Nonwords Research Articles

Delayed Non-word Repetition according to Rehearsal Conditions in 6- to 7-Year-Old Children

외현적 시연, 내현적 시연, 시연 억제의 상이한 시연조건들이 아동의 음운단기기억에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 알아보기 위해, 시연조건에 따른 지연 비단어따라말하기 수행력을 분석하고 말지각, 단기기억, 어휘량과 그 수행력과의 관계를 분석하였다. 방법: 6, 7세 일반아동 20명씩을 대상으로 외현적 시연, 내현적 시연, 시연 억제 조건에서 지연 비단어따라말하기...

Morphology and Spelling in Arabic: Development and Interface.

In the current study, two experiments were carried out: the first tested the development of derivational root and word-pattern morphological awareness in Arabic; the second tested morphological processing in Arabic spelling. 143 Arabic native speaking children with normal reading skills in 2nd, 4th and 6th grade participated in the study. The results of the first experiment demonstrated the early emergence of derivational morphological awareness in children, with root awareness emerging earlier than word-pattern awareness. The second experiment supported the implication of morphological processing in spelling words and pseudo words across all grades tested. The results are discussed within a developmental psycholinguistic framework with particular emphasis on the characteristics of the Arabic language and orthography.

Providing English foreign language teachers with content knowledge to facilitate decoding and spelling acquisition: a longitudinal perspective

This quasi-experimental study adds to the small existing literature on orthographic-related teacher knowledge in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The study examined the impact of a course on English orthography on predominantly non-native-speaking EFL preservice and inservice teachers' orthographic content knowledge, and the extent to which these teachers retained orthographic-related content knowledge four months after participating in a semester course on the topic. In addition, the study examined the relationship between participants' acquired orthographic-related content knowledge and EFL spelling. Both groups of teachers that studied in the course improved on overall orthographic-related content knowledge, both immediately following the course and longitudinally. Preservice and inservice participants showed similar levels of orthographic knowledge prior to course participation and both showed significant improvements compared to controls following course participation. Participants also retained knowledge four months after course completion. Overall, the inservice teachers scored higher on orthographic-related knowledge, possibly as a result of the immediate application of their newly acquired knowledge. An unexpected finding was a lack of interaction between acquired orthographic-related content knowledge and pseudo word spelling scores. Possible methodological limitations, such as number of participants as well as the length and scope of the course, may explain this outcome. This paper also discusses practical implications of this study for EFL decoding and spelling instruction.

Varying irrelevant phonetic features hinders learning of the feature being trained.

Learning to distinguish nonnative words that differ in a critical phonetic feature can be difficult. Speech training studies typically employ methods that explicitly direct the learner's attention to the relevant nonnative feature to be learned. However, studies on vision have demonstrated that perceptual learning may occur implicitly, by exposing learners to stimulus features, even if they are irrelevant to the task, and it has recently been suggested that this task-irrelevant perceptual learning framework also applies to speech. In this study, subjects took part in a seven-day training regimen to learn to distinguish one of two nonnative features, namely, voice onset time or lexical tone, using explicit training methods consistent with most speech training studies. Critically, half of the subjects were exposed to stimuli that varied not only in the relevant feature, but in the irrelevant feature as well. The results showed that subjects who were trained with stimuli that varied in the relevant feature and held the irrelevant feature constant achieved the best learning outcomes. Varying both features hindered learning and generalization to new stimuli.

