Middle-schoolers' reading and lexical-semantic processing depth in response to digital and print media: An N400 study.

We report the first use of ERP measures to identify text engagement differences when reading digitally or in print. Depth of semantic encoding is key for reading comprehension, and we predicted that deeper reading of expository texts would facilitate stronger associations with subsequently-presented related words, resulting in enhanced N400 responses to unrelated probe words and a graded attenuation of the N400 to related and moderately related words. In contrast, shallow reading would produce weaker associations between probe words and text passages, resulting in enhanced N400 responses to both moderately related and unrelated words, and an attenuated response to related words. Behavioral research has shown deeper semantic encoding of text from paper than from a screen. Hence, we predicted that the N400 would index deeper reading of text passages that were presented in print, and shallower reading of texts presented digitally. Middle-school students (n = 59) read passages in digital and print formats and high-density EEG was recorded while participants completed single-word semantic judgment tasks after each passage. Following digital text presentation, the N400 response pattern to moderately-related words indicated shallow reading, tracking with responses to words that were unrelated to the text. Following print reading, the N400 responses to moderately-related words patterned instead with responses to related words, interpreted as an index of deeper reading. These findings provide evidence of differences in brain responses to texts presented in print and digital media, including deeper semantic encoding for print than digital texts.

The Audiovisual Mismatch Negativity in Predictive and Non-Predictive Speech Stimuli in Older Adults With and Without Hearing Loss.

Adults with aging-related hearing loss (ARHL) experience adaptive neural changes to optimize their sensory experiences; for example, enhanced audiovisual (AV) and predictive processing during speech perception. The mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potential is an index of central auditory processing; however, it has not been explored as an index of AV and predictive processing in adults with ARHL. In a pilot study we examined the AV MMN in two conditions of a passive oddball paradigm - one AV condition in which the visual aspect of the stimulus can predict the auditory percept and one AV control condition in which the visual aspect of the stimulus cannot predict the auditory percept. In adults with ARHL, evoked responses in the AV conditions occurred in the early MMN time window while the older adults with normal hearing showed a later MMN. Findings suggest that adults with ARHL are sensitive to AV incongruity, even when the visual is not predictive of the auditory signal. This suggests that predictive coding for AV speech processing may be heightened in adults with ARHL. This paradigm can be used in future studies to measure treatment related changes, for example via aural rehabilitation, in older adults with ARHL.

Bidialectal and monodialectal differences in morphosyntactic processing of AAE and MAE: Evidence from ERPs and acceptability judgments.

INTRODUCTION: African American English (AAE) has never been examined through neurophysiological methods in investigations of dual-language variety processing. This study examines whether contrastive and non-contrastive morphosyntactic features in sentences with and without AAE constructions elicit differing neural and/or behavioral responses in bidialectal speakers of AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE), compared to monodialectal MAE speakers. We compared electroencephalographic (EEG) and behavioral (grammatical acceptability judgment) data to determine whether two dialects are processed similarly to distinct languages, as seen in studies of bilingual codeswitching where the P600 event related potential (ERP) has been elicited when processing a switch between language varieties. METHODS: Bidialectal AAE-MAE speakers (n = 15) and monodialectal MAE speakers (n = 12) listened to sentences in four conditions, while EEG was recorded to evaluate time-locked brain responses to grammatical differences between sentence types. The maintained verb form in the present progressive tense sentences (e.g., The black cat lap/s the milk) was the morphosyntactic feature of interest for comparing P600 responses as an indicator of error detection. Following each trial, responses and reaction times to a grammatical acceptability judgment task were collected and compared. RESULTS: Findings indicate distinct neurophysiological profiles between bidialectal and monodialectal speakers. Monodialectal speakers demonstrated a P600 response within 500-800ms following presentation of an AAE morphosyntax feature, indicating error detection; this response was not seen in the bidialectal group. Control sentences with non-contrasting grammar revealed no differences in ERP responses between groups. Behaviorally, bidialectal speakers showed greater acceptance of known dialectal variation and error (non-contrastive) sentence types compared to the monodialectal group. CONCLUSIONS: ERP and behavioral responses are presented as preliminary evidence of dual-language representation in bidialectal speakers. Increased consideration of AAE language processing would enhance equity in the study of language at large, improving the work of clinicians, researchers, educators and policymakers alike.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor as a Clinical Biomarker in Predicting the Development of Post-Stroke Depression: A Review of Evidence.

