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Curtis PR, Estabrook R, Roberts MY, Weisleder A. Sensitivity to Semantic Relationships in U.S. Monolingual English-Speaking Typical Talkers and Late Talkers. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2023; 66:2404-2420. [PMID: 37339002 PMCID: PMC10468120 DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-22-00563] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2022] [Revised: 01/09/2023] [Accepted: 03/29/2023] [Indexed: 06/22/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Late talkers (LTs) are a group of children who exhibit delays in language development without a known cause. Although a hallmark of LTs is a reduced expressive vocabulary, little is known about LTs' processing of semantic relations among words in their emerging vocabularies. This study uses an eye-tracking task to compare 2-year-old LTs' and typical talkers' (TTs') sensitivity to semantic relationships among early acquired words. METHOD U.S. monolingual English-speaking LTs (n = 21) and TTs (n = 24) completed a looking-while-listening task in which they viewed two images on a screen (e.g., a shirt and a pizza), while they heard words that referred to one of the images (e.g., Look! Shirt!; target-present condition) or a semantically related item (e.g., Look! Hat!; target-absent condition). Children's eye movements (i.e., looks to the target) were monitored to assess their sensitivity to these semantic relationships. RESULTS Both LTs and TTs looked longer at the semantically related image than the unrelated image on target-absent trials, demonstrating sensitivity to the taxonomic relationships used in the experiment. There was no significant group difference between LTs and TTs. Both groups also looked more to the target in the target-present condition than in the target-absent condition. CONCLUSIONS These results reveal that, despite possessing smaller expressive vocabularies, LTs have encoded semantic relationships in their receptive vocabularies and activate these during real-time language comprehension. This study furthers our understanding of LTs' emerging linguistic systems and language processing skills. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23303987.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip R. Curtis
- Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
| | - Ryne Estabrook
- Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago
| | - Megan Y. Roberts
- Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
| | - Adriana Weisleder
- Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
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Wilson K, Frank MC, Fourtassi A. Conceptual Hierarchy in Child-Directed Speech: Implicit Cues are More Reliable. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2023.2178436] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/26/2023]
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Savic O, Unger L, Sloutsky VM. Experience and maturation: The contribution of co-occurrence regularities in language to the development of semantic organization. Child Dev 2023; 94:142-158. [PMID: 35962586 PMCID: PMC9780163 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13844] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/25/2022]
Abstract
With development knowledge becomes organized according to semantic links, including early-developing associative (e.g., juicy-apple) and gradually developing taxonomic links (e.g., apple-pear). Word co-occurrence regularities may foster these links: Associative links may form from direct co-occurrence (e.g., juicy-apple), and taxonomic links from shared co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear co-occur with juicy). Four experiments (2017-2020) investigated this possibility with 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 148, 82 female) and adults (N = 116, 35 female) in a U.S. city with 58.6% White; 29.0% Black, and 5.8% Asian demographics. Results revealed earlier development of the abilities to form direct (ds > 0.536) than the abilities to form shared co-occurrence-based links (ds > 1.291). We argue that the asynchronous development of abilities to form co-occurrence-based links may explain developmental changes in semantic organization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivera Savic
- Department of Psychology Ohio State University Columbus Ohio USA
| | - Layla Unger
- Department of Psychology Ohio State University Columbus Ohio USA
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Pisano F, Manfredini A, Brachi D, Landi L, Sorrentino L, Bottone M, Incoccia C, Marangolo P. How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use? INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2022; 19:13836. [PMID: 36360715 PMCID: PMC9656816 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192113836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2022] [Revised: 10/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/21/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe consequences for people's mental health. The pandemic has also influenced our language use, shaping our word formation habits. The overuse of new metaphorical meanings has received particular attention from the media. Here, we wanted to investigate whether these metaphors have led to the formation of new semantic associations in memory. A sample of 120 university students was asked to decide whether a target word was or was not related to a prime stimulus. Responses for pandemic pairs in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., "trench"-"hospital") were compared to pre-existing semantically related pairs (i.e., "trench"-"soldier") and neutral pairs (i.e., "trench"-"response"). Results revealed greater accuracy and faster response times for pandemic pairs than for semantic pairs and for semantic pairs compared to neutral ones. These findings suggest that the newly learned pandemic associations have created stronger semantic links in our memory compared to the pre-existing ones. Thus, this work confirms the adaptive nature of human language, and it underlines how the overuse of metaphors evoking dramatic images has been, in part, responsible for many psychological disorders still reported among people nowadays.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesca Pisano
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | - Alessio Manfredini
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | - Daniela Brachi
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | - Luana Landi
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | - Lucia Sorrentino
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | - Marianna Bottone
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
| | | | - Paola Marangolo
- Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
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Plunkett K, Delle Luche C, Hills T, Floccia C. Tracking the associative boost in infancy. INFANCY 2022; 27:1179-1196. [PMID: 36066941 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12502] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/23/2021] [Revised: 07/09/2022] [Accepted: 08/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Do words that are both associatively and taxonomically related prime each other in the infant mental lexicon? We explore the impact of these semantic relations in the emerging lexicon. Using the head-turn preference procedure, we show that 18-month-old infants have begun to construct a semantic network of associatively and taxonomically related words, such as dog-cat or apple-cheese. We demonstrate that priming between words is longer-lasting when the relationship is both taxonomic and associative, as opposed to purely taxonomic, reflecting the associative boost reported in the adult priming literature. Our results demonstrate that 18-month-old infants are able to construct a lexical-semantic network based on associative and taxonomic relations between words in the network, and that lexical-semantic links are more robust when they are both associative and taxonomic in character. Furthermore, the manner in which activation is propagated through the emerging lexical-semantic network appears to depend upon the type of semantic relation between words. We argue that 18-month-old infants have a mental lexicon that shares important structural and processing properties with that of the adult system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim Plunkett
