Impaired Orthographic Processing in Chinese Dyslexic Children: Evidence from the Lexicality Effect on N400

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Tzeng, Yu-Lin; Hsu, Chun-Hsien; Lin, Wan-Hsuan; Lee, Chia-Ying

2017-01-01

This study used the lexicality effects on N400 to investigate orthographic processing in children with developmental dyslexia. Participants performed a Go/No-Go semantic judgment task; three types of stimuli--real characters (RC), pseudocharacters (PC), and noncharacters (NC)--were embedded in No-Go trials. Two types of lexicality effects (RC vs.…

Orthographic familiarity, phonological legality and number of orthographic neighbours affect the onset of ERP lexical effects

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Adorni Roberta

2008-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background It has been suggested that the variability among studies in the onset of lexical effects may be due to a series of methodological differences. In this study we investigated the role of orthographic familiarity, phonological legality and number of orthographic neighbours of words in determining the onset of word/non-word discriminative responses. Methods ERPs were recorded from 128 sites in 16 Italian University students engaged in a lexical decision task. Stimuli were 100 words, 100 quasi-words (obtained by the replacement of a single letter, 100 pseudo-words (non-derived and 100 illegal letter strings. All stimuli were balanced for length; words and quasi-words were also balanced for frequency of use, domain of semantic category and imageability. SwLORETA source reconstruction was performed on ERP difference waves of interest. Results Overall, the data provided evidence that the latency of lexical effects (word/non-word discrimination varied as a function of the number of a word's orthographic neighbours, being shorter to non-derived than to derived pseudo-words. This suggests some caveats about the use in lexical decision paradigms of quasi-words obtained by transposing or replacing only 1 or 2 letters. Our findings also showed that the left-occipito/temporal area, reflecting the activity of the left fusiform gyrus (BA37 of the temporal lobe, was affected by the visual familiarity of words, thus explaining its lexical sensitivity (word vs. non-word discrimination. The temporo-parietal area was markedly sensitive to phonological legality exhibiting a clear-cut discriminative response between illegal and legal strings as early as 250 ms of latency. Conclusion The onset of lexical effects in a lexical decision paradigm depends on a series of factors, including orthographic familiarity, degree of global lexical activity, and phonologic legality of non-words.

Lexical mediation of phonotactic frequency effects on spoken word recognition: A Granger causality analysis of MRI-constrained MEG/EEG data.

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Gow, David W; Olson, Bruna B

2015-07-01

Phonotactic frequency effects play a crucial role in a number of debates over language processing and representation. It is unclear however, whether these effects reflect prelexical sensitivity to phonotactic frequency, or lexical "gang effects" in speech perception. In this paper, we use Granger causality analysis of MR-constrained MEG/EEG data to understand how phonotactic frequency influences neural processing dynamics during auditory lexical decision. Effective connectivity analysis showed weaker feedforward influence from brain regions involved in acoustic-phonetic processing (superior temporal gyrus) to lexical areas (supramarginal gyrus) for high phonotactic frequency words, but stronger top-down lexical influence for the same items. Low entropy nonwords (nonwords judged to closely resemble real words) showed a similar pattern of interactions between brain regions involved in lexical and acoustic-phonetic processing. These results contradict the predictions of a feedforward model of phonotactic frequency facilitation, but support the predictions of a lexically mediated account.

Effects of lexical competition on immediate memory span for spoken words.

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Goh, Winston D; Pisoni, David B

2003-08-01

Current theories and models of the structural organization of verbal short-term memory are primarily based on evidence obtained from manipulations of features inherent in the short-term traces of the presented stimuli, such as phonological similarity. In the present study, we investigated whether properties of the stimuli that are not inherent in the short-term traces of spoken words would affect performance in an immediate memory span task. We studied the lexical neighbourhood properties of the stimulus items, which are based on the structure and organization of words in the mental lexicon. The experiments manipulated lexical competition by varying the phonological neighbourhood structure (i.e., neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency) of the words on a test list while controlling for word frequency and intra-set phonological similarity (family size). Immediate memory span for spoken words was measured under repeated and nonrepeated sampling procedures. The results demonstrated that lexical competition only emerged when a nonrepeated sampling procedure was used and the participants had to access new words from their lexicons. These findings were not dependent on individual differences in short-term memory capacity. Additional results showed that the lexical competition effects did not interact with proactive interference. Analyses of error patterns indicated that item-type errors, but not positional errors, were influenced by the lexical attributes of the stimulus items. These results complement and extend previous findings that have argued for separate contributions of long-term knowledge and short-term memory rehearsal processes in immediate verbal serial recall tasks.

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

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Reza Kalantari

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST. Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012, three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011, and four Vocabprofile indices (Cobb, 2000 were selected to measure different dimensions of LC. Results of repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA indicated an improvement with regard to only lexical sophistication. Positive and significant relationships were found between time and mean values in Academic Word List and Beyond-2000 as indicators of lexical sophistication. The remaining seven indices of LC, falling short of significance, tended to flatten over the course of this writing program. Correlation analyses among LC indices indicated that lexical density enjoyed positive correlations with lexical sophistication. However, lexical diversity revealed no significant correlations with both lexical density and lexical sophistication. This study suggests that DST perspective specifies a viable foundation for analyzing lexical complexity

Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of Dysarthria in Greek with a Focus on Lexical Stress

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Papakyritsis, Ioannis

The field of motor speech disorders in Greek is substantially underresearched. Additionally, acoustic studies on lexical stress in dysarthria are generally very rare (Kim et al. 2010). This dissertation examined the acoustic and perceptual effects of Greek dysarthria focusing on lexical stress. Additional possibly deviant speech characteristics were acoustically analyzed. Data from three dysarthric participants and matched controls was analyzed using a case study design. The analysis of lexical stress was based on data drawn from a single word repetition task that included pairs of disyllabic words differentiated by stress location. This data was acoustically analyzed in terms of the use of the acoustic cues for Greek stress. The ability of the dysarthric participants to signal stress in single words was further assessed in a stress identification task carried out by 14 naive Greek listeners. Overall, the acoustic and perceptual data indicated that, although all three dysarthric speakers presented with some difficulty in the patterning of stressed and unstressed syllables, each had different underlying problems that gave rise to quite distinct patterns of deviant speech characteristics. The atypical use of lexical stress cues in Anna's data obscured the prominence relations of stressed and unstressed syllables to the extent that the position of lexical stress was usually not perceptually transparent. Chris and Maria on the other hand, did not have marked difficulties signaling lexical stress location, although listeners were not 100% successful in the stress identification task. For the most part, Chris' atypical phonation patterns and Maria's very slow rate of speech did not interfere with lexical stress signaling. The acoustic analysis of the lexical stress cues was generally in agreement with the participants' performance in the stress identification task. Interestingly, in all three dysarthric participants, but more so in Anna, targets stressed on the 1st

Effects of cigarette smoking on lexical decision-making.

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Hale, C R; Gentry, M V; Meliska, C J

1999-02-01

10 habitual smokers, aged 19-25 yr., were randomly assigned to smoke either a very low nicotine "Placebo" cigarette (.05-mg nicotine delivery as estimated by the FTC method) or a Nicotine cigarette (.7-mg estimated nicotine delivery). Each participant was asked to abstain from smoking for 4 to 7 hr. prior to testing. After completing a presmoking test of lexical decision-making, participants smoked either a Nicotine or Placebo cigarette and were then retested for reaction times and accuracy on the lexical decision test. When presented the most difficult lexical decisions, participants responded significantly faster after smoking a Nicotine cigarette than they did before smoking; smoking a Placebo cigarette did not affect reaction times. Response accuracy was unaffected by smoking either kind of cigarette. These results suggest that smoking a nicotine cigarette may improve attention or memory retrieval after several hours of smoking abstinence.

The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese

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Mitsuhiko Ota

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months.

Lexical polysynthesis : Should we treat lexical bases and their affixes as a continuum ?

OpenAIRE

Tersis , Nicole

2006-01-01

International audience; Polysynthesis in Inuit appears at both lexical and sentence levels. The analysis of a sampling of 3000 lexical entries and 300 affixes collected in Eastern Greenland (Tunumiisut) shows how polysynthesis works in lexical morphology and how phonetic wastage helps to obscure the motivation for some lexical forms and favors the development of homophones. Furthermore, the analysis of the full set of affixes reveals a number of formal and semantic similarities which relate a...

Diversity and Density: Lexically Determined Evaluative and Informational Consequences of Linguistic Complexity

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Bradac, James J.; And Others

1977-01-01

Defines lexical diversity as manifest vocabulary range and lexical density as the ratio of lexical to gramatical items in a unit of discourse. Examines the effects of lexical diversity and density on listeners' evaluative judgments. (MH)

Effect of Subliminal Lexical Priming on the Subjective Perception of Images: A Machine Learning Approach.

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Dhanya Menoth Mohan

Full Text Available The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of subliminal priming in terms of the perception of images influenced by words with positive, negative, and neutral emotional content, through electroencephalograms (EEGs. Participants were instructed to rate how much they like the stimuli images, on a 7-point Likert scale, after being subliminally exposed to masked lexical prime words that exhibit positive, negative, and neutral connotations with respect to the images. Simultaneously, the EEGs were recorded. Statistical tests such as repeated measures ANOVAs and two-tailed paired-samples t-tests were performed to measure significant differences in the likability ratings among the three prime affect types; the results showed a strong shift in the likeness judgment for the images in the positively primed condition compared to the other two. The acquired EEGs were examined to assess the difference in brain activity associated with the three different conditions. The consistent results obtained confirmed the overall priming effect on participants' explicit ratings. In addition, machine learning algorithms such as support vector machines (SVMs, and AdaBoost classifiers were applied to infer the prime affect type from the ERPs. The highest classification rates of 95.0% and 70.0% obtained respectively for average-trial binary classifier and average-trial multi-class further emphasize that the ERPs encode information about the different kinds of primes.

Effect of Subliminal Lexical Priming on the Subjective Perception of Images: A Machine Learning Approach.

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Mohan, Dhanya Menoth; Kumar, Parmod; Mahmood, Faisal; Wong, Kian Foong; Agrawal, Abhishek; Elgendi, Mohamed; Shukla, Rohit; Ang, Natania; Ching, April; Dauwels, Justin; Chan, Alice H D

2016-01-01

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of subliminal priming in terms of the perception of images influenced by words with positive, negative, and neutral emotional content, through electroencephalograms (EEGs). Participants were instructed to rate how much they like the stimuli images, on a 7-point Likert scale, after being subliminally exposed to masked lexical prime words that exhibit positive, negative, and neutral connotations with respect to the images. Simultaneously, the EEGs were recorded. Statistical tests such as repeated measures ANOVAs and two-tailed paired-samples t-tests were performed to measure significant differences in the likability ratings among the three prime affect types; the results showed a strong shift in the likeness judgment for the images in the positively primed condition compared to the other two. The acquired EEGs were examined to assess the difference in brain activity associated with the three different conditions. The consistent results obtained confirmed the overall priming effect on participants' explicit ratings. In addition, machine learning algorithms such as support vector machines (SVMs), and AdaBoost classifiers were applied to infer the prime affect type from the ERPs. The highest classification rates of 95.0% and 70.0% obtained respectively for average-trial binary classifier and average-trial multi-class further emphasize that the ERPs encode information about the different kinds of primes.

Lexical competition in nonnative speech comprehension.

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FitzPatrick, Ian; Indefrey, Peter

2010-06-01

Electrophysiological studies consistently find N400 effects of semantic incongruity in nonnative (L2) language comprehension. These N400 effects are often delayed compared with native (L1) comprehension, suggesting that semantic integration in one's second language occurs later than in one's first language. In this study, we investigated whether such a delay could be attributed to (1) intralingual lexical competition and/or (2) interlingual lexical competition. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to English (L2) sentences in which the sentence-final word was (a) semantically fitting and (b) semantically incongruent or semantically incongruent but initially congruent due to sharing initial phonemes with (c) the most probable sentence completion within the L2 or (d) the L1 translation equivalent of the most probable sentence completion. We found an N400 effect in each of the semantically incongruent conditions. This N400 effect was significantly delayed to L2 words but not to L1 translation equivalents that were initially congruent with the sentence context. Taken together, these findings firstly demonstrate that semantic integration in nonnative listening can start based on word initial phonemes (i.e., before a single lexical candidate could have been selected based on the input) and secondly suggest that spuriously elicited L1 lexical candidates are not available for semantic integration in L2 speech comprehension.

Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online tool for quantifying auditory and visual lexical competition.

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Strand, Julia F

2014-03-01

A widely agreed-upon feature of spoken word recognition is that multiple lexical candidates in memory are simultaneously activated in parallel when a listener hears a word, and that those candidates compete for recognition (Luce, Goldinger, Auer, & Vitevitch, Perception 62:615-625, 2000; Luce & Pisoni, Ear and Hearing 19:1-36, 1998; McClelland & Elman, Cognitive Psychology 18:1-86, 1986). Because the presence of those competitors influences word recognition, much research has sought to quantify the processes of lexical competition. Metrics that quantify lexical competition continuously are more effective predictors of auditory and visual (lipread) spoken word recognition than are the categorical metrics traditionally used (Feld & Sommers, Speech Communication 53:220-228, 2011; Strand & Sommers, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130:1663-1672, 2011). A limitation of the continuous metrics is that they are somewhat computationally cumbersome and require access to existing speech databases. This article describes the Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online, searchable database that provides access to multiple metrics of auditory and visual (lipread) lexical competition for English words, available at www.juliastrand.com/phi-lex .

An investigation into kana reading development in normal and dyslexic Japanese children using length and lexicality effects.

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Sambai, Ami; Uno, Akira; Kurokawa, Suzuko; Haruhara, Noriko; Kaneko, Masato; Awaya, Noriko; Kozuka, Junko; Goto, Takashi; Tsutamori, Eishi; Nakagawa, Kazumi; Wydell, Taeko N

2012-06-01

This is the first study to report differences between Japanese children with and without dyslexia in the way string-length and lexicality effects are manifested when reading Japanese kana. These children were asked to read kana words and non-words consisting of either two or five kana characters. The results showed that the error rates of the normal Preschoolers and Primary-School children with dyslexia were higher than those of the normal Primary-School children. Further, the reading latencies of the normal Preschoolers, First-graders and dyslexics were significantly longer than those of the normal Second, Third and Fifth/Sixth graders. Moreover, reading latencies became shorter as the age of the participants increased. Both normal and dyslexic children showed significant effects of length and lexicality on reading latencies. However, the interaction between the length and lexicality was only seen in normal children from the Second-grade onwards. These results suggest that (1) normal First-graders reach a ceiling in terms of reading accuracy and that (2) as Japanese normal children become older, they become better at lexical reading processes, which leads to fluent kana reading, but that (3) the dyslexics, even at Fifth/Sixth grades, have not developed sufficient lexical reading processes. Copyright © 2011 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. All rights reserved.

The Word Composite Effect Depends on Abstract Lexical Representations But Not Surface Features Like Case and Font

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Paulo Ventura

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Prior studies have shown that words show a composite effect: When readers perform a same-different matching task on a target-part of a word, performance is affected by the irrelevant part, whose influence is severely reduced when the two parts are misaligned. However, the locus of this word composite effect is largely unknown. To enlighten it, in two experiments, Portuguese readers performed the composite task on letter strings: in Experiment 1, in written words varying in surface features (between-participants: courier, notera, alternating-cAsE, and in Experiment 2 in pseudowords. The word composite effect, signaled by a significant interaction between alignment of the two word parts and congruence between parts was found in the three conditions of Experiment 1, being unaffected by NoVeLtY of the configuration or by handwritten form. This effect seems to have a lexical locus, given that in Experiment 2 only the main effect of congruence between parts was significant and was not modulated by alignment. Indeed, the cross-experiment analysis showed that words presented stronger congruence effects than pseudowords only in the aligned condition, because when misaligned the whole lexical item configuration was disrupted. Therefore, the word composite effect strongly depends on abstract lexical representations, as it is unaffected by surface features and is specific to lexical items.

The Word Composite Effect Depends on Abstract Lexical Representations But Not Surface Features Like Case and Font.

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Ventura, Paulo; Fernandes, Tânia; Leite, Isabel; Almeida, Vítor B; Casqueiro, Inês; Wong, Alan C-N

2017-01-01

Prior studies have shown that words show a composite effect: When readers perform a same-different matching task on a target-part of a word, performance is affected by the irrelevant part, whose influence is severely reduced when the two parts are misaligned. However, the locus of this word composite effect is largely unknown. To enlighten it, in two experiments, Portuguese readers performed the composite task on letter strings: in Experiment 1, in written words varying in surface features (between-participants: courier, notera, alternating-cAsE), and in Experiment 2 in pseudowords. The word composite effect, signaled by a significant interaction between alignment of the two word parts and congruence between parts was found in the three conditions of Experiment 1, being unaffected by NoVeLtY of the configuration or by handwritten form. This effect seems to have a lexical locus, given that in Experiment 2 only the main effect of congruence between parts was significant and was not modulated by alignment. Indeed, the cross-experiment analysis showed that words presented stronger congruence effects than pseudowords only in the aligned condition, because when misaligned the whole lexical item configuration was disrupted. Therefore, the word composite effect strongly depends on abstract lexical representations, as it is unaffected by surface features and is specific to lexical items.

The role of visual representations during the lexical access of spoken words.

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Lewis, Gwyneth; Poeppel, David

2014-07-01

Do visual representations contribute to spoken word recognition? We examine, using MEG, the effects of sublexical and lexical variables at superior temporal (ST) areas and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) compared with that of word imageability at visual cortices. Embodied accounts predict early modulation of visual areas by imageability--concurrently with or prior to modulation of pMTG by lexical variables. Participants responded to speech stimuli varying continuously in imageability during lexical decision with simultaneous MEG recording. We employed the linguistic variables in a new type of correlational time course analysis to assess trial-by-trial activation in occipital, ST, and pMTG regions of interest (ROIs). The linguistic variables modulated the ROIs during different time windows. Critically, visual regions reflected an imageability effect prior to effects of lexicality on pMTG. This surprising effect supports a view on which sensory aspects of a lexical item are not a consequence of lexical activation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantic Analysis of Verbal Collocations with Lexical Functions

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Gelbukh, Alexander

2013-01-01

This book is written for both linguists and computer scientists working in the field of artificial intelligence as well as to anyone interested in intelligent text processing. Lexical function is a concept that formalizes semantic and syntactic relations between lexical units. Collocational relation is a type of institutionalized lexical relations which holds between the base and its partner in a collocation. Knowledge of collocation is important for natural language processing because collocation comprises the restrictions on how words can be used together. The book shows how collocations can be annotated with lexical functions in a computer readable dictionary - allowing their precise semantic analysis in texts and their effective use in natural language applications including parsers, high quality machine translation, periphrasis system and computer-aided learning of lexica. The books shows how to extract collocations from corpora and annotate them with lexical functions automatically. To train algorithms,...

The effects of bilingual status on lexical comprehension and production in Maltese five-year-old children: A LITMUS-CLT study.

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Gatt, Daniela; Attard, Donna; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

This article investigates whether the bilingual status of 56 typically developing children aged 60-69 months influenced their lexical abilities. The participants were identified as Maltese-dominant (Me) (n = 21), English-dominant (Em) (n = 15) and balanced bilingual (ME) (n = 20) on the basis of language exposure and proficiency, as reported by their parents. Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs were measured using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) in Maltese (CLT-MT) and British English (CLT-EN). Significant effects of bilingual group were identified for performance on lexical comprehension. For production, consistent bilingual group effects resulted when accurate concepts lexicalised in the test language were scored. Lexical mixing was more pronounced when children were tested in their non-dominant language. Maltese noun production elicited the highest levels of mixing across all groups. Findings point towards the need to consider specific exposure dynamics to each language within a single language pair when assessing children's bilingual lexical skills.

The Attentional Boost Effect and Context Memory

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Mulligan, Neil W.; Smith, S. Adam; Spataro, Pietro

2016-01-01

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors--the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is…

Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

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Yoshizaki, K

2001-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

A Lexical Analysis Tool with Ambiguity Support

OpenAIRE

Quesada, Luis; Berzal, Fernando; Cortijo, Francisco J.

2012-01-01

Lexical ambiguities naturally arise in languages. We present Lamb, a lexical analyzer that produces a lexical analysis graph describing all the possible sequences of tokens that can be found within the input string. Parsers can process such lexical analysis graphs and discard any sequence of tokens that does not produce a valid syntactic sentence, therefore performing, together with Lamb, a context-sensitive lexical analysis in lexically-ambiguous language specifications.

Automatic Priming Effects for New Associations in Lexical Decision and Perceptual Identification

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D. Pecher (Diane); J.G.W. Raaijmakers (Jeroen)

1999-01-01

textabstractInformation storage in semantic memory was investigated by looking at automatic priming effects for new associations in two experiments. In the study phase word pairs were presented in a paired-associate learning task. Lexical decision and perceptual identification were used to examine

Using Predictability for Lexical Segmentation.

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Çöltekin, Çağrı

2017-09-01

This study investigates a strategy based on predictability of consecutive sub-lexical units in learning to segment a continuous speech stream into lexical units using computational modeling and simulations. Lexical segmentation is one of the early challenges during language acquisition, and it has been studied extensively through psycholinguistic experiments as well as computational methods. However, despite strong empirical evidence, the explicit use of predictability of basic sub-lexical units in models of segmentation is underexplored. This paper presents an incremental computational model of lexical segmentation for exploring the usefulness of predictability for lexical segmentation. We show that the predictability cue is a strong cue for segmentation. Contrary to earlier reports in the literature, the strategy yields state-of-the-art segmentation performance with an incremental computational model that uses only this particular cue in a cognitively plausible setting. The paper also reports an in-depth analysis of the model, investigating the conditions affecting the usefulness of the strategy. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Lexical semantic access and letter access are involved in different aspects of reading

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Mads

). In this subset sample, both letter access and lexical access accounted for unique variance in reading fluency. The pattern of effects for lexical access did not change by controlling for serial rapid naming (RAN). Conclusions: The results suggest that letter access and lexical access are important for different......Purpose: This study investigated the effects of lexical access speed and letter access speed on reading fluency and reading comprehension. We hypothesized that 1) letter access speed would correlate with reading fluency but not comprehension, while 2) lexical access speed would influence reading...... comprehension. For readers who are struggling with recoding, most of the reading effort is probably tied up with recoding, leaving little to be explained by lexical access. Therefore we expected that 3) lexical access speed would primarily predict reading fluency for readers who were no longer struggling...

Context effects in embodied lexical-semantic processing

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Wessel O Van Dam

2010-10-01

Full Text Available The embodied view of language comprehension proposes that the meaning of words is grounded in perception and action rather than represented in abstract amodal symbols. Support for embodied theories of language processing comes from behavioural studies showing that understanding a sentence about an action can modulate congruent and incongruent physical responses, suggesting motor involvement during comprehension of sentences referring to bodily movement. Additionally, several neuroimaging studies have provided evidence that comprehending single words denoting manipulable objects elicits specific responses in the neural motor system. An interesting question that remains is whether action semantic knowledge is directly activated as motor simulations in the brain, or rather modulated by the semantic context in which action words are encountered. In the current paper we investigated the nature of conceptual representations using a go/no-go lexical decision task. Specifically, target words were either presented in a semantic context that emphasized dominant action features (features related to the functional use of an object or non-dominant action features. The response latencies in a lexical decision task reveal that participants were faster to respond to words denoting objects for which the functional use was congruent with the prepared movement. This facilitation effect, however, was only apparent when the semantic context emphasized corresponding motor properties. These findings suggest that motor involvement during comprehension of sentences is not automatic. Rather, the results suggest that conceptual processing is a context-dependent process that incorporates motor-related knowledge in a flexible manner.

Word Recognition and Nonword Repetition in Children with Language Disorders: The Effects of Neighborhood Density, Lexical Frequency, and Phonotactic Probability

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Rispens, Judith; Baker, Anne; Duinmeijer, Iris

2015-01-01

Purpose: The effects of neighborhood density (ND) and lexical frequency on word recognition and the effects of phonotactic probability (PP) on nonword repetition (NWR) were examined to gain insight into processing at the lexical and sublexical levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental language problems. Method:…

Automatic detection of lexical change: an auditory event-related potential study.

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Muller-Gass, Alexandra; Roye, Anja; Kirmse, Ursula; Saupe, Katja; Jacobsen, Thomas; Schröger, Erich

2007-10-29

We investigated the detection of rare task-irrelevant changes in the lexical status of speech stimuli. Participants performed a nonlinguistic task on word and pseudoword stimuli that occurred, in separate conditions, rarely or frequently. Task performance for pseudowords was deteriorated relative to words, suggesting unintentional lexical analysis. Furthermore, rare word and pseudoword changes had a similar effect on the event-related potentials, starting as early as 165 ms. This is the first demonstration of the automatic detection of change in lexical status that is not based on a co-occurring acoustic change. We propose that, following lexical analysis of the incoming stimuli, a mental representation of the lexical regularity is formed and used as a template against which lexical change can be detected.

Lexical Discourse Analysis in Translation

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Al Khotaba, Eissa; Al Tarawneh, Khaled

2015-01-01

Lexical Discourse very often depend on lexis. Lexical Discourse analysis, however, has not yet been given enough consideration of the phenomenon of translation. This paper investigates lexical discourse analysis in translation from one language to another. This qualitative study comprises 15 text translated by M.A. students at the Department of…

Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy.

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Venturaa, Paulo; Kolinsky, Régine; Fernandesa, Sandra; Queridoa, Luís; Morais, José

2007-11-01

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children's judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.

Riding the lexical speedway: a critical review on the time course of lexical selection in speech production.

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Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt's estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act.

Riding the Lexical Speedway: A Critical Review on the Time Course of Lexical Selection in Speech Production

Science.gov (United States)

Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt’s estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act. PMID:22144973

Lexical Sophistication as a Multidimensional Phenomenon: Relations to Second Language Lexical Proficiency, Development, and Writing Quality

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Kim, Minkyung; Crossley, Scott A.; Kyle, Kristopher

2018-01-01

This study conceptualizes lexical sophistication as a multidimensional phenomenon by reducing numerous lexical features of lexical sophistication into 12 aggregated components (i.e., dimensions) via a principal component analysis approach. These components were then used to predict second language (L2) writing proficiency levels, holistic lexical…

The (in)dependence of articulation and lexical planning during isolated word production.

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Buz, Esteban; Jaeger, T Florian

The number of phonological neighbors to a word (PND) can affect its lexical planning and pronunciation. Similar parallel effects on planning and articulation have been observed for other lexical variables, such as a word's contextual predictability. Such parallelism is frequently taken to indicate that effects on articulation are mediated by effects on the time course of lexical planning. We test this mediation assumption for PND and find it unsupported. In a picture naming experiment, we measure speech onset latencies (planning), word durations, and vowel dispersion (articulation). We find that PND predicts both latencies and durations. Further, latencies predict durations. However, the effects of PND and latency on duration are independent: parallel effects do not imply mediation. We discuss the consequences for accounts of lexical planning, articulation, and the link between them. In particular, our results suggest that ease of planning does not explain effects of PND on articulation.

Lexical Planning in Sentence Production Is Highly Incremental: Evidence from ERPs.

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Zhao, Li-Ming; Yang, Yu-Fang

2016-01-01

The scope of lexical planning, which means how far ahead speakers plan lexically before they start producing an utterance, is an important issue for research into speech production, but remains highly controversial. The present research investigated this issue using the semantic blocking effect, which refers to the widely observed effects that participants take longer to say aloud the names of items in pictures when the pictures in a block of trials in an experiment depict items that belong to the same semantic category than different categories. As this effect is often interpreted as a reflection of difficulty in lexical selection, the current study took the semantic blocking effect and its associated pattern of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a proxy to test whether lexical planning during sentence production extends beyond the first noun when a subject noun-phrase includes two nouns, such as "The chair and the boat are both red" and "The chair above the boat is red". The results showed a semantic blocking effect both in onset latencies and in ERPs during the utterance of the first noun of these complex noun-phrases but not for the second noun. The indication, therefore, is that the lexical planning scope does not encompass this second noun-phrase. Indeed, the present findings are in line with accounts that propose radically incremental lexical planning, in which speakers plan ahead only one word at a time. This study also provides a highly novel example of using ERPs to examine the production of long utterances, and it is hoped the present demonstration of the effectiveness of this approach inspires further application of ERP techniques in this area of research.

Macrostructural Treatment of Multi-word Lexical Items

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Alenka Vrbinc

2011-05-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses the macrostructural treatment of multi-word lexical items in mono- and bilingual dictionaries. First, the classification of multi-word lexical items is presented, and special attention is paid to the discussion of compounds – a specific group of multi-word lexical items that is most commonly afforded headword status but whose inclusion in the headword list may also depend on spelling. Then the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in monolingual dictionaries is dealt with in greater detail, while the results of a short survey on the inclusion of five randomly chosen multi-word lexical items in seven English monolingual dictionaries are presented. The proposals as to how to treat these five multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries are presented in the section about the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries. The conclusion is that it is most important to take the users’ needs into consideration and to make any dictionary as user friendly as possible.

An RT distribution analysis of relatedness proportion effects in lexical decision and semantic categorization reveals different mechanisms.

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de Wit, Bianca; Kinoshita, Sachiko

2015-01-01

The magnitude of the semantic priming effect is known to increase as the proportion of related prime-target pairs in an experiment increases. This relatedness proportion (RP) effect was studied in a lexical decision task at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (240 ms), which is widely assumed to preclude strategic prospective usage of the prime. The analysis of the reaction time (RT) distribution suggested that the observed RP effect reflected a modulation of a retrospective semantic matching process. The pattern of the RP effect on the RT distribution found here is contrasted to that reported in De Wit and Kinoshita's (2014) semantic categorization study, and it is concluded that the RP effect is driven by different underlying mechanisms in lexical decision and semantic categorization.

Automatic processing of unattended lexical information in visual oddball presentation: neurophysiological evidence

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Yury eShtyrov

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Previous electrophysiological studies of automatic language processing revealed early (100-200 ms reflections of access to lexical characteristics of speech signal using the so-called mismatch negativity (MMN, a negative ERP deflection elicited by infrequent irregularities in unattended repetitive auditory stimulation. In those studies, lexical processing of spoken stimuli became manifest as an enhanced ERP in response to unattended real words as opposed to phonologically matched but meaningless pseudoword stimuli. This lexical ERP enhancement was explained by automatic activation of word memory traces realised as distributed strongly intra-connected neuronal circuits, whose robustness guarantees memory trace activation even in the absence of attention on spoken input. Such an account would predict the automatic activation of these memory traces upon any presentation of linguistic information, irrespective of the presentation modality. As previous lexical MMN studies exclusively used auditory stimulation, we here adapted the lexical MMN paradigm to investigate early automatic lexical effects in the visual modality. In a visual oddball sequence, matched short word and pseudoword stimuli were presented tachistoscopically in perifoveal area outside the visual focus of attention, as the subjects’ attention was concentrated on a concurrent non-linguistic visual dual task in the centre of the screen. Using EEG, we found a visual analogue of the lexical ERP enhancement effect, with unattended written words producing larger brain response amplitudes than matched pseudowords, starting at ~100 ms. Furthermore, we also found significant visual MMN, reported here for the first time for unattended lexical stimuli presented perifoveally. The data suggest early automatic lexical processing of visually presented language outside the focus of attention.

Ambiguity in the Acquisition of Lexical Information

OpenAIRE

Vanderwende, Lucy

1995-01-01

This paper describes an approach to the automatic identification of lexical information in on-line dictionaries. This approach uses bootstrapping techniques, specifically so that ambiguity in the dictionary text can be treated properly. This approach consists of processing an on-line dictionary multiple times, each time refining the lexical information previously acquired and identifying new lexical information. The strength of this approach is that lexical information can be acquired from de...

Making Things Difficult in Lexical Decision: The Impact of Pseudohomophones and Transposed-Letter Nonwords on Frequency and Semantic Priming Effects

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Lupker, Stephen J.; Pexman, Penny M.

2010-01-01

Performance in a lexical decision task is crucially dependent on the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination. More wordlike nonwords cause not only a latency increase for words but also, as reported by Stone and Van Orden (1993), larger word frequency effects. Several current models of lexical decision making can explain these types of…

The influence of the boost in breast-conserving therapy on cosmetic outcome in the EORTC 'boost versus no boost' trial

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vrieling, Conny; Collette, Laurence; Fourquet, Alain; Hoogenraad, Willem J.; Horiot, Jean-Claude; Jager, Jos J.; Pierart, Marianne; Poortmans, Philip M.; Struikmans, Henk; Hulst, Marleen van der; Schueren, Emmanuel van der; Bartelink, Harry

1999-01-01

Purpose: To evaluate the influence of a radiotherapy boost on the cosmetic outcome after 3 years of follow-up in patients treated with breast-conserving therapy (BCT). Methods and Materials: In EORTC trial 22881/10882, 5569 Stage I and II breast cancer patients were treated with tumorectomy and axillary dissection, followed by tangential irradiation of the breast to a dose of 50 Gy in 5 weeks, at 2 Gy per fraction. Patients having a microscopically complete tumor excision were randomized between no boost and a boost of 16 Gy. The cosmetic outcome was evaluated by a panel, scoring photographs of 731 patients taken soon after surgery and 3 years later, and by digitizer measurements, measuring the displacement of the nipple of 3000 patients postoperatively and of 1141 patients 3 years later. Results: There was no difference in the cosmetic outcome between the two treatment arms after surgery, before the start of radiotherapy. At 3-year follow-up, both the panel evaluation and the digitizer measurements showed that the boost had a significant adverse effect on the cosmetic result. The panel evaluation at 3 years showed that 86% of patients in the no-boost group had an excellent or good global result, compared to 71% of patients in the boost group (p = 0.0001). The digitizer measurements at 3 years showed a relative breast retraction assessment (pBRA) of 7.6 pBRA in the no-boost group, compared to 8.3 pBRA in the boost group, indicating a worse cosmetic result in the boost group at follow-up (p = 0.04). Conclusions: These results showed that a boost dose of 16 Gy had a negative, but limited, impact on the cosmetic outcome after 3 years

CLEX: A cross-linguistic lexical norms database

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Rune Nørgaard; Dale, Philip; Bleses, Dorthe

2009-01-01

Parent report has proven a valid and cost-effective means of evaluating early child language. Norming datasets for these instruments, which provide the basis for standardized comparisons of individual children to a population, can also be used to derive norms for the acquisition of individual words...... in production and comprehension and also early gestures and symbolic actions. These lexical norms have a wide range of uses in basic research, assessment and intervention. In addition, crosslinguistic comparisons of lexical development are greatly facilitated by the availability of norms from diverse languages....... This report describes the development of CLEX, a new web-based cross-linguistic database for lexical data from adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. CLEX provides tools for a range of analyses within and across languages. It is designed to incorporate additional language...

Effects of relative embodiment in lexical and semantic processing of verbs.

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Sidhu, David M; Kwan, Rachel; Pexman, Penny M; Siakaluk, Paul D

2014-06-01

Research examining semantic richness effects in visual word recognition has shown that multiple dimensions of meaning are activated in the process of word recognition (e.g., Yap et al., 2012). This research has, however, been limited to nouns. In the present research we extended the semantic richness approach to verb stimuli in order to investigate how verb meanings are represented. We characterized a dimension of relative embodiment for verbs, based on the bodily sense described by Borghi and Cimatti (2010), and collected ratings on that dimension for 687 English verbs. The relative embodiment ratings revealed that bodily experience was judged to be more important to the meanings of some verbs (e.g., dance, breathe) than to others (e.g., evaporate, expect). We then tested the effects of relative embodiment and imageability on verb processing in lexical decision (Experiment 1), action picture naming (Experiment 2), and syntactic classification (Experiment 3). In all three experiments results showed facilitatory effects of relative embodiment, but not imageability: latencies were faster for relatively more embodied verbs, even after several other lexical variables were controlled. The results suggest that relative embodiment is an important aspect of verb meaning, and that the semantic richness approach holds promise as a strategy for investigating other aspects of verb meaning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Lexical influence on stress processing in a fixed-stress language.

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Garami, Linda; Ragó, Anett; Honbolygó, Ferenc; Csépe, Valéria

2017-07-01

In the present study, we investigate how lexicality affects the processing of suprasegmental features at the word level. In contrast to earlier studies which analyzed the role of either segmental or suprasegmental feature in language processing our aim was to investigate the effect of the lexical status on the processing of violated stress pattern defined by linguistic rules. We have conducted a passive oddball ERP experiment, presenting a frequent CVCV word with legal (familiar) and illegal (unfamiliar) stress patterns. Former results obtained with pseudo-words in a similar paradigm enabled to assess the influence of lexical information on stress processing. The presence of lexically relevant information resulted in different ERP patterns compared to those obtained with pseudo-words. We obtained two consecutive MMN responses to the illegally stressed words while violating the illegal stress pattern with a legal one the deviant stimulus elicited two consecutive MMN responses as well. In the latter condition lexicality clearly enhanced the comparison of prosodic information between standard and deviant stimuli, as these components very completely missing when presenting pseudo-words. We interpret the results that lexicality acts as a filter since in the absence of lexical familiarity unfamiliar stress patterns are discriminated better. Our results highlight that even when stress is fully predictable, it is taken into account during pre-attentive processing of linguistic input. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Evidence for a differential interference of noise in sub-lexical and lexical reading routes in healthy participants and dyslexics.

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Pina Rodrigues, Ana; Rebola, José; Jorge, Helena; Ribeiro, Maria José; Pereira, Marcelino; Castelo-Branco, Miguel; van Asselen, Marieke

The ineffective exclusion of surrounding noise has been proposed to underlie the reading deficits in developmental dyslexia. However, previous studies supporting this hypothesis focused on low-level visual tasks, providing only an indirect link of noise interference on reading processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of noise on regular, irregular, and pseudoword reading in 23 dyslexic children and 26 age- and IQ-matched controls, by applying the white noise displays typically used to validate this theory to a lexical decision task. Reading performance and eye movements were measured. Results showed that white noise did not consistently affect dyslexic readers more than typical readers. Noise affected more dyslexic than typical readers in terms of reading accuracy, but it affected more typical than dyslexic readers in terms of response time and eye movements (number of fixations and regressions). Furthermore, in typical readers, noise affected more the speed of reading of pseudowords than real words. These results suggest a particular impact of noise on the sub-lexical reading route where attention has to be deployed to individual letters. The use of a lexical route would reduce the effect of noise. A differential impact of noise between words and pseudowords may therefore not be evident in dyslexic children if they are not yet proficient in using the lexical route. These findings indicate that the type of reading stimuli and consequent reading strategies play an important role in determining the effects of noise interference in reading processing and should be taken into account by further studies.

Lexical Specificity Training Effects in Second Language Learners

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Janssen, Caressa; Segers, Eliane; McQueen, James M.; Verhoeven, Ludo

2015-01-01

Children who start formal education in a second language may experience slower vocabulary growth in that language and subsequently experience disadvantages in literacy acquisition. The current study asked whether lexical specificity training can stimulate bilingual children's phonological awareness, which is considered to be a precursor to…

Assessment of Lexical and Non-Lexical Spelling in Students in Grades 1-7

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Kohnen, Saskia; Colenbrander, Danielle; Krajenbrink, Trudy; Nickels, Lyndsey

2015-01-01

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and…

Carpet or Carcel: The Effect of Age of Acquisition and Language Mode on Bilingual Lexical Access

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Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta; Brehm, Laurel; Brick, Cameron A.; Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Fischer, Kara; Wagner, Katie

2010-01-01

Lexical access was examined in English-Spanish bilinguals by monitoring eye fixations on target and lexical competitors as participants followed spoken instructions in English to click on one of the objects presented on a computer (e.g., "Click on the beans"). Within-language lexical competitors had a phoneme onset in English that was shared with…

The Effect of Non-Sentential Context Prosody on Homographs' Lexical Activation in Persian

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Feizabadi, Parvin Sadat; Bijankhan, Mahmood

2015-01-01

This study examines the effect of non-sentential context prosody pattern on lexical activation in Persian. For this purpose a questionnaire including target and non-target words is used. The target words are homographs with two possible stress patterns belonging to different syntactic categories. Participants are asked to read out the words aloud…

Lexically guided perceptual learning in Mandarin Chinese

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Burchfield, L.A.; Luk, S.H.K.; Antoniou, M.; Cutler, A.

2017-01-01

Lexically guided perceptual learni ng refers to the use of lexical knowledge to retune sp eech categories and thereby adapt to a novel talker's pronunciation. This adaptation has been extensively documented, but primarily for segmental-based learning in English and Dutch. In languages with lexical

A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Vickie Y; Andruski, Jean E

2010-08-01

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mark Kit

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these studies. Lexical need analysis can be also used to learn specifics of translator’s lexical space and then to take measures for selection of translators and improvement of their skills.

Predicting Lexical Proficiency in Language Learner Texts Using Computational Indices

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

The authors present a model of lexical proficiency based on lexical indices related to vocabulary size, depth of lexical knowledge, and accessibility to core lexical items. The lexical indices used in this study come from the computational tool Coh-Metrix and include word length scores, lexical diversity values, word frequency counts, hypernymy…

Lexical Resources and Their Application.

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Gellerstam, Martin

This paper discusses computer-based resources for lexical data and their uses. First, the kinds of lexical data available are described, including those related to form (spelling, pronunciation, inflection, word class), meaning (definition/equivalent, synonyms/antonyms/hyperonyms, thesaurus classification), context (grammatical collocations,…

How logical reasoning mediates the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension.

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Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

The present study aimed to examine the role of logical reasoning in the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension in 146 fourth grade Dutch children. We assessed their standardized reading comprehension measure, along with their decoding efficiency and vocabulary as measures of lexical quality, syllogistic reasoning as measure of (verbal) logical reasoning, and nonverbal reasoning as a control measure. Syllogistic reasoning was divided into a measure tapping basic, coherence inferencing skill using logical syllogisms, and a measure tapping elaborative inferencing skill using indeterminate syllogisms. Results showed that both types of syllogisms partly mediated the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension, but also had a unique additional effect on reading comprehension. The indirect effect of lexical quality on reading comprehension via syllogisms was driven by vocabulary knowledge. It is concluded that measures of syllogistic reasoning account for higher-order thinking processes that are needed to make inferences in reading comprehension. The role of lexical quality appears to be pivotal in explaining the variation in reading comprehension both directly and indirectly via syllogistic reasoning.

The Effect of Lexical Frequency on Spoken Word Recognition in Young and Older Listeners

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Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Spieler, Daniel H.

2011-01-01

When identifying spoken words, older listeners may have difficulty resolving lexical competition or may place a greater weight on factors like lexical frequency. To obtain information about age differences in the time course of spoken word recognition, young and older adults’ eye movements were monitored as they followed spoken instructions to click on objects displayed on a computer screen. Older listeners were more likely than younger listeners to fixate high-frequency displayed phonological competitors. However, degradation of auditory quality in younger listeners does not reproduce this result. These data are most consistent with an increased role for lexical frequency with age. PMID:21707175

Reusable Lexical Representations for Idioms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Odijk, J.E.J.M.

2004-01-01

In this paper I introduce (1) a technically simple and highly theory-independent way for lexically representing flexible idiomatic expressions, and (2) a procedure to incorporate these lexical representations in a wide variety of NLP systems. The method is based on Structural EQuivalence Classes

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children's language production.

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Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2010-09-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e. a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children's production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed.

SemiBoost: boosting for semi-supervised learning.

