Word Task Research Articles

Music-reading expertise associates with face but not Chinese character processing ability.

A growing number of behavioural and neuroimaging studies have investigated the cognitive mechanisms and neural substrates underlying various forms of visual expertise, such as face and word processing. However, it remains poorly understood whether and to what extent the acquisition of one form of expertise would be associated with that of another. The current study examined the relationship between music-reading expertise and face and Chinese character processing abilities. In a series of experiments, music experts and novices performed discrimination and recognition tasks of musical notations, faces, and words. Results consistently showed that musical experts responded more accurately to musical notations and faces, but not to words, than did musical novices. More intriguingly, the music expert's age of training onset could well predict their face but not word processing performance: the earlier musical experts began musical notation reading, the better their face processing performance. Taken together, our findings provide preliminary and converging evidence that music-reading expertise links with face, but not word, processing, and lend support to the notion that the development of different types of visual expertise may not be independent, but rather interact with each other during their acquisition.

Task-dependent effects of intracranial hippocampal stimulation on human memory

Abstract Background: Despite its potential to revolutionize the treatment of memory dysfunction, the efficacy of direct electrical hippocampal stimulation for memory performance has not yet been well characterized. One of the main challenges to cross-study comparison in this area of research is the diversity of the cognitive tasks used to measure memory performance. Objective: We hypothesized that the tasks that differentially engage the hippocampus may be differentially influenced by hippocampal stimulation and the behavioral effects would be related to the underlying hippocampal activity. Methods: To investigate this issue, we recorded intracranial EEG from and directly applied stimulation to the hippocampus of 10 epilepsy patients while they performed two different verbal memory tasks e a word pair associative memory task and a single item memory task. Results: Hippocampal stimulation modulated memory performance in a task-dependent manner, improving associative memory performance, while impairing item memory performance. In addition, subjects with poorer baseline cognitive function improved much more with stimulation. iEEG recordings from the hippocampus during non-stimulation encoding blocks revealed that the associative memory task elicited stronger theta oscillations than did item memory and that stronger theta power was related to memory performance. Conclusions: We show here for the first time that stimulation-induced associative memory enhancement was linked to increased theta power during retrieval. These results suggest that hippocampal stimulation enhances associative memory but not item memory because it engages more hippocampal theta activity and that, in general, increasing hippocampal theta may provide a neural mechanism for successful memory enhancement. Keywords: Memory enhancement, iEEG, deep brain stimulation, hippocampus

Effects of computer-based therapy versus therapist-mediated therapy in stroke-related aphasia: Pilot non-inferiority study

PurposeThe burgeoning growth of computer-based rehabilitation technologies has led to a paradigm shift in the delivery of aphasia intervention. The aim of this study was to conduct a pilot non-inferiority study comparing computer-based training for people with aphasia versus traditional therapist-mediated training on language skills, functional communication and quality of life outcomes in the hospital setting. MethodsTwenty-two fluent, monolingual Italian speakers with stroke-related aphasia in the acute phase of recovery were enrolled in the study. Participants were assigned randomly to computer-based or therapist-mediated aphasia treatment. Both groups received one, 50-minute session for 5 days per week over a period of 8 weeks. During the training, they were administered words and sentence comprehension, written naming, word completion, fluency, word and sentence reorganization tasks. The complexity of each task was increased progressively based on the severity of each person's language deficits. ResultsParticipants in both computer-based and traditional therapist-mediated aphasia intervention showed significant gains in language skills, functional communication and quality of life from pre- to post-treatment. Statistically significant within-group differences were found across all outcome measures. In contrast, no significant between-group and group x time interaction effects were found across language skills, functional communication and quality-of-life measures. ConclusionsThe overall pattern of findings suggested computer-based intervention was not inferior to traditional therapist-based intervention for enhancing functional communication deficits in stroke-related aphasia during the acute phase of recovery. A follow-up, fully-powered clinical trial is needed to confirm the reliability of these results.

