Search results for "Linguistics"
showing 10 items of 8097 documents
Does Extra Interletter Spacing Help Text Reading in Skilled Adult Readers?
2016
AbstractA number of experiments have shown that, in skilled adult readers, a small increase in interletter spacing speeds up the process of visual word recognition relative to the default settings (i.e., judge faster than judge). The goal of the present experiment was to examine whether this effect can be generalized to a more ecological scenario: text reading. Each participant read two stories (367 words each) taken from a standardized reading test. The stories were presented with the standard interletter spacing or with a small increase in interletter spacing (+1.2 points to default) in a within-subject design. An eyetracker was used to register the participants’ eye movements. Comprehens…
Endocrine and mood responses to two working days in female teachers.
2014
AbstractCurrently, a considerable amount of work stress is present in school teachers, one of the occupational groups with the highest levels of job strain and burnout. As chronic stress produces significant modifications in emotional adjustment and neuroendocrine functioning, we aimed to investigate the role of these work stress constructs in the endocrine and mood responses of a group of female teachers during two working days (WD) at different moments in the academic year. We studied mood as well as levels of cortisol and testosterone, representative of a predominant catabolic or anabolic balance. Our results showed that higher “control” was associated with higher positive mood (p = .028…
The German hearing in noise test
2020
The aims of this study were to develop a German Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) using the same methodology as with previous HINT tests; to develop sentence lists for measuring speech reception thresholds (SRTs); and to determine test-retest reliability and norms for measures obtained under headphones.The following steps were followed: develop and record sentences, synthesise masking noise, determine the performance-intensity (PI) function, equalise sentence difficulty in the masking noise. Form sentence lists of equal difficulty. Measure SRTs for normal hearing individuals to determine practice/learning effects, test-retest reliability, and norms.Three groups of adults (median age = 25 years) …
Human voice pitch measures are robust across a variety of speech recordings: methodological and theoretical implications
2021
Fundamental frequency ( f o ), perceived as voice pitch, is the most sexually dimorphic, perceptually salient and intensively studied voice parameter in human nonverbal communication. Thousands of studies have linked human f o to biological and social speaker traits and life outcomes, from reproductive to economic. Critically, researchers have used myriad speech stimuli to measure f o and infer its functional relevance, from individual vowels to longer bouts of spontaneous speech. Here, we acoustically analysed f o in nearly 1000 affectively neutral speech utterances (vowels, words, counting, greetings, read paragraphs and free spontaneous speech) produced by the same 154 men and women, ag…
Effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy with relaxation vs. imagery rescripting on psychophysiological stress responses of students with test anxiety…
2018
Background and objectives: Psychophysiological measures were assessed in university students during a test simulation before and after group treatment for test anxiety based on cognitive behavioral...
Neurocognitive processing of auditorily and visually presented inflected words and pseudowords: Evidence from a morphologically rich language
2009
The aim of the study was to investigate how the input modality affects the processing of a morphologically complex word. The processing of Finnish inflected vs. monomorphemic words and pseudowords was examined during a lexical decision task, using behavioral responses and event-related potentials. The stimuli were presented in two modalities, visually and auditorily, to two groups of participants. Half of the words and pseudowords carried a case-inflection. At the behavioral level, the inflected words elicited a processing cost with longer decision latencies and higher error rates. At the neural level, pseudowords elicited an N400 effect, which was more pronounced in the visual modality. In…
Two systems of maintenance in verbal working memory: evidence from the word length effect.
2013
The extended time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model suggested a working memory architecture in which an executive loop and a phonological loop could both support the maintenance of verbal information. The consequence of such a framework is that phonological effects known to impact the maintenance of verbal information, like the word length effect (WLE), should depend on the use of the phonological loop, but should disappear under the maintenance by the executive loop. In two previous studies, introducing concurrent articulation in complex span tasks barely affected WLE, contradicting the prediction from the TBRS model. The present study re-evaluated the WLE in a complex span task while co…
The time course of orthography and phonology: ERP correlates of masked priming effects in Spanish
2009
Abstract One key issue for computational models of visual-word recognition is the time course of orthographic and phonological information during reading. Previous research, using both behavioral and event related brain potential (ERP) measures, has shown that orthographic codes are activated very early but that phonological activation starts to occur immediately afterward. Here we report an ERP masked priming experiment in Spanish that investigates this issue further by using very strict control conditions. The critical phonological comparison was between two pairs of primes having the same orthographic similarity to the target words but differing in phonological similarity (e.g., conal-CA…
A new set of 299 pictures for psycholinguistic studies : French norms for name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity,…
2003
Pictures are often used as stimuli in studies of perception, language, and memory. Since performances on different sets of pictures are generally contrasted, stimulus selection requires the use of standardized material to match pictures across different variables. Unfortunately, the number of standardized pictures available for empirical research is rather limited. The aim of the present study is to provide French normative data for a new set of 299 black-and-white drawings. Alario and Ferrand (1999) were closely followed in that the pictures were standardized on six variables: name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, image variability, and age of acquisit…
Easy-to-read Texts for Students with Intellectual Disability: Linguistic Factors Affecting Comprehension
2013
Background: The use of ‘easy-to-read’ materials for people with intellectual disabilities has become very widespread but their effectiveness has scarcely been evaluated. In this study, the framework provided by Kintsch's Construction–Integration Model (1988) is used to examine (i) the reading comprehension levels of different passages of the Spanish text that have been designed following easy-to-read guidelines and (ii) the relationships between reading comprehension (literal and inferential) and various linguistic features of these texts. Method: Sixteen students with mild intellectual disability and low levels of reading skills were asked to read easy-to-read texts and then complete a rea…