Neurolinguistic Studies Research Articles

Neurolinguistic Features of Digital Autism

The way of thinking and consciousness of a person is not only a problem of an individual, but also a general socio-social problem. In the modern era of “digitalization”, the phenomenon of “digital autism” is rapidly gaining momentum among the younger generation, especially among children and adolescents. Screeners, buzzers or Generation “Z” are modern children who cannot imagine their lives without electronic devices. This makes it difficult not only for the child to develop language abilities and speech activity, but also to adapt to the social environment, get an education, and the path to professional success. The article examines the impact of digital autism, which is the impact of autism on people's daily and personal lives. Currently, social networking or excessive spending time in a virtual environment can give people an advantage over direct communication and give them emotional freedom and confidence that are not always present in ordinary communication. However, excessive isolation from society, the distinction between virtual and real life situations, their correct assessment and the development of specific solutions create certain difficulties. The complexity of the issue of digital autism lies in the fact that digital autism occurs not only in children, but also in adults. Unfortunately, there are few neurolinguistic studies on the prevention of digital autism, treatment of autism, rehabilitation, and restoration of brain function. Digital autism is one of the most difficult problems that requires studying at the junction of several sciences, such as neurolinguistics, sociology, medicine, defectology, from the point of view of the anthropolinguistic paradigm.

Beyond the Words – The Verbal Analysis of Political-Military Personalities’ Speeches

Within the article, I intend to approach politicians’ speeches from the point of view of word analysis, in order to discover what lies beyond the apparent message. Often, the information space is assimilated to a battlefield where words, like projectiles, fly to all sides to reach their target. The analysis of political discourses complements and validates the distant assessment of political leaders’ personality traits. Thus, we can determine whether or not the generated language patterns reflect their decisions. The neurolinguistic studies show that grammatical choices are not made consciously, thus we can discover important information about the personality of a political person. Moreover, it can be validated or not by comparison if the author of the speech is the same as the one who promotes it. This method of verbal communication analysis complements the remote psychological evaluation of political-military personalities on the ways in which they assume decisions.

Dincolo de cuvinte – analiza verbală a discursurilor personalităților politico-militare

Within the article, I intend to approach politicians’ speeches from the point of view of word analysis, in order to discover what lies beyond the apparent message. Often, the information space is assimilated to a battlefield where words, like projectiles, fly to all sides to reach their target. The analysis of political discourses complements and validates the distant assessment of political leaders’ personality traits. Thus, we can determine whether or not the generated language patterns reflect their decisions. The neurolinguistic studies show that grammatical choices are not made consciously, thus we can discover important information about the personality of a political person. Moreover, it can be validated or not by comparison if the author of the speech is the same as the one who promotes it. This method of verbal communication analysis complements the remote psychological evaluation of political-military personalities on the ways in which they assume decisions.

FRENCH SCHWA [ǝ] AT THE CROSSROADS OF LINGUISTICS, SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND NEURO-LINGUISTICS

The sound [ǝ] refers to one of the most complex and variable phenomena observed in the French speech stream. One of the most important features of [ǝ] is its ability to be both a sound and an absence of sound in almost the same context, i.e. without changing the informative content of the message. The specificity of French [ǝ] also lies in the fact that it is pronounced as a labialized vowel. As a result, three rounded vowels of the front row and middle rise are pronounced in an unstressed syllable: fluent [ǝ] and harmonized [œ] and [ø]. Taking into account the acoustic and articulatory similarity of these sounds and the law of least effort, the [ǝ] ability for complete reduction could be expected to be transferred to [œ] and [ø], especially in rapid speech. Do these facts indicate the French unstressed vocalism tendency towards simplification? How is this variability tracked by the speaker while understanding and generating speech? The article summarizes empirical data (acoustic, articulatory and perceptual) on the [ǝ] variability from phonetic, sociolinguistic and neuro-linguistic studies. It highlights major challenges and open issues that should be addressed in further research.