A Critical Examination of Preservice Music Teachers’ Writing on the edTPA Portfolio

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between participants’ edTPA writing and edTPA portfolio scores. Specific questions included (a) Is there a relationship between overall word count and total score on the edTPA? (b) Are individual task commentary word counts associated with specific task scores and total edTPA scores? and (c) Is there a relationship between edTPA-specific vocabulary and total score on the edTPA? Written artifacts from 67 music education students who completed the K–12 Performing Arts edTPA Portfolio were collected over a 4-year period. Correlations between word counts and task and total scores were positive and of modest to moderate strength, as was the correlation between edTPA vocabulary word use and total scores. These findings are interpreted in relation to a national K–12 Performing Arts edTPA portfolio average score of 45 and existing edTPA policies affecting music teacher education programs.

Does stress type and level affect gut decisions in sport?

ABSTRACT Two studies examined the influence of stress type (no, mental, physical) and level (low/no, moderate, high) on the major predictions of the “take the first” (TTF) heuristic. In each study, participants performed a mental stress condition (i.e., colour word task and mental arithmetic) and/or a physical stress condition (i.e., incremental running on a treadmill). Decision-making trials utilised video clips of offensive situations in basketball and participants had to decide what the person with the ball should do next. Outcome variables included TTF frequency, quality of first option, speed of first option, and number of generated options. Study 1 investigated the option generation and selection process of 100 undergraduate students. 20 participants were randomly assigned to each of the 5 stress conditions. Results indicated that participants in high stress groups were slower to generate first options than participants in lower stress groups. No other significant differences were found. Study 2 replicated the design and aim of Study 1 using a within-person methodology. 42 undergraduate students completed all 5 stress conditions during 2 different testing sessions. Once again, high stress was associated with slower decisions. Overall, TTF was found to be an ecologically rational heuristic for making decisions under different levels of mental and physical stress in sport. However, high levels of stress may slow the option generation process.

Brain-behavior dynamics between the left fusiform and reading.

The visual word form area (VWFA) plays a significant role in the development of reading skills. However, the developmental course and anatomical properties of the VWFA have only limitedly been investigated. The aim of the current longitudinal MRI study was to investigate dynamic, bidirectional relations between reading, and the structure of the left fusiform gyrus at the early-to-advanced reading stage. More specifically, by means of bivariate correlations and a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM), the interrelations between the size of the left fusiform gyrus and reading skills (an average score of a word and pseudo-word reading task) were studied in a longitudinal cohort of 43 Flemish children (29M, 14F) with variable reading skills in grade 2 (the early stage of reading) and grade 5 (the advanced stage of reading) of primary school. Results revealed that better reading skills at grade 2 lead to a larger size of the left fusiform gyrus at grade 5, whereas there are no directional effects between the size of the left fusiform gyrus at grade 2 and reading skills at grade 5. Hence, according to our results, there is behavior-driven brain plasticity and no brain-driven reading change between the early and advanced stage of reading. Together with pre-reading brain studies showing predictive relations to later reading scores, our results suggest that the direction of brain-behavioral influences changes throughout the course of reading development.

Faces are not always special for attention: Effects of response–relevance and identity

Research over the past 25 years indicates that stimulus processing is diminished when attention is engaged in a perceptually demanding task of high ‘perceptual load’. These results have generalized across a variety of stimulus categories, but a controversy evolved over the question of whether perception of distractor faces (or other categories of perceptual expertise) can proceed irrespective of the level of perceptual load in the attended task. Here we identify task-relevance, and in particular identity-relevance, as a potentially important factor in explaining prior inconsistencies. In four experiments, we tested whether perceptual load in an attended letter or word task modulates the processing of famous face distractors, while varying their task-relevance. Distractor interference effects on task RTs was reduced by perceptual load not only when the faces were entirely task-irrelevant, but also when the face gender was task relevant, within a name gender classification response-competition task, using famous female or male distractor faces. However, when the identity associated with the famous faces was primed by the task using their names, as in prior demonstrations that face distractors are immune to the effects of perceptual load, we were able to replicate these prior findings. Our findings demonstrate a role for identity-priming by the relevant task in determining attentional capture by faces under high perceptual load. Our results also highlight the importance of considering even relatively subtle forms of task-relevance in selective attention research.