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Mallapragada, Pavan Kumar; Jin, Rong; Jain, Anil K; Liu, Yi

2009-11-01

Semi-supervised learning has attracted a significant amount of attention in pattern recognition and machine learning. Most previous studies have focused on designing special algorithms to effectively exploit the unlabeled data in conjunction with labeled data. Our goal is to improve the classification accuracy of any given supervised learning algorithm by using the available unlabeled examples. We call this as the Semi-supervised improvement problem, to distinguish the proposed approach from the existing approaches. We design a metasemi-supervised learning algorithm that wraps around the underlying supervised algorithm and improves its performance using unlabeled data. This problem is particularly important when we need to train a supervised learning algorithm with a limited number of labeled examples and a multitude of unlabeled examples. We present a boosting framework for semi-supervised learning, termed as SemiBoost. The key advantages of the proposed semi-supervised learning approach are: 1) performance improvement of any supervised learning algorithm with a multitude of unlabeled data, 2) efficient computation by the iterative boosting algorithm, and 3) exploiting both manifold and cluster assumption in training classification models. An empirical study on 16 different data sets and text categorization demonstrates that the proposed framework improves the performance of several commonly used supervised learning algorithms, given a large number of unlabeled examples. We also show that the performance of the proposed algorithm, SemiBoost, is comparable to the state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning algorithms.

Lexical priming in Alzheimer's disease and aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Arroyo-Anlló, Eva Maria; Beauchamps, Mireille; Ingrand, Pierre; Neau, Jean Philippe; Gil, Roger

2013-01-01

Lexical priming was examined in patients with Alzheimer's disease and in aphasic patients. Control participants were divided into young and elderly [cf. Arroyo-Anlló et al.: Eur J Cogn Psychol 2004;16:535-553]. For lexical priming, a word-stem completion task was used. Normal elderly participants had lexical priming scores that were significantly lower than those of young individuals. Analysis of covariance with age and educational level as covariates showed that the control participants, aphasic and Alzheimer patients did not differ significantly on the lexical priming task. Our results suggest that performance in the lexical priming task diminishes with physiological aging, but is not significantly affected by mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease or by fluent or non-fluent aphasia. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Lexical Organization in Second Language Acquisition: Does the Critical Period Matter?

Science.gov (United States)

Cardimona, Kimberly; Smith, Pamela; Roberts, Lauren Sones

2016-01-01

This study examined lexical organization in English language learners (ELLs) who acquired their second language (L2) either during or after the period of maximal sensitivity related to the critical period hypothesis. Twenty-three native-Spanish-speaking ELLs completed psycholinguistic tasks to examine age effects in bilingual lexical organization.…

Effect of pole zero location on system dynamics of boost converter for micro grid

Science.gov (United States)

Lavanya, A.; Vijayakumar, K.; Navamani, J. D.; Jayaseelan, N.

2018-04-01

Green clean energy like photo voltaic, wind energy, fuel cell can be brought together by microgrid.For low voltage sources like photovoltaic cell boost converter is very much essential. This paper explores the dynamic analysis of boost converter in a continuous conduction mode (CCM). The transient performance and stability analysis is carried out in this paper using time domain analysis and frequency domain analysis techniques. Boost converter is simulated using both PSIM and MATLAB software. Furthermore, state space model obtained and the transfer function is derived. The converter behaviour when a step input is applied is analyzed and stability of the converter is analyzed from bode plot frequency for open loop. Effect of the locations of poles and zeros in the transfer function of boost converter and how the performance parameters are affected is discussed in this paper. Closed loop performance with PI controller is also analyzed for boost converter.

The attentional boost effect and context memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Mulligan, Neil W; Smith, S Adam; Spataro, Pietro

2016-04-01

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors-the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is unclear if context memory is likewise affected. Some accounts suggest enhanced perceptual encoding or associative binding, predicting an ABE on context memory, whereas other evidence suggests a more abstract, amodal basis of the effect. In Experiment 1, context memory was assessed in terms of an intramodal perceptual detail, the font and color of the study word. Experiment 2 examined context memory cross-modally, assessing memory for the modality (visual or auditory) of the study word. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed context memory with list discrimination, in which 2 study lists are presented and participants must later remember which list (if either) a test word came from. In all experiments, item (recognition) memory was also assessed and consistently displayed a robust ABE. In contrast, the attentional-boost manipulation did not enhance context memory, whether defined in terms of visual details, study modality, or list membership. There was some evidence that the mode of responding on the detection task (motoric response as opposed to covert counting of targets) may impact context memory but there was no evidence of an effect of target detection, per se. In sum, the ABE did not occur in context memory with verbal materials. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

OpenAIRE

Mark Kit; Elena Berg

2014-01-01

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these stu...

Automatically Assessing Lexical Sophistication: Indices, Tools, Findings, and Application

Science.gov (United States)

Kyle, Kristopher; Crossley, Scott A.

2015-01-01

This study explores the construct of lexical sophistication and its applications for measuring second language lexical and speaking proficiency. In doing so, the study introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of LExical Sophistication (TAALES), which calculates text scores for 135 classic and newly developed lexical indices related to word…

A diffusion decision model analysis of evidence variability in the lexical decision task.

Science.gov (United States)

Tillman, Gabriel; Osth, Adam F; van Ravenzwaaij, Don; Heathcote, Andrew

2017-12-01

The lexical-decision task is among the most commonly used paradigms in psycholinguistics. In both the signal-detection theory and Diffusion Decision Model (DDM; Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, Psychological Review, 111, 159-182, 2004) frameworks, lexical-decisions are based on a continuous source of word-likeness evidence for both words and non-words. The Retrieving Effectively from Memory model of Lexical-Decision (REM-LD; Wagenmakers et al., Cognitive Psychology, 48(3), 332-367, 2004) provides a comprehensive explanation of lexical-decision data and makes the prediction that word-likeness evidence is more variable for words than non-words and that higher frequency words are more variable than lower frequency words. To test these predictions, we analyzed five lexical-decision data sets with the DDM. For all data sets, drift-rate variability changed across word frequency and non-word conditions. For the most part, REM-LD's predictions about the ordering of evidence variability across stimuli in the lexical-decision task were confirmed.

LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE IN INSTRUCTED LANGUAGE LEARNING: THE EFFECTS OF AGE AND EXPOSURE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Inmaculada Miralpeix

2007-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to analyse the possible effects of Age of Onset (AO, Cognitive Maturity (Age at Testing-AT- and Amount of Exposure (AE on the productive vocabularies of learners of English as a Foreign Language (FL. Three groups of bilingual Catalan/Spanish students were tested towards the end of Secondary Education. The groups differed in AO (8 vs. 11 years, AT (16 vs.17 and AE (726 vs. 800 hours. They performed four different tasks: three oral (an interview, a storytelling and a roleplay and one written (a composition. The tasks were analysed with measures extrinsic to the learners’ production. Firstly, their Lexical Frequency Profiles were computed with VocabProfile (Nation, 1995. Secondly, P_Lex (Meara, 2001 was used to assess the lexical richness of the texts. Furthermore, Anglo-Saxon and Greco-Latin Cognate indices were obtained for each of the tasks. Results show that an early AO does not necessarily suppose an advantage for Early Starters (ES, as Late Starters’ (LS productive vocabularies are very similar to those of their younger peers.

The Metamorphosis of the Statistical Segmentation Output: Lexicalization during Artificial Language Learning

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Fernandes, Tania; Kolinsky, Regine; Ventura, Paulo

2009-01-01

This study combined artificial language learning (ALL) with conventional experimental techniques to test whether statistical speech segmentation outputs are integrated into adult listeners' mental lexicon. Lexicalization was assessed through inhibitory effects of novel neighbors (created by the parsing process) on auditory lexical decisions to…

The effect of boost pressure on the performance characteristics of a diesel engine: A neuro-fuzzy approach

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Al-Hinti, I.; Sakhrieh, A. [Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hashemite University, Zarqa 13115 (Jordan); Samhouri, M.; Al-Ghandoor, A. [Department of Industrial Engineering, The Hashemite University, Zarqa 13115 (Jordan)

2009-01-15

This paper uses a neuro-fuzzy interface system (ANFIS) to study the effect of boost pressure on the efficiency, brake mean effective pressure (BMEP), and the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) of a single cylinder diesel engine. Experimental data were used as inputs to ANFIS to simulate the engine performance characteristics. The experimental as well as the model results emphasize the role of boost pressure in improving the different engine characteristics. The results show that the ANFIS technique can be used adequately to identify the effect of boost pressure on the different engine characteristics. In addition, different data points that were not used for ANFIS training were used to validate the developed models. The results suggest that ANFIS can be used accurately to predict the effect of boost pressure on the different engine characteristics. (author)

Emotion, Etmnooi, or Emitoon?--Faster lexical access to emotional than to neutral words during reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Kissler, Johanna; Herbert, Cornelia

2013-03-01

Cortical processing of emotional words differs from that of neutral words. Using EEG event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study examines the functional stage(s) of this differentiation. Positive, negative, and neutral nouns were randomly mixed with pseudowords and letter strings derived from words within each valence and presented for reading while participants' EEG was recorded. Results indicated emotion effects in the N1 (110-140 ms), early posterior negativity (EPN, 216-320) and late positive potential (LPP, 432-500 ms) time windows. Across valence, orthographic word-form effects occurred from about 180 ms after stimulus presentation. Crucially, in emotional words, lexicality effects (real words versus pseudowords) were identified from 216 ms, words being more negative over posterior cortex, coinciding with EPN effects, whereas neutral words differed from pseudowords only after 320 ms. Emotional content affects word processing at pre-lexical, lexical and post-lexical levels, but remarkably lexical access to emotional words is faster than access to neutral words. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Extending statistical boosting. An overview of recent methodological developments.

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Mayr, A; Binder, H; Gefeller, O; Schmid, M

2014-01-01

Boosting algorithms to simultaneously estimate and select predictor effects in statistical models have gained substantial interest during the last decade. This review highlights recent methodological developments regarding boosting algorithms for statistical modelling especially focusing on topics relevant for biomedical research. We suggest a unified framework for gradient boosting and likelihood-based boosting (statistical boosting) which have been addressed separately in the literature up to now. The methodological developments on statistical boosting during the last ten years can be grouped into three different lines of research: i) efforts to ensure variable selection leading to sparser models, ii) developments regarding different types of predictor effects and how to choose them, iii) approaches to extend the statistical boosting framework to new regression settings. Statistical boosting algorithms have been adapted to carry out unbiased variable selection and automated model choice during the fitting process and can nowadays be applied in almost any regression setting in combination with a large amount of different types of predictor effects.

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

OpenAIRE

Reza Kalantari; Javad Gholami

2017-01-01

This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC) through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012), three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011...

Lexicalization patterns in Brazilian Portuguese

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dorival Gonçalves Santos Filho

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Neolatin languages belong to a lexicalization pattern in which the verbal root expresses semantic primitives of MOVE and PATH, leaving MANNER or CAUSE to be expressed by an adverb or the gerund form. In German origin languages, on the contrary, verbs lexicalize the semantic primitives of MOVE, MANNER or CAUSE; as for the PATH, it is expressed by a grammatical element that is associated to the verb. Taking into consideration some of the concepts of event of move, guided by Cognitive Semantics, and an analysis of examples extracted from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’ books, the present study aims at showing, at least, three lexicalization patterns in which Brazilian Portuguese fits in.

Lexical tone and stuttering in Cantonese.

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Law, Thomas; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; To, Carol K-S; Tong, Michael C-F; Lee, Kathy Y-S

2018-01-01

Cantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18-33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

Are there mental lexicons? The role of semantics in lexical decision.

Science.gov (United States)

Dilkina, Katia; McClelland, James L; Plaut, David C

2010-12-13

What is the underlying representation of lexical knowledge? How do we know whether a given string of letters is a word, whereas another string of letters is not? There are two competing models of lexical processing in the literature. The first proposes that we rely on mental lexicons. The second claims there are no mental lexicons; we identify certain items as words based on semantic knowledge. Thus, the former approach - the multiple-systems view - posits that lexical and semantic processing are subserved by separate systems, whereas the latter approach - the single-system view - holds that the two are interdependent. Semantic dementia patients, who have a cross-modal semantic impairment, show an accompanying and related lexical deficit. These findings support the single-system approach. However, a report of an SD patient whose impairment on lexical decision was not related to his semantic deficits in item-specific ways has presented a challenge to this view. If the two types of processing rely on a common system, then shouldn't damage impair the same items on all tasks? We present a single-system model of lexical and semantic processing, where there are no lexicons, and performance on lexical decision involves the activation of semantic representations. We show how, when these representations are damaged, accuracy on semantic and lexical tasks falls off together, but not necessarily on the same set of items. These findings are congruent with the patient data. We provide an explicit explanation of this pattern of results in our model, by defining and measuring the effects of two orthogonal factors - spelling consistency and concept consistency. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration.

Science.gov (United States)

Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-11-01

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children’s language production

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2009-01-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e., a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children’s production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed. PMID:20712738

Differential age effects on lexical ambiguity resolution mechanisms

OpenAIRE

Lee, Chia-lin; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

Multiple neurocognitive subsystems are involved in resolving lexical ambiguity under different circumstances. We examined how processing in these subsystems changes with normal aging by comparing ERP responses to homographs and unambiguous words completing congruent sentences (with both semantic and syntactic contextual information) or syntactic prose (syntactic information only). Like young adults in prior work, older adults elicited more negative N400s to homographs in congruent sentences, ...

Lexical and Grammatical Collocations in Writing Production of EFL Learners

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maryam Bahardoust

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Lewis (1993 recognized significance of word combinations including collocations by presenting lexical approach. Because of the crucial role of collocation in vocabulary acquisition, this research set out to evaluate the rate of collocations in Iranian EFL learners' writing production across L1 and L2. In addition, L1 interference with L2 collocational use in the learner' writing samples was studied. To achieve this goal, 200 Persian EFL learners at BA level were selected. These participants were taking paragraph writing and essay writing courses in two successive semesters. As for the data analysis, mid-term, final exam, and also the assignments of L2 learners were evaluated. Because of the nominal nature of the data, chi-square test was utilized for data analysis. Then, the rate of lexical and grammatical collocations was calculated. Results showed that the lexical collocations outnumbered the grammatical collocations. Different categories of lexical collocations were also compared with regard to their frequencies in EFL writing production. The rate of the verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations appeared to be the highest and noun-verb collocations the lowest. The results also showed that L1 had both positive and negative effect on the occurrence of both grammatical and lexical collocations.

Pre-Attentive Auditory Processing of Lexicality

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobsen, Thomas; Horvath, Janos; Schroger, Erich; Lattner, Sonja; Widmann, Andreas; Winkler, Istvan

2004-01-01

The effects of lexicality on auditory change detection based on auditory sensory memory representations were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of repeatedly presented stimuli, while participants ignored the auditory stimuli. In a cross-linguistic study of Hungarian and German participants, stimulus sequences were composed of words that…

Investigating lexical competition and the cost of phonemic restoration.

Science.gov (United States)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-12-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant effects for several temporal attributes of the stimuli, including the duration and position of the interrupted segment. These results indicate that uniqueness points are not distinct breakpoints in the cohort reduction that occurs during lexical processing, but that temporal properties of the interrupted stimuli are central to auditory word recognition. These results are interpreted in the context of models of speech perception.

The Design of Lexical Database for Indonesian Language

Science.gov (United States)

Gunawan, D.; Amalia, A.

2017-03-01

Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI), an official dictionary for Indonesian language, provides lists of words with their meaning. The online version can be accessed via Internet network. Another online dictionary is Kateglo. KBBI online and Kateglo only provides an interface for human. A machine cannot retrieve data from the dictionary easily without using advanced techniques. Whereas, lexical of words is required in research or application development which related to natural language processing, text mining, information retrieval or sentiment analysis. To address this requirement, we need to build a lexical database which provides well-defined structured information about words. A well-known lexical database is WordNet, which provides the relation among words in English. This paper proposes the design of a lexical database for Indonesian language based on the combination of KBBI 4th edition, Kateglo and WordNet structure. Knowledge representation by utilizing semantic networks depict the relation among words and provide the new structure of lexical database for Indonesian language. The result of this design can be used as the foundation to build the lexical database for Indonesian language.

Psychometric Evaluation of Lexical Diversity Indices: Assessing Length Effects

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Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Wright, Heather Harris; Green, Samuel B.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Several novel techniques have been developed recently to assess the breadth of a speaker's vocabulary exhibited in a language sample. The specific aim of this study was to increase our understanding of the validity of the scores generated by different lexical diversity (LD) estimation techniques. Four techniques were explored: D, Maas,…

Improving the functionality of dictionary definitions for lexical sets ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2008) approach to the design of lexicographic definitions for members of lexical sets. The questions raised are how to define and identify lexical sets, how lexical conceptual models (LCMs) can support definitional consistency and coherence in ...

Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Miller, George

1997-01-01

The practical outcome of the project, Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory, is an electronic lexical database called WordNet that can be incorporated into computer systems for processing English text...

Framing effects reveal discrete lexical-semantic and sublexical procedures in reading: an fMRI study.

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Danelli, Laura; Marelli, Marco; Berlingeri, Manuela; Tettamanti, Marco; Sberna, Maurizio; Paulesu, Eraldo; Luzzatti, Claudio

2015-01-01

According to the dual-route model, a printed string of letters can be processed by either a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) route or a lexical-semantic route. Although meta-analyses of the imaging literature support the existence of distinct but interacting reading procedures, individual neuroimaging studies that explored neural correlates of reading yielded inconclusive results. We used a list-manipulation paradigm to provide a fresh empirical look at this issue and to isolate specific areas that underlie the two reading procedures. In a lexical condition, we embedded disyllabic Italian words (target stimuli) in lists of either loanwords or trisyllabic Italian words with unpredictable stress position. In a GPC condition, similar target stimuli were included within lists of pseudowords. The procedure was designed to induce participants to emphasize either the lexical-semantic or the GPC reading procedure, while controlling for possible linguistic confounds and keeping the reading task requirements stable across the two conditions. Thirty-three adults participated in the behavioral study, and 20 further adult participants were included in the fMRI study. At the behavioral level, we found sizeable effects of the framing manipulations that included slower voice onset times for stimuli in the pseudoword frames. At the functional anatomical level, the occipital and temporal regions, and the intraparietal sulcus were specifically activated when subjects were reading target words in a lexical frame. The inferior parietal and anterior fusiform cortex were specifically activated in the GPC condition. These patterns of activation represented a valid classifying model of fMRI images associated with target reading in both frames in the multi-voxel pattern analyses. Further activations were shared by the two procedures in the occipital and inferior parietal areas, in the premotor cortex, in the frontal regions and the left supplementary motor area. These regions are most

Lexical Density Of English Reading Texts For Senior High School

OpenAIRE

Nesia, Bersyebah Herljimsi; Ginting, Siti Aisah

2014-01-01

This study deals with the lexical density especially the lexical items of English reading texts in the textbook for senior high school. The objectives of the study are to find out the lexical density especially the lexical items which formed in the reading texts of Look Ahead textbook and the type of genre which has the highest lexical density of the reading texts. This study was conducted by descriptive method with qualitative approach. The data of this research were the English reading text...

Neural signatures of lexical tone reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Kwok, Veronica P Y; Wang, Tianfu; Chen, Siping; Yakpo, Kofi; Zhu, Linlin; Fox, Peter T; Tan, Li Hai

2015-01-01

Research on how lexical tone is neuroanatomically represented in the human brain is central to our understanding of cortical regions subserving language. Past studies have exclusively focused on tone perception of the spoken language, and little is known as to the lexical tone processing in reading visual words and its associated brain mechanisms. In this study, we performed two experiments to identify neural substrates in Chinese tone reading. First, we used a tone judgment paradigm to investigate tone processing of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that, relative to baseline, tone perception of printed Chinese characters were mediated by strong brain activation in bilateral frontal regions, left inferior parietal lobule, left posterior middle/medial temporal gyrus, left inferior temporal region, bilateral visual systems, and cerebellum. Surprisingly, no activation was found in superior temporal regions, brain sites well known for speech tone processing. In activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to combine results of relevant published studies, we attempted to elucidate whether the left temporal cortex activities identified in Experiment one is consistent with those found in previous studies of auditory lexical tone perception. ALE results showed that only the left superior temporal gyrus and putamen were critical in auditory lexical tone processing. These findings suggest that activation in the superior temporal cortex associated with lexical tone perception is modality-dependent. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Concreteness and context availability in lexical decision tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Levy-Drori, Shelly; Henik, Avishai

2006-01-01

Three experiments were carried out to elucidate the origins of the concreteness (C) effect in a lexical decision task. The first experiment was a replication of the work of Schwanenflugel et al. (1988) and Van Hell and De Groot (1998), who presented the context availability (CA) hypothesis. In this experiment CA seemed to be a dominant factor. Familiarity (FAM) was not incorporated in the ANOVA, but a regression analysis and negative correlation between C and FAM in the groups matched on CA showed that FAM could explain the disappearance of the C effect. Experiment 2 controlled FAM and revealed a C effect, although concrete and abstract words were matched on CA. Experiment 3 controlled C and FAM and revealed a CA effect. The current data emphasize the importance of controlling FAM and CA in examining the C effect in a lexical decision task and support a revised version of the dual-coding theory.

Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Science.gov (United States)

Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

The Precise Time Course of Lexical Activation: MEG Measurements of the Effects of Frequency, Probability, and Density in Lexical Decision

Science.gov (United States)

Stockall, Linnaea; Stringfellow, Andrew; Marantz, Alec

2004-01-01

Visually presented letter strings consistently yield three MEG response components: the M170, associated with letter-string processing (Tarkiainen, Helenius, Hansen, Cornelissen, & Salmelin, 1999); the M250, affected by phonotactic probability, (Pylkkanen, Stringfellow, & Marantz, 2002); and the M350, responsive to lexical frequency (Embick,…

The influence of emotion on lexical processing: insights from RT distributional analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Yap, Melvin J; Seow, Cui Shan

2014-04-01

In two lexical decision experiments, the present study was designed to examine emotional valence effects on visual lexical decision (standard and go/no-go) performance, using traditional analyses of means and distributional analyses of response times. Consistent with an earlier study by Kousta, Vinson, and Vigliocco (Cognition 112:473-481, 2009), we found that emotional words (both negative and positive) were responded to faster than neutral words. Finer-grained distributional analyses further revealed that the facilitation afforded by valence was reflected by a combination of distributional shifting and an increase in the slow tail of the distribution. This suggests that emotional valence effects in lexical decision are unlikely to be entirely mediated by early, preconscious processes, which are associated with pure distributional shifting. Instead, our results suggest a dissociation between early preconscious processes and a later, more task-specific effect that is driven by feedback from semantically rich representations.

Lexical richness and collocational competence in second-language writing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vedder, I.; Benigno, V.

2016-01-01

In this article we report on an experiment set up to investigate lexical richness and collocational competence in the written production of 39 low-intermediate and intermediate learners of Italian L2. Lexical richness was assessed by means of a lexical profiling method inspired by Laufer and Nation

Investigating the Usefulness of Lexical Phrases in Contemporary Coursebooks

Science.gov (United States)

Koprowski, Mark

2005-01-01

Over the past decade, lexical theory, corpus statistics, and psycholinguistic research have pointed to the pedagogical value of lexical phrases. In response, commercial publishers have been quick to import these insights into their materials in a bid to accommodate consumers and to profit from the "lexical chunk" phenomenon. Contemporary British…

How to define a word in a lexical network?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dorota Sikora

2012-01-01

Full Text Available As underlined in Wierzbicka (1996: 239, a «linguistic definition is a scientific hypothesis about the concept encoded in a given word». The present paper focuses on the problem of what such hypothesis is about. Lexicon of any language is structured with a set of connections relating lexical items. That is to say that speakers of any language need to master not only separate words, but rather a cluster of connected senses. If so, then a lexical definition should lay out the concept the word lexicalizes in the way that gives access to the whole grasp of its conceptual, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. We discuss the topic of definitional structures developed in the context of the French Lexical Network (Réseau Lexical du Français.

Lexical studies of indigenous personality factors: premises, products, and prospects.

Science.gov (United States)

Saucier, G; Goldberg, L R; Institute, O R

2001-12-01

The rationale for lexical studies rests on the assumption that the most meaningful personality attributes tend to become encoded in language as single-word descriptors. We articulate some key premises of the lexical approach and then review a number of studies that have been conducted examining the factor structure of personality descriptors extracted from dictionaries. We compare lexical studies in English and 12 other languages, with attention to delineating consistencies between the structures found in diverse languages. Our review suggests that the Anglo-Germanic Big Five is reproduced better in some languages than in others. We propose some organizing rules for lexical factor structures that may be more generalizable than the contemporary Big-Five model. And, we propose several candidate structural models that should be compared with the Big Five in future studies, including structures with one, two, and three very broad factors, an alternative five-factor structure identified in Italian and Hungarian studies, and a seven-factor structure represented in Hebrew and Philippine studies. We recommend that in future studies more attention be paid to middle-level personality constructs and to examining the effects of methodological variations on the resulting factor structures.

The perception of lexical stress in German: effects of segmental duration and vowel quality in different prosodic patterns.

Science.gov (United States)

Kohler, Klaus J

2012-01-01

Several decades of research, focusing on English, Dutch and German, have set up a hierarchy of acoustic properties for cueing lexical stress. It attributes the strongest cue to criterial-level f0 change, followed by duration, but low weight to energy and to stressed-vowel spectra. This paper re-examines the established view with new data from German. In the natural productions of the German word pair Kaffee 'coffee' - Café 'locality' (with initial vs. final stress in a North German pronunciation), vowel duration was manipulated in a complementary fashion across the two syllables in five steps, spanning the continuum from initial to final stress on each word. The two base words provided different vowel qualities as the second variable, the intervocalic fricative was varied in two values, long and short, taken from Café and Kaffee, and the generated test words were inserted in a low f0 tail and in a high f0 hat-pattern plateau, which both eliminated f0 change as a cue to lexical stress. The sentence stimuli were judged in two listening experiments by 16 listeners in each as to whether the first or the second syllable of the test word was stressed. The results show highly significant effects of vowel duration, vowel quality and fricative duration. The combined vowel-quality and fricative variable can outweigh vowel duration as a cue to lexical stress. The effect of the prosodic frame is only marginal, especially related to a rhythmic factor. The paper concludes that there is no general hierarchy with a fixed ranking of the variables traditionally adduced to signal lexical stress. Every prosodic embedding of segmental sequences defines the hierarchy afresh. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Acoustic-Phonetic Versus Lexical Processing in Nonnative Listeners Differing in Their Dominant Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Lu-Feng; Koenig, Laura L

2016-09-01

Nonnative listeners have difficulty recognizing English words due to underdeveloped acoustic-phonetic and/or lexical skills. The present study used Boothroyd and Nittrouer's (1988)j factor to tease apart these two components of word recognition. Participants included 15 native English and 29 native Russian listeners. Fourteen and 15 of the Russian listeners reported English (ED) and Russian (RD) to be their dominant language, respectively. Listeners were presented 119 consonant-vowel-consonant real and nonsense words in speech-spectrum noise at +6 dB SNR. Responses were scored for word and phoneme recognition, the logarithmic quotient of which yielded j. Word and phoneme recognition was comparable between native and ED listeners but poorer in RD listeners. Analysis of j indicated less effective use of lexical information in RD than in native and ED listeners. Lexical processing was strongly correlated with the length of residence in the United States. Language background is important for nonnative word recognition. Lexical skills can be regarded as nativelike in ED nonnative listeners. Compromised word recognition in ED listeners is unlikely a result of poor lexical processing. Performance should be interpreted with caution for listeners dominant in their first language, whose word recognition is affected by both lexical and acoustic-phonetic factors.

Neural correlates reveal sub-lexical orthography and phonology during reading aloud: A review

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Kalinka eTimmer

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The sub-lexical conversion of graphemes-to-phonemes (GPC during reading has been investigated extensively with behavioral measures, as well as event-related potentials (ERPs. Most research utilizes silent reading (e.g., lexical decision task for which phonological activation is not a necessity. However, recent research employed reading aloud to capture sub-lexical GPC. The masked priming paradigm avoids strategic processing and is therefore well suitable for capturing sub-lexical processing instead of lexical effects. By employing ERPs, the on-line time course of sub-lexical GPC can be observed before the overt response. ERPs have revealed that besides phonological activation, as revealed by behavioral studies, there is also early orthographic activation. This review describes studies in one’s native language, in one’s second language, and in a cross-language situation. We discuss the implications the ERP results have on different (computational models. First, the ERP results show that computational models should assume an early locus of the grapheme-to-phoneme-conversion (GPC. Second, cross-language studies reveal that the phonological representations from both languages of a bilingual become activated automatically and the phonology belonging to the context is selected rapidly. Therefore, it is important to extend the scope of computational models of reading (aloud to multiple lexicons.

Slovene-English Contrastive Phraseology: Lexical Collocations

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Primož Jurko

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Phraseology is seen as one of the key elements and arguably the most productive part of any language. %e paper is focused on collocations and separates them from other phraseological units, such as idioms or compounds. Highlighting the difference between a monolingual and a bilingual (i.e. contrastive approach to collocation, the article presents two distinct classes of collocations: grammatical and lexical. %e latter, treated contrastively, represent the focal point of the paper, since they are an unending source of translation errors to both students of translation and professional translators. %e author introduces a methodology of systematic classification of lexical collocations applied on the Slovene-English language pair and based on structural (lexical congruence and semantic (translational predictability criteria.

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: the role of phonological, lexical, and semantic processing.

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Caza, Nicole; Belleville, Sylvie

2008-05-01

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients' capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.

Many Neighbors are not Silent. fMRI Evidence for Global Lexical Activity in Visual Word Recognition.

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Mario eBraun

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some of which manipulated the orthographic neighborhood density of words and nonwords believed to influence the activation of orthographically similar representations in a hypothetical mental lexicon. Previous neuroimaging research failed to find evidence for such global lexical activity associated with neighborhood density. Rather, effects were interpreted to reflect semantic or domain general processing. The present fMRI study revealed effects of lexicality, orthographic neighborhood density and a lexicality by orthographic neighborhood density interaction in a silent reading task. For the first time we found greater activity for words and nonwords with a high number of neighbors. We propose that this activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex reflects activation of orthographically similar codes in verbal working memory thus providing evidence for global lexical activity as the basis of the neighborhood density effect. The interaction of lexicality by neighborhood density in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed lower activity in response to words with a high number compared to nonwords with a high number of neighbors. In the light of these results the facilitatory effect for words and inhibitory effect for nonwords with many neighbors observed in previous studies can be understood as being due to the operation of a fast-guess mechanism for words and a temporal deadline mechanism for nonwords as predicted by models of visual word recognition. Furthermore, we propose that the lexicality effect with higher activity for words compared to nonwords in inferior parietal and middle temporal cortex reflects the operation of an identification mechanism and based on local lexico-semantic activity.

Nicotine patches improve mood and response speed in a lexical decision task.

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Gentry, M V; Hammersley, J J; Hale, C R; Nuwer, P K; Meliska, C J

2000-01-01

The effects of smoking a cigarette or wearing a transdermal nicotine patch on mood and lexical decision-making were tested in eight smokers. Each participant was tested after 4 hours of smoking abstinence, under 4 conditions: placebo (very low nicotine) cigarette, nicotine cigarette, placebo patch, and nicotine patch. Relative to placebo, wearing the nicotine patch reduced Profile of Mood States (POMS) Total Mood Disturbance and Fatigue/Inertia scores, while increasing the speed of some types of lexical decisions. Smoking a nicotine cigarette did not affect reaction times, but unexpectedly decreased the accuracy of Word/ Nonword lexical decisions. Thus, transdermal nicotine may improve mood and facilitate longterm memory search and/or attentional processes in nicotine-deprived smokers.

The Effects of Prohibiting Gestures on Children's Lexical Retrieval Ability

Science.gov (United States)

Pine, Karen J.; Bird, Hannah; Kirk, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

Two alternative accounts have been proposed to explain the role of gestures in thinking and speaking. The Information Packaging Hypothesis (Kita, 2000) claims that gestures are important for the conceptual packaging of information before it is coded into a linguistic form for speech. The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis (Rauscher, Krauss & Chen, 1996)…

Lexical Reading in Dysfluent Readers of German

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Gangl, Melanie; Moll, Kristina; Jones, Manon W.; Banfi, Chiara; Schulte-Körne, Gerd; Landerl, Karin

2018-01-01

Dyslexia in consistent orthographies like German is characterized by dysfluent reading, which is often assumed to result from failure to build up an orthographic lexicon and overreliance on decoding. However, earlier evidence indicates effects of lexical processing at least in some German dyslexic readers. We investigated variations in reading…

An eye movement based reading intervention in lexical and segmental readers with acquired dyslexia.

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Ablinger, Irene; von Heyden, Kerstin; Vorstius, Christian; Halm, Katja; Huber, Walter; Radach, Ralph

2014-01-01

Due to their brain damage, aphasic patients with acquired dyslexia often rely to a greater extent on lexical or segmental reading procedures. Thus, therapy intervention is mostly targeted on the more impaired reading strategy. In the present work we introduce a novel therapy approach based on real-time measurement of patients' eye movements as they attempt to read words. More specifically, an eye movement contingent technique of stepwise letter de-masking was used to support sequential reading, whereas fixation-dependent initial masking of non-central letters stimulated a lexical (parallel) reading strategy. Four lexical and four segmental readers with acquired central dyslexia received our intensive reading intervention. All participants showed remarkable improvements as evident in reduced total reading time, a reduced number of fixations per word and improved reading accuracy. Both types of intervention led to item-specific training effects in all subjects. A generalisation to untrained items was only found in segmental readers after the lexical training. Eye movement analyses were also used to compare word processing before and after therapy, indicating that all patients, with one exclusion, maintained their preferred reading strategy. However, in several cases the balance between sequential and lexical processing became less extreme, indicating a more effective individual interplay of both word processing routes.

L2-L1 Translation Priming Effects in a Lexical Decision Task: Evidence From Low Proficient Korean-English Bilinguals

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Yoonhyoung Lee

2018-03-01

Full Text Available One of the key issues in bilingual lexical representation is whether L1 processing is facilitated by L2 words. In this study, we conducted two experiments using the masked priming paradigm to examine how L2-L1 translation priming effects emerge when unbalanced, low proficiency, Korean-English bilinguals performed a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, we used a 150 ms SOA (50 ms prime duration followed by a blank interval of 100 ms and found a significant L2-L1 translation priming effect. In contrast, in Experiment 2, we used a 60 ms SOA (50 ms prime duration followed by a blank interval of 10 ms and found a null effect of L2-L1 translation priming. This finding is the first demonstration of a significant L2-L1 translation priming effect with unbalanced Korean-English bilinguals. Implications of this work are discussed with regard to bilingual word recognition models.

Impact of Text-Mining and Imitating Strategies on Lexical Richness, Lexical Diversity and General Success in Second Language Writing

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Çepni, Sevcan Bayraktar; Demirel, Elif Tokdemir

2016-01-01

This study aimed to find out the impact of "text mining and imitating" strategies on lexical richness, lexical diversity and general success of students in their compositions in second language writing. The participants were 98 students studying their first year in Karadeniz Technical University in English Language and Literature…

Lexical and metaphonological abilities in preschoolers with phonological disorders.

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Costa, Ranilde Cristiane Cavalcante; Avila, Clara Regina Brandão de

2010-01-01

lexical and metaphonological abilities of phonologically disordered preschoolers. to investigate the influence of Phonological Disorder on the lexical and metaphonological abilities of a group of preschoolers and the correlation between them. participants were 56 preschoolers - 32 boys and 24 girls - with ages between 4 years and 6 months and 6 years and 11 months, divided into two different groups: the Research Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with Phonological Disorder, and the Control Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with normal speech and no oral speech-related complaints, paired to the research group by gender and age. All of the participants were initially assessed by the ABFW Test - Phonology. After that, they were assessed on their lexical and metaphonological abilities by the ABFW Test - Vocabulary and phonological awareness test: sequential assessment instrument, CONFIAS - identification tasks and, rhyme and alliteration production, respectively. regarding lexical ability, the preschoolers from both groups presented similar behavior. The disordered preschoolers presented the worst performance on the overall analysis of the metaphonological ability. Age had an influence on the performance of lexical ability for both groups and the metaphonological abilities only for the Control Group. Correlations were identified, mostly positive, good to moderate between lexical and metaphonological abilities. the influence of Phonological Disorder may only be observed on the metaphonological performance. Phonological Disorder did not interfere with the development of the lexical ability of this group of preschoolers. Positive correlations were identified between both abilities in the studied age group.

Using lexical analysis to identify emotional distress in psychometric schizotypy.

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Abplanalp, Samuel J; Buck, Benjamin; Gonzenbach, Virgilio; Janela, Carlos; Lysaker, Paul H; Minor, Kyle S

2017-09-01

Through the use of lexical analysis software, researchers have demonstrated a greater frequency of negative affect word use in those with schizophrenia and schizotypy compared to the general population. In addition, those with schizotypy endorse greater emotional distress than healthy controls. In this study, our aim was to expand on previous findings in schizotypy to determine whether negative affect word use could be linked to emotional distress. Schizotypy (n=33) and non-schizotypy groups (n=33) completed an open-ended, semi-structured interview and negative affect word use was analyzed using a validated lexical analysis instrument. Emotional distress was assessed using subjective questionnaires of depression and psychological quality of life (QOL). When groups were compared, those with schizotypy used significantly more negative affect words; endorsed greater depression; and reported lower QOL. Within schizotypy, a trend level association between depression and negative affect word use was observed; QOL and negative affect word use showed a significant inverse association. Our findings offer preliminary evidence of the potential effectiveness of lexical analysis as an objective, behavior-based method for identifying emotional distress throughout the schizophrenia-spectrum. Utilizing lexical analysis in schizotypy offers promise for providing researchers with an assessment capable of objectively detecting emotional distress. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

What Is Lexical Proficiency? Some Answers from Computational Models of Speech Data

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement. Generally speaking, lexical proficiency comprises breadth of…

Contrasting the effects of duration and number of syllables on the perceptual normalization of lexical tones

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Ciocca, Valter; Francis, Alexander L.; Yau, Teresa S.-K.

2004-05-01

In tonal languages, syllabic fundamental frequency (F0) patterns (``lexical tones'') convey lexical meaning. Listeners need to relate such pitch patterns to the pitch range of a speaker (``tone normalization'') to accurately identify lexical tones. This study investigated the amount of tonal information required to perform tone normalization. A target CV syllable, perceived as either a high level, a low level, or a mid level Cantonese tone, was preceded by a four-syllable carrier sentence whose F0 was shifted (1 semitone), or not shifted. Four conditions were obtained by gating one, two, three, or four syllables from the onset of the target. Presentation rate (normal versus fast) was set such that the duration of the one, two, and three syllable conditions (normal carrier) was equal to that of the two, three, and four syllable conditions (fast carrier). Results suggest that tone normalization is largely accomplished within 250 ms or so prior to target onset, independent of the number of syllables; additional tonal information produces a relatively small increase in tone normalization. Implications for models of lexical tone normalization will be discussed. [Work supported by the RGC of the Hong Kong SAR, Project No. HKU 7193/00H.

Efecto de la riqueza semántica en distintos niveles del procesamiento léxico-semántico (Semantic richness effect at different levels of lexical-semantic processing

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Mauro Fragapane

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Semantic richness is a multidimensional construct that refers to the extent of variability of information associated with the meaning of a word. The Number of Features (NoF is a dimension of semantic richness that has been shown to have a major influence on lexical and semantic processing. Several studies have shown that concepts with a higher NoF allow faster lexical processing than those with a lower NoF. The current study is the first to use a NoF measure based on norms obtained from a sample of Spanish-speaking participants. The aim was to study the effect of this variable in visual word recognition. The sample included 90 young native Spanish-speaking adults. Three tasks were administered that require access to different lexico-semantic levels: lexical decision, concreteness semantic categorization (concrete/abstract, and domain semantic categorization (living/non-living. A semantic richness effect was found in lexical decision and domain semantic categorization tasks, with greater effect in the latter task. Results are interpreted within the framework of the General Domain Interactive Activation model.

LDA boost classification: boosting by topics

Science.gov (United States)

Lei, La; Qiao, Guo; Qimin, Cao; Qitao, Li

2012-12-01

AdaBoost is an efficacious classification algorithm especially in text categorization (TC) tasks. The methodology of setting up a classifier committee and voting on the documents for classification can achieve high categorization precision. However, traditional Vector Space Model can easily lead to the curse of dimensionality and feature sparsity problems; so it affects classification performance seriously. This article proposed a novel classification algorithm called LDABoost based on boosting ideology which uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to modeling the feature space. Instead of using words or phrase, LDABoost use latent topics as the features. In this way, the feature dimension is significantly reduced. Improved Naïve Bayes (NB) is designed as the weaker classifier which keeps the efficiency advantage of classic NB algorithm and has higher precision. Moreover, a two-stage iterative weighted method called Cute Integration in this article is proposed for improving the accuracy by integrating weak classifiers into strong classifier in a more rational way. Mutual Information is used as metrics of weights allocation. The voting information and the categorization decision made by basis classifiers are fully utilized for generating the strong classifier. Experimental results reveals LDABoost making categorization in a low-dimensional space, it has higher accuracy than traditional AdaBoost algorithms and many other classic classification algorithms. Moreover, its runtime consumption is lower than different versions of AdaBoost, TC algorithms based on support vector machine and Neural Networks.

Boost.Unicode

OpenAIRE

Wien, Erik; Gigstad, Lars Erik

2005-01-01

The project has resulted in a Unicode string library for C++ that abstracts away the complexity of working with Unicode text. The idea behind the project originated from the Boost community's developer mailings lists, and is developed with inclusion into the Boost library collection in mind.

Lexical variations in the Bible translations

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Barashkova Daria Sergeyevna

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The paper contains the comparative analysis of the Ostromir Gospels (1056-1057 and the Synodal translation of the Bible in order to identify lexical variations (alternatives. A source of the analysis are identic contexts from the Bible. Besides the author examines the materials of the others Old Slavonic written manuscripts. As a result of the comparative analysis some lexical options reflecting both synonymic and hyper-hyponymic relations and derivational variability were revealed.

Lexical-Semantic Reading in a Shallow Orthography: Evidence from a Girl with Williams Syndrome

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Barca, Laura; Bello, Arianna; Volterra, Virginia; Burani, Cristina

2010-01-01

The reading skills of a girl with Williams Syndrome are assessed by a timed word-naming task. To test the efficiency of lexical and nonlexical reading, we considered four marker effects: Lexicality (better reading of words than nonwords), frequency (better reading of high than low frequency words), length (better reading of short than long words),…

Dual-Coding Theory and Connectionist Lexical Selection

OpenAIRE

Wang, Ye-Yi

1994-01-01

We introduce the bilingual dual-coding theory as a model for bilingual mental representation. Based on this model, lexical selection neural networks are implemented for a connectionist transfer project in machine translation. This lexical selection approach has two advantages. First, it is learnable. Little human effort on knowledge engineering is required. Secondly, it is psycholinguistically well-founded.

Lexical Complexity of Decision-Making Writing Tasks: Form-focused Guided Strategic Planning

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Fatemeh Mahdavirad

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of form-focused guided strategic planning on lexical complexity of learners’ performance in writing tasks. The twenty intermediate level participants of the study performed an unplanned and then a planned decision-making task. In the planned task condition, the participants were provided with form-focused guided strategic planning which contained detailed instructions about how to plan, by being instructed to focus on form. The guidance included an explanation of the necessary structural and lexical patterns employed to express the learners’ views while developing a comparison-and-contrast paragraph in each task. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that the participants produced a written product with a greater lexical complexity in their performance of the task in the form-focused strategic planning condition. The findings emphasize the importance of guided strategic planning as a task condition in syllabus design for task-based language teaching and the necessity of incorporating this task feature for accomplishing lexical complexity in decision-making writing tasks.

An Update on Statistical Boosting in Biomedicine.

