Does pain hurt more in Spanish? The neurobiology of pain among Spanish-English bilingual adults

We previously found Spanish-English bilingual adults reported higher pain intensity when exposed to painful heat in the language of their stronger cultural orientation. Here, we elucidate brain systems involved in language-driven alterations in pain responses. During separate English- and Spanish-speaking fMRI scanning runs, 39 (21 female) bilingual adults rated painful heat intermixed between culturally evocative images and completed sentence reading tasks. Surveys of cultural identity and language use measured relative preference for US-American vs Hispanic culture (cultural orientation). Participants produced higher intensity ratings in Spanish compared to English. Group-level whole-brain differences in pain-evoked activity between languages emerged in somatosensory, cingulate, precuneus and cerebellar cortex. Regions of interest associated with semantic, attention and somatosensory processing showed higher average pain-evoked responses in participants' culturally preferred language, as did expression of a multivariate pain-predictive pattern. Follow-up moderated mediation analyses showed somatosensory activity mediated language effects on pain intensity, particularly for Hispanic oriented participants. These findings relate to distinct ('meddler', 'spotlight' and 'inducer') hypotheses about the nature of language effects on perception and cognition. Knowledge of language influences on pain could improve efficacy of culturally sensitive treatment approaches across the diversity of Hispanic adults to mitigate documented health disparities in this population.

Grounded Cognition Entails Linguistic Relativity: A Neglected Implication of a Major Semantic Theory

According to the popular Grounded Cognition Model (GCM), the sensory and motor features of concepts, including word meanings, are stored directly within neural systems for perception and action. More precisely, the core claim is that these concrete conceptual features reuse some of the same modality-specific representations that serve to categorize experiences involving the relevant kinds of objects and events. Research in semantic typology, however, has shown that word meanings vary significantly across the roughly 6500 languages in the world. I argue that this crosslinguistic semantic diversity has significant yet previously unrecognized theoretical consequences for the GCM. In particular, to accommodate the typological data, the GCM must assume that the concrete features of word meanings are not merely stored within sensory/motor brain systems, but are represented there in ways that are, to a nontrivial degree, language-specific. Moreover, it must assume that these conceptual representations are also activated during the nonlinguistic processing of the relevant kinds of objects and events (e.g., during visual perception and action planning); otherwise, they would not really be grounded, which is to say, embedded inside sensory/motor systems. Crucially, however, such activations would constitute what is traditionally called linguistic relativity-that is, the influence of language-specific semantic structures on other forms of cognition. The overarching aim of this paper is to elaborate this argument more fully and explore its repercussions. To that end, I discuss in greater detail the key aspects of the GCM, the evidence for crosslinguistic semantic diversity, pertinent work on linguistic relativity, the central claim that the GCM entails linguistic relativity, some initial supporting results, and some important limitations and future directions.

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Across languages, words carve up the world of experience in different ways. For example, English lacks an equivalent to the Chinese superordinate noun tiáowèipǐn, which is loosely translated as "ingredients used to season food while cooking." Do such differences matter? A conventional label may offer a uniquely effective way of communicating. On the other hand, lexical gaps may be easily bridged by the compositional power of language. After all, most of the ideas we want to express do not map onto simple lexical forms. We conducted a referential Director/Matcher communication task with adult speakers of Chinese and English. Directors provided a clue that Matchers used to select words from a word grid. The three target words corresponded to a superordinate term (e.g., beverages) in either Chinese or English but not both. We found that Matchers were more accurate at choosing the target words when their language lexicalized the target category. This advantage was driven entirely by the Directors' use/non-use of the intended superordinate term. The presence of a conventional superordinate had no measurable effect on speakers' within- or between-category similarity ratings. These results show that the ability to rely on a conventional term is surprisingly important despite the flexibility languages offer to communicate about non-lexicalized categories.

¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing

In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors' personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities.

