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The ability of humans to store spoken words in verbal working memory and build extensive vocabularies is believed to stem from evolutionary changes in cortical connectivity across primate species. However, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain unclear. Why can humans acquire vast vocabularies, while non-human primates cannot? This study addresses this question using brain-constrained neural networks that realize between-species differences in cortical connectivity. It investigates how these structural differences support the formation of neural representations for spoken words and the emergence of verbal working memory, crucial for human vocabulary building. We develop comparative models of frontotemporal and occipital cortices, reflecting human and non-human primate neuroanatomy. Using meanfield and spiking neural networks, we simulate auditory word recognition and examine verbal working memory function. The “human models”, characterized by denser inter-area connectivity in core language areas, produced larger cell assemblies than the “monkey models”, with specific topographies reflecting semantic properties of the represented words. Crucially, longer-lasting reverberant neural activity was observed in human versus monkey architectures, compatible with robust verbal working memory, a necessary condition for vocabulary building. Our findings offer insights into the structural basis of human-specific symbol learning and verbal working memory, shedding light on humans’ unique capacity for large vocabulary acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is uncertainty about whether delusion formation in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be explained by false memories. “Metamemory,” the ability to self-evaluate memory and identify memory errors, is impaired in people with delusions in schizophrenia. Our objective was to investigate whether false memory and metamemory were associated with delusions in AD. Participants with mild AD, with and without delusions, completed a computerized word recognition task and a metamemory measure. Group differences were compared using independent-samples t-tests or Mann Whitney tests. Significant findings were explored through binary logistic regression modeling. Participants with delusions (n = 10) gave more high confidence responses, significantly so for correct responses; percentage of high confidence correct responses for those with delusions (mean (SD)) was 69.7% (31.0%) and for those without (n = 14) was 43.5% (29.9%); t22 = -2.09, p = .049. This remained significant when sex was included in regression modeling; for each 1.0% increase in high confidence correct responses, participants were 5.4% more likely to have delusions (Exp(β) 1.054, 95% CI 1.007–1.105, p = .025). Findings provide tentative support for a link between metamemory and delusions in AD. This should be explored in a larger sample as it has potential implications for treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study employed a single-case design with an AB structure to examine the effect of implementing a Response to Intervention (RTI) model on a fourth-grade elementary school student with reading difficulties. The participant in the study was Deniz, a fourth-grade elementary school student. The pretest measures revealed that Deniz was at the frustration level in both word recognition and reading comprehension skills. Consequently, an eight-week reading intervention program was designed to address and remediate Deniz’s reading difficulties. Through the intervention program, Deniz’s word recognition improved from the frustration level to the instructional level, and her reading comprehension progressed from the frustration level to the independent level, accompanied by a significant decrease in reading miscues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Adults recognize words that are acquired during childhood more quickly than words acquired during adulthood. This is known as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. The AoA effect, according to the integrated account, manifests in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing and in tasks with arbitrary input-output mapping. Compound words allow us to investigate this account due to the arbitrary input-output mapping between the compound word itself and its morphemes, which requires greater semantic processing. Method: Forty-eight British English students in each experiment completed an unspaced (Experiment 1; n = 48; 83% female; Mage = 19.73), spaced (Experiment 2; n = 48; 83% female; Mage = 19.04), auditory (Experiment 3; n = 48; 63% female; Mage = 19.83), and cross-modal (Experiment 4; n = 48; 52% female; Mage = 19.81) lexical decision task (LDT) using a regression design on 226 compound words. Results: We observed that the AoA of the compound word affected accuracy across all tasks, whereas the AoA of the compound word influenced recognition latencies across all tasks except cross-modal LDT. Discussion: The results suggest that the influence of the AoA effect and of semantic predictors is largest in unspaced compound words and smallest in cross-modal LDT. This indicates that the AoA effect in word recognition is in line with the integrated account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emojis are frequently used in digital communication to supplement the lack of non-verbal cues, but their integration during reading has not been thoroughly examined. This study explores the interplay between language and emotion by testing the influence of emotional valence and face-status of emojis on visual word recognition. Two online experiments were conducted with 92 native English-speaking university students, examining priming effects between congruent (e.g. delicious) and incongruent (e.g. hate) prime-target pairs, varying the face-status of the emoji prime (face vs. non-face) and the valence (positive vs. negative) of the word target. Irrespective of valence, face emojis demonstrated a processing advantage over non-face emojis, implying automatic attention capture. Additionally, the results revealed an interaction between prime-target congruency and valence, with a facilitatory effect for positive, but not negative, items, suggesting a valence-specific mechanism of affective priming in the lexical decision task. The research suggests that the rapid integration of emoji content occurs during the early stages of visual word recognition, with heightened attentional sensitivity to both face-like and positive stimuli when reading digital communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to understand how well students (n = 274; Mage = 12.45) were able to identify the author, the main claim, and the supporting evidence (identification performance) and to justify the author's expertise, the author's benevolence, and the quality of the evidence (justification performance) while reading multiple online texts. The study also examined the contribution of prior topic knowledge and basic reading skills (word recognition and reading comprehension) to students' identification and justification performance. Students read two more and two less credible online texts about sugar effects on health. After reading each text, they responded to multiple-choice items that measured the identification and justification performance. Justifying credibility seemed more challenging for students than identifying the claim, evidence, and author. Word recognition and reading comprehension were statistically significant predictors of identification performance, whereas prior knowledge and reading comprehension were statistically significant predictors of justification performance. The findings offer new insights into the relationship between basic reading skills and credibility evaluation that can inform both theory and instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual word recognition in developing readers is affected by several factors, many of which are important in the design of teaching and testing materials. Among these, one well-studied factor is word frequency: more frequent words are recognised more quickly than less frequent words. Another is the presence of consonant sequences, where words containing a consonant sequence (e.g. 