Semantic Skills Research Articles

Adolescent Language Therapy: Syntax and Semantics for Reasoning and Planning

Purpose: Adolescent students face increased expectations to successfully navigate academic, social, and vocational transitions. As demands increase and support systems fade, adolescents with developmental language disorder and concomitant deficits in executive functions are particularly vulnerable to these high-stakes transitional moments. Limited language systems are not well suited for navigating the subtleties of social nuance, the abstraction of academic and vocational language, and the unfamiliarity of complex planning necessary for self-regulation. Conclusions: This clinical focus article proposes a clinical model of language therapy for adolescents with developmental language disorder and concomitant deficits in executive functions. Therapy emphasizes eliciting the most complex syntactic and semantic skills available to the student as they work to formulate specific, reasoned, predictive, strategic plans. Therapy takes place in small group contexts where pairs of students collaborate to use their language and reasoning to solve unfamiliar, challenging, scientific-like problems.

Rekindling Action Language: A Neuromodulatory Study on Parkinson's Disease Patients.

Impairments of action semantics (a cognitive domain that critically engages motor brain networks) are pervasive in early Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, no study has examined whether action semantic skills in persons with this disease can be influenced by non-invasive neuromodulation. Here, we recruited 22 PD patients and performed a five-day randomized, blinded, sham-controlled study to assess whether anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) over the primary motor cortex, combined with cognitive training, can boost action–concept processing. On day 1, participants completed a picture–word association (PWA) task involving action-verb and object-noun conditions. They were then randomly assigned to either an atDCS (n = 11, 2 mA for 20 m) or a sham tDCS (n = 11, 2 mA for 30 s) group and performed an online PWA practice over three days. On day 5, they repeated the initial protocol. Relative to sham tDCS, the atDCS group exhibited faster reaction times for action (as opposed to object) concepts in the post-stimulation test. This result was exclusive to the atDCS group and held irrespective of the subjects’ cognitive, executive, and motor skills, further attesting to its specificity. Our findings suggest that action-concept deficits in PD are distinctively grounded in motor networks and might be countered by direct neuromodulation of such circuits. Moreover, they provide new evidence for neurosemantic models and inform a thriving agenda in the embodied cognition framework.

Language experience, cognitive skills, and English and Spanish semantic abilities in bilingual children with typical development and language impairments

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between language experience, nonverbal cognitive abilities, and English and Spanish semantics skills in 4–6 year-old bilingual children with typical development compared to bilingual children with language impairments (LIs). Methodology: Participants were 57 Spanish–English bilingual children (ages 4:0–6:11) with typical development ( n = 35) or LIs ( n = 22). Parents provided demographic information and detailed information about their child’s language input (exposure) and output (use). Children’s nonverbal intelligence quotient and processing speed abilities and English and Spanish semantic abilities (SAs) were measured using standardized assessments. Data and Analysis: Nonparametric statistical analyses were used to examine relationships between variables across two groups (children with typical development and children with LIs) and across Spanish and English semantic skills. Findings: Processing speed showed a significant, moderate correlation with Spanish and English semantic abilities in both groups; however, language experience variables showed weak, non-significant associations with SAs. Originality: This study is the first to investigate the relationships between both language experience factors as well as nonverbal cognitive and processing skills and the SAs of bilingual children with typical development and LIs. Implications: This research furthers understanding of the environmental and child-internal influences on SAs in bilingual children with and without LIs.

Differences and Similarities in the Contributions of Phonological Awareness, Orthographic Knowledge and Semantic Competence to Reading Fluency in Chinese School-Age Children With and Without Hearing Loss.