Studying the relationship between brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and post-stroke depression (PSD) may help determine the potential for depression in stroke patients at the earliest stage possible. Current research has identified changes in BDNF levels in PSD patients. Thus, this article was intended as a review of evidence with respect to changes in the expression of BDNF in patients with PSD by integrating extant findings. We conducted a search in the electronic databases PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO (all records from January 1, 2000, through October 20, 2020) using keywords: "brain-derived neurotrophic factor OR BDNF," "post-stroke depression OR PSD," "expression level," "association," and "relationship." Returned articles were considered for inclusion in this review if they were empirical studies investigating the association between BDNF expression and PSD. Seven original papers were selected for review and revealed inconsistent findings. Five out of seven studies reported a significant decrease in BDNF levels in PSD patients at a certain stage (most likely the early stage) of stroke after admission, whereas the other two showed contrasting findings. Overall, this review reveals associations between changes in serum BDNF levels and depression following stroke. Whether serum BDNF levels, especially in the early phase of stroke, can be a potentially effective biomarker for predicting the risk of subsequent PSD development is still open to debate.

Neural Correlates of Modality-Sensitive Deviance Detection in the Audiovisual Oddball Paradigm.

The McGurk effect, an incongruent pairing of visual /ga/-acoustic /ba/, creates a fusion illusion /da/ and is the cornerstone of research in audiovisual speech perception. Combination illusions occur given reversal of the input modalities-auditory /ga/-visual /ba/, and percept /bga/. A robust literature shows that fusion illusions in an oddball paradigm evoke a mismatch negativity (MMN) in the auditory cortex, in absence of changes to acoustic stimuli. We compared fusion and combination illusions in a passive oddball paradigm to further examine the influence of visual and auditory aspects of incongruent speech stimuli on the audiovisual MMN. Participants viewed videos under two audiovisual illusion conditions: fusion with visual aspect of the stimulus changing, and combination with auditory aspect of the stimulus changing, as well as two unimodal auditory- and visual-only conditions. Fusion and combination deviants exerted similar influence in generating congruency predictions with significant differences between standards and deviants in the N100 time window. Presence of the MMN in early and late time windows differentiated fusion from combination deviants. When the visual signal changes, a new percept is created, but when the visual is held constant and the auditory changes, the response is suppressed, evoking a later MMN. In alignment with models of predictive processing in audiovisual speech perception, we interpreted our results to indicate that visual information can both predict and suppress auditory speech perception.

Evaluation of mismatch negativity as a marker for language impairment in autism spectrum disorder.

BACKGROUND: The identification of an early and objective marker of language impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has the potential to lead to earlier language intervention for affected children. The mismatch negativity (MMN), a passive auditory evoked potential, offers insight into the brain's ability to direct attention to novel sounds. Since exposure to speech is necessary for learning to map meaning onto phonemes, we predicted slower MMN responses to speech sounds would indicate presence of language impairment in ASD. METHODS: We explored the relationship between MMN latency in children ages 5-10 with ASD plus language impairment (ASD + LI), ASD minus language impairment (ASD-LI), and typically developing children (TD) during an auditory oddball experiment presenting speech and pure tone sounds. RESULTS: Contrary to our prediction, children with ASD + LI demonstrated decreased MMN latency in the left hemisphere in response to novel vowel sounds compared to children with ASD-LI and TD controls. Parent responses to the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire revealed that all participating individuals with ASD were hypersensitive to sounds. CONCLUSIONS: Our results lend support to the theory that some children with ASD + LI have increased connectivity in primary sensory cortices at the expense of connectivity to association areas of the brain. This may account for faster speech sound processing despite low language scores in these children. Future studies should focus on individuals with language impairment and hyper-or hyposensitivity to sounds.

