Literacy skill and intra-individual variability in eye-fixation durations during reading: Evidence from a diverse community-based adult sample

Approaches to studying emotion using physiological responses to spoken narratives: A scoping review

Narratives are effective tools for evoking emotions, and physiological measurements provide a means of objectively assessing emotional reactions - making them a potentially powerful pair of tools for studying emotional processes. However, extent research combining emotional narratives and physiological measurement varies widely in design and application, making it challenging to identify previous work, consolidate findings, and design effective experiments. Our scoping review explores the use of auditory emotional narratives and physiological measures in research, examining paradigms, study populations, and represented emotions. Following the PRISMA-ScR Checklist, we searched five databases for peer-reviewed experimental studies that used spoken narratives to induce emotion and reported autonomic physiological measures. Among 3466 titles screened and 653 articles reviewed, 110 studies were included. Our exploration revealed a variety of applications and experimental paradigms; emotional narratives paired with physiological measures have been used to study diverse topics and populations, including neurotypical and clinical groups. Although incomparable designs and sometimes contradictory results precluded general recommendations as regards which physiological measures to use when designing new studies, as a whole, the body of work suggests that these tools can be valuable to study emotions. Our review offers an overview of research employing narratives and physiological measures for emotion study, and highlights weaknesses in reporting practices and gaps in our knowledge concerning the robustness and specificity of physiological measures as indices of emotion. We discuss study design considerations and transparent reporting, to facilitate future using emotional narratives and physiological measures in studying emotions.

Language Analytic Ability, Print Exposure, Memory and Comprehension of Complex Syntax by Adult Native Speakers

Nativist theories of language development assume that all native speakers of a particular language ultimately converge on (more or less) the same grammar, and argue that this is only possible because they are born with a genetic blueprint for language. However, a number of recent studies have found that there are, in fact, considerable individual differences in adult native speakers' grammatical attainment. In this study, we examine some possible reasons for these differences. We examine both learner internal cognitive factors (implicit and explicit memory for sequences, non-verbal working memory, and language analytic ability) as well as an experiential factor (print exposure). In contrast to many earlier studies which focused on the temporal aspects of language processing, we are interested in the extent to which individuals are able to use grammatical cues to extract meaning from complex sentences. To minimize the effect of performance factors, sentences remained on screen while participants responded to comprehension questions (thus easing working memory load) and participants were given as much time as they needed to respond. Our findings revealed large effects of language analytic ability and print exposure, and a much smaller effect of implicit learning. While the effect of implicit learning fits in well with current theories of language acquisition and processing, the first two findings do not. The strong relationship between print exposure and comprehension suggests that the ability to process complex syntax may depend on a particular type of language experience which is not available to all speakers. Finally, the effect of language analytic ability challenges the wide-held conviction that the ability to identify and explicitly reason about linguistic patterns is only relevant in adult second language learning.

Looking for a word or for its meaning? The impact of induction tasks on adolescents' visual search for verbal material

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to examine whether the pre-activation of different word-processing pathways by means of semantic versus perceptual induction tasks could modify the way adults and 11- to 15-year-old adolescents searched for single target words within displays of nine words. The presence within the search displays of words either looking like the target word or semantically related to the target word was manipulated. The quality of participants' lexical representations was evaluated through three word-identification and vocabulary tests. Performing a semantic induction task rather than a perceptual one on the target word before searching for it increased search times by 15% in all age groups, reflecting an increase in both the number and duration of gazes directed to non-target words. Moreover, performing the semantic induction task increased the impact of distractor words that were semantically related to the target word on search efficiency. Participants' search efficiency increased with age because of a progressive increase in the quality of adolescents' lexical representations, which allowed participants to more quickly reject the distractors on which they fixated. Indeed, lexical quality scores explained 43% of the variance in search times independently of participants' age. In the simple visual search task used in this study, fostering semantic word processing through the semantic induction task slowed down visual search. However, the literature suggests that semantic induction tasks could, in contrast, help people find information more easily in more complex verbal environments where the meaning of words must be accessed to find task-relevant information.

Feedback beyond accuracy: Using eye-tracking to detect comprehensibility and interest during reading

Knowing what information a user wants is a paramount challenge to information science and technology. Implicit feedback is key to solving this challenge, as it allows information systems to learn about a user's needs and preferences. The available feedback, however, tends to be limited and its interpretation shows to be difficult. To tackle this challenge, we present a user study that explores whether tracking the eyes can unpack part of the complexity inherent to relevance and relevance decisions. The eye behavior of 30 participants reading 18 news articles was compared with their subjectively appraised comprehensibility and interest at a discourse level. Using linear regression models, the eye-tracking signal explained 49.93% (comprehensibility) and 30.41% (interest) of variance (p < .001). We conclude that eye behavior provides implicit feedback beyond accuracy that enables new forms of adaptation and interaction support for personalized information systems.

The Effects of Sustained Literacy Engagement on Cognition and Sentence Processing Among Older Adults

Considerable evidence suggests that language processing depends on memory processes, which are vulnerable to declines with aging. Yet little is known about the effects of language processing in the form of sustained literacy engagement on memory and other aspects of cognition. In the current study, adults (60-79 years of age) were randomly assigned to an 8-week program of leisure reading (n = 38) or to an active puzzle control (n = 38). Relative to the control, the experimental group showed differential improvement in verbal working memory and episodic memory. The experimental group also showed evidence of enhanced conceptual integration in sentence processing. These effects did not vary as a function of personality characteristics (e.g., openness) hypothesized to be compatible with literacy engagement. These findings support the idea that the exercise of cognitive capacities in the context of everyday life may offset age-related impairment in areas of cognition engaged by the activity, regardless of dispositional fit.

Age-related Changes in the Structure and Dynamics of the Semantic Network

Normal aging has variable effects on language comprehension, perhaps because comprehension mechanisms vary in their dependence on network structure versus network dynamics. To test claims that processing dynamics are more affected by age than structure, we used EEG to measure and compare the impact of neighborhood size, a core measure of the structure of the lexico-semantic network, and repetition, a simple measure of processing dynamics, on single word processing. Older adults showed robust effects of neighborhood size on the N400, comparable to those elicited by young adults, but reduced effects of repetition. Furthermore, older adults with greater verbal fluency, print exposure, and reading comprehension showed greater repetition effects, suggesting some older adults can maintain processing dynamics that are similar to those of young adults. Thus, the organizational structure of the semantic network seems stable across normal aging, but (some) older adults may struggle to adjust activation states within that network.

Examining the Role of General Cognitive Skills in Language Processing: A Window into Complex Cognition

Whenever we use language to communicate, sounds, signs, and/or letters are combined into words that, in turn, form sentences, which together tell a story. Both language production and language comprehension rely on representations at different levels of granularity that need to be continuously and rapidly activated, selected, and combined. The representations themselves are specific to language, but many processes that regulate their use, such as inhibition of competitors or updating of working memory with new information, are so-called domain-general abilities that apply across different kinds of tasks. Here, we provide an overview of the behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in favor of domain-general abilities underpinning language skills and describe which particular aspects of production and comprehension draw upon such cognitive resources. We discuss how this line of research not only reveals important similarities between production and comprehension but also helps to establish links between language and other cognitive domains. Finally, we argue that studying how domain-general abilities are used in language will lead to important insights into the highly dynamic and efficient communication between brain networks that is necessary to successfully go from sounds to stories.