Investigating Health and Well-Being Challenges Faced by an Aging Workforce in the Construction and Nursing Industries: Computational Linguistic Analysis of Twitter Data.

BACKGROUND: Construction and nursing are critical industries. Although both careers involve physically and mentally demanding work, the risks to workers during the COVID-19 pandemic are not well understood. Nurses (both younger and older) are more likely to experience the ill effects of burnout and stress than construction workers, likely due to accelerated work demands and increased pressure on nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we analyzed a large social media data set using advanced natural language processing techniques to explore indicators of the mental status of workers across both industries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This social media analysis aims to fill a knowledge gap by comparing the tweets of younger and older construction workers and nurses to obtain insights into any potential risks to their mental health due to work health and safety issues. METHODS: We analyzed 1,505,638 tweets published on Twitter (subsequently rebranded as X) by younger and older (aged <45 vs >45 years) construction workers and nurses. The study period spanned 54 months, from January 2018 to June 2022, which equates to approximately 27 months before and 27 months after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The tweets were analyzed using big data analytics and computational linguistic analyses. RESULTS: Text analyses revealed that nurses made greater use of hashtags and keywords (both monograms and bigrams) associated with burnout, health issues, and mental health compared to construction workers. The COVID-19 pandemic had a pronounced effect on nurses' tweets, and this was especially noticeable in younger nurses. Tweets about health and well-being contained more first-person singular pronouns and affect words, and health-related tweets contained more affect words. Sentiment analyses revealed that, overall, nurses had a higher proportion of positive sentiment in their tweets than construction workers. However, this changed markedly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since early 2020, sentiment switched, and negative sentiment dominated the tweets of nurses. No such crossover was observed in the tweets of construction workers. CONCLUSIONS: The social media analysis revealed that younger nurses had language use patterns consistent with someone experiencing the ill effects of burnout and stress. Older construction workers had more negative sentiments than younger workers, who were more focused on communicating about social and recreational activities rather than work matters. More broadly, these findings demonstrate the utility of large data sets enabled by social media to understand the well-being of target populations, especially during times of rapid societal change.

Older nurses and work-related factors that impact their mental health and wellbeing: a qualitative systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a significant pressure on the nursing workforce, leading to an increased risk of infection and work-related issues impacting nurses' mental health. This review aims to explore the workplace challenges faced by older nurses and their impact on mental health. METHOD: This qualitative systematic review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. RESULTS: The review included 32 studies and identified three interconnected themes: heavy workload and nature of nursing, lack of recognition and feeling undervalued, and challenges in balancing personal life and work. These themes illustrated the complexity of the workplace challenges faced by older nurses. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Workplace demands and shift work were common negative contributors to mental health and wellbeing. The physical and cognitive capacity of older nurses may diminish due to age-related changes, making the workload more challenging. Recognition and support from the organisation, especially from management and leadership, played a crucial role in nurses' resilience.

Multiple talker processing in autistic adult listeners.

Accommodating talker variability is a complex and multi-layered cognitive process. It involves shifting attention to the vocal characteristics of the talker as well as the linguistic content of their speech. Due to an interdependence between voice and phonological processing, multi-talker environments typically incur additional processing costs compared to single-talker environments. A failure or inability to efficiently distribute attention over multiple acoustic cues in the speech signal may have detrimental language learning consequences. Yet, no studies have examined effects of multi-talker processing in populations with atypical perceptual, social and language processing for communication, including autistic people. Employing a classic word-monitoring task, we investigated effects of talker variability in Australian English autistic (n = 24) and non-autistic (n = 28) adults. Listeners responded to target words (e.g., apple, duck, corn) in randomised sequences of words. Half of the sequences were spoken by a single talker and the other half by multiple talkers. Results revealed that autistic participants' sensitivity scores to accurately-spotted target words did not differ to those of non-autistic participants, regardless of whether they were spoken by a single or multiple talkers. As expected, the non-autistic group showed the well-established processing cost associated with talker variability (e.g., slower response times). Remarkably, autistic listeners' response times did not differ across single- or multi-talker conditions, indicating they did not show perceptual processing costs when accommodating talker variability. The present findings have implications for theories of autistic perception and speech and language processing.

The Language-Specificity of Phonetic Adaptation to Talkers.