'tsh') are recognised more slowly than non-consonant-sequence-containing words of equivalent letter and phoneme length. In isiXhosa, there are currently no publicly available word frequency norms that are based on children's literacy materials and are thus appropriate for the testing of developing readers. Publicly available information on the frequencies of particular consonant sequences, which would be valuable in the design of classroom materials, is also lacking. To address these gaps, this paper reports on the creation of a corpus of isiXhosa texts aimed at children (321 texts, 125,447 tokens, and 31,216 types), which was subsequently processed to derive (i) word frequency measures, (ii) descriptive statistics about the characteristics of the most frequent words, and (iii) information on sublexical frequency, with a focus on two-, three-, and four-consonant sequences. The findings of the article are relevant to scholars and practitioners working on literacy development and language processing in isiXhosa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental evidence indicates that the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) processes emotional/affective features crucial to elaborate knowledge about social groups and that knowledge of social concepts is stored in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). We investigated whether knowledge about social groups is impaired in Parkinson's disease (PD), in which dysfunctional connectivity between IFG and ATL has been demonstrated. PD patients (N = 20) and healthy controls (HC, N = 16) were given a lexical decision task in a semantic priming paradigm: the prime-targets included 144 words and 144 pseudowords, each preceded by three types of prime ("animals," "things," "persons"). Out of these 288 prime-targets, forty-eight were congruent (same category) and 96 incongruent (different category). Out of 48 congruent prime-targets, 24 denoted social items and 24 nonsocial items. Thus, four types of trials were obtained: congruent social; congruent nonsocial; incongruent social; incongruent nonsocial. Congruent target-words were recognized better than incongruent target-words by all groups. The semantic priming effect was preserved in PD; however, accuracy was significantly lower in PD than in HC in social items. No difference emerged between the two groups in nonsocial items. Impaired processing of words denoting social groups in PD may be due to impairment in accessing the affective/emotional features that characterize conceptual knowledge of social groups, for the functional disconnection between the IFG and the ATL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Previous studies examining the inter-relations between serial and discrete naming with reading have found that the ability to efficiently process multiple items presented in a sequence (indexed by serial naming) is a unique predictor of word- and text-reading fluency. However, conclusions have been tempered by the concurrent nature of the available data and the uniformly low demands of the materials (words and texts). Here we go beyond previous studies by using more varied materials to examine the relations of serial and discrete naming with the discrete reading of words and the serial reading of word lists and connected text over time. Method: Two hundred and eight English-speaking Canadian children (51% female, Mage = 7.2 years) were followed from Grade 2 to Grade 5 and were assessed on serial and discrete digit naming and serial and discrete word reading at both measurement points. Results: Strong associations between discrete naming and discrete reading already from Grade 2 indicated that short and high-frequency words were processed in parallel early in development. By Grade 5, when word recognition was presumably automatized, serial naming accounted for unique variance in serial reading of word lists and connected texts after controlling for discrete word reading. More importantly, Latent Change Score modeling indicated that serial naming was the main predictor of growth in serial reading from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Conclusion: These findings suggest that, beyond individual word recognition, reading fluency development also requires efficient processing of multiple items presented in serial format (termed "cascaded processing"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We compare right-to-left and left-to-right orthographies to test the theory, derived from studying the latter, that small temporal asynchronies between the two eyes at the beginning and end of every fixation favor ocular prevalence for the left eye in the left hemifield and the right eye in the right hemifield. Ocular prevalence is the prioritizing of one eye's input in the conscious, fused binocular percept. Method: We analyze binocular eye-tracking data from the reading of multiline Arabic and Hebrew text by 28 Arabic (M = 28.7, SD = 7.2 years, 71% female) and 16 Hebrew (M = 30.1, SD = 7.9 years, 50% female) native speakers, respectively. Results: Critically, the complex pattern of asynchronies in Arabic and Hebrew resembles that reported for the left-to-right orthographies, English and Chinese, but with some particular differences that we attribute to left hemisphere specialization in word recognition. Conclusion: We conclude, first, that the oculomotor musculature plays an embodied role in the perception and cognition associated with reading. We further discuss how the evident hemispheric asymmetries in parafoveal lookahead may be reflected in the nature of the conventions of right-to-left scripts. We articulate the claim that the orthographic conventions of a language tend to reflect reading direction and hemispheric differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an 18-day summer tutoring program in which graduate student tutors delivered 15 minutes of differentiated reading instruction (DRI) and a 30-minute interactive read-aloud (IRA) lesson each day. Students in grades K-5 (N = 179) attending a summer program at one urban elementary school completed a lesson-specific combination of pretest and posttest measures of letter-sound knowledge, decoding skills, oral reading fluency, and academic reading attitudes. Students were assigned to groups targeting phonemic awareness and word recognition (PAWR), word recognition and fluency (WRAF), fluency and comprehension (FAC), or vocabulary and comprehension (VAC) based on skill profiles. Paired-samples statistical tests were used to analyze pretest and posttest measures, and tutors were observed with a checklist to document implementation fidelity. Results indicated significant gains on specific subskill mastery measures of letter-sound knowledge for students in PAWR groups and decoding skills for students in PAWR and WRAF groups. Results were not significant for a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency for students in FAC groups and were significantly negative for students in VAC groups. There were no significant differences in gains based on instructional group size. There was no evidence of summer learning loss on academic reading attitudes. Tutors were able to implement DRI and IRA lessons with acceptable fidelity. These findings suggest that a summer tutoring program delivered by graduate students can improve targeted reading skills without negatively impacting reading attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of our experiment was to analyse the effect of the emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) on true and false recognition, matching the arousal, frequency, concreteness, and associative strength of the study and recognition words. Fifty younger adults and 46 healthy older adults performed three study tasks (with words of different valence: positive, negative, neutral) and their corresponding recognition tests. Two weeks later, they performed the three recognition tests again. The results show that words with a negative valence produced less true recognition and less false recognition than words with a positive or neutral valence, in both younger and older adults, on the immediate recognition test. This pattern of results was also found in the younger adults on the delayed recognition test, whereas in the older participants, these differences disappeared. Thus, when arousal is controlled, both younger and older adults tend to recognise negative information worse than positive or neutral information, but they also commit fewer errors. Results would suggest that the greater arousal commonly associated with negative stimuli, rather than their own valence, could explain some of the contradictory results found in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractPurposeMethodResultConclusionMany children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) show poorer auditory word-learning skills than children