El estudio de los efectos de la modalidad lingüística en el léxico mental / The study of the effects of linguistic modality on the mental lexicon

Resumen El estudio se cuestiona sobre un abordaje fructífero en el estudio de los efectos de la modalidad lingüística (de señas versus oral) en la organización de la memoria semántica. Para responder la pregunta de investigación, un aspecto central es definir criterios y procedimientos capaces de distinguir entre los factores transportados por la modalidad lingüística de los que le son propios. Entre los primeros, se encuentran la edad de exposición a la lengua natural y su distribución funcional, etaria o geográfica. Entre los aspectos propios de la modalidad se incluyen la iconicidad y el grado de concreción/abstracción de las piezas léxicas. Se sugiere centrarse en el uso de dicho gradiente para evocar dominios conceptuales. Si lo concreto/abstracto es un continuo, entonces hay que preguntarse qué forma de organización es predominante en el léxico mental de las poblaciones señantes u oyentes y qué factores modulan el perfil de esa organización.

Abstract The efforts to understand the relationship of the meaning of a lexical piece to the object to which it refers, the relationship between the lexical pieces and the concepts, and the understanding of the meanings shared between two speakers who use the same lexical pieces have all constituted major problems for the semantic memory models. According to contemporary literature, perceptual-motor, linguistic, and social information have different weights in the formation of concepts, whether concrete or abstract, stored in the aforementioned memory. Regardless of the models developed so far, it is interesting to note that semantic knowledge is represented by various ways of relating the concepts and the types of relationships between them. In this context, studies in sign languages and comparative studies between spoken and sign languages are scarce. Thus, little is known about the effect of linguistic modality on the semantic networks. After all, the theory on semantic networks and norms for the production of features has been grounded on theories of language and its processing adjusted to spoken languages. As the incorporation of the sign language and the Deaf population has shown in other psycholinguistic and linguistic topics, the importance of including these languages and populations, and comparatives with spoken languages, might increase the explanatory power of the theory to account for the universal and contextual aspects of language and its processing. In this effort, there is a latent risk: the linguistic modality can be only a vehicle for more well-known or studied cross-modal variables (e. g., age of acquisition, functional distribution of language, size of the available lexicon, etc.). If it is considered that languages are not stored together, but similar processes can occur in them, it is essential to find out what may be a singular feature of each modality (spoken versus sign) that might ground differentiated processes. Considering the high iconicity of the sign languages and the possibility of a high concreteness of the lexical pieces in the sign language as distinctive features -not collapsible into well-known variables such as the aforementioned-, this article suggests a careful approach to avoid the aforementioned risk in the study of the effects of the linguistic modality (sign versus oral) in the organization of semantic memory. Since perceptual-motor and social information are the main sources of iconicity, a balanced instrument is necessary in the evocation of perceptual-motor, social, and linguistic information. Repeated free word association tasks seem like an appropriate paradigm for a suggested approach. The reasons for this are that, by not censoring the types of response, then free association tasks allow capturing all kinds of concepts (concrete or abstract), all kinds of semantic relationships/organization (paradigmatic versus thematic) and all kinds of processes (comparison versus interaction). This type of task therefore makes it possible to collect meanings related to linguistic information and non-linguistic experience because affective and experiential information is accessible by doing the task in different repetitions. The approach and the tool are exemplified by an ongoing comparative study between Deaf signing and hearing populations. The partial findings of this study also serve to focus on the expected effects of the difference in iconicity and the level of concreteness/abstractness of the lexical pieces of each linguistic modality; namely, the differences between an abstract and a concrete conceptualization of the conceptual domains. Taxonomic and introspective labels might appear as indicative of paradigmatic relationships, of a taxonomic organization, and of underlying comparison processes. On the other hand, the situational and entity labels, indicative of syntagmatic relationships, of a thematic organization and of underlying interaction processes, might suggest a predominantly concrete organization.