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Mayr, Andreas; Hofner, Benjamin; Waldmann, Elisabeth; Hepp, Tobias; Meyer, Sebastian; Gefeller, Olaf

2017-01-01

Statistical boosting algorithms have triggered a lot of research during the last decade. They combine a powerful machine learning approach with classical statistical modelling, offering various practical advantages like automated variable selection and implicit regularization of effect estimates. They are extremely flexible, as the underlying base-learners (regression functions defining the type of effect for the explanatory variables) can be combined with any kind of loss function (target function to be optimized, defining the type of regression setting). In this review article, we highlight the most recent methodological developments on statistical boosting regarding variable selection, functional regression, and advanced time-to-event modelling. Additionally, we provide a short overview on relevant applications of statistical boosting in biomedicine.

The Malay Lexicon Project: a database of lexical statistics for 9,592 words.

Science.gov (United States)

Yap, Melvin J; Liow, Susan J Rickard; Jalil, Sajlia Binte; Faizal, Siti Syuhada Binte

2010-11-01

Malay, a language spoken by 250 million people, has a shallow alphabetic orthography, simple syllable structures, and transparent affixation--characteristics that contrast sharply with those of English. In the present article, we first compare the letter-phoneme and letter-syllable ratios for a sample of alphabetic orthographies to highlight the importance of separating language-specific from language-universal reading processes. Then, in order to develop a better understanding of word recognition in orthographies with more consistent mappings to phonology than English, we compiled a database of lexical variables (letter length, syllable length, phoneme length, morpheme length, word frequency, orthographic and phonological neighborhood sizes, and orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distances) for 9,592 Malay words. Separate hierarchical regression analyses for Malay and English revealed how the consistency of orthography-phonology mappings selectively modulates the effects of different lexical variables on lexical decision and speeded pronunciation performance. The database of lexical and behavioral measures for Malay is available at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Tune in to the Tone: Lexical Tone Identification is Associated with Vocabulary and Word Recognition Abilities in Young Chinese Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Tong, Xiuli; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2015-12-01

Lexical tone is one of the most prominent features in the phonological representation of words in Chinese. However, little, if any, research to date has directly evaluated how young Chinese children's lexical tone identification skills contribute to vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. The present study distinguished lexical tones from segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness in order to estimate the unique contribution of lexical tone in early vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. A sample of 199 Cantonese children aged 5-6 years was assessed on measures of lexical tone identification, segmental phonological awareness, morphological awareness, nonverbal ability, vocabulary knowledge, and Chinese character recognition. It was found that lexical tone awareness and morphological awareness were both associated with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition. However, there was a significant relationship between lexical tone awareness and both vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, even after controlling for the effects of age, nonverbal ability, segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness. These findings suggest that lexical tone is a key factor accounting for individual variance in young children's lexical acquisition in Chinese, and that lexical tone should be considered in understanding how children learn new Chinese vocabulary words, in either oral or written forms.

Giving top quark effective operators a boost

CERN Document Server

Englert, Christoph

2016-01-01

We investigate the prospects to systematically improve generic effective field theory-based searches for new physics in the top sector during LHC run 2 as well as the high luminosity phase. In particular, we assess the benefits of high momentum transfer final states on top EFT-fit as a function of systematic uncertainties in comparison with sensitivity expected from fully-resolved analyses focusing on $t\\bar t$ production. We find that constraints are typically driven by fully-resolved selections, while boosted top quarks can serve to break degeneracies in the global fit. This demystifies and clarifies the importance of high momentum transfer final states for global fits to new interactions in the top sector from direct measurements.

Visual Word Recognition in Deaf Readers: Lexicality Is Modulated by Communication Mode

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects. PMID:23554976

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

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Laura Barca

Full Text Available Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Extensive Reading in Enhancing Lexical Chunks Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Pereyra, Nilsa

2015-01-01

The purpose of this action research was to investigate the effect of extensive reading and related activities on the acquisition of lexical chunks in EFL students. Seven adult EFL learners with an Intermediate level volunteered to take part in the 16 week project following Extensive Reading principles combined with tasks based on the Lexical…

The simultaneous boost technique

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lebesque, J.V.; Keus, R.B.

1991-01-01

Simultaneous boost technique in radiotherapy consists of delivering the boost treatment (additional doses to reduced volumes) simultaneously with the basic (large-field) treatment for all treatment sessions. Both the dose per fraction delivered by basic-treatment fields and by boost-treatment fields have to be reduced to end up with the same total dose in boost volume as in the original schedule, where basic treatment preceded boost treatment. These dose reductions and corresponding weighting factors have been calculated using the linear-quadratic (LQ) model and the concept of Normalized Total Dose (NTD). Relative NTD distributions were computed to evaluate the dose distributions resulting for the simultaneous boost technique with respect to acute and late normal tissue damage and tumor control. For the example of treatment of prostate cancer the weighting factors were calculated on basis of NTD for late normal tissue damage. For treatment of oropharyngeal cancer NTD for acute and normal tissue damage was used to determine the weighting factors. In this last example a theoretical sparing of late normal tissue damage can be demonstrated. Another advantage of simultaneous boost technique is that megavoltage images of the large basic-treatment fields facilitates the determination of the position of the patient with respect to the small boost-treatment fields. (author). 42 refs., 8 figs

Lexical Sentiment Analysis in Slovenian Texts

OpenAIRE

VOLČANŠEK, MATEJA

2015-01-01

The goal of this thesis is to create a sentiment dictionary for the Slovenian language which can be used in lexical methods for automatic sentiment analysis. We start from a sentiment dictionary for the English language, translate it semi-automatically to Slovenian and curate its content. We test the performance of using the translated dictionary for automated lexical sentiment analysis on a corpus of 5000 manually annotated Slovenian news articles gathered from the main Slovenian news por...

Effects of lexical characteristics and demographic factors on mandarin chinese open-set word recognition in children with cochlear implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Haihong; Liu, Sha; Wang, Suju; Liu, Chang; Kong, Ying; Zhang, Ning; Li, Shujing; Yang, Yilin; Han, Demin; Zhang, Luo

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the open-set word recognition performance of Mandarin Chinese-speaking children who had received a multichannel cochlear implant (CI) and examine the effects of lexical characteristics and demographic factors (i.e., age at implantation and duration of implant use) on Mandarin Chinese open-set word recognition in these children. Participants were 230 prelingually deafened children with CIs. Age at implantation ranged from 0.9 to 16.0 years, with a mean of 3.9 years. The Standard-Chinese version of the Monosyllabic Lexical Neighborhood test and the Multisyllabic Lexical Neighborhood test were used to evaluate the open-set word identification abilities of the children. A two-way analysis of variance was performed to delineate the lexical effects on the open-set word identification, with word difficulty and syllable length as the two main factors. The effects of age at implantation and duration of implant use on open-set, word-recognition performance were examined using correlational/regressional models. First, the average percent-correct scores for the disyllabic "easy" list, disyllabic "hard" list, monosyllabic "easy" list, and monosyllabic "hard" list were 65.0%, 51.3%, 58.9%, and 46.2%, respectively. For both the easy and hard lists, the percentage of words correctly identified was higher for disyllabic words than for monosyllabic words, Second, the CI group scored 26.3%, 31.3%, and 18.8 % points lower than their hearing-age-matched normal-hearing peers for 4, 5, and 6 years of hearing age, respectively. The corresponding gaps between the CI group and the chronological-age-matched normal-hearing group were 47.6, 49.6, and 42.4, respectively. The individual variations in performance were much greater in the CI group than in the normal-hearing group, Third, the children exhibited steady improvements in performance as the duration of implant use increased, especially 1 to 6 years postimplantation. Last, age at implantation had

Flexible recruitment of semantic richness: Context modulates body-object interaction effects in lexical-semantic processing

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Cody eTousignant

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Body-object interaction (BOI is a semantic richness variable that measures the perceived ease with which the human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Lexical and semantic processing is facilitated when words are associated with relatively more bodily experience (high BOI words, e.g., belt. To date, BOI effects have been examined in only one semantic decision context (is it imageable?. It has been argued that semantic processing is dynamic and can be modulated by context. We examined these influences by testing how task knowledge modulated BOI effects. We presented the same stimuli (high- and low-BOI entity words and a set of action words in each of four action/entity semantic categorization tasks (SCTs. Task framing was manipulated: participants were told about one (actions or entities or both (actions and entities categories of words in the decision task. Facilitatory BOI effects were observed when participants knew that ‘entity’ was part of the decision category, regardless of whether the high- and low-BOI entity words appeared on the affirmative or negative side of the decision. That BOI information was only useful when participants had expectations that object words would be presented suggests a strong role for the decision context in lexical-semantic processing, and supports a dynamic view of conceptual knowledge.

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

周倩

2015-01-01

This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combination of diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

周倩

2015-01-01

[ABSTRACT]This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combinationof diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

Effective local control of vertebral metastases by simultaneous integrated boost radiotherapy. Preliminary results

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lubgan, Dorota; Ziegaus, Anke; Semrau, Sabine; Lambrecht, Ulrike; Lettmaier, Sebastian; Fietkau, Rainer [Erlangen University Hospital, Department of Radiation Oncology, Erlangen (Germany)

2014-11-14

The primary endpoint was to improve local tumour control of patients with metastatic spinal tumours by stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) and dose escalation by simultaneous, integrated boost (PTV-boost). We used a whole vertebral body (PTV-elective) contouring approach. Secondary endpoints were severity of acute and chronic adverse effects and overall survival. In all, 33 patients with metastases of the vertebral column were treated at Erlangen University Hospital. SBRT was given in 12 or 10 fractions. The metastatic lesion (PTV-boost) received 3.6 Gy (range 3.0-4.51 Gy) per fraction for a total of 42.0 Gy (24.36-48.0 Gy) and the whole vertebra (PTV-elective) received 2.85 Gy (range 1.8-3.6 Gy) per fraction for a total of 32.39 Gy (range 21.60-38.0 Gy). Patients were followed up every 3 months. Local control rate of all patients was 93 % at 12 and 24 months. The overall survival rate was 54 % at 12 months, 38 % at 24 months and 18 % at 36 months. No radiation myelopathy occurred. The most frequently observed adverse events in 3 cases was oesophagitis grade 2. SBRT with simultaneous, integrated boost was associated with excellent local control of 93 % after 24 months. This result shows the possibility of delivering escalated doses to the target while still keeping the incidence of side effects low. This study forms the basis for a future randomised controlled trial comparing conventional radiotherapy (10 fractions of 3 Gy) with hypofractionated dose intensified SBRT (12 fractions of 3 Gy + integrated boost 12 fractions of 4 Gy) for improvement of local tumour control and pain. (orig.) [German] Das primaere Ziel der Studie war die Verbesserung der lokalen Tumorkontrolle von Patienten mit Wirbelkoerpermetastasen mittels stereotaktischer Radiotherapie (SBRT) mit Dosiseskalation durch einen simultan integrierten Boost (PTV-Boost). Dabei wurde der ganze Wirbelkoerper konturiert (PTV-Elektive). Zu den sekundaeren Endpunkten der Studie gehoerten der Schweregrad von

Investigating lexical competition and the cost of phonemic restoration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-01-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced...... phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration......, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant...

Investigating Lexical Competition and the Cost of Phonemic Restoration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-01-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced...... phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration......, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant...

Lexical gaps and morphological decomposition: Evidence from German.

Science.gov (United States)

Schuster, Swetlana; Lahiri, Aditi

2018-04-26

On the evidence of four lexical-decision tasks in German, we examine speakers' sensitivity to internal morphological composition and abstract morphological rules during the processing of derived words, real and novel. In a lexical-decision task with delayed priming, speakers were presented with two-step derived nouns such as Heilung "healing" derived from the adjective heil "intact" via the verb heilen "to heal." These were compared with two sets of derived novel words, one with and the other without an intermediate verb; for example, *Spitzung "sharpening" from spitz "sharp" via spitzen "sharpen" (Experiment 1) and *Hübschung "beautifying" from hübsch "pretty" via *hübschen "beautify" (Experiment 2). The question was whether there would be a difference between the two types of novel words. Both sets were morphologically viable in terms of combinatory possibilities. Results indicated that extant and novel complex words activated their respective base forms; that is, Heilung, *Spitzung, *Hübschung all primed heil, spitz, hübsch. Both sets of novel words were then combined in a third (delayed priming) experiment, where again they primed their bases, but were nevertheless significantly different from each other. Items with real words in the intermediate position (*Spitzung) showed stronger priming effects. Controls that were only related in form or semantics did not prime; neither did structurally unviable pseudowords show priming. A final experiment (Experiment 4), comparing the two types of novel words (*Spitzung vs. *Hübschung) in a simple lexical-decision task, also revealed significant differences across these sets, suggesting that the lexical status of the intermediate derivation affects the processing of novel forms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Sonority's Effect as a Surface Cue on Lexical Speech Perception of Children With Cochlear Implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Hamza, Yasmeen; Okalidou, Areti; Kyriafinis, George; van Wieringen, Astrid

2018-03-06

Sonority is the relative perceptual prominence/loudness of speech sounds of the same length, stress, and pitch. Children with cochlear implants (CIs), with restored audibility and relatively intact temporal processing, are expected to benefit from the perceptual prominence cues of highly sonorous sounds. Sonority also influences lexical access through the sonority-sequencing principle (SSP), a grammatical phonotactic rule, which facilitates the recognition and segmentation of syllables within speech. The more nonsonorous the onset of a syllable is, the larger is the degree of sonority rise to the nucleus, and the more optimal the SSP. Children with CIs may experience hindered or delayed development of the language-learning rule SSP, as a result of their deprived/degraded auditory experience. The purpose of the study was to explore sonority's role in speech perception and lexical access of prelingually deafened children with CIs. A case-control study with 15 children with CIs, 25 normal-hearing children (NHC), and 50 normal-hearing adults was conducted, using a lexical identification task of novel, nonreal CV-CV words taught via fast mapping. The CV-CV words were constructed according to four sonority conditions, entailing syllables with sonorous onsets/less optimal SSP (SS) and nonsonorous onsets/optimal SSP (NS) in all combinations, that is, SS-SS, SS-NS, NS-SS, and NS-NS. Outcome measures were accuracy and reaction times (RTs). A subgroup analysis of 12 children with CIs pair matched to 12 NHC on hearing age aimed to study the effect of oral-language exposure period on the sonority-related performance. The children groups showed similar accuracy performance, overall and across all the sonority conditions. However, within-group comparisons showed that the children with CIs scored more accurately on the SS-SS condition relative to the NS-NS and NS-SS conditions, while the NHC performed equally well across all conditions. Additionally, adult-comparable accuracy

COLLOCATION PHRASES IN RELATION TO OTHER LEXICAL PHRASES IN CROATIAN

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Goranka Blagus Bartolec

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes the semantic and lexicological aspects of collocation phrases in Croatian with tendency to separate them from other lexical phrases in Croatian (terms, idioms, names. The collocation phrase is defined as a special lexical phrase on a syntagmatic level, based on the semantic correlation of the two individual lexical components in which their meanings are specified.

Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words

OpenAIRE

Vejdemo, Susanne; H?rberg, Thomas

2016-01-01

The rate of lexical replacement estimates the diachronic stability of word forms on the basis of how frequently a proto-language word is replaced or retained in its daughter languages. Lexical replacement rate has been shown to be highly related to word class and word frequency. In this paper, we argue that content words and function words behave differently with respect to lexical replacement rate, and we show that semantic factors predict the lexical replacement rate of content words. For t...

Evidence accumulation as a model for lexical selection.

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Anders, R; Riès, S; van Maanen, L; Alario, F X

2015-11-01

We propose and demonstrate evidence accumulation as a plausible theoretical and/or empirical model for the lexical selection process of lexical retrieval. A number of current psycholinguistic theories consider lexical selection as a process related to selecting a lexical target from a number of alternatives, which each have varying activations (or signal supports), that are largely resultant of an initial stimulus recognition. We thoroughly present a case for how such a process may be theoretically explained by the evidence accumulation paradigm, and we demonstrate how this paradigm can be directly related or combined with conventional psycholinguistic theory and their simulatory instantiations (generally, neural network models). Then with a demonstrative application on a large new real data set, we establish how the empirical evidence accumulation approach is able to provide parameter results that are informative to leading psycholinguistic theory, and that motivate future theoretical development. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Boost.Asio C++ network programming

CERN Document Server

Torjo, John

2013-01-01

What you want is an easy level of abstraction, which is just what this book provides in conjunction with Boost.Asio. Switching to Boost.Asio is just a few extra #include directives away, with the help of this practical and engaging guide.This book is great for developers that need to do network programming, who don't want to delve into the complicated issues of a raw networking API. You should be familiar with core Boost concepts, such as smart pointers and shared_from_this, resource classes (noncopyable), functors and boost::bind, boost mutexes, and the boost date/time library. Readers should

Competitive dynamics of lexical innovations in multi-layer networks

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Javarone, Marco Alberto

2014-04-01

We study the introduction of lexical innovations into a community of language users. Lexical innovations, i.e. new term added to people's vocabulary, plays an important role in the process of language evolution. Nowadays, information is spread through a variety of networks, including, among others, online and offline social networks and the World Wide Web. The entire system, comprising networks of different nature, can be represented as a multi-layer network. In this context, lexical innovations diffusion occurs in a peculiar fashion. In particular, a lexical innovation can undergo three different processes: its original meaning is accepted; its meaning can be changed or misunderstood (e.g. when not properly explained), hence more than one meaning can emerge in the population. Lastly, in the case of a loan word, it can be translated into the population language (i.e. defining a new lexical innovation or using a synonym) or into a dialect spoken by part of the population. Therefore, lexical innovations cannot be considered simply as information. We develop a model for analyzing this scenario using a multi-layer network comprising a social network and a media network. The latter represents the set of all information systems of a society, e.g. television, the World Wide Web and radio. Furthermore, we identify temporal directed edges between the nodes of these two networks. In particular, at each time-step, nodes of the media network can be connected to randomly chosen nodes of the social network and vice versa. In doing so, information spreads through the whole system and people can share a lexical innovation with their neighbors or, in the event they work as reporters, by using media nodes. Lastly, we use the concept of "linguistic sign" to model lexical innovations, showing its fundamental role in the study of these dynamics. Many numerical simulations have been performed to analyze the proposed model and its outcomes.

An Update on Statistical Boosting in Biomedicine

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Andreas Mayr

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Statistical boosting algorithms have triggered a lot of research during the last decade. They combine a powerful machine learning approach with classical statistical modelling, offering various practical advantages like automated variable selection and implicit regularization of effect estimates. They are extremely flexible, as the underlying base-learners (regression functions defining the type of effect for the explanatory variables can be combined with any kind of loss function (target function to be optimized, defining the type of regression setting. In this review article, we highlight the most recent methodological developments on statistical boosting regarding variable selection, functional regression, and advanced time-to-event modelling. Additionally, we provide a short overview on relevant applications of statistical boosting in biomedicine.

Boosting foundations and algorithms

CERN Document Server

Schapire, Robert E

2012-01-01

Boosting is an approach to machine learning based on the idea of creating a highly accurate predictor by combining many weak and inaccurate "rules of thumb." A remarkably rich theory has evolved around boosting, with connections to a range of topics, including statistics, game theory, convex optimization, and information geometry. Boosting algorithms have also enjoyed practical success in such fields as biology, vision, and speech processing. At various times in its history, boosting has been perceived as mysterious, controversial, even paradoxical.

Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children's Lexical Processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Inkster, Michelle; Wellsby, Michele; Lloyd, Ellen; Pexman, Penny M

2016-01-01

Previous research showed an effect of words' rated body-object interaction (BOI) in children's visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (Wellsby and Pexman, 2014a). In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children's BOI experience (child-BOI). We examined effects of words' child-BOI and also words' imageability on children's responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6-7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children's auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.

Effect of Subliminal Lexical Priming on the Subjective Perception of Images: A Machine Learning Approach

OpenAIRE

Mohan, Dhanya Menoth; Kumar, Parmod; Mahmood, Faisal; Wong, Kian Foong; Agrawal, Abhishek; Elgendi, Mohamed; Shukla, Rohit; Ang, Natania; Ching, April; Dauwels, Justin; Chan, Alice H. D.

2016-01-01

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of subliminal priming in terms of the perception of images influenced by words with positive, negative, and neutral emotional content, through electroencephalograms (EEGs). Participants were instructed to rate how much they like the stimuli images, on a 7-point Likert scale, after being subliminally exposed to masked lexical prime words that exhibit positive, negative, and neutral connotations with respect to the images. Simultaneously, the EE...

The effect of word length and other sublexical, lexical, and semantic variables on developmental reading deficits.

Science.gov (United States)

De Luca, Maria; Barca, Laura; Burani, Cristina; Zoccolotti, Pierluigi

2008-12-01

To examine the effect of word length and several sublexical, and lexico-semantic variables on the reading of Italian children with a developmental reading deficit. Previous studies indicated the role of word length in transparent orthographies. However, several factors that may interact with word length were not controlled for. Seventeen impaired and 34 skilled sixth-grade readers were presented words of different lengths, matched for initial phoneme, bigram frequency, word frequency, age of acquisition, and imageability. Participants were asked to read aloud, as quickly and as accurately as possible. Reaction times at the onset of pronunciation and mispronunciations were recorded. Impaired readers' reaction times indicated a marked effect of word length; in skilled readers, there was no length effect for short words but, rather, a monotonic increase from 6-letter words on. Regression analyses confirmed the role of word length and indicated the influence of word frequency (similar in impaired and skilled readers). No other variables predicted reading latencies. Word length differentially influenced word recognition in impaired versus skilled readers, irrespective of the action of (potentially interfering) sublexical, lexical, and semantic variables. It is proposed that the locus of the length effect is at a perceptual level of analysis. The independent influence of word frequency on the reading performance of both groups of participants indicates the sparing of lexical activation in impaired readers.

Early lexical and phonological acquisition and its relationships.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Nóro, Letícia Arruda; Mota, Helena Bolli

2014-01-01

Verifying likely relationships between lexical and phonological development of children aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, who were enrolled in public kindergarten schools of Santa Maria (RS). The sample consisted of 18 children of both genders, with typical language development and aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, separated in three age subgroups. Visual recordings of spontaneous speech of each child were collected and then lexical analysis regarding the types of the said lexical items and phonological assessment were performed. The number of sounds acquired and partially acquired were counted together, and the 19 sounds and two all phones of Brazilian Portuguese were considered. To the statistical analysis, the tests of Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon were used, with significance level of prelace_LT0.05. When compared the means relating to the acquired sounds and mean of the acquired and partially acquired sounds percentages, there was difference between the first and the second age subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup. In the comparison of the said lexical items means among the age subgroups, there was difference between the first and the second subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup again. In the comparison between the said lexical items and acquired and partially acquired sounds in each age subgroup, there was difference only in the age subgroup of 1 year and 8 months to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, in which the sounds highlighted. The phonological and lexical domains develop as a growing process and influence each other. The Phonology has a little advantage.

Diet-boosting foods

Science.gov (United States)

Obesity - diet-boosting foods; Overweight - diet-boosting foods ... Low-fat and nonfat milk, yogurt, and cottage cheese are healthy sources of calcium, vitamin D , and potassium. Unlike sweetened drinks with extra calories, milk ...

Lexical Modernization in Nepali: A Study of Borrowing.

Science.gov (United States)

Acharya, Jayaraj

1990-01-01

Focuses on the controversy among Nepali language specialists over the sources of lexical borrowing in Nepali. Lexical items currently are borrowed from both English and Sanskrit, and also Hindi/Urdu, Persian and Arabic. After reviewing Nepali history and language, the question of borrowing from different sources within different domains of…

Metrical expectations from preceding prosody influence perception of lexical stress.

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Brown, Meredith; Salverda, Anne Pier; Dilley, Laura C; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2015-04-01

Two visual-world experiments tested the hypothesis that expectations based on preceding prosody influence the perception of suprasegmental cues to lexical stress. The results demonstrate that listeners' consideration of competing alternatives with different stress patterns (e.g., 'jury/gi'raffe) can be influenced by the fundamental frequency and syllable timing patterns across material preceding a target word. When preceding stressed syllables distal to the target word shared pitch and timing characteristics with the first syllable of the target word, pictures of alternatives with primary lexical stress on the first syllable (e.g., jury) initially attracted more looks than alternatives with unstressed initial syllables (e.g., giraffe). This effect was modulated when preceding unstressed syllables had pitch and timing characteristics similar to the initial syllable of the target word, with more looks to alternatives with unstressed initial syllables (e.g., giraffe) than to those with stressed initial syllables (e.g., jury). These findings suggest that expectations about the acoustic realization of upcoming speech include information about metrical organization and lexical stress and that these expectations constrain the initial interpretation of suprasegmental stress cues. These distal prosody effects implicate online probabilistic inferences about the sources of acoustic-phonetic variation during spoken-word recognition. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Policy for the treatment of insulting and sensitive lexical items in the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Keywords: policy, treatment, insulting lexical items, sensitive lexical items, dictionary, woordeboek van die afrikaanse taal, simplexes, compounds, expressions, general usage criterion, labelling, synonyms, metalanguage, collocations, editorial usage examples, citations, advisors, racist lexical items, neutral lemmas, ...

Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms.

Science.gov (United States)

Gibbs, R W; Nayak, N P; Bolton, J L; Keppel, M E

1989-01-01

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.

Contrasting effects of self-schema priming on lexical decisions and interpersonal stroop task performance: evidence for a cognitive/interactionist model of interpersonal dependency.

Science.gov (United States)

Bornstein, Robert F; Ng, H Mei; Gallagher, Heather A; Kloss, Deanna M; Regier, Natalie G

2005-06-01

Four experiments tested a key tenet of Bornstein's (1992, 1993) cognitive/interactionist (C/I) model of interpersonal dependency: that priming the helpless self-schema (HSS) alters processing of dependency-related information in dependent--but not nondependent--individuals. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of subliminal lexical priming and an emotional priming manipulation on lexical decision (LD) judgments for dependency-related words and control words. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the effects of these same priming procedures on Interpersonal Stroop Task (IST) performance. As predicted, priming the HSS produced contrasting effects on different outcome measures, decreasing LD latencies, but increasing IST response times. Results are discussed in the context of the C/I model, and suggestions for future studies are offered.

The naming of gender-marked pronouns supports interactivity in models of lexical access

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Albert Costa

2009-01-01

Full Text Available When a speaker names an object using a gender-marked pronominal form, the referent word corresponding to the target object has to be selected in order to access the grammatical gender. By contrast, the phonological content of the referent word is not needed. In two picture-naming interference experiments we explored whether the lexical selection of a referent word is affected by its phonological properties. In Experiment 1, Spanish participants named pictures using a sentence with a noun or a pronoun while ignoring words semantically or phonologically related. The results showed a semantic interference effect and a Phonological Facilitation Effect (PFE in both type of utterances. In Experiment 2 the PFE was replicated with Italian participants in a different pronominal utterance. The PFE suggests that the lexical selection of the referent word is facilitated by the presentation of a distractor word phonologically related. These findings are consistent with the predictions of interactive models of lexical access.

Selected Lexical Patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Lesa; Palmer, Jeffrey Levi; Reynolds, Wanette

2012-01-01

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and…

Clear speech and lexical competition in younger and older adult listeners.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Engen, Kristin J

2017-08-01

This study investigated whether clear speech reduces the cognitive demands of lexical competition by crossing speaking style with lexical difficulty. Younger and older adults identified more words in clear versus conversational speech and more easy words than hard words. An initial analysis suggested that the effect of lexical difficulty was reduced in clear speech, but more detailed analyses within each age group showed this interaction was significant only for older adults. The results also showed that both groups improved over the course of the task and that clear speech was particularly helpful for individuals with poorer hearing: for younger adults, clear speech eliminated hearing-related differences that affected performance on conversational speech. For older adults, clear speech was generally more helpful to listeners with poorer hearing. These results suggest that clear speech affords perceptual benefits to all listeners and, for older adults, mitigates the cognitive challenge associated with identifying words with many phonological neighbors.

Robust boosting via convex optimization

Science.gov (United States)

Rätsch, Gunnar

2001-12-01

In this work we consider statistical learning problems. A learning machine aims to extract information from a set of training examples such that it is able to predict the associated label on unseen examples. We consider the case where the resulting classification or regression rule is a combination of simple rules - also called base hypotheses. The so-called boosting algorithms iteratively find a weighted linear combination of base hypotheses that predict well on unseen data. We address the following issues: o The statistical learning theory framework for analyzing boosting methods. We study learning theoretic guarantees on the prediction performance on unseen examples. Recently, large margin classification techniques emerged as a practical result of the theory of generalization, in particular Boosting and Support Vector Machines. A large margin implies a good generalization performance. Hence, we analyze how large the margins in boosting are and find an improved algorithm that is able to generate the maximum margin solution. o How can boosting methods be related to mathematical optimization techniques? To analyze the properties of the resulting classification or regression rule, it is of high importance to understand whether and under which conditions boosting converges. We show that boosting can be used to solve large scale constrained optimization problems, whose solutions are well characterizable. To show this, we relate boosting methods to methods known from mathematical optimization, and derive convergence guarantees for a quite general family of boosting algorithms. o How to make Boosting noise robust? One of the problems of current boosting techniques is that they are sensitive to noise in the training sample. In order to make boosting robust, we transfer the soft margin idea from support vector learning to boosting. We develop theoretically motivated regularized algorithms that exhibit a high noise robustness. o How to adapt boosting to regression problems

Portuguese Lexical Clusters and CVC Sequences in Speech Perception and Production.

Science.gov (United States)

Cunha, Conceição

2015-01-01

This paper investigates similarities between lexical consonant clusters and CVC sequences differing in the presence or absence of a lexical vowel in speech perception and production in two Portuguese varieties. The frequent high vowel deletion in the European variety (EP) and the realization of intervening vocalic elements between lexical clusters in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) may minimize the contrast between lexical clusters and CVC sequences in the two Portuguese varieties. In order to test this hypothesis we present a perception experiment with 72 participants and a physiological analysis of 3-dimensional movement data from 5 EP and 4 BP speakers. The perceptual results confirmed a gradual confusion of lexical clusters and CVC sequences in EP, which corresponded roughly to the gradient consonantal overlap found in production. © 2015 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Morphological Cues for Lexical Semantics

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Light, Marc

1996-01-01

Most natural language processing tasks require lexical semantic information such as verbal argument structure and selectional restrictions, corresponding nominal semantic class, verbal aspectual class...

Effects of Emotional Experience in Lexical Decision

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Paul D Siakaluk

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Previous research has examined the effects of emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotion information in semantic categorization, word naming, and Stroop tasks (Moffat, Siakaluk, Sidhu, & Pexman, 2015; Newcombe, Campbell, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2012; Siakaluk, Knol, & Pexman, 2014. However, to date there are no published reports on whether emotional experience influences performance in the lexical decision task (LDT. In the present study, we examined the influence of emotional experience in LDT using three different stimulus sets. In Experiment 1 we used a stimulus set used by both Kousta, Vinson, and Vigliocco (2009; Experiment 1 and Yap and Seow (2014 that is comprised of 40 negative, 40 positive, and 40 neutral words; in Experiment 2 we used a stimulus set comprised of 150 abstract nouns; and in Experiment 3 we used a stimulus set comprised of 373 verbs. We observed facilitatory effects of emotional experience in each of the three experiments, such that words with higher emotional experience ratings were associated with faster response latencies. These results are important because the influence of emotional experience: (a is observed in stimulus sets comprised of different types of words, demonstrating the generalizability of the effect in LDT; (b accounts for LDT response latency variability above and beyond the influences of valence and arousal, and is thus a robust dimension of conceptual knowledge; (c suggests that a richer representation of emotional experience provides more reliable evidence that a stimulus is a word, which facilitates responding in LDT; and (d is consistent with grounded cognition frameworks that propose that emotion information may be grounded in bodily experience with the world (Barsalou, 2003, 2009; Vigliocco, Meteyard, Andrews, & Kousta, 2009.

Differential lexical predictors of reading comprehension in fourth graders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swart, N.M.; Muijselaar, M.M.L.; Steenbeek-Planting, E.G.; Droop, M.; de Jong, P.F.; Verhoeven, L.

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical

Lexical Borrowings in the ESL Classrooms in Malaysia

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Thirusanku, Jantmary; Yunus, Melor Md

2013-01-01

This paper attempts to show the use of lexical borrowings in ten teaching materials used by the English as Second Language (ESL) teachers in the ESL classrooms in the National Secondary Schools in the Klang district in Selangor, Malaysia. It also discusses the general and pedagogical implications involved in using lexical borrowings. This paper…

Evidence for the Modulation of Sub-Lexical Processing in Go No-Go Naming: The Elimination of the Frequency x Regularity Interaction

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Cummine, Jacqueline; Amyotte, Josee; Pancheshen, Brent; Chouinard, Brea

2011-01-01

The Frequency (high vs. low) x Regularity (regular vs. exception) interaction found on naming response times is often taken as evidence for parallel processing of sub-lexical and lexical systems. Using a Go/No-go naming task, we investigated the effect of nonword versus pseudohomophone foils on sub-lexical processing and the subsequent Frequency x…

LEXICAL ANALYSIS OF THE VERB COOK AND LEARNING VOCABULARY: A CORPUS STUDY

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Priyono Priyono

2011-07-01

Full Text Available English verbs have built-in properties that determine how they behave syntactically and generate appropriate meaning associated. With these inherent properties some verbs can fill in only in certain syntactic structures and some in others. The observation of the verb COOK using English corpus has revealed its lexical properties covering the area of syntax, semantics, and collocation suggesting uniqueness of its behaviours that are distinguishable from other verbs. Having found the lexical properties of COOK, this article concludes that the acquisition of lexicon should include lexical properties that reflect their level of competence. It also argues that the acquisition of lexical properties should be implicit, not through meta-linguistic knowledge. This would render early grammar teaching unnecessary. The acquisition of lexical properties should take place through subconscious process, not explicit grammar instruction. Many of these are grammatical aspects such as word order, sentence construction, grammatical and lexical collocations.

Where Is the Beat? The Neural Correlates of Lexical Stress and Rhythmical Well-formedness in Auditory Story Comprehension.

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Kandylaki, Katerina D; Henrich, Karen; Nagels, Arne; Kircher, Tilo; Domahs, Ulrike; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina; Wiese, Richard

2017-07-01

While listening to continuous speech, humans process beat information to correctly identify word boundaries. The beats of language are stress patterns that are created by combining lexical (word-specific) stress patterns and the rhythm of a specific language. Sometimes, the lexical stress pattern needs to be altered to obey the rhythm of the language. This study investigated the interplay of lexical stress patterns and rhythmical well-formedness in natural speech with fMRI. Previous electrophysiological studies on cases in which a regular lexical stress pattern may be altered to obtain rhythmical well-formedness showed that even subtle rhythmic deviations are detected by the brain if attention is directed toward prosody. Here, we present a new approach to this phenomenon by having participants listen to contextually rich stories in the absence of a task targeting the manipulation. For the interaction of lexical stress and rhythmical well-formedness, we found one suprathreshold cluster localized between the cerebellum and the brain stem. For the main effect of lexical stress, we found higher BOLD responses to the retained lexical stress pattern in the bilateral SMA, bilateral postcentral gyrus, bilateral middle fontal gyrus, bilateral inferior and right superior parietal lobule, and right precuneus. These results support the view that lexical stress is processed as part of a sensorimotor network of speech comprehension. Moreover, our results connect beat processing in language to domain-independent timing perception.

Probabilistic lexical generalization for French dependency parsing

OpenAIRE

Henestroza Anguiano , Enrique; Candito , Marie

2012-01-01

International audience; This paper investigates the impact on French dependency parsing of lexical generalization methods beyond lemmatization and morphological analysis. A distributional thesaurus is created from a large text corpus and used for distributional clustering and WordNet automatic sense ranking. The standard approach for lexical generalization in parsing is to map a word to a single generalized class, either replacing the word with the class or adding a new feature for the class....

The unique role of lexical accessibility in predicting kindergarten emergent literacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Verhoeven, Ludo; van Leeuwe, Jan; Irausquin, Rosemarie; Segers, Eliane

The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine how lexical quality predicts the emergence of literacy abilities in 169 Dutch kindergarten children before formal reading instruction has started. At the beginning of the school year, a battery of precursor measures associated with lexical quality was related to the emergence of letter knowledge and word decoding. Confirmatory factor analysis evidenced five domains related to lexical quality, i.e., vocabulary, phonological coding, phonological awareness, lexical retrieval and phonological working memory. Structural equation modeling showed that the development of letter knowledge during the year could be predicted from children's phonological awareness and lexical retrieval, and the emergence of word decoding from their phonological awareness and letter knowledge. It is concluded that it is primarily the accessibility of phonological representations in the mental lexicon that predicts the emergence of literacy in kindergarten.

Effects of hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space on the modeling of plasma accelerators in a Lorentz boosted frame

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vay, J.-L.; Geddes, C. G. R.; Cormier-Michel, E.; Grote, D. P.

2011-01-01

The effects of hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space resulting from the use of Lorentz boosted frames of calculation on laser propagation in plasmas are analyzed. Selection of a boost frame at the laser group velocity is shown to alter the laser spectrum, allowing the use of higher boost velocities. The technique is applied to simulations of laser driven plasma wakefield accelerators, which promise much smaller machines and whose development requires detailed simulations that challenge or exceed current capabilities. Speedups approaching the theoretical optima are demonstrated, producing the first direct simulations of stages up to 1 TeV. This is made possible by a million times speedup thanks to a frame boost with a relativistic factor γ b as high as 1300, taking advantage of the rotation to mitigate an instability that limited previous work.

Standard-Chinese Lexical Neighborhood Test in normal-hearing young children.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Chang; Liu, Sha; Zhang, Ning; Yang, Yilin; Kong, Ying; Zhang, Luo

2011-06-01

The purposes of the present study were to establish the Standard-Chinese version of Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) and to examine the lexical and age effects on spoken-word recognition in normal-hearing children. Six lists of monosyllabic and six lists of disyllabic words (20 words/list) were selected from the database of daily speech materials for normal-hearing (NH) children of ages 3-5 years. The lists were further divided into "easy" and "hard" halves according to the word frequency and neighborhood density in the database based on the theory of Neighborhood Activation Model (NAM). Ninety-six NH children (age ranged between 4.0 and 7.0 years) were divided into three different age groups of 1-year intervals. Speech-perception tests were conducted using the Standard-Chinese monosyllabic and disyllabic LNT. The inter-list performance was found to be equivalent and inter-rater reliability was high with 92.5-95% consistency. Results of word-recognition scores showed that the lexical effects were all significant. Children scored higher with disyllabic words than with monosyllabic words. "Easy" words scored higher than "hard" words. The word-recognition performance also increased with age in each lexical category. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that neighborhood density, age, and word frequency appeared to have increasingly more contributions to Chinese word recognition. The results of the present study indicated that performances of Chinese word recognition were influenced by word frequency, age, and neighborhood density, with word frequency playing a major role. These results were consistent with those in other languages, supporting the application of NAM in the Chinese language. The development of Standard-Chinese version of LNT and the establishment of a database of children of 4-6 years old can provide a reliable means for spoken-word recognition test in children with hearing impairment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Lexical Borrowing in the Speech of First-Generation Hungarian Immigrants in Australia

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Anikó Hatoss

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This article reports findings of a sociolinguistic project which investigated language contact phenomena in the speech of first-generation Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The research aimed to identify and analyze English lexical items borrowed into the spoken Hungarian of first-generation Hungarian–English bilinguals. This research had a mixed methods approach including a quantitative element (count of lexical manifestations by categories such as part of speech and a qualitative element in which the various lexical manifestations have been subjected to a linguistic analysis. The Hungarian National Corpus was used as a reference guide to determine the status of these phenomena in the lexicon of Standard Hungarian. The data were collected through semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews with 22 Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The findings demonstrate that (a first-generation Hungarians are highly creative language users and integrate a large number of English lexical items into their speech. Most lexical borrowings belong to the derivational blends with the highest proportion of the nominal group. Lexical borrowings from English are morphologically integrated with Hungarian-derivational suffixes and inflectional case markings. This research provides original empirical data to better understand the various inter-language lexical manifestations in Hungarian–English bilingual contexts. The study adds to the relatively small body of research on Hungarian–English bilingualism in diasporic context and contributes to understanding lexical borrowing from a contact linguistic perspective.

Document boundary determination using structural and lexical analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Taghva, Kazem; Cartright, Marc-Allen

2009-01-01

The document boundary determination problem is the process of identifying individual documents in a stack of papers. In this paper, we report on a classification system for automation of this process. The system employs features based on document structure and lexical content. We also report on experimental results to support the effectiveness of this system.

The Microstructural Treatment of Sub lexical Lemmas in Afrikaans ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

include synonyms and semantic oppositions. Since all Afrikaans descriptive dictionaries supply these lexical relations for lexical lemmas, there is no reason why they should be omitted in the articles of sublexicallemmas. Naturally the synonym or antonym for sublexical lemmas need not be sublexical as well,.

Increasing Statistical Literacy by Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity of Technical Terms

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Jennifer Kaplan

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Instructional inattention to language poses a barrier for students in entry-level science courses, in part because students may perceive a subject as difficult solely based on the lack of understanding of the vocabulary. In addition, the technical use of terms that have different everyday meanings may cause students to misinterpret statements made by instructors, leading to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the domain. Terms that have different technical and everyday meanings are said to have lexical ambiguity and statistics, as a discipline, has many lexically ambiguous terms. This paper presents a cyclic process for designing activities to address lexical ambiguity in statistics. In addition, it describes three short activities aimed to have high impact on student learning associated with two different lexically ambiguous words or word pairs in statistics. Preliminary student-level data are used to assess the efficacy of the activities, and future directions for development of activities and research about lexical ambiguity in statistics in particular and STEM in general are discussed.

Richness of information about novel words influences how episodic and semantic memory networks interact during lexicalization.

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Takashima, Atsuko; Bakker, Iske; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2014-01-01

The complementary learning systems account of declarative memory suggests two distinct memory networks, a fast-mapping, episodic system involving the hippocampus, and a slower semantic memory system distributed across the neocortex in which new information is gradually integrated with existing representations. In this study, we investigated the extent to which these two networks are involved in the integration of novel words into the lexicon after extensive learning, and how the involvement of these networks changes after 24h. In particular, we explored whether having richer information at encoding influences the lexicalization trajectory. We trained participants with two sets of novel words, one where exposure was only to the words' phonological forms (the form-only condition), and one where pictures of unfamiliar objects were associated with the words' phonological forms (the picture-associated condition). A behavioral measure of lexical competition (indexing lexicalization) indicated stronger competition effects for the form-only words. Imaging (fMRI) results revealed greater involvement of phonological lexical processing areas immediately after training in the form-only condition, suggesting that tight connections were formed between novel words and existing lexical entries already at encoding. Retrieval of picture-associated novel words involved the episodic/hippocampal memory system more extensively. Although lexicalization was weaker in the picture-associated condition, overall memory strength was greater when tested after a 24hour delay, probably due to the availability of both episodic and lexical memory networks to aid retrieval. It appears that, during lexicalization of a novel word, the relative involvement of different memory networks differs according to the richness of the information about that word available at encoding. © 2013.

Feasibility and Utility of Lexical Analysis for Occupational Health Text.

Science.gov (United States)

Harber, Philip; Leroy, Gondy

2017-06-01

Assess feasibility and potential utility of natural language processing (NLP) for storing and analyzing occupational health data. Basic NLP lexical analysis methods were applied to 89,000 Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) free text records. Steps included tokenization, term and co-occurrence counts, term annotation, and identifying exposure-health effect relationships. Presence of terms in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) was assessed. The methods efficiently demonstrated common exposures, health effects, and exposure-injury relationships. Many workplace terms are not present in UMLS or map inaccurately. Use of free text rather than narrowly defined numerically coded fields is feasible, flexible, and efficient. It has potential to encourage workers and clinicians to provide more data and to support automated knowledge creation. The lexical method used is easily generalizable to other areas. The UMLS vocabularies should be enhanced to be relevant to occupational health.