with typical hearing (TH). The goal of this study was to test the effect of retrieval practice on word learning in children who are hard of hearing (HH).Twenty-six TH children and 16 children who are HH completed a speech perception and a vocabulary test, and a rapid word-learning game to learn new words under no retrieval, immediate retrieval, and spaced retrieval conditions.Linear mixed-effect models revealed that learning condition and time predicted 48% of the variance in word recognition, and age predicted 15% of word recall variance. We observed no differences in word recognition and recall between TH children and children who are HH. Children learned and remembered more words in the immediate and spaced retrieval practice conditions than in the no retrieval condition.Retrieval practice is more effective for word learning and retention than passive exposure (no retrieval). Clinical and educational practices for children who are DHH could combine explicit instruction using targeted exposures and retrieval of new words with naturalistic approaches. Future studies should assess retrieval practice in real-life interventions to inform clinical and educational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractObjectivesDesignStudy SampleResultsConclusionsStandard diagnostic measures focus on threshold elevation but hearing concerns may occur independently of threshold elevation – referred to as “hidden hearing loss” (HHL). A deeper understanding of HHL requires measurements that locate dysfunction along the auditory pathway. This study aimed to describe the relationship and interdependence between certain behavioural and physiological measures of auditory function that are thought to be indicative of HHL.Data were collected on a battery of behavioural and physiological measures of hearing. Threshold-dependent variance was removed from each measure prior to generating a multiple regression model of the behavioural measures using the physiological measures.224 adults in the United States with audiometric thresholds ≤65 dB HL.Thresholds accounted for between 21 and 60% of the variance in our behavioural measures and 5–51% in our physiological measures of hearing. There was no evidence that the behavioural measures of hearing could be predicted by the selected physiological measures.Several proposed behavioural measures for HHL: thresholds-in-noise, frequency-modulation detection, and speech recognition in difficult listening conditions, are influenced by hearing sensitivity and are not predicted by outer hair cell or auditory nerve physiology. Therefore, these measures may not be able to assess threshold-independent hearing disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has found an in-group advantage (IGA) favouring native speakers in emotional prosody perception over non-native speakers, the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception remain unclear. This study investigated the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception in Chinese words and sentences for native and non-native Chinese speakers. The critical manipulation was the congruence of prosodic (positive, negative) and semantic (positive, negative, and neutral) valence. Participants listened to a series of audio clips and judged whether the emotional prosody was positive or negative for each utterance. The results revealed an IGA effect: native speakers perceived emotional prosody more accurately and quickly than non-native speakers in Chinese words and sentences. Furthermore, a semantic congruence effect was observed in Chinese words, where both native and non-native speakers recognised emotional prosody more accurately in the semantic-prosody congruent condition than in the incongruent condition. However, in Chinese sentences, this congruence effect was only present for non-native speakers. Additionally, the IGA effect and semantic congruence effect on emotional prosody perception were influenced by prosody valence. These findings illuminate the role of semantics in emotional prosody perception, highlighting perceptual differences between native and non-native Chinese speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We replicated and extended the findings of Yao et al. [(2018). Differential emotional processing in concrete and abstract words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(7), 1064–1074] regarding the interaction of emotionality, concreteness, and imageability in word processing by measuring eye fixation times on target words during normal reading. A 3 (Emotion: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Concreteness: abstract, concrete) design was used with 22 items per condition, with each set of six target words matched across conditions in terms of word length and frequency. Abstract (e.g. shocking, reserved, fabulous) and concrete (e.g. massacre, calendar, treasure) target words appeared (separately) within contextually neutral, plausible sentences. Sixty-three participants each read all 132 experimental sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Analyses using Gamma generalised linear mixed models revealed significant effects of both Emotion and Concreteness on all fixation measures, indicating faster processing for emotional and concrete words. Additionally, there was a significant Emotion × Concreteness interaction which, critically, was modulated by Imageability in early fixation time measures. Emotion effects were significantly larger in higher-imageability abstract words than in lower-imageability ones, but remained unaffected by imageability in concrete words. These findings support the multimodal induction hypothesis and highlight the intricate interplay of these factors in the immediate stages of word processing during fluent reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gesture data collection in a controlled lab environment often restricts participants to performing gestures in a uniform or biased manner, resulting in gesture data which may not sufficiently reflect gesture variability to build robust gesture recognition models. Crowdsourcing has been widely accepted as an efficient high-sample-size method for collecting more representative and variable data. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of crowdsourcing for gesture data collection, specifically for gesture variability. When compared to a controlled lab environment, crowdsourcing resulted in improved recognition performance of 8.98% and increased variability for various gesture features, eg, a 142% variation increase for Quantity of Movement. Integrating a supplemental gesture data collection methodology known as Styling Words increased recognition performance by an additional 2.94%. The study also investigated the efficacy of gesture collection methodologies and gesture memorization paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe rich inflectional grammar of Finnish is often considered a challenge for second language (L2) learners. However, the inflectional variation is based on relatively systematic morphological and morphophonological rules. Smartphone applications could offer an effective way to train these rules by utilizing adaptive spaced repetition exercises. Currently there is little research on morphology learning via Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) applications in morphologically rich languages. The present study introduces a newly developed Finnish Morphology Application (FMA) that aims to teach beginner-level Finnish morphology. In a randomized controlled trial, the test group participants (n = 33) practiced Finnish morphology with the FMA during a three-week period, and their improvements were compared to those of an active control group using a general Finnish language learning application (n = 38). The practiced morphological operations comprised transparent and semi-transparent inflections. Pre- and posttests included a visual lexical decision task and a morphological production task. In comparison to the control group, the FMA group improved substantially in written morphological production skills, especially in transparent inflections. In visual lexical decision task, there was an improvement in accuracy for trained words in the FMA group, but this improvement applied to both transparent and semi-transparent inflections as well as monomorphemic nouns. In reaction times, there were no differences between the groups. Self-ratings of perceived efficacy of the FMA regarding grammar and vocabulary varied from neutral to positive. The results suggest that the FMA is particularly useful for learning inflectional