Search Results (27)

Background/Objectives. In dementia, progressive changes in spoken language, including reduced lexical diversity, increased disfluency, and syntactic simplification, are well documented. Although computational approaches have demonstrated reliable group differences in individual linguistic features, less attention has been given to the potential coordination between linguistic features and discourse-level moderation of the features with group differences. Methods. Over five domains—syntactic, lexical, disfluency, output, and affective—nine linguistic features were extracted from 552 transcripts (309 dementia, 243 healthy controls) of individuals performing the Cookie Theft picture description task in the DementiaBank Pitt Corpus. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to examine group differences with rank-biserial correlation effect sizes. Fisher z-transformation tests were applied to compare within-group correlation to examine the moderation effect of discourse-pragmatic factors (self-references, hedging, and sentiment polarity) on different groups. Fisher z-transformation tests were used to compare inter-feature correlations between the two groups. All multiple comparisons were controlled using the Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) procedure. Results. Out of the nine features, word complexity, repetition rate, MLU, and filler rate were significantly different between the group with dementia and healthy controls. Among them, word complexity and repetition rate showed the largest and most consistent effects. Self-referential language showed a stronger association with verbal output in the group with dementia, although the association was not significant when analyses were restricted to one visit per participant. Moreover, one inter-feature relationship (i.e., the positive correlation between short utterance ratio and word complexity) remained significant after FDR correction. This correlation was present only in healthy controls, suggesting that this preserved coordination may be disrupted in dementia. Conclusions. Dementia disrupts not only individual linguistic features but also the relationships between them. The preserved coordination between syntactic simplification and lexical elaboration was found to be absent in speakers with dementia. Inter-feature coordination may, therefore, be able to reveal group differences that individual feature analyses alone cannot detect. Full article

Objective: Language delay (LD) is a common developmental condition in which children fail to achieve age-appropriate language milestones, affecting communication, cognition, and social integration. It affects approximately 1 in 14 preschool children and may have long-term consequences into adulthood. The period from 12 to 36 months is a critical window for language development, during which children begin to comprehend and produce their first words. Early identification of risk factors during this stage is essential for timely intervention. However, in Vietnam, data on factors associated with language delay in this age group remain limited. Therefore, this study aimed to identify factors associated with language delay in children aged 12–36 months. Methods: A case–control study was conducted, including 55 children with language delay and 55 typically developing children aged 12–36 months. Personal, familial, medical, and environmental data were collected using structured questionnaires. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with language delay. Results: A total of 110 children (43 boys and 67 girls) were included. The strongest risk factor was the use of screens to calm or occupy children (OR = 36.6; p < 0.001). Early bilingual exposure was a significant protective factor (OR = 0.12; p = 0.014), while shared reading or picture viewing showed a strong but borderline protective effect (OR = 0.23; p = 0.051). Conclusions: The use of screens to calm or occupy children was the main risk factor for language delay, whereas early bilingual exposure and shared reading or picture viewing were protective factors. These findings highlight the importance of limiting non-interactive screen use and promoting interactive language activities to support early language development. Full article

Speech sound disorder (SSD) is common in childhood and can persist, adversely affecting language, literacy, and social functioning. Yet consonant error patterns in school-age children, particularly in non-English-speaking populations, remain insufficiently characterized. Short-term memory (STM) supports phonological processing and speech learning, but its relationship with SSD severity in school-age children is not well established. This study profiles consonant errors and short-term memory in school-age Chinese children with SSD and examines short-term memory correlates and predictors of disorder severity to inform targeted interventions. A total of 142 Mandarin-speaking school-age children with SSD were recruited. For the short-term memory analyses, we randomly selected 70 children with SSD and recruited 70 typically developing controls. Speech was assessed using a word-level picture-naming task to derive consonant accuracy and characterize error types/patterns, and short-term memory was measured with the WISC-IV Digit Span (forward and backward). Substitutions predominated for most consonants, and individual phonemes often exhibited co-occurring error patterns. In addition, school-age children with SSD showed significantly poorer short-term memory than typically developing peers across multiple indices. Notably, backward digit span was positively associated with consonant accuracy and remained an independent predictor of consonant accuracy. These results advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying SSD and provide an evidence-based rationale for future interventions that combine speech-focused therapy with cognitive training to enhance clinical outcomes. Full article