Positive Predictive Value of Sonographic BI-RADS Final Assessment Categories for Breast Lesions

@#Introduction: We want to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, positive (PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) of BI-RADS ultrasound, as well as PPV and NPV of BI-RADS ultrasound lexicon. Methods: A total of 517 ultrasound-guided breast biopsy cases were performed within three years. A total of 324 cases remained after 193 cases were excluded from this study. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, PPV and NPV of overall BI-RADS and PPV for each BI-RADS categories were calculated from the data when compared with histopathological examination (HPE) finding. One observer evaluated four criteria of BI-RADS ultrasound lexicon; margin, echogenicity, posterior artefact and internal echo from static sonographic images to determine the PPV and NPV of sonographic BI-RADS lexicon based on HPE correlation. Results: There were 236 (72.8%) benign and 88 (27.1%) malignant lesions. The overall BI-RADS has a sensitivity of 93.18%, specificity of 66.95%, accuracy of 74.07% with PPV and NPV of 51.25% and 96.34% respectively. The PPV of each BI-RADS categories were; BI-RADS 2 (9.09%), BI-RADS 3 (3.27%), BI-RADS 4 (39.02%) and BI-RADS 5 (91.89%). The highest predictive value for malignancy was irregular margin (52.3%) and for benign was well-defined margin (89.7%). Criteria for margin and posterior artefact had a significant association with HPE (p<0.0001) in differentiating between malignant and benign breast lesions in breast ultrasound. Conclusion: Overlapping benign and malignant sonographic breast lesion descriptors tend to influence radiologist’s decision to overcall final BI-RADS categories. The margin and posterior artefact are the important criteria in BI-RADS lexicon in differentiating benign and malignant breast lesion.

El vocabulario productivo y su relación con la gramática en niños hablantes de castellano peruano entre los 16 y los 30 meses / Productive vocabulary and its relationship with grammar in Spanish-speaking children from 16 to 30 months of age

Resumen Se examinaron datos provenientes de la evaluación del lenguaje de 104 niños con edades entre 16 y 30 meses residentes en Lima con una versión preliminar de la adaptación de la Forma II de los reportes parentales MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) al español del Perú. Se analizó el léxico productivo a partir de la lista de palabras del reporte y se realizaron análisis de regresión para evaluar si el nivel de vocabulario contribuía a predecir el desarrollo gramatical de los niños, empleando como variables de control la edad del niño y el nivel de escolarización materna (como indicador del nivel socioeconómico) y como variables dependientes la longitud media de los tres enunciados más largos (LME3) y la complejidad morfosintáctica (CM), obtenidas con el CDI. Los sustantivos fueron la clase de palabras más frecuente y que más aumentó con la edad, como en el italiano (Caselli et al., 1995; D'Odorico y Fasolo, 2007) y el español mexicano (Jackson-Maldonado et al., 1993). Además, el nivel de vocabulario predijo el nivel de desarrollo gramatical, como en el español peninsular (Mariscal y Gallego, 2012) y en el mexicano (Thal, Jackson-Maldonado y Acosta, 2000): una vez controlados los efectos de la edad y la escolarización materna, el vocabulario explicó el 20 % de la variabilidad de la LME3 y el 37 % de la variabilidad de la CM. Este estudio ofrece información sobre el desarrollo temprano del vocabulario y la gramática en el español del Perú, una etapa escasamente estudiada en esta variedad.

Abstract We present results from the analysis of data from 104 children with ages ranging from 16 to 30 months, living in Lima, Peru. The data was collected using a preliminary version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI), Form II, adapted to Peruvian Spanish. The CDIs are parental reports that assess language through the presentation of a series of items to the parents, mainly in the form of a checklist. We aimed to (1) describe the composition of Peruvian children's productive lexicon at this age, (2) identify whether nouns were the most frequent class in their vocabulary, and also the class which increased the most with age, as is the case in Italian (Caselli et al., 1995; D'Odorico y Fasolo, 2007) and Mexican Spanish (Jackson-Maldonado et al., 1993); and (3) assess whether vocabulary size explained the level of grammatical development as in Peninsular and Mexican Spanish (Mariscal & Gallego, 2012; Thal, Jackson-Maldonado & Acosta, 2000). In order to do so, we analyzed the following data: age; maternal education level (as an indicator of socioeconomic status); vocabulary (represented by a list of more than 500 words that parents recognized as produced or not by their children); the mean length of the three longest utterances produced by the child as reported by parents; and sentence complexity, a measure of the level of structures produced by the child based on the parent's report. To achieve the first and second goals, words in the vocabulary list were classified according to grammatical class. Then, the percentage of production of each class of words was calculated, as well as the correlation between this percentage and age. Children's vocabulary was composed mainly of nouns, which represented 57 % of the production, followed by predicates (verbs and adjectives) and function words (pronouns, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions and connectives). Noun was the class of words that increased the most with age, showing the highest correlation with such variable (r = .72). Correlations between other types of words and age varied: it was also high for adjectives; but moderate for some classes and low for others. This showed that each type of word increased at different rates. Regarding the third goal, to assess the relationship between vocabulary size and level of grammatical development, two regression analyses were conducted to predict the variables mean-length-of-the-three-longest-utterances and sentence-complexity. For both analyses, age and maternal education level were entered in the first step, in order to control for their effect; and vocabulary was entered in the second step. Both models accounted for substantial amounts of variance and showed an important effect on vocabulary. The model with the mean-length-of-the-three-longest-utterances as the dependent variable accounted for 56 % of the variance. The first step explained 37 % of the variance (due to the contribution of both age and maternal education level), and the second step explained an additional 20 %. The model with sentence-complexity accounted for a higher percentage of the variance, 75 %. The first step explained 38 % of the variance, exclusively due to age; while the second step explained an additional 37 %. These results suggest a strong relationship between vocabulary and grammar. Further research is needed to confirm these results with direct measures of child production and more representative samples of children acquiring Peruvian Spanish, including speakers of dialects of other parts of the country. However, these results, preliminary as they are, shed light on the composition of vocabulary and its relationship with grammar in a variety of Spanish scarcely studied during early stages of development.

