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Lorenz A, Pino D, Jescheniak JD, Obrig H. On the lexical representation of compound nouns: Evidence from a picture-naming task with compound targets and gender-marked determiner primes in aphasia. Cortex 2021; 146:116-140. [PMID: 34856428 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.09.019] [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: 02/09/2021] [Revised: 08/06/2021] [Accepted: 09/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Our study examines the lexical representation and processing of compounds in participants with aphasia (PWA) and language-unimpaired control speakers. Participants were engaged in primed picture-naming in German, a language that marks for grammatical gender. Gender-marked determiners served as primes (dermasc, diefem, dasneut [the]) and noun-noun compounds as targets (e.g., Goldneutfischmasc [goldfish]). Experiment 1 tested whether the compound's constituents are activated at a lexical-syntactic level during production. Primes were gender-congruent either with the morphological head of the target compound (e.g., dermasc for the target Goldneutfischmasc), or its modifier (dasneut for Goldneutfischmasc), or incongruent with both (diefem). Head congruency of prime and target produced strong facilitatory effects across groups. Modifier congruent primes produced contrasting effects. Modifier congruency speeded up picture naming in the controls and PWA with isolated deficits of lexical access (PWA-lex) but they delayed picture naming in PWA with additional deficits of phonological encoding (PWA-pho). Both patterns suggest that the lemmas of both constituents of compound targets and their grammatical gender are activated during compound retrieval, in line with a multiple-lemma representation of compounds. Experiment 2 explored the nature of the observed effects compared to a gender-neutral control condition. While facilitatory effects were shown by PWA-lex and the controls, PWA-pho did not profit from congruent primes but showed inhibitory effects by incongruent primes, exclusively. Inhibitory effects were also attested for the controls but not for PWA-lex. The functional origin of determiner priming effects and their theoretical and clinical implications are discussed in the framework of current accounts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antje Lorenz
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Danièle Pino
- Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital / Faculty of Medicine, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department Neurology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jörg D Jescheniak
- Institute of Psychology - Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Hellmuth Obrig
- Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital / Faculty of Medicine, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department Neurology, Leipzig, Germany
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Interference Resolution in Nonfluent Variant Primary Progressive Aphasia: Evidence From a Picture-Word Interference Task. Cogn Behav Neurol 2021; 34:11-25. [PMID: 33652466 DOI: 10.1097/wnn.0000000000000255] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2020] [Accepted: 08/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Picture-word interference tasks have been used to investigate (a) the time course of lexical access in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and (b) how these individuals resolve competition during lexical selection. OBJECTIVE To investigate the time course of Greek-speaking individuals with PPA to produce grammatical gender-marked determiner phrases by examining their picture-naming latencies in the context of distractor words. METHOD Eight individuals with nonfluent variant PPA (nfv-PPA; M age = 62.8 years) and eight cognitively intact controls (M age = 61.1 years) participated in our study. In a picture-word interference task, the study participants named depicted objects by producing determiner + noun sequences. Interference was generated by manipulating the grammatical gender of the depicted objects and distractor words. Two stimulus onset asynchronies were used: +200 ms and +400 ms. RESULTS The individuals with nfv-PPA exhibited longer picture-naming latencies than the controls (P = 0.003). The controls exhibited interference from incongruent distractors at both asynchronies (P < 0.001); the individuals with PPA exhibited interference from incongruent distractors only at the +400-ms interval (P = 0.002). The gender-congruency effect was stronger for the individuals with PPA than for the controls at the +400-ms interval (P = 0.05); the opposite pattern was observed at the +200-ms interval (P = 0.024). CONCLUSION Gender interference resolution was abnormal in the individuals with nfv-PPA. The results point to deficits in lexicosyntactic networks that compromised the time course of picture-naming production.
