Verb Processing Research Articles

Atypical activation of action-semantic network in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

In typical adults, fMRI studies have shown activation of primary and pre-motor regions during action word processing. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communication impairments. ASD studies have shown atypical semantic processing and motor deficits. The objective of this study was to examine semantic processing of verbs in ASD. 15 ASD adolescents and 19 typically developing adolescents, 11–16years, completed a semantic similarity judgment task during fMRI. There were no differences in task accuracy or reaction time. At the group level, both groups had activation in left language areas; controls, but not ASD, also had activation in the left pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA). In ASD, less left frontal activation and reduced left lateralization of activation within these regions was associated with shorter reaction times and better language skills. More left temporal activation was associated with better language abilities in ASD. Differences in pre-SMA activation may relate to motor planning deficits or differences in approach to the semantic task in ASD. Results suggest that left frontal language areas may be less efficient in ASD and those who can compensate by recruiting more right hemisphere homologues may result in better language abilities.

Body-part specific interactions of action verb processing with motor behaviour

The interaction of action-related language processing with actual movement is an indicator of the functional role of motor cortical involvement in language understanding. This paper describes two experiments using single action verb stimuli. Motor responses were performed with the hand or the foot. To test the double dissociation of language-motor facilitation effects within subjects, Experiments 1 and 2 used a priming procedure where both hand and foot reactions had to be performed in response to different geometrical shapes, which were preceded by action verbs. In Experiment 1, the semantics of the verbs could be ignored whereas Experiment 2 included semantic decisions. Only Experiment 2 revealed a clear double dissociation in reaction times: reactions were facilitated when preceded by verbs describing actions with the matching effector. In Experiment 1, by contrast, there was an interaction between verb-response congruence and a semantic variable related to motor features of the verbs. Thus, the double dissociation paradigm of semantic motor priming was effective, corroborating the role of the motor system in action-related language processing. Importantly, this effect was body part specific.

Afasiaren azterketa hizkuntza ezberdinetan neurozientzia kognitiboaren ikuspegitik

Artikulu honen helburua da neurozientzia kognitiboaren ikuspegitik defi- nitzea afasia zer den eta afasiologia zertan datzan. Horrez gain, afasia hizkuntza ezberdinetan aztertzearen ezinbestekotasuna erakustea du xedea, burmuinaren eta hizkuntzaren arteko eraginak hobeki ulertzeko. Gaixo agramatikoen aditz-prozesamenduaren azterketa hartzen dut adibidetzat. Bukatzeko, etorkizunari begira, euskal afasiologiari eta afasiadun eleaniztunen azterketari buruzko ikerketa-lerro batzuk aipatzen ditut.

P184 Individual transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) within the beta range during verbal working memory

Introduction Beta band brain oscillations (13–30 Hz) correlate with cognitive manipulations during language processing ( Weiss and Muller, 2012 ). In particular, they are associated with the active maintenance of stimuli in verbal working memory ( Weiss and Rappelsberger, 2000 ). Therefore, beta oscillations are suited for tACS during verbal memory encoding. Objectives We examined whether 18 Hz tACS stimulation modulates verbal WM performance in a healthy participant. We did this single-case study since most tACS results are based on group studies and we want to test tACS in individual patients with disturbances of verbal WM. Materials & Methods A right-handed female (27 y) had to memorize 600 visually presented concrete words (150 nouns, 150 verbs; randomly presented two times) and do subsequent free recall. tACS in the beta (18 Hz) and alpha (9 Hz) band as well as a sham stimulation was applied in a double-blind multiple treatment design (ABCBCA) on 6 different days with at least 24 h between sessions. tACS-intensity was 350 μA (below individual phosphene and discomfort threshold). 20 min stimulation was applied at left temporo-parietal and right fronto-central sites. Results A significant difference between the stimulation and sham condition (Pearson χ2 = 12.0, p = 0.03, two-tailed) was found which differed for nouns and verbs. During beta stimulation the participant showed a 48% increase of recalled nouns (8% for verbs), during alpha stimulation a 28% (26 % for verbs) and during sham a 20% (36% for verbs) increase. Overall error rate was higher for verbs (Pearson χ2 = 11.73, p = 0.008, two-tailed). The influence of beta vs. alpha stimulation could not be reliably distinguished with the current protocol. Conclusion Although, beta oscillations are important for linking past and present input into a coherent representation of memorized contents ( Weiss and Rappelsberger, 2000 , Kopell and Whittington, 2011 ), no significant difference was found between alpha and beta stimulation. The word category difference is in accordance with previous findings ( Fiori and Cipollari, 2013 ) who revealed better performance for verb versus noun processing when stimulating left frontal in contrast to temporal areas.