Listeners adapt efficiently to new talkers by using lexical knowledge to resolve perceptual uncertainty. This adaptation has been widely observed, both in first (L1) and in second languages (L2). Here, adaptation was tested in both the L1 and L2 of speakers of Mandarin and English, two very dissimilar languages. A sound midway between /f/ and /s/ replacing either /f/ or /s/ in Mandarin words presented for lexical decision (e.g., bu4fa3 "illegal"; kuan1song1 "loose") prompted the expected adaptation; it induced an expanded /f/ category in phoneme categorization when it had replaced /f/, but an expanded /s/ category when it had replaced /s/. Both L1 listeners and English-native listeners with L2 Mandarin showed this effect. In English, however (with e.g., traffic; insane), we observed adaptation in L1 but not in L2; Mandarin-native listeners, despite scoring highly in the English lexical decision training, did not adapt their category boundaries for /f/ and /s/. Whether the ambiguous sound appeared syllable-initially (as in Mandarin phonology) versus word-finally (providing more word identity information) made no difference. Perceptual learning for talker adaptation is language-specific in that successful lexically guided adaptation in one language does not guarantee adaptation in other known languages; the enabling conditions for adaptation may be multiple and diverse.

The effect of study-abroad experience on lexical translation among interpreting students.

This study investigates the impact of study-abroad experience (SAE) on lexical translation among 50 Chinese (L1)-English (L2) interpreting students. Participants were divided into two groups based on their experience abroad. Both groups consisted of 25 unbalanced L2 learners who were matched in age, working memory, length of interpreting training, and L2 proficiency. Bidirectional word translation recognition tasks, from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1, highlighted several key findings: (1) both groups were significantly more accurate and faster from L2 to L1 than in the reverse direction; (2) the study abroad (SA) group was more inclined to respond quickly at the risk of making errors, whereas the non-study abroad (NSA) group tended to be more cautious, prioritising accuracy over speed; (3) the SA group were more balanced and consistent in their performance across lexical translations in both directions than the NSA group. These results emphasise the potent effect of SAE in resolving bilinguals' language competition, especially in streamlining language switching, a cognitive process critical for interpreting students engaging daily with dual languages.

Corrigendum: Editorial: New approaches to how bilingualism shapes cognition and the brain across the lifespan: beyond the false dichotomy of advantage versus no advantage.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1149062.].

Understanding preschoolers' word learning success in different scenarios: disambiguation meets statistical learning and eBook reading.

Children's ability to learn new words during their preschool years is crucial for further academic success. Previous research suggests that children rely on different learning mechanisms to acquire new words depending on the available context and linguistic information. To date, there is limited research integrating different paradigms to provide a cohesive view of the mechanisms and processes involved in preschool children's word learning. We presented 4 year-old children (n = 47) with one of three different novel word-learning scenarios to test their ability to connect novel words to their correspondent referents without explicit instruction to do so. The scenarios were tested with three exposure conditions of different nature: (i) mutual exclusivity-target novel word-referent pair presented with a familiar referent, prompting fast-mapping via disambiguation, (ii) cross-situational-target novel word-referent pair presented next to an unfamiliar referent prompting statistically tracking the target pairs across trials, and (iii) eBook - target word-referent pairs presented within an audio-visual electronic storybook (eBook), prompting inferring meaning incidentally. Results show children succeed at learning the new words above chance in all three scenarios, with higher performance in eBook and mutual exclusivity than in cross-situational word learning. This illustrates children's astounding ability to learn while coping with uncertainty and varying degrees of ambiguity, which are common in real-world situations. Findings extend our understanding of how preschoolers learn new words more or less successfully depending on specific word learning scenarios, which should be taken into account when working on vocabulary development for school readiness in the preschool years.

What interventions and programmes are available to support older nurses in the workplace? A literature review of available evidence.

