A lexical decision task to measure crystallized-verbal ability in Spanish / Una tarea de decisión léxica para medir la capacidad verbal cristalizada en español

Abstract A classical distinction in cognitive science is between fluid and crystalized abilities. Fluid ability is captured by many common executive function and intelligence tests. Crystalized ability, on the other hand, can be measured quite simply via lexical decision tasks including the English-language Spot-the-Word Test. However, no similar Spanish-language test has been available up to now. This paper presents a Spanish-language Lexical Decision Task that is quick to administer and was tested on sample of 139 normal adult participants. Results indicate that the new test has good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. An analysis of the correlations between this new test and demographic variables, as well as with the subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale suggest that it is a valid measure of crystalized-verbal ability. It also appears to be a brief but valid assessment of intelligence in general, and its positive correlation with academic achievement establishes predictive validity. The new test has the potential to be a useful research tool to rapidly measure reading ability, crystalized-verbal ability, and intelligence in Spanish speaking adults.

Resumen Una distinción clásica en la ciencia cognitiva es entre las habilidades fluidas y cristalizadas. La habilidad fluida es medida por muchas funcionas ejecutivas y tests de inteligencia. Por otro lado, la habilidad cristalizada puede ser medida sencillamente mediante una tarea de decisión léxica, como en la versión en inglés conocida como Spot-the-Word Test. Sin embargo, hasta ahora no ha habido una versión similar de este test en español. Aquí les presento una Tarea de Decisión Léxica en español que es de rápida aplicación. Esta fue aplicada en una muestra de 139 participantes, adultos normales. Los resultados indican que este nuevo test tiene buena consistencia interna y confiabilidad test-retest. Los análisis de las correlaciones entre este nuevo test y las variables demográficas, al igual que con las sub pruebas de las Escala de Inteligencia de Wechsler para Adultos, sugiere que es una medida confiable de la habilidad verbal cristalizada. También parece ser una breve, pero válida evaluación de inteligencia en general, con validez predictiva establecida por sus correlaciones positivas con el logro académico. Este nuevo test tiene potencial para ser una herramienta útil para medir rápidamente habilidad de lectura, habilidad verbal cristalizada e inteligencia en adultos hispanohablantes.

El papel de estructura argumental en el procesamiento de los compuestos verbo-nombre del español: Evidencias experimentales / The role of semantic argument structure in spanish verb-noun compound words: Experimental evidence

Los compuestos verbo-nombre del español presentan la particularidad de carecer de un núcleo que aporte los rasgos morfológicos, de categoría o semántico-referenciales. El acceso al significado depende entonces de la relación que mantienen los constituyentes entre sí y no a partir de la identificación de un elemento nuclear, como ocurre en compuestos que poseen un lexema referencial (telaraña, bocacalle). Dentro del compuesto verbo-nombre, la relación semántica que se establece entre los constituyentes no es única. Si bien la estructura semántica prototípica responde al patrón agente-paciente (cortacésped), existen otras posibilidades argumentales, como las relaciones locativas (pasacalle). El estudio realizado tuvo como objetivo determinar hasta qué punto la estructura argumental proyectada por el verbo tiene una influencia en el procesamiento cognitivo de estas unidades. Primeramente, se llevó a cabo un juicio de aceptabilidad para asegurar que los estímulos se correspondieran con la realidad lingüística de los participantes del estudio experimental. A continuación, se administró una prueba de decisión léxica con compuestos que poseían distintos tipos de estructura argumental: (1) agente / paciente (algo que V a N, abrelatas), (2) agente / paciente menos prototípica (procesos metafóricos, chupasangre) y (3) locativos (lugar donde x hace V a N, guardamuebles). Los resultados muestran que los tiempos de decisión (respuesta) ante compuestos locativos fueron significativamente mayores que ante los prototípicos. Este resultado no puede ser explicado por diferencias en longitud o frecuencia de los compuestos o sus constituyentes, por lo que parecen apoyar la hipótesis de que la estructura argumental juega un rol central en el procesamiento de estas palabras.