Word reading aloud skills: their positive redefinition through ageing

BackgroundSuccessful reading can be achieved by means of two different procedures: sub‐word processes for the pronunciation of words without semantics or pseudowords (PW) and whole‐word processes that recruit word‐specific information regarding the pronunciation of words with atypical orthography‐to‐phonology mappings (exception words, EW).MethodsWe compared reading abilities between 35 young and 35 older adults in an experimental reading task including low‐frequency regular (RW), EW and PW.ResultsA significant effect of word type, group and an interaction word type by group was found for errors. Young adults made significantly more regularization errors than older subjects for EWs. Conversely, young readers read PW and RW significantly faster. These results indicate that older adults compared with younger adults are more accurate when reading low‐frequency EW.ConclusionThe fact that young adults were faster than the elderly for PW and RW reading, together with a larger number of regularization errors in EW reading, suggests that they relied on sub‐word processes to a larger extent than the older group.HighlightsWhat is already known about this topic: Sub‐word processes are based on the use of consistent or regular orthography‐to‐phonology mappings that represent the sub‐units that compose words and are mainly used for pseudoword reading. Whole‐word processes use item‐specific information regarding the pronunciation of a particular word and are mainly used for exception word reading. During reading acquisition, and as reading experience increase, children switch from sub‐word processing strategies to a more efficient use of whole‐word processes. What this paper adds: The ability to read exception words continues to improve over the lifespan, even in later stages of life. Elderly adults rely on whole‐word processes to a larger extent than younger adults. Implications for theory, policy or practice: These results contrast with the general idea that ageing is associated with general cognitive decline, so older people should be encouraged to engage in reading activities. The fact that this cognitive ability is improved during ageing could provide insightful information for developing intervention programmes in patients with acquired reading disorders.

Telling the world’s least funny jokes: On the quantification of humor as entropy

In assessing aphasics or conducting experiments using a lexical decision task, we have observed informally that some non-words (NWs) reliably make people laugh. In this paper, we describe a set of studies aimed at illuminating what underlies this effect, performing the first quantitative test of a 200 year old theory of humor proposed by Schopenhauer (1818). We begin with a brief overview of the history of humor theories. Schopenhauer’s theory is formulated in terms of detection/violation of patterns of co-occurrence and thereby suggests a method to quantify NW humor using Shannon entropy. A survey study demonstrates that there is much more consistency than could be expected by chance in human judgments of which NWs are funny. Analysis of that survey data and two experiments all demonstrate that Shannon entropy does indeed correctly predict human judgments of NW funniness, demonstrating as well that the perceived humor is a quantifiable function of how far the NWs are from being words.

Broca's region and Visual Word Form Area activation differ during a predictive Stroop task

Competing theories attempt to explain the function of Broca's area in single word processing. Studies have found the region to be more active during processing of pseudo words than real words and during infrequent words relative to frequent words and during Stroop (incongruent) color words compared to Non-Stroop (congruent) words. Two related theories explain these findings as reflecting either “cognitive control” processing in the face of conflicting input or a linguistic prediction error signal, based on a predictive coding approach. The latter implies that processing cost refers to violations of expectations based on the statistical distributions of input. In this fMRI experiment we attempted to disentangle single word processing cost originating from cognitive conflict and that stemming from predictive expectation violation. Participants (N = 49) responded to whether the words “GREEN” or “RED” were displayed in green or red (incongruent vs congruent colors). One of the colors, however, was presented three times as often as the other, making it possible to study both congruency and frequency effects independently. Auditory stimuli saying “GREEN” or “RED” had the same distribution, making it possible to study frequency effects across modalities. We found significant behavioral effects of both incongruency and frequency. A significant effect (p < .05 FWE) of incongruency was found in Broca's region, but no effect of frequency was observed and no interaction. Conjoined effects of incongruency and frequency were found in parietal regions as well as in the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA). No interaction between perceptual modality and frequency was found in VWFA suggesting that the region is not strictly visual. These findings speak against a strong version of the prediction error processing hypothesis in Broca's region. They support the idea that prediction error processes in the intermediate timeframe are allocated to more posterior parts of the brain.

