Taboo language across the globe: A multi-lab study.

The use of taboo words represents one of the most common and arguably universal linguistic behaviors, fulfilling a wide range of psychological and social functions. However, in the scientific literature, taboo language is poorly characterized, and how it is realized in different languages and populations remains largely unexplored. Here we provide a database of taboo words, collected from different linguistic communities (Study 1, N = 1046), along with their speaker-centered semantic characterization (Study 2, N = 455 for each of six rating dimensions), covering 13 languages and 17 countries from all five permanently inhabited continents. Our results show that, in all languages, taboo words are mainly characterized by extremely low valence and high arousal, and very low written frequency. However, a significant amount of cross-country variability in words' tabooness and offensiveness proves the importance of community-specific sociocultural knowledge in the study of taboo language.

Short report: Social processing in non-emotional contexts by children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

BACKGROUND: Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to show social-processing deficits in forced-choice social judgment or story interpretation tasks. However, these methods may limit examination of social-processing within a set of acceptable answers. In this pilot study, we propose a novel method predicated on the premise that language carries social information and validate this method to measure social perception in ASD. METHOD: 20 children with ASD and 20 typically developing (TD) children matched-pairwise on age (5-12 years), gender, and non-verbal IQ, described pictures of people in everyday situations varying on extent of social engagement. Their social language production was examined in high- and low-social picture conditions. RESULTS: The TD group produced significantly more social language in high-social than low-social picture conditions, with a large effect size (d = 3.15). The TD group produced significantly more social language than the ASD group under high-social conditions (p< .001, η2p = 0.24), but were not significantly different under low-social conditions (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The study presents proof-of-concept that expressed language carries social information. The findings indicate that social language may be used to measure social perception and examine differences in ASD, with potential applications for other clinical groups with social-processing challenges.

Malay Lexicon Project 2: Morphology in Malay word recognition.

Morphological processing in visual word recognition has been extensively studied in a few languages, but other languages with interesting morphological systems have received little attention. Here, we examined Malay, an Austronesian language that is agglutinative. Agglutinative languages typically have a large number of morphemes per word. Our primary aim was to facilitate research on morphological processing in Malay by augmenting the Malay Lexicon Project (a database containing lexical information for almost 10,000 words) to include a breakdown of the words into morphemes as well as morphological properties for those morphemes. A secondary goal was to determine which morphological variables influence Malay word recognition. We collected lexical decision data for Malay words that had one prefix and one suffix, and first examined the predictive power of 15 morphological and four lexical variables on response times (RT). Of these variables, two lexical and three morphological variables emerged as strong predictors of RT. In GAMM models, we found a facilitatory effect of root family size, and inhibitory effects of prefix length and prefix percentage of more frequent words (PFMF) on RT. Next, we explored the interactions between overall word frequency and several of these predictors. Of particular interest, there was a significant word frequency by root family size interaction in which the effect of root family size is stronger for low-frequency words. We hope that this initial work on morphological processing in Malay inspires further research in this and other understudied languages, with the goal of developing a universal theory of morphological processing.

The Chinese Lexicon Project II: A megastudy of speeded naming performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character words.

Using a megastudy approach, (Tse et al., 2017 Behavior Research Methods, 49, 1503-1519) established a large-scale repository of lexical variables and lexical decision responses for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character words. In the current study, we expand their database by collecting norms for speeded naming reaction times (RTs) and accuracy rates, and compiling more lexical variables (e.g., phonological consistency and semantic neighborhood size). Following Tse et al.'s procedure, about 33 college-aged native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong read aloud each word. We conducted item-level regression analyses to test the relative predictive power of orthographic variables (e.g., stroke count), phonological variables (e.g., phonological consistency), and semantic variables (e.g., semantic transparency) in naming performance. We also compared the effects of lexical variables on naming performance and Tse et al.'s lexical decision performance to examine the extent to which effects are task-specific or task-general. Freely accessible to the research community, this resource provides a valuable addition to other influential mega-databases, such as the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2004 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283-316), and furthers our understanding of Chinese word recognition processes.

Are there task-specific effects in morphological processing? Examining semantic transparency effects in semantic categorisation and lexical decision.