Compared with the large number of studies on reading of children with hearing loss (HL) in alphabetic languages, there are only a very limited number of studies on reading of Chinese-speaking children with HL. It remains unclear how phonological, orthographic, and semantic skills contribute to reading fluency of Chinese school-age children with HL. The present study explored this issue by examining the performances of children with HL on reading fluency and three linguistic skills compared with matched controls with normal hearing (NH). Specifically, twenty-eight children with HL and 28 chronological-age-matched children with NH were tested on word/sentence reading fluency (WRF/SRF), phonological awareness (PA) which was composed of onset/vowel/lexical tone awareness, orthographic knowledge (OK), and semantic competence (SC) which comprised animal word identification, pseudo-homophone detection, and word segmentation. Results showed that children with HL lagged behind their peers with NH in WRF/SRF and most of the phonological, orthographic, and semantic subskills except onset awareness and pseudo-homophone detection. Furthermore, the significant contributors to WRF differed between the two groups with PA being the significant contributor in the children with NH while OK being the significant contributor in the children with HL. However, the significant contributor to SRF did not differ between the two groups with SC being the only significant contributor. These results revealed not only between-group differences but also similarities in the relative contributions of PA, OK, and SC to reading fluency at both word and sentence levels, which has practical implications for developing better training programs to improve reading for children with HL.

Освоение навыков смыслового чтения как результат обучения младших школьников

The article describes the semantic reading, considered as the main component of communicative functional literacy, the mastery of which
 includes both subject and meta-subject learning outcomes of primary schoolchildren. The features of the methodology of teaching semantic
 reading at different stages of school education are revealed. Examples of tasks that contribute to the development of semantic reading skills in
 schoolchildren studying in the fourth grades are given.

The development of semantic reading among students of a defectological profile in the digitalization of education

The study of psychological and pedagogical conditions, and the formation of professionally significant qualities of the future speech therapist, is associated with the formation of intonational and semantic skills, which affects the training of future specialists. The presented forms, methods of organizing the educational process on the example of specific subjects of the educational plan, made it possible to increase the competence of students. Specially selected exercises during the "Pedagogy" discipline were focused on mastering the scientific style, which contributed to the development of semantic reading. The results of the work done confirm that if specially selected tasks are included in the educational process, this allows for better training of future speech therapists in accordance with the standard of professional training in the context of digitalization.

A Generic Plug & Produce System Composed of Semantic OPC UA Skills

Typical industrial workcells are composed of a plenitude of devices from various manufacturers, which rely on their own specific control interfaces. To reduce setup and reconfiguration times, a hardware-agnostic Plug & Produce system is required. In this paper, we present a system architecture that uses generic and semantically augmented OPC UA skills for robots, tools, and other system components. Standardized skill interfaces and parameters facilitate flexible component interchange and automatic parametrization with a focus on reusability of skills across different platforms and domains. The hierarchical composition of such skills allows for additional abstraction through the grouping of functionalities. Through the extension of OPC UA discovery services, available skills are dynamically detected whenever a manufacturing system's component is updated. The introduced Plug & Produce system is evaluated in multiple industrial workcells composed of robots, tool changer, electric parallel gripper, and vacuum gripper-all controlled via the proposed OPC UA skill interface. The evaluation of our system architecture demonstrates the applicability of the Plug & Produce concept in the domain of robot-based industrial assembly. Although it is necessary to adapt existing hardware to comply with the semantic skill concept, the initial one-time effort yields reoccurring efficiency gains during system reconfiguration. In particular, small lot production benefits from reduced changeover times.

Psychological Determinants of Meta-Linguistic Skills by Pre-School Children

The paper concerns psycholinguistic phenomena connected with meta-language, meta-linguistic awareness and children’s semantic skills. The main aim of empirical activities was to analyze psychological and linguistic conditionings of acquiring the meanings of words by 4- and 6-year-old children. It was examined how children understand the meaning of words from two categories: home and family. The analyses and conclusions on the creation of meaning presented in the paper are focused around the symbiosis of two planes: cognitive and linguistic. An analysis of the collected empirical material shows that their compilation reveals the unique nature of children’s meta-language reflection, the character of concepts and notion profiles which are closely determined by mental processes.