O Impacto do Implante Coclear na Linguagem Oral das Crianças com Surdez Congénita

Children with severe to profound sensorineural deafness can acquire vocabulary and syntactic structures to communicate by oral language, after cochlear implant. Identify the linguistic skills of children with cochlear implant. Eighteen children of both gender, between 9 and 10 years, with congenital bilateral deafness, using cochlear implant, were studied. The evaluation instrument used was Observation Chart of Language-School Level. The results were compared with standard of normal-hearing children with the same hearing age. The scores registered in the linguistics structures studied, comparing implanted children and standard, was: phonology, 29.44 ± 8.4 vs. 29.68 ± 5.90, p = 0.91; semantics, 18.55 ± 8.89 vs. 19.20 ± 4.85, p = 0.76; morpho-syntax 21.89 ± 12.85 vs. 26.35 ± 10.36, p = 0.159. Regarding the tests of semantics, there was no significant difference. Concerning the tests of morpho-syntactic structure, the difference was significant in the derivation of words, 2.83 ± 2.81 vs. 4.65 ± 1.64, p = 0.014. In the phonology, a significant difference was found comparing implanted children and standard, in the discrimination of pseudo words, 6.6 ± 2.8 vs. 8.37 ± 2.32, p = 0.023. However, in syllabic segmentation, implanted children had a mean score 8.56 ± 1.6 significantly higher than standard, 5.9 ± 1.58, p < 0.001. The similarity of the scores obtained by children with cochlear implants with the standard, in the language components studied confirms that cochlear implant promotes the development of oral verbal language in children with congenital deafness. Implanted children had acquired language skills similar to normal-hearing children with the same hearing age.

Pedagogical Significance of Morphological Awareness in Korean and English

This study investigated whether Korean children understand the internal structure of compound words in Korean and English and whether there is a relationship between their performance in tasks that measure their understanding of the morphological structure of compounds in Korean and English. This study also examined the effects of gender, grade, and verbal ability on the performance of the Korean and English tasks. 106 primary school children completed a Korean and English compound task, which consisted of 32 compound test items in Korean and in English respectively. Each compound task included 16 comprehension test items and 16 production test items. Half of them were real words and the other half were pseudo words. The structures of the compounds were noun-noun or noun-verb. Korean task scores made a significant contribution to predicting English test scores after controlling for gender, grade, and verbal ability. It is concluded that L1 task performance can be a significant factor in L2 task performance, supporting evidence that L1 morphological awareness is transferable to L2 morphological processes. From a pedagogical perspective, research findings will be useful for teachers when designing compound tasks to develop Korean children’s morphological awareness for language and literacy development in English.

P110. Networks for semantic integration in auditory speech comprehension

Introduction Semantic integration refers to the influence of previous context on the automatic integration of new information into a sentence during word comprehension. Neuroimaging studies have shown that sentence-level integration of semantic information is associated with activation of a left-lateralized fronto-temporal language network (Baumgaertner et al., 2002). The activation patterns are dependent on the difficulty of semantic integration which can be operationalised on the sentence-level through variation of the terminal word's expectancy, called probability. With this paradigm we attempted to characterize the properties of the language network relevant for semantic integration through multimodal neuroimaging examining structural and effective connectivity. Methods 17 young and healthy right-handed individuals were examined with functional MRI (fMRI) while they judged aurally presented sentences. Sentences were constructed following the pattern Der Schreiner baut den … (The Carpenter constructs the …) Tisch (desk=expected)/Turm (tower=unexpected)/Wein (wine=incongruent)/Kirst (pseudo word=anomalous). In a lexical decision task the subject has to decide if the last word of a sentence is a word (Tisch/Turm/Wein) or a pseudo word (Kirst). Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) for effective connectivity was calculated for 63 fully connected models between fMRI activation maxima in three regions. Additionally diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) sequences were acquired to assess structural connectivity between these regions. Results Behavioural data show the expected influence of cloze probability on lexical decision reaction times (expected nouns expected and incorrect>expected activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the superior and medial temporal gyrus (STG/MTG) was increased ( p Discussion These results support the notion of a key contribution of the inferior frontal gyrus and the medial and superior temporal gyrus to semantic integration. DCM network analysis shows inhibitory influences on the pMTG as a consequence of increased difficulty of semantic integration. The functional relevance of these activation patterns and interactions will now be addressed in TMS experiments.