Bilinguals Show Weaker Lexical Access during Spoken Sentence Comprehension

Science.gov (United States)

Shook, Anthony; Goldrick, Matthew; Engstler, Caroline; Marian, Viorica

2015-01-01

When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German…

Improving the Functionality of Dictionary Definitions for Lexical Sets: The Role of Definitional Templates, Definitional Consistency, Definitional Coherence and the Incorporation of Lexical Conceptual Models

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Piet Swanepoel

2011-10-01

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ABSTRACT: This article focuses on some of the problems raised by Atkins and Rundell's (2008 approach to the design of lexicographic definitions for members of lexical sets. The questions raised are how to define and identify lexical sets, how lexical conceptual models (LCMs can support definitional consistency and coherence in defining members of lexical sets, and what the ideal content and structure of LCMs could be. Although similarity of meaning is proposed as the defining feature of lexical sets, similarity of meaning is only one dimension of the broader concept of lexical coherence. The argument is presented that numerous conceptual lexical models (e.g. taxonomies, folk models, frames, etc. in fact indicate, justify or explain how lexical items cohere (and thus form sets. In support of Fillmore's (2003 suggestion that definitions of the lexical items of cohering sets should be linked to such explanatory models, additional functionally-orientated arguments are presented for the incorporation of conceptual lexical models in electronic monolingual learners' dictionaries. Numerous resources exist to support the design of LCMs which can improve the functionality of definitions of members of lexical sets. A few examples are discussed of how such resources can be used to design functionally justified LCMs.

OPSOMMING: Verbetering van die funksionaliteit van woordeboekdefinisies vir leksikale versamelings: Die rol van definisiematryse, definisie-eenvormigheid, definisiesamehang en die inkorporering van leksikale konseptuele modelle. Hierdie artikel fokus op sommige van die probleme wat ter sprake kom deur Atkins en Rundell (2008 se benadering tot die ontwerp van leksikografiese definisies vir lede van leksikale versamelings. Die vrae wat gestel word, is hoe leksikale versamelings gedefinieer en geïdentifiseer moet word, hoe leksikale konseptuele modelle (LKM's definisie-eenvormigheid en-samehang kan ondersteun by die definiëring van lede

The Contribution of Lexical Diversity to College-Level Writing

Science.gov (United States)

González, Melanie C.

2017-01-01

This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which lexical frequency and lexical diversity contribute to writing proficiency scores on monolingual English-speaking writers' and advanced multilingual writers' academic compositions. The data consist of essays composed by 104 multilingual English learners enrolled in advanced…

Effects of nasal corticosteroids on boosts of systemic allergen-specific IgE production induced by nasal allergen exposure.

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Cornelia Egger

Full Text Available Allergen exposure via the respiratory tract and in particular via the nasal mucosa boosts systemic allergen-specific IgE production. Intranasal corticosteroids (INCS represent a first line treatment of allergic rhinitis but their effects on this boost of allergen-specific IgE production are unclear.Here we aimed to determine in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study whether therapeutic doses of an INCS preparation, i.e., nasal fluticasone propionate, have effects on boosts of allergen-specific IgE following nasal allergen exposure.Subjects (n = 48 suffering from grass and birch pollen allergy were treated with daily fluticasone propionate or placebo nasal spray for four weeks. After two weeks of treatment, subjects underwent nasal provocation with either birch pollen allergen Bet v 1 or grass pollen allergen Phl p 5. Bet v 1 and Phl p 5-specific IgE, IgG1-4, IgM and IgA levels were measured in serum samples obtained at the time of provocation and one, two, four, six and eight weeks thereafter.Nasal allergen provocation induced a median increase to 141.1% of serum IgE levels to allergens used for provocation but not to control allergens 4 weeks after provocation. There were no significant differences regarding the boosts of allergen-specific IgE between INCS- and placebo-treated subjects.In conclusion, the application of fluticasone propionate had no significant effects on the boosts of systemic allergen-specific IgE production following nasal allergen exposure.http://clinicaltrials.gov/NCT00755066.

How lexical is the lexicon? Evidence for integrated auditory memory representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Pufahl, April; Samuel, Arthur G

2014-05-01

Previous research has shown that lexical representations must include not only linguistic information (what word was said), but also indexical information (how it was said, and by whom). The present work demonstrates that even this expansion is not sufficient. Seemingly irrelevant information, such as an unattended background sound, is retained in memory and can facilitate subsequent speech perception. We presented participants with spoken words paired with environmental sounds (e.g., a phone ringing), and had them make an "animate/inanimate" decision for each word. Later performance identifying filtered versions of the words was impaired to a similar degree if the voice changed or if the environmental sound changed. Moreover, when quite dissimilar words were used at exposure and test, we observed the same result when we reversed the roles of the words and the environmental sounds. The experiments also demonstrated limits to these effects, with no benefit from repetition. Theoretically, our results support two alternative possibilities: (1) Lexical representations are memory representations, and are not walled off from those for other sounds. Indexical effects reflect simply one type of co-occurrence that is incorporated into such representations. (2) The existing literature on indexical effects does not actually bear on lexical representations - voice changes, like environmental sounds heard with a word, produce implicit memory effects that are not tied to the lexicon. We discuss the evidence and implications of these two theoretical alternatives. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Second Language Idiom Learning: The Effects of Lexical Knowledge and Pedagogical Sequencing

Science.gov (United States)

Zyzik, Eve

2011-01-01

This article examines the acquisition of Spanish idioms in a classroom setting that was supplemented with explicit instruction over a 10-week period. The research design manipulated two variables: prior lexical knowledge and idiom organization. Sixty-five second language (L2) learners completed pre- and posttests that measured their ability to…

Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets

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Alma eVeenstra

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1 Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s; and (2 this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material.We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple

Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children’s Lexical Processing

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Michelle eInkster

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Previous research showed an effect of words’ rated body-object interaction (BOI in children’s visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (Wellsby & Pexman, 2014a. In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children’s body-object interaction experience (child-BOI. We examined effects of words’ child-BOI and also words’ imageability on children’s responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6-7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children’s auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.

On stylistic automatization of lexical units in various types of contexts

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В В Зуева

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Stylistic automatization of lexical units in various types of contexts is investigated in this article. Following the works of Boguslav Havranek and other linguists of the Prague Linguistic School automatization is treated as a contextual narrowing of the meaning of a lexical unit to the level of its complete predictability in situational contexts and the lack of stylistic contradiction with other lexical units in speech.

Pathways from Toddler Information Processing to Adolescent Lexical Proficiency

Science.gov (United States)

Rose, Susan A.; Feldman, Judith F.; Jankowski, Jeffery J.

2015-01-01

This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

Modulation of working memory updating: Does long-term memory lexical association matter?

Science.gov (United States)

Artuso, Caterina; Palladino, Paola

2016-02-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate how working memory updating for verbal material is modulated by enduring properties of long-term memory. Two coexisting perspectives that account for the relation between long-term representation and short-term performance were addressed. First, evidence suggests that performance is more closely linked to lexical properties, that is, co-occurrences within the language. Conversely, other evidence suggests that performance is linked more to long-term representations which do not entail lexical/linguistic representations. Our aim was to investigate how these two kinds of long-term memory associations (i.e., lexical or nonlexical) modulate ongoing working memory activity. Therefore, we manipulated (between participants) the strength of the association in letters based on either frequency of co-occurrences (lexical) or contiguity along the sequence of the alphabet (nonlexical). Results showed a cost in working memory updating for strongly lexically associated stimuli only. Our findings advance knowledge of how lexical long-term memory associations between consonants affect working memory updating and, in turn, contribute to the study of factors which impact the updating process across memory systems.

Evaluating Lexical Cohesion in Nigerian Newspaper Genres: Focus on the Editorials

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Zubairu Malah

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings emerging from such studies would be of pedagogical significance because most of the newspaper genres share certain conventional features with school genres. Similarly, this study explored lexical cohesion in newspaper editorials, and it is understood that the findings could help learners in handling persuasive writings. The study sought to identify the dominant sources of lexical cohesion in the editorials, and also to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized to achieve coherence in the editorials. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL, the study applied Eggins’ (2004 model of lexical cohesion and analyzed 30 editorial texts of 20, 354 words drawn from three major Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard. The analysis revealed 2, 685 ties across 849 sentences. The data demonstrated that the major types of lexical cohesion in the editorials include: repetition (49.5%, expectancy relations (15. 8%, class/sub-class (11%, and synonymy (10.8%. It was further revealed that lexical cohesion devices, which formed into chains (586 and isolated ties (837, were utilized in building coherence in the editorial texts. It was finally shown how findings of the study could be beneficial in ESP, EAP, and EGP learning, especially in persuasive writings.

Three-level boost converter with zero voltage transition

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Kuo-Ing Hwu

2017-06-01

Full Text Available As compared with the traditional boost converter, the three-level boost converter possesses several advantages, such as lower switch voltage stresses and lower inductor current ripple. To improve the efficiency, this paper proposes a zero voltage transition (ZVT three-level boost converter. With the proposed ZVT circuit, the switches can achieve soft switching. Moreover, by using the voltage balance control, the output voltage can be equally across the output capacitors. In this study, the effectiveness of the proposed topology is verified by the experimental results based on the field-programmable gate array control.

Distribution-Specific Agnostic Boosting

OpenAIRE

Feldman, Vitaly

2009-01-01

We consider the problem of boosting the accuracy of weak learning algorithms in the agnostic learning framework of Haussler (1992) and Kearns et al. (1992). Known algorithms for this problem (Ben-David et al., 2001; Gavinsky, 2002; Kalai et al., 2008) follow the same strategy as boosting algorithms in the PAC model: the weak learner is executed on the same target function but over different distributions on the domain. We demonstrate boosting algorithms for the agnostic learning framework tha...

When Language Switching has No Apparent Cost: Lexical Access in Sentence Context

Science.gov (United States)

Gullifer, Jason W.; Kroll, Judith F.; Dussias, Paola E.

2013-01-01

We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a matched non-cognate control. Sentences appeared in one language alone (i.e., Spanish or English) and target words were not predictable on the basis of the preceding semantic context. In Experiment 1, we mixed the language of the sentence within a block such that sentences appeared in an alternating run in Spanish or in English. These conditions partly resemble normally occurring inter-sentential code-switching. In these mixed-language sequences, cognates were named faster than non-cognates in both languages. There were no effects of switching the language of the sentence. In Experiment 2, with Spanish-English bilinguals matched closely to those who participated in the first experiment, we blocked the language of the sentences to encourage language-specific processes. The results were virtually identical to those of the mixed-language experiment. In both cases, target cognates were named faster than non-cognates, and the magnitude of the effect did not change according to the broader context. Taken together, the results support the predictions of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + Model (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002) in demonstrating that bilingual lexical access is language non-selective even under conditions in which language-specific cues should enable selective processing. They also demonstrate that, in contrast to lexical switching from one language to the other, inter-sentential code-switching of the sort in which bilinguals frequently engage, imposes no significant costs to lexical processing. PMID:23750141

When language switching has no apparent cost: Lexical access in sentence context

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Jason W. Gullifer

2013-05-01

Full Text Available We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a matched non-cognate control. Sentences appeared in one language alone (i.e., Spanish or English and target words were not predictable on the basis of the preceding semantic context. In Experiment 1, we mixed the language of the sentence within a block such that sentences appeared in an alternating run in Spanish or in English. These conditions partly resemble normally occurring inter-sentential code-switching. In these mixed language sequences, cognates were named faster than non-cognates in both languages. There were no effects of switching the language of the sentence. In Experiment 2, with Spanish-English bilinguals matched closely to those who participated in the first experiment, we blocked the language of the sentences to encourage language-specific processes. The results were virtually identical to those of the mixed language experiment. In both cases, target cognates were named faster than non-cognates, and the magnitude of the effect did not change according to the broader context. Taken together, the results support the predictions of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + Model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002 in demonstrating that bilingual lexical access is language nonselective even under conditions in which language-specific cues should enable selective processing. They also demonstrate that, in contrast to lexical switching from one language to the other, inter-sentential code-switching of the sort in which bilinguals frequently engage, imposes no significant costs to lexical processing.

Usefulness of effective field theory for boosted Higgs production

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dawson, S. [Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Lewis, I. M. [SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Zeng, Mao [Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States)

2015-04-07

The Higgs + jet channel at the LHC is sensitive to the effects of new physics both in the total rate and in the transverse momentum distribution at high _pT. We examine the production process using an effective field theory (EFT) language and discussing the possibility of determining the nature of the underlying high-scale physics from boosted Higgs production. The effects of heavy color triplet scalars and top partner fermions with TeV scale masses are considered as examples and Higgs-gluon couplings of dimension-5 and dimension-7 are included in the EFT. As a byproduct of our study, we examine the region of validity of the EFT. Dimension-7 contributions in realistic new physics models give effects in the high _pT tail of the Higgs signal which are so tiny that they are likely to be unobservable.

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu.

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Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Ahmed, Saaliha

2016-07-28

This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG) developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012). The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC), noun production (NP), predicate comprehension (PC), and predicate production (PP). Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1) test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2) test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3) present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu

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Ramona Kunene Nicolas

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012. The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC, noun production (NP, predicate comprehension (PC, and predicate production (PP. Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1 test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2 test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3 present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Some lexical aspects of Cape Muslim Afrikaans | Davids | Lexikos

African Journals Online (AJOL)

It looks at the role of the literary tradition of Arabic-Afrikaans and the Islamic religious education system at the Cape in this regard. Of particular interest are the changes which occur in the orthoepic nature and syntactical function of inherited and borrowed lexical units, by the affixing of lexical or grammatical morphemes, ...

Eye Movements Reveal Readers' Lexical Quality and Reading Experience

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Taylor, Jessica Nelson; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

Two experiments demonstrate that individual differences among normal adult readers, including lexical quality, are expressed in silent reading at the word level. In the first of two studies we identified major dimensions of variability among college readers and among words using factor analysis. We then examined the effects of these dimensions of…

The Spanish word tiempo: its omnipresence and conceptual, logical and lexical versatility

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Karlo Budor

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The common Spanish word tiempo corresponds to three English terms, each of them being a lexical equivalent based on a specific notion: (1 time – physical, astronomical, philosophical reference; (2 weather – geographical, climatological, meteorological reference; (3 tense: linguistic, lexical, grammatical reference. As far as universal and metalinguistic referential distinctions are concerned, all natural languages in fact present a considerable degree of variation ranging from inexistent or very vague to complete differentiation of these terms. In order to express these three types of specific references, some languages have a single word of general usage covering all its lexical acceptations. Therefore in such languages, Spanish included, different references can be distinguished only in part lexically. However, asemantic analysis of the Spanish word tiempo reveals its complexity as well as its conceptual, logical and lexical versatility. This is reflected in its capacity to combine in numerous lexical units, i.e. word compounds and/or phrases, endowed with different or specific semantic meanings. The repertory of these virtual and derived lexical forms appears to be practically unlimited, although their sphere of application and their boundaries are neither always very clear nor precise, which can be illustrated with the examples given in Spanish dictionaries.

Boost breaking in the EFT of inflation

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Delacrétaz, Luca V.; Senatore, Leonardo [Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States); Noumi, Toshifumi, E-mail: lvd@stanford.edu, E-mail: tnoumi@phys.sci.kobe-u.ac.jp, E-mail: senatore@stanford.edu [Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong)

2017-02-01

If time-translations are spontaneously broken, so are boosts. This symmetry breaking pattern can be non-linearly realized by either just the Goldstone boson of time translations, or by four Goldstone bosons associated with time translations and boosts. In this paper we extend the Effective Field Theory of Multifield Inflation to consider the case in which the additional Goldstone bosons associated with boosts are light and coupled to the Goldstone boson of time translations. The symmetry breaking pattern forces a coupling to curvature so that the mass of the additional Goldstone bosons is predicted to be equal to √2 H in the vast majority of the parameter space where they are light. This pattern therefore offers a natural way of generating self-interacting particles with Hubble mass during inflation. After constructing the general effective Lagrangian, we study how these particles mix and interact with the curvature fluctuations, generating potentially detectable non-Gaussian signals.

Category Priming in the Lexical Decision Task and Evidence of Repetition Effects.

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Sanza, James

Semantic priming is the process by which a subject performing a lexical decision task is prepared for a target word through the presentation of a semantically related word. Repetition of a given word at specific intervals is one form of priming that has been shown to reduce subject reaction time in word recognition tasks. A study was conducted to…

Cognitive status, lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language

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Zahra Jafari

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim : Learning and memory are two high level cognitive performances in human that hearing loss influences them. In our study, mini-mental state examination (MMSE and Ray auditory-verbal learning test (RAVLT was conducted to study cognitive stat us and lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language. Methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was conducted on 30 available congenitally deaf adults using sign language in Persian and 46 normal adults aged 19 to 27 years for both sexes, with a minimum of diploma level of education. After mini-mental state examination, Rey auditory-verbal learning test was run through computers to evaluate lexical learning and memory with visual presentation. Results: Mean scores of mini-mental state examination and Rey auditory-verbal learning test in congenitally deaf adults were significantly lower than normal individuals in all scores (p=0.018 except in the two parts of the Rey test. Significant correlation was found between results of two tests just in the normal group (p=0.043. Gender had no effect on test results. Conclusion: Cognitive status and lexical memory and learning in congenitally deaf individuals is weaker than in normal subjects. It seems that using sign language as the main way of communication in deaf people causes poor lexical memory and learning.

The effects of associative and semantic priming in the lexical decision task.

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Perea, Manuel; Rosa, Eva

2002-08-01

Four lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine under which conditions automatic semantic priming effects can be obtained. Experiments 1 and 2 analyzed associative/semantic effects at several very short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), whereas Experiments 3 and 4 used a single-presentation paradigm at two response-stimulus intervals (RSIs). Experiment 1 tested associatively related pairs from three semantic categories (synonyms, antonyms, and category coordinates). The results showed reliable associative priming effects at all SOAs. In addition, the correlation between associative strength and magnitude of priming was significant only at the shortest SOA (66 ms). When prime-target pairs were semantically but not associatively related (Experiment 2), reliable priming effects were obtained at SOAs of 83 ms and longer. Using the single-presentation paradigm with a short RSI (200 ms, Experiment 3), the priming effect was equal in size for associative + semantic and for semantic-only pairs (a 21-ms effect). When the RSI was set much longer (1,750 ms, Experiment 4), only the associative + semantic pairs showed a reliable priming effect (23 ms). The results are interpreted in the context of models of semantic memory.

Lexical Variation and Change in British Sign Language

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Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Rentelis, Ramas; Woll, Bencie; Cormier, Kearsy

2014-01-01

This paper presents results from a corpus-based study investigating lexical variation in BSL. An earlier study investigating variation in BSL numeral signs found that younger signers were using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct variants, suggesting that levelling may be taking place. Here, we report findings from a larger investigation looking at regional lexical variants for colours, countries, numbers and UK placenames elicited as part of the BSL Corpus Project. Age, school location and language background were significant predictors of lexical variation, with younger signers using a more levelled variety. This change appears to be happening faster in particular sub-groups of the deaf community (e.g., signers from hearing families). Also, we find that for the names of some UK cities, signers from outside the region use a different sign than those who live in the region. PMID:24759673

Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Mandarin-speaking Congenital Amusics

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Wan Ting Huang

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Previous research suggests that within Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics, only a subgroup has behavioral lexical tone perception impairments (tone agnosia, whereas the rest of amusics do not. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the categorical nature of lexical tone perception in Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without behavioral lexical tone deficits. Three groups of listeners (controls, pure amusics and amusics with tone agnosia participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Indexes of the categorical perception of a physical continuum of fundamental frequencies ranging from a rising to level tone were measured. Specifically, the stimulus durations were manipulated at 100 and 200 ms. For both stimulus durations, all groups exhibited similar categorical boundaries. The pure amusics showed sharp identification slopes and significantly peaked discrimination functions similar to those of normal controls. However, such essential characteristics for the categorical perception of lexical tones were not observed in amusics with tone agnosia. An enlarged step-size from 20 Hz to 35 Hz was not able to produce any discrimination peaks in tone agnosics either. The current study revealed that only amusics with tone agnosia showed a lack of categorical tone perception, while the pure amusics demonstrated typical categorical perception of lexical tones, indicating that the deficit of pitch processing in music does not necessarily result in the deficit in the categorical perception of lexical tones. The different performance between congenital amusics with and without tone agnosia provides a new perspective on the proposition of the relationship between music and speech perception.

Lexical access in sign language: a computational model.

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Caselli, Naomi K; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M

2014-01-01

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORIES HAVE PREDOMINANTLY BEEN BUILT UPON DATA FROM SPOKEN LANGUAGE, WHICH LEAVES OPEN THE QUESTION: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012) presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012), and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either (1) the time course of sign perception or (2) the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

Lexical access in sign language: A computational model

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Naomi Kenney Caselli

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic theories have predominantly been built upon data from spoken language, which leaves open the question: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012 presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012, and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either 1 the time course of sign perception or 2 the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

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Violaine Michel Lange

Full Text Available Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

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Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production. PMID:29091940

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

Science.gov (United States)

Michel Lange, Violaine; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Exploiting Lexical Regularities in Designing Natural Language Systems.

Science.gov (United States)

1988-04-01

ELEMENT. PROJECT. TASKN Artificial Inteligence Laboratory A1A4WR NTumet 0) 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 Ln *t- CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND...RO-RI95 922 EXPLOITING LEXICAL REGULARITIES IN DESIGNING NATURAL 1/1 LANGUAGE SYSTENS(U) MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE...oes.ary and ftdou.Ip hr Nl wow" L,2This paper presents the lexical component of the START Question Answering system developed at the MIT Artificial

Lexical orthography acquisition: Is handwriting better than spelling aloud?

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Bosse, Marie-Line; Chaves, Nathalie; Valdois, Sylviane

2014-01-01

Lexical orthography acquisition is currently described as the building of links between the visual forms and the auditory forms of whole words. However, a growing body of data suggests that a motor component could further be involved in orthographic acquisition. A few studies support the idea that reading plus handwriting is a better lexical orthographic learning situation than reading alone. However, these studies did not explore which of the cognitive processes involved in handwriting enhanced lexical orthographic acquisition. Some findings suggest that the specific movements memorized when learning to write may participate in the establishment of orthographic representations in memory. The aim of the present study was to assess this hypothesis using handwriting and spelling aloud as two learning conditions. In two experiments, fifth graders were asked to read complex pseudo-words embedded in short sentences. Immediately after reading, participants had to recall the pseudo-words' spellings either by spelling them aloud or by handwriting them down. One week later, orthographic acquisition was tested using two post-tests: a pseudo-word production task (spelling by hand in Experiment 1 or spelling aloud in Experiment 2) and a pseudo-word recognition task. Results showed no significant difference in pseudo-word recognition between the two learning conditions. In the pseudo-word production task, orthography learning improved when the learning and post-test conditions were similar, thus showing a massive encoding-retrieval match effect in the two experiments. However, a mixed model analysis of the pseudo-word production results revealed a significant learning condition effect which remained after control of the encoding-retrieval match effect. This later finding suggests that orthography learning is more efficient when mediated by handwriting than by spelling aloud, whatever the post-test production task.

Lexical orthographic acquisition: Is handwriting better than spelling aloud?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marie-Line eBosse

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Lexical orthography acquisition is currently described as the building of links between the visual forms and the auditory forms of whole words. However, a growing body of data suggests that a motor component could further be involved in orthographic acquisition. A few studies support the idea that reading plus handwriting is a better lexical orthographic learning situation than reading alone. However, these studies did not explore which of the cognitive processes involved in handwriting enhanced lexical orthographic acquisition. Some findings suggest that the specific movements memorized when learning to write may participate in the establishment of orthographic representations in memory. The aim of the present study was to assess this hypothesis using handwriting and spelling aloud as two learning conditions. In two experiments, fifth graders were asked to read complex pseudo-words embedded in short sentences. Immediately after reading, participants had to recall the pseudo-words’ spellings either by spelling them aloud or by handwriting them down. One week later, orthographic acquisition was tested using two post-tests: a pseudo-word production task (spelling by hand in Experiment 1 or spelling aloud in Experiment 2 and a pseudo-word recognition task. Results showed no significant difference in pseudo-word recognition between the two learning conditions. In the pseudo-word production task, orthography learning improved when the learning and post-test conditions were similar, thus showing a massive encoding-retrieval match effect in the two experiments. However, a mixed model analysis of the pseudo-word production results revealed a significant learning condition effect which remained after control of the encoding-retrieval match effect. This later finding suggests that orthography learning is more efficient when mediated by handwriting than by spelling aloud, whatever the post-test production task.

ERP measures of partial semantic knowledge: left temporal indices of skill differences and lexical quality.

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Frishkoff, Gwen A; Perfetti, Charles A; Westbury, Chris

2009-01-01

This study examines the sensitivity of early event-related potentials (ERPs) to degrees of word semantic knowledge. Participants with strong, average, or weak vocabulary skills made speeded lexical decisions to letter strings. To represent the full spectrum of word knowledge among adult native-English speakers, we used rare words that were orthographically matched with more familiar words and with pseudowords. Since the lexical decision could not reliably be made on the basis of word form, subjects were obliged to use semantic knowledge to perform the task. A d' analysis suggested that high-skilled subjects adopted a more conservative strategy in response to rare versus more familiar words. Moreover, the high-skilled participants showed a trend towards an enhanced "N2c" to rare words, and a similar posterior temporal effect reached significance approximately 650 ms. Generators for these effects were localized to left temporal cortex. We discuss implications of these results for word learning and for theories of lexical semantic access.

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts-A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger.

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Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M; Conrad, Markus

2016-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales-valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking-for 57 German poems (" die verteidigung der wölfe ") which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either "friendly," "sad," or "spiteful." Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning . Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43-70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23-48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level.

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts—A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger

Science.gov (United States)

Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M.; Conrad, Markus

2017-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales—valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking—for 57 German poems (“die verteidigung der wölfe”) which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either “friendly,” “sad,” or “spiteful.” Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning. Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43–70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23–48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level

Interaction between lexical and grammatical language systems in the brain

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Ardila, Alfredo

2012-06-01

This review concentrates on two different language dimensions: lexical/semantic and grammatical. This distinction between a lexical/semantic system and a grammatical system is well known in linguistics, but in cognitive neurosciences it has been obscured by the assumption that there are several forms of language disturbances associated with focal brain damage and hence language includes a diversity of functions (phoneme discrimination, lexical memory, grammar, repetition, language initiation ability, etc.), each one associated with the activity of a specific brain area. The clinical observation of patients with cerebral pathology shows that there are indeed only two different forms of language disturbances (disturbances in the lexical/semantic system and disturbances in the grammatical system); these two language dimensions are supported by different brain areas (temporal and frontal) in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, these two aspects of the language are developed at different ages during child's language acquisition, and they probably appeared at different historical moments during human evolution. Mechanisms of learning are different for both language systems: whereas the lexical/semantic knowledge is based in a declarative memory, grammatical knowledge corresponds to a procedural type of memory. Recognizing these two language dimensions can be crucial in understanding language evolution and human cognition.

Lexicalization of idioms in urban fifth graders: a reaction time study.

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Qualls, Constance Dean; Treaster, Beth; Blood, Gordon W; Hammer, Carol Scheffner

2003-01-01

Idioms are an important aspect of language that comprises a sizeable portion of our vocabulary. However, lexical access research has largely been limited to understanding how literal words are accessed and processed in the mental lexicon. Adult data show that idioms are quickly accessed from the lexicon and are likely processed as long words [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523]. The purpose of this study was to examine lexicalization of idioms in a group of school-aged children. Using a phrase classification design, this research tested the Lexical Representation Hypothesis [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523] in 19 urban fifth graders (5 boys, 14 girls; M age=10.16 years). On a computer, the students classified 54 phrases, including 24 idioms (high, moderate, and low familiarity [J. Speech Hear. Res. 36 (1993) 728]), 24 grammatical control word strings and 6 unrelated foils as either idioms or nonidioms. The idioms were identified with 62% accuracy. Unexpectedly, the boys tended to show higher rates of accuracy than the girls. Response latencies were shorter on the idioms compared to the controls and high familiarity idioms were processed faster than moderate and low familiarity idioms. These findings provide developmental data for lexicalization of idioms and the relationship between lexicalization and familiarity. At the cocnlusion of this articel, the reader will be able to: (1). discuss the various theories of idiom access and processing, (2). discuss how lexical access relates to idiom knowledge in school-aged children, and (3). consider the association between lexical access and familiarity relative to idiom comprehension in school-aged children.

Identification and Definition of Lexically Ambiguous Words in Statistics by Tutors and Students

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Richardson, Alice M.; Dunn, Peter K.; Hutchins, Rene

2013-01-01

Lexical ambiguity arises when a word from everyday English is used differently in a particular discipline, such as statistics. This paper reports on a project that begins by identifying tutors' perceptions of words that are potentially lexically ambiguous to students, in two different ways. Students' definitions of nine lexically ambiguous words…

Gradient Boosting Machines, A Tutorial

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Alexey eNatekin

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Gradient boosting machines are a family of powerful machine-learning techniques that have shown considerable success in a wide range of practical applications. They are highly customizable to the particular needs of the application, like being learned with respect to different loss functions. This article gives a tutorial introduction into the methodology of gradient boosting methods. A theoretical information is complemented with many descriptive examples and illustrations which cover all the stages of the gradient boosting model design. Considerations on handling the model complexity are discussed. A set of practical examples of gradient boosting applications are presented and comprehensively analyzed.

Be aware of the rifle but do not forget the stench: differential effects of fear and disgust on lexical processing and memory.

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Ferré, Pilar; Haro, Juan; Hinojosa, José Antonio

2017-08-07

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of discrete emotions in lexical processing and memory, focusing on disgust and fear. We compared neutral words to disgust-related words and fear-related words in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT), and in Experiment 3 an affective categorisation task. These tasks were followed by an unexpected memory task. The results of the LDT experiments showed slower reaction times for both types of negative words with respect to neutral words, plus a higher percentage of errors, this being more consistent for fear-related words (Experiments 1 and 2) than for disgust-related words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, only disgusting words exhibited a higher recall accuracy than neutral words in the memory task. Moreover, the advantage in memory for disgusting words disappeared when participants carried out an affective categorisation task during encoding (Experiment 3), suggesting that the superiority in memory for disgusting words observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to greater elaborative processing. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of discrete emotions in explaining the effects of the emotional content on lexical processing and memory.

Contrastive Lexical Pragmatics as an Effective Strategy in Teaching Pragmatics: A Review Article

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Ghaemi, Farid; Ziafar, Meisam

2011-01-01

Pragmatic aspect of formulaic language must be emphasized and employed in second language acquisition. Translation of formulaic speech can help learners better understand the pragmatic nature of L2 prefabricated language through comparing them with their L1 (first language) equivalents. This study proposes a contrastive lexical pragmatic approach…

Addressing the Problem of Negative Lexical Transfer Errors in Chilean University Students

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Paul Anthony Dissington

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Studies of second language learning have revealed a connection between first language transfer and errors in second language production. This paper describes an action research study carried out among Chilean university students studying English as part of their degree programmes. The study focuses on common lexical errors made by Chilean Spanish-speakers due to negative first language transfer and aims to analyse the effects of systematic instruction and practice of this problematic lexis. It is suggested that raising awareness of lexical transfer through focused attention on common transfer errors is valued by students and seems essential for learners to achieve productive mastery.

The Emar Lexical Texts

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Gantzert, Merijn

2011-01-01

This four-part work provides a philological analysis and a theoretical interpretation of the cuneiform lexical texts found in the Late Bronze Age city of Emar, in present-day Syria. These word and sign lists, commonly dated to around 1100 BC, were almost all found in the archive of a single school.

Writing nonsense: the interaction between lexical and sublexical knowledge in the priming of nonword spelling.

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Martin, Daisy H; Barry, Christopher

2012-08-01

The task of spelling nonwords to dictation necessarily requires the operation of a sublexical or assembled sound-to-spelling conversion process. We report an experiment that shows a clear lexical priming effect on nonword spelling (e.g., /vi:m/ was spelled as VEME more often following the prime word "theme" and as VEAM more often following "dream"), which was larger for lexically low-probability (or low-contingency) than for common (or high-contingency) spellings. Priming diminished when an unrelated word intervened between the prime word and target nonword and did so more for the production of low- than for high-contingency spellings. We interpret these results within an interactive model of spelling production that proposes feedback from the graphemic level to both the lexical and assembled spelling processes.

Lexical access changes in patients with multiple sclerosis: a two-year follow-up study.

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Sepulcre, Jorge; Peraita, Herminia; Goni, Joaquin; Arrondo, Gonzalo; Martincorena, Inigo; Duque, Beatriz; Velez de Mendizabal, Nieves; Masdeu, Joseph C; Villoslada, Pablo

2011-02-01

The aim of the study was to analyze lexical access strategies in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and their changes over time. We studied lexical access strategies during semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tests and also confrontation naming in a 2-year prospective cohort of 45 MS patients and 20 healthy controls. At baseline, switching lexical access strategy (both in semantic and in phonemic verbal fluency tests) and confrontation naming were significantly impaired in MS patients compared with controls. After 2 years follow-up, switching score decreased, and cluster size increased over time in semantic verbal fluency tasks, suggesting a failure in the retrieval of lexical information rather than an impairment of the lexical pool. In conclusion, these findings underline the significant presence of lexical access problems in patients with MS and could point out their key role in the alterations of high-level communications abilities in MS.

Robust loss functions for boosting.

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Kanamori, Takafumi; Takenouchi, Takashi; Eguchi, Shinto; Murata, Noboru

2007-08-01

Boosting is known as a gradient descent algorithm over loss functions. It is often pointed out that the typical boosting algorithm, Adaboost, is highly affected by outliers. In this letter, loss functions for robust boosting are studied. Based on the concept of robust statistics, we propose a transformation of loss functions that makes boosting algorithms robust against extreme outliers. Next, the truncation of loss functions is applied to contamination models that describe the occurrence of mislabels near decision boundaries. Numerical experiments illustrate that the proposed loss functions derived from the contamination models are useful for handling highly noisy data in comparison with other loss functions.

Measuring Lexical Diversity in Narrative Discourse of People with Aphasia

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Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Wright, Heather H.; West, Thomas M.

2013-01-01

Purpose: A microlinguistic content analysis for assessing lexical semantics in people with aphasia (PWA) is lexical diversity (LD). Sophisticated techniques have been developed to measure LD. However, validity evidence for these methodologies when applied to the discourse of PWA is lacking. The purpose of this study was to evaluate four measures…

Lexical bundles in an advanced INTOCSU writing class and engineering texts: A functional analysis

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Alquraishi, Mohammed Abdulrahman

The purpose of this study is to investigate the functions of lexical bundles in two corpora: a corpus of engineering academic texts and a corpus of IEP advanced writing class texts. This study is concerned with the nature of formulaic language in Pathway IEPs and engineering texts, and whether those types of texts show similar or distinctive formulaic functions. Moreover, the study looked into lexical bundles found in an engineering 1.26 million-word corpus and an ESL 65000-word corpus using a concordancing program. The study then analyzed the functions of those lexical bundles and compared them statistically using chi-square tests. Additionally, the results of this investigation showed 236 unique frequent lexical bundles in the engineering corpus and 37 bundles in the pathway corpus. Also, the study identified several differences between the density and functions of lexical bundles in the two corpora. These differences were evident in the distribution of functions of lexical bundles and the minimal overlap of lexical bundles found in the two corpora. The results of this study call for more attention to formulaic language at ESP and EAP programs.

Putting lexical constraints in context into the visual-world paradigm.

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Novick, Jared M; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L; Trueswell, John C

2008-06-01

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of Put the frog on the napkin... despite strong lexical biases associated with Put that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632-1634; Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M. & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73, 89-134). This pattern is not expected under constraint-based parsing theories: cue conflict between the lexical evidence (which supports the Goal analysis) and the visuo-contextual evidence (which supports the Modifier analysis) should result in uncertainty about the intended analysis and partial consideration of the Goal analysis. We reexamined these put studies (Experiment 1) by introducing a response time-constraint and a spatial contrast between competing referents (a frog on a napkin vs. a frog in a bowl). If listeners immediately interpret on the... as the start of a restrictive modifier, then their eye movements should rapidly converge on the intended referent (the frog on something). However, listeners showed this pattern only when the phrase was unambiguously a Modifier (Put the frog that's on the...). Syntactically ambiguous trials resulted in transient consideration of the Competitor animal (the frog in something). A reading study was also run on the same individuals (Experiment 2) and performance was compared between the two experiments. Those individuals who relied heavily on lexical biases to resolve a complement ambiguity in reading (The man heard/realized the story had been...) showed increased sensitivity to both lexical and contextual constraints in the put-task; i

Lexical Orthographic Knowledge Develops from the Beginning of Literacy Acquisition

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Martinet, Catherine; Valdois, Sylviane; Fayol, Michel

2004-01-01

This study reports two experiments assessing the spelling performance of French first graders after 3 months and after 9 months of literacy instruction. The participants were asked to spell high and low frequency irregular words (Experiment 1) and pseudowords, some of which had lexical neighbours (Experiment 2). The lexical database which children…

Genre-dependent interaction of coherence and lexical cohesion in written discourse

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Berzlánovich, I.; Redeker, G.

2012-01-01

We investigate the interaction between coherence and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts using seven encyclopedia texts and seven fundraising letters. We describe genre structure in terms of genre-specific moves and coherence structure with Rhetorical Structure Theory. For lexical

Lexical Retrieval is not by Competition: Evidence from the Blocked Naming Paradigm

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Navarrete, Eduardo; Del Prato, Paul; Peressotti, Francesca; Mahon, Bradford Z.

2014-01-01

A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category (‘homogenous’ or ‘related’ blocks) or not grouped by semantic category (‘heterogeneous’ or ‘unrelated’ blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be ‘semantic interference’ in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelated blocks. These data undermine the theory of lexical selection by competition and indicate a model in which the most highly activated word is retrieved, regardless of the activation levels of nontarget words. We conclude that the theory of lexical selection by competition, and by extension the important psycholinguistic models based on that assumption, are no longer viable, and frame a new way to approach the question of how words are retrieved in spoken language production. PMID:25284954

Boosted beta regression.

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Matthias Schmid

Full Text Available Regression analysis with a bounded outcome is a common problem in applied statistics. Typical examples include regression models for percentage outcomes and the analysis of ratings that are measured on a bounded scale. In this paper, we consider beta regression, which is a generalization of logit models to situations where the response is continuous on the interval (0,1. Consequently, beta regression is a convenient tool for analyzing percentage responses. The classical approach to fit a beta regression model is to use maximum likelihood estimation with subsequent AIC-based variable selection. As an alternative to this established - yet unstable - approach, we propose a new estimation technique called boosted beta regression. With boosted beta regression estimation and variable selection can be carried out simultaneously in a highly efficient way. Additionally, both the mean and the variance of a percentage response can be modeled using flexible nonlinear covariate effects. As a consequence, the new method accounts for common problems such as overdispersion and non-binomial variance structures.

Online Lexical Competition during Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

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Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Brown, Helen; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-01-01

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7-8 years and tested variables that influence "online" lexical activity in adults. Children…

Predicting the Proficiency Level of Language Learners Using Lexical Indices

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.

2012-01-01

This study explores how second language (L2) texts written by learners at various proficiency levels can be classified using computational indices that characterize lexical competence. For this study, 100 writing samples taken from 100 L2 learners were analyzed using lexical indices reported by the computational tool Coh-Metrix. The L2 writing…

Boosted black holes on Kaluza-Klein bubbles

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Iguchi, Hideo; Mishima, Takashi; Tomizawa, Shinya

2007-01-01

We construct an exact stationary solution of black-hole-bubble sequence in the five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory by using solitonic solution-generating techniques. The solution describes two stationary black holes with topology S 3 on a Kaluza-Klein bubble and has a linear momentum component in the compactified direction. We call the solution boosted black holes on Kaluza-Klein bubble because it has the linear momentum. The Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass and the linear momentum depend on the two boosted velocity parameters of black holes. In the effective four-dimensional theory, the solution has an electric charge which is proportional to the linear momentum. The solution includes the static solution found by Elvang and Horowitz. The small and the big black holes limits are investigated. The relation between the solution and the single boosted black string are considered

An explicit statistical model of learning lexical segmentation using multiple cues

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Çöltekin, Ça ̆grı; Nerbonne, John; Lenci, Alessandro; Padró, Muntsa; Poibeau, Thierry; Villavicencio, Aline

2014-01-01

This paper presents an unsupervised and incremental model of learning segmentation that combines multiple cues whose use by children and adults were attested by experimental studies. The cues we exploit in this study are predictability statistics, phonotactics, lexical stress and partial lexical

Cascading activation from lexical processing to letter-level processing in written word production.

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Buchwald, Adam; Falconer, Carolyn

2014-01-01

Descriptions of language production have identified processes involved in producing language and the presence and type of interaction among those processes. In the case of spoken language production, consensus has emerged that there is interaction among lexical selection processes and phoneme-level processing. This issue has received less attention in written language production. In this paper, we present a novel analysis of the writing-to-dictation performance of an individual with acquired dysgraphia revealing cascading activation from lexical processing to letter-level processing. The individual produced frequent lexical-semantic errors (e.g., chipmunk → SQUIRREL) as well as letter errors (e.g., inhibit → INBHITI) and had a profile consistent with impairment affecting both lexical processing and letter-level processing. The presence of cascading activation is suggested by lower letter accuracy on words that are more weakly activated during lexical selection than on those that are more strongly activated. We operationalize weakly activated lexemes as those lexemes that are produced as lexical-semantic errors (e.g., lethal in deadly → LETAHL) compared to strongly activated lexemes where the intended target word (e.g., lethal) is the lexeme selected for production.

Radiographer-led breast boost localisation – A service evaluation study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, S.; Comins, C.

2015-01-01

A radiation boost to the tumour bed as part of breast conserving therapy reduces the rate of local recurrence. Radiographer-led planning for tangential field radiotherapy has been the practice at our centre since 2007. The transition from conventional simulation to computed tomography (CT) and virtual simulation enhanced the radiographer's role in the breast planning process. Electron boost mark ups continued to be marked up freehand by doctors using available imaging to determine tumour bed. The paper reports on a service evaluation undertaken to establish a change in practice for electron breast boosts to be simulated using the virtual simulator by suitably trained radiographers. The retrospective simulation of ten patients confirmed the consistency of radiographer tumour bed localisation, followed by the prospective simulation of ten patients' boost fields. The introduction of a radiographer-led planning breast boost service has given greater autonomy and job satisfaction to individuals as well as resulting in a cost effective use of available resources. - Highlights: • A service evaluation study was undertaken to train a radiographer to perform breast boost planning. • Retrospective breast boost planning established proposed technique was workable. • Prospective planning by radiographer proved their competence. • Introduction of new technique provided job satisfaction and service improvement

Deep Incremental Boosting

OpenAIRE

Mosca, Alan; Magoulas, George D

2017-01-01

This paper introduces Deep Incremental Boosting, a new technique derived from AdaBoost, specifically adapted to work with Deep Learning methods, that reduces the required training time and improves generalisation. We draw inspiration from Transfer of Learning approaches to reduce the start-up time to training each incremental Ensemble member. We show a set of experiments that outlines some preliminary results on some common Deep Learning datasets and discuss the potential improvements Deep In...

Auditing SNOMED CT hierarchical relations based on lexical features of concepts in non-lattice subgraphs.