Current theories of morphological processing include form-then-meaning accounts, form-with-meaning accounts, and connectionist theories. Form-then meaning accounts argue that the morphological decomposition of complex words is based purely on orthographic structure, while form-with meaning accounts argue that decomposition is influenced by the semantic properties of the stem. Connectionist theories, however, argue that morphemes are encoded as statistical patterns of occurrences between form and meaning. The weight of evidence from the literature thus far suggests that morphological decomposition is best explained by form-then-meaning accounts. That said, conflicting empirical findings exist, and more importantly, semantic transparency effects in morphological processing have been examined almost exclusively with the lexical decision task, in which participants discriminate between words and nonwords. Consequently, the extent to which observed results reflect the specific demands of the lexical decision task remains unclear. The present study extends previous work by testing whether the processing dynamics of early morphological processing are moderated by task requirements. Using the masked morphological priming paradigm, this hypothesis was tested by examining semantic transparency effects for a common set of words across semantic categorisation and lexical decision. In both tasks, priming was stronger for transparent (e.g., painter-PAINT) than opaque (e.g., corner-CORN) prime-target pairs; these results speak against form-then-meaning accounts. These findings further inform theories of morphological processing and underscore the importance of examining the interplay between task-general and task-specific mechanisms.

Brief Report: Emotional Picture and Language Processing in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

There is currently limited research and a lack of consensus on emotional processing impairments among adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present pilot study sought to characterize the extent to which adults with ASD are impaired in processing emotions in both words and pictures. Ten adults with ASD rated word and picture stimuli on emotional valence and arousal. Their ratings were compared to normative data for both stimuli sets using item-level correlations. Adults with ASD rank-ordered stimuli similarly to typically developing individuals, demonstrating relatively typical understanding of emotional words and pictures. However, they used a narrower range of the scales which suggests more subtle impairments affecting emotion-processing. Future directions arising from the findings of this pilot study are discussed.

Effects of Physical Exercise Interventions on Stereotyped Motor Behaviours in Children with ASD: A Meta-Analysis.

Studies have reported that physical exercise reduces maladaptive stereotyped motor behaviours (SMB) in children with ASD, but these intervention studies vary in design and outcome. The present systematic review and meta-analysis included 22 studies, involving 274 children with ASD, to quantify the effect of exercise on SMB and its potential moderators. Multi-level modelling revealed a large overall effect, Hedges' g = 1.16, with significant heterogeneity across participant, treatment, and study levels. Further, a more appropriate model using between-case estimation for within-subject effects to improve comparability between single-case and group-design studies, yielded a smaller but still significant effect, g = 0.51. Lastly, higher exercise intensity, but not age, exercise duration or settings, reliably predicted treatment effectiveness. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.

LexiCAL: A calculator for lexical variables.

While a number of tools have been developed for researchers to compute the lexical characteristics of words, extant resources are limited in their useability and functionality. Specifically, some tools require users to have some prior knowledge of some aspects of the applications, and not all tools allow users to specify their own corpora. Additionally, current tools are also limited in terms of the range of metrics that they can compute. To address these methodological gaps, this article introduces LexiCAL, a fast, simple, and intuitive calculator for lexical variables. Specifically, LexiCAL is a standalone executable that provides options for users to calculate a range of theoretically influential surface, orthographic, phonological, and phonographic metrics for any alphabetic language, using any user-specified input, corpus file, and phonetic system. LexiCAL also comes with a set of well-documented Python scripts for each metric, that can be reproduced and/or modified for other research purposes.

Consistency norms for 37,677 english words.

Consistency reflects the mapping between spelling and sound. That is, a word is feedforward consistent if its pronunciation matches that of similarly spelled words, and feedback consistent if its spelling matches that of similar pronounced words. For a quasi-regular language such as English, the study of consistency effects on lexical processing has been limited by the lack of readily accessible norms. In order to improve current methodological resources, feedforward (spelling-to-sound) and feedback (sound-to-spelling) consistency measures for 37,677 English words were computed. The consistency measures developed here are operationalized at the composite level for multisyllabic words, and at different sub-syllabic segments (onset, nucleus, coda, oncleus, and rime) for both monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. These measures constitute the largest database of English consistency norms to be developed, and will be a valuable resource for researchers to explore the effects of consistency on lexical processes, such as word recognition and spelling. The norms are available as supplementary material with this paper.

The Auditory English Lexicon Project: A multi-talker, multi-region psycholinguistic database of 10,170 spoken words and nonwords.