Rapid and automatic speech-specific learning mechanism in human neocortex

A unique feature of human communication system is our ability to rapidly acquire new words and build large vocabularies. However, its neurobiological foundations remain largely unknown. In an electrophysiological study optimally designed to probe this rapid formation of new word memory circuits, we employed acoustically controlled novel word-forms incorporating native and non-native speech sounds, while manipulating the subjects' attention on the input. We found a robust index of neurolexical memory-trace formation: a rapid enhancement of the brain's activation elicited by novel words during a short (~30min) perceptual exposure, underpinned by fronto-temporal cortical networks, and, importantly, correlated with behavioural learning outcomes. Crucially, this neural memory trace build-up took place regardless of focused attention on the input or any pre-existing or learnt semantics. Furthermore, it was found only for stimuli with native-language phonology, but not for acoustically closely matching non-native words. These findings demonstrate a specialised cortical mechanism for rapid, automatic and phonology-dependent formation of neural word memory circuits.

Seeing is knowing? Visual word recognition in non-dyslexic and dyslexic readers: An ERP study

The aim of the current study was to investigate whether phonological/semantic processing of the word takes place simultaneously with, or following, the early processing of its visual features. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 13 dyslexic (four female) and 14 non-dyslexic (six female) native English speaking young adults in two lexical decision tasks. In Task 1 participants had to make an orthographic lexical decision to distinguish frequently used words (W) from pseudohomophones (PH1) focusing on visual properties of stimuli. In Task 2 they had to make a phonological lexical decision—to pseudohomophones (PH2) and pseudowords (PW) and decide whether stimuli sounded like real words—focusing on non-visual higher order, i.e., phonological and semantic, processing of the stimuli. The behavioural performance was less good and the ERP peaks’ latency longer in dyslexics compared to controls. The reaction times (RTs) and the number of errors (reversed for the controls in Task 2) increased across four conditions for both groups in the following order: W< PH1< PH2< PW. The ERPs were larger in Task 2 compared to Task 1 starting at 100 ms (P1) for the controls and from about 220 ms (P2) for the dyslexics. The latency of N2 peak in left occipito-temporal sites was larger (as was the number of errors) in PH2 compared to PW condition in controls only, which indicates phonological/semantic specific processing at a time latency of 250–260 ms. Thus, the visual task required less effort than the phonological task, dyslexics’ behavioural performance was less good and the brain activation delayed compared to controls. Combined behavioural and ERP results of this study indicated that phonological/semantic processing of the word took place 150 ms after processing of its visual features in controls and possibly later in dyslexics.

Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways

The role of morphological and syntactic information in non-native second language (L2) comprehension is controversial. Some have argued that late bilinguals rapidly integrate grammatical cues with other information sources during reading or listening in the same way as native speakers. Others claim that structural cues are underused in L2 processing. We examined different kinds of modifiers inside compounds (e.g. singulars vs. plurals, *rat eater vs. rats eater) with respect to this controversy, which are subject to both structural and non-structural constraints. Two offline and two online (eye-movement) experiments were performed examining the role of these constraints in spoken language comprehension of English and German, testing 77 advanced L2 learners. We also compared the L2 groups to corresponding groups of native speakers. Our results suggest that despite native-like sensitivity to the compounding constraints, late bilinguals rely more on non-structural constraints and are less able to revise their initial interpretations than L1 comprehenders.

Adding words to the brain's visual dictionary: novel word learning selectively sharpens orthographic representations in the VWFA.

The nature of orthographic representations in the human brain is still subject of much debate. Recent reports have claimed that the visual word form area (VWFA) in left occipitotemporal cortex contains an orthographic lexicon based on neuronal representations highly selective for individual written real words (RWs). This theory predicts that learning novel words should selectively increase neural specificity for these words in the VWFA. We trained subjects to recognize novel pseudowords (PWs) and used fMRI rapid adaptation to compare neural selectivity with RWs, untrained PWs (UTPWs), and trained PWs (TPWs). Before training, PWs elicited broadly tuned responses, whereas responses to RWs indicated tight tuning. After training, TPW responses resembled those of RWs, whereas UTPWs continued to show broad tuning. This change in selectivity was specific to the VWFA. Therefore, word learning appears to selectively increase neuronal specificity for the new words in the VWFA, thereby adding these words to the brain's visual dictionary.