Effect of Constrained Arm Posture on the Processing of Action Verbs.

Evidence is increasing that brain areas that are responsible for action planning and execution are activated during the information processing of action-related verbs (e.g., pick or kick). To obtain further evidence, we conducted three experiments to see if constraining arm posture, which could disturb the motor planning and imagery for that arm, would lead to delayed judgment of verbs referring to arm actions. In all experiments, native Japanese speakers judged as quickly as possible whether the presented object and the verb would be compatible (e.g., ball–throw) or not (e.g., ball–pour). Constrained arm posture was introduced to the task by asking participants to keep both hands behind their back. Two types of verbs were used: manual action verbs (i.e., verbs referring to actions performed on an object by a human hand) and non-manual action verbs. In contrast to our hypothesis that constrained arm posture would affect only the information processing of manual action verbs, the results showed delayed processing of both manual action and non-manual action verbs when the arm posture was constrained. The effect of constrained arm posture was observed even when participants responded with their voice, suggesting that the delayed judgment was not simply due to the difficulty of responding with the hand (i.e., basic motor interference). We discussed why, contrary to our hypothesis, constrained arm posture resulted in delayed CRTs regardless of the “manipulability” as symbolized by the verbs.

Rapid automatized processing of nouns and verbs in typical children

Abstract The utility of Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) as a clinical tool to predict later reading abilities was addressed by researchers as early as the 1970s. Over the years, several variants of the task came into existence such as inclusion of a variety of stimuli, varying picture size, etc. but very few have addressed the response modality. The study aimed to compare rapid processing skills in typical children in verbal and non-verbal modalities using picture arrays of nouns and verbs. Twenty typically developing children in the age range of 5–7 years participated in the study. Picture arrays of five common nouns and verbs each served as the stimuli. The task comprised picture naming and picture pointing. The results revealed that nouns were processed faster than verbs in both verbal and non-verbal modalities. It was also found that there was no difference in the processing of nouns between the two modalities unlike verbs. Overall, the results point to the potential use of a non-verbal task to assess the rapid processing skills in children with limited verbal abilities.

Processing epistemic modality in a second language: a self-paced reading study

AbstractThe current study brings together two novel perspectives: one is concerned with second language acquisition of complex modal semantics by learners of a Slavic (Croatian) language, and the other relates to online processing of modal auxiliary verbs in L2 English. The study sought to examine how English L2 learners process modal verbs

Developmental Coordination Disorder Affects the Processing of Action-Related Verbs

Processing action-language affects the planning and execution of motor acts, which suggests that the motor system might be involved in action-language understanding. However, this claim is hotly debated. For the first time, we compared the processing of action-verbs in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a disease that specifically affects the motor system, with children with a typical development (TD). We administered two versions of a go/no-go task in which verbs expressing either hand, foot or abstract actions were presented. We found that only when the semantic content of a verb has to be retrieved, TD children showed an increase in reaction times if the verb involved the same effector used to give the response. In contrast, DCD patients did not show any difference between verb categories irrespective of the task. These findings suggest that the pathological functioning of the motor system in individuals with DCD also affects language processing.

The behavioural status and neural bases of concrete and abstract verb processing in aphasia

The behavioural status and neural bases of concrete and abstract verb processing in aphasia

Feature-Specific Event-Related Potential Effects to Action- and Sound-Related Verbs during Visual Word Recognition.