The Auditory English Lexicon Project (AELP) is a multi-talker, multi-region psycholinguistic database of 10,170 spoken words and 10,170 spoken nonwords. Six tokens of each stimulus were recorded as 44.1-kHz, 16-bit, mono WAV files by native speakers of American, British, and Singapore English, with one from each gender. Intelligibility norms, as determined by average identification scores and confidence ratings from between 15 and 20 responses per token, were obtained from 561 participants. Auditory lexical decision accuracies and latencies, with between 25 and 36 responses per token, were obtained from 438 participants. The database also includes a variety of lexico-semantic variables and structural indices for the words and nonwords, as well as participants' individual difference measures such as age, gender, language background, and proficiency. Taken together, there are a total of 122,040 sound files and over 4 million behavioral data points in the AELP. We describe some of the characteristics of this database. This resource is freely available from a website ( https://inetapps.nus.edu.sg/aelp/ ) hosted by the Department of Psychology at the National University of Singapore.

Individual differences in Cantonese Chinese word recognition: Insights from the Chinese Lexicon Project.

The Chinese Lexicon Project is a repository of lexical decision data for 25,286 Cantonese Chinese two-character compound words. To create that repository, 594 participants responded to approximately 1,404 words and 1,404 nonwords over three sessions. Using the data in this repository, the present study examines the variability and reliability of Chinese lexical decision performance, along with the moderating influence of individual differences on lexical processing. We generally found high to very high within- and between-session reliabilities for mean response times, ex-Gaussian parameters, accuracy rates, and a composite proficiency measure tapping lexical processing fluency. Using linear mixed effects models, we also found reliable interactions between fluency and two lexical effects. Specifically, more fluent readers showed larger effects of word frequency and semantic transparency. These results attest to the stability of Chinese word recognition performance, and are most consistent with a flexible lexical processing system that adapts optimally to task demands.

The influence of relatedness proportion on the joint relationship among word frequency, stimulus quality, and semantic priming in the lexical decision task.

In the lexical decision task, the additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency have been used to infer the presence of independent processing stages in visual word recognition. Importantly, this pattern can be moderated by semantic priming, suggesting the presence of a retrospective prime retrieval mechanism that is selectively engaged based on task context (i.e., utility of the primes). We examine the sensitivity of this mechanism in two lexical decision experiments that manipulate stimulus quality, word frequency, and semantic priming. Critically, we studied these joint effects when the proportion of related primes was set at .50 or .25. Results indicated that with a .50 relatedness proportion, a three-way interaction was obtained such that additivity between frequency and stimulus quality was found following related semantic primes, but an overadditive pattern was exhibited following unrelated primes. When the relatedness proportion was reduced to .25, this interaction was eliminated. Furthermore, relatedness proportion affected the magnitude of the stimulus quality by priming interaction but not the frequency by priming interaction. These results are interpreted within the context of a flexible lexical processer that adaptively engages processes in response to task context.

A further examination of word frequency and age-of-acquisition effects in English lexical decision task performance: The role of frequency trajectory.

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).

The role of semantic transparency in visual word recognition of compound words: A megastudy approach.

Previous studies on visual word recognition of compound words have provided evidence for the influence of lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency) and semantic transparency (the degree of relatedness in meaning between a compound word and its constituents) in morphological processing (e.g., to what extent is doorbell influenced by door and bell?). However, a number of questions in this domain, which are difficult to address with the available methodological resources, are still unresolved. We collected semantic transparency scores for 2,861 compound words at the constituent level (i.e., how strongly the overall meaning of a compound word is related to that of each constituent) and analyzed their effects on speeded pronunciation and lexical decision performance for the compound words using the English Lexicon Project (http://elexicon.wustl.edu) data. The results from both tasks indicated that our human-judged semantic transparency ratings for both the first and second constituents play a significant role in compound word processing. Moreover, additional analyses indicated that the human-judged semantic transparency scores at the constituent level accounted for more variance in compound word recognition performance than did either whole-word semantic transparency scores or corpus-based semantic distance scores.

Quantifying sensorimotor experience: Body-object interaction ratings for more than 9,000 English words.