production skills in Finnish by adult beginner level learners but can also be used to train word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the effectiveness of different encoding techniques across the adult age range. Three hundred participants: 100 younger, 100 middle-aged, and 100 older adults, were asked to encode a set of visually presented concrete and abstract words. Participants were shown target words one at a time, along with prompts (randomly and intermixed, within-subject) to either silently read, read aloud, write, or draw a picture of the target, for a duration of 10-seconds each. On a later free recall test, participants were given 2-minutes to type all the words they could remember from the encoding phase. Across age groups, we showed that drawing, writing, and reading aloud as encoding techniques yielded better memory than silently reading words, with drawing leading to the largest boost. While memory performance did decrease as age increased, it interacted with the encoding technique. Of note, there were no differences in memory performance in middle-aged compared to young adults. Importantly, age differences in memory emerged only when drawing was used as the encoding strategy, in line with previously reported age-related deficits in generating imagery, or integrating it with motoric processes. Despite this, concrete relative to abstract words that were drawn or written during encoding were better retained, regardless of age, suggesting these techniques facilitate formation of age-invariant visuo-spatial representations. Our findings suggest that whether age differences in memory emerge depends on the strategy used at encoding, and the type of information being encoded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual experiences, such as first language attriters, heritage speakers, or sequential bilinguals. Consequently, there is a critical gap in our knowledge regarding how bilinguals navigate and resolve competition dynamics during spoken word recognition in the context of language attrition. We compare the within-L1 and within-L2 competition mechanisms of Spanish-English attriters (N = 65) with two monolingual control groups (Spanish and English speakers). Participants completed two visual world tasks with manipulation of onset/rhyme overlap. Results indicate a contrast between the competition mechanisms exhibited by the L1 monolingual group and the Spanish attriters during L1 spoken word recognition. Our findings highlight the role of bilingual experiences in modulating L1 competition dynamics, shedding light on the complex relationship between bilingualism and lexical competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to better understand the difficulties faced by underprepared college readers, including those enrolled in Developmental Education (DE) programs. The Reading Systems Framework was used as a theoretical motivation. Participants (n = 258) completed a measure of component reading skills (Study Aid and Reading Assessment, word recognition/decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing) and a think-aloud measure wherein they produced written responses while reading texts. Responses were scored based on evidence of the use of inference strategies (bridging and elaboration). Cumulative links mixed-effects models were used to assess the extent to which proficiency in component reading skills and DE enrollment were differentially related to the use of inferencing. Results indicated that vocabulary was a positive predictor of bridging and elaboration scores. DE enrollment was a negative predictor of elaboration scores, suggesting that DE readers were less likely to produce elaborations. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The indication criteria for cochlear implantation differ considerably across regions. To estimate the effects of different candidacy criteria on the number of cochlear implant (CI) candidates. We analysed a very large clinical audiological database comprising pure-tone thresholds and speech-audiometric data in order to identify CI candidates on the basis of different audiometric candidacy criteria. In particular, we simulated the effects of three different CI candidacy criteria. The bilateral evaluation of CI candidacy has the strongest influence on the number of potential CI candidates. Additionally, the cut-off criteria for middle-ear implants have a large effect on numbers of candidates when air conduction has deteriorated. Conclusions and Significance: Expanding the indication criteria opens up the possibility of improving the accurate identification of individual cases suitable for cochlear-implant provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring the impact of spatial attention on signal detection in damaged parts of the visual field can be a useful tool for eye care practitioners. Studies on letter perception have shown that glaucoma exacerbates difficulties to detect a target within flankers (crowding) in parafoveal vision. A target can be missed because it is not seen or because attention was not focused at that location. This prospective study evaluates the contribution of spatial pre-cueing on target detection. Fifteen patients and 15 age-matched controls were presented with letters displayed for 200 ms. Participants were asked to identify the orientation of the target letter T in two conditions: an isolated letter (uncrowded condition) and a letter with two flankers (crowded condition). The spacing between target and flankers was manipulated. The stimuli were randomly displayed at the fovea and at the parafovea at 5° left or right of fixation. A spatial cue preceded the stimuli in 50% of the trials. When present, the cue always signalled the correct location of the target. Pre-cueing the spatial location of the target significantly improved performance for both foveal and parafoveal presentations in patients but not in controls who were at ceiling level. Unlike controls, patients exhibited an effect of crowding at the fovea with a higher accuracy for the isolated target than for the target flanked by two letters with no spacing between the elements. Higher susceptibility to central crowding supports data showing abnormal foveal vision in glaucoma. Exogenous orienting of attention facilitates perception in parts of the visual field with reduced sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In adults with dyslexia (DYS), the persistent influence of phonological deficits on spoken language processing has mainly been examined in either perceptual tasks or those tapping complex cognitive operations. Much less attention is devoted to spoken word recognition per se. Our study aimed to fill this gap. Adults with and without dyslexia (for both groups: N = 30, mean age = 21 years, 50% female, 100% white European) performed an auditory lexical decision task. Performance and ERP were recorded. Reaction times showed a lexicality effect in both groups although they differed in ERP responses to stimulus lexicality. Skilled readers showed the typical amplitude enhancement for pseudowords compared to words in a late phase of N400 (414-581msec) whereas DYS showed the opposite pattern in an earlier phase of N400 (246-413msec). Both groups showed a stronger negativity during pseudowords processing in the late post-lexical stage (582-800msec). ERP data showed subtle differences between the two populations during the lexical stage of word recognition despite their comparable behavioral outcomes. We hypothesized that a stronger reliance on intact semantic knowledge might contribute to the general enhanced and sustained ERP responses to words in DYS across different phases of lexical processing, although confirmation is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effect of character complexity on early Chinese literacy (word reading and writing). We also investigated whether cognitive skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) could moderate the influence of character complexity on literacy outcomes. Our pre-registered study included a sample of 342 Cantonese – speaking Hong Kong Chinese children (162 males, 180 females, mean age = 7.32, SD = 0.87) from Grade 1 to Grade 3. We used a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) to estimate the main effect of complexity on word recognition and dictation as well as interaction effects with each of the three cognitive skills. Age and nonverbal IQ were also included as controls. Character complexity had a slightly curvilinear but consistently negative association with word reading, with odds ratios ranging from.62 