Processing symbolic magnitude information conveyed by number words and by scalar adjectives.

Humans not only process and compare magnitude information such as size, duration, and number perceptually, but they also communicate about these properties using language. In this respect, a relevant class of lexical items are so-called scalar adjectives like “big,” “long,” “loud,” and so on which refer to magnitude information. It has been proposed that humans use an amodal and abstract representation format shared by different dimensions, called the generalised magnitude system (GMS). In this paper, we test the hypothesis that scalar adjectives are symbolic references to GMS representations, and, therefore, GMS gets involved in processing their meaning. Previously, a parallel hypothesis on the relation between number symbols and GMS representations has been tested with the size congruity paradigm. The results of these experiments showed interference between the processing of number symbols and the processing of physical (font-) size. In the first three experiments of the present study (total N = 150), we used the size congruity paradigm and the same/different task to look at the potential interaction between physical size magnitude and numerical magnitude expressed by number words. In the subsequent three experiments (total N = 149), we looked at a parallel potential interaction between physical size magnitude and scalar adjective meaning. In the size congruity paradigm, we observed interference between the processing of the numerical value of number words and the meaning of scalar adjectives, on the one hand, and physical (font-) size, on the other hand, when participants had to judge the number words or the adjectives (while ignoring physical size). No interference was obtained for the reverse situation, i.e., when participants judged the physical font size (while ignoring numerical value or meaning). The results of the same/different task for both number words and scalar adjectives strongly suggested that the interference that was observed in the size congruity paradigm was likely due to a response conflict at the decision stage of processing rather than due to the recruitment of GMS representations. Taken together, it can be concluded that the size congruity paradigm does not provide evidence in support the hypothesis that GMS representations are used in the processing of number words or scalar adjectives. Nonetheless, the hypothesis we put forward about scalar adjectives is still is a promising potential line of research. We make a number of suggestions for how this hypothesis can be explored in future studies.

Neural Dynamics of Inhibitory Control in Musicians with Absolute Pitch: Theta Synchrony as an Oscillatory Signature of Information Conflict.

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify an auditory pitch without prior context. Current theories posit AP involves automatic retrieval of referents. We tested interference in well-matched AP musicians, non-AP musicians, and nonmusicians with three auditory Stroop tasks. Stimuli were one of two sung pitches with congruent or incongruent verbal cues. The tasks used different lexicons: binary concrete adjectives (i.e., words: Low/High), syllables with no obvious semantic properties (i.e., solmization: Do/So), and abstract semiotic labels (i.e., orthographic: C/G). Participants were instructed to respond to pitch regardless of verbal information during electroencephalographic recording. Incongruent stimuli of words and solmization tasks increased errors and slowed response times (RTs), which was reversed in nonmusicians for the orthographic task. AP musicians made virtually no errors, but their RTs slowed for incongruent stimuli. Frontal theta (4–7 Hz) event-related synchrony was significantly enhanced during incongruence between 350 and 550 ms poststimulus onset in AP, regardless of lexicon or behavior. This effect was found in non-AP musicians and nonmusicians for word task, while orthographic task showed a reverse theta congruency effect. Findings suggest theta synchrony indexes conflict detection in AP. High beta (21–29 Hz) desynchrony indexes response conflict detection in non-AP musicians. Alpha (8–12 Hz) synchrony may reflect top-down attention.

Entropy and Multifractal-Multiscale Indices of Heart Rate Time Series to Evaluate Intricate Cognitive-Autonomic Interactions.