Ratings of body-object interaction (BOI) measure the ease with which the human body can interact with a word's referent. Researchers have studied the effects of BOI in order to investigate the relationships between sensorimotor and cognitive processes. Such efforts could be improved, however, by the availability of more extensive BOI norms. In the present work, we collected BOI ratings for over 9,000 words. These new norms show good reliability and validity and have extensive overlap with the words used both in other lexical and semantic norms and in the available behavioral megastudies (e.g., the English Lexicon Project, Balota, Yap, Cortese, Hutchison, Kessler, & Loftis in Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445-459, 2007; and the Calgary Semantic Decision Project, Pexman, Heard, Lloyd, & Yap in Behavior Research Methods, 49, 407-417, 2017). In analyses using the new BOI norms, we found that high-BOI words tended to be more concrete, more graspable, and more strongly associated with sensory, haptic, and visual experience than are low-BOI words. When we used the new norms to predict response latencies and accuracy data from the behavioral megastudies, we found that BOI was a stronger predictor of responses in the semantic decision task than in the lexical decision task. These findings are consistent with a dynamic, multidimensional account of lexical semantics. The norms described here should be useful for future research examining the effects of sensorimotor experience on performance in tasks involving word stimuli.

Cross-modal masked repetition and semantic priming in auditory lexical decision.

The underlying processes and mechanisms supporting the recognition of visually and auditorily presented words have received considerable attention in the literature. To a lesser extent, the interplay between visual and spoken lexical representations has also been investigated using cross-modal lexical processing paradigms, yielding evidence that auditorily presented words influence visual word recognition, and vice versa. The present study extends this work by examining and comparing the relative sizes of cross-modal repetition (cat-CAT) and semantic (dog-CAT) priming in auditory lexical decision, using heavily masked, briefly presented visual primes and a common set of auditory targets. Even when conscious awareness of the prime was minimized, reliable cross-modal repetition and semantic priming was observed. More critically, repetition priming was stronger than semantic priming, consistent with the idea that multiple pathways connect the two modalities. Implications of the findings for the bidirectional interactive activation model (Grainger & Ferrand, 1994) are discussed.

An item-level analysis of lexical-semantic effects in free recall and recognition memory using the megastudy approach.

Psycholinguists have developed a number of measures to tap different aspects of a word's semantic representation. The influence of these measures on lexical processing has collectively been described as semantic richness effects. However, the effects of these word properties on memory are currently not well understood. This study examines the relative contributions of lexical and semantic variables in free recall and recognition memory at the item-level, using a megastudy approach. Hierarchical regression of recall and recognition performance on a number of lexical-semantic variables showed task-general effects where the structural component, frequency, number of senses, and arousal accounted for unique variance in both free recall and recognition memory. Task-specific effects included number of features, imageability, and body-object interaction, which accounted for unique variance in recall, whereas age of acquisition, familiarity, and extremity of valence accounted for unique variance in recognition. Forward selection regression analyses generally converged on these findings. Hierarchical regression also revealed that lexical variables accounted for more variance in recognition compared with recall, whereas semantic variables accounted for more unique variance above and beyond lexical variables in recall compared with recognition. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The role of lexical variables in the visual recognition of two-character Chinese compound words: A megastudy analysis.

To examine the effect of lexical variables on two-character Chinese compound word processing, we performed item-level hierarchical regression analyses on lexical decision megastudy data of 18,983 two-character Chinese compound words. The first analysis determined the unique item-level variance explained by orthographic (frequency and stroke count), phonological (consistency, homophonic density), and semantic (transparency) variables. Both character and word variables were considered. Results showed that orthographic and semantic variables, respectively, accounted for more collective variance than phonological variables, suggesting that Chinese skilled readers rely more on orthographic and semantic information than phonological information when processing visually presented words. The second analysis tested interactive effects of lexical variables and showed significant semantic transparency × cumulative character frequency and word frequency × cumulative character frequency interactions. The effect of cumulative character frequency was stronger for transparent words than for opaque words and was stronger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words. However, there was no semantic transparency × word frequency interaction in reaction time. Implications of the current findings on models of Chinese compound word processing are discussed.

Emotional Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Effects of Age, Emotional Valence, and Social Engagement on Emotional Language Use.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show deficits in reporting others' emotions (Lartseva et al. in Front Hum Neurosci 8:991, 2015) and in deriving meaning in social contexts (Klin et al. in Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders, Wiley, Hoboken, 2005). However, researchers often use stimuli that conflate salient emotional and social information. Using a matched-pairs design, the impact of emotional and social information on emotional language in pre-school and school-age children, with and without ASD, was assessed with a picture description task comprising rated stimuli from the Pictures with Social Contexts and Emotional Scenes database (Teh et al. in Behav Res Methods, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0947-x , 2017). Results showed both groups with ASD produced fewer emotional terms than typically developing children, but the effects were moderated by valence, social engagement, and age. Implications for theory and clinical practice are discussed.