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Beatty-Martínez AL, Dussias PE. Revisiting Masculine and Feminine Grammatical Gender in Spanish: Linguistic, Psycholinguistic, and Neurolinguistic Evidence. Front Psychol 2019; 10:751. [PMID: 31024394 PMCID: PMC6460095 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00751] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2019] [Accepted: 03/18/2019] [Indexed: 12/01/2022] Open
Abstract
Research on grammatical gender processing has generally assumed that grammatical gender can be treated as a uniform construct, resulting in a body of literature in which different gender classes are collapsed into single analysis. The present work reviews linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research on grammatical gender from different methodologies and across different profiles of Spanish speakers. Specifically, we examine distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, the resulting biases in gender assignment, and the consequences of these assignment strategies on gender expectancy and processing. We discuss the implications of the findings for the design of future gender processing studies and, more broadly, for our understanding of the potential differences in the processing reflexes of grammatical gender classes within and across languages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anne L Beatty-Martínez
- Center for Language Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States.,Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States
| | - Paola E Dussias
- Center for Language Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States.,Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States
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Lorenz A, Mädebach A, Jescheniak JD. Grammatical-gender effects in noun–noun compound production: Evidence from German. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 71:1134-1149. [DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1310916] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
We examined how noun–noun compounds and their syntactic properties are lexically stored and processed in speech production. Using gender-marked determiner primes ( dermasc, diefem, dasneut [the]) in a picture naming task, we tested for specific effects from determiners congruent with either the modifier or the head of the compound target (e.g., Teemasckannefem [teapot]) to examine whether the constituents are processed independently at the syntactic level. Experiment 1 assessed effects of auditory gender-marked determiner primes in bare noun picture naming, and Experiment 2 assessed effects of visual gender-marked determiner primes in determiner–noun picture naming. Three prime conditions were implemented: (a) head-congruent determiner (e.g., diefem), (b) modifier-congruent determiner (e.g., dermasc), and (c) incongruent determiner (e.g., dasneuter). We observed a facilitation effect of head congruency but no effect of modifier congruency. In Experiment 3, participants produced novel noun–noun compounds in response to two pictures, demanding independent processing of head and modifier at the syntactic level. Now, head and modifier congruency effects were obtained, demonstrating the general sensitivity of our task. Our data support the notion of a single-lemma representation of lexically stored compound nouns in the German production lexicon.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antje Lorenz
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Fieder N, Nickels L, Biedermann B. Representation and processing of mass and count nouns: a review. Front Psychol 2014; 5:589. [PMID: 24966849 PMCID: PMC4052098 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00589] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/17/2013] [Accepted: 05/26/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Comprehension and/or production of noun phrases and sentences requires the selection of lexical-syntactic attributes of nouns. These lexical-syntactic attributes include grammatical gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), number (singular/plural) and countability (mass/count). While there has been considerable discussion regarding gender and number, relatively little attention has focused on countability. Therefore, this article reviews empirical evidence for lexical-syntactic specification of nouns for countability. This includes evidence from studies of language production and comprehension with normal speakers and case studies which assess impairments of mass/count nouns in people with acquired brain damage. Current theories of language processing are reviewed and found to be lacking specification regarding countability. Subsequently, the theoretical implications of the empirical studies are discussed in the context of frameworks derived from these accounts of language production (Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999) and comprehension (Taler and Jarema, 2006). The review concludes that there is empirical support for specification of nouns for countability at a lexical-syntactic level.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nora Fieder
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Lyndsey Nickels
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Britta Biedermann
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia
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Fieder N, Nickels L, Biedermann B, Best W. From "some butter" to "a butter": an investigation of mass and count representation and processing. Cogn Neuropsychol 2014; 31:313-49. [PMID: 24801445 DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2014.903914] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
This paper investigates the representation of mass and count nouns at the lexical-syntactic level, an issue that has not been addressed to date in psycholinguistic theories. A single case study is reported of a man with aphasia, R.A.P., who showed a countability specific deficit that affected processing of mass noun grammar. R.A.P. frequently substituted mass noun determiners (e.g., some, much) with count noun determiners (e.g., a, many). Experimental investigations determined that R.A.P. had a modality-neutral lexical-syntactic impairment. Furthermore, a series of novel experiments revealed that R.A.P.'s processing of mass noun determiners varied depending on how mass nouns were depicted (single vs. multiple depictions) and how congruent these were with the conceptual-semantic information of target determiners (e.g., "some" corresponds to multiple but not single concepts). R.A.P.'s determiner difficulties emerged only when mass nouns and determiners were number incongruent. The results of this research clearly indicate that nouns are lexical-syntactically specified for countability, but that the derivation of countability can additionally be influenced by conceptual-semantics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nora Fieder