Recent research has clarified the existence of a networked system involving a cortical and subcortical circuitry regulating both cognition and cardiac autonomic control, which is dynamically organized as a function of cognitive demand. The main interactions span multiple temporal and spatial scales and are extensively governed by nonlinear processes. Hence, entropy and (multi)fractality in heart period time series are suitable to capture emergent behavior of the cognitive-autonomic network coordination. This study investigated how entropy and multifractal-multiscale analyses could depict specific cognitive-autonomic architectures reflected in the heart rate dynamics when students performed selective inhibition tasks. The participants () completed cognitive interference (Stroop color and word task), action cancellation (stop-signal) and action restraint (go/no-go) tasks, compared to watching a neutral movie as baseline. Entropy and fractal markers (respectively, the refined composite multiscale entropy and multifractal-multiscale detrended fluctuation analysis) outperformed other time-domain and frequency-domain markers of the heart rate variability in distinguishing cognitive tasks. Crucially, the entropy increased selectively during cognitive interference and the multifractality increased during action cancellation. An interpretative hypothesis is that cognitive interference elicited a greater richness in interactive processes that form the central autonomic network while action cancellation, which is achieved via biasing a sensorimotor network, could lead to a scale-specific heightening of multifractal behavior.

The Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Dual-Task Interference Depend on the Dual-Task Content.

Recently, some studies revealed that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) reduces dual-task interference. Since there are countless combinations of dual-tasks, it remains unclear whether stable effects by tDCS can be observed on dual-task interference. An aim of the present study was to investigate whether the effects of tDCS on dual-task interference change depend on the dual-task content. We adopted two combinations of dual-tasks, i.e., a word task while performing a tandem task (word-tandem dual-task) and a classic Stroop task while performing a tandem task (Stroop-tandem dual-task). We expected that the Stroop task would recruit the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and require involvement of executive function to greater extent than the word task. Subsequently, we hypothesized that anodal tDCS over the DLPFC would improve executive function and result in more effective reduction of dual-task interference in the Stroop-tandem dual-task than in the word-tandem dual-task. Anodal or cathodal tDCS was applied over the DLPFC or the supplementary motor area using a constant current of 2.0 mA for 20 min. According to our results, dual-task interference and the task performances of each task under the single-task condition were not changed after applying any settings of tDCS. However, anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC significantly improved the word task performance immediately after tDCS under the dual-task condition. Our findings suggested that the effect of anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC varies on the task performance under the dual-task condition was changed depending on the dual-task content.

A Neural Marker of Speech Intention: Evidence From Contingent Negative Variation.

Purpose This study investigated whether changes in brain activity preceding spoken words can be used as a neural marker of speech intention. Specifically, changes in the contingent negative variation (CNV) were examined prior to speech production in three different study designs to determine a method that maximizes signal detection in a speaking task. Method Electroencephalography data were collected in three different protocols to elicit the CNV in a spoken word task that varied the timing and type of linguistic information. The first protocol provided participants with the word to be spoken before the instruction of whether or not to speak, the second provided both the word and the instruction to speak, and the third provided the instruction to speak before the word. Participants (N = 18) were split into three groups (one for each protocol) and were instructed to either speak (Go) or refrain from speaking (NoGo) each word according to task instructions. The CNV was measured by analyzing the difference in slope between Go and NoGo trials. Results Statistically significant effects of hemispheric laterality on the CNV slope confirm the third protocol where the participants know they will speak in advance of the word, as the paradigm that reliably elicits a CNV response related to speech intention. Conclusions The maximal CNV response when the instruction is known before the word indicates the neural processing measured in this protocol may reflect a generalized speech intention process in which the speech-language systems become prepared to speak and then execute production once the word information is provided. Further analysis of the optimal protocol identified in this study requires additional experimental investigation to confirm its role in eliciting an objective marker of speech intention. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14111468.

Effects of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness

Previous studies on bilingual children have shown a significant correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) morphological awareness and a unique contribution of morphological awareness in one language to reading performance in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence. However, few studies have compared advanced adult L2 learners from L1s of different morphological types or compared native speakers with advanced learners from a morphologically more complex L1 in their target-language morphological awareness. The current study filled this gap by comparing native English speakers (analytic) and two L2 groups from typologically different L1s: Turkish (agglutinative) and Chinese (isolating). Participants’ morphological awareness was evaluated via a series of tasks, including derivation, affix-choice word and nonword tasks, morphological relatedness, and a suffix-ordering task. Results showed a significant effect of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness. After accounting for L2 proficiency, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the Chinese group in the derivation, morphological relatedness, and suffix-ordering tasks. More importantly, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the native English group in the morphological relatedness task even without accounting for English proficiency. Such results have implications for theories in second language acquisition regarding representation of the bilingual lexicon. In addition, results of the current study underscored the need to guard against the comparative fallacy and highlighted the influential effect of L1 experience on the acquisition of L2 morphological knowledge.

