Evaluating quantitative measures of grammatical complexity in spontaneous speech samples

The validity of MLU and a measure of syntactic complexity were tested against LARSP on spontaneous speech samples from 87 children, ranging in age from 1;6 to 4;9. Change in some LARSP clausal measures was found across MLU stages up to MLU 4.5. For the measure of syntactic complexity, no such ceiling was found for the clausal connectivity score in LARSP or for average clausal complexity in LARSP. Neither MLU nor the measure of syntactic complexity indexed LARSP phrasal complexity. It is concluded that MLU is a valid measure of clausal complexity up to 4.5 and that our measure of syntactic complexity is more valid at more advanced stages.     

Sentence context, word recognition, and repetition blindness.

When the sentence She ran her best time yet in the rice last week is displayed using rapid serial visual presentation, viewers sometimes misread rice as race (M. C. Potter, A. Moryadas,1. Abrams, & A. Noel, 1993). Seven experiments combined misreading and repetition blindness (RB) paradigms to determine whether misreading of a word because of biasing sentence context represents a genuine perceptual effect. In Experiments 1-4, misreading a word either caused or prevented RB for a downstream word, depending on whether orthographic similarity was increased or decreased. Additional experiments examined temporal parameters of misreading RB and tested the hypothesis that RB results from reconstructive memory processes. Results suggest that the effect of prior context occurs during perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension of grammatical and emotional prosody is impaired in Alzheimer's disease.

Previous research has demonstrated impairment in comprehension of emotional prosody in individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The present pilot study further explored the prosodic processing impairment in AD, aiming to extend our knowledge to encompass both grammatical and emotional prosody processing. As expected, impairments were seen in emotional prosody. AD individuals were also found to be impaired in detecting sentence modality, suggesting that impairments in affective prosody processing in AD may be ascribed to a more general prosodic processing impairment, specifically in comprehending prosodic information signaled across the sentence level. AD participants were at a very mild stage of the disease, suggesting that prosody impairments occur early in the disease course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal change in language production: Effects of aging and dementia on grammatical complexity and propositional content.

Mixed modeling was used to examine longitudinal changes in linguistic ability in healthy older adults and older adults with dementia. Language samples, vocabulary scores, and digit span scores were collected annually from healthy older adults and semiannually from older adults with dementia. The language samples were scored for grammatical complexity and propositional content. For the healthy group, age-related declines in grammatical complexity and propositional content were observed. The declines were most rapid in the mid 70s. For the group with dementia, grammatical complexity and propositional content also declined over time, regardless of age. Rates of decline were uniform across individuals. These analyses reveal how both grammatical complexity and proposition content are related to late-life changes in cognition in healthy older adults as well as those with dementia. Alzheimer's disease accelerates this decline, regardless of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narrative comprehension in Alzheimer's disease: Assessing inferences and memory operations with a think-aloud procedure.

Objective: To further understanding of text comprehension abilities in Alzheimer's disease (AD), a think-aloud protocol was used to examine the role of inferencing and the memory operations used to produce inferences. Method: Twenty participants with AD and 20 cognitively healthy older adults (OA) read narratives, pausing to talk aloud after each sentence. A verbal protocol analysis developed by Trabasso and Magliano (1996a) was used to code participants' utterances into inferential and noninferential clause types; inferential statements were then coded to identify the memory operation used in their generation. Results: Compared with OA controls, the AD participants showed poorer story comprehension, d = 2.0, produced fewer inferences, d = .67, and were less skilled at providing explanations of story events, d = 1.27, and in using prior text information to explain outcomes, d = .90. The AD group also appeared to rely more on the activation of world knowledge, d = .58, which contributed to less effective inferences and produced more incoherent noninferential statements, d = 1.05. Poorer text comprehension for the AD group was associated with poorer verbal memory abilities, r's > .55, and poorer use of prior text events when producing explanatory inferences, r = .42. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the memory difficulties of the AD group appear to be an important cognitive factor interfering with their ability to integrate story events through the use of inferences and to create a global coherence to support text comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of lexical frequency and syntactic complexity in spoken-language comprehension: Evidence from the auditory moving-window technique.

In 2 experiments, a new technique called the auditory moving window was used to investigate aspects of spoken-language processing. Participants paced their way through spoken sentences divided into word or wordlike segments, and their processing time for each segment was recorded. The 1st experiment demonstrated that high-frequency words in spoken sentences require less time to process than do low-frequency words. The 2nd experiment demonstrated that words in syntactically demanding contexts (i.e., the disambiguating word of so-called garden-path sentences) are processed longer than the same words in syntactically simpler contexts. Helpful prosodic information appeared to facilitate reanalysis of garden-path structures but did not seem to prevent the misanalysis. The implications of these findings for issues in spoken-language comprehension are discussed. The authors conclude that the auditory moving-window technique provides a useful tool for addressing largely unexplored issues in spoken-language comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of pitch and speech rate on personal attributions.