- a ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD) and Department of Cognitive Science , Macquarie University , Sydney , NSW , Australia
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Gregory E, Varley R, Herbert R. Determiner primes as facilitators of lexical retrieval in English. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2012; 41:439-453. [PMID: 22411592 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-012-9207-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
Gender priming studies have demonstrated facilitation of noun production following pre-activation of a target noun's grammatical gender. Findings provide support for models in which syntactic information relating to words is stored within the lexicon and activated during lexical retrieval. Priming effects are observed in the context of determiner plus noun phrase production. Few studies demonstrate gender priming effects in bare noun production (i.e., nouns in isolation). We investigated the effects of English determiner primes on bare mass and count noun production. In two experiments, participants named pictures after exposure to primes involving congruent, incongruent and neutral determiners. Facilitation of noun production by congruent and neutral determiner primes was found in both experiments. The results suggest that noun phrase syntax is activated in lexical retrieval, even when not explicitly required for production. Post hoc analysis of the relative frequency of congruent and incongruent prime-target pairs provides support for a frequency-based interpretation of the data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emma Gregory
- Department of Human Communication Sciences, The University of Sheffield, 31 Claremont Crescent, Sheffield S10 2TA, UK.
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Hofmann J, Kotz SA, Marschhauser A, Yves von Cramon D, Friederici AD. Lesion-site affects grammatical gender assignment in German: Perception and production data. Neuropsychologia 2007; 45:954-65. [PMID: 17098262 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.08.029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2006] [Accepted: 08/28/2006] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Two experiments investigated phonological, derivational-morphological and semantic aspects of grammatical gender assignment in a perception and a production task in German aphasic patients and age-matched controls. The agreement of a gender indicating adjective (feminine, masculine or neuter) and a noun was evaluated during perception in Experiment 1 (grammaticality judgment). In Experiment 2 the same participants had to produce the matching definite article to a noun. In the perception task patients with left frontal lesions (LF) made more errors during phonological gender assignment as compared to derivational-morphological and semantic gender assignment, while patients with lesions of the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) made more errors in derivational-morphological gender assignment as compared to phonological and semantic gender assignment. In the production task no differences between patient groups were found. These data support previous evidence that left frontal brain areas are critically involved in phonological processing. The pSTG on the other hand may be critically engaged in the integration of phonological and lexical information essential for phonological and derivational-morphological gender assignment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juliane Hofmann
- Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, Saarland University, P.O. Box 151150, 66041 Saarbruecken, Germany.
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Wicha NYY, Orozco-Figueroa A, Reyes I, Hernandez A, de Barreto LG, Bates EA. When zebras become painted donkeys: Grammatical gender and semantic priming interact during picture integration in a spoken Spanish sentence. LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES 2005; 20:553-587. [PMID: 22773871 PMCID: PMC3389823 DOI: 10.1080/01690960444000241] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
This study investigates the contribution of grammatical gender to integrating depicted nouns into sentences during on-line comprehension, and whether semantic congruity and gender agreement interact using two tasks: naming and semantic judgement of pictures. Native Spanish speakers comprehended spoken Spanish sentences with an embedded line drawing, which replaced a noun that either made sense or not with the preceding sentence context and either matched or mismatched the gender of the preceding article. In Experiment 1a (picture naming) slower naming times were found for gender mismatching pictures than matches, as well as for semantically incongruous pictures than congruous ones. In addition, the effects of gender agreement and semantic congruity interacted; specifically, pictures that were both semantically incongruous and gender mismatching were named slowest, but not as slow as if adding independent delays from both violations. Compared with a neutral baseline, with pictures embedded in simple command sentences like "Now please say ____", both facilitative and inhibitory effects were observed. Experiment 1b replicated these results with low-cloze gender-neutral sentences, more similar in structure and processing demands to the experimental sentences. In Experiment 2, participants judged a picture's semantic fit within a sentence by button-press; gender agreement and semantic congruity again interacted, with gender agreement having an effect on congruous but not incongruous pictures. Two distinct effects of gender are hypothesised: a "global" predictive effect (observed with and without overt noun production), and a "local" inhibitory effect (observed only with production of gender-discordant nouns).