to.71 per 10% increase in complexity. RAN and morphological awareness buffered the negative influence of character complexity. For writing to dictation, character complexity was more curvilinear, but character complexity and the interactions between cognitive skills and character complexity were not significant. Complex visual input can be a barrier to early reading development in Chinese, and fostering morphological awareness may help mitigate this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrode impedance measurements from cochlear implants (CI) reflect the status of the electrode array as well as the surrounding cochlear environment, and could provide a clinical index of functional changes with the CI. The goals of this study were to examine (1) the impact of electrode array type on electrode impedance, and (2) the relationship between electrode impedance and short-term hearing preservation and speech recognition outcomes. Retrospective study of 115 adult hearing preservation CI recipients of a slim modiolar or slim straight array. Common ground electrode impedances, pre- and post-operative hearing thresholds and CNC word recognition scores were retrieved. Electrode impedances were significantly higher for recipients of the straight electrode array. Within individuals, electrode impedances were stable after the first week post-activation. However, increased standard deviation of electrode impedances was associated with greater loss of low frequency hearing at initial activation, and with poorer speech recognition at 6 months post-implantation. Results demonstrate that electrode impedances depend on the type of implanted array. Findings also suggest that there may be a role for the variability in electrode impedance across electrodes as an indicator of changes in the intracochlear environment that contribute to outcomes with a CI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speed and accuracy of lexical access change with healthy ageing and neurodegeneration. While a word's immediate phonological neighbourhood density (i.e. words differing by a single phoneme) influences access, connectivity to all words in the phonological network (i.e. closeness centrality) may influence processing. This study aimed to investigate the effect of closeness centrality on speed and accuracy of lexical processing pre- and post- a single word-training session in healthy younger and older adults, and adults with logopenic primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), which affects phonological processing. Participants included 29 young and 17 older healthy controls, and 10 adults with lvPPA. Participants received one session of word-training on words with high or low closeness centrality, using a picture-word verification task. Changes in lexical decision reaction times (RT) and accuracy were measured. Baseline RT was unaffected by age and accuracy was at ceiling for controls. Post-training, only young adults' RT were significantly faster. Adults with lvPPA were slower and less accurate than controls at baseline, with no training effect. Closeness centrality did not influence performance. Absence of training effect for older adults suggests higher threshold to induce priming, possibly associated with insufficient dosage or fatigue. Implications for word-finding interventions with older adults are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the effects of different face masks on school-age children's and young adults' word recognition. Speech recognition thresholds were measured adaptively in a two-talker speech masker using a closed-set picture pointing task. Target words were recorded by a female talker in five conditions: no mask, transparent mask, face shield, N95 mask and surgical mask. Thirty children (8–12 years) and 25 adults (18–25 years) with normal hearing. Both children's and adults' word recognition was most negatively impacted by the face shield. Children's recognition was also impaired by the transparent mask. No negative effects were observed for the N95 or surgical mask for either age group. School-age children, like young adults, are negatively affected by face masks when recognising speech in a two-talker speech masker, but the effects depend on the type of face mask being worn. Acoustic analyses suggest that the reflective materials used for masks impact speech signal quality and impair word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological regularities are an important feature of the English writing system, and exposure to written morphology may be key in the development of skilled word recognition. Our aim was to investigate children's experiences of written morphology by analyzing a large-scale corpus of children's reading materials spanning a target age range from 5 to 14 years. Analysis was based on the Oxford Children's Reading Corpus. We examined frequency distributions of derived and compound words by target age and genre, as well as type and token frequencies for individual derivational suffixes. We found that the proportion of morphologically complex words – and derived words particularly – increased in line with target age, and that nonfiction contained more complex words than fiction. Frequencies of individual suffixes also varied by target age and genre, with Germanic forms more common in fiction and texts for younger children, and Latinate forms more common in nonfiction and texts for older children. These findings provide a comprehensive picture of how children's experience with written morphology changes over the course of reading development. We discuss these findings in the context of developmental changes in morphological processing, and the benefits and limitations of using large-scale natural language datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated whether the number of syllables affects developing readers' word recognition when controlling for word length and word frequency and, if so, whether the effect is dependent on reading fluency. The target language was Finnish, a language with a transparent orthography and a simple syllable structure. Eye movements of 142 third and fourth graders were recorded during silent reading of two stories. Reading fluency was assessed separately. For analyses, a data subset containing words of a certain length (6,7,9 letters) and varying syllable number (2,3,4 syllables) was extracted from the data set. Using linear mixed-effects modeling, the effect of the syllable number on various eye-tracking measures across different levels of reading fluency was studied. Results revealed a statistically significant, impeding number of syllables effect in first fixation duration but non-significant effects in the later reading measures. Furthermore, fluent and dysfluent readers did not differ regarding the number of syllables effect. These findings suggest that in Finnish developing readers, syllabic parsing is a highly rapid and automatized process, which predominantly takes place during the early holistic orthographic processing of a word, and that qualitatively similar orthographic processing occurs in fluent and dysfluent beginning readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the intra-/inter-hemispheric interactions during visual word processing, by manipulating stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in a primed-lateralized lexical decision task. To assess intra-/inter-hemispheric priming effects, identical prime-target pairs were presented in the same or opposite unilateral visual fields. The study found that the right visual field advantage (RVFA) was observed when Korean words were presented sequentially within hemispheres, indicating that the inherent characteristics of the two hemispheres, rather than differences in memory or linguistic aspects of lexical processing, contributed to the hemispheric asymmetry. Additionally, intra-hemispheric priming effects were symmetrical in both hemispheres, with similar increases in priming for words and nonwords from SOA 120 ms to SOA 600 ms. Furthermore, inter-hemispheric priming effects were asymmetrical, with stronger priming when stimuli were presented in a sequence of LH→RH than in RH→LH. These findings suggest that the intrinsic differences in lexical processing between the two hemispheres may be related to the asymmetric pattern of hemispheric interactions in visual word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extraction of meaningful information from a huge amount of data available on the web is a quite challenging task. The challenges faced in information extraction can be overcome with the help of