Neural basis of writing in prodromal to mild dementia with lewy bodies.

OBJECTIVES: We have previously demonstrated difficulties in written production in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) patients. We now aim to determine the neural correlates of writing production in DLB, combining clinical data and structural MRI measures. METHOD: Sixteen prodromal to mild DLB patients were selected to participate in the study. The GREMOTS test was used to assess writing production. Using three-dimensional T1 brain MRI images, correlations between the GREMOTS test and grey matter (GM) volume were performed using voxel-based morphometry (VBM; SPM12, XjView and Matlab R2021b softwares). RESULTS: VBM analysis (p < 0.001, uncorrected) revealed a positive and significant correlation between both left anterior insula and left supramarginal gyrus GM volumes and DLB patients' ability to write logatoms using the phonological route. The handwriting deficit was negatively and significantly correlated to the supplementary motor area. The parkinsonism-like characteristics of agraphia were negatively and significantly correlated with both right anterior and right posterior cerebellum GM volumes. Our study also revealed a negative and significant correlation between grammatical spelling impairments and an area of the orbitofrontal gyrus, and a negative and significant correlation between supramarginal gyrus and general slowness in dictation tasks. CONCLUSION: Writing disorders in early DLB patients appears to be GM decreases in several brain regions, such as the left anterior insula, the left supramaginal gyrus, as well as two areas of the right cerebellum.

The Effects of Cognitive Control on the Subcomponents of Language Control in Spoken and Written Productions.

AIMS: The present study aimed to investigate whether and how the subcomponents of language control during spoken and written productions were modulated by cognitive control. METHOD: In the current study, unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals were recruited from a convenience sample at a university to complete the cued language naming task in spoken production and written production, which measured the local language control (as indexed by language switch costs) and the global language control (as indexed by language mixing costs and reversed language dominance effect). In addition, all the participants performed the Simon task, which measured their general inhibitory control ability by calculating the Simon effect, and performed the AX-CPT task to measure their reactive/proactive control preference by calculating their BSI score. All the data were collected using E-prime 2.0 and analyzed in R. Linear mixed-effect model analyses were conducted to reveal the similarities and differences between spoken production and written production for the first-step analysis. Then, the Simon effect and BSI scores were inserted into the mixed-effect models of the switch costs and mixing costs in spoken production and written production, respectively, to explore whether cognitive control can predict the subcomponents of bilingual control. RESULTS: The results showed similar symmetrical switch costs in spoken and written modalities. In contrast, there was a reversed language dominance effect (in the mixed language context) and asymmetrical mixing costs in spoken production but neither in written production. Furthermore, we found that the Simon effect significantly negatively predicted the L2 mixing costs in spoken production, whereas the BSI score significantly negatively predicted both the L1 and L2 mixing costs in written production. CONCLUSION: The findings indicated that, for unbalanced bilinguals, local language control is shared between two modalities, while global language control is modality-independent between spoken production and written production. More importantly, the findings also suggested that global language control in spoken production relies more on the individuals' general inhibitory control, while in written production, it relies more on their cognitive control strategy. Global language control in spoken and written productions separately engages specific aspects of cognitive control, which may account for different forms of processing in global language control between speaking and writing.

French Students with Dyslexia Facing the Punctuation System: Insecurity, Inventory Use, and Error Studies.

Punctuation strongly contributes to the cohesion of the text. Despite this relevant role in written activity, this linguistic paradigm is too rarely observed. Moreover, it is all the more important to analyze its management as it is one of the difficulties declared by students with dyslexia. In that sense, the purpose of this paper is to analyze punctuation management during written text production by students with dyslexia, compared to matched control students. Previous English and Dutch studies confirm this feeling and reveal that students with dyslexia make many punctuation errors. That being said, there is no consensus; other studies do not reach this conclusion. For this present study, students with dyslexia and control students matched in age, university level, and gender were asked to produce spontaneous written and spoken narrative and expository texts. The written texts (N = 86) were collected using Eye and Pen© software with digitizing tablets. Results reveal that if students with dyslexia use the same inventory of punctuation marks as control students, they use fewer punctuation marks and make more errors than control students. These results are discussed and highlighted by the literature dealing with written production as a complex cognitive activity. They reveal that punctuation management is deficient for students with dyslexia, suggesting that the cohesion system can be impacted by dyslexia.