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Cui, Licong; Bodenreider, Olivier; Shi, Jay; Zhang, Guo-Qiang

2018-02-01

We introduce a structural-lexical approach for auditing SNOMED CT using a combination of non-lattice subgraphs of the underlying hierarchical relations and enriched lexical attributes of fully specified concept names. Our goal is to develop a scalable and effective approach that automatically identifies missing hierarchical IS-A relations. Our approach involves 3 stages. In stage 1, all non-lattice subgraphs of SNOMED CT's IS-A hierarchical relations are extracted. In stage 2, lexical attributes of fully-specified concept names in such non-lattice subgraphs are extracted. For each concept in a non-lattice subgraph, we enrich its set of attributes with attributes from its ancestor concepts within the non-lattice subgraph. In stage 3, subset inclusion relations between the lexical attribute sets of each pair of concepts in each non-lattice subgraph are compared to existing IS-A relations in SNOMED CT. For concept pairs within each non-lattice subgraph, if a subset relation is identified but an IS-A relation is not present in SNOMED CT IS-A transitive closure, then a missing IS-A relation is reported. The September 2017 release of SNOMED CT (US edition) was used in this investigation. A total of 14,380 non-lattice subgraphs were extracted, from which we suggested a total of 41,357 missing IS-A relations. For evaluation purposes, 200 non-lattice subgraphs were randomly selected from 996 smaller subgraphs (of size 4, 5, or 6) within the "Clinical Finding" and "Procedure" sub-hierarchies. Two domain experts confirmed 185 (among 223) suggested missing IS-A relations, a precision of 82.96%. Our results demonstrate that analyzing the lexical features of concepts in non-lattice subgraphs is an effective approach for auditing SNOMED CT. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical and sublexical units in speech perception.

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Giroux, Ibrahima; Rey, Arnaud

2009-03-01

Saffran, Newport, and Aslin (1996a) found that human infants are sensitive to statistical regularities corresponding to lexical units when hearing an artificial spoken language. Two sorts of segmentation strategies have been proposed to account for this early word-segmentation ability: bracketing strategies, in which infants are assumed to insert boundaries into continuous speech, and clustering strategies, in which infants are assumed to group certain speech sequences together into units (Swingley, 2005). In the present study, we test the predictions of two computational models instantiating each of these strategies i.e., Serial Recurrent Networks: Elman, 1990; and Parser: Perruchet & Vinter, 1998 in an experiment where we compare the lexical and sublexical recognition performance of adults after hearing 2 or 10 min of an artificial spoken language. The results are consistent with Parser's predictions and the clustering approach, showing that performance on words is better than performance on part-words only after 10 min. This result suggests that word segmentation abilities are not merely due to stronger associations between sublexical units but to the emergence of stronger lexical representations during the development of speech perception processes. Copyright © 2009, Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

The Effect of Lexical Coverage and Dictionary Use on L2 Reading Comprehension

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Prichard, Caleb; Matsumoto, Yuko

2011-01-01

This study aims to further understand the role of lexical coverage on L2 reading comprehension. It examines test scores of learners at or near the 90-95% coverage level to determine if this coverage range allows for comprehension of authentic texts. The findings suggest that 92-93% may be a threshold mark at which understanding of a text…

Differential impact of thalamic versus subthalamic deep brain stimulation on lexical processing.

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Krugel, Lea K; Ehlen, Felicitas; Tiedt, Hannes O; Kühn, Andrea A; Klostermann, Fabian

2014-10-01

Roles of subcortical structures in language processing are vague, but, interestingly, basal ganglia and thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation can go along with reduced lexical capacities. To deepen the understanding of this impact, we assessed word processing as a function of thalamic versus subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. Ten essential tremor patients treated with thalamic and 14 Parkinson׳s disease patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation performed an acoustic Lexical Decision Task ON and OFF stimulation. Combined analysis of task performance and event-related potentials allowed the determination of processing speed, priming effects, and N400 as neurophysiological correlate of lexical stimulus processing. 12 age-matched healthy participants acted as control subjects. Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation prolonged word decisions and reduced N400 potentials. No comparable ON-OFF effects were present in patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. In the latter group of patients with Parkinson' disease, N400 amplitudes were, however, abnormally low, whether under active or inactive Deep Brain Stimulation. In conclusion, performance speed and N400 appear to be influenced by state functions, modulated by thalamic, but not subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation, compatible with concepts of thalamo-cortical engagement in word processing. Clinically, these findings specify cognitive sequels of Deep Brain Stimulation in a target-specific way. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Lexical Difficulty--Using Elicited Imitation to Study Child L2

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Campfield, Dorota E.

2017-01-01

This paper reports a post-hoc analysis of the influence of lexical difficulty of cue sentences on performance in an elicited imitation (EI) task to assess oral production skills for 645 child L2 English learners in instructional settings. This formed part of a large-scale investigation into effectiveness of foreign language teaching in Polish…

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information

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Enzo eBrunetti

2013-06-01

Full Text Available During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, results critical to understand how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on ‘kept in mind’ rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge, and the lexical-semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments were independent of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information.

Science.gov (United States)

Brunetti, Enzo; Maldonado, Pedro E; Aboitiz, Francisco

2013-01-01

During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, a central aspect to elucidate is how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on "kept in mind" rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge), and the lexical semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments occurred irrespective of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

The Effect of Pre-teaching Extended Prefabricated Lexical Bundles on the Writing Development of

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Seiyed Mahdi Araghi

2014-03-01

Full Text Available This study attempts to shed light on how a teacher’s instruction and guidance can cast aside writing inhibitions and bring about remarkable changes in the writing ability of advanced EFL students through the collaborative construction of extended chunks of language with the aim of enhancing lexical density and complexity and consequently injecting into learners a sense of satisfaction with their work. The sample included 40 TOEFL students selected out of 75 TOEFL students on the basis of their scores on a TOEFL test. The participants were randomly assigned into two groups-the control group and experimental group. After 20 instructional sessions both groups were assigned five writing tasks. The results reveal that the participants in experimental group outperformed their counterparts in control group. Overall, it is concluded that pre-teaching extended prefabricated lexical bundles can be a useful means of helping advanced students to improve their writing quality.

Formalizing the Process of Constructing Chains of Lexical Units

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Grigorij Chetverikov

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Formalizing the Process of Constructing Chains of Lexical Units The paper investigates mathematical aspects of describing the construction of chains of lexical units on the basis of finite-predicate algebra. Analyzing the construction peculiarities is carried out and application of the method of finding the power of linear logical transformation for removing characteristic words of a dictionary entry is given. Analysis and perspectives of the results of the study are provided.

On the flexibility of grammatical advance planning during sentence production: Effects of cognitive load on multiple lexical access.

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Wagner, Valentin; Jescheniak, Jörg D; Schriefers, Herbert

2010-03-01

Three picture-word interference experiments addressed the question of whether the scope of grammatical advance planning in sentence production corresponds to some fixed unit or rather is flexible. Subjects produced sentences of different formats under varying amounts of cognitive load. When speakers described 2-object displays with simple sentences of the form "the frog is next to the mug," the 2 nouns were found to be lexically-semantically activated to similar degrees at speech onset, as indexed by similarly sized interference effects from semantic distractors related to either the first or the second noun. When speakers used more complex sentences (including prenominal color adjectives; e.g., "the blue frog is next to the blue mug") much larger interference effects were observed for the first than the second noun, suggesting that the second noun was lexically-semantically activated before speech onset on only a subset of trials. With increased cognitive load, introduced by an additional conceptual decision task and variable utterance formats, the interference effect for the first noun was increased and the interference effect for second noun disappeared, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had been narrowed. By contrast, if cognitive load was induced by a secondary working memory task to be performed during speech planning, the interference effect for both nouns was increased, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had not been affected. In all, the data suggest that the scope of advance planning during grammatical encoding in sentence production is flexible, rather than structurally fixed.

ERP correlates of letter identity and letter position are modulated by lexical frequency

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Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Perea, Manuel; Gómez, Pablo; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2013-01-01

The encoding of letter position is a key aspect in all recently proposed models of visual-word recognition. We analyzed the impact of lexical frequency on letter position assignment by examining the temporal dynamics of lexical activation induced by pseudowords extracted from words of different frequencies. For each word (e.g., BRIDGE), we created two pseudowords: A transposed-letter (TL: BRIGDE) and a replaced-letter pseudoword (RL: BRITGE). ERPs were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in two tasks: Semantic categorization (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). For high-frequency stimuli, similar ERPs were obtained for words and TL-pseudowords, but the N400 component to words was reduced relative to RL-pseudowords, indicating less lexical/semantic activation. In contrast, TL- and RL-pseudowords created from low-frequency stimuli elicited similar ERPs. Behavioral responses in the lexical decision task paralleled this asymmetry. The present findings impose constraints on computational and neural models of visual-word recognition. PMID:23454070

Component-Minimized Buck-Boost Voltage Source Inverters

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gao, F.; Loh, P.C.; Blaabjerg, Frede

2007-01-01

This paper presents the design of buck-boost B4 inverters that can be derived from either Ćuk- or SEPIC-derived buck-boost B6 inverters. Unlike traditional inverters, the integration of front-end voltage boost circuitry and inverter circuitry allows it to perform buck-boost voltage inversion...... between capacitors. Modulation wise, the proposed buck-boost B4 inverters can be controlled using a carefully designed carrier-based pulse-width modulation (PWM) scheme that will always ensure balanced threephase outputs as desired, while simultaneously achieving minimal voltage stress across...

A normative study of lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse elderly population.

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Kim, Bong Jo; Lee, Cheol Soon; Oh, Byoung Hoon; Hong, Chang Hyung; Lee, Kang Soo; Son, Sang Joon; Han, Changsu; Park, Moon Ho; Jeong, Hyun-Ghang; Kim, Tae Hui; Park, Joon Hyuk; Kim, Ki Woong

2013-12-01

Lexical fluency tests are frequently used to assess language and executive function in clinical practice. We investigated the influences of age, gender, and education on lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse, elderly Korean population and provided its' normative information. We administered the lexical verbal fluency test (LVFT) to 1676 community-dwelling, cognitively normal subjects aged 60 years or over. In a stepwise linear regression analysis, education (B=0.40, SE=0.02, standardized B=0.506) and age (B=-0.10, SE=0.01, standardized B=-0.15) had significant effects on LVFT scores (p0.05). Education explained 28.5% of the total variance in LVFT scores, which was much larger than the variance explained by age (5.42%). Accordingly, we presented normative data of the LVFT stratified by age (60-69, 70-74, 75-79, and ≥80 years) and education (0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and ≥13 years). The LVFT norms should provide clinically useful data for evaluating elderly people and help improve the interpretation of verbal fluency tasks and allow for greater diagnostic accuracy.

USING AUTHENTIC LITERARY WORKS FOR THE FORMATION OF LEXICAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE GERMAN LANGUAGE TEACHERS

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Антоніна Палецька-Юкало

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the advantages of use of authentic literary works as the main sphere of learning and improvement of foreign language vocabulary.The definition of lexical competence has been suggested. The possibilities for perceiving and analysis of such language phenomena as synonyms, antonyms, polisemic words, lexical links, linguistic clichés non-equivalent and emotionally colored vocabulary of authentic literary works as the basis of the formation of German lexical competence of future teachers have been grounded. The process of investigation has revealed that lexical contents of authentic literary works contribute to a comprehensive dictionary and learning connected speech structures, provide frequent repetition of lexical items, and create a sense of language.

Lexical Characteristics of Expressive Vocabulary in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Kover, Sara T.; Weismer, Susan Ellis

2014-01-01

Purpose: Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young…

Lexical Development during Middle Infancy: A Mutually Driven Infant-Caregiver Process.

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Dunham, Philip; Dunham, Frances

1992-01-01

Mothers' utterances were measured during interactions with their 13-month-old infants and correlated with measures of infants' productive lexical development at 13 and 24 months. Correlations between maternal measures and infants' lexical development were lower for employed mothers than for mothers who were full-time caregivers. (BC)

The Interaction of Lexical Characteristics and Speech Production in Parkinson's Disease

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Chiu, Yi-Fang; Forrest, Karen

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study sought to investigate the interaction of speech movement execution with higher order lexical parameters. The authors examined how lexical characteristics affect speech output in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy control (HC) speakers. Method: Twenty speakers with PD and 12 healthy speakers read sentences…

Radiotherapy Breast Boost With Reduced Whole-Breast Dose Is Associated With Improved Cosmesis: The Results of a Comprehensive Assessment From the St. George and Wollongong Randomized Breast Boost Trial

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hau, Eric; Browne, Lois H.; Khanna, Sam; Cail, Stacy; Cert, Grad; Chin, Yaw; Clark, Catherine; Inder, Stephanie; Szwajcer, Alison; Graham, Peter H.

2012-01-01

Purpose: To evaluate comprehensively the effect of a radiotherapy boost on breast cosmetic outcomes after 5 years in patients treated with breast-conserving surgery. Methods: The St. George and Wollongong trial (NCT00138814) randomized 688 patients with histologically proven Tis-2, N 0–1, M0 carcinoma to the control arm of 50 Gy in 25 fractions (342 patients) and the boost arm of 45 Gy in 25 fractions to the whole breast followed by a 16 Gy in 8 fraction electron boost (346 patients). Five-year cosmetic outcomes were assessed by a panel subjectively in 385 patients and objectively using pBRA (relative breast retraction assessment). A subset of patients also had absolute BRA measurements. Clinician assessment and patient self-assessment of overall cosmetic and specific items as well as computer BCCT.core analysis were also performed. Results: The boost arm had improved cosmetic overall outcomes as scored by the panel and BCCT.core software with 79% (p = 0.016) and 81% (p = 0.004) excellent/good cosmesis respectively compared with 68% in no-boost arm. The boost arm also had lower pBRA and BRA values with a mean difference of 0.60 and 1.82 mm, respectively, but was not statistically significant. There was a very high proportion of overall excellent/good cosmetic outcome in 95% and 93% in the boost and no–boost arms using patient self-assessment. However, no difference in overall and specific items scored by clinician assessment and patient self-assessment was found. Conclusion: The results show the negative cosmetic effect of a 16-Gy boost is offset by a lower whole-breast dose of 45 Gy.

Can you boost your metabolism?

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... this page: //medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000893.htm Can you boost your metabolism? To use the sharing ... boosting metabolism than tactics that work. Some myths can backfire. If you think you are burning more ...

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies.

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Kuperman, Victor; Drieghe, Denis; Keuleers, Emmanuel; Brysbaert, Marc

2013-01-01

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times, and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7-44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5-17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to 0.2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye-mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts.

FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION OF LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL FACTORS IN THE ENGLISH VERB SYSTEM

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Nina Sergeevna Kotova

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Purpose. The purpose of the research conducted is revealing the peculiarities of lexical paradigmatics influence upon the usage of aspect and temporal verb forms and the opposite impact as well, i.e. the influence of aspect and temporal verb forms upon the lexical meaning of this verb groups under specific conditions of functioning. The lexical paradigmatics is considered as the system of mutually contrasted semantic features of particular verb groups. In this case, we analyze the paradigmatics in the middle language hierarchy for each language level separately. Methodology. The research is conducted synchronically on the material of the contemporary English verb system. Interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is examined in a functional aspect. Such consideration gives a possibility to differentiate the intrasystem phenomena and phenomena of pragmatic character and expose the system-structural mutual relations of lexical and grammatical factors. The research material is the verb as massive word group. From the point of view of interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the functional and semantic field representing aspectuality, we get interested in the meaning which realizes in the opposition ofatelicity – telicity(telicity correlates the action with the limit, and atelicity demotes the action irrespectively to its limit. The technique applied to the analysis of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is complex combining descriptive and comparative and functional methods. Results. Interrelations and interdependency of lexical and grammatical paradigmatics create particular sustainability in using the lexical unit of this paradigm with aspect and temporal verb forms. In this case, the tendencies of the language sign developing and changing are expressed in the process of the mutual substitution and interpenetration of grammatical forms primarily under the influence of paradigmatic

Learning Boost C++ libraries

CERN Document Server

Mukherjee, Arindam

2015-01-01

If you are a C++ programmer who has never used Boost libraries before, this book will get you up-to-speed with using them. Whether you are developing new C++ software or maintaining existing code written using Boost libraries, this hands-on introduction will help you decide on the right library and techniques to solve your practical programming problems.

Lexical Errors and Accuracy in Foreign Language Writing. Second Language Acquisition

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del Pilar Agustin Llach, Maria

2011-01-01

Lexical errors are a determinant in gaining insight into vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary use and writing quality assessment. Lexical errors are very frequent in the written production of young EFL learners, but they decrease as learners gain proficiency. Misspellings are the most common category, but formal errors give way to semantic-based…

Nouns, verbs, objects, actions, and abstractions: local fMRI activity indexes semantics, not lexical categories.

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Moseley, Rachel L; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2014-05-01

Noun/verb dissociations in the literature defy interpretation due to the confound between lexical category and semantic meaning; nouns and verbs typically describe concrete objects and actions. Abstract words, pertaining to neither, are a critical test case: dissociations along lexical-grammatical lines would support models purporting lexical category as the principle governing brain organisation, whilst semantic models predict dissociation between concrete words but not abstract items. During fMRI scanning, participants read orthogonalised word categories of nouns and verbs, with or without concrete, sensorimotor meaning. Analysis of inferior frontal/insula, precentral and central areas revealed an interaction between lexical class and semantic factors with clear category differences between concrete nouns and verbs but not abstract ones. Though the brain stores the combinatorial and lexical-grammatical properties of words, our data show that topographical differences in brain activation, especially in the motor system and inferior frontal cortex, are driven by semantics and not by lexical class. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Detection of Illegitimate Emails using Boosting Algorithm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nizamani, Sarwat; Memon, Nasrullah; Wiil, Uffe Kock

2011-01-01

and spam email detection. For our desired task, we have applied a boosting technique. With the use of boosting we can achieve high accuracy of traditional classification algorithms. When using boosting one has to choose a suitable weak learner as well as the number of boosting iterations. In this paper, we......In this paper, we report on experiments to detect illegitimate emails using boosting algorithm. We call an email illegitimate if it is not useful for the receiver or for the society. We have divided the problem into two major areas of illegitimate email detection: suspicious email detection...

An Analysis of the Time Course of Lexical Processing during Reading

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Sheridan, Heather; Reichle, Erik D.

2016-01-01

Reingold, Reichle, Glaholt, and Sheridan (2012) reported a gaze-contingent eye-movement experiment in which survival-curve analyses were used to examine the effects of word frequency, the availability of parafoveal preview, and initial fixation location on the time course of lexical processing. The key results of these analyses suggest that…

Basic lexical and grammatical transformations in translation of German print advertising

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Артур Нарманович Мамедов

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents basic lexical and grammatical transformations, which contribute to preserving the semantic and syntactic structure of a German advertising text and reproducing the image of the advertised product. This shows that the translation has the same communicative effect as that achieved by the source text.

Both lexical and non-lexical characters are processed during saccadic eye movements.

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Hao Zhang

Full Text Available On average our eyes make 3-5 saccadic movements per second when we read, although their neural mechanism is still unclear. It is generally thought that saccades help redirect the retinal fovea to specific characters and words but that actual discrimination of information only occurs during periods of fixation. Indeed, it has been proposed that there is active and selective suppression of information processing during saccades to avoid experience of blurring due to the high-speed movement. Here, using a paradigm where a string of either lexical (Chinese or non-lexical (alphabetic characters are triggered by saccadic eye movements, we show that subjects can discriminate both while making saccadic eye movement. Moreover, discrimination accuracy is significantly better for characters scanned during the saccadic movement to a fixation point than those not scanned beyond it. Our results showed that character information can be processed during the saccade, therefore saccades during reading not only function to redirect the fovea to fixate the next character or word but allow pre-processing of information from the ones adjacent to the fixation locations to help target the next most salient one. In this way saccades can not only promote continuity in reading words but also actively facilitate reading comprehension.

The Chinese Lexicon Project: A megastudy of lexical decision performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character compound words.

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Tse, Chi-Shing; Yap, Melvin J; Chan, Yuen-Lai; Sze, Wei Ping; Shaoul, Cyrus; Lin, Dan

2017-08-01

Using a megastudy approach, we developed a database of lexical variables and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character compound words. Each word was responded to by about 33 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. This resource provides a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the Chinese single-character, English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Three analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential uses of the database. First, we compared the proportion of variance in lexical decision performance accounted for by six word frequency measures and established that the best predictor was Cai and Brysbaert's (PLoS One, 5, e10729, 2010) contextual diversity subtitle frequency. Second, we ran virtual replications of three previously published lexical decision experiments and found convergence between the original experiments and the present megastudy. Finally, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the effects of theoretically important lexical variables in our normative data. This is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese two-character compound word processing, which should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity to Help Students Understand the Meaning of "Random"

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Kaplan, Jennifer J.; Rogness, Neal T.; Fisher, Diane G.

2014-01-01

Words that are part of colloquial English but used differently in a technical domain may possess lexical ambiguity. The use of such words by instructors may inhibit student learning if incorrect connections are made by students between the technical and colloquial meanings. One fundamental word in statistics that has lexical ambiguity for students…

Multiclass Boosting with Adaptive Group-Based kNN and Its Application in Text Categorization

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Lei La

2012-01-01

Full Text Available AdaBoost is an excellent committee-based tool for classification. However, its effectiveness and efficiency in multiclass categorization face the challenges from methods based on support vector machine (SVM, neural networks (NN, naïve Bayes, and k-nearest neighbor (kNN. This paper uses a novel multi-class AdaBoost algorithm to avoid reducing the multi-class classification problem to multiple two-class classification problems. This novel method is more effective. In addition, it keeps the accuracy advantage of existing AdaBoost. An adaptive group-based kNN method is proposed in this paper to build more accurate weak classifiers and in this way control the number of basis classifiers in an acceptable range. To further enhance the performance, weak classifiers are combined into a strong classifier through a double iterative weighted way and construct an adaptive group-based kNN boosting algorithm (AGkNN-AdaBoost. We implement AGkNN-AdaBoost in a Chinese text categorization system. Experimental results showed that the classification algorithm proposed in this paper has better performance both in precision and recall than many other text categorization methods including traditional AdaBoost. In addition, the processing speed is significantly enhanced than original AdaBoost and many other classic categorization algorithms.

Subgroup differences in the lexical tone mismatch negativity (MMN) among Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia.

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Nan, Yun; Huang, Wan-ting; Wang, Wen-jing; Liu, Chang; Dong, Qi

2016-01-01

The association/dissociation of pitch processing between music and language is a long lasting debate. We examined this music-language relationship by investigating to what extent pitch deficits in these two domains were dissociable. We focused on a special neurodevelopmental pitch disorder - congenital amusia, which primarily affects musical pitch processing. Recent research has also revealed lexical tone deficits in speech among amusics. Approximately one-third of Mandarin amusics exhibits behavioural difficulties in lexical tone perception, which is known as tone agnosia. Using mismatch negativities (MMNs), our current work probed lexical tone encoding at the pre-attentive level among the Mandarin amusics with (tone agnosics) and without (pure amusics) behavioural lexical tone deficits compared with age- and IQ-matched controls. Relative to the controls and the pure amusics, the tone agnosics exhibited reduced MMNs specifically in response to lexical tone changes. Their tone-consonant MMNs were intact and similar to those of the other two groups. Moreover, the tone MMN reduction over the left hemisphere was tightly linked to behavioural insensitivity to lexical tone changes. The current study thus provides the first psychophysiological evidence of subgroup differences in lexical tone processing among Mandarin amusics and links amusics' behavioural tone deficits to impaired pre-attentive tone processing. Despite the overall music pitch deficits, the subgroup differences in lexical tone processing in Mandarin-speaking amusics suggest dissociation of pitch deficits between music and speech. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Boosting Memory by tDCS to Frontal or Parietal Brain Regions? A Study of the Enactment Effect Shows No Effects for Immediate and Delayed Recognition

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Beat Meier

2018-06-01

Full Text Available Boosting memory with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS seems to be an elegant way to optimize learning. Here we tested whether tDCS to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or to the left posterior parietal cortex would boost recognition memory in general and/or particularly for action phrases enacted at study. During study, 48 young adults either read or enacted simple action phrases. Memory for the action phrases was assessed after a retention interval of 45 min and again after 7-days to investigate the long-term consequences of brain stimulation. The results showed a robust enactment effect in both test sessions. Moreover, the decrease in performance was more pronounced for reading than for enacting the phrases at study. However, tDCS did not reveal any effect on subsequent recognition memory performance. We conclude that memory benefits of tDCS are not easily replicated. In contrast, enactment at study reliably boosts subsequent memory.

Lexical Access in L2 Speech Production: a controlled serial search task

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Gicele Vergine Vieira

2017-09-01

Full Text Available When it comes to lexical access in L2 speech production, working memory (WM seems to play a central role as for less automatized procedures require more WM capacity to be executed (Prebianca, 2007. With that in mind, this paper aims at claiming that bilingual lexical access qualifies as a controlled serial strategic search task susceptible to individual differences in WM capacity. Evidence in support of such claim is provided by the results of AUTHOR's (2010 study conducted so as to investigate the relationship between L2 lexical access, WMC and L2 proficiency. AUTHOR's (2010 findings indicate that bilingual lexical access entails underlying processes such as cue generation, set delimitation, serial search and monitoring, which to be carried out, require the allocation of attention. Attention is limited and, as a result, only higher spans were able to perform these underlying processes automatically.

Lexical Bundle Analysis in Mathematics Classroom Discourse: The Significance of Stance

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Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David; Cortes, Viviana

2010-01-01

In this article, we introduce the lexical bundle, defined by corpus linguists as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 2006; Cortes, "English for Specific Purposes" 23:397-423, 2004). Attention to lexical bundles helps to explore…

The N400 as a snapshot of interactive processing: evidence from regression analyses of orthographic neighbor and lexical associate effects

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Laszlo, Sarah; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

Linking print with meaning tends to be divided into subprocesses, such as recognition of an input's lexical entry and subsequent access of semantics. However, recent results suggest that the set of semantic features activated by an input is broader than implied by a view wherein access serially follows recognition. EEG was collected from participants who viewed items varying in number and frequency of both orthographic neighbors and lexical associates. Regression analysis of single item ERPs replicated past findings, showing that N400 amplitudes are greater for items with more neighbors, and further revealed that N400 amplitudes increase for items with more lexical associates and with higher frequency neighbors or associates. Together, the data suggest that in the N400 time window semantic features of items broadly related to inputs are active, consistent with models in which semantic access takes place in parallel with stimulus recognition. PMID:20624252

Evaluating lexical characteristics of verbal fluency output in schizophrenia.

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Juhasz, Barbara J; Chambers, Destinee; Shesler, Leah W; Haber, Alix; Kurtz, Matthew M

2012-12-30

Standardized lexical analysis of verbal output has not been applied to verbal fluency tasks in schizophrenia. Performance of individuals with schizophrenia on both a letter (n=139) and semantic (n=137) fluency task was investigated. The lexical characteristics (word frequency, age-of-acquisition, word length, and semantic typicality) of words produced were evaluated and compared to those produced by a healthy control group matched on age, gender, and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) vocabulary scores (n=20). Overall, individuals with schizophrenia produced fewer words than healthy controls, replicating past research (see Bokat and Goldberg, 2003). Words produced in the semantic fluency task by individuals with schizophrenia were, on average, earlier acquired and more typical of the category. In contrast, no differences in lexical characteristics emerged in the letter fluency task. The results are informative regarding how individuals with schizophrenia access their mental lexicons during the verbal fluency task. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Symmetry boost of the fidelity of Shor factoring

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Nam, Y. S.; Blümel, R.

2018-05-01

In Shor's algorithm quantum subroutines occur with the structure F U F-1 , where F is a unitary transform and U is performing a quantum computation. Examples are quantum adders and subunits of quantum modulo adders. In this paper we show, both analytically and numerically, that if, in analogy to spin echoes, F and F-1 can be implemented symmetrically when executing Shor's algorithm on actual, imperfect quantum hardware, such that F and F-1 have the same hardware errors, a symmetry boost in the fidelity of the combined F U F-1 quantum operation results when compared to the case in which the errors in F and F-1 are independently random. Running the complete gate-by-gate implemented Shor algorithm, we show that the symmetry-induced fidelity boost can be as large as a factor 4. While most of our analytical and numerical results concern the case of over- and under-rotation of controlled rotation gates, in the numerically accessible case of Shor's algorithm with a small number of qubits, we show explicitly that the symmetry boost is robust with respect to more general types of errors. While, expectedly, additional error types reduce the symmetry boost, we show explicitly, by implementing general off-diagonal SU (N ) errors (N =2 ,4 ,8 ), that the boost factor scales like a Lorentzian in δ /σ , where σ and δ are the error strengths of the diagonal over- and underrotation errors and the off-diagonal SU (N ) errors, respectively. The Lorentzian shape also shows that, while the boost factor may become small with increasing δ , it declines slowly (essentially like a power law) and is never completely erased. We also investigate the effect of diagonal nonunitary errors, which, in analogy to unitary errors, reduce but never erase the symmetry boost. Going beyond the case of small quantum processors, we present analytical scaling results that show that the symmetry boost persists in the practically interesting case of a large number of qubits. We illustrate this result

Lexical Frames and Reported Speech

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Howard

2004-01-01

This paper addresses a problem of lexical choice that arises for ESL/EFL learners in the writing of research papers, critiques, interview reports, or any other sort of discourse that requires source attribution. The problem falls naturally into two parts. One part concerns the general lack of linguistic resources typically available (for various…

Tumour bed boost radiotherapy for women after breast-conserving surgery.

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Kindts, Isabelle; Laenen, Annouschka; Depuydt, Tom; Weltens, Caroline

2017-11-06

Breast-conserving therapy, involving breast-conserving surgery followed by whole-breast irradiation and optionally a boost to the tumour bed, is a standard therapeutic option for women with early-stage breast cancer. A boost to the tumour bed means that an extra dose of radiation is applied that covers the initial tumour site. The rationale for a boost of radiotherapy to the tumour bed is that (i) local recurrence occurs mostly at the site of the primary tumour because remaining microscopic tumour cells are most likely situated there; and (ii) radiation can eliminate these causative microscopic tumour cells. The boost continues to be used in women at high risk of local recurrence, but is less widely accepted for women at lower risk. Reasons for questioning the boost are twofold. Firstly, the boost brings higher treatment costs. Secondly, the potential adverse events are not negligible. In this Cochrane Review, we investigated the effect of the tumour bed boost on local control and side effects. To assess the effects of tumour bed boost radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery and whole-breast irradiation for the treatment of breast cancer. We searched the Cochrane Breast Cancer Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (January 1966 to 1 March 2017), Embase (1980 to 1 March 2017), the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, and ClinicalTrials.gov on 1 March 2017. We also searched the European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology Annual Meeting, the St Gallen Oncology Conferences, and the American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting for abstracts. Randomised controlled trials comparing the addition and the omission of breast cancer tumour bed boost radiotherapy. Two review authors (IK and CW) performed data extraction and assessed risk of bias using Cochrane's 'Risk of bias' tool, resolving any disagreements through discussion. We entered data into Review Manager 5 for

Lexical quality and executive control predict children's first and second language reading comprehension.

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Raudszus, Henriette; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2018-01-01

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years, SD  = 5 months) learning to read Dutch in the Netherlands. Bilingual children showed lower Dutch vocabulary, syntactic integration and reading comprehension skills, but better decoding skills than their monolingual peers. There were no differences in working memory or inhibition. Multigroup path analysis showed relatively invariant connections between predictors and reading comprehension for monolingual and bilingual readers. For both groups, there was a direct effect of lexical quality on reading comprehension. In addition, lexical quality and executive control indirectly influenced reading comprehension via syntactic integration. The groups differed in that inhibition more strongly predicted syntactic integration for bilingual than for monolingual children. For a subgroup of bilingual children, for whom home language vocabulary data were available ( n  = 56), there was an additional positive effect of home language vocabulary on second language reading comprehension. Together, the results suggest that similar processes underlie reading comprehension in first and second language readers, but that syntactic integration requires more executive control in second language reading. Moreover, bilingual readers additionally benefit from first language vocabulary to arrive at second language reading comprehension.

Boosted tops at ATLAS

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Villaplana, M; The ATLAS collaboration

2011-01-01

A sample of candidate events for highly boosted top quarks is selected following the standard ATLAS selection for semi-leptonic ttbar events plus a requirement that the invariant mass of the reconstructed ttbar pair is greater than 700 GeV. Event displays are presented for the most promising candidates, as well as quantitative results for observables designed to isolate a boosted top quark signal.

Nudging and Boosting: Steering or Empowering Good Decisions.

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Hertwig, Ralph; Grüne-Yanoff, Till

2017-11-01

In recent years, policy makers worldwide have begun to acknowledge the potential value of insights from psychology and behavioral economics into how people make decisions. These insights can inform the design of nonregulatory and nonmonetary policy interventions-as well as more traditional fiscal and coercive measures. To date, much of the discussion of behaviorally informed approaches has emphasized "nudges," that is, interventions designed to steer people in a particular direction while preserving their freedom of choice. Yet behavioral science also provides support for a distinct kind of nonfiscal and noncoercive intervention, namely, "boosts." The objective of boosts is to foster people's competence to make their own choices-that is, to exercise their own agency. Building on this distinction, we further elaborate on how boosts are conceptually distinct from nudges: The two kinds of interventions differ with respect to (a) their immediate intervention targets, (b) their roots in different research programs, (c) the causal pathways through which they affect behavior, (d) their assumptions about human cognitive architecture, (e) the reversibility of their effects, (f) their programmatic ambitions, and (g) their normative implications. We discuss each of these dimensions, provide an initial taxonomy of boosts, and address some possible misconceptions.

Balancing Generalization and Lexical Conservatism: An Artificial Language Study with Child Learners

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Wonnacott, Elizabeth

2011-01-01

Successful language acquisition involves generalization, but learners must balance this against the acquisition of lexical constraints. Such learning has been considered problematic for theories of acquisition: if learners generalize abstract patterns to new words, how do they learn lexically-based exceptions? One approach claims that learners use…

[Effects of self-touching behavior on the performance of lexical retrieval].

Science.gov (United States)

Fujii, M

1997-08-01

In this study, effects of self-touching behavior on the performance of lexical retrieval were investigated. In Experiment 1, 52 women were required to retrieve Japanese idioms, and to recall them approximately 2 minutes after the retrieval. The participants were randomly assigned into two groups; in one group, they were tested with the restriction of their hand movement, whereas in the other group, they were allowed to move their hands freely. Results revealed that when the movement was restricted, their performance in the retrieval task was significantly deteriorated. In Experiment 2, after the presentation of tape-recorded verbal stimuli, 26 women were required to recall them either with an interval of 2 minutes or with an interval of 2 weeks. The self-touching behavior was found to occur more often when the recall was performed with the interval of 2 weeks than when it took place immediately after the stimulus presentation. Thus self-touching is considered to serve as a cue to retrieve information stored in the long term memory.

Nonword repetition in lexical decision: support for two opposing processes.

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Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan; Zeelenberg, René; Steyvers, Mark; Shiffrin, Richard; Raaijmakers, Jeroen

2004-10-01

We tested and confirmed the hypothesis that the prior presentation of nonwords in lexical decision is the net result of two opposing processes: (1) a relatively fast inhibitory process based on global familiarity; and (2) a relatively slow facilitatory process based on the retrieval of specific episodic information. In three studies, we manipulated speed-stress to influence the balance between the two processes. Experiment 1 showed item-specific improvement for repeated nonwords in a standard "respond-when-ready" lexical decision task. Experiment 2 used a 400-ms deadline procedure and showed performance for nonwords to be unaffected by up to four prior presentations. In Experiment 3 we used a signal-to-respond procedure with variable time intervals and found negative repetition priming for repeated nonwords. These results can be accounted for by dual-process models of lexical decision.

Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating.

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Boudelaa, Sami

2018-02-07

Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic-English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] "moon") and English (e.g., [bæd] "bad") activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

Lexical tonal discrimination in Zapotec children. A study of the theta rhythm.

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Poblano, Adrián; Castro-Sierra, Eduardo; Arteaga, Carmina; Pérez-Ruiz, Santiago J

Zapotec is a language used mainly in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico of tonal characteristic; homophone words with difference in fundamental frequency with different meanings. Our objective was to analyze changes in the electroencephalographic (EEG) theta rhythm during word discrimination of lexical tonal bi-syllabic homophone word samples of Zapotec. We employed electroencephalography analysis during lexical tonal discrimination in 12 healthy subjects 9-16 years of age. We observed an increase in theta relative power between lexical discrimination and at rest eyes-open state in right temporal site. We also observed several significant intra- and inter-hemispheric correlations in several scalp sites, mainly in left fronto-temporal and right temporal areas when subjects were performing lexical discrimination. Our data suggest more engagement of neural networks of the right hemisphere are involved in Zapotec language discrimination. Copyright © 2015 Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez. Publicado por Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.

Clustering Using Boosted Constrained k-Means Algorithm

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Masayuki Okabe

2018-03-01

Full Text Available This article proposes a constrained clustering algorithm with competitive performance and less computation time to the state-of-the-art methods, which consists of a constrained k-means algorithm enhanced by the boosting principle. Constrained k-means clustering using constraints as background knowledge, although easy to implement and quick, has insufficient performance compared with metric learning-based methods. Since it simply adds a function into the data assignment process of the k-means algorithm to check for constraint violations, it often exploits only a small number of constraints. Metric learning-based methods, which exploit constraints to create a new metric for data similarity, have shown promising results although the methods proposed so far are often slow depending on the amount of data or number of feature dimensions. We present a method that exploits the advantages of the constrained k-means and metric learning approaches. It incorporates a mechanism for accepting constraint priorities and a metric learning framework based on the boosting principle into a constrained k-means algorithm. In the framework, a metric is learned in the form of a kernel matrix that integrates weak cluster hypotheses produced by the constrained k-means algorithm, which works as a weak learner under the boosting principle. Experimental results for 12 data sets from 3 data sources demonstrated that our method has performance competitive to those of state-of-the-art constrained clustering methods for most data sets and that it takes much less computation time. Experimental evaluation demonstrated the effectiveness of controlling the constraint priorities by using the boosting principle and that our constrained k-means algorithm functions correctly as a weak learner of boosting.

Responding to Nonwords in the Lexical Decision Task: Insights from the English Lexicon Project

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Yap, Melvin J.; Sibley, Daragh E.; Balota, David A.; Ratcliff, Roger; Rueckl, Jay

2014-01-01

Researchers have extensively documented how various statistical properties of words (e.g., word-frequency) influence lexical processing. However, the impact of lexical variables on nonword decision-making performance is less clear. This gap is surprising, since a better specification of the mechanisms driving nonword responses may provide valuable insights into early lexical processes. In the present study, item-level and participant-level analyses were conducted on the trial-level lexical decision data for almost 37,000 nonwords in the English Lexicon Project in order to identify the influence of different psycholinguistic variables on nonword lexical decision performance, and to explore individual differences in how participants respond to nonwords. Item-level regression analyses reveal that nonword response time was positively correlated with number of letters, number of orthographic neighbors, number of affixes, and baseword number of syllables, and negatively correlated with Levenshtein orthographic distance and baseword frequency. Participant-level analyses also point to within- and between-session stability in nonword responses across distinct sets of items, and intriguingly reveal that higher vocabulary knowledge is associated with less sensitivity to some dimensions (e.g., number of letters) but more sensitivity to others (e.g., baseword frequency). The present findings provide well-specified and interesting new constraints for informing models of word recognition and lexical decision. PMID:25329078

A taste for words and sounds: a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia

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Olympia eColizoli

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Gustatory forms of synesthesia involve the automatic and consistent experience of tastes that are triggered by non-taste related inducers. We present a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia within one individual, SC. Most words and a subset of nonlinguistic sounds induce the experience of taste, smell and physical sensations for SC. SC’s lexical-gustatory associations were significantly more consistent than those of a group of controls. We tested for effects of presentation modality (visual vs. auditory, taste-related congruency, and synesthetic inducer-concurrent direction using a priming task. SC’s performance did not differ significantly from a trained control group. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of SC’s synesthetic experiences by comparing her brain activation to the literature on brain networks related to language, music and sound processing, in addition to synesthesia. Words that induced a strong taste were contrasted to words that induced weak-to-no tastes (tasty vs. tasteless words. Brain activation was also measured during passive listening to music and environmental sounds. Brain activation patterns showed evidence that two regions are implicated in SC’s synesthetic experience of taste and smell: the left anterior insula and left superior parietal lobe. Anterior insula activation may reflect the synesthetic taste experience. The superior parietal lobe is proposed to be involved in binding sensory information across sub-types of synesthetes. We conclude that SC’s synesthesia is genuine and reflected in her brain activation. The type of inducer (visual-lexical, auditory-lexical, and non-lexical auditory stimuli could be differentiated based on patterns of brain activity.

Usage labels network: an approach to lexical variation

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Danko Šipka

1994-12-01

Full Text Available The Problem of lexical variation is frequently addressed within the linguistic community. Its complexity and the broad implications of any possible solution have considerable appeal among theoretical linguists. Lexicographers, in their turn, have been forced to address it in order to provide dictionary usage information, which is normally done by means of dictionary labels such as: American English, obsolete, slang , etc. An insightful overview of the relevant lexicological approaches, as well as some lexicographis projects is provided in Lipka (1990. The most exhaustive sociolinguistic classification, however, can be found in Preston (1986. Lexicographis treatments of lexical variation have been addressed in numerous papers listed in Zgusta (1988.

Stuttering Frequency in Relation to Lexical Diversity, Syntactic Complexity, and Utterance Length

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Wagovich, Stacy A.; Hall, Nancy E.

2018-01-01

Children's frequency of stuttering can be affected by utterance length, syntactic complexity, and lexical content of language. Using a unique small-scale within-subjects design, this study explored whether language samples that contain more stuttering have (a) longer, (b) syntactically more complex, and (c) lexically more diverse utterances than…

CyberKnife Boost for Patients with Cervical Cancer Unable to Undergo Brachytherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Haas, Jonathan Andrew; Witten, Matthew R.; Clancey, Owen; Episcopia, Karen; Accordino, Diane; Chalas, Eva

2012-01-01

Standard radiation therapy for patients undergoing primary chemosensitized radiation for carcinomas of the cervix usually consists of external beam radiation followed by an intracavitary brachytherapy boost. On occasion, the brachytherapy boost cannot be performed due to unfavorable anatomy or because of coexisting medical conditions. We examined the safety and efficacy of using CyberKnife stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) as a boost to the cervix after external beam radiation in those patients unable to have brachytherapy to give a more effective dose to the cervix than with conventional external beam radiation alone. Six consecutive patients with anatomic or medical conditions precluding a tandem and ovoid boost were treated with combined external beam radiation and CyberKnife boost to the cervix. Five patients received 45 Gy to the pelvis with serial intensity-modulated radiation therapy boost to the uterus and cervix to a dose of 61.2 Gy. These five patients received an SBRT boost to the cervix to a dose of 20 Gy in five fractions of 4 Gy each. One patient was treated to the pelvis to a dose of 45 Gy with an external beam boost to the uterus and cervix to a dose of 50.4 Gy. This patient received an SBRT boost to the cervix to a dose of 19.5 Gy in three fractions of 6.5 Gy. Five percent volumes of the bladder and rectum were kept to ≤75 Gy in all patients (i.e., V75 Gy ≤ 5%). All of the patients remain locally controlled with no evidence of disease following treatment. Grade 1 diarrhea occurred in 4/6 patients during the conventional external beam radiation. There has been no grade 3 or 4 rectal or bladder toxicity. There were no toxicities observed following SBRT boost. At a median follow-up of 14 months, CyberKnife radiosurgical boost is well tolerated and efficacious in providing a boost to patients with cervix cancer who are unable to undergo brachytherapy boost. Further follow-up is required to see if these results remain durable.

Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Application: Improving Web Service to Defense Acquisition Visibility Environment (DAVE)

Science.gov (United States)

2015-05-01

1 LEXICAL LINK ANALYSIS (LLA) APPLICATION: IMPROVING WEB SERVICE TO DEFENSE ACQUISITION VISIBILITY ENVIRONMENT(DAVE) May 13-14, 2015 Dr. Ying...REPORT DATE MAY 2015 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2015 to 00-00-2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Application...Making 3 2 1 3 L L A Methods • Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Core – LLA Reports and Visualizations • Collaborative Learning Agents (CLA) for

The Role of Low-Spatial Frequencies in Lexical Decision and Masked Priming

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Boden, C.; Giaschi, D.

2009-01-01

Spatial frequency filtering was used to test the hypotheses that low-spatial frequency information in printed text can: (1) lead to a rapid lexical decision or (2) facilitate word recognition. Adult proficient readers made lexical decisions in unprimed and masked repetition priming experiments with unfiltered, low-pass, high-pass and notch…

How Logical Reasoning Mediates the Relation between Lexical Quality and Reading Comprehension

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Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-01-01

The present study aimed to examine the role of logical reasoning in the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension in 146 fourth grade Dutch children. We assessed their standardized reading comprehension measure, along with their decoding efficiency and vocabulary as measures of lexical quality, syllogistic reasoning as measure of…

The Challenge and the Opportunity of Lexical Inferencing in Language Minority Students

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Shahar-Yames, Daphna; Prior, Anat

2018-01-01

Lexical inferencing from text is a powerful tool for vocabulary and reading comprehension enhancement. Lexical inferencing relies on the pre-requisite skills of reading and existing vocabulary, and is also linked to non-verbal inferencing abilities and reading comprehension. In this study, we examined whether Fifth-grade Russian-speaking language…

Comparing the Lexical Features of EAP Students' Essays by Prompt and Rating

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Lavallée, Maxime; McDonough, Kim

2015-01-01

Previous research has shown that high frequency lexical items, such as AWL words and formulaic expressions, may differentiate between texts written by expert and novice writers (Chen & Baker, 2010; Hancioglu, 2009), and that lexical features related to breadth, depth, and accessibility differentiate among texts from L2 writers of different…

BoostEMM : Transparent boosting using exceptional model mining

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Zon, S.B.; Zeev Ben Mordehay, O.; Vrijdag, T.S.; van Ipenburg, W.; Veldsink, J.; Duivesteijn, W.; Pechenizkiy, M.; Bordino, I.; Caldarelli, G.; Fumarola, F.; Gullo, F.; Squartini, T.

2017-01-01

Boosting is an iterative ensemble-learning paradigm. Every iteration, a weak predictor learns a classification task, taking into account performance achieved in previous iterations. This is done by assigning weights to individual records of the dataset, which are increased if the record is

Lexical characteristics of expressive vocabulary in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.

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Kover, Sara T; Ellis Weismer, Susan

2014-08-01

Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young children with ASD, applying the extended statistical learning theory of vocabulary delay in late talkers (Stokes, Kern, & Dos Santos, 2012) to toddlers with ASD. Parents reported the words produced by toddlers with ASD (n = 57; age 21-37 months) or toddlers without ASD (n = 41; age 22-26 months) on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The average phonological neighborhood density, word frequency, and word length of each toddler's lexicon were calculated. These lexical characteristics served as predictors of vocabulary size. Findings differed for toddlers with and without ASD and according to subsamples. Word length was the most consistent predictor of vocabulary size for toddlers with ASD. Distinct relationships between lexical characteristics and vocabulary size were observed for toddlers with and without ASD. Experimental studies on distributional cues to vocabulary acquisition are needed to inform what is known about mechanisms of learning in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Buck-Boost Current-Source Inverters With Diode-Inductor Network

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gao, Feng; Liang, Chao; Loh, Poh Chiang

2009-01-01

This paper presents a number of novel currentsource inverters (CSIs) with enhanced current buck-boost capability. By adding a unique diode-inductor network between the inverter circuitry and current-boost elements, the proposed buck-boost CSIs demonstrate a doubling of current-boost capability......, as compared with other recently reported buck-boost CSIs. For controlling the proposed CSIs, two modulation schemes are designed for achieving either optimized harmonic performance or minimized commutation count without influencing the inverter current buck-boost gain. These theoretical findings were...

Lexical and Symbolic Meaning of Some Colors in Kazakh Language

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Shara Mazhitaeva

2012-10-01

Full Text Available . Colour is objectified in language by means of lexical units’ group - colour names, therefore colour namings attract a constant interest of the scholars who study mechanisms of categorizing the world around by the person, and they are one of the most investigated concepts in different languages. Colour namings are frequently analyzed in the works devoted to studying color as a special lexical category with great attention paid to a problem of conceptualizing colour space by the person. However a colour owing to certain psychological influence on consciousness of the person possesses the wide associative potential defined not only by specific features of perception but also to great extent, by a cultural heritage of all society including mythological and religious representations. The basic research object is both paroemia and phraseological units and lexical-semantic group of color namings of the Kazakh language.

Within-category variance and lexical tone discrimination in native and non-native speakers

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoffmann, C.W.G.; Sadakata, M.; Chen, A.; Desain, P.W.M.; McQueen, J.M.; Gussenhove, C.; Chen, Y.; Dediu, D.

2014-01-01

In this paper, we show how acoustic variance within lexical tones in disyllabic Mandarin Chinese pseudowords affects discrimination abilities in both native and non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Within-category acoustic variance did not hinder native speakers in discriminating between lexical

Lexical retrieval : An aspect of fluent second language production that can be enhanced

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Snellings, P; de Glopper, Kees; van Gelderen, A.

2002-01-01

The efficiency of lexical retrieval, an essential subprocess of productive language skills, is crucial in fluent writing and speaking. We examine the feasibility of an experimental computerized training for fluent lexical retrieval in the second language in a classroom setting, applying techniques

A Sensorless Predictive Current Controlled Boost Converter by Using an EKF with Load Variation Effect Elimination Function.

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Tong, Qiaoling; Chen, Chen; Zhang, Qiao; Zou, Xuecheng

2015-04-28

To realize accurate current control for a boost converter, a precise measurement of the inductor current is required to achieve high resolution current regulating. Current sensors are widely used to measure the inductor current. However, the current sensors and their processing circuits significantly contribute extra hardware cost, delay and noise to the system. They can also harm the system reliability. Therefore, current sensorless control techniques can bring cost effective and reliable solutions for various boost converter applications. According to the derived accurate model, which contains a number of parasitics, the boost converter is a nonlinear system. An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is proposed for inductor current estimation and output voltage filtering. With this approach, the system can have the same advantages as sensored current control mode. To implement EKF, the load value is necessary. However, the load may vary from time to time. This can lead to errors of current estimation and filtered output voltage. To solve this issue, a load variation elimination effect elimination (LVEE) module is added. In addition, a predictive average current controller is used to regulate the current. Compared with conventional voltage controlled system, the transient response is greatly improved since it only takes two switching cycles for the current to reach its reference. Finally, experimental results are presented to verify the stable operation and output tracking capability for large-signal transients of the proposed algorithm.

Input frequency and lexical variability in phonological development: a survival analysis of word-initial cluster production.

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Ota, Mitsuhiko; Green, Sam J

2013-06-01

Although it has been often hypothesized that children learn to produce new sound patterns first in frequently heard words, the available evidence in support of this claim is inconclusive. To re-examine this question, we conducted a survival analysis of word-initial consonant clusters produced by three children in the Providence Corpus (0 ; 11-4 ; 0). The analysis took account of several lexical factors in addition to lexical input frequency, including the age of first production, production frequency, neighborhood density and number of phonemes. The results showed that lexical input frequency was a significant predictor of the age at which the accuracy level of cluster production in each word first reached 80%. The magnitude of the frequency effect differed across cluster types. Our findings indicate that some of the between-word variance found in the development of sound production can indeed be attributed to the frequency of words in the child's ambient language.

Prioritising lexical patterns to increase axiomatisation in biomedical ontologies. The role of localisation and modularity.

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Quesada-Martínez, M; Fernández-Breis, J T; Stevens, R; Mikroyannidi, E

2015-01-01

This article is part of the Focus Theme of METHODS of Information in Medicine on "Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems". In previous work, we have defined methods for the extraction of lexical patterns from labels as an initial step towards semi-automatic ontology enrichment methods. Our previous findings revealed that many biomedical ontologies could benefit from enrichment methods using lexical patterns as a starting point.Here, we aim to identify which lexical patterns are appropriate for ontology enrichment, driving its analysis by metrics to prioritised the patterns. We propose metrics for suggesting which lexical regularities should be the starting point to enrich complex ontologies. Our method determines the relevance of a lexical pattern by measuring its locality in the ontology, that is, the distance between the classes associated with the pattern, and the distribution of the pattern in a certain module of the ontology. The methods have been applied to four significant biomedical ontologies including the Gene Ontology and SNOMED CT. The metrics provide information about the engineering of the ontologies and the relevance of the patterns. Our method enables the suggestion of links between classes that are not made explicit in the ontology. We propose a prioritisation of the lexical patterns found in the analysed ontologies. The locality and distribution of lexical patterns offer insights into the further engineering of the ontology. Developers can use this information to improve the axiomatisation of their ontologies.

A Structural-Lexical Measure of Semantic Similarity for Geo-Knowledge Graphs

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Andrea Ballatore

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Graphs have become ubiquitous structures to encode geographic knowledge online. The Semantic Web’s linked open data, folksonomies, wiki websites and open gazetteers can be seen as geo-knowledge graphs, that is labeled graphs whose vertices represent geographic concepts and whose edges encode the relations between concepts. To compute the semantic similarity of concepts in such structures, this article defines the network-lexical similarity measure (NLS. This measure estimates similarity by combining two complementary sources of information: the network similarity of vertices and the semantic similarity of the lexical definitions. NLS is evaluated on the OpenStreetMap Semantic Network, a crowdsourced geo-knowledge graph that describes geographic concepts. The hybrid approach outperforms both network and lexical measures, obtaining very strong correlation with the similarity judgments of human subjects.

Lexical Access in Persian Normal Speakers: Picture Naming, Verbal Fluency and Spontaneous Speech

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Zahra Sadat Ghoreishi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Lexical access is the process by which the basic conceptual, syntactical and morpho-phonological information of words are activated. Most studies of lexical access have focused on picture naming. There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants. This study investigates the lexical access performance in normal speakers in different issues such as age, sex and education. Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package”. The performance of participants between two gender groups (male/female, three education groups (below 5 years, above 12 years, between 5 and 12 years and three age groups (18-35 years, 36-55 years, 56-75 years were compared. Results: According to findings, picture naming increased with increasing education and decreased with increasing age. The performance of participants in phonological and semantic verbal fluency showed improvement with age and education. No significant difference was seen between males and females in verbal fluency task. In the analysis of connected speech there were no significant differences between different age and education groups and just mean length of utterance in males was significantly higher than females. Discussion: The findings could be a primitive scale for comparison between normal subjects and patients in lexical access tasks, furthermore it could be a horizon for planning of treatment goals in patients with word finding problem according to age, gender and education.

AlignerBoost: A Generalized Software Toolkit for Boosting Next-Gen Sequencing Mapping Accuracy Using a Bayesian-Based Mapping Quality Framework.

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Qi Zheng

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Accurate mapping of next-generation sequencing (NGS reads to reference genomes is crucial for almost all NGS applications and downstream analyses. Various repetitive elements in human and other higher eukaryotic genomes contribute in large part to ambiguously (non-uniquely mapped reads. Most available NGS aligners attempt to address this by either removing all non-uniquely mapping reads, or reporting one random or "best" hit based on simple heuristics. Accurate estimation of the mapping quality of NGS reads is therefore critical albeit completely lacking at present. Here we developed a generalized software toolkit "AlignerBoost", which utilizes a Bayesian-based framework to accurately estimate mapping quality of ambiguously mapped NGS reads. We tested AlignerBoost with both simulated and real DNA-seq and RNA-seq datasets at various thresholds. In most cases, but especially for reads falling within repetitive regions, AlignerBoost dramatically increases the mapping precision of modern NGS aligners without significantly compromising the sensitivity even without mapping quality filters. When using higher mapping quality cutoffs, AlignerBoost achieves a much lower false mapping rate while exhibiting comparable or higher sensitivity compared to the aligner default modes, therefore significantly boosting the detection power of NGS aligners even using extreme thresholds. AlignerBoost is also SNP-aware, and higher quality alignments can be achieved if provided with known SNPs. AlignerBoost's algorithm is computationally efficient, and can process one million alignments within 30 seconds on a typical desktop computer. AlignerBoost is implemented as a uniform Java application and is freely available at https://github.com/Grice-Lab/AlignerBoost.

AlignerBoost: A Generalized Software Toolkit for Boosting Next-Gen Sequencing Mapping Accuracy Using a Bayesian-Based Mapping Quality Framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Qi; Grice, Elizabeth A

2016-10-01

Accurate mapping of next-generation sequencing (NGS) reads to reference genomes is crucial for almost all NGS applications and downstream analyses. Various repetitive elements in human and other higher eukaryotic genomes contribute in large part to ambiguously (non-uniquely) mapped reads. Most available NGS aligners attempt to address this by either removing all non-uniquely mapping reads, or reporting one random or "best" hit based on simple heuristics. Accurate estimation of the mapping quality of NGS reads is therefore critical albeit completely lacking at present. Here we developed a generalized software toolkit "AlignerBoost", which utilizes a Bayesian-based framework to accurately estimate mapping quality of ambiguously mapped NGS reads. We tested AlignerBoost with both simulated and real DNA-seq and RNA-seq datasets at various thresholds. In most cases, but especially for reads falling within repetitive regions, AlignerBoost dramatically increases the mapping precision of modern NGS aligners without significantly compromising the sensitivity even without mapping quality filters. When using higher mapping quality cutoffs, AlignerBoost achieves a much lower false mapping rate while exhibiting comparable or higher sensitivity compared to the aligner default modes, therefore significantly boosting the detection power of NGS aligners even using extreme thresholds. AlignerBoost is also SNP-aware, and higher quality alignments can be achieved if provided with known SNPs. AlignerBoost's algorithm is computationally efficient, and can process one million alignments within 30 seconds on a typical desktop computer. AlignerBoost is implemented as a uniform Java application and is freely available at https://github.com/Grice-Lab/AlignerBoost.

Lexical Bundles and the Construction of an Academic Voice in Business Writing

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Mhedhbi, Malek

2014-01-01

Most previous studies on disciplinary academic writing focused on the structures in research articles or linguistic realizations of each move (Lau, 2004; Hyland, 2000). Few have been conducted to address the interpersonal aspect of disciplinary discourse texts. The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of lexical bundles' (LBs) awareness…

Lexical processing and organization in bilingual first language acquisition: Guiding future research.

Science.gov (United States)

DeAnda, Stephanie; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal; Friend, Margaret

2016-06-01

A rich body of work in adult bilinguals documents an interconnected lexical network across languages, such that early word retrieval is language independent. This literature has yielded a number of influential models of bilingual semantic memory. However, extant models provide limited predictions about the emergence of lexical organization in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Empirical evidence from monolingual infants suggests that lexical networks emerge early in development as children integrate phonological and semantic information. These findings tell us little about the interaction between 2 languages in early bilingual memory. To date, an understanding of when and how languages interact in early bilingual development is lacking. In this literature review, we present research documenting lexical-semantic development across monolingual and bilingual infants. This is followed by a discussion of current models of bilingual language representation and organization and their ability to account for the available empirical evidence. Together, these theoretical and empirical accounts inform and highlight unexplored areas of research and guide future work on early bilingual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

FORMATION OF PUPILS’ LEXICAL COMPETENCE BY COMPUTER GAMES IN THE STUDY OF UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

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Oksana A. Kucheruk

2018-02-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the problem of forming the lexical competence of younger teenage pupils with the use of computer games in the process of learning the Ukrainian language, the ways of its solution and the corresponding methodical recommendations are offered. The importance of creating and using computer games in order to improve the quality level of Ukrainian-language education is substantiated. The essence of the concepts of «lexical competence», «educational computer game» is specified. On the basis of analysis of scientific works, synthesis of educational and methodological ideas, generalization of own experience of pedagogical work the conditions of effective use of educational computer games within the limits of Ukrainian-language education are determined. It has been established that the integration of computer games into the traditional Ukrainian language learning system helps to provide internal motivation for learning, activating pupils ‘cognitive activity, forming general and substantive competencies. It is emphasized that the effectiveness of educational computer games in the language training of students depends on the level of professional education, ICT competence and linguodidactic skill of a teacher-translator. The educational potential of an interactive educational game complex is described, which is to stimulate interest in teaching the Ukrainian language and creates opportunities for the formation of lexical competence on the basis of electronic linguodidactics.

The role of selected lexical factors on confrontation naming accuracy, speed, and fluency in adults who do and do not stutter.

Science.gov (United States)

Newman, Rochelle S; Bernstein Ratner, Nan

2007-02-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether lexical access in adults who stutter (AWS) differs from that in people who do not stutter. Specifically, the authors examined the role of 3 lexical factors on naming speed, accuracy, and fluency: word frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency. If stuttering results from an impairment in lexical access, these factors were hypothesized to differentially affect AWS performance on a confrontation naming task. Twenty-five AWS and 25 normally fluent comparison speakers, matched for age and education, participated in a confrontation naming task designed to explore within-speaker performance on naming accuracy, speed, and fluency based on stimulus word frequency and neighborhood characteristics. Accuracy, fluency, and reaction time (from acoustic waveform analysis) were computed. In general, AWS demonstrated the same effects of lexical factors on their naming as did adults who do not stutter. However, accuracy of naming was reduced for AWS. Stuttering rate was influenced by word frequency but not other factors. Results suggest that AWS could have a fundamental deficit in lexical retrieval, but this deficit is unlikely to be at the level of the word's abstract phonological representation. Implications for further research are discussed.

A diffusion decision model analysis of evidence variability in the lexical decision task

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Tillman, Gabriel; Osth, Adam F.; van Ravenzwaaij, Don; Heathcote, Andrew

2017-01-01

The lexical-decision task is among the most commonly used paradigms in psycholinguistics. In both the signal-detection theory and Diffusion Decision Model (DDM; Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, Psychological Review, 111, 159–182, 2004) frameworks, lexical-decisions are based on a continuous source of

Role of working memory and lexical knowledge in perceptual restoration of interrupted speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Nagaraj, Naveen K; Magimairaj, Beula M

2017-12-01

The role of working memory (WM) capacity and lexical knowledge in perceptual restoration (PR) of missing speech was investigated using the interrupted speech perception paradigm. Speech identification ability, which indexed PR, was measured using low-context sentences periodically interrupted at 1.5 Hz. PR was measured for silent gated, low-frequency speech noise filled, and low-frequency fine-structure and envelope filled interrupted conditions. WM capacity was measured using verbal and visuospatial span tasks. Lexical knowledge was assessed using both receptive vocabulary and meaning from context tests. Results showed that PR was better for speech noise filled condition than other conditions tested. Both receptive vocabulary and verbal WM capacity explained unique variance in PR for the speech noise filled condition, but were unrelated to performance in the silent gated condition. It was only receptive vocabulary that uniquely predicted PR for fine-structure and envelope filled conditions. These findings suggest that the contribution of lexical knowledge and verbal WM during PR depends crucially on the information content that replaced the silent intervals. When perceptual continuity was partially restored by filler speech noise, both lexical knowledge and verbal WM capacity facilitated PR. Importantly, for fine-structure and envelope filled interrupted conditions, lexical knowledge was crucial for PR.

Conceptual elaboration versus direct lexical access in WAIS-similarities: differential effects of white-matter lesions and gray matter volumes.

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Fernaeus, Sven-Erik; Hellström, Åke

2017-09-18

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) subscale Similarities have been classified as a test of either verbal comprehension or of inductive reasoning. The reason may be that items divide into two categories. We tested the hypothesis of heterogeneity of items in WAIS-Similarities. Consecutive patients at a memory clinic and healthy controls participated in the study. White-matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and normalized temporal lobe volumes were measured based on Magnetic resonance Imaging (MRI), and tests of verbal memory and attention were used in addition to WAIS-Similarities to collect behavioural data. Factor analysis supported the hypothesis that two factors are involved in the performance of WAIS-similarities: (1) semiautomatic lexical access and (2) conceptual elaboration. These factors were highly correlated but provided discriminative diagnostic information: In logistic regression analyses, scores of the lexical access factor and of the conceptual elaboration factor discriminated patients with mild cognitive impairment from Alzheimer's disease patients and from healthy controls, respectively. High scores of WMH, indicating periventricular white-matter lesions, predicted factor scores of direct lexical access but not those of conceptual elaboration, which were predicted only by medial and lateral temporal lobe volumes.

Lexical retrieval in discourse: an early indicator of Alzheimer's dementia.

Science.gov (United States)

Pekkala, Seija; Wiener, Debra; Himali, Jayandra J; Beiser, Alexa S; Obler, Loraine K; Liu, Yulin; McKee, Ann; Auerbach, Sanford; Seshadri, Sudha; Wolf, Philip A; Au, Rhoda

2013-12-01

We examined the progression of lexical-retrieval deficits in individuals with neuropathologically determined Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 23) and a comparison group without criteria for AD (n = 24) to determine whether linguistic changes were a significant marker of the disease. Our participants underwent multiple administrations of a neuropsychological battery, with initial administration occurring on average 16 years prior to death. The battery included the Boston Naming Test (BNT), a letter fluency task (FAS) and written description of the Cookie Theft Picture (CTP). Repeated measures analysis revealed that the AD-group showed progressively greater decline in FAS and CTP lexical performance than the comparison group. Cross-sectional time-specific group comparisons indicated that the CTP differentiated performance between the two groups at 7-9 years prior to death and FAS and BNT only at 2-4 years. These results suggest that lexical-retrieval deficits in written discourse serve as an early indicator of AD.

Lexical Range and Communicative Competence of Learners in Bilingual Schools in Lower Austria

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Claudia Mewald

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners’ ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual (German-English and regular school classes at grades 5-8 in Austrian secondary schools. Results suggest that a wider lexical range results in better communicative competence and fluency and that breakdown of communication in spoken or written performance is more frequently caused by insufficient vocabulary rather than by lack of control or grammatical problems. Consequently, insights from cognitive linguistics, the Lexical Approach, and Lexical Priming are discussed to justify the concept of vocabulary instruction in contextualized units. Taking the scarceness of theoretical and practical concepts into consideration, the need for research on the explicit instruction of vocabulary and metacognitive strategies is fleshed out.

Niacin to Boost Your HDL "Good" Cholesterol

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Niacin can boost 'good' cholesterol Niacin is a B vitamin that may raise your HDL ("good") cholesterol. But side effects might outweigh benefits for most ... been used to increase high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol — the "good" cholesterol that helps remove low-density ...

Productivity of lexical categories in French-speaking children with cochlear implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Le Normand, M-T; Ouellet, C; Cohen, H

2003-11-01

The productivity of lexical categories was studied longitudinally in a sample of 17 young hearing-impaired French-speaking children with cochlear implants. Age of implantation ranged from 22 months to 76 months. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at six-month intervals over a period of 36 months, starting at the one-word stage. Four general measures of their linguistic production (number of utterances, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and grammatical production) as well as 36 specific lexical categories, according to the CHILDES codes, were computed in terms of tokens, i.e., total number of words. Cochlear-implanted children (CI) were compared to a French database of normally hearing children aged 2-4 compiled by the first author. Follow-up results indicate that, at the two-year post-implantation follow-up, noun, and verb morphology was significantly impaired. At the three-year follow-up, the cochlear-implanted group had recovered on adjectives, determiners and nouns, main verbs, and auxiliaries. The two groups differed significantly in processing locative adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs (infinitive verb, modal, and modal lexical), but individual variability within the cochlear-implanted group was substantial. Results are discussed in terms of recovery and developmental trends and variability in the acquisition of lexical categories by French children two years and three years post-implantation.

Are lexical tones musical? Native language's influence on neural response to pitch in different domains.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Ao; Peter, Varghese; Wijnen, Frank; Schnack, Hugo; Burnham, Denis

2018-04-21

Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Processing of Acoustic Cues in Lexical-Tone Identification by Pediatric Cochlear-Implant Recipients

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Shu-Chen; Lu, Hui-Ping; Lu, Nelson; Lin, Yung-Song; Deroche, Mickael L. D.; Chatterjee, Monita

2017-01-01

Purpose: The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers. Method: Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally…

OKVAR-Boost: a novel boosting algorithm to infer nonlinear dynamics and interactions in gene regulatory networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Lim, Néhémy; Senbabaoglu, Yasin; Michailidis, George; d'Alché-Buc, Florence

2013-06-01

Reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks remains a central challenge in computational systems biology, despite recent advances facilitated by benchmark in silico challenges that have aided in calibrating their performance. A number of approaches using either perturbation (knock-out) or wild-type time-series data have appeared in the literature addressing this problem, with the latter using linear temporal models. Nonlinear dynamical models are particularly appropriate for this inference task, given the generation mechanism of the time-series data. In this study, we introduce a novel nonlinear autoregressive model based on operator-valued kernels that simultaneously learns the model parameters, as well as the network structure. A flexible boosting algorithm (OKVAR-Boost) that shares features from L2-boosting and randomization-based algorithms is developed to perform the tasks of parameter learning and network inference for the proposed model. Specifically, at each boosting iteration, a regularized Operator-valued Kernel-based Vector AutoRegressive model (OKVAR) is trained on a random subnetwork. The final model consists of an ensemble of such models. The empirical estimation of the ensemble model's Jacobian matrix provides an estimation of the network structure. The performance of the proposed algorithm is first evaluated on a number of benchmark datasets from the DREAM3 challenge and then on real datasets related to the In vivo Reverse-Engineering and Modeling Assessment (IRMA) and T-cell networks. The high-quality results obtained strongly indicate that it outperforms existing approaches. The OKVAR-Boost Matlab code is available as the archive: http://amis-group.fr/sourcecode-okvar-boost/OKVARBoost-v1.0.zip. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Semantic interference from distractor pictures in single-picture naming: evidence for competitive lexical selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Jescheniak, Jörg D; Matushanskaya, Asya; Mädebach, Andreas; Müller, Matthias M

2014-10-01

Picture-naming studies have demonstrated interference from semantic-categorically related distractor words, but not from corresponding distractor pictures, and the lack of generality of the interference effect has been argued to challenge theories viewing lexical selection in speech production as a competitive process. Here, we demonstrate that semantic interference from context pictures does become visible, if sufficient attention is allocated to them. We combined picture naming with a spatial-cuing procedure. When participants' attention was shifted to the distractor, semantically related distractor pictures interfered with the response, as compared with unrelated distractor pictures. This finding supports models conceiving lexical retrieval as competitive (Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999) but is difficult to reconcile with the response exclusion hypothesis (Finkbeiner & Caramazza, 2006b) proposed as an alternative.

A FIRST APPROACH TO THE LEXICAL PROFILE OF TELECOMMUNICATION ENGLISH: FREQUENCY, DISTRIBUTION, RESTRICTION AND KEYNESS

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Camino Rea Rizzo

2009-10-01

Full Text Available This corpus-based study is conducted to gain an insight into the lexis of Telecommunication English, with the aim of characterizing the lexical profile of this specialized language. The applied methodology integrates quantitative techniques and qualitative interpretations to perform an analysis from two different perspectives, and according to two parameters: restriction and keyness. The first approach is focused on the lexical behaviour and the extent that a word is restricted to the constituent areas of a domain, whereas the second approach is directed towards the extent that a word is significant in the domain, regardless of lexical category. The set of empirical and statistical data obtained contribute to map the lexical profile and will serve as a baseline for future studies.

Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition Visibility Portal Phase III

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2015-04-30

ååì~ä=^Åèìáëáíáçå= oÉëÉ~êÅÜ=póãéçëáìã= qÜìêëÇ~ó=pÉëëáçåë= sçäìãÉ=ff= = Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition...2015 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2015 to 00-00-2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service...processes. Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) can help, by applying automation to reveal and depict???to decisionmakers??? the correlations, associations, and

Capturing the Diversity in Lexical Diversity

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Jarvis, Scott

2013-01-01

The range, variety, or diversity of words found in learners' language use is believed to reflect the complexity of their vocabulary knowledge as well as the level of their language proficiency. Many indices of lexical diversity have been proposed, most of which involve statistical relationships between types and tokens, and which ultimately…

Lexical selectivity in Danish toddlers with cleft palate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Willadsen, Elisabeth

2013-01-01

. Methods: All participants were video recorded at 18 months of age during play interaction with a parent. The video recordings were transcribed according to the IPA and an individual consonant inventory was established for each participant. The video recordings were also analysed with respect to word...... productions establishing an observed productive vocabulary size for each participant. Results: At 18 months of age Danish toddlers with cleft palate showed marked lexical selectivity in their early words. The distribution of consonant classes observed at 11 months of age in a previous study of the children...... as it has been described for English speaking toddlers with and without cleft palate, even though some qualitative differences were found. Keywords: consonant inventory, lexical selectivity, early words, cleft palate....

Words we do not say-Context effects on the phonological activation of lexical alternatives in speech production.

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Jescheniak, Jörg D; Kurtz, Franziska; Schriefers, Herbert; Günther, Josefine; Klaus, Jana; Mädebach, Andreas

2017-06-01

There is compelling evidence that context strongly influences our choice of words (e.g., whether we refer to a particular animal with the basic-level name "bird" or the subordinate-level name "duck"). However, little is known about whether the context already affects the degree to which the alternative words are activated. In this study, we explored the effect of a preceding linguistic context on the phonological activation of alternative picture names. In Experiments 1 to 3, the context was established by a request produced by an imaginary interlocutor. These requests either constrained the naming response to the subordinate level on pragmatic grounds (e.g., "name the bird!") or not (e.g., "name the object!"). In Experiment 4, the context was established by the speaker's own previous naming response. Participants named the pictures with their subordinate-level names and the phonological activation of the basic-level names was assessed with distractor words phonologically related versus unrelated to that name (e.g., "birch" vs. "lamp"). In all experiments, we consistently found that distractor words phonologically related to the basic-level name interfered with the naming response more strongly than unrelated distractor words. Moreover, this effect was of comparable size for nonconstraining and constraining contexts indicating that the alternative name was phonologically activated and competed for selection, even when it was not an appropriate lexical option. Our results suggest that the speech production system is limited in its ability of flexibly adjusting and fine-tuning the lexical activation patterns of words (among which to choose from) as a function of pragmatic constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Divided Attention Can Enhance Early-Phase Memory Encoding: The Attentional Boost Effect and Study Trial Duration

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Mulligan, Neil W.; Spataro, Pietro

2015-01-01

Divided attention during encoding typically produces marked reductions in later memory. The attentional boost effect (ABE) is a surprising variation on this phenomenon. In this paradigm, each study stimulus (e.g., a word) is presented along with a target or a distractor (e.g., different colored circles) in a detection task. Later memory is better…

Does Lexical Stress Influence 17-Month-Olds' Mapping of Verbs and Nouns?

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Campbell, Jennifer; Mihalicz, Patrick; Thiessen, Erik; Curtin, Suzanne

2018-01-01

English-learning infants attend to lexical stress when learning new words. Attention to lexical stress might be beneficial for word learning by providing an indication of the grammatical class of that word. English disyllabic nouns commonly have trochaic (strong-weak) stress, whereas English disyllabic verbs commonly have iambic (weak-strong)…

Boosting Learning Algorithm for Stock Price Forecasting

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Chengzhang; Bai, Xiaoming

2018-03-01

To tackle complexity and uncertainty of stock market behavior, more studies have introduced machine learning algorithms to forecast stock price. ANN (artificial neural network) is one of the most successful and promising applications. We propose a boosting-ANN model in this paper to predict the stock close price. On the basis of boosting theory, multiple weak predicting machines, i.e. ANNs, are assembled to build a stronger predictor, i.e. boosting-ANN model. New error criteria of the weak studying machine and rules of weights updating are adopted in this study. We select technical factors from financial markets as forecasting input variables. Final results demonstrate the boosting-ANN model works better than other ones for stock price forecasting.

Lexical and metaphonological abilities in preschoolers with phonological disorders

OpenAIRE

Costa, Ranilde Cristiane Cavalcante [UNIFESP; Ávila, Clara Regina Brandão de [UNIFESP

2010-01-01

TEMA: competência lexical e metafonológica em pré-escolares com transtorno fonológico OBJETIVO: investigar, em um grupo de pré-escolares a influência do transtorno fonológico sobre as competências lexical e metafonológica e a existência de correlações entre ambas. MÉTODO: a amostra foi composta por 56 pré-escolares, 32 meninos e 24 meninas, entre 4:0 a 6:11 anos, que constituíram dois grupo: o Grupo Pesquisa, composto por 28 pré-escolares com transtorno fonológico e o grupo de comparação, com...

A Lexical Approach to Identifying Dimensions of Organizational Culture

Science.gov (United States)

Chapman, Derek S.; Reeves, Paige; Chapin, Michelle

2018-01-01

A comprehensive measure of organizational culture was developed using a lexical approach, a method typically employed within the study of personality. 1761 adjectives were narrowed down and factor analyzed, which resulted in the identification of a nine factor solution to organizational culture, including the dimensions of: Innovative, Dominant, Pace, Friendly, Prestigious, Trendy, Corporate Social Responsibility, Traditional, and Diverse. Comprised of 135 adjectives most frequently used in describing organizational culture by current employees of several hundred organizations, the Lexical Organizational Culture Scale (LOCS) was found to predict employee commitment, job satisfaction, job search behaviors, and subjective fit better than earlier scales of organizational culture. PMID:29922200

Heterologous Prime-Boost HIV-1 Vaccination Regimens in Pre-Clinical and Clinical Trials

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Julia L. Hurwitz

2010-02-01

Full Text Available Currently, there are more than 30 million people infected with HIV-1 and thousands more are infected each day. Vaccination is the single most effective mechanism for prevention of viral disease, and after more than 25 years of research, one vaccine has shown somewhat encouraging results in an advanced clinical efficacy trial. A modified intent-to-treat analysis of trial results showed that infection was approximately 30% lower in the vaccine group compared to the placebo group. The vaccine was administered using a heterologous prime-boost regimen in which both target antigens and delivery vehicles were changed during the course of inoculations. Here we examine the complexity of heterologous prime-boost immunizations. We show that the use of different delivery vehicles in prime and boost inoculations can help to avert the inhibitory effects caused by vector-specific immune responses. We also show that the introduction of new antigens into boost inoculations can be advantageous, demonstrating that the effect of ‘original antigenic sin’ is not absolute. Pre-clinical and clinical studies are reviewed, including our own work with a three-vector vaccination regimen using recombinant DNA, virus (Sendai virus or vaccinia virus and protein. Promising preliminary results suggest that the heterologous prime-boost strategy may possibly provide a foundation for the future prevention of HIV-1 infections in humans.

[Impacts of biological and family factors on lexical and intellectual development in Mandarin-speaking children].

Science.gov (United States)

Niu, Jie; Chen, Yong-Xiang; Zhu, Li-Qi

2015-07-01

To investigate the impacts of biological factors (age and sex) and family factors (socioeconomic status and parenting style) on the early lexical and intellectual development of children in a longitudinal tracking study. A total of 38 Mandarin-speaking children aged from 18 to 24 months were surveyed using the Putonghua Chinese Communicative Development Inventory (PCDI), the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), and a self-designed Questionnaire for Parents. All of the subjects were retested using PCDI and ASQ after 6 months. Biological factors accounted for 65% of the variance in lexical development, 10% of which was attributed to gender, in the first survey. After six months, the contribution of age decreased to 26% and gender had no significant impact. Lexical development could positively predict the intellectual development of children. When age and gender were controlled, it accounted for 22% of the variance in intellectual development. Family socioeconomic factors had no significant impacts on lexical and intellectual development. Children's recognition of people and objects around them with guidance of parents in parenting styles could positively predict the intellectual development of children six months later, which accounted for 10% of the variance. Biological factors play an important role in the early lexical development of children. However, the influence decreases with the increase of age (months). Biological factors, lexical development, and parenting style have a combined influence on children's intellectual development.

Inter- and Intralingual Lexical Influences in Advanced Learners' French L3 Oral Production

Science.gov (United States)

Lindqvist, Christina

2010-01-01

The present study investigates lexical inter- and intralingual influences in the oral production of 14 very advanced learners of French L3. Lexical deviances are divided into two main categories: formal influence and meaning-based influence. The results show that, as predicted with respect to advanced learners, meaning-based influence is the most…

Lexical preferences in Dutch verbal cluster ordering

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloem, J.; Bellamy, K.; Karvovskaya, E.; Kohlberger, M.; Saad, G.

2016-01-01

This study discusses lexical preferences as a factor affecting the word order variation in Dutch verbal clusters. There are two grammatical word orders for Dutch two-verb clusters, with no clear meaning difference. Using the method of collostructional analysis, I find significant associations

Bilingual visual word recognition and lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Kroll, J.F.; Groot, A.M.B. de

2005-01-01

In spite of the intuition of many bilinguals, a review of empirical studies indicates that during reading under many circumstances, possible words from different languages temporarily become active. Such evidence for "language non-selective lexical access" is found using stimulus materials of

Age of acquisition predicts naming and lexical-decision performance above and beyond 22 other predictor variables: an analysis of 2,342 words.

Science.gov (United States)

Cortese, Michael J; Khanna, Maya M

2007-08-01

Age of acquisition (AoA) ratings were obtained and were used in hierarchical regression analyses to predict naming and lexical-decision performance for 2,342 words (from Balota, Cortese, Sergent-Marshall, Spieler, & Yap, 2004). In the analyses, AoA was included in addition to the set of predictors used by Balota et al. (2004). AoA significantly predicted latency performance on both tasks above and beyond the standard predictor set. However, AoA was more strongly related to lexical-decision performance than to naming performance. Finally, the previously reported effect of imageability on naming latencies by Balota et al. was not significant with AoA included as a factor. These results are consistent with the idea either that AoA has a semantic/lexical locus or that AoA effects emerge primarily in situations in which the input-output mapping is arbitrary.

SeLeCT: a lexical cohesion based news story segmentation system

OpenAIRE

Stokes, Nicola; Carthy, Joe; Smeaton, Alan F.

2004-01-01

In this paper we compare the performance of three distinct approaches to lexical cohesion based text segmentation. Most work in this area has focused on the discovery of textual units that discuss subtopic structure within documents. In contrast our segmentation task requires the discovery of topical units of text i.e., distinct news stories from broadcast news programmes. Our approach to news story segmentation (the SeLeCT system) is based on an analysis of lexical cohesive strength between ...

O campo lexical Economia em documentos do século XVIII

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Vanessa Regina Duarte Xavier

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This text aims to analyze the lexical field Economy in documents of Goiás from 1751 to 1753, that were submitted to facsimile and semidiplomatic editions, in desideratum of to enable greater contact with the originals and the confrontation of their image to their conservative lesson. In addition, notes on the historical context alluded in the corpus seek clarify it and to explicit the semantic relationships that motivated the grouping of lexical items in fields.

Designing a Lexical Database for a Combined Use of Corpus Annotation and Dictionary Editing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas; Langer, Gabriele

2016-01-01

In a combined corpus-dictionary project, you would need one lexical database that could serve as a shared “backbone” for both corpus annotation and dictionary editing, but it is not that easy to define a database structure that applies satisfactorily to both these purposes. In this paper, we...... will exemplify the problem and present ideas on how to model structures in a lexical database that facilitate corpus annotation as well as dictionary editing. The paper is a joint work between the DGS Corpus Project and the DTS Dictionary Project. The two projects come from opposite sides of the spectrum (one...... adjusting a lexical database grown from dictionary making for corpus annotating, one building a lexical database in parallel with corpus annotation and editing a corpus-based dictionary), and we will consider requirements and feasible structures for a database that can serve both corpus and dictionary....

Sensorimotor Behaviour Reflects Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in Czech: An Eye Tracking Study

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Michal Kořenář

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Thinking and speaking about events is a process tightly connected with time perception. We can express when an event has occurred with respect to other events, whether it was a durative or a one-time event, whether it was an ongoing or already finished event, etc. Every human language has its own way and extent to which this complex temporal structure of experienced events is expressed. Upon hearing a story we construct a mental representation of the communicated event (e.g. Givón 1992. Some studies show that this construction already evolves during online processing, thanks to instantly accessible language processing cues (Altman and Kamide 1999, Ferretti, McRae and Hatherell 2001, McRae, Ferretti and Amyote 1997. These cues are employed to capture the intricate temporal structure of the story, for instance. They arise from the interplay of the three basic linguistic components (structure, meaning and function and as such are consistent with a constructional view of language (e.g. Fillmore 1988. Even subtle changes of any of the linguistic cues may lead to a different mental representation. Examples of the sources of grammatical markers and lexical categories from which the linguistic cues arise are grammatical and lexical aspect. In the linguistic field, a lot of attention has been paid to analyses of how those sources of temporal cues function within a language system. However, there is a lack of empirical data on how grammatical and lexical aspect interact, and what the effects of such an interaction are. The present study aims to investigate the link between the complex system of temporal cues and sensorimotor representation in Czech speakers, with specific focus on grammatical verb aspect and so-called event telicity, i.e. lexical aspect, all of which will be further described below.

Approaching the axiomatic enrichment of the Gene Ontology from a lexical perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Quesada-Martínez, Manuel; Mikroyannidi, Eleni; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás; Stevens, Robert

2015-09-01

The main goal of this work is to measure how lexical regularities in biomedical ontology labels can be used for the automatic creation of formal relationships between classes, and to evaluate the results of applying our approach to the Gene Ontology (GO). In recent years, we have developed a method for the lexical analysis of regularities in biomedical ontology labels, and we showed that the labels can present a high degree of regularity. In this work, we extend our method with a cross-products extension (CPE) metric, which estimates the potential interest of a specific regularity for axiomatic enrichment in the lexical analysis, using information on exact matches in external ontologies. The GO consortium recently enriched the GO by using so-called cross-product extensions. Cross-products are generated by establishing axioms that relate a given GO class with classes from the GO or other biomedical ontologies. We apply our method to the GO and study how its lexical analysis can identify and reconstruct the cross-products that are defined by the GO consortium. The label of the classes of the GO are highly regular in lexical terms, and the exact matches with labels of external ontologies affect 80% of the GO classes. The CPE metric reveals that 31.48% of the classes that exhibit regularities have fragments that are classes into two external ontologies that are selected for our experiment, namely, the Cell Ontology and the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology, and 18.90% of them are fully decomposable into smaller parts. Our results show that the CPE metric permits our method to detect GO cross-product extensions with a mean recall of 62% and a mean precision of 28%. The study is completed with an analysis of false positives to explain this precision value. We think that our results support the claim that our lexical approach can contribute to the axiomatic enrichment of biomedical ontologies and that it can provide new insights into the engineering of

Assessment of lexical semantic judgment abilities in alcohol ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

2013-11-06

Nov 6, 2013 ... Keywords. Alcoholism; brain; fMRI; language processing; lexical; semantic judgment .... (English for all subjects) and hours spent reading one/both languages. ..... and alcoholism on verbal and visuospatial learning. J. Nerv.

