1,720,973 research outputs found
Referential Numerosity and Morphosyntactic Number Agreement: A Psycholinguistic Study on Italian qualche/alcuni
No full textThe present study aims at shedding new light on the relationship between morphological Number and the numerosity of the referent(s). Previous studies exploiting agreement violations suggested a possible involvement of numerosity processing in the encoding of morphological Number (Carreiras et al., 2010). By employing the two Italian quantifiers qualche and alcuni, and exploiting their diverging requirements for Number agreement, we developed a picture–phrase matching paradigm. This minimal pair enabled us to test the hypothesis that when the morphological information of Number is incongruent with the numerosity encoded on the whole expression, more processing time is needed. The results are consistent with previous studies, and add evidence to a relationship between certain aspects of language and numerical cognition. Notably, contrary to previous literature, our results were obtained by exploiting well-formed expressions only
In the Words of Others: ERP Evidence of Speaker‐Specific Phonological Prediction
No full textPrediction models usually assume that highly constraining contexts allow the pre-activation of phonological information. However, the evidence for phonological prediction is mixed and controversial. In this study, we implement a paradigm that capitalizes on the phonological errors produced by L2 speakers to investigate whether specific phonological predictions are made based on speaker identity. L1 Italian speakers were asked to read sentence fragments, after which a final word was spoken by either an L1- or an L2-accented speaker. The spoken final word could be predictable or not, depending on the sentence context. The identity of the speaker (L1- vs. L2-accented) may or may not be cued by an image of the face of the speaker. Our main analysis indicated that cueing the speaker identity was associated with a larger N400 predictability effect, possibly reflecting an easier processing of predictable words due to phonological pre-activation. As visual inspection of the waveforms revealed a more complex pattern than initially anticipated, we used Temporal EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) to identify and disentangle the ERP components underlying the effect observed. In the L1-accent condition, predictable words elicited a posterior positivity relative to unpredictable words, possibly reflecting a P3b response, which was more pronounced when the speaker identity was cued. In the L2-accent condition, cueing the speaker identity was associated with a smaller N1 and a larger P3a response. These results suggest that phonological prediction for L1- and L2-accented speakers likely involves different cognitive processes
Commonalities in alpha and beta neural desynchronizations during prediction in language comprehension and production
Full text linkImpaired speech-motor control in stuttering affects EEG correlates of predictive speech comprehension
No full textCortical tracking of speech is reduced in adults who stutter when listening for speaking
Full text linkThis study explores cortical tracking of speech (CTS) in adults who stutter (AWS) compared to typically fluent adults (TFA) while listening to sentences. We manipulated the upcoming involvement of the speech-motor system during listening: participants either had to simply listen to the sentences (listening only) or complete unfinished sentences by naming a picture (listening-for-speaking). AWS, known for atypical neural structure and functionaing in the speech-motor network, exhibited reduced CTS in the theta band in temporal sensors during the listening-for-speaking task, reflected at the source level in the left temporo-parietal junction and the right pre-motor and supplementary motor regions. Additionally, connectivity analyses reveal that TFA had stronger inter- and intra-hemispheric information transfer in the theta range than AWS in both tasks, involving frontal, temporo-parietal, (pre-)motor, and superior temporal regions, with different patterns according to the task. Notably, increased connectivity from the right superior temporal cortex to the left sensorimotor cortex correlated with faster naming times in the listening-for-speaking task. These findings suggest that atypical speech-motor functioning in stuttering impact also speech perception, especially in situations requiring articulatory alertness, and highlight the involvement of frontal and (pre-) motor regions in normal conditions in CTS.
