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.

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.

El rol de la información morfológica: evidencias de un caso de alexia / The role of morphological information in the lexicon: evidences from a case of alexia

Los modelos de léxico discuten la posibilidad de que el morfema más que la palabra completa sea la unidad de procesamiento. Se postularon dos tipos de modelos: por un lado, aquellos que proponen que el léxico contiene entradas léxicas completas para las palabras polimorfémicas; por otro, aquellos que asumen que las entradas léxicas corresponden a unidades morfológicamente descompuestas y que es necesario un mecanismo prelexical de descomposición morfológica de los estímulos. Una tercera posición (mixta), derivada de la última asume dos mecanismos de acceso, uno a través de palabra completa (para palabras frecuentes) y otro a través de unidades morfémicas (para palabras poco frecuentes y palabras nuevas), que permiten el acceso a un léxico cuyas representaciones son morfémicas. En este trabajo discutiremos el caso de una paciente con alexia fonológica cuyos resultados en tareas de lectura y decisión léxica de palabras y no palabras pueden explicarse a la luz de este modelo.