Multisensory Teaching and TBR Oscillatory Activities in Foreign Language Vocabulary Retention: A Neurolinguistic Study

Multisensory Teaching and TBR Oscillatory Activities in Foreign Language Vocabulary Retention: A Neurolinguistic Study

NEURO-LINGUISTIC INTERRELATION OF VERBAL AND NO N-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

The research paper is dedicated to the neuro-linguistic study of the relationship between verbal and nonverbal communication. The authors differentiate the features of verbal and nonverbal communication and describe their relationship from the neuro-linguistic and psilinguistic points of view.The aim of the study is to prove on the basis of experiments the neuropsycholinguistic features of verbal and nonverbal communication, the main neurobiological reasons for their parallelism and synchronicity. The paper analyzes the conclusions and judgments of world and domestic scientists on the study of verbal and sign language at the intersection of cosmetology and neurobiology, semiotic sciences, on the synchronicity of verbal and nonverbal signs. In order to clarify the synchronicity of verbal language and non-verbal means of communication a number of experiments, neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic experiments were conducted by foreign neurolinguistic scientists and psychologists to verify scientific assumptions about the parallelism of speech and gestures. According to ballistic understanding, information exchange occurs only at the stages of planning a speech act and non-verbal movement, but as soon as they begin the communication process, the two systems become independent. As a result, the authors differentiated and determined the mutual influence, the ratio of verbal and nonverbal communication, synchronicity, and the close connection of language and gestures.

Color Categorization and its Electroencephalography Correlates: A Review of Neuro-Linguistic Oddball Paradigm Research

This paper presents a review of neuro-linguistic studies on color categorization, developed using the oddball paradigm. The selection of research sources was conducted through Russian National Corpus, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science. This study undertook a comprehensive analysis of all relevant articles published within the last 15 years (with the earliest dating back to 2007). Through this analysis, traditional methodologies were identified and five thematic groups of research were established, all of which employed the oddball paradigm. The focus of neuro-linguistic research has been shown to be directed towards (1) studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of color categorization and their temporal parameters; (2) investigating the mechanisms of color categorization in preverbal infants; (3) examining the effect of lateralization; (4) analyzing inter- and intra-linguistic differences in color categorization; and (5) determining the neurophysiological correlates of artificial color categories. Paying particular attention to experimental design, principles of stimulus chromatic characteristics selection, and the results obtained by the authors will enable specialists in the field of theoretical, applied, and comparative linguistics to use the review presented in this article as a basis for planning and developing new experimental research in this area.

Pre-activation negativity (PrAN): A neural index of predictive strength of phonological cues

We propose that a recently discovered event-related potential (ERP) component—the pre-activation negativity (PrAN)—indexes the predictive strength of phonological cues, including segments, word tones, and sentence-level tones. Specifically, we argue that PrAN is a reflection of the brain’s anticipation of upcoming speech (segments, morphemes, words, and syntactic structures). Findings from a long series of neurolinguistic studies indicate that the effect can be divided into two time windows with different possible brain sources. Between 136–200 ms from stimulus onset, it indexes activity mainly in the primary and secondary auditory cortices, reflecting disinhibition of neurons sensitive to the expected acoustic signal, as indicated by the brain regions’ response to predictive certainty rather than sound salience. After ~200 ms, PrAN is related to activity in Broca’s area, possibly reflecting inhibition of irrelevant segments, morphemes, words, and syntactic structures

Rethinking motor region role in verb processing: Insights from a neurolinguistic study of noun-verb dissociation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Rethinking motor region role in verb processing: Insights from a neurolinguistic study of noun-verb dissociation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Neural correlates of linguistic collocations during continuous speech perception.

Language is fundamentally predictable, both on a higher schematic level as well as low-level lexical items. Regarding predictability on a lexical level, collocations are frequent co-occurrences of words that are often characterized by high strength of association. So far, psycho- and neurolinguistic studies have mostly employed highly artificial experimental paradigms in the investigation of collocations by focusing on the processing of single words or isolated sentences. In contrast, here we analyze EEG brain responses recorded during stimulation with continuous speech, i.e., audio books. We find that the N400 response to collocations is significantly different from that of non-collocations, whereas the effect varies with respect to cortical region (anterior/posterior) and laterality (left/right). Our results are in line with studies using continuous speech, and they mostly contradict those using artificial paradigms and stimuli. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first neurolinguistic study on collocations using continuous speech stimulation.