Impacto del léxico mental en la comprensión lectora en niños de nivel socioeconómico bajo / Impact of Mental Lexicon on Reading Comprehension in Children Growing up in Poverty

Resumen Objetivo. Analizar el impacto que las representaciones léxicas de niños hispanohablantes, que crecen en contextos de pobreza, tiene sobre la comprensión lectora. Método. Se evaluó a 61 niños en una prueba de comprensión lectora y, a partir de los resultados, se dividió la muestra total en dos grupos: un grupo de alto nivel de comprensión y otro grupo de bajo nivel. Luego, se evaluaron ambos grupos en pruebas de vocabulario (representaciones semánticas del léxico mental) y el nivel lector (representaciones ortográficas del léxico mental). Asimismo, se exploró el nivel de memoria operativa de los niños, la realización de inferencias y el procesamiento morfosintáctico de lenguaje oral. Resultados. Se obtienen resultados que otorgan evidencia sobre la incidencia del léxico mental en la comprensión de textos escritos.

Abstract Objetive. This study analyses the impact that lexical representations of Spanish-speaking children in contexts of poverty have on the reading comprehension skills. Method. To this end, an assessment was made of the reading comprehension of 61 children. The results helped identify two groups within the sample: one with a high level of comprehension, and a second with a low level of comprehension. Each group's vocabulary (semantic representations of the mental lexicon) and reading level (orthographic representations of the mental lexicon) was then assessed. Other important skills related to comprehension were likewise explored, such as working memory, inference-making ability, and morphosyntactic processing of spoken language. Results. The results provide evidence regarding the substantial impact of mental lexicon representations on reading comprehension.

Lengua de Signos Española y Clasificación de los Números: Análisis y Propuesta de Neologismos1 / Spanish Sign Language and Classification of Numbers: Analysis and Proposal of Neologisms

RESUMEN: Las personas Sordas usuarias de la Lengua de Signos Española (LSE) en su etapa académica precisan del acompañamiento de un Intérprete de LSE que les facilite el acceso al currículum. En este sentido, y para facilitar la labor de los profesionales de la interpretación, los materiales lexicográficos de la LSE cobran una especial importancia. La calidad de los diccionarios de una lengua repercute en la calidad de las interpretaciones y traducciones. El objetivo de esta investigación es determinar si los diccionarios de la LSE recogen unidades léxicas (Signos) de calidad para los conceptos o nombres de los diferentes tipos de números. Para ello, se ha buscado, analizado y, en caso de ser necesario, creado Signos que reúnen las características básicas de las lenguas de modalidad viso-gestual. Los resultados de la investigación muestran, por un lado, que los materiales lexicográficos de la LSE presentan carencias terminológicas y, por otro lado, que en aquellos casos en los que se encuentra una opción de Signo para la palabra buscada es habitual encontrarnos con Signos que no transmiten el significado del concepto en cuestión. A pesar de ello, la LSE, al igual que todas las lenguas signadas, presenta recursos y métodos para crear nuevos Signos demostrando que es una lengua rica, capaz de transmitir cualquier tipo de información.