Lexical and phraseological differences between second language written and spoken opinion responses.

This study examines differences in lexical and phraseological complexity features between second language (L2) written and spoken opinion responses via classification analysis. The study further examines the characteristics of L2 written and spoken responses that were misclassified in terms of lexical and phraseological differences, L2 learners' vocabulary knowledge, and raters' judgments of L2 use. The goal is to more thoroughly explore potential differences in lexical and phraseological production based on modality. The results indicated that L2 written responses tended to elicit greater lexical and phraseological complexity. The results also indicated that crossing the boundaries from L2 spoken to written (i.e., the use of less lexical and phraseological complexity) was related to lower levels of L2 vocabulary knowledge and tended to be penalized by raters in terms of L2 use. In contrast, crossing the boundaries from L2 written output to spoken (i.e., the use of greater lexical and phraseological complexity) was acceptable in terms of L2 use. Overall, this study highlights lexical and phraseological differences and the importance of the use of greater lexical and phraseological complexity in a modality-insensitive manner in L2 opinion-giving responses.

The time course of lexical and sublexical phonological activation in Chinese written production.

The time course of sublexical processing in written production is scarcely investigated due to transparent sound-to-spelling correspondence in most alphabetical languages. By taking advantage of the opaque orthography of Chinese, we were able to dissociatively manipulate sublexical relatedness and lexical relatedness in a picture-word interference task. The ERP technique was also used to provide a fine-grained time course of sublexical processing. Participants were asked to handwrite picture names while ignoring distractors overlain on the pictures. Distractors were phonologically related to the picture names (lexically related), phonologically related to the phonetic radicals of picture names (sublexically related), or unrelated to picture names. ERP results revealed that sublexical relatedness affected ERPs in the time window of 370-470 ms after picture onset, which was later than the early time window (200-260 ms) of the effect of lexical relatedness. We suggest that the sublexical phonological activation happens in the stages of sublexical POC procedure and/or the graphemic output buffer in written production. The relatively later time window of the sublexical effect is consistent with the later loci of the sublexical processes in the model of written production.

Facilitating Text Production in Fourth Graders: Effects of Script-Based Knowledge and Writing Prompts.

This study aimed at providing evidence that prior knowledge (semantic relatedness) and its organization (scripted versus not related) prompted either through pictures alone, pictures and associated words, words only have different impacts on several components of text produced by fourth graders. The results showed that the semantic relatedness affected three dependent measures: prompt words recalled, coherence and quality of texts. The nature of the prompts impacted on planning (number of ideas) and translating (number of propositions and length of texts) processes. Findings, instructional applications, limitations, and proposals for future research are discussed.

Confronting Lexical Choice and Error Distribution in Written French: New Insights into the Linguistic Insecurity of Students with Dyslexia.

The main goal of this paper is to analyze written texts produced by monolingual French university students, with and without dyslexia. More specifically, we were interested in the linguistic characteristics of the words used during a written production and of the type of word errors. Previous studies showed that students with dyslexia have difficulties in written production, whether in terms of the number of spelling errors, some syntactic aspects, identification of errors, confusion of monosyllabic words, omissions of words in sentences, or utilization of unexpected or inappropriate vocabulary. For this present study, students with dyslexia and control students were asked to produce written and spoken narrative and expository texts. The written texts (N = 86) were collected using Eye and Pen© software with digitizing tablets. Results reveal that students with dyslexia do not censor themselves as regards the choice of words in their written productions. They use the same types of words as the control students. Nevertheless, they make many more errors than the control students on all types of words, regardless of their linguistic characteristics (length, frequency, grammatical classes, etc.). Finally, these quantitative analyses help to target a rather unexpected subset of errors: short words, and in particular determiners and prepositions.

How words ripple through bilingual hands: Motor-language coupling during L1 and L2 writing.