an efficient named entity recognition (NER) system. Named entities are the proper names that play an important role in searching important information of interest. In this study, an efficient deep learning-based NER technique has been proposed which recognizes the named entities belonging to the general domain from Hindi, Punjabi, and bilingual Hindi and Punjabi text. An important variant of recurrent neural network, namely bidirectional long short-term memory-based model using improved word embeddings has been developed. Improved word embeddings are the combination of character convolutional neural network embeddings and part of speech embeddings. The main findings of the study include the development of a NER system that can extract named entities not only from Hindi and Punjabi datasets individually but also from mixed Hindi and Punjabi text. Besides, improved word embeddings are the combination of character-level features and word-level features which we find as the novel work as per our knowledge. Improved word embeddings are found to be effective in achieving better results than the results obtained by earlier NER models with deep feature extraction tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention deficit and reading difficulty are often comorbid in neuropsychiatric disorders of childhood and adolescence. Although recent research has shown how these two domains may interact in children, knowledge about such interaction in elderly is lacking. The present study tested whether this association is also present in healthy elderly with undiagnosed attention problems. Thirty-two subjects (65+ years) with life-long complaints of attention and with a Mini Mental (MMSE) cutoff of 27 points were tested with MapCog Spectra (MCS), with a word recognition test (Word Chains test) and CANTAB subtests of attention. All tests were presented on a tablet, except for the Word Chains test. The participants mean MMSE score was 29 points and their mean age was 71.5 years. Strong correlations were seen between the Word Chains test and the MCS, suggesting that a high number of aberrantly long pauses during serial naming was associated with fewer identifications of letters, words and sentences. The number of aberrant pauses was also associated with slower Reaction Time and a lower score on the Attention Shifting task of the CANTAB. The results were not associated with either gender or general intelligence. This study shows that attention is linked to decoding speed irrespective of intelligence and gender. We therefore suggest that a clinical assessment of attention deficit should also include an assessment of decoding ability, and vice versa, as these cognitive functions are strongly interdependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article by Jaswal et al. (2024) purports to find evidence of literacy skills in a subset of minimal-to-nonspeaking autistic individuals with at least one year of experience communicating on a letterboard held by an assistant, a variant of facilitated communication known as Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) or Spelling to Communicate (S2C). Because the assistant can control letter selection (through letterboard movements, verbal prompts, and decisions about which letters were selected), the literacy skills of those subjected to RPM/S2C are in doubt. Additional doubt about this literacy stems from research that finds significant impairments in the receptive language skills of minimal-to-non-speaking autistic individuals. Receptive language is a prerequisite for literacy: reading and writing involve not just letter recognition and letter sequencing, but also comprehension of the words and sentences that are spelled out. Rather than assessing literacy directly by measuring recognition and comprehension of written words, however, Jaswal et al. indirectly assess one aspect of literacy – knowledge of orthographic conventions (spelling conventions and boundaries between written words) – through participants' response times to pulsing letter and symbol sequences on an iPad game designed for this purpose. This article reviews Jaswal et al.'s study, critiquing the experimental design and authors' conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all of the stimuli that we encounter are unequivocal; some of them may be ambiguous. In a series of two experiments, we investigated how people perceive and assess the emotionality of the words ambiguous on three emotional spaces: valence (dimensions of positivity and negativity), origin (automaticity and reflectiveness), and activation (arousal and subjective significance). Using two types of measurement – behavioural and webcam-based eye tracking – we compared words of moderate and high ambiguity on each of those spaces with control (uniequivocal) words. The behavioural measurements indicated that reaction times were significantly longer for the control words than for all the ambiguous words; the emotionality of words of ambiguous valence and origin was rated as significantly lower than the control words and words of ambiguous activation. The eye-tracking measurements indicated that words of ambiguous valence and origin caused significantly more and longer eye fixations than control words and words of ambiguous activation. The results showed the visible distinctiveness of the ambiguous words compared with the control words; they also showed differences between words of various ambiguities, verifying the proposed new model for the emotional ambiguity and presenting the behavioral and eye tracking correlates for each of the three ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional words have consistently been shown to be processed differently than neutral words. However, few studies have examined individual variability in emotion word processing with longer, ecologically valid stimuli (beyond isolated words, sentences, or paragraphs). In the current study, we re-analysed eye-tracking data collected during story reading to reveal how individual differences in need for affect and narrative absorption impact the speed of emotion word reading. Word emotionality was indexed by affective-aesthetic potentials (AAP) calculated by a sentiment analysis tool. We found that individuals with higher levels of need for affect and narrative absorption read positive words more slowly. On the other hand, these individual differences did not influence the reading time of more negative words, suggesting that high need for affect and narrative absorption are characterised by a positivity bias only. In general, unlike most previous studies using more isolated emotion word stimuli, we observed a quadratic (U-shaped) effect of word emotionality on reading speed, such that both positive and negative words were processed more slowly than neutral words. Taken together, this study emphasises the importance of taking into account individual differences and task context when studying emotion word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several interventions for acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) involve models, imitation, or repetition to elicit production of words. Early researchers wrote about anecdotal experiences, in which sentence completion facilitated speech production for individuals with AOS. The use of sentence completion to elicit production of words during intervention has not been systematically researched. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of sentence completion to elicit correct productions of words, as part of an intervention for one individual with aphasia and AOS. Training occurred three times a week for six weeks. In each session, the participant answered 20 simple questions, for which the answer was one of 20 target words. Ten of these 20 words were used for training, while the other set of 10 words remained untrained. During training, the participant produced words, as the final word of a sentence. The participant improved production of the trained target words. By the end of training, the participant produced more words, as the final word in a sentence and as the answer to a simple question. For this case study, an individual with severe Broca's aphasia and severe AOS increased the number of personally-relevant words produced following training using sentence completion to elicit production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most models of word recognition assume that a letter's identity and position are conjointly encoded. This means that in words with repeated letters (e.g. "radar"), each instance of the same letter is coded as a separate object. Here we tested an alternative scenario, according to which the brain employs configurational representations (e.g. recognition of three units in the configuration 12321 activating "radar"). Such representations explain why one sees similarities between "radar" and "tenet", and would offer an efficient way to compute letter repetitions. In two experiments, target word recognition was tested as a function of different-symbol primes that were configurationally congruent ("kgegk"—"radar") or not ("kggke"—"radar"). We reasoned that if the brain indeed engages configuration codes, congruent primes should facilitate target recognition compared to incongruent primes. However, Bayesian statistical analyses provided strong evidence for the null-hypothesis. We surmise that the brain does not engage configuration codes in word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two eye movement/EEG co-registration experiments investigated effects of predictability, visual contrast, and parafoveal preview in normal reading. Replicating previous studies, in Experiment 1 contrast and predictability additively influenced fixation durations, and in Experiment 2 invalid preview eliminated the predictability effect on early eye movement measures. In both experiments, predictability influenced the amplitude of the N400 component of the fixation-related potential. In Experiment 1, visual contrast did not influence the N400, and in Experiment 2, the effect of predictability on the N400 was larger with invalid preview, in opposition to the eye movement pattern. The N400 may reflect a late process of accessing conceptual representations while the duration of the eyes' fixation on a word is sensitive to the difficulty of perceptual encoding and early stages of word recognition. The effects of predictability on both fixation duration and the N400 suggest an influence of this variable at two distinct processing stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to school and the first years of elementary school education are very sensitive phases for reading development. Reading researchers have established key precursors and developmental steps in these phases. However, how these components interact and affect growth is not well understood yet. The current study from Germany replicates established findings and explores how curvilinear effects can add information to our understanding of reading development. 525 German-speaking children were followed during a 5-year period from kindergarten to fourth Grade. Phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge (LK), rapid naming (RAN) and language skills (LS) were assessed in kindergarten, decoding and reading comprehension in elementary school. Analysis was based on latent growth models with curvilinear (quadratic) effects. The results indicate that PA and LK are of importance for early reading, RAN was additionally revealed to be of importance for further growth in decoding. Language skills and decoding, together with their interaction, explain variation in reading comprehension skills. A curvilinear effect was found for decoding on reading comprehension growth only. Our study shows which precursors predict growth in reading development in a transparent orthography and expands our understanding of how language and decoding affect the development of reading comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In speech sound intervention, consonant clusters promote generalisation (i.e. improvement in untreated sounds and words), ostensibly due to their relative complexity compared to other phonological targets. However, our understanding of clusters as intervention targets is largely restricted to those in word-initial position (e.g. [fl-], flip). The present study extends available work to consider the effects of word-final consonant cluster targets (e.g. [-ks]). Phonologically complex word-final clusters may be morphologically simple (e.g. mix) or morphologically complex (e.g. packs, inflected with third-person singular) – yet this cross-domain complexity remains an understudied phenomenon. Presently, two case studies provide an initial investigation of word-final cluster intervention targets for children with phonologically based speech sound disorders. Intervention targets for both Anna (3;7 [years;months]) and David (4;1) featured the phonologically complex word-final cluster [-ks], with Anna's target being morphologically simple and David's being morphologically complex. Intervention was provided in 45-minute, individual sessions three times per week for a maximum of 18 sessions. Both children demonstrated high target accuracy by intervention's end. Following intervention, both children demonstrated progress in intelligibility and ability to produce word-final consonant clusters; David further demonstrated generalisation across multiple measures. Results are interpreted with consideration of individual differences and existing research on complexity in phonological intervention. Overall, present findings motivate continued research, as manipulation of word-final complexity allows for emphasis on a context that is relevant for children with speech sound disorders, for peers with difficulties in morphology (including word-final grammatical morphemes) and for the substantial proportion of children demonstrating weaknesses in both domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that emotionally-valenced words are given higher judgements of learning (JOLs) than are neutral words. The current study examined potential explanations for this emotional salience effect on JOLs. Experiment 1 replicated the basic emotionality/JOL effect. In Experiments 2A and 2B, we used pre-study JOLs and assessed memory beliefs qualitatively, finding that, on average, participants believed that positive and negative words were more memorable than neutral words. Experiment 3 utilised a lexical decision task, resulting in lower reaction times (RTs) for positive words than for neutral words, but equivalent RTs for negative and neutral words, suggesting that processing fluency may partially account for higher JOLs for positive words, but not for negative words. Finally, we conducted a series of moderation analyses in Experiment 4 which assessed the relative contributions of fluency and beliefs to JOLs by measuring both factors in the same participants, showing that RTs made no significant contribution to JOLs for either positive or negative words. Our findings suggest that although positive words may be more fluently processed than neutral words, memory beliefs are the primary factor underlying higher JOLs for both positive and negative words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study tested parafoveal morphological processing during sentence reading with two eye-tracking experiments, making use of an implicit measurement of morphological awareness. In Chinese and Korean, each character form typically corresponds to multiple mental lexicons, leading to morphological ambiguity. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, we manipulated the relation between the homographic parafoveal preview morphemes and the target words in Chinese and Korean, respectively, in two experiments. We tested 57 Chinese and 45 Korean university students. Together with baseline conditions in which the previews were either identical or unrelated to the target, we had two critical conditions in which the homographs shared/did not share the same morphemic meaning (i.e., same morpheme/different morpheme) with the target morpheme. Across the two experiments, the differences between the same and different morpheme conditions in a number of eye movement indices were significant, consistently showing that appropriate morpho-semantic information facilitates lexical processing. The different-morpheme previews facilitated the target word processing in Chinese but not in Korean reading. These findings suggest that morphemic meanings are activated early on during word recognition in Chinese, a logographic orthography, and Korean Hangul, a phonologically transparent writing system, before the word is fixated upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This 2-year longitudinal study examined the unique prediction of a dynamic assessment (DA) of character decoding on Chinese early reading development, and further explored whether learning potential, as assessed by DA, predicts subsequent character reading development in a sample of 135 native Mandarin-speaking Chinese students from first grade to second grade. Latent Growth Modeling was carried out to examine the prediction of