Early detection of language categories in face perception

Does language categorization influence face identification? The present study addressed this question by means of two experiments. First, to establish language categorization of faces, the memory confusion paradigm was used to create two language categories of faces, Spanish and English. Subsequently, participants underwent an oddball paradigm, in which faces that had been previously paired with one of the two languages (Spanish or English), were presented. We measured EEG perceptual differences (vMMN) between standard and two types of deviant faces: within-language category (faces sharing language with standards) or between-language category (faces paired with the other language). Participants were more likely to confuse faces within the language category than between categories, an index that faces were categorized by language. At the neural level, early vMMN were obtained for between-language category faces, but not for within-language category faces. At a later stage, however, larger vMMNs were obtained for those faces from the same language category. Our results showed that language is a relevant social cue that individuals used to categorize others and this categorization subsequently affects face perception.

Effects of Language on Visual Perception

Does language change what we perceive? Does speaking different languages cause us to perceive things differently? We review the behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the influence of language on perception, with an emphasis on the visual modality. Effects of language on perception can be observed both in higher-level processes such as recognition and in lower-level processes such as discrimination and detection. A consistent finding is that language causes us to perceive in a more categorical way. Rather than being fringe or exotic, as they are sometimes portrayed, we discuss how effects of language on perception naturally arise from the interactive and predictive nature of perception.

Semantic verbal fluency task: The effects of age, educational level, and sex in Lebanese-speaking adults

Verbal fluency tasks are considered clinically valuable measures of cognitive impairment for they are short, easy to score and administer, and of low costs. Sociodemographic, cultural, and linguistic variables have been shown to affect verbal fluency performance. Information concerning the effects of sociodemographic variables on semantic verbal fluency (SVF) performance in Lebanon and other Arabic-speaking countries is lacking. This study examined the effects of age, educational level, and sex on SVF performance in healthy Lebanese-speaking adults. Data were obtained from 70 adult Lebanese speakers ages 19-79. Participants were presented with fourteen categories, each at a time, and were asked to generate as many exemplars as they could in 60 seconds. Results from regression analyses showed that age (p < .001) and educational level (p = .002) variables had significant effects on overall SVF performance resulting in younger adults and adults with higher educational levels achieving higher SVF scores. Overall, sex did not emerge a predictor of SVF performance. Category-specific differences demonstrate variability. Consequently, the effects education and age present on SVF may be due to their critical roles in the semantic and non-semantic components of SVF, respectively.

(Not so) Great Expectations: Listening to Foreign-Accented Speech Reduces the Brain's Anticipatory Processes

This study examines the effect of foreign-accented speech on the predictive ability of our brain. Listeners actively anticipate upcoming linguistic information in the speech signal so as to facilitate and reduce processing load. However, it is unclear whether or not listeners also do this when they are exposed to speech from non-native speakers. In the present study, we exposed native Dutch listeners to sentences produced by native and non-native speakers while measuring their brain activity using electroencephalography. We found that listeners’ brain activity differed depending on whether they listened to native or non-native speech. However, participants’ overall performance as measured by word recall rate was unaffected. We discussed the results in relation to previous findings as well as the automaticity of anticipation.

Language can shape the perception of oriented objects

Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object's configuration. We show that language can also shape our knowledge about visual objects. We investigated sign language that enables deaf individuals to communicate through hand movements with as much expressive power as any other natural language. A few signs represent objects in a specific orientation. Sign-language users (signers) recognized visual objects faster when oriented as in the sign, and this match in orientation elicited specific brain responses in signers, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). Further analyses suggested that signers' responsiveness to object orientation derived from changes in the visual object representations induced by the signs. Our results also show that language facilitates discrimination between objects of the same kind (e.g., different cars), an effect never reported before with spoken languages. By focusing on sign language we could better characterize the impact of language (a uniquely human ability) on object visual processing.

Semantic Knowledge Enhances Conscious Awareness of Visual Objects

It is becoming increasingly established that information from long-term memory can influence early perceptual processing, a finding that is in line with recent theoretical approaches to cognition such as the predictive coding framework. Notwithstanding, the impact of semantic knowledge on conscious perception and the temporal dynamics of such an influence remain unclear. To address this question, we presented pictures of novel objects to participants as the second of two targets in an attentional blink paradigm. We found that associating newly acquired semantic knowledge to objects increased overall conscious detection in comparison to objects associated with minimal knowledge while controlling for object familiarity. Additionally, event-related brain potentials revealed a corresponding modulation beginning 100 msec after stimulus presentation in the P1 component. Furthermore, the size of this modulation was correlated with participant's subjective reports of conscious perception. These findings suggest that semantic knowledge can shape the contents of consciousness by affecting early stages of perceptual processing.