The speed of our hand movements can be affected by concurrent processing of manual action verbs (MaVs). Whereas this phenomenon is well established for native languages (L1s), it remains underexplored in late foreign languages (L2s), especially during highly automatized tasks. Here we timed keystroke activity while Spanish-English bilinguals copied MaVs, non-manual action verbs, and non-action verbs in their L1 and L2. Motor planning and execution dynamics were indexed by first-letter lag (the time-lapse between word presentation and first keystroke) and whole-word lag (the time-lapse between first and last keystroke), respectively. Despite yielding no effects on motor planning, MaVs facilitated typing execution in L1 but delayed it in L2, irrespective of the subjects' typing skills, age of L2 learning, and L2 competence. Therefore, motor-language coupling effects seem to be present in both languages though they can arise differently in each. These results extend language grounding models, illuminating the role of embodied mechanisms throughout life.

Investigating the mechanisms of written word production: Insights from the written blocked cyclic naming paradigm.

In three experiments, we examined whether similar principles apply to written and spoken production. Using a blocked cyclic written picture naming paradigm, we replicated the semantic interference effects previously reported in spoken production (Experiment 1). Using a written spelling-to-dictation blocked cyclic naming task, we also demonstrated that these interference effects disappear when the task does not require semantically-mediated lexical selection (Experiment 2). Results are parallel to those reported for the analogous spoken production task of reading aloud. Similar results were observed in written spelling to dictation regardless of whether stimuli consisted of words with high or low probability phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences (Experiment 3) revealing the important role of non-semantically-mediated spelling routes in written word production. Overall, our results support the view that similar mechanisms underlie written and spoken production. This includes an incremental learning mechanism underlying semantically-mediated lexical selection that produces long-lived interference effects when multiple semantically similar items are repeatedly named.

Timed written picture naming in 14 European languages.

We describe the Multilanguage Written Picture Naming Dataset. This gives trial-level data and time and agreement norms for written naming of the 260 pictures of everyday objects that compose the colorized Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (Rossion & Pourtois in Perception, 33, 217-236, 2004). Adult participants gave keyboarded responses in their first language under controlled experimental conditions (N = 1,274, with subsamples responding in Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish). We measured the time to initiate a response (RT) and interkeypress intervals, and calculated measures of name and spelling agreement. There was a tendency across all languages for quicker RTs to pictures with higher familiarity, image agreement, and name frequency, and with higher name agreement. Effects of spelling agreement and effects on output rates after writing onset were present in some, but not all, languages. Written naming therefore shows name retrieval effects that are similar to those found in speech, but our findings suggest the need for cross-language comparisons as we seek to understand the orthographic retrieval and/or assembly processes that are specific to written output.

Functional and anatomical dissociation between the orthographic lexicon and the orthographic buffer revealed in reading and writing Chinese characters by fMRI.

The contribution of orthographic representations to reading and writing has been intensively investigated in the literature. However, the distinction between neuronal correlates of the orthographic lexicon and the orthographic (graphemic) buffer has rarely been examined in alphabetic languages and never been explored in non-alphabetic languages. To determine whether the neural networks associated with the orthographic lexicon and buffer of logographic materials are comparable to those reported in the literature, the present fMRI experiment manipulated frequency and the stroke number of Chinese characters in the tasks of form judgment and stroke judgment, which emphasized the processing of character recognition and writing, respectively. It was found that the left fusiform gyrus exhibited higher activation when encountering low-frequency than high-frequency characters in both tasks, which suggested this region to be the locus of the orthographic lexicon that represents the knowledge of character forms. On the other hand, the activations in the posterior part of the left middle frontal gyrus and in the left angular gyrus were parametrically modulated by the stroke number of target characters only in the stroke judgment task, which suggested these regions to be the locus of the orthographic buffer that represents the processing of stroke sequence in writing. These results provide the first evidence for the functional and anatomical dissociation between the orthographic lexicon and buffer in reading and writing Chinese characters. They also demonstrate the critical roles of the left fusiform area and the frontoparietal network to the long-term and short-term representations of orthographic knowledge, respectively, across different orthographies.

Hands typing what hands do: Action-semantic integration dynamics throughout written verb production.