Although associative interference has traditionally been attributed to retrieval competition, emerging evidence suggests that interference may also arise from encoding-based representational processes. The present study examined whether retroactive interference (RI) and proactive interference (PI) can occur in the absence of explicit retrieval competition and whether they reflect distinct underlying mechanisms. Participants studied two lists of word–picture pairs in an AB/AC associative learning paradigm, followed by a non-competitive two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) associative recognition test and a source memory task. Across both frequentist and Bayesian analyses, recognition accuracy revealed a significant RI effect—lower accuracy for earlier A-B pairs relative to non-overlapping controls—whereas PI manifested as longer reaction times (RTs) for later A-C pairs, despite comparable accuracy. Source judgments showed faster correct responses for overlapping than for non-overlapping pairs, suggesting that cue overlap facilitated more fluent retrieval rather than confusion. These findings indicate that interference can emerge independently of retrieval competition and that RI and PI are supported by dissociable mechanisms: RI reflects encoding-related reorganization that weakens earlier associations, whereas PI reflects increased retrieval effort following differentiation of overlapping traces. Together, the results support a process-interaction framework in which encoding-based reactivation and reorganization shape later retrieval dynamics, demonstrating that associative interference arises from the interplay between encoding and retrieval processes rather than retrieval competition alone. Full article

Objectives: This study investigated the effects of healthy aging on sentence production in narrative discourse and examined the role of cognitive abilities and Lifelong Learning (LLL) in mitigating age-related decline. Methods: Three hundred and seven Italian-speaking adults (26–89 years) completed a narrative task elicited from five picture stimuli, alongside assessments of verbal working memory, sustained attention, and inhibitory control. Morphological and morphosyntactic measures (morphological errors and omissions of content and function words) and syntactic variables (complete sentences, subordinate clauses, and passive sentences) were analyzed. Results: Aging was associated with increased morphological and morphosyntactic errors and reduced syntactic complexity. These effects were non-linear for the % of morphological errors, the % of omission of content words, and the % of complete sentences and were more pronounced after age 70. LLL was negatively associated with morphological and morphosyntactic errors and positively associated with sentence production. Verbal working memory and sustained attention explained additional variance only for omissions of function words, whereas the passive component of verbal working memory only explained additional variance for complete sentence production. Conclusions: These findings suggest that aging affects both simple and complex sentence production, with declines related to morphological errors and omissions. LLL appears to buffer against some grammatical declines, suggesting a role for educational engagement in maintaining syntactic abilities. Clinically, assessing complex sentence production and considering LLL may improve diagnosis and intervention for language disorders in older adults. Full article

In recent years, the open data initiative has led to the willingness of many governments, researchers, and organizations to share their data and make it publicly available. Healthcare, disease, and epidemiological data, such as privacy statistics on patients who have suffered from epidemic diseases such as the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are examples of open big data. Therefore, huge volumes of valuable data have been generated and collected at high speed from a wide variety of rich data sources. Analyzing these open big data can be of social benefit. For example, people gain a better understanding of disease by analyzing and mining disease statistics, which can inspire them to participate in disease prevention, detection, control, and combat. Visual representation further improves data understanding and corresponding results for analysis and mining, as a picture is worth a thousand words. In this paper, we present a visual data science solution for the visualization and visual analysis of large sequence data. These ideas are illustrated by the visualization and visual analysis of sequences of real epidemiological data of COVID-19. Through our solution, we enable users to visualize the epidemiological data of COVID-19 over time. It also allows people to visually analyze data and discover relationships between popular features associated with COVID-19 cases. The effectiveness of our visual data science solution in improving the user experience of visualization and visual analysis of large sequence data is demonstrated by the real-life evaluation of these sequenced epidemiological data of COVID-19. Full article