Language biographies

AbstractThe various collections of language biographies starting in the 1990s have given rise to a new field of investigation in sociolinguistics. The interest in the very individual, autobiographical viewpoint on languages in speakers’ own repertoires offers new insights for macrosociolinguistic research. These detailed corpora also provide data for microanalytical investigations into the specificity of autobiographical narrations, i.e. how speakers construe their language repertoires in the narrative interview setting. This contribution seeks to depict how the interest in LB emerged and subsequently describes the most important developments in LB research, which to date is still limited to the European arena. Since the field is still growing and is in need of formalization, this overview must remain incomplete. Finally, the contribution warns of pitfalls and highlights some fields where LB has provided important input, from language didactics to neurolinguistic studies.

What Can Aphasia Tell Us about How the First-Acquired Language Is Instantiated in the Brain?

Recent neurolinguistic theories converge on the hypothesis that the languages of multilingual people are processed as one system in the brain. One system for the multiple languages is also at the core of a translanguaging framework of multilingualism—a framework that focuses on each speaker’s complete linguistic repertoire rather than on the separate languages they know. However, evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests at least some nonoverlapping activations of the first-acquired language (L1) and other (non-L1) languages of multilingual people, especially when the age of acquisition and/or levels of proficiency differ across the languages. Neurolinguistic studies of acquired language disorders have demonstrated that in multilingual people who experience language impairments due to brain lesion, L1 may be less impaired or better recovered than non-L1. This paper explores the evidence available to date from the study of acquired language impairment regarding this potential primacy of the first-acquired language. Findings suggest that L1 may be better preserved in many instances of language impairment, challenging the theory of a single system for multiple languages.

Developing psycholinguistic norms for action pictures in Cantonese

The purpose of this study was to establish psycholinguistic norms for 249 action pictures in Cantonese, a language with few norms available. We provide normative data for rated visual complexity, rated age of acquisition, name agreement, word frequency and rated familiarity in this study. Forty participants were recruited to participate in both timed picture naming and rating experiments. The linear mixed effect analysis revealed that familiarity, visual complexity, and name agreement were significant predictors of action naming in Cantonese. However, AoA did not show any significant effect on action naming, which is consistently observed in previous studies of action picture naming in Chinese. The possible explanation for null effect of AoA on naming latency are discussed. This set of psycholinguistic norms in Cantonese could serve as a valuable resource for future psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic and clinical studies in Cantonese.

Cognitive and Neurolinguistic Aspects of Interpreting

Over the past decade, a large and growing body of literature has explored the cognitive and neural foundations of interpreting processes. The article explores the relevance of cognitive and neurolinguistic approaches to the process of both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. The main objective is to reveal the interpreter’s status, his/her mental and linguistic operations as cognitive units in the approaches under review. Firstly, we discuss how both interpreting modes have been understood and defined by various researchers. Secondly, we present the overview of diverse research works on cognitive and neurolinguistic scientific approaches to interpretation, trying to understand and explain the operating of interpreters’ minds. Finally, we focus on the issues of bilingualism and its impact on language comprehension and its production. It has been revealed that interpreting contributes significantly to improving cognitive and neural functions of the brain. Interpreters have always been a key figure in facilitating and bridging communication across cultures and languages. They can input, retain, retrieve, and output data but are limited in processing capacity at any given time. Quite recently, scholars in both interpreting and neurolinguistics have attempted to provide insight into the organization of bilingual speakers’ minds. In interpreting and translation tasks, it has been complemented by research works into language control in a bilingual language mode, with both language systems being simultaneously activated. Taken together, the cognitive and neurolinguistic studies reviewed in the paper support strong recommendations to regard an interpreter as a conceptual mediator relying on both his/her decision-making and probability thinking mechanisms.

The Theory of Aspect and Its Processing Correlates in Neurolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Studies / Teorija glagolskog vida i neurolingvistička i psiholingvistička saznanja o načinu procesiranja glagolskog vida

Languages convey aspectual meanings differently. Generally, there are two types of aspect: lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. Lexical aspect relates to inherent features of the predicate, whilst grammatical aspect, sometimes dubbed as viewpoint aspect, expresses the speaker’s viewpoint. Nevertheless, in traditional theoretical linguistics, these two aspectual systems are typically defined in terms of the same or similar criteria. The article discusses lexical and grammatical aspect in more detail and points out the problems that theoretical linguistics encounters when defining lexical and grammatical aspect in terms of the same holistic criterion. Importantly, the article outlines findings of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies which (possibly to the dissatisfaction of theoretical linguistics) unambiguously show that lexical and grammatical aspect are indeed inextricably linked. Perfective and imperfective aspect do model the comprehender’s understanding of the situation as complete (perfective aspect) or ongoing with all the stages, participants and locations cognitively more available to the comprehender (imperfective aspect).