Visually Evoked Response Differences to Contrast and Motion in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

High-density electroencephalography (EEG) was used to examine the utility of the P1 event-related potential (ERP) as a marker of visual motion sensitivity to luminance defined low-spatial frequency drifting gratings in 16 children with autism and 16 neurotypical children. Children with autism displayed enhanced sensitivity to large, high-contrast low-spatial frequency stimuli as indexed by significantly shorter P1 response latencies to large vs. small gratings. The current study also found that children with autism had larger amplitude responses to large gratings irrespective of contrast. A linear regression established that P1 adaptive mean amplitude for large, high-contrast sinusoidal gratings significantly predicted hyperresponsiveness item mean scores on the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire for children with autism, but not for neurotypical children. We conclude that children with autism have differences in the mechanisms that underlie low-level visual processing potentially related to altered visual spatial suppression or contrast gain control.

Perception of American English vowels by sequential Spanish-English bilinguals.

Research on American-English (AE) vowel perception by Spanish-English bilinguals has focused on the vowels /i/-/ɪ/ (e.g., in sheep/ship). Other AE vowel contrasts may present perceptual challenges for this population, especially those requiring both spectral and durational discrimination. We used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), MMN (Mismatch Negativity) and P300, to index discrimination of AE vowels /ɑ/-/ʌ/ by sequential adult Spanish-English bilingual listeners compared to AE monolinguals. Listening tasks were non-attended and attended, and vowels were presented with natural and neutralized durations. Regardless of vowel duration, bilingual listeners showed no MMN to unattended sounds, and P300 responses were elicited to /ɑ/ but not /ʌ/ in the attended condition. Monolingual listeners showed pre-attentive discrimination (MMN) for /ɑ/ only; while both vowels elicited P300 responses when attended. Findings suggest that Spanish-English bilinguals recruit attentional and cognitive resources enabling native-like use of both spectral and durational cues to discriminate between AE vowels /ɑ/ and /ʌ/.

Categorical perception of lexical tones by English learners of Mandarin Chinese.

Whether native speakers of non-tonal languages can acquire categorical representations of lexical tones remains controversial. This study investigates the acquisition of lexical tone categories by native English speakers learning Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language by comparing the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones between three groups of listeners: (1) native English speakers who had taken advanced Mandarin courses in colleges; (2) native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin Chinese; and (3) native Mandarin speakers. Two tonal continua derived from natural speech within carrier phrases were created through interpolation within two tonal contrasts (tone 1/tone 4, T1/T4; tone 2/tone 3, T2/T3). Results showed categorical-like perception of tones by native Mandarin speakers. The inexperienced English speakers performed near chance on discrimination tasks and showed significantly broader identification boundaries than the other two groups. The learners of Mandarin showed similar pattern of CP to native Mandarin speakers, but with higher overall discrimination scores. Findings suggest that CP of lexical tone may be available to advanced second language learners.

Mismatch negativity responses in children with a diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).

PURPOSE: To evaluate whether a hypothesis suggesting that apraxia of speech results from phonological overspecification could be relevant for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). METHOD: High-density EEG was recorded from 5 children with CAS and 5 matched controls, ages 5-8 years, with and without CAS, as they listened to randomized sequences of CV syllables in two oddball paradigms: phonemic (/ba/, /pa/) and allophonic (/pa/, /p(h)a/). RESULTS: In the phonemic contrast condition, mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to oddball sounds were observed for the typically developing (comparison) group but not the CAS group, although a component similar to an immature mismatch response was apparent. The allophonic contrast did not elicit MMN responses in the comparison group, but in the CAS group, an MMN-like response was observed. CONCLUSION: The authors propose that these preliminary findings are consistent with a view of CAS as a disorder that not only affects motor planning but also has a phonological component.