BACKGROUND: High exit rates, stalling entry rates, population ageing, and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have placed significant strain on the world's nursing workforce. Both developed and developing countries face similar predicaments. Evidence-based programmes to support older nurses in the workplace are urgently needed to ensure the sustainability of a career in nursing for this group of healthcare professionals. OBJECTIVES: To scope and synthesise available evidence on evaluated programmes and interventions implemented to support the ageing nursing workforce's health, wellbeing, and retention. DESIGN: A literature review of available evidence using a systematic approach. METHOD: Medline, Scopus, PsycINFO and CINAHL were searched for relevant peer-reviewed evidence. Data from the peer-reviewed literature were extracted separately into purpose designed-extraction spreadsheets. Information relevant to study design, intervention design, outcome constructs, intervention outcomes, and barriers and enablers to intervention success were collected. The protocol for this review was registered in PROSPERO [CRD42021274491]. RESULTS: Eighteen published studies were included in this review. We identified a range of interventions and programmes that have been implemented to support older nurses, which included flexible and reduced work arrangements, mentoring programmes, exercise and lifestyle interventions, continued professional development and purpose-designed remote retreats. We found limited evidence of evaluated outcomes from workplace support interventions that addresses the actual challenges faced by ageing nurses as reported in previous literature reviews. Interventions that were designed to promote a sense of purpose at work resulted in positive outcomes and appeared to more directly address the stated needs of older nurses. Holistic programmes and interventions that could potentially promote both physical well-being and psychological well-being required a broader, whole-of-organisation approach rather than more piecemeal interventions addressing individual physical and mental health concerns. Interventions which acknowledged older nurses' clinical expertise and experience (e.g., mentoring programmes) were linked to positive outcomes. CONCLUSION: Future intervention efforts should acknowledge and balance intervention participation opportunities against existing everyday workload constraints faced by older nurses. Our review suggests the need for further intervention studies assessing specific outcomes such as psychological and emotional health, as well as interventions that more directly address the most pressing concerns that ageing nurses report at personal and organisational levels. A paradigm shift in productivity measurement in clinical nursing work is required in order to increase the value placed on the unique contribution of older nurses working clinically, particularly in sharing their acquired knowledge, skill, and expertise.

Harnessing automatic speech recognition to realise Sustainable Development Goals 3, 9, and 17 through interdisciplinary partnerships for children with communication disability.

PURPOSE: To showcase how applications of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology could help solve challenges in speech-language pathology practice with children with communication disability, and contribute to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). RESULT: ASR technologies have been developed to address the need for equitable, efficient, and accurate assessment and diagnosis of communication disability in children by automating the transcription and analysis of speech and language samples and supporting dual-language assessment of bilingual children. ASR tools can automate the measurement of and help optimise intervention fidelity. ASR tools can also be used by children to engage in independent speech production practice without relying on feedback from speech-language pathologists (SLPs), thus bridging the long-standing gap between recommended and received intervention intensity. These innovative technologies and tools have been generated from interdisciplinary partnerships between SLPs, engineers, data scientists, and linguists. CONCLUSION: To advance equitable, efficient, and effective speech-language pathology services for children with communication disability, SLPs would benefit from integrating ASR solutions into their clinical practice. Ongoing interdisciplinary research is needed to further advance ASR technologies to optimise children's outcomes. This commentary paper focusses on industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9) and partnerships for the goals (SDG 17). It also addresses SDG 1, SDG 3, SDG 4, SDG 8, SDG 10, SDG 11, and SDG 16.

Auditory perceptual learning in autistic adults.

The automatic retuning of phoneme categories to better adapt to the speech of a novel talker has been extensively documented across various (neurotypical) populations, including both adults and children. However, no studies have examined auditory perceptual learning effects in populations atypical in perceptual, social, and language processing for communication, such as populations with autism. Employing a classic lexically-guided perceptual learning paradigm, the present study investigated perceptual learning effects in Australian English autistic and non-autistic adults. The findings revealed that automatic attunement to existing phoneme categories was not activated in the autistic group in the same manner as for non-autistic control subjects. Specifically, autistic adults were able to both successfully discern lexical items and to categorize speech sounds; however, they did not show effects of perceptual retuning to talkers. These findings may have implications for the application of current sensory theories (e.g., Bayesian decision theory) to speech and language processing by autistic individuals. LAY SUMMARY: Lexically guided perceptual learning assists in the disambiguation of speech from a novel talker. The present study established that while Australian English autistic adult listeners were able to successfully discern lexical items and categorize speech sounds in their native language, perceptual flexibility in updating speaker-specific phonemic knowledge when exposed to a novel talker was not available. Implications for speech and language processing by autistic individuals as well as current sensory theories are discussed.

The Multilingual Picture Database.

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.

Predicting Mental Health Status in Remote and Rural Farming Communities: Computational Analysis of Text-Based Counseling.