Early life stress sensitizes youth to the influence of stress-induced cortisol on memory for affective words.

Early life stress (ELS) is a well-established risk factor for psychopathology across the lifespan. Cognitive vulnerability to stress-induced cortisol may explain risk and resilience. The current study aimed to elucidate a psychobiological pathway linking stress to altered memory for affective words among youth with and without exposure to ELS. One hundred and fifteen youth (ages 9-16, 47% female) were randomized either to a psychosocial stressor or a control condition. Immediately following the stress or control condition, participants completed a memory task for affective words. Change in salivary cortisol from immediately before to 25min after stress onset were used to predict memory for affective words. Exposure to the acute laboratory stressor led to activation of the HPA axis. Greater cortisol reactivity was associated with less accurate recognition of negative valence words. Among youth exposed to ELS, greater cortisol reactivity to acute stress was associated with poorer recognition of dysphoric and neutral words. Acute increases in cortisol may interfere with negatively-valenced information processing that has implications for memory. Youth exposed to high ELS may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of cortisol, which may explain one pathway through which stress leads to psychopathology among at-risk youth.

Sleep-Related Declarative Memory Consolidation in Children and Adolescents with Developmental Dyslexia.

Sleep has a crucial role in memory processes, and maturational changes in sleep electrophysiology are involved in cognitive development. Albeit both sleep and memory alterations have been observed in Developmental Dyslexia (DD), their relation in this population has been scarcely investigated, particularly concerning topographical aspects. The study aimed to compare sleep topography and associated sleep-related declarative memory consolidation in participants with DD and normal readers (NR). Eleven participants with DD and 18 NR (9–14 years old) underwent a whole-night polysomnography. They were administered a word pair task before and after sleep to assess for declarative memory consolidation. Memory performance and sleep features (macro and microstructural) were compared between the groups, and the intercorrelations between consolidation rate and sleep measures were assessed. DD showed a deeper worsening in memory after sleep compared to NR and reduced slow spindles in occipito-parietal and left fronto-central areas. Our results suggest specific alterations in local sleep EEG (i.e., sleep spindles) and in sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes in DD. We highlight the importance of a topographical approach, which might shed light on potential alteration in regional cortical oscillation dynamics in DD. The latter might represent a target for therapeutic interventions aimed at enhancing cognitive functioning in DD.

3D word spotting using leap motion sensor

Leap motion sensor provides a new way of interaction with computers or mobile devices. With this sensor, users can write in air by moving palm or finger, thus, avoiding traditional pen and paper for writing. The strokes of air-writing or 3D writing is different from conventional way of writing. In 3D writing, the words are connected by continuous lines instead of space between them. Also, the arbitrary size of characters and presence of frequent jitters in strokes make the recognition tasks of such words and sentences difficult. To understand the semantics of a word without recognizing each character of words, the alternative process called “word-spotting” is being used. Word-spotting is often useful than conventional recognition systems to understand complex handwriting. Hence, we propose a novel word spotting methodology for 3D text using Leap motion sensor data. Spotting/detection of a keyword in 3D sentences is carried out using Hidden Markov Model (HMM) framework. From experimental study, an average of 41.7 is recorded in terms of Mean-Average-Precision (MAP). The efficiency of the system is demonstrated by comparing traditional segmentation based system. The improved performance shows that the system could be used in developing novel applications in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) domain.