Processing action verbs, in general, and manual action verbs, in particular, involves activations in gross and hand-specific motor networks, respectively. While this is well established for receptive language processes, no study has explored action-semantic integration during written production. Moreover, little is known about how such crosstalk unfolds from motor planning to execution. Here we address both issues through our novel "action semantics in typing" paradigm, which allows to time keystroke operations during word typing. Specifically, we created a primed-verb-copying task involving manual action verbs, non-manual action verbs, and non-action verbs. Motor planning processes were indexed by first-letter lag (the lapse between target onset and first keystroke), whereas execution dynamics were assessed considering whole-word lag (the lapse between first and last keystroke). Each phase was differently delayed by action verbs. When these were processed for over one second, interference was strong and magnified by effector compatibility during programming, but weak and effector-blind during execution. Instead, when they were processed for less than 900ms, interference was reduced by effector compatibility during programming and it faded during execution. Finally, typing was facilitated by prime-target congruency, irrespective of the verbs' motor content. Thus, action-verb semantics seems to extend beyond its embodied foundations, involving conceptual dynamics not tapped by classical reaction-time measures. These findings are compatible with non-radical models of language embodiment and with predictions of event coding theory.

Percepção de professores de Língua Portuguesa sobre criatividade em produções textuais discentes / Portuguese language teachers' perception of creativity in students' written productions

Este estudo investigou a percepção de professores de Língua Portuguesa sobre fatores relacionados à criatividade em produções textuais discentes. Foram entrevistados 12 docentes do segundo ciclo do ensino fundamental (seis de escolas públicas e seis de escolas particulares). Os resultados revelaram ser a elaboração de textos pouco trabalhada pelos professores, tendo sido dada como justificativa a falta de tempo gerada pelo número elevado de alunos e carga horária extensa. Um percentual expressivo de docentes considerou pouco criativas as produções textuais discentes, embora a quase totalidade tenha se avaliado como profissionais inventivos e apontado diversas estratégias para facilitar a escrita de textos criativos em sala de aula. Indicaram, como fatores limitadores à expressão da criatividade nas produções textuais, elementos relacionados aos estudantes, professores e escola. Os resultados trazem implicações para a formação de professores de Língua Portuguesa no que diz respeito à criatividade na redação de textos em sala de aula.(AU)

This study investigated Portuguese language teachers' perceptions of factors associated with creativity in students' written production. Twelve elementary school Portuguese language teachers (six from public schools and six from private schools) were interviewed. The results revealed that written production has not been widely used in school, especially due to teachers' lack of time owing to the high number of students and number of hours of work. A considerable number of teachers considered their students' written production as not very creative although most of them considered themselves as highly creative professionals who make frequent use of several strategies to facilitate creative written production in the classroom. They indicated elements related to the students, teachers, and school as limiting factors to the expression of creativity in written production. The results show impacts on Portuguese language teachers' education and training in terms of creativity in written productions in the classroom.(AU)

Percepção de professores de língua portuguesa sobre criatividade em produções textuais discentes / Portuguese language teachers' perception of creativity in students' written productions

Este estudo investigou a percepção de professores de Língua Portuguesa sobre fatores relacionados à criatividade em produções textuais discentes. Foram entrevistados 12 docentes do segundo ciclo do ensino fundamental (seis de escolas públicas e seis de escolas particulares). Os resultados revelaram ser a elaboração de textos pouco trabalhada pelos professores, tendo sido dada como justificativa a falta de tempo gerada pelo número elevado de alunos e carga horária extensa. Um percentual expressivo de docentes considerou pouco criativas as produções textuais discentes, embora a quase totalidade tenha se avaliado como profissionais inventivos e apontado diversas estratégias para facilitar a escrita de textos criativos em sala de aula. Indicaram, como fatores limitadores à expressão da criatividade nas produções textuais, elementos relacionados aos estudantes, professores e escola. Os resultados trazem implicações para a formação de professores de Língua Portuguesa no que diz respeito à criatividade na redação de textos em sala de aula.

This study investigated Portuguese language teachers' perceptions of factors associated with creativity in students' written production. Twelve elementary school Portuguese language teachers (six from public schools and six from private schools) were interviewed. The results revealed that written production has not been widely used in school, especially due to teachers' lack of time owing to the high number of students and number of hours of work. A considerable number of teachers considered their students' written production as not very creative although most of them considered themselves as highly creative professionals who make frequent use of several strategies to facilitate creative written production in the classroom. They indicated elements related to the students, teachers, and school as limiting factors to the expression of creativity in written production. The results show impacts on Portuguese language teachers' education and training in terms of creativity in written productions in the classroom.