In 3 experiments, 61 undergraduates listened to recordings of male speakers answering 2 interview questions and rated the speakers on a variety of semantic differential scales. The recordings had been altered so that the pitch of the speakers' voices was raised or lowered by 20% or left at its normal level, and speech rate was expanded or compressed by 30% or left at its normal rate. The results provide clear evidence that listeners use these acoustic properties in making personal attributions to speakers. Speakers with high-pitched voices were judged less truthful, less emphatic, less "potent" (smaller, thinner, faster), and more nervous. Slow-talking speakers were judged less truthful, less fluent, and less persuasive and were seen as more "passive" (slower, colder, passive, weaker) but more "potent." However, the effects of the acoustic manipulations on personal attributions also depended on the particular question that elicited the response. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing speed, speech rate, and memory.

In each of 2 studies, 24 9-yr-olds and 24 adults were administered measures of memory and measures of processing speed. In addition, in Study 2, articulation rate was measured. Age was correlated positively with memory but was correlated negatively with processing speed and articulation rate. The results of path analyses were consistent with the hypothesis that age and processing speed independently contribute to articulation rate, which determines memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Externality, internality, and (in)dispensability of grammatical features in speech production: Evidence from Czech declension and conjugation.

In 3 picture–word experiments, the authors explored the activation of 2 grammatical features in Czech during lexical access: declensional class of nouns and conjugational class of verbs. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated congruency effects of declensional and conjugational class, respectively. Picture naming times were reliably longer if the declensional or conjugational classes of the pictures' names and the distractors were incongruent. Experiment 3 explored the origin of the congruency effect in more detail. Congruency effects were obtained for declensional class regardless of whether the target name and the distractor differed in form, speaking for competition at the lemma level. These findings are discussed in comparison with gender congruency effects. The authors propose a differentiation between externally and internally specified features of lemmas, especially with respect to the time course of their activation. Internal features that become available only when the lemma is activated (e.g., gender, declensional or conjugational class of nouns and verbs) can be bypassed or not, depending on the grammatical specification of the earlier available external features (like case or number). Following this argument, supposedly inconsistent findings regarding grammatical gender and declensional or conjugational class can be explained straightforwardly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letter differentiation and rate of comprehension in reading.

375 adults were given 90 sec. to read passages of about 450 words printed in 1 of 7 typefaces equated for size. They had then to answer 10 open-ended questions on the content. Of the typefaces without serifs Gill Medium, the letters of which were judged by typographical experts to be fairly strongly differentiated, was comprehended reliably faster than Grotesque 215 and 2 versions of Univers, in which the letters were judged to be less well differentiated (p     

An event-related potential examination of masked and unmasked repetition priming in Alzheimer's disease: Implications for theories of implicit memory.

Fifteen patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 26 matched older controls engaged in a lexical-decision task with a list of words and nonwords while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two repetition conditions were embedded in the list: words repeated at relatively long lags or words repeated shortly after a brief masked presentation. Although older controls displayed behavioral and ERP repetition priming for words repeated at long lags, consistent with previous studies, AD patients displayed neither. In contrast, both controls and AD patients displayed an ERP repetition priming effect for words repeated shortly after a brief masked presentation. ERP priming effects for masked and unmasked repetition differed in older controls, and additionally, the ERP masked priming effect differed between controls and AD patients. Results are discussed in the context of studies that have examined memory performance in brain-damaged populations using an impaired-intact dichotomy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of stimulus complexity on mental rotation rate of polygons.

Both spatial and propositional theories of imagery predict that the rate at which mental images can be rotated is slower the more complex the stimulus. Four experiments (three published and one unpublished) testing that hypothesis found no effect of complexity on rotation rate. It is argued that despite continued methodological improvements, subjects in the conditions of greater complexity may have found it sufficient to rotate only partial images, thereby vitiating the prediction. The two experiments reported here are based on the idea of making the discriminative response sufficiently difficult so as to force the rotation of complete images. The first one scaled the similarity between standard polygons and certain systematically mutated versions. From the ratings so obtained, two levels of perceived similarity, high and low, were defined and served as separate conditions in a response-time, image rotation experiment. The second experiment tested the complexity hypothesis by examining the effect of similarity on rotation rates and its interaction with levels of complexity. The results support the complexity hypothesis, but only for the highly similar stimuli. Rotation times were also generally slower for high as compared with low similarity. It is argued that these results arise because subjects rotate incomplete images when the stimuli are not very similar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of research on the intelligibility and comprehension of accelerated speech.