Acquiring diglossia: mutual influences of formal and colloquial Arabic on children's grammaticality judgments.

There are differences and similarities between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and spoken varieties of Arabic, in all language domains. To obtain preliminary insights into interactions between the acquisition of spoken and standard varieties of a language in a diglossic situation, we employed forced-choice grammaticality judgments to investigate morphosyntactic knowledge of MSA and the local variant of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA), in 60 Arabic-speaking children aged 6 ; 4 to 12 ; 4, from a school in Nazareth. We used morphosyntactic structures which either differed or were similar between PCA and standard Arabic. Children generally performed better on items presented in PCA than in standard Arabic, with the exception of constructions involving negation. Children performed better on items when the two constructions were similar in both language varieties. We discuss the results with respect to the multiple factors that affect acquisition in a diglossic situation, and relate our findings to the possibility of interference effects of diglossia on learning.

Brain/behavior Asymmetry in Schizophrenia: A MEG Study of Cross-modal Semantic Priming.

Semantic priming has long been used to investigate how concepts and ideas are related at the level of language, and has become a convenient tool for assessing conceptual and semantic dysfunction in cognitive disorders, including schizophrenia. The study of semantic priming in schizophrenia has led to diverse results: enhanced priming, reduced priming, and priming equivalent to that found in nonpsychiatric comparison groups. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain some of the observed deficits in schizophrenia patients. For example, difficulties in word recognition may be due to hyperactivation of too many lexical representations or to a failure to inhibit lexical competitors. One way to distinguish between these possible explanations is to move beyond reliance on behavior alone and to examine the neural processes involved in lexical recognition. Here we present a magnetoencephalographic study of semantic priming in schizophrenia. Importantly, schizophrenia patients and healthy controls did not differ in performance on a priming task. We show that normal behavioral performance can occur in a context of aberrant neural responses. These findings suggest that normal behavioral responses in schizophrenia can be achieved through neural mechanisms that differ from those seen in the psychiatrically well brain.

Evidence of the voice-related cortical potential: an electroencephalographic study.

The Bereitschaftspotential (BP) is a slow negative-going cortical potential associated with preparation for volitional movement. Studies since the 1960s have provided evidence for a BP preceding speech-related volitional motor acts. However, the BP associated specifically with phonation [corrected] has not to date been systematically investigated. The current investigation utilizes a novel experimental design to address methodological confounds typically found in studies of movement-related cortical potentials, to demonstrate the existence and localization of generators for the voice-related cortical potential (VRCP). Using high-density EEG, we recorded scalp potentials in preparation for voicing and controlled [corrected] exhalation in a stimulus-induced voluntary movement task. Results showed a slow, increasingly negative cortical potential in the time window of of a standard BP prior [corrected] to the mean onset of phonation. This VRCP peaked at a greater amplitude and shorter latency than the BP associated with exhalation alone. Region analysis exhibited a steeper slope of the late VRCP in the primary motor area (M1) than that in the Supplementary [corrected] Motor Area (SMA), reflecting the complexity of motor movements and control necessary for voicing. Additionally, the late VRCP offset in M1 (-400 ms) was later than that in the SMA (-600 ms), possibly reflecting later engagement of primary motor areas following motor preparation in premotor areas [corrected] Further examination of the spatiotemporal change of the VRCP yielded source models indicating [corrected] involvement of the cortical regions [corrected] responsible for the initiation and continuation of phonation. Sources were localized to the middle frontal gyri and M1, bilaterally. Additional sources were localized to bilateral cerebellum and occipital lobe [corrected]

The count-mass distinction in typically developing and grammatically specifically language impaired children: new evidence on the role of syntax and semantics.