Cascadedness in Chinese written word production.

In written word production, is activation transmitted from lexical-semantic selection to orthographic encoding in a serial or cascaded fashion? Very few previous studies have addressed this issue, and the existing evidence comes from languages with alphabetic orthographic systems. We report a study in which Chinese participants were presented with colored line drawings of objects and were instructed to write the name of the color while attempting to ignore the object. Significant priming was found when on a trial, the written response shared an orthographic radical with the written name of the object. This finding constitutes clear evidence that task-irrelevant lexical codes activate their corresponding orthographic representation, and hence suggests that activation flows in a cascaded fashion within the written production system. Additionally, the results speak to how the time interval between processing of target and distractor dimensions affects and modulates the emergence of orthographic facilitation effects.

Phonology is not accessed earlier than orthography in Chinese written production: evidence for the orthography autonomy hypothesis.

The contribution of orthographic and phonological codes to written production remains controversial. We report results using a picture-word interference task in which participants were asked to write (Experiments 1 and 2) or to speak (Experiment 3) the names of pictures while trying to ignore visual distractors, and the interval between the target and distractor onset was varied. Distractors were orthographically plus phonologically related, orthographically related, phonologically related, or unrelated to picture names. For written production, we found an exclusive orthographic effect at an early stage, reflecting a fast and direct link between meaning and graphemic lexicon, and we demonstrated that orthographic codes can be accessed directly from meaning in healthy adults. We also found orthographic and phonological effects at a later stage, reflecting a slow and indirect link between meaning and graphemic lexicon via phonology. Furthermore, the absence of an interaction effect of orthographic and phonological facilitation on written latencies suggests that the two effects are additive in general and that they might occur independently in written production in Chinese. For spoken production, we found that orthographic and phonological effects occur simultaneously in spoken production and that the two effects are additive at an early stage but interactive at a later stage. The temporal courses and their interplay of orthographic and phonological effects are dissociative in written and spoken production. Our findings thus support the orthography autonomy hypothesis, rather than the obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis, in written production in Chinese (as a non-alphabetic script).

Written production in a case of locked-in syndrome with bilateral corticopontic degeneration.

Patients in locked-in syndrome show normal or near normal mental abilities that contrast with the limited motor capacity that hinders voluntary communication. However, eye movements and blinking are usually preserved and can be used to establish a communication system. We report an exceptional case of locked-in syndrome. The aetiology was basilar thrombosis consecutive to a cervical manipulation. In addition, brain MRI performed 23 years later showed a ventral pontine stroke with bilateral corticopontic degeneration. In this study the patient was able to produce written output using a chin-controlled Morse system decoded by a computer. A detailed linguistic analysis of text written over 20 years by the patient was carried out. The data demonstrate that improvements in language performance can be observed even in patients with brain lesions in areas associated with high-level cognitive processes. The data show a decrease of typing, grammatical and lexical errors over time, use of less frequent words, and an increase of more complex linguistic structures. This paper adds to previous findings confirming the value of daily practice and rehabilitation to enhance quality of life in this group of patients.

Influência de estímulos visuais na escrita de escolares do ensino fundamental / Influence of visual stimuli in the writing of students from the elementary school

No ensino da Língua Portuguesa, a produção de texto escrito é muito importante por ser uma atividade discursiva que possibilita ao estudante se expressar por meio de uma sequência escrita organizada. Dessa forma, faz-se necessário investigar o desenvolvimento da produção textual de escolares bem como quais elementos podem favorecer o seu aprimoramento. Nesse sentido, o objetivo deste estudo foi verificar a influência de estímulos visuais na produção escrita de estudantes de 2ª série (3º ano) do Ensino Fundamental de escola pública. Métodos: Foram sujeitos deste estudo 24 escolares sem queixa de alterações na escrita, de ambos os gêneros, estudantes da 2ª série (3º ano) do Ensino Fundamental. Os sujeitos foram solicitados a realizar duas produções escritas, com base em quatro figuras em sequência lógico-temporal e em uma figura de ação. As produções escritas foram analisadas segundo as Competências Comunicativas (Linguística, Genérica e Enciclopédica), adaptadas em protocolo por estudo brasileiro. Análise dos resultados: Na Competência Genérica houve predomínio da narração como tipologia do discurso. No que se refere à Competência Enciclopédica e Linguística não foram encontradas diferenças entre as produções escritas, tanto para a figura de ação quanto para as figuras em sequência. Considerações finais: os estudantes de séries iniciais apresentaram produções simples , com uso predominante do gênero narrativo, talvez por ser o mais ensinado no contexto escolar; e pouco domínio das competências enciclopédica e linguística. Portanto, a produção escrita não foi influenciada pelo tipo de estímulo visual apresentado, uma vez que o escrever ainda é uma tarefa difícil para esses escolares.