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Alario FX, Matos RE, Segui J. Gender congruency effects in picture naming. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2004; 117:185-204. [PMID: 15464013 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.06.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2003] [Revised: 06/01/2004] [Accepted: 06/02/2004] [Indexed: 10/26/2022] Open
Abstract
The analysis of speech error corpora in various gender-marked languages has shown that noun substitutions tend to preserve grammatical gender. This result has been taken as an indication that grammatical gender could play a constraining role during the process of lexical selection. To gain insights on the status of grammatical gender in the speech production system, we discuss this hypothesis and we report three picture naming experiments. We attempted to observe gender-marked context effects in the course of error-free speech production. Participants named pictures shortly after processing a prime that was or was not gender marked and that was or was not congruent with the name of the picture. A clear congruency effect was observed, involving both facilitation in the gender congruent conditions and inhibition in gender incongruent conditions. Different interpretations of this effect and of previously reported gender context effects are discussed in the context of current models of speech production.
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Affiliation(s)
- F-X Alario
- CNRS and Université René Descartes, Paris, France.
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Abstract
Two procedures were used to explore the effects of semantic and grammatical gender on the recognition and processing of Bulgarian nouns, in relation to other factors that are known to affect lexical access. This study in a three-gender language was modeled on previous work in Italian, a two-gender language (Bates, Devescovi, Pizzamiglio, D'Amico, & Hernandez, 1995). Words were presented auditorily in randomized lists in two tasks: (1) repeat the word as quickly as possible and (2) determine the grammatical gender of the noun as soon as possible and indicate the decision by pressing a button. Reaction times in both tasks were influenced by phonological factors, word frequency, and irregularity of gender marking, but semantic and grammatical gender affected only gender monitoring. The significant contribution of semantic gender to processing in Bulgarian contrasts with previous findings for Italian. Also, we obtained an interaction between sex of the subject and noun gender, reflecting a bias toward one's own grammatical gender "counterpart" (especially for females). Reanalysis of the prior study in Italian showed a similar interaction but confirmed no effects of the semantic gender of the noun, suggesting that these two natural gender effects can dissociate. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences are discussed, with implications for comparative studies of gender and lexical access.
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Abstract
The role of grammatical gender for auditory word recognition in German was investigated in three experiments and two sets of corpus analyses. In the corpus analyses, gender information reduced the lexical search space as well as the amount of input needed to uniquely identify a word. To test whether this holds for on-line processing, two auditory lexical decision experiments (Experiments 1 and 3) were conducted using valid, invalid, or noise-masked articles as primes. Clear gender-priming effects were obtained in both experiments. Experiment 2 used phoneme monitoring with words and with pseudowords deviating from base words in one or more phonological features. Contrary to the lexical decision latencies, phoneme-monitoring latencies showed no influence of gender but did show similarity mismatch effects. We argue that gender information is not utilized early during word recognition. Rather, the presence of a valid article increases the initial familiarity of a word, facilitating subsequent responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jens Bölte
- Psychologisches Institut II, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany.