Investigating Profiles of Lexical Quality in Preschool and Their Contribution to First Grade Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, Kimberly A.; Farquharson, Kelly

2016-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated profiles of lexical quality domains in preschool children and the extent to which profile membership predicted reading comprehension in first grade. A latent profile analysis was conducted to classify 420 preschool children on lexical quality domains, including orthography, phonology, morphosyntax, and…

Intensity modulated radiotherapy with simultaneous integrated boost vs. conventional radiotherapy with sequential boost for breast cancer - A preliminary result.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Hsin-Hua; Hou, Ming-Feng; Chuang, Hung-Yi; Huang, Ming-Yii; Tsuei, Le-Ping; Chen, Fang-Ming; Ou-Yang, Fu; Huang, Chih-Jen

2015-10-01

This study was aimed to assess the acute dermatological adverse effect from two distinct RT techniques for breast cancer patients. We compared intensity-modulated radiotherapy with simultaneous integrated boost (IMRT-SIB) and conventional radiotherapy followed by sequential boost (CRT-SB). The study population was composed of 126 consecutive female breast cancer patients treated with breast conserving surgery. Sixty-six patients received IMRT-SIB to 2 dose levels simultaneously. They received 50.4 Gy at 1.8 Gy per fraction to the whole breast and 60.2 Gy at 2.15 Gy per fraction to the tumor bed by integral boost. Sixty patients in the CRT-SB group received 50 Gy in 25 fractions to the whole breast followed by a boost irradiation to tumor bed in 5-7 fractions to a total dose of 60-64 Gy. Acute skin toxicities were documented in agreement with the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 3 (CTCAE v.3.0). Ninety-eight patients had grade 1 radiation dermatitis while 14 patients had grade 2. Among those with grade 2, there were 3 patients in IMRT-SIB group (4.5%) while 11 in CRT-SB group (18.3%). (P = 0.048) There was no patient with higher than grade 2 toxicity. Three year local control was 99.2%, 3-year disease free survival was 97.5% and 3-year overall survival was 99.2%. A significant reduction in the severity of acute radiation dermatitis from IMRT-SIB comparing with CRT-SB is demonstrated. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A patient with aphasia using the nonsemantic lexical route for Kanji reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Hashimoto, Kosei; Uno, Akira; Sambai, Ami; Mizumoto, Go

We report a patient with aphasia, caused by cerebral hemorrhage, who probably used the nonsemantic lexical route when reading words aloud. To investigate the mechanisms underlying her reading dysfunction, we analyzed her reading abilities using the Dual-Route Cascaded Model. Language tests resulted in low correct percentages for both reading comprehension and reading nonwords aloud, suggesting problems in the semantic system and the nonlexical route. Conversely, the patient showed high scores on the reading words aloud task. Although she failed to understand many inconsistent-atypical words in the reading comprehension test, she correctly read most words aloud, suggesting that she used the nonsemantic lexical route. In addition, the lexical reading route was analyzed in detail by using inconsistent-atypical Kanji words as stimuli. Finally, we analyzed her reading dysfunction compared with previous cases.

Syntax-driven semantic frame composition in Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars

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Laura Kallmeyer

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The grammar framework presented in this paper combines Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG with a (decompositional frame semantics. We introduce elementary constructions as pairs of elementary LTAG trees and decompositional frames. The linking between syntax and semantics can largely be captured by such constructions since in LTAG, elementary trees represent full argument projections. Substitution and adjunction in the syntax then trigger the unification of the associated semantic frames, which are formally defined as base-labelled feature structures. Moreover, the system of elementary constructions is specified in a metagrammar by means of tree and frame descriptions. This metagrammatical factorization gives rise to a fine-grained decomposition of the semantic contributions of syntactic building blocks, and it allows us to separate lexical from constructional contributions and to carve out generalizations across constructions. In the second half of the paper, we apply the framework to the analysis of directed motion expressions and of the dative alternation in English, two well-known examples of the interaction between lexical and constructional meaning.

Patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading in Portuguese

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Senaha M.L.H.

2005-01-01

Full Text Available According to the concepts of cognitive neuropsychology, there are two principal routes of reading processing: a lexical route, in which global reading of words occurs and a phonological route, responsible for the conversion of the graphemes into their respective phonemes. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI was used to investigate the patterns of cerebral activation in lexical and phonological reading by 13 healthy women with a formal educational level greater than 11 years. Participants were submitted to a silent reading task containing three types of stimuli: real words (irregular and foreign words, nonwords and illegitimate graphic stimuli. An increased number of activated voxels were identified by fMRI in the word reading (lexical processing than in the nonword reading (phonological processing task. In word reading, activation was greater than for nonwords in the following areas: superior, middle and inferior frontal gyri, and bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right cerebellum and the left precentral gyrus, as indicated by fMRI. In the reading of nonwords, the activation was predominant in the right cerebellum and in the left superior temporal gyrus. The results of the present study suggest the existence of differences in the patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading, with greater involvement of the right hemisphere in reading words than nonwords.

Boosting structured additive quantile regression for longitudinal childhood obesity data.

Science.gov (United States)

Fenske, Nora; Fahrmeir, Ludwig; Hothorn, Torsten; Rzehak, Peter; Höhle, Michael

2013-07-25

Childhood obesity and the investigation of its risk factors has become an important public health issue. Our work is based on and motivated by a German longitudinal study including 2,226 children with up to ten measurements on their body mass index (BMI) and risk factors from birth to the age of 10 years. We introduce boosting of structured additive quantile regression as a novel distribution-free approach for longitudinal quantile regression. The quantile-specific predictors of our model include conventional linear population effects, smooth nonlinear functional effects, varying-coefficient terms, and individual-specific effects, such as intercepts and slopes. Estimation is based on boosting, a computer intensive inference method for highly complex models. We propose a component-wise functional gradient descent boosting algorithm that allows for penalized estimation of the large variety of different effects, particularly leading to individual-specific effects shrunken toward zero. This concept allows us to flexibly estimate the nonlinear age curves of upper quantiles of the BMI distribution, both on population and on individual-specific level, adjusted for further risk factors and to detect age-varying effects of categorical risk factors. Our model approach can be regarded as the quantile regression analog of Gaussian additive mixed models (or structured additive mean regression models), and we compare both model classes with respect to our obesity data.

A dual-route perspective on brain activation in response to visual words: evidence for a length by lexicality interaction in the visual word form area (VWFA).

Science.gov (United States)

Schurz, Matthias; Sturm, Denise; Richlan, Fabio; Kronbichler, Martin; Ladurner, Gunther; Wimmer, Heinz

2010-02-01

Based on our previous work, we expected the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) in the left ventral visual pathway to be engaged by both whole-word recognition and by serial sublexical coding of letter strings. To examine this double function, a phonological lexical decision task (i.e., "Does xxx sound like an existing word?") presented short and long letter strings of words, pseudohomophones, and pseudowords (e.g., Taxi, Taksi and Tazi). Main findings were that the length effect for words was limited to occipital regions and absent in the VWFA. In contrast, a marked length effect for pseudowords was found throughout the ventral visual pathway including the VWFA, as well as in regions presumably engaged by visual attention and silent-articulatory processes. The length by lexicality interaction on brain activation corresponds to well-established behavioral findings of a length by lexicality interaction on naming latencies and speaks for the engagement of the VWFA by both lexical and sublexical processes. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition Visibility Portal Phase II

Science.gov (United States)

2014-04-30

bäÉîÉåíÜ=^ååì~ä=^Åèìáëáíáçå= oÉëÉ~êÅÜ=póãéçëáìã= qÜìêëÇ~ó=pÉëëáçåë= sçäìãÉ=ff= = Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to...DATE 30 APR 2014 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2014 to 00-00-2014 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving...vocabulary or lexicon, to describe the attributes and surrounding environment of the system. Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) is a form of text mining in which

Cross-Lingual Lexical Triggers in Statistical Language Modeling

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Kim, Woosung; Khudanpur, Sanjeev

2003-01-01

.... We achieve this through an extension of the method of lexical triggers to the cross-language problem, and by developing a likelihoodbased adaptation scheme for combining a trigger model with an N-gram model...

Predicting word-recognition performance in noise by young listeners with normal hearing using acoustic, phonetic, and lexical variables.

Science.gov (United States)

McArdle, Rachel; Wilson, Richard H

2008-06-01

To analyze the 50% correct recognition data that were from the Wilson et al (this issue) study and that were obtained from 24 listeners with normal hearing; also to examine whether acoustic, phonetic, or lexical variables can predict recognition performance for monosyllabic words presented in speech-spectrum noise. The specific variables are as follows: (a) acoustic variables (i.e., effective root-mean-square sound pressure level, duration), (b) phonetic variables (i.e., consonant features such as manner, place, and voicing for initial and final phonemes; vowel phonemes), and (c) lexical variables (i.e., word frequency, word familiarity, neighborhood density, neighborhood frequency). The descriptive, correlational study will examine the influence of acoustic, phonetic, and lexical variables on speech recognition in noise performance. Regression analysis demonstrated that 45% of the variance in the 50% point was accounted for by acoustic and phonetic variables whereas only 3% of the variance was accounted for by lexical variables. These findings suggest that monosyllabic word-recognition-in-noise is more dependent on bottom-up processing than on top-down processing. The results suggest that when speech-in-noise testing is used in a pre- and post-hearing-aid-fitting format, the use of monosyllabic words may be sensitive to changes in audibility resulting from amplification.

Effects of Forward and Backward Contextual Elaboration on Lexical Inferences: Evidence from a Semantic Relatedness Judgment Task

Science.gov (United States)

Hamada, Akira

2015-01-01

Three experiments examined whether the process of lexical inferences differs according to the direction of contextual elaboration using a semantic relatedness judgment task. In Experiment 1, Japanese university students read English sentences where target unknown words were semantically elaborated by prior contextual information (forward lexical…

Impact of Cyrillic on Native English Speakers' Phono-lexical Acquisition of Russian.

Science.gov (United States)

Showalter, Catherine E

2018-03-01

We investigated the influence of grapheme familiarity and native language grapheme-phoneme correspondences during second language lexical learning. Native English speakers learned Russian-like words via auditory presentations containing only familiar first language phones, pictured meanings, and exposure to either Cyrillic orthographic forms (Orthography condition) or the sequence (No Orthography condition). Orthography participants saw three types of written forms: familiar-congruent (e.g., -[kom]), familiar-incongruent (e.g., -[rɑt]), and unfamiliar (e.g., -[fil]). At test, participants determined whether pictures and words matched according to what they saw during word learning. All participants performed near ceiling in all stimulus conditions, except for Orthography participants on words containing incongruent grapheme-phoneme correspondences. These results suggest that first language grapheme-phoneme correspondences can cause interference during second language phono-lexical acquisition. In addition, these results suggest that orthographic input effects are robust enough to interfere even when the input does not contain novel phones.

Beyond Auditory Sensory Processing Deficits: Lexical Tone Perception Deficits in Chinese Children With Developmental Dyslexia.

Science.gov (United States)

Tong, Xiuhong; Tong, Xiuli; King Yiu, Fung

Increasing evidence suggests that children with developmental dyslexia exhibit a deficit not only at the segmental level of phonological processing but also, by extension, at the suprasegmental level. However, it remains unclear whether such a suprasegmental phonological processing deficit is due to a difficulty in processing acoustic cues of speech rhythm, such as rise time and intensity. This study set out to investigate to what extent suprasegmental phonological processing (i.e., Cantonese lexical tone perception) and rise time sensitivity could distinguish Chinese children with dyslexia from typically developing children. Sixteen children with dyslexia and 44 age-matched controls were administered a Cantonese lexical tone perception task, psychoacoustic tasks, a nonverbal reasoning ability task, and word reading and dictation tasks. Children with dyslexia performed worse than controls on Cantonese lexical tone perception, rise time, and intensity. Furthermore, Cantonese lexical tone perception appeared to be a stable indicator that distinguishes children with dyslexia from controls, even after controlling for basic auditory processing skills. These findings suggest that suprasegmental phonological processing (i.e., lexical tone perception) is a potential factor that accounts for reading difficulty in Chinese.

Optimality Theory and Lexical Interpretation and Selection

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hogeweg, L.; Legendre, G.; Putnam, M.T.; de Swart, H.; Zaroukian, E.

2016-01-01

This chapter argues for an optimization approach to the selection and interpretation of words. Several advantages of such an approach to lexical semantics are discussed. First of all, it will be argued that competition, entailing that words and interpretations are always judged in relation to other

Estimation of reliability of a interleaving PFC boost converter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gulam Amer Sandepudi

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Reliability plays an important role in power supplies. For other electronic equipment, a certain failure mode, at least for a part of the total system, can often be employed without serious (critical effects. However, for power supply no such condition can be accepted, since very high demands on its reliability must be achieved. At higher power levels, the continuous conduction mode (CCM boost converter is preferred topology for implementation a front end with PFC. As a result, significant efforts have been made to improve the performance of high boost converter. This paper is one of the efforts for improving the performance of the converter from the reliability point of view. In this paper, interleaving boost power factor correction converter is simulated with single switch in continuous conduction mode (CCM, discontinuous conduction mode (DCM and critical conduction mode (CRM under different output power ratings. Results of the converter are explored from reliability point of view.

Word Recognition during Reading: The Interaction between Lexical Repetition and Frequency

Science.gov (United States)

Lowder, Matthew W.; Choi, Wonil; Gordon, Peter C.

2013-01-01

Memory studies utilizing long-term repetition priming have generally demonstrated that priming is greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words and that this effect persists if words intervene between the prime and the target. In contrast, word-recognition studies utilizing masked short-term repetition priming typically show that the magnitude of repetition priming does not differ as a function of word frequency and does not persist across intervening words. We conducted an eye-tracking while reading experiment to determine which of these patterns more closely resembles the relationship between frequency and repetition during the natural reading of a text. Frequency was manipulated using proper names that were high-frequency (e.g., Stephen) or low-frequency (e.g., Dominic). The critical name was later repeated in the sentence, or a new name was introduced. First-pass reading times and skipping rates on the critical name revealed robust repetition-by-frequency interactions such that the magnitude of the repetition-priming effect was greater for low-frequency names than for high-frequency names. In contrast, measures of later processing showed effects of repetition that did not depend on lexical frequency. These results are interpreted within a framework that conceptualizes eye-movement control as being influenced in different ways by lexical- and discourse-level factors. PMID:23283808

A New Method of Cloud Detection Based on Cascaded AdaBoost

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ma, C; Chen, F; Liu, J; Duan, J

2014-01-01

Cloud detection of remote sensing image is a critical step in the processing of the remote sensing images. How to quickly, accurately and effectively detect cloud on remote sensing images, is still a challenging issue in this area. In order to avoid disadvantages of the current algorithms, the cascaded AdaBoost classifier algorithm is successfully applied to the cloud detection. A new algorithm combined cascaded AdaBoost classifier and multi-features, is proposed in this paper. First, multi-features based on the color, texture and spectral features are extracted from the remote sensing image. Second, the automatic cloud detection model is obtained based on the cascaded AdaBoost algorithm. In this paper, the results show that the new algorithm can determine cloud detection model and threshold values adaptively for different resolution remote sensing training data. The accuracy of cloud detection is improved. So it is a new effective algorithm for the cloud detection of remote sensing images

Lexical exposure to native language dialects can improve non-native phonetic discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Olmstead, Annie J; Viswanathan, Navin

2018-04-01

Nonnative phonetic learning is an area of great interest for language researchers, learners, and educators alike. In two studies, we examined whether nonnative phonetic discrimination of Hindi dental and retroflex stops can be improved by exposure to lexical items bearing the critical nonnative stops. We extend the lexical retuning paradigm of Norris, McQueen, and Cutler (Cognitive Psychology, 47, 204-238, 2003) by having naive American English (AE)-speaking participants perform a pretest-training-posttest procedure. They performed an AXB discrimination task with the Hindi retroflex and dental stops before and after transcribing naturally produced words from an Indian English speaker that either contained these tokens or not. Only those participants who heard words with the critical nonnative phones improved in their posttest discrimination. This finding suggests that exposure to nonnative phones in native lexical contexts supports learning of difficult nonnative phonetic discrimination.

Influence of the timing of a concomitant boost during fractionated irradiation of rat rhabdomyosarcoma R1H

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dubben, H.H.; Beck-Bornholdt, H.P.

1993-01-01

Rhabdomyosarcomas R1H of the rat (WAG/Rij) were treated using fractionation schedules including a boost. The total dose was 60 Gy. Overall treatment time was 6 weeks. Four different boost schedules were applied: A single dose boost (12.15 Gy) at the last day of treatment, a single dose boost (12.15 Gy) at the first day of treatment, a schedule including the boost in 7 fractions during the first week, and a schedule including the boost in 10 fractions during the first week of treatment. A standard schedule with 30 fractions of 2 Gy without a boost was used for comparison. Initially accelerated schedules, i.e. those with a boost at start of treatment, revealed higher effect on tumour parenchyma as monitored by local control rate and net growth delay. This could be due to a decrease of radio-sensitivity, that is, an increase of the hypoxic fraction of clonogenic tumour cells during fractionated irradiation. (orig.)

Lexical ambiguity resolution

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Small, S.; Cottrell, G.; Tanenhaus, M.

1987-01-01

This book collects much of the best research currently available on the problem of lexical ambiguity resolution in the processing of human language. When taken out of context, sentences are usually ambiguous. When actually uttered in a dialogue or written in text, these same sentences often have unique interpretations. The inherent ambiguity of isolated sentences, becomes obvious in the attempt to write a computer program to understand them. Different views have emerged on the nature of context and the mechanisms by which it directs unambiguous understanding of words and sentences. These perspectives are represented and discussed. Eighteen original papers from a valuable source book for cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics.

Significance analysis of lexical bias in microarray data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Falkow Stanley

2003-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Genes that are determined to be significantly differentially regulated in microarray analyses often appear to have functional commonalities, such as being components of the same biochemical pathway. This results in certain words being under- or overrepresented in the list of genes. Distinguishing between biologically meaningful trends and artifacts of annotation and analysis procedures is of the utmost importance, as only true biological trends are of interest for further experimentation. A number of sophisticated methods for identification of significant lexical trends are currently available, but these methods are generally too cumbersome for practical use by most microarray users. Results We have developed a tool, LACK, for calculating the statistical significance of apparent lexical bias in microarray datasets. The frequency of a user-specified list of search terms in a list of genes which are differentially regulated is assessed for statistical significance by comparison to randomly generated datasets. The simplicity of the input files and user interface targets the average microarray user who wishes to have a statistical measure of apparent lexical trends in analyzed datasets without the need for bioinformatics skills. The software is available as Perl source or a Windows executable. Conclusion We have used LACK in our laboratory to generate biological hypotheses based on our microarray data. We demonstrate the program's utility using an example in which we confirm significant upregulation of SPI-2 pathogenicity island of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium by the cation chelator dipyridyl.

Lexical analysis of the Code of Medical Ethics of the Federal Council of Medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Andrade, Edson de Oliveira; Andrade, Edson de Oliveira

2016-04-01

The Code of Medical Ethics (CME) of the Federal Council of Medicine is the legal document that exposes the moral discourse of Brazilian physicians to society and the profession. It is a set of propositions based on which doctors say they are committed to values of conduct aimed at fair and proper professional practice. To verify through lexical analysis of the CME corpus if the goals presented in the arguments of the resolution that established the code are properly addressed in these regulations. This is a quantitative and qualitative study of descriptive nature, aiming at a lexical analysis of the CME. The lexical analysis was performed using a method of Top-Down Hierarchical Classification of vocabulary, as described by Reinert in 1987, assuming that words used in similar contexts are associated with a single lexical world. In addition to the analysis of results, an improved representation of the charts related with Factorial and Similitude Analyses was made. Six clusters were extracted, leading to the identification of three major branches: health care, professional practice and research. These branches revolve around the figures of physician and patient. The similitude analysis revealed a complementarity status between these two figures. The lexical analysis showed that the purposes contained in the resolution that established the CME were adequately represented in the document body.

A Python-based Interface for Wide Coverage Lexicalized Tree-adjoining Grammars

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wang Ziqi

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the design and implementation of a Python-based interface for wide coverage Lexicalized Tree-adjoining Grammars. The grammars are part of the XTAG Grammar project at the University of Pennsylvania, which were hand-written and semi-automatically curated to parse real-world corpora. We provide an interface to the wide coverage English and Korean XTAG grammars. Each XTAG grammar is lexicalized, which means at least one word selects a tree fragment (called an elementary tree or etree. Derivations for sentences are built by combining etrees using substitution (replacement of a tree node with an etree at the frontier of another etree and adjunction (replacement of an internal tree node in an etree by another etree. Each etree is associated with a feature structure representing constraints on substitution and adjunction. Feature structures are combined using unification during the combination of etrees. We plan to integrate our toolkit for XTAG grammars into the Python-based Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK: nltk.org. We have provided an API capable of searching the lexicalized etrees for a given word or multiple words, searching for a etree by name or function, display the lexicalized etrees to the user using a graphical view, display the feature structure associated with each tree node in an etree, hide or highlight features based on a regular expression, and browsing the entire tree database for each XTAG grammar.

Lexical Tones in Mandarin Chinese Infant-Directed Speech: Age-Related Changes in the Second Year of Life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mengru Han

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Tonal information is essential to early word learning in tone languages. Although numerous studies have investigated the intonational and segmental properties of infant-directed speech (IDS, only a few studies have explored the properties of lexical tones in IDS. These studies mostly focused on the first year of life; thus little is known about how lexical tones in IDS change as children’s vocabulary acquisition accelerates in the second year (Goldfield and Reznick, 1990; Bloom, 2001. The present study examines whether Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS addressing 18- and 24-month-old children—at which age children are learning words at a rapid speed—vs. adult-directed speech (ADS. Thirty-nine Mandarin Chinese–speaking mothers were tested in a semi-spontaneous picture-book-reading task, in which they told the same story to their child (IDS condition and to an adult (ADS condition. Results for the F0 measurements (minimum F0, maximum F0, and F0 range of tone in the speech data revealed a continuum of differences among IDS addressing 18-month-olds, IDS addressing 24-month-olds, and ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 18-month-old children had a higher minimum F0, higher maximum F0, and larger pitch range than lexical tones in ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 24-month-old children showed more similarity to ADS tones with respect to pitch height: there were no differences in minimum F0 and maximum F0 between ADS and IDS. However, F0 range was still larger. These results suggest that lexical tones are generally hyperarticulated in Mandarin Chinese IDS addressing 18- and 24- month-old children despite the change in pitch level over time. Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS when talking to toddlers and potentially facilitate tone acquisition and word learning.

Developmental Trajectory for Production of Prosody: Lexical Stress Contrastivity in Children Ages 3 to 7 Years and in Adults

Science.gov (United States)

Ballard, Kirrie J.; Djaja, Danica; Arciuli, Joanne; James, Deborah G. H.; van Doorn, Jan

2012-01-01

Purpose: Accurate production of lexical stress within English polysyllabic words is critical for intelligibility and is affected in many speech-language disorders. However, models of speech production remain underspecified with regard to lexical stress. In this study, the authors report a large-scale acoustic investigation of lexical stress…

Fine motor skills enhance lexical processing of embodied vocabulary: A test of the nimble-hands, nimble-minds hypothesis.

Science.gov (United States)

Suggate, Sebastian; Stoeger, Heidrun

2017-10-01

Research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) are linked to aspects of cognitive development in children. Additionally, lexical processing advantages exist for words implying a high body-object interaction (BOI), with initial findings indicating that such words in turn link to children's FMS-for which we propose and evaluate four competing hypotheses. First, a maturational account argues that any links between FMS and lexical processing should not exist once developmental variables are controlled for. Second, functionalism posits that any link between FMS and lexical processing arises due to environmental interactions. Third, the semantic richness hypothesis argues that sensorimotor input improves lexical processing, but predicts no links between FMS and lexical processing. A fourth account, the nimble-hands, nimble minds (NHNM) hypothesis, proposes that having greater FMS improves lexical processing for high-BOI words. In two experiments, the response latencies of preschool children (n = 90, n = 76, ages = 5;1) to 45 lexical items encompassing high-BOI, low-BOI, and less imageable words were measured, alongside measures of FMS, reasoning, and general receptive/expressive vocabulary. High-BOI words appeared to show unique links to FMS, which remained after accounting for low-BOI and less imageable words, general vocabulary, reasoning, and chronological age. Although further work is needed, the findings provide initial support for the NHNM hypothesis.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lange, Violaine Michel; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter

2017-01-01

to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words...... were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production....

Structural Analysis of Lexical Bundles in University Lectures of Politics and Chemistry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hadi Kashiha

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Referred to as extended collocations, lexical bundles are considered as a main factor in building fluency in academic discourse; helping to shape meaning and coherence in a text or speech. For decades, lexical bundles have attracted considerable amount of attention in corpus-based research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP. While, the focus of the most of the studies on lexical bundles was to explore the use of these multi-word expressions in academic written registers such as research articles, academic spoken registers such as university lectures have not received that amount of attention from the scholars. In this vein, there is still an open question of how they are structurally different across disciplines. With these concerns in mind, this study aimed to explore how lexical bundles are used structurally in a 50291 words corpus of 8 university lectures across two disciplines: chemistry and politics. To this aim, the most frequent four-word bundles in the corpus were classified according to their grammatical types to see the possible disciplinary variations in their frequency of use as well as the structure involved in their use. Results of the analysis revealed that noun phrase and prepositional phrase fragments were the most common structures in the lectures of the two disciplines, accounting for more than half of the bundles in politics. University lecturers appear to apply a variety of structures in the use of lexical bundles often peculiar to the discipline in order to convey their disciplinary messages.  This would lead to the need to emphasize the instruction of the most common structures in that discipline in a way for the lectures to be as comprehensive as possible for the intended audiences.

Is it beneficial to selectively boost high-risk tumor subvolumes? A comparison of selectively boosting high-risk tumor subvolumes versus homogeneous dose escalation of the entire tumor based on equivalent EUD plans

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Yusung; To me, Wolfgang A.

2008-01-01

Purpose. To quantify and compare expected local tumor control and expected normal tissue toxicities between selective boosting IMRT and homogeneous dose escalation IMRT for the case of prostate cancer. Methods. Four different selective boosting scenarios and three different high-risk tumor subvolume geometries were designed to compare selective boosting and homogeneous dose escalation IMRT plans delivering the same equivalent uniform dose (EUD) to the entire PTV. For each scenario, differences in tumor control probability between both boosting strategies were calculated for the high-risk tumor subvolume and remaining low-risk PTV, and were visualized using voxel based iso-TCP maps. Differences in expected rectal and bladder complications were quantified using radiobiological indices (generalized EUD (gEUD) and normal tissue complication probability (NTCP)) as well as %-volumes. Results. For all investigated scenarios and high-risk tumor subvolume geometries, selective boosting IMRT improves expected TCP compared to homogeneous dose escalation IMRT, especially when lack of control of the high-risk tumor subvolume could be the cause for tumor recurrence. Employing, selective boosting IMRT significant increases in expected TCP can be achieved for the high-risk tumor subvolumes. The three conventional selective boosting IMRT strategies, employing physical dose objectives, did not show significant improvement in rectal and bladder sparing as compared to their counterpart homogeneous dose escalation plans. However, risk-adaptive optimization, utilizing radiobiological objective functions, resulted in reduction in NTCP for the rectum when compared to its corresponding homogeneous dose escalation plan. Conclusions. Selective boosting is a more effective method than homogeneous dose escalation for achieving optimal treatment outcomes. Furthermore, risk-adaptive optimization increases the therapeutic ratio as compared to conventional selective boosting IMRT

Functional MRI assessment of hemispheric language dominance with using a lexical decision task

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Choi, Dae Seob; Cho, Jae Min; Park, Eui Dong; You, Jin Jong; Na, Dong Gyu; Kim, Sam Soo; Cha, Sang Hoon

2005-01-01

We wanted to compare the fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance images) obtained during a lexical decision task and also during a word generation task, and we wanted to evaluate the usefulness of using a lexical decision task for the visualization of the brain language area and for the determination of language dominance. Sixteen patients (9 women and 7 men) who had had undergone the Wada test were included in our study. All the patients were left dominant for language, as tested for on the Wada test. The functional maps of the brain language area were obtained in all the subjects during the performance of a lexical decision task and also during the performance of a word generation task. The MR examinations were performed with a 1.5 T scanner and with using the EPI BOLD technique. We used the SPM program for the postprocessing of the images. The threshold for significance was set at ρ <0.001 or ρ <0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in each hemispheric region (the whole hemisphere, the frontal lobe and the temporoparietal lobe), and the hemispheric language dominance was assessed by the lateralization index; the results were then compared with those results of the Wada test. The differences for the lateralization of the language area were analyzed with regard to the stimulation tasks and the regions used for the calculation of the lateralization indices. The number of activated pixels during the lexical decision task was significantly smaller than that of the word generation task. The language dominance based on the activated signals in each hemisphere, was consistent with the results of the Wada test for the word generation tasks in all the subjects. On the lexical decision task, the language dominance, as determined by the activated signals in each hemisphere and the temporoparietal lobe, correlated for 94% of the patients. The mean values of the lateralization index for the lexical decision task were higher than those

Functional MRI assessment of hemispheric language dominance with using a lexical decision task

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Choi, Dae Seob; Cho, Jae Min; Park, Eui Dong; You, Jin Jong [Gyeongsang National University College of Medicine, Jinju (Korea, Republic of); Na, Dong Gyu [Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Sam Soo [Kangwon National University College of Medicine, Chuncheon (Korea, Republic of); Cha, Sang Hoon [Chungbuk National University College of Medicine, Cheonju (Korea, Republic of)

2005-07-15

We wanted to compare the fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance images) obtained during a lexical decision task and also during a word generation task, and we wanted to evaluate the usefulness of using a lexical decision task for the visualization of the brain language area and for the determination of language dominance. Sixteen patients (9 women and 7 men) who had had undergone the Wada test were included in our study. All the patients were left dominant for language, as tested for on the Wada test. The functional maps of the brain language area were obtained in all the subjects during the performance of a lexical decision task and also during the performance of a word generation task. The MR examinations were performed with a 1.5 T scanner and with using the EPI BOLD technique. We used the SPM program for the postprocessing of the images. The threshold for significance was set at {rho} <0.001 or {rho} <0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in each hemispheric region (the whole hemisphere, the frontal lobe and the temporoparietal lobe), and the hemispheric language dominance was assessed by the lateralization index; the results were then compared with those results of the Wada test. The differences for the lateralization of the language area were analyzed with regard to the stimulation tasks and the regions used for the calculation of the lateralization indices. The number of activated pixels during the lexical decision task was significantly smaller than that of the word generation task. The language dominance based on the activated signals in each hemisphere, was consistent with the results of the Wada test for the word generation tasks in all the subjects. On the lexical decision task, the language dominance, as determined by the activated signals in each hemisphere and the temporoparietal lobe, correlated for 94% of the patients. The mean values of the lateralization index for the lexical decision task were higher than

Intranasal boosting with an adenovirus-vectored vaccine markedly enhances protection by parenteral Mycobacterium bovis BCG immunization against pulmonary tuberculosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Santosuosso, Michael; McCormick, Sarah; Zhang, Xizhong; Zganiacz, Anna; Xing, Zhou

2006-08-01

Parenterally administered Mycobacterium bovis BCG vaccine confers only limited immune protection from pulmonary tuberculosis in humans. There is a need for developing effective boosting vaccination strategies. We examined a heterologous prime-boost regimen utilizing BCG as a prime vaccine and our recently described adenoviral vector expressing Ag85A (AdAg85A) as a boost vaccine. Since we recently demonstrated that a single intranasal but not intramuscular immunization with AdAg85A was able to induce potent protection from pulmonary Mycobacterium tuberculosis challenge in a mouse model, we compared the protective effects of parenteral and mucosal booster immunizations following subcutaneous BCG priming. Protection by BCG prime immunization was not effectively boosted by subcutaneous BCG or intramuscular AdAg85A. In contrast, protection by BCG priming was remarkably boosted by intranasal AdAg85A. Such enhanced protection by intranasal AdAg85A was correlated to the numbers of gamma interferon-positive CD4 and CD8 T cells residing in the airway lumen of the lung. Our study demonstrates that intranasal administration of AdAg85A represents an effective way to boost immune protection by parenteral BCG vaccination.

Boosted dark matter signals uplifted with self-interaction

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kong, Kyoungchul, E-mail: kckong@ku.edu [Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 (United States); Mohlabeng, Gopolang, E-mail: mohlabeng319@gmail.com [Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 (United States); Park, Jong-Chul, E-mail: log1079@gmail.com [Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 (United States); Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746 (Korea, Republic of)

2015-04-09

We explore detection prospects of a non-standard dark sector in the context of boosted dark matter. We focus on a scenario with two dark matter particles of a large mass difference, where the heavier candidate is secluded and interacts with the standard model particles only at loops, escaping existing direct and indirect detection bounds. Yet its pair annihilation in the galactic center or in the Sun may produce boosted stable particles, which could be detected as visible Cherenkov light in large volume neutrino detectors. In such models with multiple candidates, self-interaction of dark matter particles is naturally utilized in the assisted freeze-out mechanism and is corroborated by various cosmological studies such as N-body simulations of structure formation, observations of dwarf galaxies, and the small scale problem. We show that self-interaction of the secluded (heavier) dark matter greatly enhances the capture rate in the Sun and results in promising signals at current and future experiments. We perform a detailed analysis of the boosted dark matter events for Super-Kamiokande, Hyper-Kamiokande and PINGU, including notable effects such as evaporation due to self-interaction and energy loss in the Sun.

Face Alignment Using Boosting and Evolutionary Search

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zhang, Hua; Liu, Duanduan; Poel, Mannes; Nijholt, Antinus; Zha, H.; Taniguchi, R.-I.; Maybank, S.

2010-01-01

In this paper, we present a face alignment approach using granular features, boosting, and an evolutionary search algorithm. Active Appearance Models (AAM) integrate a shape-texture-combined morphable face model into an efficient fitting strategy, then Boosting Appearance Models (BAM) consider the

Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter at direct detection experiments

Science.gov (United States)

Giudice, Gian F.; Kim, Doojin; Park, Jong-Chul; Shin, Seodong

2018-05-01

We explore a novel class of multi-particle dark sectors, called Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter (iBDM). These models are constructed by combining properties of particles that scatter off matter by making transitions to heavier states (Inelastic Dark Matter) with properties of particles that are produced with a large Lorentz boost in annihilation processes in the galactic halo (Boosted Dark Matter). This combination leads to new signals that can be observed at ordinary direct detection experiments, but require unconventional searches for energetic recoil electrons in coincidence with displaced multi-track events. Related experimental strategies can also be used to probe MeV-range boosted dark matter via their interactions with electrons inside the target material.

Mental Imagery as Facilitator to Lexical Learning-Blocked and Random Trials

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Subhash Bhatnagar

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Developing an effective treatment plan that promotes learning-generalization beyond treated stimuli remains a challenging task in language rehabilitation. Many specific treatments have been used to document therapeutic gains in learned lexical behaviors and now learning generalizations beyond practiced stimuli are being forged (Boyle, 2004 and Kiran & Thompson, 2003.Accordingly, generalization beyond practiced structures still remains an exciting therapeutic strategy. As major elements of cognitive processing, the perceptual representations embedded within mental imagery (MI, have long been recognized for their healing potential (Thomas, 2008, and training mindfulness. MI is also known to modulate the brain’s neural-circuitry in new learning (Davidson, 2000. It also acts as a mean to access memories and passes undistorted through mental resistances (Singer 1974. Purpose We integrated blocked and random presentations of MI with our treatment of anomia with three goals in mind: (1 to evaluate whether activation of the neural circuitry through controlled MI facilitated word finding skills; (2 to determine if the blocked or random modes of MI presentation facilitate learning equally or not; and, (3 to evaluate if the effects of evoked MI generalize to untrained lexical items. Subject The participating subject was a three-year post-onset, right-handed, 68-year old University-educated male with chronic aphasia secondary to a MRI confirmed large left temporal-parietal infarct in addition to an earlier left frontal infarct. These strokes resulted in moderately impaired comprehension and verbal expression. He made gains in both aspects of language following two years of SLP treatment. However, he continued to exhibit moderate to severe word finding (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983. Methods We incorporated MI with random and blocked presentations in ABA format to explore the learning and generalization of trained mental representations that comprised of both

Bedding down new words: Sleep promotes the emergence of lexical competition in visual word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Hua-Chen; Savage, Greg; Gaskell, M Gareth; Paulin, Tamara; Robidoux, Serje; Castles, Anne

2017-08-01

Lexical competition processes are widely viewed as the hallmark of visual word recognition, but little is known about the factors that promote their emergence. This study examined for the first time whether sleep may play a role in inducing these effects. A group of 27 participants learned novel written words, such as banara, at 8 am and were tested on their learning at 8 pm the same day (AM group), while 29 participants learned the words at 8 pm and were tested at 8 am the following day (PM group). Both groups were retested after 24 hours. Using a semantic categorization task, we showed that lexical competition effects, as indexed by slowed responses to existing neighbor words such as banana, emerged 12 h later in the PM group who had slept after learning but not in the AM group. After 24 h the competition effects were evident in both groups. These findings have important implications for theories of orthographic learning and broader neurobiological models of memory consolidation.

Word length, set size, and lexical factors: Re-examining what causes the word length effect.

Science.gov (United States)

Guitard, Dominic; Gabel, Andrew J; Saint-Aubin, Jean; Surprenant, Aimée M; Neath, Ian

2018-04-19

The word length effect, better recall of lists of short (fewer syllables) than long (more syllables) words has been termed a benchmark effect of working memory. Despite this, experiments on the word length effect can yield quite different results depending on set size and stimulus properties. Seven experiments are reported that address these 2 issues. Experiment 1 replicated the finding of a preserved word length effect under concurrent articulation for large stimulus sets, which contrasts with the abolition of the word length effect by concurrent articulation for small stimulus sets. Experiment 2, however, demonstrated that when the short and long words are equated on more dimensions, concurrent articulation abolishes the word length effect for large stimulus sets. Experiment 3 shows a standard word length effect when output time is equated, but Experiments 4-6 show no word length effect when short and long words are equated on increasingly more dimensions that previous demonstrations have overlooked. Finally, Experiment 7 compared recall of a small and large neighborhood words that were equated on all the dimensions used in Experiment 6 (except for those directly related to neighborhood size) and a neighborhood size effect was still observed. We conclude that lexical factors, rather than word length per se, are better predictors of when the word length effect will occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Brachytherapy boost for breast cancer: what do we know? where do we go?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hannoun-Levi, J.M.; Marsiglia, H.

2004-01-01

Since many years, Brachytherapy (BT) appears to play an important role in the treatment of many solid tumors. For breast cancer, BT is usually used as boost after postoperative external beam radiation therapy. In certain circumstances. BT can be used as sole radiation technique focalized on the tumor bed or more rarely, as second conservative treatment in case of local recurrence for woman refusing salvage mastectomy. Boost BT is most often applied via an interstitial technique while the dose rate can vary from low to high close rate through pulse dose rate. All of those boost techniques were published and some of them compared the results obtained with BT and external beam electron therapy. The analysis of the published phase II and III trials was not able to show significant differences between the two boost techniques in term of local control as well as late skin side effects. However, we noted that the patients who received BT boost presented a higher risk of local recurrence compare to those treated with electron therapy, due to age, margin status or presence of extensive intraductal component. Only a phase III trial randomizing BT boost vs electron therapy boost could show a possible improvement of local control rate in the BT arm; however, this trial should enroll patients with a real high risk of local recurrence in order to take benefit from the dosimetric advantages of BT. (author)

Lexical Inferencing in Reading L2 Russian

Science.gov (United States)

Comer, William J.

2012-01-01

This study describes how intermediate-level first language English readers of Russian as a second language deploy lexical inferencing and other strategies when reading informational texts. Fifth-semester students of Russian performed think-alouds while reading two texts; one written for the general adult reader, and the other meant for school-age…

Fast neutron boost for the treatment of grade IV astrocytomas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Breteau, N.; Destembert, B.; Favre, A.; Pheline, C.; Schlienger, M.

1989-01-01

A previous study, on grade IV astrocytomas, compared a combination of photons and fast neutron boost to photons only, both treatments being delivered following a concentrated irradiation schedule. A slight improvement in survival was observed after neutron boost for non operated patients, but not for operated patients. Since death was always related to local recurrence and since no complication occurred after neutron boost, the neutron dose was increased from 6 to 7 Gy in January 1985. No improvement in survival was observed for patients treated with neutron boost after complete resection. After subtotal resection, the group that was treated with the higher neutron boost (7 Gy) showed a significant benefit in survival at twelve months. When patients had only a biopsy before irradiation, there was a benefit in survival after neutron boost, but no additional benefit was gained when the size of the neutron boost was increased from 6 to 7 Gy. (orig.) [de

An Analysis of Lexical Errors of Korean Language Learners: Some American College Learners' Case

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, Manjin

2014-01-01

There has been a huge amount of research on errors of language learners. However, most of them have focused on syntactic errors and those about lexical errors are not found easily despite the importance of lexical learning for the language learners. The case is even rarer for Korean language. In line with this background, this study was designed…

Single- versus dual-process models of lexical decision performance: insights from response time distributional analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Yap, Melvin J; Balota, David A; Cortese, Michael J; Watson, Jason M

2006-12-01

This article evaluates 2 competing models that address the decision-making processes mediating word recognition and lexical decision performance: a hybrid 2-stage model of lexical decision performance and a random-walk model. In 2 experiments, nonword type and word frequency were manipulated across 2 contrasts (pseudohomophone-legal nonword and legal-illegal nonword). When nonwords became more wordlike (i.e., BRNTA vs. BRANT vs. BRANE), response latencies to nonwords were slowed and the word frequency effect increased. More important, distributional analyses revealed that the Nonword Type = Word Frequency interaction was modulated by different components of the response time distribution, depending on the specific nonword contrast. A single-process random-walk model was able to account for this particular set of findings more successfully than the hybrid 2-stage model. (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Orthodontics Align Crooked Teeth and Boost Self-Esteem

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... desktop! more... Orthodontics Align Crooked Teeth and Boost Self- esteem Article Chapters Orthodontics Align Crooked Teeth and Boost Self- esteem print full article print this chapter email this ...

Heterogeneity in semantic priming effect with a lexical decision task in patients after left hemisphere stroke

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Candice Steffen Holderbaum

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Investigations on the semantic priming effect (SPE in patients after left hemisphere (LH lesions have shown disparities that may be explained by the variability in performance found among patients. The aim of the present study was to verify the existence of subgroups of patients after LH stroke by searching for dissociations between performance on the lexical decision task based on the semantic priming paradigm and performance on direct memory, semantic association and language tasks. All 17 patients with LH lesions after stroke (ten non-fluent aphasics and seven non aphasics were analyzed individually. Results indicated the presence of three groups of patients according to SPE: one exhibiting SPE at both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs, one with SPE only at long SOA, and another, larger group with no SPE.

Lexical and perceptual grounding of a sound ontology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lobanova, Anna; Spenader, Jennifer; Valkenier, Bea; Matousek,; Mautner, P

2007-01-01

Sound ontologies need to incorporate source unidentifiable sounds in an adequate and consistent manner. Computational lexical resources like WordNet have either inserted these descriptions into conceptual categories, or make no attempt to organize the terms for these sounds. This work attempts to

Neural correlates of rhyming vs. lexical and semantic fluency.

Science.gov (United States)

Kircher, Tilo; Nagels, Arne; Kirner-Veselinovic, André; Krach, Sören

2011-05-19

Rhyming words, as in songs or poems, is a universal feature of human language across all ages. In the present fMRI study a novel overt rhyming task was applied to determine the neural correlates of rhyme production. Fifteen right-handed healthy male volunteers participated in this verbal fluency study. Participants were instructed to overtly articulate as many words as possible either to a given initial letter (LVF) or to a semantic category (SVF). During the rhyming verbal fluency task (RVF), participants had to generate words that rhymed with pseudoword stimuli. On-line overt verbal responses were audiotaped in order to correct the imaging results for the number of generated words. Fewer words were generated in the rhyming compared to both the lexical and the semantic condition. On a neural level, all language tasks activated a language network encompassing the left inferior frontal gyrus, the middle and superior temporal gyri as well as the contralateral right cerebellum. Rhyming verbal fluency compared to both lexical and semantic verbal fluency demonstrated significantly stronger activation of left inferior parietal region. Generating novel rhyme words seems to be mainly mediated by the left inferior parietal lobe, a region previously found to be associated with meta-phonological as well as sub-lexical linguistic processes. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Insights into failed lexical retrieval from network science.