Background/Objectives: Understanding the diagnostic landscape is essential prior to developing artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostic strategies for automating the diagnosis of duodenal biopsies. This study aims to (1) determine the frequencies of different diagnoses seen in endoscopic duodenal biopsies in a large, tertiary referral centre; (2) identify key words on histopathology request forms that could indicate that a biopsy may contain a serious pathology and should not be diagnosed by an AI system; and (3) investigate the proportion of cases described as showing “intraepithelial lymphocytosis” that might be coeliac disease. Methods: To achieve this, we audited 18 months’ worth of duodenal biopsy reports in our centre. Results: A total of 6245 duodenal biopsies were identified, of which 73.76% were normal and at least 8.84% fell within the spectrum of coeliac disease. Additionally, 6.47% were classified as showing non-specific inflammation, 1.86% were adenomas, 0.45% were carcinomas, 0.06% were neuroendocrine tumours, 0.10% were lymphomas, and 0.03% were cases of flat dysplasia, giving a total of 0.64% of dysplastic or malignant diagnoses. Rarer diagnoses included ulceration, Helicobacter pylori infection, giardiasis, lymphangiectasia, transplant rejection, and lymphoma. Furthermore, 227 biopsies (3.63%) showed isolated intraepithelial lymphocytosis, of which 33 cases (14.5%) gave an overall clinicopathological picture of coeliac disease. Conclusions: We present the first long-term audit of all endoscopic duodenal biopsies received by the histopathology department of a tertiary-care facility. The results indicate that a fully automated diagnostic histopathology reporting system able to identify normal duodenal biopsies and biopsies within the spectrum of coeliac disease-associated enteropathy could decrease pathologists’ endoscopic duodenal biopsy workload by up to 80%. Full article

This study investigates the effects of bilingual proficiency on word recognition and recall across different memory tasks, with a focus on Chinese–English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in either their L1 (Chinese) or L2 (English) language while performing a semantic judgment task. Their memory for the learned words was subsequently assessed using three distinct tasks: a word recognition task (Experiment 1), a picture endorsement task (Experiment 2), and a free recall task (Experiment 3). The results revealed a significant L2 advantage in word recognition, as evidenced by higher hit rates, lower false alarm rates, and greater discrimination scores for L2 words. Furthermore, altering the retrieval cues from words to pictures led to a significant decrease in memory performance, but this did not diminish the L2 advantage. However, removing retrieval cues entirely eliminated the L2 advantage: participants demonstrated similar levels of correct recall for both L1 and L2 words, but showed a higher frequency of false recall for L1 words. To account for these dissociations between recall and recognition tasks, a level-based bilingual cognitive efficiency framework was proposed, incorporating factors such as pre-experimental exposure, cognitive resource allocation, the strength of lexical associations, and the demands of retrieval cues. Full article

This study investigates consonant devoicing in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in order to assess whether an ongoing sound change is taking place. We examine plural forms consisting of a stop consonant followed by a word-final sibilant, such as in redes [hedz] ~ [heds] ~ [hets] and sedes [sɛdz] ~ [sɛds] ~ [sɛts], focusing on the emergence of voiceless sibilants before word-initial vowels (e.g., redes amarelas, ‘yellow hammocks’). If sibilants remain voiceless despite a following vowel, this challenges the expected regressive voicing assimilation in BP and raises the question of the conditions under which this devoicing occurs. Data were collected through recordings of oral production from twenty Brazilian speakers, using reading and picture naming tasks. Sibilant voicing was quantified using harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). A linear mixed-effects model—including random intercepts and slopes for both speakers and words—reveals that sibilants are significantly more voiced before a vowel than before a pause, but this voicing is substantially reduced when the sibilant is preceded by voiceless consonants. These findings indicate an ongoing devoicing process at pre-vocalic word boundaries in BP, affecting clusters [pz, tz, kz] and [bz, dz, gz] alike. Spectrographic analyses indicate that not only the sibilants but also their preceding stop may exhibit devoicing. Moreover, minimal-pair considerations suggest that speakers potentially maintain sibilant voicing in certain lexical items to preserve intelligibility (e.g., gra[dz] ‘grades’ and se[dz] ‘headquarters’ vs. grá[ts] ‘free’ and se[ts] ‘sets’). Drawing on Exemplar Theory, we propose a competition between the influence of the phonological environment and word-final devoicing: sibilants are sometimes voiced due to a following vowel (e.g., botes argentinos [bɔtz ah.ʒẽ.’tʃi.nus] ‘Argentine boats’), but they often emerge as voiceless due to consonantal devoicing (e.g., [bɔts ah.ʒẽ.’tʃi.nus]), resulting in both expected and unexpected forms. We suggest that fine phonetic detail, whether associated with allophonic or emergent sound patterns, contributes to the construction of phonological representations. Full article