Time-compressed or accelerated speech is speech which has been reproduced in less than the original production time. Such speech may prove to be useful in a variety of situations in which people must rely upon listening to obtain the information specified by language. It may also prove to be a useful tool in studying the temporal requirements of the listener as he processes spoken language. Methods for the generation of time compressed speech are reviewed. Methods for the assessment of the effect of compression on word intelligibility and listening comprehension are discussed. Experiments dealing with the effect of time compression upon word intelligibility and upon the comprehensibility of connected discourse, and experiments concerned with the influence of stimulus variables, such as signal distortion, and organismic variables such as intelligence, are reviewed. The general finding that compression in time has a different effect upon the comprehensibility of connected discourse than upon word intelligibility is discussed, and a tentative explanation of this difference is offered. (63 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of repetition and foreknowledge in task-set reconfiguration.

To examine the roles of executive control and automatic activation in task switching, we manipulated foreknowledge as well as task transitions. In Experiments 1 and 2, performance with foreknowledge was faster than performance with no foreknowledge, but the amount of switch cost did not depend on foreknowledge. This result suggests that switch costs primarily reflect persisting activation rather than inadequate preparation. In Experiment 3, switch cost was greater with foreknowledge about task transitions alone than with foreknowledge about both task transition and identity, suggesting that foreknowledge about specific task identity did allow preparation for a switched task. We argue that task repetition and foreknowledge effects are independent. Although foreknowledge allows preparation for both repeated and switched tasks, repeating the same task has benefits over task switching regardless of foreknowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Odor identification in normal aging and early Alzheimer's disease: Effects of retrieval support.

Odor sensitivity and identification were examined in normal aging and early Alzheimer's disease (AD). The aims were to investigate AD as associated with lower odor sensitivity, odor identification as a function of retrieval support, and the relationship between global cognitive functioning (Mini-Mental State Exam [MMSE]; M. R Folstein, S. E. Folstein, & P. R. McHugh, 1975) and olfactory performance. Results indicated intact odor sensitivity but deficient odor identification in AD. Both groups benefited from cues in identification, and the size of the gains was equally large in AD patients and controls. The finding of no selective benefit from retrieval support in AD suggests that a degradation of olfactory knowledge contributes to the odor identification deficits in these patients. MMSE and identification were positively related, whereas MMSE and olfactory sensitivity were unrelated. These findings suggest that the AD-related olfactory impairment stems from lesions in cortical rather than peripheral structures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of speech variety on teachers' evaluation of reading comprehension.

Investigated how 2 speech varieties, standard English and Black English, used during an oral reading and recall task influenced 64 White and 8 Black teachers' (mean age 36 yrs) evaluations of reading comprehension and how teachers' attitudes toward Black English related to those evaluations. Measures included the Oral Reading and Recall Evaluation, the Reading Miscue Inventory, and the Language Attitude Scale. Although the proportion of variance accounted for by the overall model was not great (11%), significant contrasts between the evaluations of 2 readers, one a Black English speaker and one a standard English speaker, were found with teachers who held negative attitudes toward Black English. No significant contrasts were found with teachers who held positive attitudes toward Black English. Results indicate that Black English readers were rated lower in reading comprehension than equivalent standard English readers when teachers held a negative attitude toward their language. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploration, curiosity, and play in young children: Effects of stimulus complexity.

Presented 3-dimensional random polygon objects varying between 4 and 40 turns to 8 2-yr-old and 32 4-7-yr-old children and measured the time spent in exploratory and play behavior. Exploratory time was predominantly an increasing linear function of the level of stimulus complexity for the older Ss and a curvilinear function of stimulus complexity for the younger ones. Play time was a decreasing linear function of the level of stimulus complexity for the younger Ss and for the older boys. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory.

Recall is typically better for emotional than for neutral stimuli. This enhancement is believed to rely on limbic regions. Memory is also better for neutral stimuli embedded in an emotional context. The neural substrate supporting this effect has not been thoroughly investigated but may include frontal lobe, as well as limbic circuits. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in atrophy of limbic structures, whereas normal aging relatively spares limbic regions but affects prefrontal areas. The authors hypothesized that AD would reduce all enhancement effects, whereas aging would disproportionately affect enhancement based on emotional context. The results confirmed the authors' hypotheses: Young and older adults, but not AD patients, showed better memory for emotional versus neutral pictures and words. Older adults and AD patients showed no benefit from emotional context, whereas young adults remembered more items embedded in an emotional versus neutral context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)