DA administered in grade 1 for the character reading growth in Chinese children from grade 1 to 2. Growth Mixture Modeling was used to identify latent-class groups with varying learning potential based on the trial-by-trial progresses on DA, and predicted the distal outcome, Chinese character reading. DA uniquely predicted the final level and growth rate of character reading for Chinese children from grade 1 to 2 after controlling for traditional static predictors. Additionally, three latent groups were identified to characterize different responsiveness to graduated prompts in the DA task; the three latent groups showed significant differences in character reading over time. The findings underscore the importance of DA in predicting Chinese children's early reading development and the classification validity of learning potential subgroups of DA in differentiating early character reading development in Chinese children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modulation of gaze fixations on neural activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory, has been shown to be weaker in older adults compared to younger adults. However, as such research has relied on indirect measures of memory, it remains unclear whether the relationship between visual exploration and direct measures of memory is similarly disrupted in aging. The current study tested older and younger adults on a face memory eye-tracking task previously used by our group that showed that recognition memory for faces presented across variable, but not fixed, viewpoints relies on a hippocampal-dependent binding function. Here, we examined how aging influences eye movement measures that reveal the amount (cumulative sampling) and extent (distribution of gaze fixations) of visual exploration. We also examined how aging influences direct (subsequent conscious recognition) and indirect (eye movement repetition effect) expressions of memory. No age differences were found in direct recognition regardless of facial viewpoint. However, the eye movement measures revealed key group differences. Compared to younger adults, older adults exhibited more cumulative sampling, a different distribution of fixations, and a larger repetition effect. Moreover, there was a positive relationship between cumulative sampling and direct recognition in younger adults, but not older adults. Neither age group showed a relationship between the repetition effect and direct recognition. Thus, despite similar direct recognition, age-related differences were observed in visual exploration and in an indirect eye-movement memory measure, suggesting that the two groups may acquire, retain, and use different facial information to guide recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is long known that facial configurations play a critical role when inferring mental and emotional states from others. Nevertheless, there is still a scientific debate on how we infer emotions from facial configurations. The theory of constructed emotion (TCE) suggests that we may infer different emotions from the same facial configuration, depending on the context (e.g. provided by visual and lexical cues) in which they are perceived. For instance, a recent study found that participants were more accurate in inferring mental and emotional states across three different datasets (i.e. RMET, static and dynamic emojis) when words were provided (i.e. forced-choice task), compared to when they were not (i.e. free-labelling task), suggesting that words serve as contexts that modulate the inference from facial configurations. The goal of the current within-subject study was to replicate and extend these findings by adding a fourth dataset (KDEF-dyn), consisting of morphed human faces (to increase the ecological validity). Replicating previous findings, we observed that words increased accuracy across the three (previously used) datasets, an effect that was also observed for the facial morphed stimuli. Our findings are in line with the TCE, providing support for the importance of contextual verbal cues in emotion perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Matthew effects suggest that children who struggle when learning to read are less likely to read for pleasure later in life compared to children who ease into reading quickly. One aspect of early literacy instruction that might hamper reading progress is learning to read simultaneously in two languages. Despite the long-lasting and widespread benefits of bilingualism, early setbacks in reading development might carry lasting effects for later reading habits. We investigated whether present-day print exposure of adults who learned to read in their first language were different from those who learned to read in two languages. Adults completed: Bilingual Author Recognition, Viewing Recognition, and English and French Word Recognition Tests. Participants who reported that reading instruction took place in their first language recognized more authors than those who learned to read in two languages. These first-language learners were also better at identifying real English words. Bilingual learners were superior at identifying real French words on the corresponding task. Lastly, both groups demonstrated similar viewing habits. The findings from this retrospective study align with the Matthew effects and suggest that a focus on first language reading instruction in Grades 1 and 2 remains correlated with print exposure 25 years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluent word recognition is an essential component of skilled reading, yet most children with reading difficulty have impaired word recognition. We developed and evaluated a web app, WordDriver, delivered via teletherapy, which targets phonological recoding to support orthographic learning and efficient word recognition. Participants were five children (aged 7–10 years) who, despite previous intervention using a systematic, synthetic phonics approach, demonstrated persistent word recognition impairment. Two studies, each using a single case experimental design examined changes in decoding accuracy (study 1) and orthographic learning (study 2) as measured by researcher-developed nonword reading and spelling lists, and standardised nonword reading assessments. Results suggested that all participants, irrespective of oral language and phonological processing profiles, made significant gains in decoding accuracy and orthographic learning for targeted vowel digraphs on researcher-developed nonword reading assessments, with clinically significant gains on standardised measures of decoding, and trends for generalisation in spelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the effect of wearing a face mask on word recognition in hearing-impaired listeners. Word recognition scores were obtained in quiet and in different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs 0, +5, and +10 dB) using two listening conditions (with N95 mask and with no-mask). Participants were forty-six listeners with normal hearing sensitivity and thirty-nine listeners with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss. Results showed that wearing a face mask affected word recognition and that this effect was greater for listeners with hearing impairment than that observed for listeners with normal hearing sensitivity. The extent of this effect was also dependent on the SNR conditions such that the effect of wearing a face mask was worse in adverse listening conditions. Overall, this study demonstrated that face mask can disrupt speech intelligibility possibly by degrading some acoustical features which may pose substantial difficulties for those with hearing impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-focus has been shown to induce negative thoughts and affects. We hypothesized that individual differences in sense of entrapment moderate the effects of self-focus on failure- and escape-thought accessibility. Participants (N = 150) were briefly primed with their first names or a random string of letters (33 ms), before completing a lexical decision task with words related to success, failure and escape, as well as neutral words. Compared to the control condition, first name priming facilitated identification of failure-related words, and this effect was moderated by self-reported feelings of entrapment. A similar, although marginal, facilitation of name priming was also observed for escape-related words. Sense of entrapment appears to be a vulnerability factor to the negative effects of self-focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]