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Baciu M, Roger E. Finding the Words: How Does the Aging Brain Process Language? A Focused Review of Brain Connectivity and Compensatory Pathways. Top Cogn Sci 2024. [PMID: 38734967 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2023] [Revised: 04/30/2024] [Accepted: 05/02/2024] [Indexed: 05/13/2024]
Abstract
As people age, there is a natural decline in cognitive functioning and brain structure. However, the relationship between brain function and cognition in older adults is neither straightforward nor uniform. Instead, it is complex, influenced by multiple factors, and can vary considerably from one person to another. Reserve, compensation, and maintenance mechanisms may help explain why some older adults can maintain high levels of performance while others struggle. These mechanisms are often studied concerning memory and executive functions that are particularly sensitive to the effects of aging. However, language abilities can also be affected by age, with changes in production fluency. The impact of brain changes on language abilities needs to be further investigated to understand the dynamics and patterns of aging, especially successful aging. We previously modeled several compensatory profiles of language production and lexical access/retrieval in aging within the Lexical Access and Retrieval in Aging (LARA) model. In the present paper, we propose an extended version of the LARA model, called LARA-Connectivity (LARA-C), incorporating recent evidence on brain connectivity. Finally, we discuss factors that may influence the strategies implemented with aging. The LARA-C model can serve as a framework to understand individual performance and open avenues for possible personalized interventions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Monica Baciu
- LPNC, Psychology Department, Grenoble Alps University
- Neurology Department, Grenoble Alps University Hospital
| | - Elise Roger
- LPNC, Psychology Department, Grenoble Alps University
- Communication and Aging Laboratory, Research Center of the University Institute of Geriatrics of Montreal
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal
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Fuhrmeister P, Elbuy S, Bürki A. Are Faster Participants Always Faster? Assessing Reliability of Participants' Mean Response Speed in Picture Naming. J Cogn 2024; 7:12. [PMID: 38223223 PMCID: PMC10786007 DOI: 10.5334/joc.337] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2021] [Accepted: 12/06/2023] [Indexed: 01/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Studies of language production often make use of picture naming tasks to investigate the cognitive processes involved in speaking, and many of these studies report a wide range of individual variability in how long speakers need to prepare the name of a picture. It has been assumed that this variability can be linked to inter-individual differences in cognitive skills or abilities (e.g., attention or working memory); therefore, several studies have tried to explain variability in language production tasks by correlating production measures with scores on cognitive tests. This approach, however, relies on the assumption that participants are reliable over time in their picture naming speed (i.e., that faster speakers are consistently fast). The current study explicitly tested this assumption by asking participants to complete a simple picture naming task twice with one to two weeks in between sessions. In one experiment, we show that picture naming speed has excellent within-task reliability and good test-retest reliability, at least when participants perform the same task in both sessions. In a second experiment with slight task variations across sessions (a speeded and non-speeded picture naming task), we replicated the high split-half reliability and found moderate consistency over tasks. These findings are as predicted under the assumption that the speed of initiating responses for speech production is an intrinsic property or capacity of an individual. We additionally discuss the consequences of these results for the statistical power of correlational designs.
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Dominguez A, Santos A, Fu Y. The Access to Grammatical Number in Spanish Children and Adults. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:2499-2515. [PMID: 37656324 PMCID: PMC10703981 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-10008-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/10/2023] [Indexed: 09/02/2023]
Abstract
In Spanish, the plural form in plural dominant frequency pairs, like "diente/dientes" [tooth/teeth], occurs more frequently than the corresponding singular form. On the other hand, for the singular dominant frequency pairs such as "cometa/cometas" [kite/kites], the singular form is more common than the plural. The recognition of singular forms by adult readers is dependent on the dominance factor, while the identification of plural forms relies on the frequency of the stem. Given that age and reading experience may influence morphological processing of words, we investigate the representation of singulars and plurals in Spanish primary school children in Third Grade (8/9) and Sixth Grade (11/12) and adults through a lexical decision task. Though children's lexical decisions were twice as slow as adults, the pattern of morphological processing was consistent across ages: dominant plural forms resulted in decision times that were comparable to those of non-dominant singular forms, while recognition of singular-dominant forms was quicker than recognition of plural non-dominant forms. It appears that singulars are accessed and stored in the lexical memory as separate entities, while plurals depend on their morphological closer relatives, in this case, the singular forms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alberto Dominguez
- Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia (IUNE), Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain.