UNLABELLED: By the age of three, typically developing children can draw conceptual distinctions between "kinds of individual" and "kinds of stuff" on the basis of syntactic structures. They differ from adults only in the extent to which syntactic knowledge can be over-ridden by semantic properties of the referent. However, the relative roles of syntax and semantics in determining the nature of the count-mass distinction in language acquisition are still not well-understood. This paper contributes to this debate by studying novel noun acquisition in a subgroup of children, aged 8-15 years, with specific language impairment, whose core deficits are limited to within the grammatical system (G-SLI), We conducted two experiments: a production task and a word extension task. Such children might be expected to rely to a greater extent than their age-matched peers on semantic properties of referents in order to assign noun interpretations, since by hypothesis they have greater difficulty in accessing and utilizing syntactic category distinctions than typically developing children. In the production task, the Children with G-SLI demonstrated rigid over-application of a pluralization rule which masked even basic knowledge of semantic information about individuated objects versus non-individuated substances. Age-matched control children only performed in this way when all syntactic and conceptual/perceptual cues were neutralized. In the word extension task, which required a non-verbal response, the Children with G-SLI showed evidence of only very limited abilities to use syntactic or semantic information for word-learning. Thus, developmental deficits in the grammatical system can be seen to impact on lexical acquisition as well as syntactic development. LEARNING OUTCOMES: As a result of this activity, the reader will be able to: (1) describe how syntactic (grammatical) impairment affects the ability to use syntactic cues for lexical acquisition, resulting in difficulties representing the structure of even simple phrases; (2) discuss the interaction between language components throughout development, and the cumulative impact of impairment in one or more aspect of language, which results in secondary impairments in other parts of the system; (3) consider the effects of an impairment in the ability to use syntactic cues for narrowing down word meanings, and how this can result in a much bigger problem affecting the subtle semantics of words and word classes.

Development of the Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test to assess key markers of specific language and literacy difficulties in young children.

BACKGROUND: Despite a large body of evidence regarding reliable indicators of language deficits in young children, there has not been a standardized, quick screen for language impairment. The Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test was therefore designed as a short, reliable assessment of young children's language abilities. AIMS: GAPS was designed to provide a quick screening test to assess whether pre- and early school entry children have the necessary grammar and pre-reading phonological skills needed for education and social development. This paper reports the theoretical background to the test, the pilot study and reliability, and the standardization. METHODS: This 10-min test comprises 11 test sentences and eight test nonsense words for direct imitation and is designed to highlight significant markers of language impairment and reading difficulties. To standardize the GAPS, 668 children aged 3.4-6.6 were tested across the UK, taking into account population distribution and socio-economic status. The test was carried out by a range of health and education professionals as well as by students and carers using only simple, written instructions. RESULTS: GAPS is effective in detecting a range of children in need of further in-depth assessment or monitoring for language difficulties. The results concur with those from much larger epidemiological studies using lengthy testing procedures. CONCLUSIONS: The GAPS test (1) provides a successful screening tool; (2) is designed to be administered by professionals and non-professionals alike; and (3) facilitates identification of language impairment or at-risk factors of reading impairment in the early educational years. Thus, the test affords a first step in a process of assessment and targeted intervention to enable children to reach their potential.

The syntax of single words: Evidence from a patient with a selective function word reading deficit.

We describe the reading performance of a patient who has selective deficits for reading nonwords, function words, and morphologically complex words in isolation. His reading of highly abstract nouns and verbs, however, is relatively well preserved. He can recognise and comprehend the meaning of written function words, of derivational morphology, and of most inflectional morphology. We suggest that his deficit in reading grammatical morphemes is unrelated to his problems in reading nonwords and cannot be explained by their low semanticity and imageability. The patient's speech is ungrammatical but is not devoid of grammatical morphemes and his reading of functional elements improves when these are presented within the context of sentences. We argue that syntactic information relevant to individual lexical items including information about how the word may potentially be used within a phrase must be accessed during single word reading tasks (e.g., Levelt, 1989). This is particularly difficult for function words due to their linguistic specification, which is different from that of lexical categories (Chomsky, 1995). Both linguistic theory and Garrett's (e.g., 1982) model of sentence processing account for the patient's improved reading of function words in the context of sentences.