Leticia Vivas

Spanish semantic feature production norms for 400 concrete concepts.

Semantic feature production norms provide many quantitative measures of different feature and concept variables that are necessary to solve some debates surrounding the nature of the organization, both normal and pathological, of semantic memory. Despite the current existence of norms for different languages, there are still no published norms in Spanish. This article presents a new set of norms collected from 810 participants for 400 living and nonliving concepts among Spanish speakers. These norms consist of empirical collections of features that participants used to describe the concepts. Four files were elaborated: a concept–feature file, a concept–concept matrix, a feature–feature matrix, and a significantly correlated features file. We expect that these norms will be useful for researchers in the fields of experimental psychology, neuropsychology, and psycholinguistics.

Recognition of thematic and taxonomic conceptual relations in patients with aphasia

Background: There is mounting evidence that there exist conceptual non-verbal deficits in patients with aphasia. In the current paper, taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations are the focus of interest. There is a debate surrounding this topic regarding whether they are part of the same semantic system or there are independent systems dedicated to each kind of relations. Aims: Our aim was to study and look for possible dissociations in a group of fluent and non-fluent aphasic patients on their ability to recognise conceptual relations (taxonomic and thematic). Methods & Procedures: Previous studies have usually proposed forced-choice tasks, which give the patients closed response options and do not allow the researcher to assess the criteria for the choice the participants have made. In the following study we assigned different types of conceptual tasks (forced choice and free choice) to a group of 25 stroke patients (7 fluent and 18 non-fluent aphasic patients), as well as 30 healthy control participants. We assessed the hit rates and the response criteria followed by the patients. Outcomes & Results: The results showed that although all aphasic patients experienced difficulties in establishing both types of conceptual relations in verbal tasks, dissociations were observed particularly in non-verbal tasks showing poor performance in thematic relations. This was especially noticeable in non-fluent aphasic patients. Meanwhile, fluent aphasic patients showed more difficulty in establishing taxonomic relations in the pictorial free-choice task and a tendency to use thematic criteria. Conclusion: These results support the claim that there exist separate systems for both kinds of conceptual relations. Implications for the assessment of semantic deficits in aphasic patients were discussed.

Core Semantic Links or Lexical Associations: Assessing the Nature of Responses in Word Association Tasks

AbstractThe processes tapped by the widely-used word association (WA) paradigm remain a matter of debate: while some authors consider them as driven by lexical co-occurrences, others emphasize the role of meaning-based connections. To test these contrastive hypotheses, we analyzed responses in a WA task in terms of their normative defining features (those describing the object denoted by the cue word). Results indicate that 72.5% of the responses had medium-to-high coincidence with such defining semantic features. Moreover, 75.51% of responses had medium-to-high values of Relevance (a measure of the importance of the feature for construing a given concept). Furthermore, most responses (62.7%) referred to elements of the situation in which the concept usually appears, followed by sensory properties (e.g., color) of the denoted object (27.86%). These results suggest that the processes behind WA tasks involve a reactivation of the cue item’s semantic properties, particularly those most relevant to its core meaning.

DIFFERENCES IN SEMANTIC FEATURE PRODUCTION BETWEEN HEALTHY OLDER AND YOUNG ADULTS

High Risk and LowAverage/poorMemory class were at an elevated risk of developing incident dementia (HR 1⁄4 13.6, 95%CI 1⁄4 5.9 -31.2 and HR 1⁄4 5.8, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.6 – 12.8) and incident AD (HR 1⁄4 11.1, 95%CI 1⁄4 4.7 – 25.9, and HR 1⁄4 5.0, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.2 – 11.2) in the first four years from baseline assessment, while participants in the Dysexecutive Function class were at an elevated risk for incident all-cause dementia and incident AD after four years of follow-up (HR 1⁄4 6.0, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.5 – 14.3, and HR 1⁄4 7.1, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.7 – 18.4). Results in the Elite class were not applicable in the first 4 years since therewere no cases and, after 4 years results were not significant (there were only 5 cases in total). Conclusions: This study highlights the clinical applicability of the association between a patient’s cognitive profile and future risk of all-cause dementia and AD. This area of research may lead to personalized risk profiles.

LOCAL PSYCHOLINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS IN NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT: THE ARGENTINE SPANISH EXPERIENCE

11.89, 11.82) years before AD diagnosis, where the trajectories transitioned from non-significant increase in performance over time to significant moderate declines in performance. The respective second change points were 3.95 (95% CI: 2.91, 4.98) years and 5.68 (95% CI: 4.40, 6.97) years before AD diagnosis, where the trajectories transitioned from moderate decline to accelerated decline. For long delayed recall, the 1-change point model fits the data best, and the only change point was 6.31 (95% CI: 5.62, 7.00) years before AD diagnosis. Conclusions:CVLT measures of verbal episodic memory show changes in trajectories almost 12 years before AD diagnosis, suggesting their potential utility in early detection of individuals at risk for AD.

Psycholinguistic variables involved in concept recall from the successive presentation of features / Variables psicolingüísticas involucradas en la evocación de conceptos a partir de la presentación de atributos sucesivos

Abstract The aim of this study was to analyse the psycholinguistic variables of the attributes and concepts involved in the recall of a concept. One hundred and twenty adults (18–40 years old) participated. A lexical recall task was administered by presenting a successive list of defining attributes. Forty concepts from different semantic categories were used. The attributes were obtained empirically from local Semantic Features Production Norms. The influence of the characteristics and attributes of the concepts on the number of participants who accessed the name of the concept and the correct guess trend was analysed. Significant values for Age of Acquisition, Presence of Distinctive Attributes and Presence of Taxonomic Attributes were observed. Results show that concepts which are acquired earliest are more easily recalled; presenting taxonomic categories narrows the search and the presence of distinctive attributes allow differentiating between such concepts within a category.