Significance Statement
This study shows for the first time that individuals with a speech-motor impairment, namely persistent developmental stuttering, also show impaired cortical tracking of speech, especially when upcoming speech production is required. The effects emerge in the theta range, corresponding to the syllabic rhythm, suggested to be an optimal interface between the human biomechanic constraints for producing sounds and the human brain's perceptual capabilities for speech. Our study highlights the relevance of speech-motor regions in cortical tracking of speech and suggests that spoken language perception in individuals with speech-motor deficits is an important ground for research, especially in real-life conversational settings where smooth transitioning between listening and speaking is required
Inefficient speech-motor control affects predictive speech comprehension: atypical electrophysiological correlates in stuttering
No full text: Listeners predict upcoming information during language comprehension. However, how this ability is implemented is still largely unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis proposing that language production mechanisms have a role in prediction. We studied 2 electroencephalographic correlates of predictability during speech comprehension-pre-target alpha-beta (8-30 Hz) power decrease and the post-target N400 event-related potential effect-in a population with impaired speech-motor control, i.e. adults who stutter (AWS), compared to typically fluent adults (TFA). Participants listened to sentences that could either constrain towards a target word or not, modulating its predictability. As a complementary task, participants also performed context-driven word production. Compared to TFA, AWS not only displayed atypical neural responses in production, but, critically, they showed a different pattern also in comprehension. Specifically, while TFA showed the expected pre-target power decrease, AWS showed a power increase in frontal regions, associated with speech-motor control. In addition, the post-target N400 effect was reduced for AWS with respect to TFA. Finally, we found that production and comprehension power changes were positively correlated in TFA, but not in AWS. Overall, the results support the idea that processes and neural structures prominently devoted to speech planning also support prediction during speech comprehension
Predictive language processing: integrating comprehension and production, and what atypical populations can tell us
Full text linkPredictive processing, a crucial aspect of human cognition, is also relevant for language comprehension. In everyday situations, we exploit various sources of information to anticipate and therefore facilitate processing of upcoming linguistic input. In the literature, there are a variety of models that aim at accounting for such ability. One group of models propose a strict relationship between prediction and language production mechanisms. In this review, we first introduce very briefly the concept of predictive processing during language comprehension. Secondly, we focus on models that attribute a prominent role to language production and sensorimotor processing in language prediction (“prediction-by-production” models). Contextually, we provide a summary of studies that investigated the role of speech production and auditory perception on language comprehension/prediction tasks in healthy, typical participants. Then, we provide an overview of the limited existing literature on specific atypical/clinical populations that may represent suitable testing ground for such models–i.e., populations with impaired speech production and auditory perception mechanisms. Ultimately, we suggest a more widely and in- depth testing of prediction-by-production accounts, and the involvement of atypical populations both for model testing and as targets for possible novel speech/language treatment approaches
One can be some but some cannot be one: ERP correlates of numerosity incongruence are different for singular and plural
Full text linkHumans can communicate information on numerosity by means of number words (e.g., one hundred, a couple), but also through Number morphology (e.g., through the singular vs the plural forms of a noun). Agreement violations involving Number morphology (e.g., *one apples) are well known to elicit specific ERP components such as the Left Anterior Negativity (LAN); yet, the relationship between a morphological Number value (e.g., singular vs plural) and its referential numerosity has rarely been considered in the literature. Moreover, even if agreement violations have been proven to be very useful, they do not typically characterise everyday language usage, thus narrowing the scope of the results.
In this study we investigated Number morphology from a different perspective, by focusing on the ERP correlates of congruence and incongruence between a depicted numerosity and noun phrases. To this aim we designed a picture–phrase matching paradigm in Italian. In each trial, a picture depicting one or four objects was followed by a grammatically well-formed phrase made up of a quantifier and a content noun inflected either in the singular or in the plural. When analysing ERP time-locked to the content noun, plural phrases after pictures presenting one object elicited a larger negativity, similar to a LAN effect. No significant congruence effect was found in the case of the phrases whose morphological Number value conveyed a numerosity of one. Our results suggest that: 1) incongruence elicits a LAN-like negativity independently from the grammaticality of the utterances and irrespectively of the P600 component; 2) the reference to a numerosity can be partially encoded in an incremental way when processing Number morphology; and, most importantly, 3) the processing of the morphological Number value of plural is different from that of singular as the former shows a narrower interpretability than the latter
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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