Written textual production has a significant importance to the teaching of Portuguese Language, since it is an organized discursive activity which provides to the student the possibility of expressing himself. Therefore, it is required to investigate the development of the textual production of scholars, as well as how to improve it. Consequently, it was aimed to verify the influence of visual stimuli in the written production of Elementary School children from public education. Methods: A total of 24 students from basic education (2nd grade) with no complaints of writing alterations and from both genders participated in the study. The subjects were asked to perform two written productions, based on four figures in logical time sequence and on an action figure. The written productions were analyzed according to the Communicative Skills (Linguistics, Generic and Encyclopedic), adapted protocol by Brazilian study. Analysis of results: Regarding General Competence, it was predominant the utilization of narrative as typology of speech. With regard to Encyclopedic and Linguistic Competences, differences were found between the written productions, both for the action figure and for the figures in sequence. Final considerations: The students of early grades showed simplicity in their productions, with predominant use of narrative genre, perhaps for being the most taught in school context and that requires less of their competences. Accordingly, the written production was not influenced by the type of visual stimulus presented, since writing remains as a difficult task for these children.

Syllable frequency and word frequency effects in spoken and written word production in a non-alphabetic script.

The effects of word frequency (WF) and syllable frequency (SF) are well-established phenomena in domain such as spoken production in alphabetic languages. Chinese, as a non-alphabetic language, presents unique lexical and phonological properties in speech production. For example, the proximate unit of phonological encoding is syllable in Chinese but segments in Dutch, French or English. The present study investigated the effects of WF and SF, and their interaction in Chinese written and spoken production. Significant facilitatory WF and SF effects were observed in spoken as well as in written production. The SF effect in writing indicated that phonological properties (i.e., syllabic frequency) constrain orthographic output via a lexical route, at least, in Chinese written production. However, the SF effect over repetitions was divergent in both modalities: it was significant in the former two repetitions in spoken whereas it was significant in the second repetition only in written. Due to the fragility of the SF effect in writing, we suggest that the phonological influence in handwritten production is not mandatory and universal, and it is modulated by experimental manipulations. This provides evidence for the orthographic autonomy hypothesis, rather than the phonological mediation hypothesis. The absence of an interaction between WF and SF showed that the SF effect is independent of the WF effect in spoken and written output modalities. The implications of these results on written production models are discussed.

Investigación documental sobre escritura académica en tres universidades nacionales: Período 1990-2011 / Documentary research on academic writing in three national universities: Period 1990-2011

We present a documental research, period 1990-2011, which wanted to know the course of research published in scientific events of three national universities: National University of La Plata, National University of Mar del Plata and University of Buenos Aires. The issue was the written production of students in higher education. We identified and classified the documentary source (N=72) according to their place of publication, publication subject area, temporal distribution, place of establishment of research projects, unit of analysis, instructional intervention, skills trying to be promoted. Encouraging results are available showing a positive trend in researches that present contextual analysis units.(AU)

Se presenta un trabajo de investigación documental, periodo 1990-2011, en el que se quiso conocer el decurso de investigaciones publicadas en memorias de eventos científicos y anuarios de investigación de las facultades de psicología de tres universidades nacionales: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata y Universidad de Buenos Aires. El tema explorado fue la producción escrita de estudiantes del nivel superior. Se identificó y clasificó la fuente documental (N=72) según su lugar de publicación, área temática de publicación, distribución temporal, lugar de radicación de los proyectos de investigación, unidad de análisis, intervención instruccional, habilidades que se quieren promover. Se ofrecen resultados alentadores que muestran tendencia positiva de las investigaciones con unidades de análisis contextuales.(AU)