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Claire Delle Luche
- Centre for Research in Language Development Throughout the Lifespan, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
| | - Thomas Hills
- Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, University Road, Coventry, UK
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Socher M, Löfkvist U, Wass M. Comparing the semantic networks of children with cochlear implants and children with typical hearing: Effects of length of language access. JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION DISORDERS 2022; 99:106247. [PMID: 35843069 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2022.106247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2021] [Revised: 07/06/2022] [Accepted: 07/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Kenett et al. (2013) report that the sematic networks, measured by using an oral semantic fluency task, of children with cochlear implants (CI) are less structured compared to the sematic networks of children with typical hearing (TH). This study aims to evaluate if such differences are only evident if children with CI are compared to children with TH matched on chronological age, or also if they are compared to children with TH matched on hearing age. METHOD The performance of a group of children with CI on a verbal fluency task was compared to the performance of a group of chronological-age matched children with TH. Subsequently, computational network analysis was used to compare the semantic network structure of the groups. The same procedure was applied to compare a group of children with CI to a group of hearing-age matched children with TH. RESULTS The children with CI perform on the same level on an oral semantic verbal fluency task as the children with TH matched on hearing age. There are significant differences in terms of the structure of the semantic network between the groups. The magnitude of these differences is very small and they are non-significant for a proportion of nodes included in the bootstrap analysis. This indicates that there is no true difference between the networks. Hearing age, but not age at implantation was found to be significantly positively correlated with semantic verbal fluency performance for the children with CI. CONCLUSIONS The results from the current study indicate that length of exposure to the tested language is an important factor for the structure of the semantic network and the performance on a semantic verbal fluency task for children with CI. Further studies are needed to explore the role of the accessibility of the language input for the development of semantic networks of children with CI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michaela Socher
- Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden; Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden; Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP, Institute Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
| | - Ulrika Löfkvist
- Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Malin Wass
- Department of Health, Learning and Technology, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
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Jiang H, Frank MC, Kulkarni V, Fourtassi A. Exploring Patterns of Stability and Change in Caregivers' Word Usage Across Early Childhood. Cogn Sci 2022; 46:e13177. [PMID: 35820173 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13177] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2021] [Revised: 04/22/2022] [Accepted: 06/11/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
The linguistic input children receive across early childhood plays a crucial role in shaping their knowledge about the world. To study this input, researchers have begun applying distributional semantic models to large corpora of child-directed speech, extracting various patterns of word use/co-occurrence. Previous work using these models has not measured how these patterns may change throughout development, however. In this work, we leverage natural language processing methods-originally developed to study historical language change-to compare caregivers' use of words when talking to younger versus older children. Some words' usage changed more than others; this variability could be predicted based on the word's properties at both the individual and category levels. These findings suggest that caregivers' changing patterns of word use may play a role in scaffolding children's acquisition of conceptual structure in early development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hang Jiang
- Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University
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Hofmann MJ, Kleemann MA, Roelke-Wellmann A, Vorstius C, Radach R. Semantic feature activation takes time: longer SOA elicits earlier priming effects during reading. Cogn Process 2022; 23:309-318. [PMID: 35254545 PMCID: PMC9072456 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-022-01084-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2021] [Accepted: 02/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
While most previous studies of "semantic" priming confound associative and semantic relations, here we use a simple co-occurrence-based approach to examine "pure" semantic priming, while experimentally controlling for associative relations. We define associative relations by the co-occurrence of words in the sentences of a large text corpus. Contextual-semantic feature overlap, in contrast, is defined by the number of common associates that the prime shares with the target. Then we revisit the spreading activation theory and examine whether a long vs. short time available for semantic feature activation leads to early vs. late viewing time effects on the target words of a sentence reading experiment. We independently manipulate contextual-semantic feature overlap of two primes with one target word in sentences of the form pronoun, verb prime, article, adjective prime and target noun, e. g., "She rides the gray elephant." The results showed that long-SOA (verb-noun) overlap reduces early single and first fixation durations of the target noun, and short-SOA (adjective-noun) overlap reduces late go-past durations. This result pattern can be explained by the spreading activation theory: The semantic features of the prime words need some time to become sufficiently active before they can reliably affect target processing. Therefore, the verb can act on the target noun's early eye-movement measures presented three words later, while the adjective is presented immediately prior to the target-thus a difficult adjective-noun semantic integration leads to a late sentence re-examination of the preceding words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Markus J Hofmann
- General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany.