Semantic priming and reading skills among Spanish-speaking dual language learners

ABSTRACT Substantial research among bilingual adults indicates that exposure to words primes other semantically related words within and across languages, as well as the direct translation equivalents [e.g. Chen and Ng 1989. “Semantic Facilitation and Translation Priming Effects in Chinese-English Bilinguals.” Memory & Cognition 17: 454–462]. However, there is less research on semantic and translation priming among bilingual children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate semantic priming effects as an indicator of underlying lexical quality among Spanish-speaking dual language learners (DLLs) in the U.S., including examination of whether semantic and translation priming effects were related to children’s reading-related skills. Ninety-five Spanish-speaking DLLs in second and fourth grade completed an eye-tracking semantic priming task along with measures of English and Spanish reading-related skills. Results indicated that there were consistent translation priming effects, with observed translation priming stronger from English to Spanish than from Spanish to English. Additionally, there were consistent within-English semantic priming effects. Results suggested that semantic priming effects were stronger for children with higher levels of English vocabulary and reading comprehension than they were for children with lower levels of English vocabulary and reading comprehension. Findings are discussed in the context of theoretical models of bilingual language processing, as well as the lexical quality hypothesis [e.g. Perfetti 2007. “Reading Ability: Lexical Quality to Comprehension.” Scientific Studies of Reading 11: 357–383].

Spontaneous Expressive Language Profiles in a Clinically Ascertained Sample of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have varying degrees of language impairment across multiple domains, which may include deficits in syntactic, pragmatic, and/or semantic skills. The heterogeneity of language profiles within ASD, coupled with the limited scope of existing standardized language measures, makes a comprehensive assessment of language impairments in ASD challenging. The Observation of Spontaneous Expressive Language (OSEL) is a new measure developed to capture children's spontaneous use of language in a naturalistic setting. The current study used the OSEL to examine the patterns of spontaneous expressive language abilities of 87 clinically ascertained children with ASD from 2 to 12 years. As expected, children with ASD were significantly more impaired in their spontaneous use of language compared to typically developing peers. Syntax and narrative skills continued to increase with age from toddler to elementary school years in cross-sectional comparisons. Pragmatic skills improved form toddler to preschool years but remained stable from preschool to elementary school years. Preliminary data also demonstrated significant improvements in OSEL syntax scores over time for a subset of children followed longitudinally (n = 8). Children with ASD consistently showed more impairments in spontaneous expressive language captured on the OSEL compared to language skills measured by other more structured standardized assessments, despite moderate convergent validity among those measures. Results suggest that impairments in the spontaneous and functional use of expressive language persist into middle childhood for many children with ASD, and a comprehensive assessment approach can lead to more precisely targeted treatment addressing specific language profiles. LAY SUMMARY: This study aimed to examine the variable language profiles in children with ASD. Children with ASD were shown to have impairments in the structure, meaning, and social use of language. These challenges were captured best by a measure that was created to assess the spontaneous use of language in a naturalistic environment. The results of this study emphasize the importance of a comprehensive assessment of language in ASD to inform treatment. Autism Res 2021, 14: 720-732. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Audio Stories as Incidental Language Teachers

Abstract. Audio stories offer a unique blend of narrative entertainment with language learning opportunities as a user’s enjoyment is dependent on their processing of the linguistic content. A total of 138 third- and fourth-graders from low socioeconomic status and migrant families recruited from a metropolitan area in Germany participated in a randomized pre–post follow-up intervention study with a control group. Children listened to a tailored crime story of approximately 90 min over a period of 3 days within the classroom setting. Entertainment value for the age group was established in a pilot study. Outcome variables included semantic and grammatical skills in German and were administered before (pretest), shortly after intervention (posttest), and 2 weeks later (follow-up). We used nonverbal intelligence, reading, comprehension skills, age and sex as control variables. Results indicate a strong positive effect of media reception on language skills. The effectiveness of the intervention is discussed with reference to different linguistic domains, entertainment value, and compensatory effects in populations at risk of language learning deficits.

Освоение навыков смыслового чтения как результат обучения младших школьников

The article describes the semantic reading, considered as the main component of communicative functional literacy, the mastery of which includes both subject and meta-subject learning outcomes of primary schoolchildren. The features of the methodology of teaching semantic reading at different stages of school education are revealed. Examples of tasks that contribute to the development of semantic reading skills in schoolchildren studying in the first and second grades are given.