Neuronal correlates of label facilitated tactile perception

It is a long-standing question in neurolinguistics, to what extent language can have a causal effect on perception. A recent behavioural study reported that participants improved their discrimination ability of Braille-like tactile stimuli after one week of implicit association training with language stimuli being co-presented redundantly with the tactile stimuli. In that experiment subjects were exposed twice a day for 1 h to the joint presentation of tactile stimuli presented to the fingertip and auditorily presented pseudowords. Their discrimination ability improved only for those tactile stimuli that were consistently paired with pseudowords, but not for those that were discordantly paired with different pseudowords. Thereby, a causal effect of verbal labels on tactile perception has been demonstrated under controlled laboratory conditions. This raises the question as to what the neuronal mechanisms underlying this implicit learning effect are. Here, we present fMRI data collected before and after the aforementioned behavioral learning to test for changes in brain connectivity as the underlying mechanism of the observed behavioral effects. The comparison of pre- and post-training revealed a language-driven increase in connectivity strength between auditory and secondary somatosensory cortex and the hippocampus as an association-learning related region.

Die Beziehung zwischen sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Kognition

Zusammenfassung. Die Beziehung zwischen sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Kognition ist wenig verstanden. In der Vergangenheit wurden einige Arbeiten veröffentlicht, deren Ergebnisse in der Regel so interpretiert wurden, dass die sprachliche Kognition kaum oder gar nicht die nicht-sprachliche Kognition beeinflusst. Dies hat unseres Erachtens in der Vergangenheit dazu geführt, dass sprachliche und nicht-sprachliche Kognition eher separat beforscht wurden und zu der Vorstellung beigetragen, dass Sprache ein eigenständiges Modul innerhalb des kognitiven Systems besitzt, das funktional unabhängig von nicht-sprachlichen Prozessen ist. In jüngerer Zeit werden diese beiden Bereiche der Kognition im Rahmen des Grounded-Cognition-Ansatzes zusammengeführt, wobei allerdings linguistische Gesichtspunkte unberücksichtigt bleiben (z. B. die kompositionale Struktur sprachlicher Bedeutung). Daher sind die theoretischen Grenzen dieses Ansatzes als umfassendes Modell des menschlichen Sprachverstehens schon jetzt erkennbar. Nicht ganz unabhängig davon, erlebt die Forschung über das Verhältnis von Sprache und Denken in den letzten Jahren eine Wiederbelebung, die im Gegensatz zum Grounded-Cognition-Ansatz eher für die Vorstellung einer funktionalen Trennung von sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Kognition spricht. Wir vertreten hier die These, dass das Verhältnis von sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Kognition stark davon abhängt, welche Repräsentationsformen die beiden Bereiche involvieren. Wir diskutieren dabei zwei Sichtweisen (eine Zwei-Format-Sichtweise und eine Ein-Format-Sichtweise) und analysieren deren Implikationen für das theoretische Verständnis über den Zusammenhang von und sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Kognition. Wir verdeutlichen diese Konzepte anhand aktueller Forschungsergebnisse. Unserer Meinung nach generiert die Ein–Format-Hypothese derzeit mehr Fragen als sie beantwortet. Im Gegensatz dazu erscheint uns die Zwei-Format-Hypothese als Forschungsansatz für die Kognitionspsychologie vielversprechender.