| | - Mareike A Kleemann
- General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
| | - André Roelke-Wellmann
- General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
| | - Christian Vorstius
- General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
| | - Ralph Radach
- General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
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Stefaniak N, Baltazart V, Declercq C. Processing Verb Meanings and the Declarative/Procedural Model: A Developmental Study. Front Psychol 2021; 12:714523. [PMID: 34659028 PMCID: PMC8514706 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.714523] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2021] [Accepted: 08/26/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
According to the Declarative/Procedural Model, the lexicon depends on declarative memory while grammar relies on procedural memory. Furthermore, procedural memory underlies the sequential processing of language. Thus, this system is important for predicting the next item in a sentence. Verb processing represents a good candidate to test this assumption. Semantic representations of verbs include information about the protagonists in the situations they refer to. This semantic knowledge is acquired implicitly and used during verb processing, such that the processing of a verb preactivates its typical patients (e.g., the window for break). Thus, determining how the patient typicality effect appears during children’s cognitive development could provide evidence about the memory system that is dedicated to this effect. Two studies are presented in which French children aged 6–10 and adults made grammaticality judgments on 80 auditorily presented sentences. In Experiment 1, the verb was followed by a typical patient or by a less typical patient. In Experiment 2, grammatical sentences were constructed such that the verb was followed either by a typical patient or by a noun that could not be a patient of that verb. The typicality effect occurs in younger children and is interpreted in terms of developmental invariance. We suggest that this effect may depend on procedural memory, in line with studies that showed that meaning is necessary to allow procedural memory to learn the sequence of words in a sentence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicolas Stefaniak
- Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
| | - Véronique Baltazart
- Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
| | - Christelle Declercq
- Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
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Unger L, Fisher AV. The Emergence of Richly Organized Semantic Knowledge from Simple Statistics: A Synthetic Review. DEVELOPMENTAL REVIEW 2021; 60:100949. [PMID: 33840880 PMCID: PMC8026144 DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2021.100949] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
As adults, we draw upon our ample knowledge about the world to support such vital cognitive feats as using language, reasoning, retrieving knowledge relevant to our current goals, planning for the future, adapting to unexpected events, and navigating through the environment. Our knowledge readily supports these feats because it is not merely a collection of stored facts, but rather functions as an organized, semantic network of concepts connected by meaningful relations. How do the relations that fundamentally organize semantic concepts emerge with development? Here, we cast a spotlight on a potentially powerful but often overlooked driver of semantic organization: Rich statistical regularities that are ubiquitous in both language and visual input. In this synthetic review, we show that a driving role for statistical regularities is convergently supported by evidence from diverse fields, including computational modeling, statistical learning, and semantic development. Finally, we identify a number of key avenues of future research into how statistical regularities may drive the development of semantic organization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Layla Unger
- Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus OH
| | - Anna V Fisher
- Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA
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Socher M, Ingebrand E, Wass M, Lyxell B. The relationship between reasoning and language ability: comparing children with cochlear implants and children with typical hearing. LOGOP PHONIATR VOCO 2020; 47:73-83. [PMID: 33150820 DOI: 10.1080/14015439.2020.1834613] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE Language has been suggested to play a facilitating role for analogical reasoning tasks, especially for those with high complexity. This study aims to evaluate if differences in analogical reasoning ability between children with cochlear implants (CI) and children with typical hearing (TH) might be explained by differences in language ability. METHODS The analogical reasoning ability (verbal; non-verbal; complex non-verbal: high relational integration demand) of children with CI (N = 15, mean age = 6;7) was compared to two groups of children with TH: age and language matched (TH-A+L, N = 23, mean age = 6;5), and age matched (TH-A, N = 23, mean age = 6;5). RESULTS Children with CI were found to perform comparable to Group TH-A+L on non-verbal reasoning tasks but significantly more poorly on a verbal analogical reasoning task. Children with CI were found to perform significantly more poorly on both the non-verbal analogical reasoning task with high relational integration demand and on the verbal analogical reasoning task compared to Group TH-A. For the non-verbal analogical reasoning task with lower relational integration demand only a tendency for a difference between group CI and Group TH-A was found. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that verbal strategies are influencing the performance on the non-verbal analogical reasoning tasks with a higher relational integration demand. The possible reasons for this are discussed. The verbal analogical reasoning task used in the current study partly measured lexical access. Differences between the children with CI and both groups of children with TH might therefore be explained by differences in expressive vocabulary skills.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michaela Socher
- Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.,Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
| | - Elias Ingebrand
- Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
| | - Malin Wass
- Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
| | - Björn Lyxell
- Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.,Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
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