As modern technology enables instant access to virtually limitless information, students may perceive memorization of information as lacking in practical importance. The current study investigated the relationship between attitudes toward remembering and metamemory as well as objective memory performance. University students (N = 108, M_Age = 19.39, 77% women) completed the Importance of Remembering questionnaire (IORQ) as a measure of attitudes toward remembering. Subjective components of memory were measured by immediate and delayed judgments of learning (JOLs), global judgments of learning (global JOLs), retroactive confidence judgments (RCJs), and subjective mental workload. Objective memory performance was measured using a cued recall test using word pairs and picture pairs. The IORQ was only significantly correlated with absolute accuracy of delayed judgments of learning for words and pictures such that higher IORQ ratings were associated with less accurate judgments about how well they learned the items. No other correlations were significant. This suggests that a student’s lack of belief in the importance of remembering, at least as conceptualized on the IORQ, may not affect most aspects of memory performance, including those related to academic outcomes. Full article

Previous studies have shown that language learners’ auditory word recognition behavior provides evidence for independent contributions of perceptual and phonolexical representations, and learners’ patterns of auditory word recognition have been characterized as resulting from “fuzziness” or “imprecision” associated with these representations. More recently, it has been argued that representational “fuzziness” may in fact take various forms (e.g., neutralized, precise, ambiguous). The purpose of the present study is to further build on this line of work by elaborating additional logically possible scenarios by crossing larger sets of logically possible types of perceptual and phonolexical representational precision/imprecision, as an exercise in exploring the empirical and theoretical implications of our characterizations of representational fuzziness in language learners. We collect new empirical data for the purpose of demonstrating how we might evaluate auditory word recognition performance relative to this fuller set of predicted scenarios. We computed the set of hypothesized scenarios by crossing possible perceptual and lexical representations. We crossed four possible perceptual representations (NeutralizedC + NeutralizedV, NeutralizedC + PreciseV, PreciseC + NeutralizedV, or PreciseC + PreciseV) and six possible phonolexical representations (Neutralized, Ambiguous, Not X, Precise, Fuzzy Word, or Word Length), for a total of 24 scenarios, each accompanied by a set of predictions with respect to accuracy on an auditory word–picture matching test. We interpret the group and individual performance relative to these scenarios with the ultimate aim of better understanding the implications of our assumptions about the nature of perceptual and phonolexical representations relative to observed patterns of learner behavior. Our hope is that in computing this factorial typology of logically possible scenarios and demonstrating a starting point for how we might empirically evaluate its predictions, we set the stage for future research to refine the hypothesis space through empirical studies of auditory word processing in language learners. Full article

Two studies looked at the prevalence and predictors of black cat bias—negative behaviors and attitudes toward black cats—using explicit and implicit measures. The first study looked at an internet sample of 114 people to see if people who self-identified as liking cats (cat people) showed less bias against black cats than those who self-identified as dog people or those who liked both dogs and cats (dog-and-cat people). Participants completed a questionnaire that measured superstitious beliefs, belief in witchcraft, and religiosity before rating pictures and, for about half of the participants, descriptions of black and non-black cats. They rated each cat for how good they thought it was and whether they wanted to live with the cat. Participants also completed a brief implicit association task in which they categorized pictures of black and non-black cats and good and bad words. Results suggest that bias against black cats exists when measured implicitly for dog people and dog-and-cat people but not for cat people. These results suggest that liking cats does not protect one from black cat bias and that liking dogs may lead to black cat bias. Belief in witchcraft was positively correlated with the explicit measure of black cat bias for dog people (medium effect size). In study two, a sample of 37 college students, mostly self-identified as dog people, completed this study twice—once at least six weeks before and once no more than three weeks before Halloween. The implicit measure of black cat bias was about 40% larger when measured closer to Halloween. These results suggest that black cat bias might be modified by environmental factors. Full article