Thresholds of visibility for masked lexical, non-lexical, and non-linguistic items in aphasia

Thresholds of visibility for masked lexical, non-lexical, and non-linguistic items in aphasia

Nonword Repetition and Speech Motor Control in Children.

This study examined how familiarity of word structures influenced articulatory control in children and adolescents during repetition of real words (RWs) and nonwords (NWs). A passive reflective marker system was used to track articulator movement. Measures of accuracy were obtained during repetition of RWs and NWs, and kinematic analysis of movement duration and variability was conducted. Participants showed greater consonant and vowel accuracy during RW than NW repetition. Jaw movement duration was longer in NWs compared to RWs across age groups, and younger children produced utterances with longer jaw movement duration compared to older children. Jaw movement variability was consistently greater during repetition of NWs than RWs in both groups of participants. The results indicate that increases in phonological short-term memory demands affect articulator movement. This effect is most pronounced in younger children. A range of skills may develop during childhood, which supports NW repetition skills.

Language specific listening of Japanese geminate consonants: a cross-linguistic study.

Various aspects of linguistic experience influence the way we segment, represent, and process speech signals. The Japanese phonetic and orthographic systems represent geminate consonants (double consonants, e.g., /ss/, /kk/) in a unique way compared to other languages: one abstract representation is used to characterize the first part of geminate consonants despite the acoustic difference between two distinct realizations of geminate consonants (silence in the case of e.g., stop consonants and elongation in the case of fricative consonants). The current study tests whether this discrepancy between abstract representations and acoustic realizations influences how native speakers of Japanese perceive geminate consonants. The experiments used pseudo words containing either the geminate consonant /ss/ or a manipulated version in which the first part was replaced by silence /_s/. The sound /_s/ is acoustically similar to /ss/, yet does not occur in everyday speech. Japanese listeners demonstrated a bias to group these two types into the same category while Italian and Dutch listeners distinguished them. The results thus confirmed that distinguishing fricative geminate consonants with silence from those with sustained frication is not crucial for Japanese native listening. Based on this observation, we propose that native speakers of Japanese tend to segment geminated consonants into two parts and that the first portion of fricative geminates is perceptually similar to a silent duration. This representation is compatible with both Japanese orthography and phonology. Unlike previous studies that were inconclusive in how native speakers segment geminate consonants, our study demonstrated a relatively strong effect of Japanese specific listening. Thus the current experimental methods may open up new lines of investigation into the relationship between development of phonological representation, orthography and speech perception.

Individual differences in the perception of nonnative speech

As a mentor, Diane Kewley-Port was attentive to each student’s needs and took a highly hands-on, individualized approach. In many of her collaborative research endeavors, she has also taken a fine-grained approach toward both discovering individual differences in speech perception and production as well as explaining the causes and consequences of this range of variation. I will present research investigating several cognitive-linguistic factors that may contribute to individual differences in the perception of nonnative speech. Recognizing words from nonnative talkers can be particularly difficult when combined with environmental degradation (e.g., background noise) or listener limitations (e.g., child listener). Under these conditions, the range of performance across listeners is substantially wider than observed under more optimal conditions. My work has investigated these issues in monolingual and bilingual adults and children. Results have indicated that age, receptive vocabulary, and phonological awareness are predictive of nonnative word recognition. Factors supporting native word recognition, such as phonological memory, were less strongly associated with nonnative word recognition. Together, these results suggest that the ability to accurately perceive nonnative speech may rely, at least partially, on different underlying cognitive-linguistic abilities than those recruited for native word recognition. [Work supported by NIH-R21DC010027.]

Non-native listeners' recognition of high-variability speech using PRESTO.