Research on the processing of compound words offers important insights on how the mental lexicon is organized. It is a current topic in psycholinguistics if compound words are represented and processed as unitary lexical units (full-listing models) or only as individual constituents analyzed via acombinatorial mechanism (full-parsing models). There is enough experimental evidence that both mechanisms are involved (dual-route models). Several characteristics of the stimuli, like length, morphological family size, frequency of compounds and their constituents are important factors to determine how they are processed. Compound words are meaningful units that contain smaller meaningful units. Therefore, in the domain of compounds' studies, several hypotheses have been proposed to explain how only one interpretation is achieved from two independent meanings. Models that describe the construction of lexical semantic features in compound words, like APPLE - Automatic Progressive Parsing and Lexical Excitation (Libben 1994,1998) or CARIN - Competition Among Relations in Nominals (Gagné, 2000), are based on the notion of a morphological head. According to these theories the recognition of the head would trigger an interpretation of the whole word. In noun-noun compounds (pez espada, 'swordfish', telaraña 'spiderweb'), in which the head has the referential features, the identification of this head and the posterior clarification of the relationship with the non-head lexeme is the way to interpret the whole compound (pez 'fish' and tela 'web', respectively). However, not every compound has a head with the referential attributes inside. Verb-noun compounding is an extremely productive word-formation process in Romance languages. Spanish verb-noun compounds have the particularity of being exocentric: these constructions do not present a categorical, morphological or semantic head. Therefore, access to the meaning depends on the relationship between both of their constituent lexemes. For these units, the traditional distinction between semantically transparent and semantically opaque compounds is not suitable, because it doesn't take under consideration the projection of the argument structure by the verbal constituent. The semantic relationship established between the lexemes within a compound is not unique. While the prototypical semantic structure responds to the agent-patient pattern (cortacésped), there are other semantic possibilities, such as locative relationships (pasacalle). The present study addresses the issue of the comprehension of Spanish verb-noun compounds in order to provide evidence about the role of the argument structure projected by the first lexeme in the whole-word meaning. It is proposed that the argument structure of the verbal constituent has a cognitive influence on the processing and comprehension of these units. Firstly, an acceptability judgment test was administrated in order to identify a group of verb-noun compounds that were adequate for the Argentinean Spanish lexicon. Secondly, a lexical decision task was conducted with the stimuli selected as acceptable. Thirty native speakers (20 females), ranged in age from 19 to 34 years old, with at least 12 years of schooling, participated in the experiment. The lexical decision task included three types of compounds according to their argument structure: (1) Agent / patient (abrelatas), (2) Agent / patient with less prototypical features or metaphorical processes (chupasangre), and (3) locatives (guardamuebles). Stimuli were matched according to the whole-word and constituent frequency and length. For the statistical analysis, ANOVAs were calculated for error rates and response times (RTs) for each condition. Results show that reaction times (answers) to locative compounds were significantly higher than to agent-patient compounds. This contrast cannot be explained by differences in frequency or length, of the compounds or their constituents. Consequently, the present results seem to support the hypothesis that argument structure plays a central role in the processing of these words.

Procesamiento de palabras con contenido emocional en personas adultas mayores con deterioro cognoscitivo leve / Processing of words with emotional content in adults seniors with mild cognitive impairment