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Székely A, D'Amico S, Devescovi A, Federmeier K, Herron D, Iyer G, Jacobsen T, Bates E. Timed picture naming: Extended norms and validation against previous studies. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2003; 35:621-33. [PMID: 14748507 DOI: 10.3758/bf03195542] [Citation(s) in RCA: 80] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Anna Székely
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
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Wicha NYY, Moreno EM, Kutas M. Expecting gender: an event related brain potential study on the role of grammatical gender in comprehending a line drawing within a written sentence in Spanish. Cortex 2003; 39:483-508. [PMID: 12870823 PMCID: PMC3392191 DOI: 10.1016/s0010-9452(08)70260-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the role of grammatical gender in written sentence comprehension. Native Spanish speakers read sentences in which a drawing depicting a target noun was either congruent or incongruent with sentence meaning, and either agreed or disagreed in gender with that of the preceding article. The gender-agreement violation at the drawing was associated with an enhanced negativity between 500 and 700 msec post-stimulus onset. Semantically incongruent drawings elicited a larger N400 than congruent drawings regardless of gender (dis)agreement, indicating little effect of grammatical gender agreement on contextual integration of a picture into a written sentence context. We also observed an enhanced negativity for articles with unexpected relative to expected gender based on prior sentence context indicating that readers generate expectations for specific nouns and their articles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Y Y Wicha
- Department of Cognitive Science, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
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Bates E, D'Amico S, Jacobsen T, Székely A, Andonova E, Devescovi A, Herron D, Lu CC, Pechmann T, Pléh C, Wicha N, Federmeier K, Gerdjikova I, Gutierrez G, Hung D, Hsu J, Iyer G, Kohnert K, Mehotcheva T, Orozco-Figueroa A, Tzeng A, Tzeng O. Timed picture naming in seven languages. Psychon Bull Rev 2003; 10:344-80. [PMID: 12921412 PMCID: PMC3392189 DOI: 10.3758/bf03196494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 290] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-language universals and cross-language disparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g., Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth Bates
- Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0526, USA.
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Lu CC, Bates E, Hung D, Tzeng O, Hsu J, Tsai CH, Roe K. Syntactic priming of nouns and verbs in Chinese. LANGUAGE AND SPEECH 2001; 44:437-471. [PMID: 12162694 DOI: 10.1177/00238309010440040201] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
Syntactic priming of Chinese nouns and verbs was investigated in word recognition (cued shadowing of auditory targets) and production (picture naming). Disyllabic compound words were presented after syntactically congruent, incongruent, or neutral auditory contexts, with a zero delay between offset of the context and onset of the target. Significant priming was observed in both tasks, including facilitation as well as inhibition. Post hoc analyses showed that reaction times were also affected by sublexical variables that are especially relevant for Chinese, including syllable density (number of word types and tokens in the language with the same first or second syllable) and semantic transparency (whether the meaning of the whole word is predictable from the separate meanings of the two syllables within the compound). These patterns suggest competitive effects at the sublexical level. Implications for interactive models of lexical access are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- C C Lu
- National Hsinchu Teachers College, Taiwan
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Abstract
Results from two separate norming studies of lexical access in Italian were merged, permitting a comparison of word-reading and picture-naming latencies and the factors that predict each one for an overlapping subsample of 128 common nouns. Factor analysis of shared lexical predictors yielded four latent variables: a frequency factor, a semantic factor, a length factor, and a final factor dominated by frication on the initial phoneme. Age of acquisition (AoA) loaded highly on the first two factors, suggesting that it can be split into separate sources of variance. Regression analyses using factor scores as predictors showed that word reading and picture naming are both influenced by the frequency/AoA factor. The semantics/AoA factor influenced only picture naming, whereas the length and frication factors influenced only word reading. Generalizability of these results to other languages is discussed, including potential effects of cross-language differences in orthographic transparency.
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Affiliation(s)
- E Bates
- Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0526, USA.
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Abstract
Cross-linguistic studies are essential to the identification of universal processes in language development, language use, and language breakdown. Comparative studies in all three areas are reviewed, demonstrating powerful differences across languages in the order in which specific structures are acquired by children, the sparing and impairment of those structures in aphasic patients, and the structures that normal adults rely upon most heavily in real-time word and sentence processing. It is proposed that these differences reflect a cost-benefit trade-off among universal mechanisms for learning and processing (perception, attention, motor planning, memory) that are critical for language, but are not unique to language.