Natural variability in speech is a significant challenge to robust successful spoken word recognition. In everyday listening environments, listeners must quickly adapt and adjust to multiple sources of variability in both the signal and listening environments. High-variability speech may be particularly difficult to understand for non-native listeners, who have less experience with the second language (L2) phonological system and less detailed knowledge of sociolinguistic variation of the L2. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of high-variability sentences on non-native speech recognition and to explore the underlying sources of individual differences in speech recognition abilities of non-native listeners. Participants completed two sentence recognition tasks involving high-variability and low-variability sentences. They also completed a battery of behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires designed to assess their indexical processing skills, vocabulary knowledge, and several core neurocognitive abilities. Native speakers of Mandarin (n = 25) living in the United States recruited from the Indiana University community participated in the current study. A native comparison group consisted of scores obtained from native speakers of English (n = 21) in the Indiana University community taken from an earlier study. Speech recognition in high-variability listening conditions was assessed with a sentence recognition task using sentences from PRESTO (Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-Set) mixed in 6-talker multitalker babble. Speech recognition in low-variability listening conditions was assessed using sentences from HINT (Hearing In Noise Test) mixed in 6-talker multitalker babble. Indexical processing skills were measured using a talker discrimination task, a gender discrimination task, and a forced-choice regional dialect categorization task. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed with the WordFam word familiarity test, and executive functioning was assessed with the BRIEF-A (Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function - Adult Version) self-report questionnaire. Scores from the non-native listeners on behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires were compared with scores obtained from native listeners tested in a previous study and were examined for individual differences. Non-native keyword recognition scores were significantly lower on PRESTO sentences than on HINT sentences. Non-native listeners' keyword recognition scores were also lower than native listeners' scores on both sentence recognition tasks. Differences in performance on the sentence recognition tasks between non-native and native listeners were larger on PRESTO than on HINT, although group differences varied by signal-to-noise ratio. The non-native and native groups also differed in the ability to categorize talkers by region of origin and in vocabulary knowledge. Individual non-native word recognition accuracy on PRESTO sentences in multitalker babble at more favorable signal-to-noise ratios was found to be related to several BRIEF-A subscales and composite scores. However, non-native performance on PRESTO was not related to regional dialect categorization, talker and gender discrimination, or vocabulary knowledge. High-variability sentences in multitalker babble were particularly challenging for non-native listeners. Difficulty under high-variability testing conditions was related to lack of experience with the L2, especially L2 sociolinguistic information, compared with native listeners. Individual differences among the non-native listeners were related to weaknesses in core neurocognitive abilities affecting behavioral control in everyday life.

Cortical motor systems are involved in second-language comprehension: Evidence from rapid mu-rhythm desynchronisation

Understanding neurocognitive mechanisms supporting the use of multiple languages is a key question in language science. Recent neuroimaging studies in monolinguals indicated that core language areas in human neocortex together with sensorimotor structures form a highly interactive system underpinning native language comprehension. While the experience of a native speaker promotes the establishment of strong action–perception links in the comprehension network, this may not necessarily be the case for L2 where, as it has been argued, the most a typical L2 speaker may get is a link between an L2 wordform and its L1 translation equivalent. Therefore, we investigated, whether the motor cortex of bilingual subjects shows differential involvement in processing action semantics of native and non-native words. We used high-density EEG to dynamically measure changes in the cortical motor system's activity, indexed by event-related desynchronisation (ERD) of the mu-rhythm, in response to passively reading L1 (German) and L2 (English) action words. Analysis of motor-related EEG oscillations at the sensor level revealed an early (starting ~150ms) and left-lateralised coupling between action and semantics during both L1 and L2 processing. Crucially, source-level activation in the motor areas showed that mu-rhythm ERD, while present for both languages, is significantly stronger for L1 words. This is the first neurophysiological evidence of rapid motor-cortex involvement during L2 action–semantic processing. Our results both strengthen embodied cognition evidence obtained previously in monolinguals and, at the same time, reveal important quantitative differences between L1 and L2 sensorimotor brain activity in language comprehension.