BACKGROUND: Australians living in rural and remote areas are at elevated risk of mental health problems and must overcome barriers to help seeking, such as poor access, stigma, and entrenched stoicism. e-Mental health services circumvent such barriers using technology, and text-based services are particularly well suited to clients concerned with privacy and self-presentation. They allow the client to reflect on the therapy session after it has ended as the chat log is stored on their device. The text also offers researchers an opportunity to analyze language use patterns and explore how these relate to mental health status. OBJECTIVE: In this project, we investigated whether computational linguistic techniques can be applied to text-based communications with the goal of identifying a client's mental health status. METHODS: Client-therapist text messages were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count tool. We examined whether the resulting word counts related to the participants' presenting problems or their self-ratings of mental health at the completion of counseling. RESULTS: The results confirmed that word use patterns could be used to differentiate whether a client had one of the top 3 presenting problems (depression, anxiety, or stress) and, prospectively, to predict their self-rated mental health after counseling had been completed. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that language use patterns are useful for both researchers and clinicians trying to identify individuals at risk of mental health problems, with potential applications in screening and targeted intervention.

Learning to Perceive Non-Native Tones via Distributional Training: Effects of Task and Acoustic Cue Weighting.

As many distributional learning (DL) studies have shown, adult listeners can achieve discrimination of a difficult non-native contrast after a short repetitive exposure to tokens falling at the extremes of that contrast. Such studies have shown using behavioural methods that a short distributional training can induce perceptual learning of vowel and consonant contrasts. However, much less is known about the neurological correlates of DL, and few studies have examined non-native lexical tone contrasts. Here, Australian-English speakers underwent DL training on a Mandarin tone contrast using behavioural (discrimination, identification) and neural (oddball-EEG) tasks, with listeners hearing either a bimodal or a unimodal distribution. Behavioural results show that listeners learned to discriminate tones after both unimodal and bimodal training; while EEG responses revealed more learning for listeners exposed to the bimodal distribution. Thus, perceptual learning through exposure to brief sound distributions (a) extends to non-native tonal contrasts, and (b) is sensitive to task, phonetic distance, and acoustic cue-weighting. Our findings have implications for models of how auditory and phonetic constraints influence speech learning.

Suitability of Text-Based Communications for the Delivery of Psychological Therapeutic Services to Rural and Remote Communities: Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: People living in rural and remote areas have poorer access to mental health services than those living in cities. They are also less likely to seek help because of self-stigma and entrenched stoic beliefs about help seeking as a sign of weakness. E-mental health services can span great distances to reach those in need and offer a degree of privacy and anonymity exceeding that of traditional face-to-face counseling and open up possibilities for identifying at-risk individuals for targeted intervention. OBJECTIVE: This scoping review maps the research that has explored text-based e-mental health counseling services and studies that have used language use patterns to predict mental health status. In doing so, one of the aims was to determine whether text-based counseling services have the potential to circumvent the barriers faced by clients in rural and remote communities using technology and whether text-based communications, in particular, can be used to identify individuals at risk of psychological distress or self-harm. METHODS: We conducted a comprehensive electronic literature search of PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC, and Web of Science databases for articles published in English through November 2020. RESULTS: Of the 9134 articles screened, 70 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. There is preliminary evidence to suggest that text-based, real-time communication with a qualified therapist is an effective form of e-mental health service delivery, particularly for individuals concerned with stigma and confidentiality. There is also converging evidence that text-based communications that have been analyzed using computational linguistic techniques can be used to accurately predict progress during treatment and identify individuals at risk of serious mental health conditions and suicide. CONCLUSIONS: This review reveals a clear need for intensified research into the extent to which text-based counseling (and predictive models using modern computational linguistics tools) may help deliver mental health treatments to underserved groups such as regional communities, identify at-risk individuals for targeted intervention, and predict progress during treatment. Such approaches have implications for policy development to improve intervention accessibility in at-risk and underserved populations.

Babies detect when the timing is right: Evidence from event-related potentials to a contingent mother-infant conversation.

Social interactions are vital for healthy brain development. Burgeoning behavioural evidence indicates that a caregiver who provides contingently timed vocal responses to infant vocalisations provides key support for early language development. Understanding how contingently timed vocal responses relate to neurodevelopment in early infancy is lacking. This study compares event-related potentials (ERPs) to contingent and non-contingently timed vocalisations in 6- and 9-month-old infants (n = 36), and adults (n = 24). ERPs were recorded from each age group while listening to a naturalistic 21-minute recording of a mother playing and conversing with her baby. At 6-months, infants showed a significant positive ERP response to contingent vocalisations by the mother and infant. At 9-months infants showed negative ERP response to the mother's contingent speech. Adults showed no differences in ERPs between contingent and non-contingent speech regardless of the talker. We interpret the increased positivity in response to contingent speech as suggesting that infants show an attentional response at 6-months, and the increased negativity at 9-months relates to lexical-semantic processing. Further work is necessary to confirm the development of distinct ERPs shown in response to natural speech.