Introducción: El procesamiento del contenido emocional de los estímulos ha supuesto cambios en el envejecimiento, tanto normal como patológico. Objetivo: El objetivo del presente estudio fue comparar el procesamiento de palabras emocionales versus no emocionales en personas con y sin deterioro cognoscitivo leve (DCL) en una tarea de decisión léxica. Materiales y métodos: Para esto se presentaron 30 palabras, correspondientes a 10 palabras con valencia emocional positiva, 10 palabras con valencia emocional negativa y 10 palabras neutras o sin valencia emocional, frente a igual número de pseudopalabras para la tarea decisión léxica, en la que los participantes debían indicar mediante el uso de un dispositivo de respuesta, adaptado a un computador, si aquello que aparecía en la pantalla era o no una palabra. En total se contó con 34 participantes, con edades entre los 47 y 78 años; 16 de ellos con diagnóstico de DCL y 18 sin antecedentes neurológicos y con habilidades cognitivas, del lenguaje y la conducta típicas, emparejados por variables de edad, escolaridad y nivel socioeconómico. Resultados: Se encontraron diferencias de lexicalidad, con mayores tiempos de reacción y tasas de error para pseudopalabras que para palabras, tal como predice el paradigma de decisión léxica. Hubo un efecto de facilitación en ambos grupos de participantes, con respecto a la carga emocional (menor tiempo de reacción y tasas de error para palabras emocionales). Las palabras positivas fueron más rápidas y acertadamente reconocidas, en comparación con las negativas y neutras para ambos tipos de participantes. No hubo diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los grupos. Conclusiones: Las variables lexicalidad y valencia emocional producen un efecto en el reconocimiento visual de palabras en personas con y sin DCL. Los cambios en el procesamiento emocional pueden aportar en el diagnóstico diferencial, la estimación de la severidad y el pronóstico del deterioro cognitivo y las demencias.

Introduction: The processing of the emotional content of stimuli has led to changes in aging, both normal and pathological. Onjetive: The aim of this study was to compare the processing of emotional words versus no emotional in people with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in a lexical decision task. Meterials and Methods: For this presen¬taron 30 words corresponding to 10 words with positive emotional valence, 10 words with negative emotional valence and 10 neutral or without emotional valence words, compared to the same number pseudoword for lexical decision task, which participants had to indicate by using a response device adapted to a computer, if what appeared on screen was or was not a word. In total he had 34 participants, aged between 47 and 78 years; 16 of them diagnosed with DLB and 18 with no neurological history and cognitive skills, language and typical behavior, matched variables of age, education and socioeconomic status. Results: Lexicality differences with longer reaction times and error rates for pseudoword that words, as predicted by the lexical decision paradigm were found. There was a facilitation effect in both groups of participants regarding the emotional burden (less reaction time and error rates for emotional words). Positive words were correctly recognized faster and compared to negative and neutral for both types of participants. There were no statistically significant differences between groups. Conclusions: Lexicality and emotional valence variables have an effect on the visual recognition of words in people with and without DCL. Changes in emotional processing may contribute to the differential diagnosis, estimation of the severity and prognosis of cognitive impairment and dementia.

Interferencia de la información léxica sobre la identificación de fonemas durante una tarea de decisión fonológica / Lexical information interference in phonemic recognition during a phonological decision task

A partir de estudios con potenciales relacionados a eventos en tareas de decisión fonológica (DF) o léxica (DL), se ha propuesto que el procesamiento auditivo del lenguaje es de tipo serial con interacciones tardías entre los módulos fonológico, sintáctico y semántico. Este trabajo intentó valorar si existía una interferencia entre el procesamiento fonológico y semántico durante la DL y DF de sintagmas nominales utilizando un artículo definido en concordancia con un sustantivo. A fin de examinar esto, se presentaron 180 estímulos auditivos a un grupo de participantes, y se les pidió que realizaran una tarea de DL y una de decisión DF; 60 estímulos utilizaron palabras de la lengua, 60 con una vocal alterada en el sustantivo que generaba una pseudopalabra (PSP1), y 60 con una sílaba traslocada en el sustantivo para generar otro tipo de pseudopalabra (PSP2). Se registraron 10 participantes hispanohablantes adultos sin padecimientos neurológicos ni psiquiátricos. Se encontró que los participantes se equivocaron más al identificar las PSP1 que las PSP2 en la tarea de DL. No se encontraron diferencias en el componente N400 durante DL. En la tarea de DF, se encontró que el N100 incrementó su amplitud ante la presentación de palabras. Estos hallazgos apuntan a que la información léxica interfiere con la fase de procesamiento fonológico y cuestiona el modelo de procesamiento serial del lenguaje.