Grounded cognition theories suggest that conceptual representations essentially depend on modality-specific sensory and motor systems. Feature-specific brain activation across different feature types such as action or audition has been intensively investigated in nouns, while feature-specific conceptual category differences in verbs mainly focused on body part specific effects. The present work aimed at assessing whether feature-specific event-related potential (ERP) differences between action and sound concepts, as previously observed in nouns, can also be found within the word class of verbs. In Experiment 1, participants were visually presented with carefully matched sound and action verbs within a lexical decision task, which provides implicit access to word meaning and minimizes strategic access to semantic word features. Experiment 2 tested whether pre-activating the verb concept in a context phase, in which the verb is presented with a related context noun, modulates subsequent feature-specific action vs. sound verb processing within the lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, ERP analyses revealed a differential ERP polarity pattern for action and sound verbs at parietal and central electrodes similar to previous results in nouns. Pre-activation of the meaning of verbs in the preceding context phase in Experiment 2 resulted in a polarity-reversal of feature-specific ERP effects in the lexical decision task compared with Experiment 1. This parallels analogous earlier findings for primed action and sound related nouns. In line with grounded cognitions theories, our ERP study provides evidence for a differential processing of action and sound verbs similar to earlier observation for concrete nouns. Although the localizational value of ERPs must be viewed with caution, our results indicate that the meaning of verbs is linked to different neural circuits depending on conceptual feature relevance.

Lexical-retrieval and semantic memory in Parkinson’s disease: The question of noun and verb dissociation

The dissociation between the processing of verbs and nouns has been debated in light of the Embodied Cognition Theory (EC). The objective of this paper is to verify how action and verb processing deficits of PD patients are modulated by different tasks with different cognitive demands. Action and object lexical-semantic processing was evaluated in patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and cognitively healthy controls through three different tasks (verbal fluency, naming and semantic association). Compared to controls, PD patients presented worse performance in naming actions and in the two semantic association tasks (action/object). Action verbal fluency performance was significantly associated with PD severity whereas object semantic association deficits and noun verbal fluency scores were associated to lower scores in measures of global cognitive functioning. Our data suggest that semantic deficits are related to the type of cognitive processing and this is in the line with more flexible EC accounts.

Left inferior frontal gyrus mediates morphosyntax: ERP evidence from verb processing in left-hemisphere damaged patients

Neurocognitive models of language comprehension have proposed different mechanisms with different neural substrates mediating human language processing. Whether the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is engaged in morpho-syntactic information processing is currently still controversially debated. The present study addresses this issue by examining the processing of irregular verb inflection in real words (e.g., swim > swum > swam) and pseudowords (e.g., frim > frum > fram) by using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in neurological patients with lesions in the LIFG involving Broca's area as well as healthy controls. Different ERP patterns in response to the grammatical violations were observed in both groups. Controls showed a biphasic negativity-P600 pattern in response to incorrect verb inflections whereas patients with LIFG lesions displayed a N400. For incorrect pseudoword inflections, a late positivity was found in controls, while no ERP effects were obtained in patients. These findings of different ERP patterns in the two groups strongly indicate an involvement of LIFG in morphosyntactic processing, thereby suggesting brain regions' specialization for different language functions.

The Matrix Verb as a Source of Comprehension Difficulty in Object Relative Sentences.

Two experiments used eyetracking during reading to examine the processing of the matrix verb following object and subject relative clauses. The experiments show that the processing of the matrix verb following an object relative is indeed slowed compared to the processing of the same verb following a subject relative. However, this difficulty is entirely eliminated if additional material intervenes between the object gap and the matrix verb. An explanation in terms of spillover processing is ruled out, suggesting that it is the gap-matrix verb sequence that is itself responsible for the difficulty. We consider two accounts of this difficulty, one emphasizing the potential difficulty of rapidly switching between the sentential subject's thematic or syntactic role in the embedded clause and its role in the matrix clause, and one emphasizing the potential difficulty of performing two demanding memory retrievals in rapid succession. The present experiments also closely replicate the previous findings from eyetracking that the noun phrase and the verb within an object relative are both loci of processing difficulty, but that the former induces substantially greater difficulty.