ABSTRACT: Deaf people who use Spanish Sign Language (LSE) in their academic stage need the support of an LSE Interpreter who facilitates their access to the curricular content. In this sense, in order to facilitate the work of professional interpreters, lexicographic materials of the LSE acquire a special importance. The quality of the dictionaries of a language has repercussions on the quality of interpretations and translations. The objective of this research is to determine if the LSE dictionaries collect lexical units (Signs) of quality for the concepts or names of the different types of numbers. To achieve that, we have searched, analyzed and, if necessary, created Signs that meet the basic characteristics of the languages ​​of visual-gestural modality. On the one hand, the results of our investigation allow us to assure that the lexicographical materials of the LSE present terminological deficiencies; on the other hand, in those cases where a Sign option is found for the searched word, it is common to find Signs that do not convey the meaning of the concept in question. In spite of this, LSE, like all Sign Languages, presents resources and methods to create new Signs, showing that it is a rich language, capable of transmitting any type of information.

A code biology analysis of the regulatory regions in cell lines / Análisis de biología de códigos de las regiones reguladoras en líneas celulares

Abstract Coding sequences are widely studied for their relevance in protein synthesis. However, higher organism genomes, such as human genomes, has a small amount of them, and a larger proportion of non-coding sequences. ENCODE and Epigenomic Roadmap projects discovered that regulatory functions are carried out in the non-coding regions of the human genome. These regulatory functions are part of the regulatory machinery that yields different gene expression profiles, thus, different cell lines. Whereas different environmental elements, i. e. histone modifications, DNA methylation, and other epigenomic phenomena, determine the regulatory function of genome part, the sequences' composition where these functions take place could also influence regulatory machinery. In this work, we explore the non-coding regulatory sequences and lexica build with subsequences between 3 and 16 nucleotides to evaluate the difference between the sequence composition of the regulatory regions in the cell lines. Our results show that the lexica corresponding to the regulatory regions are different based on their complexity/degeneracy, moreover, the lexica of regulatory regions in different cell lines are also different. These features suggest that non-coding sequences are an active element of the regulatory machinery and the histone code that are involved in cell differentiation.

Resumen Las secuencias codificantes han sido ampliamente estudiadas por su relevancia en la síntesis de proteínas. Sin embargo, los genomas de organismos complejos, como el humano, tiene una porción menor de estas secuencias y una mayor proporción de secuencias no codificantes. Los proyectos del ENCODE y Epigenomic Roadmap describieron que las funciones reguladoras se llevan acabo en las regiones no codificantes del genoma humano. Estas funciones reguladoras son parte de la maquinaria reguladora que produce diferentes perfiles de expresión genética, por tanto, diferentes líneas celulares. Mientras diferentes elementos del entorno, como las modificaciones en las histonas, metilación del ADN y otros fenómenos epigenéticos, determinan la función reguladora que tienen una porción del genoma, la composición de la secuencia donde estas funciones son llevadas a cabo también podrían influir en la maquinaria reguladora. En este trabajo, se exploraron las secuencias de las regiones no codificantes y los léxicos generados con las subsecuencias entre 3 y 16 nucleótidos, para evaluar las diferencias entre la composición de las secuencias de las regiones reguladoras en las líneas celulares. Los resultados muestran que los léxicos correspondientes a las regiones reguladoras son diferentes con base en su complejidad/degeneración, así mismo, los léxicos de las regiones reguladoras en distintas líneas celulares son también distintos. Estos detalles sugieren que las secuencias no codificantes son elemento activo de la maquinaria reguladora y del código histónico que participan en la diferenciación celular.

Can a lexical decision task predict efficiency in the judgment of ambiguous sentences?

Abstract The lexicon plays a fundamental role in reading, but little is known about how it influences reading efficiency. Thus, this study seeks to identify which lexical factors in a lexical decision task are relevant in a semantic decision test. A total of 33 university students were recruited to perform a lexical decision task and a semantic decision task. The results revealed differences between the three types of words in the lexical decision task for all measures, but only in the regressive saccades for the semantic decision task. Ambiguous sentences triggered fewer regressions than sentences related to objects. The only lexical measure found to predict efficiency was average time on regular words, which predicted 24% of the efficiency. We discuss the implications of the use of a lexical decision task and the use of the inverse efficiency score as a semantic measure, and we discuss how the lexicon can predict semantic comprehension.