Experiments using event-related potentials during phonological decision (PD) and lexical decision (LD) tasks have suggested that auditory language processing occurs in a serial fashion, with late interactions amongst the phonological, syntactic and semantic modules. This paper sought to assess the existence of interference between phonological and semantic processing during LD and PD in nominal phrases, by using a definite article to match a noun. In order to examine this, 180 auditory stimuli were presented to a group of participants, and they were asked to perform a LD and a PD task. Sixty auditory stimuli included a noun that generated a pseudo-word (PSP1), and 60 others included a misplaced syllable within the noun so as to generate another type of pseudo-word (PSP2). Ten adult Spanish speakers without any neurological or psychiatric disorders volunteered to take part in the experiment. Participants were found to make more mistakes when identifying PSP1 than PSP2 during the LD task. There were no significant differences in the N400 component during LD. As for the PD task, it was found that N100 increased in amplitude when words were presented. These findings go to show that lexical information interferes with the phonological processing phase, and questions the serial model of language processing.

El rol de la morfología en el proceso de aprendizaje de la lectura en español / The role of morphology in reading acquisition in Spanish

En lenguas con distintos sistemas ortográficos como el inglés, francés, finés e italiano se encontraron efectos de la presencia de morfemas en tareas que involucran el procesamiento de palabras escritas durante el desarrollo lector. Esta sensibilidad a la morfología se observa muy tempranamente en los lectores y también se ha descripto en niños con dificultades en la lectura. El objetivo del trabajo que se informa fue obtener evidencia acerca del rol de la morfología durante el proceso de aprendizaje de la lectura en español. Para ello se evaluaron tres grupos de niños de segundo a cuarto grado con tareas de decisión léxica y de lectura en voz alta, utilizando palabras y no palabras morfológicas, compuestas por dos morfemas en una combinación nueva y no palabras simples, sin componentes morfológicos. Los resultados mostraron, por un lado, un efecto de frecuencia para el procesamiento de palabras en ambas pruebas y, por otro, un efecto de interferencia de los morfemas en la tarea de decisión léxica y de facilitación en la lectura en voz alta para las no palabras compuestas por morfemas. Estos efectos se interpretan como el resultado del desarrollo temprano de un léxico ortográfico que incluye morfemas como unidades de representación utilizadas por los lectores iniciales para el reconocimiento y la lectura de estímulos nuevos. Esto se produce en detrimento de los procesos sublexicales que usualmente se utilizan para procesar estos estímulos nuevos y que son más lentos y laboriosos puesto que procesan unidades menores que el morfema o la palabra completa.