Correction: Grasping Hand Verbs: Oscillatory Beta and Alpha Correlates of Action-Word Processing

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0108059.].

Toward Transversal Cosmopolitanism: Understanding Alternative Praxes in the Global Field of Transformative Movements

This article critically reflects on theoretical dilemmas of conceptualizing recent ideological shifts and contention among global transformative movements. Some studies conceptualize these movements as ideologically mature and coherent, while other inquiries highlight disorganization, fragmentation, disillusion, and dispute. The former line of argument suggests that underlying emerging global solidarities—to the extent they genuinely exist—there are some identifiably coherent cosmopolitanist, or globalist, values. The latter claim that existing global justice and transformative movements lack an effective ideological position for uniting the masses behind a global (political) project for transforming global capitalist social relations. By drawing upon an interpretive review of empirical studies conducted throughout the last decade, the article delineates four modalities, defined in terms of their orientations toward cosmopolitanist values. Among these modalities is a new and promising one, termed here as ‘transversal cosmopolitanist’ (‘transversal’ here understood as a process verb, indicating a new form of cosmopolitanist praxis). This approach assumes the possibility of creating a common ground for fruitful dialogue, constructive collective learning, progressive hybridization, and active political cooperation among diverse identities and ideological visions of contemporary global transformative movements, against existing capitalist social relations and structures of domination.

EP 27. Modulatory effect of motor cortex stimulation on semantic priming

Background Processing hand and foot verbs has been shown to activate the respective motor areas and to elicit beta desynchronization similar to movement execution ( van Elk et al., 2010 , Niccolai et al., 2014 ). Above that, oscillatory brain responses have shown that motor execution interferes with simultaneous verb processing ( Klepp et al., 2015 ). Objectives By exploiting the up- and down-regulation that anodal and cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) respectively exert on motor cortical excitability ( Nitsche and Paulus, 2000 ), we aimed at modulating semantic priming of action verbs. We expected that online anodal stimulation of the left hand motor cortex would slow down the processing of hand verbs by increasing cortical excitability and inducing the previously observed interference effect. The opposite outcome was expected for cathodal stimulation. Sham stimulation was used as a control condition in a double-blind within-subjects design. Methods The stimuli set consisted of disyllabic hand, foot, and non-body (abstract) verbs followed by shapes with rounded or pointed corners. Twenty healthy participants (10 females) were required to read the verbs and to perform a go/no-go task: (a) to respond only in trials with concrete verbs, (b) by pressing a manual button if the shape prompt had rounded/pointed corners and a foot pedal if the shape had pointed/rounded corners. Results Results showed a semantic priming effect consisting in significantly shorter reaction times to congruent verb type – response modality pairs. Cathodal stimulation resulted in less wrong answers for incongruent pairs compared to the sham condition. Responses to shapes following hand verbs were significantly faster in the cathodal compared to the anodal condition when responding with the hand. Conversely, button responses to shapes following hand and foot verbs in the anodal condition were slower compared to the sham condition. Conclusions Cathodal stimulation of the hand motor area appears to selectively improve processing of hand verbs. Anodal stimulation showed an interference effect unrelated to verb type, probably depending on modulation of both hand verbs processing and hand responses. As button responses were overall faster than pedal responses, the lack of modulation of the latter suggests either that the effect of tDCS on word processing is short-timed or that tDCS influenced both verb processing and hand responses.