An investigation into the relationship between Quality of pantomime gestures and visuospatial skills

While children with developmental language disorder or Williams syndrome appear to use hand gestures to compensate for specific cognitive and communicative difficulties, they have different cognitive strength-weakness profiles. Their semantic and visuospatial skills potentially affect gesture quality such as iconicity. The present study focuses on untangling the unique contribution of these skills in the quality of gestures. An explicit gesture elicitation task was presented to 25 participants with developmental language disorder between 7 and 10 years of age, 25 age-matched peers with typical development, and 14 participants with Williams Syndrome (8−23 years). They gestured pictures of objects without using speech (pantomime). The iconicity, semantic richness, and representation technique of the pantomimes were coded. Participants’ semantic association and visuospatial skills were formally assessed. Iconicity was slightly lower in individuals with Williams syndrome, which seems related to their visuospatial deficit. While semantic saliency was similar across participant groups, small differences in representation technique were found. Partial correlations showed that visuospatial skills and semantic skills were instrumental in producing clear pantomimes. These findings indicate that clinicians aiming to enhance individuals’ natural iconic gestures should consider achieved iconicity, particularly in individuals with low visuospatial skills.

Preschool phonological, morphological and semantic skills explain it all: following reading development through a 9‐year period

BackgroundThere is increasing recognition of the contribution of morphological skills to the development of reading fluency. However, theoretical models and recent research raise questions about how different language skills influence reading development.MethodsThe present study was designed to follow the reading development of a large sample of Norwegian children (N = 323) from preschool to Grade 9, assessing their performance on a wide range of language‐related and reading skills including morphological awareness. We employed confirmatory factor analyses of the cognitive, linguistic and reading variables prior to modelling the contribution of the preschool language variables to reading comprehension in Grades 1, 2 and 9.ResultsPreschool measures of phonological, morphological and semantic skills were best represented by a single language latent variable. Reading in Grades 1 and 2, assessed by measures of both decoding and comprehension, was also best represented by a single latent variable. Preschool language skills have long‐range direct and indirect effects on the development of reading comprehension. Overall, preschool language abilities accounted for 69.2% of the variance in reading comprehension 9 years later.ConclusionsThe results demonstrate the powerful influence of early language on later reading and suggest that language intervention programmes, combining phonological, morphological and semantic activities, may help to reduce the incidence of reading problems.

Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills predict reading ability: A 9-year longitudinal study.

Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills encapsulate a complex array of grammatical and semantic skills that underpin complex reading comprehension processes. However, most research in this area has focused onchildren with reading difficultiesandnoton typically developing children.Also the research hasmostly focused onshort-term effects of theseskills on reading during the primary school years. Therefore, it remains unclear what specific role linguistic comprehension and narrative skills play in typically developing children's reading beyond the primary school years. With this 9-year prospective longitudinal study, we sought to clarify the independent effects of linguistic comprehension and narrative skill (at 5 years of age) on children's reading ability at 10 and 14 years of age. We examined the data from 716 children (MAge =67 months, SD=2.13 months), which were drawn from a major population cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Children's language skills were assessed at 5 and word reading and reading comprehension skills at 10 years of age. The reading achievement scores at 14 years of age were based on national curriculum test results. Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills at 5 years of age made unique and direct contributions to reading comprehension skills and reading achievement after accounting for general cognitive ability, memory, phonological skills, and mother's education. Moreover, listening comprehension predicted reading achievement even when prior reading skills were taken into account. Linguistic comprehension and narrative skills are related but distinct oral language skills that continue to influence children's reading development beyond the primary school years.

Procedural Learning Improves Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis.