Several studies on literacy acquisition conducted in different orthographies such as English, French, Finnish and Italian have shown that morphemes play an early role in visual word processing such as reading and lexical decision. Also, the degree of consistency or transparency between orthography and phonology in a language seems to play a role in the size of the processing units used by young readers. In scripts with highly inconsistent grapheme - phoneme correspondences such as English or French units larger than the grapheme are early used due to the unpredictability of grapheme - phoneme finer grain size mappings. Thus morpheme -and whole word- based reading are early developed by children in these languages. Conversely, in highly consistent languages like Italian or Spanish the grapheme is a reliable unit for visual word processing since almost invariably a single grapheme maps onto a single phoneme. In the acquisition of such scripts whole word reading would be developed later on. This diminished morphological effect in normal development has been explained based on the influence of larger grain size units such as whole words as children master of literacy increases. For instance, Italian developing readers have been shown to be early affected by the morphological components of a stimulus but morphology continued to affect visual word processing only in older children with reading difficulties. Thus this morphological sensitivity seems to develop early in childhood even in transparent orthographies as Italian and it has been described to continue affecting processing only in individuals with reading difficulties. However and to the best of our knowledge very few studies on the influence of morphology in Spanish children have been conducted. None of them was on the influence of morphology in visual word processing tasks such as word reading and lexical decision. That is why the aim of the present study was to obtain evidence of the role of morphology in early literacy acquisition in Spanish. Three groups of children from 2nd to 4th year of primary school participated in the study. Participants were administered a lexical decision and a reading task with high and low frequency words and: (1) morphological non-words made up of morphemes combination (root and suffix); and (2) non-morphological simple non-words. The results showed an effect of frequency in the processing of words, i.e., better processing of highly frequent words as compared to low frequency ones. The influence of a lexical variable like frequency shows that the orthographic input lexicon is also early organized in children that learn the script of a transparent language. In lexical decision morphologically complex non-words were processed with more errors than morphologically simple non-words. In other words, morphology had an inhibitory effect in lexical decision because children had a tendency to accept morphologically complex non-words as real words. This inhibitory effect is compatible with the (at least partial) morphological organization of the orthographic input lexicon. Morphological complexity had the opposite effect during reading of non-words. Morphologically complex non-words were read with fewer errors than morphologically simple non-words. This facilitator effect of morphology for reading can be explained by the fact that for efficient reading children will rely more on larger grain size units like morphemes (as compared to the slower and less efficient grapheme-phoneme based reading processes). In sum, the results of the present study provide evidence of the early organization of an orthographic lexicon that includes morphemes as representation units in Spanish. These units are used by early readers during visual word processing of new stimuli. Such morphological processing proves more useful than sub lexical grapheme-phoneme conversion processing because it deals with larger-grain units than single graphemes and phonemes.

Procesamiento léxico-semántico en un grupo de sujetos sanos: estudio con potenciales relacionados a eventos