Event-related potentials reveal early activation of syntax information in Chinese verb processing

By taking advantage of the semantic-syntactic characteristics of Chinese verbs, the current study examined the brain activity of automatic activation of syntactic features at the single word level. Both syntactic (transitivity) and semantic (integrity) features of the verb were manipulated. Event-related potentials were measured while subjects performed lexical decision tasks on visually presented verbs at the single word level. The results showed that there was a significant transitivity effect in both lateral and midline areas for the 150–200ms time window (N200 effect), indicating the retrieval of the syntactic feature. There was also a significant syntactic-semantic interaction at the late stage of verb processing (N400 effect) in the midline central-parietal region, reflecting syntactic influences on semantic processing. These findings suggest that transitivity is an integral part of the mental representation of Chinese verbs and such information can be retrieved at the early stage of single verb processing and can influence subsequent semantic integration. These results also reveal the special features of Chinese language processing.

Online processing of Verb–Argument Constructions: lexical decision and meaningfulness

abstractThis paper discusses how patterns of construction usage, implicitly learned over lifelong experience, tune the language processing system for fluent interactive lexical, syntactic, and semantic access. It reports on three experiments that investigate online processing of Verb–Argument Constructions (VACs) and the degree to which this is effected by (i) verb frequency in the language, (ii) verb frequency in the VAC, (iii) VAC-verb contingency, and (iv) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. Experiment 1 tested lexical decision of VAC exemplars presented as successive verb–preposition pairs. Experiment 2 tested lexical decision of VAC exemplars presented as arbitrarily interrupted verb–adverb–preposition pairs. Experiment 3 had participants judge whether two-word utterances were meaningful or not. All of the experiments show effects of Verb Frequency and Verb-VAC frequency: learners have rich implicit statistical knowledge of verb-VAC type–token frequency that guides processing. Lexical decision is additionally driven by semantic prototypicality (but not VAC-verb contingency ΔPcw), whereas meaning judgment is affected by VAC-verb contingency ΔPcw (but not semantic prototypicality). These findings, I argue, index the spreading activation of unconscious meaning representation in lexical decision in comparison to the election of a unitary interpretation in conscious comprehension. I conclude that speeded automatic VAC processing involves rich associations, tuned by verb type and token frequencies, their contingencies of usage, and their histories of prototypical and specific interpretations which interface syntax, lexis, and semantics.

Linguistic Legitimation of Political Events in Newspaper Discourse

This paper examines the discursive structures employed in legitimizing the event of U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq and identifies them in relation to linguistic features. It attempts to describe the relation between language use and legitimation discursive structures in depicting political events. The paper focuses on the political event of U.S. forces’ withdrawal from Iraq in the English newspaper issued in Iraq. The study shows the way in which journalists express their values and attitudes concerning this critical event. Consequently, this requires a critical discourse analysis (henceforth, CDA) to analyse news articles in the Iraqi English newspaper: The Kurdish Globe (henceforth, KG) newspaper. Accordingly, the study presents a qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles to identify the legitimation discursive structures and their linguistic features. It is found that the main discursive structures of legitimation employed in the KG newspaper are: authorization, rationalization, and moral evaluation. Besides, there were five verb processes used to represent this legitimation, including material, verbal, relational, mental, and existential. Keywords : Critical discourse analysis, legitimation discursive structures, linguistic features, newspaper discourse, systemic functional linguistics

Modelling verb selection within argument structure constructions

ABSTRACTThis article looks into the nature of cognitive associations between verbs and argument structure constructions (ASCs). Existing research has shown that distributional and semantic factors affect speakers' choice of verbs in ASCs. A formal account of this theory has been proposed by Ellis, N. C., O'Donnell, M. B., & Römer, U. [(2014a). The processing of verb–argument constructions is sensitive to form, function, frequency, contingency and prototypicality. Cognitive Linguistics, 25, 55–98. doi:10.1515/cog-2013-0031], who show that the frequency of production of verbs within an ASC can be predicted from joint verb–construction frequency, contingency of verb–construction mapping, and prototypicality of verb meaning. We simulate the verb production task using a computational model of ASC learning, and compare its performance to the available human data. To account for individual variation between speakers and for order of verb preference, we carry out two additional analyses. We then compare a number of prediction models with different variables, and propose a refined account of verb selection within ASCs: overall verb frequency is an additional factor affecting verb selection, while the effects of joint frequency and contingency may be combined rather than independent.