| | - Anthea Santos
- Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia (IUNE), Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain
| | - Yang Fu
- Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia (IUNE), Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain
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Lorenz A, Pino D, Jescheniak JD, Obrig H. On the lexical representation of compound nouns: Evidence from a picture-naming task with compound targets and gender-marked determiner primes in aphasia. Cortex 2021; 146:116-140. [PMID: 34856428 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.09.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2021] [Revised: 08/06/2021] [Accepted: 09/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Our study examines the lexical representation and processing of compounds in participants with aphasia (PWA) and language-unimpaired control speakers. Participants were engaged in primed picture-naming in German, a language that marks for grammatical gender. Gender-marked determiners served as primes (dermasc, diefem, dasneut [the]) and noun-noun compounds as targets (e.g., Goldneutfischmasc [goldfish]). Experiment 1 tested whether the compound's constituents are activated at a lexical-syntactic level during production. Primes were gender-congruent either with the morphological head of the target compound (e.g., dermasc for the target Goldneutfischmasc), or its modifier (dasneut for Goldneutfischmasc), or incongruent with both (diefem). Head congruency of prime and target produced strong facilitatory effects across groups. Modifier congruent primes produced contrasting effects. Modifier congruency speeded up picture naming in the controls and PWA with isolated deficits of lexical access (PWA-lex) but they delayed picture naming in PWA with additional deficits of phonological encoding (PWA-pho). Both patterns suggest that the lemmas of both constituents of compound targets and their grammatical gender are activated during compound retrieval, in line with a multiple-lemma representation of compounds. Experiment 2 explored the nature of the observed effects compared to a gender-neutral control condition. While facilitatory effects were shown by PWA-lex and the controls, PWA-pho did not profit from congruent primes but showed inhibitory effects by incongruent primes, exclusively. Inhibitory effects were also attested for the controls but not for PWA-lex. The functional origin of determiner priming effects and their theoretical and clinical implications are discussed in the framework of current accounts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antje Lorenz
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Danièle Pino
- Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital / Faculty of Medicine, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department Neurology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jörg D Jescheniak
- Institute of Psychology - Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Hellmuth Obrig
- Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital / Faculty of Medicine, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department Neurology, Leipzig, Germany
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Reifegerste J, Meyer AS, Zwitserlood P, Ullman MT. Aging affects steaks more than knives: Evidence that the processing of words related to motor skills is relatively spared in aging. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2021; 218:104941. [PMID: 34015683 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2021.104941] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2019] [Revised: 12/21/2020] [Accepted: 03/26/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Lexical-processing declines are a hallmark of aging. However, the extent of these declines may vary as a function of different factors. Motivated by findings from neurodegenerative diseases and healthy aging, we tested whether 'motor-relatedness' (the degree to which words are associated with particular human body movements) might moderate such declines. We investigated this question by examining data from three experiments. The experiments were carried out in different languages (Dutch, German, English) using different tasks (lexical decision, picture naming), and probed verbs and nouns, in all cases controlling for potentially confounding variables (e.g., frequency, age-of-acquisition, imageability). Whereas 'non-motor words' (e.g., steak) showed age-related performance decreases in all three experiments, 'motor words' (e.g., knife) yielded either smaller decreases (in one experiment) or no decreases (in two experiments). The findings suggest that motor-relatedness can attenuate or even prevent age-related lexical declines, perhaps due to the relative sparing of neural circuitry underlying such words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jana Reifegerste
- Brain and Language Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA; Department of Psychology and Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany; Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Germany.
| | - Antje S Meyer
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Pienie Zwitserlood
- Department of Psychology and Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
| | - Michael T Ullman
- Brain and Language Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.
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Lorenz A, Zwitserlood P, Bürki A, Regel S, Ouyang G, Abdel Rahman R. Morphological facilitation and semantic interference in compound production: An ERP study. Cognition 2021; 209:104518. [PMID: 33545513 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104518] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2019] [Revised: 10/28/2020] [Accepted: 11/11/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
This study investigates the production of nominal compounds (Experiment 1) and simple nouns (Experiment 2) in a picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm to test models of morpho-lexical representation and processing. The continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) was registered and event-related brain potentials [ERPs] were analyzed in addition to picture-naming latencies. Experiment 1 used morphologically and semantically related distractor words to tap into different pre-articulatory planning stages during compound production. Relative to unrelated distractors, naming was speeded when distractors corresponded to morphemes of the compound (sun or flower for the target sunflower), but slowed when distractors were from the same semantic category as the compound (tulip ➔ sunflower). Distractors from the same category as the compound's first constituent (moon ➔ sunflower) had no influence. The diverging effects for semantic and morphological distractors replicate results from earlier studies. ERPs revealed different effects of morphological and semantic distractors with an interesting time course: morphological effects had an earlier onset. Comparable to the naming latencies, no ERP effects were obtained for distractors from the same semantic category as the compound's first constituent. Experiment 2 investigated the effectiveness of the latter distractors, presenting them with pictures of the compounds' first constituents (e.g., moon ➔ sun). Interference was confirmed both behaviorally and in the ERPs, showing that the absence of an effect in Experiment 1 was not due to the materials used. Considering current models of speech production, the data are best explained by a cascading flow of activation throughout semantic, lexical and morpho-phonological steps of speech planning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antje Lorenz
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
| | - Pienie Zwitserlood
- Department of Psychology and Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany
| | - Audrey Bürki
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany
| | - Stefanie Regel
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
| | - Guang Ouyang
- Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, China
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
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Lorenz A, Regel S, Zwitserlood P, Rahman RA. Age-related effects in compound production: Intact lexical representations but more effortful encoding. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2018; 191:289-309. [PMID: 30404741 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.09.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2017] [Revised: 08/29/2018] [Accepted: 09/03/2018] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
The production of nominal compounds in the presence of morphological, semantic, and unrelated distractor words (picture-word interference paradigm) was investigated in young (M = 27 years) and older (M = 70.5 years) German speakers to test models of speech production and lexical representation. Constituent distractors of compound targets (lip or stick for the target LIPSTICK) speeded compound naming, while naming was slowed by distractors that were categorically related to the compound as a whole (powder → LIPSTICK). Furthermore, no effects were obtained for distractors from the same category as the first constituent of compound targets in picture-naming latencies (toe → LIPSTICK). These effects were present in both age groups and indicate that compounds are stored holistically at the lemma level, and as morphemes at the word-form level, unaffected by age. Main effects of age revealed overall slower picture naming and less accurate responses in the elderly. Furthermore, older speakers showed stronger morphological facilitation, while semantic distractor effects were unaffected by age. In a non-verbal attentional control task (Simon task), older speakers were slower overall and showed larger processing costs than young speakers in the conflict (incongruent) condition. Our data replicate a decline in non-verbal attentional control with age and also reveal slower and more error-prone picture-naming in the elderly. These language-specific changes, however, seem to be independent from attentional control and are likely to result from less fluent morpho-phonological encoding in the elderly.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antje Lorenz
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
| | - Stefanie Regel
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
| | - Pienie Zwitserlood
- Department of Psychology, Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
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