Background:Multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered a neurodegenerative disease and an inflammatory demyelinating neuropathology in young population. Procedural memory has been poorly investigated in MS.Objective:We assessed whether the MS group was able to develop a motor-cognitive skill, using a procedural task (PLSC) developed in our laboratory, applying a manual and serial reaction time (RT) paradigm to semantic categorization.Methods:We evaluated 26 MS patients and 26 socio-demographic matched control participants using the PLSC task.Results:Using non-parametric statistical analyses, we observed a significant improvement of semantic categorization RTs with practice (p = 0.002), even with new verbal material to categorize in MS patients (p = 0.006), despite their motor and executive moderate deficits. This same profile of semantic procedural learning in MS was observed in previous studies carried out with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Moreover, the visual-motor RTs remained stable or slightly improved over the five blocks in both groups, as well as in the AD groups of previous studies. The MS group showed longer visual-motor reaction times than those of the control group (p < 0.042), except in motor initiation aspect (p = 0.064). Both groups showed no significant differences for any type of error. Additionally, disability level and cognitive performances were not associated with the ratio of semantic procedural learning.Conclusion:The present results support the notion that MS patients may be capable of acquiring semantic skill, despite their motor disabilities and executive troubles. This work also addresses the possibilities to improve motor-cognitive skill RTs in neurodegenerative diseases.

Embodied concepts, allostasis, and the origin of emotions.

Here we advance the proposal that in addition to the importance of emotion words, the dynamics of allostatic regulation play a central role in emotion concept development. We argue for a comprehensive extension of constructed emotion theory to emotional development. To do so, we emphasize possible mechanisms for emotion concept differentiation that may occur before linguistic and semantic skills necessary for constructing and using abstract concepts are sufficiently developed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Study of University Students’ Cognitive Competence in Performing the Learning Assignments: Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Approach

One of the major tasks of today’s higher education schools—raising cognitively competent specialists—is still far from completion. Two University professors, a journalist and a psychologist, with different cultural backgrounds, united their pedagogical experience and the results of their long-term studies of the students’ cognitive functioning in performing learning assignments. These assignments were analogues of the problems which journalists and school teachers will have to solve eventually in their everyday professional practice. The results showed that most students in each investigated population had poor cognitive skills for working with textual information. Their mistakes in performing course work were systematic and similar. They were caused by an inability to identify key-words which most accurately point to the main ideas of the texts. Such students had no full-fledged understanding of what they read. To denote this phenomenon, the authors used the term “fuzzy thinking”. The authors concluded that today’s educators’ efforts should be aimed at teaching university students to work with textual information professionally. The necessary analytic and semantic skills should be instilled in students in every course, every semester, and throughout all years of university study.

Intuitive Task-Level Programming by Demonstration Through Semantic Skill Recognition

Intuitive robot programming for non-experts will be essential to increasing automation in small and medium-sized enterprises. Programming by demonstration (PbD) is a fast and intuitive approach, whereas programs created with task-level programming (TLP) are easy to understand and flexible in their execution. In this letter, we propose an approach which combines these complementary advantages of PbD and TLP. Users define complete task-level programs including all parameters through PbD alone. Therefore, we call this approach task-level programming by demonstration (TLPbD). TLPbD extends skill-based approaches by enabling experts to semantically annotate robot skills with their conditions and effects, which facilitates online skill recognition from pure demonstrations by a non-expert. In a user study with 21 participants, the approach is compared with an existing intuitive TLP approach. The results show that the new approach drastically reduces the programming time while at the same time being more intuitive, reducing mental load, and achieving the same or even better skill sequences.

Teacher Strategies in Developing Speaking Skills for Class VI Students

This study aims to describe the strategies employed by teachers to enhance the speaking abilities of sixth-grade students at SDN 04/II Muara Bungo during the odd semester of the 2018/2019 academic year. Utilizing qualitative research with a descriptive approach, data collection involved observation, interviews, and documentation of the homeroom teachers of class VI. The findings indicate commendable speaking proficiency among students, facilitated by diverse teaching strategies. These encompass social skill development through discussions, model repetition, and interactive questioning; semantic skill enhancement via audio-visual aids like images and videos, alongside question-answer techniques; phonetic skill refinement through mobile audio-visual aids and interactive sessions; vocal skill improvement through revisiting reading materials and interactive sessions; as well as teachers employing effective speaking styles, utilizing standard language, appropriate gestures, and mastery of the subject matter. Additionally, teachers utilize oral assessments to evaluate students' speaking proficiency. In conclusion, the study affirms the teachers' success in fostering students' speaking abilities, encompassing social, semantic, phonetic, and vocal dimensions.