Language Training Leads to Global Cognitive Improvement in Older Adults: A Preliminary Study.

Purpose We report a preliminary study that prospectively tests the potential cognitive enhancing effect of foreign language (FL) learning in older adults with no clear signs of cognitive decline beyond what is age typical. Because language learning engages a large brain network that overlaps with the network of cognitive aging, we hypothesized that learning a new language later in life would be beneficial. Method Older adults were randomly assigned to 3 training groups: FL, games, and music appreciation. All were trained predominately by a computer-based program for 6 months, and their cognitive abilities were tested before, immediately after, and 3 months after training. Results FL and games, but not music appreciation, improved overall cognitive abilities that were maintained at 3 months after training. Conclusion This is the 1st randomized control study providing preliminary support for the cognitive benefits of FL learning.

What Can Lexical Tone Training Studies in Adults Tell Us about Tone Processing in Children?

A growing number of studies on the acquisition of lexical tone by adult learners have revealed that factors such as language background, musical experience, cognitive abilities, and neuroanatomy all play a role in determining tone learning success. On the basis of these findings, it has been argued that the effectiveness of tone learning in adulthood depends on individual differences in these factors. However, it is not clear whether similar individual differences play an analogous role in tone learning in childhood. Indeed, relatively few studies have made comparisons between how adults and children learn lexical tones. Here, we review recent developments for tone learning in both adults and children. The review covers tone training in a range of contexts, including in naive listeners, in native speakers of other tone languages, in listeners with varying levels of musical experience, and in individuals with speech and hearing disorders. Finally, we discuss the parallels between adult and child tone learning, and provide recommendations concerning how findings in adult tone training can provide insights into tone learning for children by accommodating the needs of individual learners.

Uncovering the Mechanisms Responsible for Why Language Learning May Promote Healthy Cognitive Aging.

One of the great challenges facing humankind in the 21st century is preserving healthy brain function in our aging population. Individuals over 60 are the fastest growing age group in the world, and by 2050, it is estimated that the number of people over the age of 60 will triple. The typical aging process involves cognitive decline related to brain atrophy, especially in frontal brain areas and regions that subserve declarative memory, loss of synaptic connections, and the emergence of neuropathological symptoms associated with dementia. The disease-state of this age-related cognitive decline is Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, which may cause older adults to lose their independence and rely on others to live safely, burdening family members and health care systems in the process. However, there are two lines of research that offer hope to those seeking to promote healthy cognitive aging. First, it has been observed that lifestyle variables such as cognitive leisure activities can moderate the risk of Alzheimer's disease, which has led to the development of plasticity-based interventions for older adults designed to protect against the adverse effects of cognitive decline. Second, there is evidence that lifelong bilingualism acts as a safeguard in preserving healthy brain function, possibly delaying the incidence of dementia by several years. In previous work, we have suggested that foreign language learning programs aimed at older populations are an optimal solution for building cognitive reserve because language learning engages an extensive brain network that is known to overlap with the regions negatively affected by the aging process. Here, we will outline potential future lines of research that may uncover the mechanism responsible for the emergence of language learning related brain advantages, such as language typology, bi- vs. multi-lingualism, age of acquisition, and the elements that are likely to result in the largest gains.

Complexity, Training Paradigm Design, and the Contribution of Memory Subsystems to Grammar Learning.

Although there is variability in nonnative grammar learning outcomes, the contributions of training paradigm design and memory subsystems are not well understood. To examine this, we presented learners with an artificial grammar that formed words via simple and complex morphophonological rules. Across three experiments, we manipulated training paradigm design and measured subjects' declarative, procedural, and working memory subsystems. Experiment 1 demonstrated that passive, exposure-based training boosted learning of both simple and complex grammatical rules, relative to no training. Additionally, procedural memory correlated with simple rule learning, whereas declarative memory correlated with complex rule learning. Experiment 2 showed that presenting corrective feedback during the test phase did not improve learning. Experiment 3 revealed that structuring the order of training so that subjects are first exposed to the simple rule and then the complex improved learning. The cumulative findings shed light on the contributions of grammatical complexity, training paradigm design, and domain-general memory subsystems in determining grammar learning success.