A case study on language deficits in posterior aphasia / 中国康复医学杂志

Objective:To explore the language deficits in a single case of posterior aphasic to test the dual-system model of language processing and provide neurolinguistic basis for clinical language therapy.Method:A circumscribed posterior aphasic was selected,whose language data were collected through spontaneous talk,WAB test,and other language production tasks including picture-naming and sentence repetition.The language data were analyzed with the emphasis on syntax-lexicon dissociation and noun-verb dissociation.Result:For the posterior aphasic,lexicon was severely impaired while syntax was preserved relatively well;in comparison to lexical production,lexical comprehension was preserved better;noun-verb dissociation,especially NSD,was discovered.Conclusion:The syntax-lexicon dissociation and the relevant noun-verb dissociation can serve as powerful evidence for the dual-system model of language processing,and throw light on language therapy for posterior aphasics.

Practical and illustrated summary of updated BI-RADS for ultrasonography

The American College of Radiology released the fifth edition of the Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) in 2014 (copyright 2013), which includes the expanded second edition of the ultrasound BI-RADS lexicon. This review provides a practical summary of the updated lexicon, including selective illustrations with original clinical images, a discussion of overarching concepts, and examples of current clinical applications.

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.

Análise da narrativa de Viktor Frankl acerca da experiência dos prisioneiros nos campos de concentração / Analysis of Viktor Frankl's narrative on the experience of prisoners in concentration camps / Análisis de la narrativa de Viktor Frankl sobre la experiencia de los presos en campos de concentración

O objetivo do presente artigo foi identificar a estrutura lexical mais significativa na obra de Viktor Frankl Em busca de sentido: um psicólogo no campo de concentração. O corpus do texto foi analisado por meio do software ALCESTE (Análise Lexical Contextual de um Conjunto de Segmentos de Texto), um método computacional que se propõe a decompor um texto a fim de obter as estruturas mais significativas. Os significados encontrados foram divididos em três classes subdivididas em dois eixos: Facticidade e Posicionamento Psicoexistencial dos Prisioneiros. Por meio dessa análise foi possível identificar as palavras mais características utilizadas por Frankl na sua narrativa acerca da vivência do prisioneiro no campo de concentração. Os resultados foram discutidos com base nos direitos humanos e na logoterapia e análise existencial...

The aim of this paper was to identify the lexical structure more significant in the work of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The text corpus was analyzed by the software ALCESTE (Lexical analysis by context of a set of text segments), a computational method that aims to decompose a text in order to obtain the most significant structures. The meanings found were divided into three classes subdivided into two axes: Facticity and Psycho-existential Positioning of Prisoners. By this analysis it was possible to identify the most typical words used by Frankl in his narrative about the experience of the prisoner in a concentration camp. The results were discussed based on human rights and logotherapy and existential analysis...

El objetivo de este trabajo fue identificar la estructura léxica más importante en la labor de búsqueda de Viktor Frankl en busca de sentido: un psicólogo en el campo de concentración. La recopilación del texto fue analizado por el software ALCESTE (Análisis léxico por el contexto de un conjunto de segmentos de texto), un método computacional que tiene como objetivo descomponer un texto con el fin de obtener las estructuras más importantes. Los significados que se encuentran divididos en tres categorías, subdivididas en dos ejes: facticidad y posicionamiento psico-existencial de los reclusos. Mediante este análisis se pudo identificar las palabras más típicas utilizadas por Frankl en su relato sobre la experiencia de los prisioneros en un campo de concentración. Los resultados fueron discutidos con base en los derechos humanos y en la logoterapia y análisis existencial...

Semantic word association: comparative data for Brazilian children and adults

The construction of associated word lists is important for the elaboration of psychological and neuropsychological tasks and experiments. It remains unknown whether differences exist in the semantic associations of words from childhood to adulthood, possibly indicating important lexico-semantic developmental changes that influence neuropsychological assessment. The present study compared semantic word associations in children and adults in terms of forward associative strength and set size. The participants included 247 children from the third grade of elementary school, aged 7 to 11 years (M = 9.17 years, SD = 0.83 years), and 108 adults, aged 16 to 49 years (M = 22.17 years, SD = 6.04 years) from the study of Salles et al. (2008). The task consisted of the participants responding to the first word that came to mind (associate) with a meaning related to each of 87 words presented aloud (target). The children's responses had significantly higher forward associative strength between the target and most frequent associate word and a smaller response diversity index. Although the meaning and total set size did not significantly differ between groups, 40.2% of the targets had a large meaning set size in the children compared with only 10.3% in the adults. Among the most strongly associated pairs, 56.3% were equal between the sample groups. These results suggest that the selection of stimuli for the construction of verbal cognitive tasks should consider specific word association norms for different ages.