The Croatian psycholinguistic database: Estimates for 6000 nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

Psycholinguistic databases containing ratings of concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency are used in psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies which require words as stimuli. Linguistic characteristics (e.g. word length, corpus frequency) are frequently coded, but word class is seldom systematically treated, although there are indications of its significance for imageability and concreteness. This paper presents the Croatian Psycholinguistic Database (CPD; available at: https://doi.org/10.17234/megahr.2019.hpb), containing 6000 Croatian nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, rated for concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency. Moreover, we present computationally obtained extrapolations of concreteness and imageability to the remainder of the Croatian lexicon (available at: https://github.com/megahr/lexicon/blob/master/predictions/hr_c_i.predictions.txt). In the two studies presented here, we explore the significance of word class for concreteness and imageability in human and computationally obtained ratings. The observed correlations in the CPD indicate correspondences between psycholinguistic measures expected from the literature. Word classes exhibit differences in subjective frequency, age of acquisition, concreteness and imageability, with significant differences between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. In the computational study which focused on concreteness and imageability, concreteness obtained higher correlations with human ratings than imageability, and the system underpredicted the concreteness of nouns, and overpredicted the concreteness of adjectives and adverbs. Overall, this suggests that word class contains schematic conceptual and distributional information. Schematic conceptual content seems to be more significant in human ratings of concreteness and less significant in computationally obtained ratings, where distributional information seems to play a more significant role. This suggests that word class differences should be theoretically explored.

Impact Of Arabic Online Learning In The Perspective Of How The Brain Learns

The study aims to describe the impact of learning Arabic online and the viewpoint of brain-based learning on these implications. The research used a mixed-method that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to get a real picture of the implementation of online learning from a neurolinguistic perspective, the data is obtained through the results of questionnaires and studied in a neurolinguistic perspective based on the literature on the theme. The data collection technique was carried out by distributing questionnaires to PKPBA students who carried out Arabic learning through online and literature review on neurolinguistic studies. The results of this study are that the Arabic learning process carried out online has good benefits with varied but not optimal patterns of interaction through blended learning. In contrast, according to neurolinguistics, it is stated that at least any model can maintain how the potential of the brain through language habituation must be consistent with the balance of the left and right brain.

Data-driven models and computational tools for neurolinguistics: a language technology perspective

In this paper, our focus is the connection and influence of language technologies on the research in neurolinguistics. We present a review of brain imaging-based neurolinguistic studies with a focus on the natural language representations, such as word embeddings and pre-trained language models. Mutual enrichment of neurolinguistics and language technologies leads to development of brain-aware natural language representations. The importance of this research area is emphasized by medical applications.

ЎЗБЕК ТИЛИДАГИ АГРАММАТИК АФАЗИЯДА ОТ ВА ФЕЪЛЛАРНИНГ ИФОДАЛАНИШИ

Noun and verb retrieval in Uzbek agrammatic aphasia is studied through picture naming experiment. Healthy and brain-damaged individuals participated in the study. Neuro linguistic studies showed difference in noun and verb impairment in aphasia. Majority of studies reported that noun processing is easier than verb processing for aphasic speakers. The results of the current study showed no noun-verb dissociation in Uzbek agrammatic aphasia. However, a small effect of age of acquisition on noun production and image ability effect on verb production is observed.

Патология мышления при шизофрении: нейролингвистический подход к изучению нарушения процесса обобщения

The study attempts to present a critical review of certain problems in pathopsychological investigaton of operational thought disorders and to outline the possible ways for its further development. We compare the differences in approaches to the analysis of pathology of thinking in schizophrenia presented in the classic works of L.S. Vygotsky and B.V. Zeigarnik. We argue that, when studying some of the thought disorders in schizophrenia, it may be more effective to revert to Vygotsky’s approach associated with the investigation of word meaning disturbances in the analysis of disorders of the generalization process. As a way to further develop this approach to the study of thought disorders in schizophrenia, we suggest exploring the perspectives of synthesizing various research areas that have stemed from cultural-historical psychology. Basing on the analysis of Russian neurolinguistic studies of word meaning impairment, we propose two possible directions for studying the psychological and brain mechanisms of operational disorders of thinking.