Whole-brain functional correlates of memory formation in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

The mesial temporal lobe is a key region for episodic memory. Accordingly, memory impairment is frequent in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the functional relevance of potentially epilepsy-induced reorganisation for memory formation is still not entirely clear. Therefore, we investigated whole-brain functional correlates of verbal and non-verbal memory encoding and subsequent memory formation in 56 (25 right sided) mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients and 21 controls. We applied an fMRI task of learning scenes, faces, and words followed by an out-of-scanner recognition test. During encoding of faces and scenes left and right mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients had consistently reduced activation in the epileptogenic mesial temporal lobe compared with controls. Activation increases in patients were apparent in extra-temporal regions, partly associated with subsequent memory formation (left frontal regions and basal ganglia), and patients had less deactivation in regions often linked to the default mode and auditory networks. The more specific subsequent memory contrast indicated only marginal group differences. Correlating patients’ encoding activation with memory performance both within the paradigm and with independent clinical measures demonstrated predominantly increased contralateral mesio-temporal activation supporting intact memory performance. In left temporal lobe epilepsy patients, left frontal activation was also correlated with better verbal memory performance. Taken together, our findings hint towards minor extra-temporal plasticity in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients, which is in line with pre-surgical impairment and post-surgical memory decline in many patients. Further, data underscore the importance of particularly the contralateral mesial temporal lobe itself, to maintain intact memory performance.

Heterogeneity of repetition abilities in logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia.

ABSTRACT.The differential diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is challenging due to overlapping clinical manifestations of the different variants of the disease. This is particularly true for the logopenic variant of PPA (lvPPA), in which such overlap was reported with regard to impairments in repetition abilities. In this study, four individuals with lvPPA underwent standard neuropsychological and language assessments. The influence of psycholinguistic variables on their performance of in word, nonword and sentence repetition tasks was also specifically explored. Some level of heterogeneity was found in cognitive functions and in language. The four participants showed impairment in sentence repetition in which their performance was negatively affected by semantic reversibility and syntactic complexity. This study supports the heterogeneity of lvPPA with respect to the cognitive and linguistic status of participants. It also shows that sentence repetition is influenced not only by length, but also by semantic reversibility and syntactic complexity, two psycholinguistic variables known to place additional demands on phonological working memory.

Decision Outcomes in Sport: Influence of Type and Level of Stress.

In two experiments, the authors investigated the influence of stress type (i.e.,low/no stress, mental, and physical), level (i.e.,low, moderate, and high), and Type × Level interaction on intuitive decision frequency, decision quality, and decision speed. Participants were exposed to mental (i.e.,color word task, mental arithmetic) and/or physical stress (i.e.,running) and then required to make decisions regarding videotaped offensive situations in basketball. Intuitive decision frequency, decision quality, and decision speed were measured for each trial. Study 1 used a between-subjects design whereby 20 participants were randomly assigned to each of the five stress conditions. Results revealed that moderate stress was associated with faster decisions. Study 2 replicated the design and aim of Study 1 using a within-subject methodology (n = 42). Results suggested that moderate stress levels produced better, faster decisions. In conclusion, moderate levels of stress were associated with the most desirable decision outcomes.

Underdeveloped recollection during adolescence: Semantic elaboration and inhibition as underlying mechanisms

Recognition memory abilities undergo important developmental changes until adulthood, with earlier studies showing different trajectories for recollection and familiarity-based processes. However, previous work has primarily focused on childhood, and differences in memory retrieval, notably in recollection, between adolescents and adults, have been hard to confirm. To address this gap in the literature and to better characterize the development of recollection and familiarity during adolescence, we applied the process dissociation procedure to a word recognition memory task, after semantic and perceptual encoding of words, in adolescents (n = 30, 13–15 years of age) and young adults (n = 30, 20–22 years). Relative to young adults, adolescents’ lower recognition memory performance was restricted to context recollection of semantically encoded items. This effect was predicted by individual differences in inhibitory control abilities. These findings highlight the distinct developmental trajectories of familiarity and context recollection over the course of adolescence, and suggest that semantic elaboration and inhibition are two key mechanisms toward the full maturation of recollection processes.