Science.gov (United States)

Vitevitch, Michael S; Chan, Kit Ying; Goldstein, Rutherford

2014-02-01

Previous network analyses of the phonological lexicon (Vitevitch, 2008) observed a web-like structure that exhibited assortative mixing by degree: words with dense phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have dense phonological neighborhoods, and words with sparse phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have sparse phonological neighborhoods. Given the role that assortative mixing by degree plays in network resilience, we examined instances of real and simulated lexical retrieval failures in computer simulations, analysis of a slips-of-the-ear corpus, and three psycholinguistic experiments for evidence of this network characteristic in human behavior. The results of the various analyses support the hypothesis that the structure of words in the mental lexicon influences lexical processing. The implications of network science for current models of spoken word recognition, language processing, and cognitive psychology more generally are discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Peculiarities of Creating Foreign Students’ Lexical Competence

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Aigul Eskermesovna Sadenova

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Teaching of vocabulary includes several aspects of teaching content: linguistic, methodological and psychological. Teaching of vocabulary is a process which is inextricably entwined with understanding relations between new words and phonetic and grammar aspects of the language. On the one hand, simultaneous learning of two languages complicates the tasks set to the students, but, on the other hand, it simplifies the process. The complexity is in the scope of vocabulary to be remembered, as well as in the differences between grammar structures used in Russian and Kazakh. The simplification is in the fact that students are fully aware that lexical competence is formed gradually, and that every language has its lexical base required at the initial stage, and that such base is to be developed for mastering a specific language. Before identifying the methods of vocabulary semantization in the course of teaching a language to foreign students, students shall be offered active vocabulary, used to express their ideas orally and in written form, and passive vocabulary, used to perceive oral and written information. It is not possible to teach semantics only. It is necessary to create paradigmatic, syntactic and associative relations. The formation of lexical skills is connected with the solidity of vocabulary retention. In order to ensure reinforcement of the vocabulary learnt, the students shall be offered exercises contributing to the development of their skills of using vocabulary in listening, speaking, reading and writing. All above mentioned types of vocabulary semantization constitute a unified whole. Different ways of semantization are set forth for methodological purposes, to facilitate the achievement of the desired result. Translation and non-translation techniques for vocabulary presentation, as well as some tips and exercises, are given. The use of basic vocabulary at elementary and advanced levels is suggested. Certain methods for the

Color perception involves color representations firstly at a semantic level and then at a lexical level.

Science.gov (United States)

Heurley, Loïc P; Brouillet, Thibaut; Chesnoy, Gabrielle; Brouillet, Denis

2013-03-01

Studies and models have suggested that color perception first involves access to semantic representations of color. This result leads to two questions: (1) is knowledge able to influence the perception of color when associated with a color? and (2) can the perception of color really involve only semantic representations? We developed an experiment where participants have to discriminate the color of a patch (yellow vs. green). The target patch is preceded either by a black-and-white line drawing or by a word representing a natural object associated with the same or a different color (banana vs. frog). We expected a priming effect for pictures because, with a 350-ms SOA, they only involve access to semantic representations of color, whereas words seem only elicit an access to lexical representations. As expected, we found a priming effect for pictures, but also for words. Moreover, we found a general slowdown of response times in the word-prime-condition suggesting the need of an additional processing step to produce priming. In a second experiment, we manipulated the SOA in order to preclude a semantic access in the word-prime-condition that could explain the additional step of processing. We also found a priming effect, suggesting that interaction with perception occurs at a lexical level and the additional step occurs at a color perception level. In the discussion, we develop a new model of color perception assuming that color perception involves access to semantic representations and then access to lexical representations.

Boost.Unicode : a Unicode library for C++

OpenAIRE

Wien, Erik; Gigstad, Lars Erik

2005-01-01

The project has resulted in a Unicode string library for C++ that abstracts away the complexity of working with Unicode text. The idea behind the project originated from the Boost community's developer mailings lists, and is developed with inclusion into the Boost library collection in mind.

A Lexical Approach to Passive in ESL.

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, Fred

Dissatisfaction with the standard transformational grammar approach to teaching passive voice sentences gave rise to the method developed. It is based on the framework of a lexical-functional grammar, which claims that both active and passive sentences are base-generated, and that both active and passive verb forms occur in the lexicon. It would…

Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter at direct detection experiments

OpenAIRE

Giudice, Gian F.; Kim, Doojin; Park, Jong-Chul; Shin, Seodong

2018-01-01

We explore a novel class of multi-particle dark sectors, called Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter (iBDM). These models are constructed by combining properties of particles that scatter off matter by making transitions to heavier states (Inelastic Dark Matter) with properties of particles that are produced with a large Lorentz boost in annihilation processes in the galactic halo (Boosted Dark Matter). This combination leads to new signals that can be observed at ordinary direct detection experimen...

PESQUISAS EM AQUISIÇÃO LEXICAL ATRAVÉS DA LEITURA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lucilene Bender de Sousa

2012-07-01

Full Text Available A aquisição de palavras através da leitura é um tema de pesquisa pouco estudado no país, embora seja objeto de estudo desde a década de 80 no exterior. Neste artigo, nosso objetivo é mostrar a relevância desse tema e o que já foi pesquisado sobre ele. Partimos da seguinte citação: “o vocabulário serve de ponte entre o processamento fônico no nível da palavra e o processo cognitivo de compreensão.”(KAMIL; HIEBERT, 2005, p. 4, que nos faz enxergar de modo mais claro a relação entre o conhecimento lexical e o desenvolvimento da proficiência em leitura. Refletir sobre essa relação também pode trazer mudanças interessantes no trabalho com leitura em sala de aula. Inicialmente, abordamos o que é contexto, qual é o seu papel na aquisição lexical e que tipos de informações ele pode fornecer; também identificamos fatores relacionados ao contexto que podem interferir no processo de aquisição lexical. Em seguida, descrevemos algumas pesquisas relevantes realizadas nessa área de estudo tanto em língua materna quanto em segunda língua, em períodos diversos, desde 1984 a 2005. Essa descrição busca revisar os resultados obtidos por essas pesquisas e as metodologias por elas utilizadas. Por fim, analisamos as características predominantes nos experimentos descritos e questões que ainda precisam ser investigadas dentro da aquisição lexical através da leitura.

Boosted Higgs shapes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schlaffer, Matthias; Spannowsky, Michael; Wymant, Chris

2014-05-01

The inclusive Higgs production rate through gluon fusion has been measured to be in agreement with the Standard Model (SM). We show that even if the inclusive Higgs production rate is very SM-like, a precise determination of the boosted Higgs transverse momentum shape offers the opportunity to see effects of natural new physics. These measurements are generically motivated by effective field theory arguments and specifically in extensions of the SM with a natural weak scale, like composite Higgs models and natural supersymmetry. We show in detail how a measurement at high transverse momentum of H→2l+p T via H→ττ and H→WW * could be performed and demonstrate that it offers a compelling alternative to the t anti tH channel. We discuss the sensitivity to new physics in the most challenging scenario of an exactly SM-like inclusive Higgs cross-section.

Boosted top: experimental tools overview

CERN Document Server

Usai, Emanuele

2015-01-01

An overview of tools and methods for the reconstruction of high-boost top quark decays at the LHC is given in this report. The focus is on hadronic decays, in particular an overview of the current status of top quark taggers in physics analyses is presented. The most widely used jet substructure techniques, normally used in combination with top quark taggers, are reviewed. Special techniques to treat pileup in large cone jets are described, along with a comparison of the performance of several boosted top quark reconstruction techniques.

Environmental Determinants of Lexical Processing Effort

OpenAIRE

McDonald, Scott

2000-01-01

Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation A central concern of psycholinguistic research is explaining the relative ease or difficulty involved in processing words. In this thesis, we explore the connection between lexical processing effort and measurable properties of the linguistic environment. Distributional information (information about a word’s contexts of use) is easily extracted from large language corpora in the form of co-occurrence statistics. We claim that su...

Effects of context and word class on lexical retrieval in Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Law, Sam-Po; Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Lai, Loretta Wing-Shan; Lai, Christy

2015-01-01

Differences in processing nouns and verbs have been investigated intensely in psycholinguistics and neuropsychology in past decades. However, the majority of studies examining retrieval of these word classes have involved tasks of single word stimuli or responses. While the results have provided rich information for addressing issues about grammatical class distinctions, it is unclear whether they have adequate ecological validity for understanding lexical retrieval in connected speech which characterizes daily verbal communication. Previous investigations comparing retrieval of nouns and verbs in single word production and connected speech have reported either discrepant performance between the two contexts with presence of word class dissociation in picture naming but absence in connected speech, or null effects of word class. In addition, word finding difficulties have been found to be less severe in connected speech than picture naming. However, these studies have failed to match target stimuli of the two word classes and between tasks on psycholinguistic variables known to affect performance in response latency and/or accuracy. The present study compared lexical retrieval of nouns and verbs in picture naming and connected speech from picture description, procedural description, and story-telling among 19 Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia and their age, gender, and education matched healthy controls, to understand the influence of grammatical class on word production across speech contexts when target items were balanced for confounding variables between word classes and tasks. Elicitation of responses followed the protocol of the AphasiaBank consortium (http://talkbank.org/AphasiaBank/). Target words for confrontation naming were based on well-established naming tests, while those for narrative were drawn from a large database of normal speakers. Selected nouns and verbs in the two contexts were matched for age-of-acquisition (AoA) and familiarity

Pathway-Based Kernel Boosting for the Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies

Science.gov (United States)

Manitz, Juliane; Burger, Patricia; Amos, Christopher I.; Chang-Claude, Jenny; Wichmann, Heinz-Erich; Kneib, Thomas; Bickeböller, Heike

2017-01-01

The analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) benefits from the investigation of biologically meaningful gene sets, such as gene-interaction networks (pathways). We propose an extension to a successful kernel-based pathway analysis approach by integrating kernel functions into a powerful algorithmic framework for variable selection, to enable investigation of multiple pathways simultaneously. We employ genetic similarity kernels from the logistic kernel machine test (LKMT) as base-learners in a boosting algorithm. A model to explain case-control status is created iteratively by selecting pathways that improve its prediction ability. We evaluated our method in simulation studies adopting 50 pathways for different sample sizes and genetic effect strengths. Additionally, we included an exemplary application of kernel boosting to a rheumatoid arthritis and a lung cancer dataset. Simulations indicate that kernel boosting outperforms the LKMT in certain genetic scenarios. Applications to GWAS data on rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer resulted in sparse models which were based on pathways interpretable in a clinical sense. Kernel boosting is highly flexible in terms of considered variables and overcomes the problem of multiple testing. Additionally, it enables the prediction of clinical outcomes. Thus, kernel boosting constitutes a new, powerful tool in the analysis of GWAS data and towards the understanding of biological processes involved in disease susceptibility. PMID:28785300

Pathway-Based Kernel Boosting for the Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Friedrichs, Stefanie; Manitz, Juliane; Burger, Patricia; Amos, Christopher I; Risch, Angela; Chang-Claude, Jenny; Wichmann, Heinz-Erich; Kneib, Thomas; Bickeböller, Heike; Hofner, Benjamin

2017-01-01

The analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) benefits from the investigation of biologically meaningful gene sets, such as gene-interaction networks (pathways). We propose an extension to a successful kernel-based pathway analysis approach by integrating kernel functions into a powerful algorithmic framework for variable selection, to enable investigation of multiple pathways simultaneously. We employ genetic similarity kernels from the logistic kernel machine test (LKMT) as base-learners in a boosting algorithm. A model to explain case-control status is created iteratively by selecting pathways that improve its prediction ability. We evaluated our method in simulation studies adopting 50 pathways for different sample sizes and genetic effect strengths. Additionally, we included an exemplary application of kernel boosting to a rheumatoid arthritis and a lung cancer dataset. Simulations indicate that kernel boosting outperforms the LKMT in certain genetic scenarios. Applications to GWAS data on rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer resulted in sparse models which were based on pathways interpretable in a clinical sense. Kernel boosting is highly flexible in terms of considered variables and overcomes the problem of multiple testing. Additionally, it enables the prediction of clinical outcomes. Thus, kernel boosting constitutes a new, powerful tool in the analysis of GWAS data and towards the understanding of biological processes involved in disease susceptibility.

A PIPO Boost Converter with Low Ripple and Medium Current Application

Science.gov (United States)

Bandri, S.; Sofian, A.; Ismail, F.

2018-04-01

This paper presents a Parallel Input Parallel Output (PIPO) boost converter is proposed to gain power ability of converter, and reduce current inductors. The proposed technique will distribute current for n-parallel inductor and switching component. Four parallel boost converters implement on input voltage 20.5Vdc to generate output voltage 28.8Vdc. The PIPO boost converter applied phase shift pulse width modulation which will compare with conventional PIPO boost converters by using a similar pulse for every switching component. The current ripple reduction shows an advantage PIPO boost converter then conventional boost converter. Varies loads and duty cycle will be simulated and analyzed to verify the performance of PIPO boost converter. Finally, the unbalance of current inductor is able to be verified on four area of duty cycle in less than 0.6.

A DISTRIBUIÇÃO GEOLINGUÍSTICA DO ITEM LEXICAL TOCO DE CIGARRO NAS CAPITAIS BRASILEIRAS

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Abdelhak Razky

2016-01-01

Full Text Available O léxico da Língua Portuguesa, há muito, tem sidotema de estudos de dialetólogos e geolinguístas brasileiros.Muitos são os trabalhos já publicados sobre a variedadelexical no Português Brasileiro (PB. Isso é constatado pormeio do grande volume de trabalhos publicados sob formade artigos científicos, dissertações de mestrado ou teses dedoutorado. Entretanto, dada a riqueza e diversidade queenvolve o tema, é praticamente impossível esgotar as possibilidadesde estudo do léxico de uma língua. Neste artigo,tomamos o léxico como objeto de estudo. A análise quefaremos se pauta na orientação geossociolinguística. Analisaremoso item lexical toco de cigarro, variante linguísticaque integra o campo semântico “Convívio e comportamentosocial” do Questionário Semântico-Lexical (QSLdo projeto Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB. Trata-se deuma abordagem geolinguística multidimensional que tempor objetivo a elaboração de uma carta lexical experimentalpara a visualização da variação diatópica, diastrática, diagenéricae diageracional do item lexical referido.Palavras-chave: Variação Lexical. Geolinguística Multidimensional.Atlas Linguístico do Brasil.

Predicting factors of verbal fluency and the effects of stereotype threat and boost

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2015-09-01

Full Text Available Aims: Verbal Fluency (VF tasks are often utilised to assist in the neuropsychological assessment of cognitive impairment and diagnosis of cognitive disorders. VF performance can also provide information about an individual’s vocabulary and speed of cognitive processes. In order to further develop our understanding of predictors of VF, this study explored how age, education and time spent reading and writing can affect performance. Furthermore, this study investigated the effects of a stereotype threat (STT or boost (STB. Method: VF tasks (pre and post stereotype manipulation were administrated to 30 adults with 15 receiving a STT and 15 receiving a STB. The stereotype threat/boost was activated by informing participants that they read and wrote less/more than their peers. Results: Medium to strong positive correlations (with some being significant were found between education level and both the number of words generated and with word commonality scores (i.e. how common the words were for these participants. Negative medium to weak correlations were found between age and both the number of words generated and with commonality scores. There was also a significant interaction showing that the words generated by a category prompt were less common following a STB and more common following a STT. Conclusions: These results support those of previous literature in regards to the respective impacts of education and age on VF. Furthermore, the impacts found of age and education on the commonality of words generated provides information on the nature of their influences. Lastly, the present study sheds light on the potential effects of STT and STB on verbal fluency.

Concomitant boost radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pos, Floris J; Tienhoven, Geertjan van; Hulshof, Maarten C.C.M.; Koedooder, Kees; Gonzalez Gonzalez, Dionisio

2003-07-01

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a concomitant partial bladder boost schedule in radiotherapy for invasive bladder cancer, coupling a limited boost volume with shortening of the overall treatment time. Methods and materials: Between 1994 and 1999, 50 patients with a T2-T4 N0M0 transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder received radiotherapy delivered in a short overall treatment time with a concomitant boost technique. With this technique a dose of 40 Gy in 2-Gy fractions was administered to the small pelvis with a concomitant boost limited to the bladder tumor area plus margin of 15 Gy in fractions of 0.75 Gy. The total tumor dose was 55 Gy in 20 fractions in 4 weeks. Toxicity was scored according to EORTC/RTOG toxicity criteria. Results: The feasibility of the treatment was good. Severe acute toxicity {>=}G3 was observed in seven patients (14%). Severe late toxicity {>=}G3 was observed in six patients (13%). Thirty-seven patients (74%) showed a complete and five (10 %) a partial remission after treatment. The actuarial 3-year freedom of local progression was 55%. Conclusion: In external radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer a concomitant boost technique coupling a partial bladder boost with shortening of the overall treatment time provides a high probability of local control with acceptable toxicity.

Concomitant boost radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pos, Floris J.; Tienhoven, Geertjan van; Hulshof, Maarten C.C.M.; Koedooder, Kees; Gonzalez Gonzalez, Dionisio

2003-01-01

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a concomitant partial bladder boost schedule in radiotherapy for invasive bladder cancer, coupling a limited boost volume with shortening of the overall treatment time. Methods and materials: Between 1994 and 1999, 50 patients with a T2-T4 N0M0 transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder received radiotherapy delivered in a short overall treatment time with a concomitant boost technique. With this technique a dose of 40 Gy in 2-Gy fractions was administered to the small pelvis with a concomitant boost limited to the bladder tumor area plus margin of 15 Gy in fractions of 0.75 Gy. The total tumor dose was 55 Gy in 20 fractions in 4 weeks. Toxicity was scored according to EORTC/RTOG toxicity criteria. Results: The feasibility of the treatment was good. Severe acute toxicity ≥G3 was observed in seven patients (14%). Severe late toxicity ≥G3 was observed in six patients (13%). Thirty-seven patients (74%) showed a complete and five (10 %) a partial remission after treatment. The actuarial 3-year freedom of local progression was 55%. Conclusion: In external radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer a concomitant boost technique coupling a partial bladder boost with shortening of the overall treatment time provides a high probability of local control with acceptable toxicity

Introducing state-trajectory control for the synchronous interleaved boost converter

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Peña-Alzola, Rafael; Ksiazek, Peter; Ordonez, Martin

2015-01-01

Synchronous interleaved boost converters (SIBCs) result in lower ripple currents and bidirectional power flow. The boost topology has a non-minimum phase characteristic, producing instability problems when a large bandwidth is required. Linear controllers inherently limit the boost controller...

Acoustic and Lexical Representations for Affect Prediction in Spontaneous Conversations.

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Houwei; Savran, Arman; Verma, Ragini; Nenkova, Ani

2015-01-01

In this article we investigate what representations of acoustics and word usage are most suitable for predicting dimensions of affect|AROUSAL, VALANCE, POWER and EXPECTANCY|in spontaneous interactions. Our experiments are based on the AVEC 2012 challenge dataset. For lexical representations, we compare corpus-independent features based on psychological word norms of emotional dimensions, as well as corpus-dependent representations. We find that corpus-dependent bag of words approach with mutual information between word and emotion dimensions is by far the best representation. For the analysis of acoustics, we zero in on the question of granularity. We confirm on our corpus that utterance-level features are more predictive than word-level features. Further, we study more detailed representations in which the utterance is divided into regions of interest (ROI), each with separate representation. We introduce two ROI representations, which significantly outperform less informed approaches. In addition we show that acoustic models of emotion can be improved considerably by taking into account annotator agreement and training the model on smaller but reliable dataset. Finally we discuss the potential for improving prediction by combining the lexical and acoustic modalities. Simple fusion methods do not lead to consistent improvements over lexical classifiers alone but improve over acoustic models.

4 Types of Foods that Boost Your Memory

Science.gov (United States)

... 4 Types of Foods to Help Boost Your Memory By Marisa Moore, MBA, RDN, LD Published November ... in brain health. The best menu for boosting memory and brain function encourages good blood flow to ...

Eloquent silences: A musical and lexical analysis of conversation between oncologists and their patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Bartels, Josef; Rodenbach, Rachel; Ciesinski, Katherine; Gramling, Robert; Fiscella, Kevin; Epstein, Ronald

2016-10-01

Silences in doctor-patient communication can be "connectional" and communicative, in contrast to silences that indicate awkwardness or distraction. Musical and lexical analyses can identify and characterize connectional silences in consultations between oncologists and patients. Two medical students and a professor of voice screened all 1211 silences over 2s in length from 124 oncology office visits. We developed a "strength of connection" taxonomy and examined ten connectional silences for lexical and musical features including pitch, volume, and speaker turn-taking rhythm. We identified connectional silences with good reliability. Typical dialog rhythms surrounding connectional silences are characterized by relatively equal turn lengths and frequent short vocalizations. We found no pattern of volume and pitch variability around these silences. Connectional silences occurred in a wide variety of lexical contexts. Particular patterns of dialog rhythm mark connectional silences. Exploring structures of connectional silence extends our understanding of the audio-linguistic conditions that mark patient-clinician connection. Communicating with an awareness of pitch, rhythm, and silence - in addition to lexical content - can facilitate shared understanding and emotional connection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Application of Boosting Regression Trees to Preliminary Cost Estimation in Building Construction Projects

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Yoonseok Shin

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Among the recent data mining techniques available, the boosting approach has attracted a great deal of attention because of its effective learning algorithm and strong boundaries in terms of its generalization performance. However, the boosting approach has yet to be used in regression problems within the construction domain, including cost estimations, but has been actively utilized in other domains. Therefore, a boosting regression tree (BRT is applied to cost estimations at the early stage of a construction project to examine the applicability of the boosting approach to a regression problem within the construction domain. To evaluate the performance of the BRT model, its performance was compared with that of a neural network (NN model, which has been proven to have a high performance in cost estimation domains. The BRT model has shown results similar to those of NN model using 234 actual cost datasets of a building construction project. In addition, the BRT model can provide additional information such as the importance plot and structure model, which can support estimators in comprehending the decision making process. Consequently, the boosting approach has potential applicability in preliminary cost estimations in a building construction project.

Novel second language words and asymmetric lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Escudero, P.; Hayes-Harb, R.; Mitterer, H.

2008-01-01

The lexical and phonetic mapping of auditorily confusable L2 nonwords was examined by teaching L2 learners novel words and by later examining their word recognition using an eye-tracking paradigm. During word learning, two groups of highly proficient Dutch learners of English learned 20 English

Lexical morphology and its role in the writing process: evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia.

Science.gov (United States)

Badecker, W; Hillis, A; Caramazza, A

1990-06-01

A case of acquired dysgraphia is presented in which the deficit is attributed to an impairment at the level of the Graphemic Output Buffer. It is argued that this patient's performance can be used to identify the representational character of the processing units that are stored in the Orthographic Output Lexicon. In particular, it is argued that the distribution of spelling errors and the types of lexical items which affect error rates indicate that the lexical representations passed from the lexical output system to the Graphemic Output Buffer correspond to the productive morphemes of the language.

A further examination of word frequency and age-of-acquisition effects in English lexical decision task performance: The role of frequency trajectory.

Science.gov (United States)

Juhasz, Barbara J; Yap, Melvin J; Raoul, Akila; Kaye, Micaela

2018-04-23

Word frequency is an important predictor of lexical-decision task performance. The current study further examined the role of this variable by exploring the influence of frequency trajectory. Frequency trajectory is measured by how often a word occurs in childhood relative to adulthood. Past research on the role of this variable in word recognition has produced equivocal results. In the current study, words were selected based on their frequencies in Grade 1 (child frequency) and Grade 13 (college frequency). In Experiment 1, four frequency trajectory conditions were factorially examined in a lexical-decision task with English words: high-to-high (world), high-to-low (uncle), low-to-high (brain) and low-to-low (opera). an interaction between Grade 1 and college frequency demonstrated that words in the low-to-high condition were processed significantly faster and more accurately than words in the low-to-low condition, whereas the high-to-high and high-to-low conditions did not differ significantly. In Experiment 2, an advantage for words with an increasing frequency trajectory was also supported in regression analyses on both lexical decision and naming times for 3,039 items selected from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007). This was replicated in Experiment 3, based on a regression analysis of 2,680 words from the British Lexicon Project (BLP; Keuleers, Lacey, Rastle, & Brysbaert, 2012). In all analyses, rated age-of-acquisition also significantly impacted word recognition. Together, the results suggest that the age at which a word is initially learned as well as its frequency trajectory across childhood impact performance in the lexical-decision task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Modeling the lexical morphology of Western handwritten signatures.

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Moises Diaz-Cabrera

Full Text Available A handwritten signature is the final response to a complex cognitive and neuromuscular process which is the result of the learning process. Because of the many factors involved in signing, it is possible to study the signature from many points of view: graphologists, forensic experts, neurologists and computer vision experts have all examined them. Researchers study written signatures for psychiatric, penal, health and automatic verification purposes. As a potentially useful, multi-purpose study, this paper is focused on the lexical morphology of handwritten signatures. This we understand to mean the identification, analysis, and description of the signature structures of a given signer. In this work we analyze different public datasets involving 1533 signers from different Western geographical areas. Some relevant characteristics of signature lexical morphology have been selected, examined in terms of their probability distribution functions and modeled through a General Extreme Value distribution. This study suggests some useful models for multi-disciplinary sciences which depend on handwriting signatures.

Diode-Assisted Buck-Boost Current Source Inverters

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gao, F.; Cai, Liang; Loh, P.C.

2007-01-01

This paper presents a couple of novel current source inverters (CSIs) with the enhanced current buckboost capability. With the unique diode-inductor network added between current source inverter circuitry and current boost elements, the proposed buck-boost current source inverters demonstrate...... uninfluenced. Lastly, all theoretical findings were verified experimentally using constructed laboratory prototypes....

Long-Term Results of Targeted Intraoperative Radiotherapy (Targit) Boost During Breast-Conserving Surgery

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vaidya, Jayant S., E-mail: jayant.vaidya@ucl.ac.uk [Research Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London (United Kingdom); Baum, Michael [Research Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London (United Kingdom); Tobias, Jeffrey S. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University College London Hospitals, London (United Kingdom); Wenz, Frederik [Radiation Oncology and Gynaecology, University Medical Centre of Mannheim (Germany); Massarut, Samuele [Surgery and Radiation Oncology, Centro di Riferimento Oncologico (CRO), Aviano (Italy); Keshtgar, Mohammed [Research Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London (United Kingdom); Hilaris, Basil [Radiation Oncology, Our Lady of Mercy, New York Medical College, New York (United States); Saunders, Christobel [Institute of Health and Rehabilitation Research, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia (Australia); Williams, Norman R.; Brew-Graves, Chris [Research Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London (United Kingdom); Corica, Tammy [Institute of Health and Rehabilitation Research, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia (Australia); Roncadin, Mario [Surgery and Radiation Oncology, Centro di Riferimento Oncologico (CRO), Aviano (Italy); Kraus-Tiefenbacher, Uta; Suetterlin, Marc [Radiation Oncology and Gynaecology, University Medical Centre of Mannheim (Germany); Bulsara, Max [Institute of Health and Rehabilitation Research, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia (Australia); Joseph, David [Radiation Oncology, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and School of Surgery, University of Western Australia, Perth (Australia)

2011-11-15

Purpose: We have previously shown that delivering targeted radiotherapy to the tumour bed intraoperatively is feasible and desirable. In this study, we report on the feasibility, safety, and long-term efficacy of TARGeted Intraoperative radioTherapy (Targit), using the Intrabeam system. Methods and Materials: A total of 300 cancers in 299 unselected patients underwent breast-conserving surgery and Targit as a boost to the tumor bed. After lumpectomy, a single dose of 20 Gy was delivered intraoperatively. Postoperative external beam whole-breast radiotherapy excluded the usual boost. We also performed a novel individualized case control (ICC) analysis that computed the expected recurrences for the cohort by estimating the risk of recurrence for each patient using their characteristics and follow-up period. Results: The treatment was well tolerated. The median follow up was 60.5 months (range, 10-122 months). Eight patients have had ipsilateral recurrence: 5-year Kaplan Meier estimate for ipsilateral recurrence is 1.73% (SE 0.77), which compares well with that seen in the boosted patients in the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer study (4.3%) and the UK STAndardisation of breast RadioTherapy study (2.8%). In a novel ICC analysis of 242 of the patients, we estimated that there should be 11.4 recurrences; in this group, only 6 recurrences were observed. Conclusions: Lumpectomy and Targit boost combined with external beam radiotherapy results in a low local recurrence rate in a standard risk patient population. Accurate localization and the immediacy of the treatment that has a favorable effect on tumour microenvironment may contribute to this effect. These long-term data establish the long-term safety and efficacy of the Targit technique and generate the hypothesis that Targit boost might be superior to an external beam boost in its efficacy and justifies a randomized trial.

Lexical Complexity of Decision-Making Writing Tasks: Form-focused Guided Strategic Planning

OpenAIRE

Mahdavirad, Fatemeh

2016-01-01

The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of form-focused guided strategic planning on lexical complexity of learners’ performance in writing tasks. The twenty intermediate level participants of the study performed an unplanned and then a planned decision-making task. In the planned task condition, the participants were provided with form-focused guided strategic planning which contained detailed instructions about how to plan, by being instructed to focus on form. The guidanc...

The Comparative Impacts of Using Lexical Glossing and Inferencing Strategies on Students' Reading Comprehension

Science.gov (United States)

Juliana

2018-01-01

The study compared the use of the lexical glossing and inferencing strategies that impact toward the students' reading comprehension. The objective of the study was to find out the effective strategy to use for enhancing the students' reading comprehension. The population of the study was 40 Informatics Systems students of Potensi Utama…

Phonotactics, Neighborhood Activation, and Lexical Access for Spoken Words

Science.gov (United States)

Vitevitch, Michael S.; Luce, Paul A.; Pisoni, David B.; Auer, Edward T.

2012-01-01

Probabilistic phonotactics refers to the relative frequencies of segments and sequences of segments in spoken words. Neighborhood density refers to the number of words that are phonologically similar to a given word. Despite a positive correlation between phonotactic probability and neighborhood density, nonsense words with high probability segments and sequences are responded to more quickly than nonsense words with low probability segments and sequences, whereas real words occurring in dense similarity neighborhoods are responded to more slowly than real words occurring in sparse similarity neighborhoods. This contradiction may be resolved by hypothesizing that effects of probabilistic phonotactics have a sublexical focus and that effects of similarity neighborhood density have a lexical focus. The implications of this hypothesis for models of spoken word recognition are discussed. PMID:10433774

Priming effects in early readers. A quantitative study of children's response times in visual lexical decision-making in their first and second language.

OpenAIRE

Fitjar, Camilla Lausund

2016-01-01

Master's thesis in Literacy studies This thesis investigates the effects of various conditions of open priming on children in a series of lexical decision tasks in their first and second language. The primes are related through meaning and/or form to the target words in the experiments. The five conditions used are same word priming, meaning-related, shared first syllable, shared last syllable or unrelated. In addition, the experiment consists of 50% pseudo-words. There are two experim...

Primary Paralleled Isolated Boost Converter with Extended Operating Voltage Range

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hernandez Botella, Juan Carlos; Sen, Gökhan; Mira Albert, Maria del Carmen

2012-01-01

Applications requiring wide input and output voltage range cannot often be satisfied by using buck or boost derived topologies. Primary paralleled isolated boost converter (PPIBC) [1]-[2] is a high efficiency boost derived topology. This paper proposes a new operation mode for extending the input...

ERP Evidence for the Activation of Syntactic Structure During Comprehension of Lexical Idiom.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Meichao; Lu, Aitao; Song, Pingfang

2017-10-01

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the syntactic structure was activated in the comprehension of lexical idioms, and if so, whether it varied as a function of familiarity and semantic transparency. Participants were asked to passively read the "1+2" structural Chinese lexical idioms with each being presented following 3-5 contextual "1+2" (congruent-structure condition) or "2+1" structural Chinese phrases (incongruent-structure condition). The N400 ERP responses showed more positivity in congruent-structure condition relative to incongruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity and high semantic transparency, but less positivity in congruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity but low semantic transparency, idioms with low familiarity but high semantic transparency, and idioms with low familiarity and low semantic transparency. Our results suggest that syntactic structure, as the unnecessarity of lexical idiomatic words, was nevertheless activated, independent of familiarity and semantic transparency.

Spoken word production: A theory of lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Levelt, W.J.M.

2001-01-01

A core operation in speech production is the preparation of words from a semantic base. The theory of lexical access reviewed in this article covers a sequence of processing stages beginning with the speaker's focusing on a target concept and ending with the initiation of articulation. The initial

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anneke P. Potgieter

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Background: There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives: To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1 occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2 in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method: Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results: The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion: As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Background There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure. PMID:27245133

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans.

Science.gov (United States)

Potgieter, Anneke P

2016-05-20

There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals' languages, regardless of input quantity. Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals' acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals' acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals' input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

Effects of Lexical Features, Textual Properties, and Individual Differences on Word Processing Times during Second Language Reading Comprehension

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Minkyung; Crossley, Scott A.; Skalicky, Stephen

2018-01-01

This study examines whether lexical features and textual properties along with individual differences on the part of readers influence word processing times during second language (L2) reading comprehension. Forty-eight Spanish-speaking adolescent and adult learners of English read nine English passages in a self-paced word-by-word reading…

Boosting BCG-primed responses with a subunit Apa vaccine during the waning phase improves immunity and imparts protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Nandakumar, Subhadra; Kannanganat, Sunil; Dobos, Karen M; Lucas, Megan; Spencer, John S; Amara, Rama Rao; Plikaytis, Bonnie B; Posey, James E; Sable, Suraj B

2016-05-13

Heterologous prime-boosting has emerged as a powerful vaccination approach against tuberculosis. However, optimal timing to boost BCG-immunity using subunit vaccines remains unclear in clinical trials. Here, we followed the adhesin Apa-specific T-cell responses in BCG-primed mice and investigated its BCG-booster potential. The Apa-specific T-cell response peaked 32-52 weeks after parenteral or mucosal BCG-priming but waned significantly by 78 weeks. A subunit-Apa-boost during the contraction-phase of BCG-response had a greater effect on the magnitude and functional quality of specific cellular and humoral responses compared to a boost at the peak of BCG-response. The cellular response increased following mucosal BCG-prime-Apa-subunit-boost strategy compared to Apa-subunit-prime-BCG-boost approach. However, parenteral BCG-prime-Apa-subunit-boost by a homologous route was the most effective strategy in-terms of enhancing specific T-cell responses during waning in the lung and spleen. Two Apa-boosters markedly improved waning BCG-immunity and significantly reduced Mycobacterium tuberculosis burdens post-challenge. Our results highlight the challenges of optimization of prime-boost regimens in mice where BCG drives persistent immune-activation and suggest that boosting with a heterologous vaccine may be ideal once the specific persisting effector responses are contracted. Our results have important implications for design of prime-boost regimens against tuberculosis in humans.

Internationalization of Boost Juice to Malaysia

OpenAIRE

Jane L. Menzies; Stuart C. Orr

2014-01-01

This case describes the process that the Australian juice retail chain, Boost Juice, has used to internationalize to Malaysia. The main objective of this case is to demonstrate good practice in regard to internationalization. The case provides the background of the juice bar industry in Malaysia and determines that it is an attractive market for new start-up juice bars. An analysis of Boost Juice's capability determined that the company utilized the skills of its staff, product innovations, b...

Opposite patterns of hemisphere dominance for early auditory processing of lexical tones and consonants

OpenAIRE

Luo, Hao; Ni, Jing-Tian; Li, Zhi-Hao; Li, Xiao-Ou; Zhang, Da-Ren; Zeng, Fan-Gang; Chen, Lin

2006-01-01

in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, a lexical tone carries semantic information and is preferentially processed in the left brain hemisphere of native speakers as revealed by the functional MRI or positron emission tomography studies, which likely measure the temporally aggregated neural events including those at an attentive stage of auditory processing. Here, we demonstrate that early auditory processing of a lexical tone at a preattentive stage is actually ...

The roles of long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge in phonological short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Tanida, Yuki; Ueno, Taiji; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Saito, Satoru

2015-04-01

Many previous studies have explored and confirmed the influence of long-term phonological representations on phonological short-term memory. In most investigations, phonological effects have been explored with respect to phonotactic constraints or frequency. If interaction between long-term memory and phonological short-term memory is a generalized principle, then other phonological characteristics-that is, suprasegmental aspects of phonology-should also exert similar effects on phonological short-term memory. We explored this hypothesis through three immediate serial-recall experiments that manipulated Japanese nonwords with respect to lexical prosody (pitch-accent type, reflecting suprasegmental characteristics) as well as phonotactic frequency (reflecting segmental characteristics). The results showed that phonotactic frequency affected the retention not only of the phonemic sequences, but also of pitch-accent patterns, when participants were instructed to recall both the phoneme sequence and accent pattern of nonwords. In addition, accent pattern typicality influenced the retention of the accent pattern: Typical accent patterns were recalled more accurately than atypical ones. These results indicate that both long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge contribute to phonological short-term memory performance.

The preverbal locative NP in Lexical Functional Grammar

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Data is drawn from some of the findings of the study I conducted on the locative inversion constructions in Botswana in 2003. I explore an information structure analysis of the findings. I also propose an analysis within Lexical Functional Grammar (Henceforth LFG), a non-transformational theory which considers languages ...

Bilingual Children's Lexical Strategies in a Narrative Task

Science.gov (United States)

Barbosa, Poliana; Nicoladis, Elena; Keith, Margaux

2017-01-01

We investigated how bilinguals choose words in a narrative task, contrasting the possibilities of a developmental delay vs. compensatory strategies. To characterize a developmental delay, we compared younger (three to five years) and older (seven to ten years) children's lexicalization of target words (Study 1). The younger children told shorter…

Dissociating Visual Form from Lexical Frequency Using Japanese

Science.gov (United States)

Twomey, Tae; Duncan, Keith J. Kawabata; Hogan, John S.; Morita, Kenji; Umeda, Kazumasa; Sakai, Katsuyuki; Devlin, Joseph T.

2013-01-01

In Japanese, the same word can be written in either morphographic Kanji or syllabographic Hiragana and this provides a unique opportunity to disentangle a word's lexical frequency from the frequency of its visual form--an important distinction for understanding the neural information processing in regions engaged by reading. Behaviorally,…

Lexical Borrowings in Spanish: Function, Length, Genealogy and Chronology.

Science.gov (United States)

Patterson, William T.

1986-01-01

A study reveals that lexical borrowing in Spanish, from a variety of languages including Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Provencal, and Catalan, accounts for 41 percent of the basic Spanish vocabulary, with variation in source according to historical period. (MSE)

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT).

Science.gov (United States)

Haman, Ewa; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Hansen, Pernille; Simonsen, Hanne Gram; Chiat, Shula; Bjekić, Jovana; Blažienė, Agnė; Chyl, Katarzyna; Dabašinskienė, Ineta; Engel de Abreu, Pascale; Gagarina, Natalia; Gavarró, Anna; Håkansson, Gisela; Harel, Efrat; Holm, Elisabeth; Kapalková, Svetlana; Kunnari, Sari; Levorato, Chiara; Lindgren, Josefin; Mieszkowska, Karolina; Montes Salarich, Laia; Potgieter, Anneke; Ribu, Ingeborg; Ringblom, Natalia; Rinker, Tanja; Roch, Maja; Slančová, Daniela; Southwood, Frenette; Tedeschi, Roberta; Tuncer, Aylin Müge; Ünal-Logacev, Özlem; Vuksanović, Jasmina; Armon-Lotem, Sharon

2017-01-01

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

Lexical learning in mild aphasia: gesture benefit depends on patholinguistic profile and lesion pattern.

Science.gov (United States)

Kroenke, Klaus-Martin; Kraft, Indra; Regenbrecht, Frank; Obrig, Hellmuth

2013-01-01

the multimodal learning strategy, in which gestures may cause a deeper semantic rooting of the novel word-form. The results tap into theoretical accounts of gestures in lexical learning and suggest an explanation for the diverging effect in therapeutical studies advocating gestures in aphasia rehabilitation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The (null impact of pseudohomophones in lexical decision: No phonological activation in semantic dementia?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maximiliano A. Wilson

2014-04-01

The results in controls reproduce those found in literature (Braun et al., 2009. The general impairment and the lack of lexicality effect are also in line with current literature on svPPA and are likely explained by semantic impairment (Rogers et al., 2004. Interestingly, the novel result here is the absence of PsH effect in svPPA. This suggests that phonology is not correctly activated and that O-P mappings are also impaired in svPPA.

Conflicts between domestic inequality and global poverty: lexicality versus proportionality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francisco García Gibson

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Current views on global justice often hold that affluent states are under at least two duties: a duty to reduce socioeconomic inequalities at home and a duty to reduce extreme poverty abroad. Potential duty conflicts deriving from resource scarcity can be solved in broadly two principled ways. The ‘lexical’ principle requires all disputed resources to be allocated to the weightiest duty. The ‘proportionality’ principle requires resources to be distributed between the two duties according to their relative weight (the weightiest duty receives the largest resource share, but the less weighty duty receives a share too. I argue that the proportionality principle is morally preferable. I show that it is sensitive to a number of factors that are intuitively relevant when solving duty conflicts: the number of affected individuals, the size of the benefits each individual could get, and the time it could take to eventually comply with the less weighty duty. Some argue that the lexical principle should nevertheless be preferred because domestic egalitarian duties are duties of justice, and they are therefore lexically prior to mere humanitarian duties to reduce global poverty. I reject this view by showing that duties of justice are not necessarily lexically prior to humanitarian duties, and that (even if they were duties to reduce global poverty can be regarded as duties of justice too.

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Reuter, Martin; Montag, Christian; Peters, Kristina; Kocher, Anne; Kiefer, Markus

2009-01-01

The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N = 104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs), direct and indirect priming), COMT was not significantly related to priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 and 14.5% of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Reuter

2009-08-01

Full Text Available The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N=104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs, direct and indirect priming, COMT was not significantly related to masked priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 to 14.5 % of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

Boosted jets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Juknevich, J.

2014-01-01

We present a study of the substructure of jets high transverse momentum at hadron colliders. A template method is introduced to distinguish heavy jets by comparing their energy distributions to the distributions of a set of templates which describe the kinematical information from signal or background. As an application, a search for a boosted Higgs boson decaying into bottom quarks in association with a leptonically decaying W boson is presented as well. (author)

The Decoy Effect as a Nudge: Boosting Hand Hygiene With a Worse Option.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Meng; Sun, Yan; Chen, Hui

2018-05-01

This article provides the first test of the decoy effect as a nudge to influence real-world behavior. The decoy effect is the phenomenon that an additional but worse option can boost the appeal of an existing option. It has been widely demonstrated in hypothetical choices, but its usefulness in real-world settings has been subject to debate. In three longitudinal experiments in food-processing factories, we tested two decoy sanitation options that were worse than the existing sanitizer spray bottle. Results showed that the presence of a decoy, but not an additional copy of the original sanitizer bottle in a different color, drastically increased food workers' hand sanitizer use from the original sanitizer bottle and, consequently, improved workers' passing rate in hand sanitary tests from 60% to 70% to above 90% for 20 days. These findings indicate that the decoy effect can be a powerful nudge technique to influence real-world behavior.