Dissociating Attention Effects from Categorical Perception with ERP Functional Microstates

When faces appear in our visual environment we naturally attend to them, possibly to the detriment of other visual information. Evidence from behavioural studies suggests that faces capture attention because they are more salient than other types of visual stimuli, reflecting a category-dependent modulation of attention. By contrast, neuroimaging data has led to a domain-specific account of face perception that rules out the direct contribution of attention, suggesting a dedicated neural network for face perception. Here we sought to dissociate effects of attention from categorical perception using Event Related Potentials. Participants viewed physically matched face and butterfly images, with each category acting as a target stimulus during different blocks in an oddball paradigm. Using a data-driven approach based on functional microstates, we show that the locus of endogenous attention effects with ERPs occurs in the N1 time range. Earlier categorical effects were also found around the level of the P1, reflecting either an exogenous increase in attention towards face stimuli, or a putative face-selective measure. Both category and attention effects were dissociable from one another hinting at the role that faces may play in early capturing of attention before top-down control of attention is observed. Our data support the conclusion that certain object categories, in this experiment, faces, may capture attention before top-down voluntary control of attention is initiated.

Neurolinguistic Relativity: How Language Flexes Human Perception and Cognition

The time has come, perhaps, to go beyond merely acknowledging that language is a core manifestation of the workings of the human mind and that it relates interactively to all aspects of thinking. The issue, thus, is not to decide whether language and human thought may be ineluctably linked (they just are), but rather to determine what the characteristics of this relationship may be and to understand how language influences-and may be influenced by-nonverbal information processing. In an attempt to demystify linguistic relativity, I review neurolinguistic studies from our research group showing a link between linguistic distinctions and perceptual or conceptual processing. On the basis of empirical evidence showing effects of terminology on perception, language-idiosyncratic relationships in semantic memory, grammatical skewing of event conceptualization, and unconscious modulation of executive functioning by verbal input, I advocate a neurofunctional approach through which we can systematically explore how languages shape human thought.

Words Jump-Start Vision: A Label Advantage in Object Recognition

People use language to shape each other's behavior in highly flexible ways. Effects of language are often assumed to be "high-level" in that, whereas language clearly influences reasoning, decision making, and memory, it does not influence low-level visual processes. Here, we test the prediction that words are able to provide top-down guidance at the very earliest stages of visual processing by acting as powerful categorical cues. We investigated whether visual processing of images of familiar animals and artifacts was enhanced after hearing their name (e.g., "dog") compared with hearing an equally familiar and unambiguous nonverbal sound (e.g., a dog bark) in 14 English monolingual speakers. Because the relationship between words and their referents is categorical, we expected words to deploy more effective categorical templates, allowing for more rapid visual recognition. By recording EEGs, we were able to determine whether this label advantage stemmed from changes to early visual processing or later semantic decision processes. The results showed that hearing a word affected early visual processes and that this modulation was specific to the named category. An analysis of ERPs showed that the P1 was larger when people were cued by labels compared with equally informative nonverbal cues-an enhancement occurring within 100 ms of image onset, which also predicted behavioral responses occurring almost 500 ms later. Hearing labels modulated the P1 such that it distinguished between target and nontarget images, showing that words rapidly guide early visual processing.

Second language feedback abolishes the "hot hand" effect during even-probability gambling

Research into language-emotion interactions has revealed intriguing cognitive inhibition effects by emotionally negative words in bilinguals. Here, we turn to the domain of human risk taking and show that the experience of positive recency in games of chance-the "hot hand" effect-is diminished when game outcomes are provided in a second language rather than the native language. We engaged late Chinese-English bilinguals with "play" or "leave" decisions upon presentation of equal-odds bets while manipulating language of feedback and outcome value. When positive game outcomes were presented in their second language, English, participants subsequently took significantly fewer gambles and responded slower compared with the trials in which equivalent feedback was provided in Chinese, their native language. Positive feedback was identified as driving the cross-language difference in preference for risk over certainty: feedback for previous winning outcomes presented in Chinese increased subsequent risk taking, whereas in the English context no such effect was observed. Complementing this behavioral effect, event-related brain potentials elicited by feedback words showed an amplified response to Chinese relative to English in the feedback-related negativity window, indicating a stronger impact in the native than in the second language. We also observed a main effect of language on P300 amplitude and found it correlated with the cross-language difference in risk selections, suggesting that the greater the difference in attention between languages, the greater the difference in risk-taking behavior. These results provide evidence that the hot hand effect is at least attenuated when an individual operates in a non-native language.