resumen está disponible en el texto completo

Abstract: Introduction: An insight into the meaning of words is one of the central processes of semantic memory. To evalúate the access to the cognitive representation of the meaning of words, in the present study we used the lexical decision paradigm developed by Marcos. In this situation, the subject has to recognize if the presented stimulus corresponds to a word or a pseudo-word with the purpose of building a model of normal processing. Once such a model of normal processing is obtained, the findings can be contrasted with pathologies in which semantic memory is altered. Method: The sample consisted of 32 healthy subjects (7 men, 25 women), right-handed and with no personal or familial history of neurological or psychiatric conditions. The average age of the subjects was 34.4 (+ 9.56) years and they had an average educational level of 16.2 (+ 4.4) years. The lexical decision paradigm employed in this study is constituted by 408 stimuli, 240 words and 168 pseudo-words. The criteria for word selection were: frequency, length, grammatical category and morphology. Electroencephalogram (EEG) monopolar recording was obtained from 19 derivations (F3, F4, C3, C4, P3, P4, O1, O2, F7, F8, T3, T4, T5, T6, Fz, Cz and Pz), as well as event-related potentials (ERPs) for the word and pseudo-word sub-states. Results: In the first place, a chi-squared analysis was performed to establish whether significative differences existed between the rates of correct and incorrect answers for both sub-states. The value of chi-squared was 65.7 (gl=1) and significant for p<0.0001. A correlation value of 0.43 (p< 0.02) was found when the educational level and the percentage of correct answers in the sub-sate word were compared. On the other hand, for the pseudo-word sub-state, the value 0.24 was encountered for the same correlation, being statistically non-significant. Pearson's correlation coefficient was also calculated for the educational level variable compared to the mistakes committed when subjects were presented with frequent and infrequent words. In the case of infrequent words, a value of r = - 0.43 (p<0.02) was obtained when the educational level and the number of mistakes were correlated. No correlation was found when the educational level and the number of mistakes commited for frequent words were compared (r = - 0.06). A multivariate variance analysis for repeated measures was performed to determine significant differences between the reaction times when recognizing words or pseudo-words. The outcome showed that all effects were significant in the following cases: reaction times for words and pseudo-words, notwithstanding whether they were correct or incorrect; comparison between correct and incorrect answers, independently of their being words or pseudo-words, as well as the interactions between both effects. To determine differences between average ERPs for both sub-states, Student's T-test was applied with Bonferroni's correction and p<0.0002 as the significance level. Significant differences were encountered between the two sub-states, independently of the age or gender. In the 375-495 ms latency interval, a negative component was appreciated in the pseudo-words case, showing significant differences (p<0.0002) in the following derivations: F3, F4, C3, C4, P3, P4, O1, O2, T3, T5, T6, Fz, Cz and Pz. Amplitude differences between the two sub-states were more evident in Pz and P3 derivations followed by Cz. In addition, a positive component in the 700-795 ms latency interval was detected (mainly in 795 ms) when pseudo-words were presented. Here, the significant differences (p<0.0002) were manifest in the following derivations: F3, C3, P3, F7, T3, T5 and Pz. Amplitude differences between the two sub-states were mainly patent in Pz and P3 followed by C3. Discussion: When analyzing behavioral aspects, subjects made more mistakes when presented with words. However, individuals with less education were the ones committing more mistakes. From this we can infer that this variable may be associated with the range of lexical repertoire. A relation was encountered between educational level and word recognition. With regard to reaction times, significant differences were detected between both sub-states, since the recognition of both words and correct answers was achieved in shorter reaction times. Average reaction times for words and pseudo-words were 819.73 ms and 999.35 ms, respectively. Similarly, the latest potential component appeared in an interval of significant differences between 600 and 940 ms, though with a significance p<0.0005 between 690 and 805 ms. This means that positiveness occurred much sooner than the response, implying that the activity underlying ERPs is related to a cognitive processing of information due to the paradigm used. The analysis of ERPs primary components for both sub-states shows that significant differences arise until 270 ms. The negative component in this study was present between 270 and 580 ms, rendering it similar to N400 given its latency (around 400 ms). Although well-defined in centro-parietal regions, its distribution was generalized, which corresponds to the results of studies using the semantic incongruence paradigm. According to the data from previous research on ERPs, N400 has been associated with the integration process. If this were the case, this association would be equivalent to the semantic incongruence within a lexical integration process described in conventional literature as a "semantic facilitator", only that this time it would be limited to the process of access to the lexicon, which can be interpreted as a discrimination of the answer by assigning a meaning to a word, that is, to process information in the semantic module. This negative component may be related to the generalized response to brain activity when given a meaningless stimulus, i.e., a pseudo-word. Similarly, the wave amplitude may be related to the amount of activation necessary to gain access to the semantic representation of the stimulus in the memory. With regard to the positive component in this study, it is present between 600 and 940 ms and is interpreted as a late P300 (P3b), which has a latency in the 500-1400 ms interval. It is distributed over the centro-parietal region, making it a liable participant in the task categorization process, in which it is necessary to discriminate between the target from the non-target stimulus, and also reflects focalized attentional processes (voluntary) involved in the execution of the task. From the former, it is believed that this component may be related to attentional resources necessary to process the presentation of pseudo-words. Research dealing with the P600 component locate it within the context of statements and associate it with an anomaly in statement syntax. Therefore, even though the positive component lies within the P600 latency domain, this particular component was not considered as being present in this study, because a syntax incongruence paradigm was not used. Finally, the contribution of the present study lies in the finding of N400 and "P600" components, which have been reported when the "semantic facilitator" and the syntax incongruence paradigm were respectively used, but had not been observed when a lexical decision paradigm based on word recognition per se was utilized. Similarly, given that our results stem from a sample of healthy subjects, a comparison can be made with a patient population with semantic memory alterations.