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Affiliation(s)
- E Bates
- Center For Research in Language, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
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Akhutina T, Kurgansk A, Kurganskaya M, Polinsky M, Polonskaya N, Larina O, Bates E, Appelbaum M. Processing of grammatical gender in normal and aphasic speakers of Russian. Cortex 2001; 37:295-326. [PMID: 11485060 DOI: 10.1016/s0010-9452(08)70576-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Sensitivity to grammatical gender was investigated in 22 Russian-speaking aphasic patients, compared with young controls. Experiment 1 used a cued shadowing paradigm to assess gender priming (facilitation and/or inhibition of lexical access by a prenominal modifier with congruent, incongruent or neutral gender). Experiment 2 used a grammaticality judgment paradigm with similar stimuli. Normals showed significant interactions between gender and priming in Experiment 1 (facilitation for feminine and neuter nouns but not for masculines) and Experiment 2 (larger effects of context on feminine and neuter nouns) that we interpret as a Markedness Effect. Patients showed significant priming in Experiment 1 and above-chance accuracy in Experiment 2, but failed to show reduced effects for the least-marked masculine gender (the Markedness Effect) in either experiment. Context effects were not related to specific aphasic symptoms or subtypes in either experiment. However, canonical correlation revealed differential effects of specific aphasic symptoms on judgment accuracy (false alarms vs. misses). We conclude that knowledge of grammatical gender is spared in Russian aphasics, but gender processing is deviant. A possible model to account for these differences is discussed.
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D'Amico S, Devescovi A, Bates E. Picture Naming and Lexical Access in Italian Children and Adults. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2001. [DOI: 10.1207/s15327647jcd0201_4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/31/2022]
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Bates E, Marangolo P, Pizzamiglio L, Dick F. Linguistic and nonlinguistic priming in aphasia. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2001; 76:62-69. [PMID: 11161355 DOI: 10.1006/brln.2000.2391] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
Studies of real-time processing in aphasia suggest that linguistic symptoms may be due to deficits in activation dynamics rather than loss of linguistic knowledge. To investigate the domain specificity of such processing deficits, we compared performance by Italian-speaking fluent aphasics, nonfluent aphasics, and normal controls in a linguistic priming task (grammatical gender) with their performance in a color-priming task that requires no verbal mediation. Normal or larger than normal color-priming effects were demonstrated in both aphasic groups. Gender priming did not reach significance in either group, even though the patients displayed above-chance sensitivity to gender class and gender agreement in their accuracy scores. The demonstration of spared gender knowledge despite impaired gender priming underscores the utility of on-line techniques in the study of aphasia. The demonstration of spared color priming suggests that priming deficits in aphasia are either (1) specific to speech and language or (2) specific only to those sensorimotor and attentional processes that language shares with other nonlinguistic systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- E Bates
- Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, USA.
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Roe K, Jahn-Samilo J, Juarez L, Mickel N, Royer I, Bates E. Contextual effects on word production: a lifespan study. Mem Cognit 2000; 28:756-65. [PMID: 10983449 DOI: 10.3758/bf03198410] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The effect of sentence priming on picture naming was investigated across the lifespan, from age 3 to 87 years. Names that are normally acquired before 3 years of age were presented in auditory contexts that were semantically congruent, incongruent, or neutral in relation to each picture and its name. Sentential priming was present at all age levels. Facilitation (neutral vs. congruent) was significantly by 4 years of age and did not vary significantly with age. Interference (incongruent vs. neutral) was significant at all age levels, but changed nonmonotonically with age (largest in the youngest children, stable from young adulthood through age 70, with a small increase in the oldest participants). We conclude that picture naming is a useful tool for the investigation of sentential priming effects across the lifespan and that it can reveal potentially interesting developmental changes in the effects of sentential context on word retrieval.
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Affiliation(s)
- K Roe
- University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0526, USA
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