Background: Ashwagandha has been reported to reduce stress and attenuate cognitive decline associated with inflammation and neurodegeneration in clinical populations. However, the effects as a potential nootropic nutrient in younger populations are unclear. This study examined the effects of liposomal ashwagandha supplementation on cognitive function, mood, and markers of health and safety in healthy young men and women. Methods: 59 men and women (22.7 ± 7 yrs., 74.9 ± 16 kg, 26.2 ± 5 BMI) fasted for 12 h, donated a fasting blood sample, and were administered the COMPASS cognitive function test battery (Word Recall, Word recognition, Choice Reaction Time Task, Picture Recognition, Digit Vigilance Task, Corsi Block test, Stroop test) and profile of mood states (POMS). In a randomized and double-blind manner, participants were administered 225 mg of a placebo (Gum Arabic) or ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) root and leaf extract coated with a liposomal covering. After 60-min, participants repeated cognitive assessments. Participants continued supplementation (225 mg/d) for 30 days and then returned to the lab to repeat the experiment. Data were analyzed using a general linear model (GLM) univariate analysis with repeated measures and pairwise comparisons of mean changes from baseline with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: Ashwagandha supplementation improved acute and/or 30-day measures of Word Recall (correct and recalled attempts), Choice Reaction Time (targets identified), Picture Recognition (“yes” correct responses, correct and overall reaction time), Digit Vigilance (correct reaction time), Stroop Color-Word (congruent words identified, reaction time), and POMS (tension and fatigue) from baseline more consistently with several differences observed between groups. Conclusion: Results support contentions that ashwagandha supplementation (225 mg) may improve some measures of memory, attention, vigilance, attention, and executive function while decreasing perceptions of tension and fatigue in younger healthy individuals. Retrospectively registered clinical trial ISRCTN58680760. Full article

This study elucidated the brain regions associated with the perception-driven suppression of mental imagery generation by comparing brain activation in a picture observation condition with that in a positive imagery generation condition. The assumption was that mental imagery generation would be suppressed in the former condition but not in the latter. The results show significant activation of the left posterior cingulate gyrus (PCgG) in the former condition compared to in the latter condition. This finding is generally consistent with a previous study showing that the left PCgG suppresses mental imagery generation. Furthermore, correlational analyses showed a significant correlation between the activation of the left PCgG and participants’ subjective richness ratings, which are a measure of the clarity of a presented picture. Increased activity in the PCgG makes it more difficult to generate mental imagery. As visual perceptual processing and visual imagery generation are in competition, the suppression of mental imagery generation leads to enhanced visual perceptual processing. In other words, the greater the suppression of mental imagery, the clearer the presented pictures are perceived. The significant correlation found is consistent with this idea. The current results and previous studies suggest that the left PCgG plays a role in suppressing the generation of mental imagery. Full article

The main topic of this article is the relationship between morphosyntactic contexts and nominal inflections in Aromanian varieties of southern Albania. These varieties have a specialized inflection in the plural definite and feminine singular nouns, associated with genitive, dative, and prepositional contexts, where it is preceded by a Possessive Introducer. We present a detailed picture of the microvariation that characterizes the different systems. The broad syncretism that emerges suggests a rethinking of the syntactic status of inflections and the notion of Case. Our approach assumes that morphology is based on Merge within the syntactic computation and that sub-word elements are provided with interpretable content. This theoretical model will also guide us in the study of prepositions and their distribution. Full article