Pure Alexia in Chinese: A Case Report / 中国康复理论与实践

@#A patient with pure alexia after occipital lobe and splenium infarction was investigated systematically in cognition and speech. It suggested that the damage of the route from orthographic processing to mental lexicon might cause reading disability, that meant the patient can not extract the phonological and semantic information from the mental lexicon. This patient presented some visual perception disorder, but the significance of visual perception still needs further research.

Normas brasileiras para listas de palavras associadas: associação semântica, concretude, frequência e emocionalidade / Brazilian norms for word lists: semantic association, concreteness, word frequency, and emotionality

O presente estudo fornece medidas normatizadas para 44 listas de palavras semanticamente associadas em português, de acordo com as seguintes dimensões: concretude, frequência, emocionalidade e associação semântica. Cada lista de palavras é composta por uma palavra-tema e 15 palavras semanticamente associadas a ela. As medidas de cada dimensão foram selecionadas de bancos de dados encontrados na literatura brasileira ou coletadas com universitários. Os resultados indicaram que os valores referentes à concretude, frequência e emocionalidade das palavras-tema tendem a covariar positivamente com os valores médios das suas respectivas listas. Além disso, o tamanho do conjunto de diferentes palavras associadas semanticamente à palavra-tema apresentou uma correlação inversa com a força associativa média das listas, mas não com a concretude da palavra-tema.

The present study provides normative measures for 44 word lists in Portuguese according to the following dimensions: concreteness, word frequency, emotionality and semantic association. Each list contains one theme word and 15 semantically associated words. The measures for each dimension were selected from databases published in the Brazilian literature, or collected from a sample of undergraduate students. The results indicated that concreteness, word frequency and emotionality values tend to co-vary positively with the average values of its respective lists. Furthermore, an inverse correlation was observed between the average associative values of each list and its set size, but no correlation was found between set size and the concreteness ratings of the theme word.

Aquisição inicial do léxico verbal e aproximações semânticas em português / Early acquisition of the verbal lexicon and semantic approximations in Portuguese

O raciocínio analógico, que permite relacionar conceitos, possibilita a construção do sistema conceitual. Na fase inicial de aquisição do léxico, notadamente entre 2 e 4 anos de idade, observam-se produções lingüísticas decorrentes do raciocínio analógico, às vezes designadas metáforas. Segundo Duvignau (2002, 2003), tais emissões resultam da aproximação semântica por analogia, mecanismo que permite aproximar conceitos mais ou menos distantes do léxico disponível. O presente estudo dimensiona a importância das aproximações semânticas verbais para o desenvolvimento lexical inicial de crianças monolíngües da língua portuguesa e estuda o recurso aos itens genéricos versus específicos. Participaram deste estudo 80 crianças com idades entre 2 e 4 anos e 75 estudantes universitários monolíngües, que responderam à Tarefa de Nomeação e Reformulação de Ações. Os resultados permitiram concluir que a aproximação semântica por analogia é uma estratégia lingüística fundamental para o desenvolvimento do léxico e revela a flexibilidade cognitiva presente no desenvolvimento típico.

The analogical reasoning that allows relating concepts, permits the construction of the conceptual system. In the early phase of lexicon acquisition, mainly between 2 and 4 years of age, linguistic productions are observed resulting from the analogical reasoning, sometimes named metaphors. According to Duvignau (2002, 2003), these emissions result from the semantic approximation by analogy, a mechanism that allows approaching concepts more or less distant from the available lexicon. This study dimensions the importance of verbal semantic approximations for the early lexical development of monolingual children of the Portuguese language and studies the resource to generic versus specific items. Eighty monolingual children between 2 and 4 years old and 75 undergraduate students took part of this study, answering the Actions Naming and Reformulation Tasks. The results conclude that the semantic approximation by analogy is a fundamental linguistic strategy for lexicon development and reveals the cognitive flexibility which is present in typical development.