On the road to somewhere: Brain potentials reflect language effects on motion event perception

Recent studies have identified neural correlates of language effects on perception in static domains of experience such as colour and objects. The generalization of such effects to dynamic domains like motion events remains elusive. Here, we focus on grammatical differences between languages relevant for the description of motion events and their impact on visual scene perception. Two groups of native speakers of German or English were presented with animated videos featuring a dot travelling along a trajectory towards a geometrical shape (endpoint). English is a language with grammatical aspect in which attention is drawn to trajectory and endpoint of motion events equally. German, in contrast, is a non-aspect language which highlights endpoints. We tested the comparative perceptual saliency of trajectory and endpoint of motion events by presenting motion event animations (primes) followed by a picture symbolising the event (target): In 75% of trials, the animation was followed by a mismatching picture (both trajectory and endpoint were different); in 10% of trials, only the trajectory depicted in the picture matched the prime; in 10% of trials, only the endpoint matched the prime; and in 5% of trials both trajectory and endpoint were matching, which was the condition requiring a response from the participant. In Experiment 1 we recorded event-related brain potentials elicited by the picture in native speakers of German and native speakers of English. German participants exhibited a larger P3 wave in the endpoint match than the trajectory match condition, whereas English speakers showed no P3 amplitude difference between conditions. In Experiment 2 participants performed a behavioural motion matching task using the same stimuli as those used in Experiment 1. German and English participants did not differ in response times showing that motion event verbalisation cannot readily account for the difference in P3 amplitude found in the first experiment. We argue that, even in a non-verbal context, the grammatical properties of the native language and associated sentence-level patterns of event encoding influence motion event perception, such that attention is automatically drawn towards aspects highlighted by the grammar.

Language and culture modulate online semantic processing

Language has been shown to influence non-linguistic cognitive operations such as colour perception, object categorization and motion event perception. Here, we show that language also modulates higher level processing, such as semantic knowledge. Using event-related brain potentials, we show that highly fluent Welsh-English bilinguals require significantly less processing effort when reading sentences in Welsh which contain factually correct information about Wales, than when reading sentences containing the same information presented in English. Crucially, culturally irrelevant information was processed similarly in both Welsh and English. Our findings show that even in highly proficient bilinguals, language interacts with factors associated with personal identity, such as culture, to modulate online semantic processing.

Does the semantic content of verbal categories influence categorical perception? An ERP study

Accumulating evidence suggests that visual perception and, in particular, visual discrimination, can be influenced by verbal category boundaries. One issue that still awaits systematic investigation is the specific influence of semantic contents of verbal categories on categorical perception (CP). We tackled this issue with a learning paradigm in which initially unfamiliar, yet realistic objects were associated with either bare labels lacking explicit semantic content or labels that were accompanied by enriched semantic information about the specific meaning of the label. Two to three days after learning, the EEG was recorded while participants performed a lateralized oddball task. Newly acquired verbal category boundaries modulated low-level aspects of visual perception as early as 100-150 ms after stimulus onset, suggesting a genuine influence of language on perception. Importantly, this effect was not further influenced by enriched semantic category information, suggesting that bare labels and the associated minimal and predominantly perceptual information are sufficient for CP. Distinct effects of semantic knowledge independent of category boundaries were found subsequently, starting at about 200 ms, possibly reflecting selective attention to semantically meaningful visual features.

Compound words prompt arbitrary semantic associations in conceptual memory

Linguistic relativity theory has received empirical support in domains such as color perception and object categorization. It is unknown, however, whether relations between words idiosyncratic to language impact non-verbal representations and conceptualizations. For instance, would one consider the concepts of horse and sea as related were it not for the existence of the compound seahorse? Here, we investigated such arbitrary conceptual relationships using a non-linguistic picture relatedness task in participants undergoing event-related brain potential recordings. Picture pairs arbitrarily related because of a compound and presented in the compound order elicited N400 amplitudes similar to unrelated pairs. Surprisingly, however, pictures presented in the reverse order (as in the sequence horse–sea) reduced N400 amplitudes significantly, demonstrating the existence of a link in memory between these two concepts otherwise unrelated. These results break new ground in the domain of linguistic relativity by revealing predicted semantic associations driven by lexical relations intrinsic to language.