Svetlana Malyutina

Russian normative data for 375 action pictures and verbs

The present article introduces a Russian-language database of 375 action pictures and associated verbs with normative data. The pictures were normed for name agreement, conceptual familiarity, and subjective visual complexity, and measures of age of acquisition, imageability, and image agreement were collected for the verbs. Values of objective visual complexity, as well as information about verb frequency, length, argument structure, instrumentality, and name relation, are also provided. Correlations between these parameters are presented, along with a comparative analysis of the Russian name agreement norms and those collected in other languages. The full set of pictorial stimuli and the obtained norms may be freely downloaded from http://neuroling.ru/en/db.htm for use in research and for clinical purposes.

What is it that lingers? Garden-path (mis)interpretations in younger and older adults

Previous research has shown that comprehenders do not always conduct a full (re)analysis of temporarily ambiguous “garden-path” sentences. The present study used a sentence–picture matching task to investigate what kind of representations are formed when full reanalysis is not performed: Do comprehenders “blend” two incompatible representations as a result of shallow syntactic processing or do they erroneously maintain the initial incorrect parsing without incorporating new information, and does this vary with age? Twenty-five younger and 15 older adults performed a multiple-choice sentence–picture matching task with stimuli including early-closure garden-path sentences. The results suggest that the type of erroneous representation is affected by linguistic variables, such as sentence structure, verb type, and semantic plausibility, as well as by age. Older adults’ response patterns indicate an increased reliance on inferencing based on lexical and semantic cues, with a lower bar for accepting an initial parse and with a weaker drive to reanalyse a syntactic representation. Among younger adults, there was a tendency to blend two representations into a single interpretation, even if this was not licensed by the syntax.

On the Use of the Terms Anodal and Cathodal in High‐Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: A Technical Note

The terms “anodal” and “cathodal” are widely used to describe transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of opposing polarities, often interpreted as excitatory and inhibitory, respectively. However, high‐definition tDCS allows for complex electrode configurations that may not be characterized accurately as “anodal” and “cathodal.”

The effects of instrumentality and name relation on action naming in Russian speakers with aphasia

Background: A verb’s instrumentality and name relation to an associated instrument noun are among the factors influencing verb retrieval in speakers with aphasia. Previous data on the effects of these factors are equivocal, possibly due to language- and task-specific factors. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate the nature of the instrumentality and verb-noun name relation effects by retesting them in a large sample of Russian-speaking individuals with fluent and non-fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Forty Russian-speaking individuals with aphasia (twenty with fluent and twenty with non-fluent aphasia) and twenty controls performed an action naming task. Overall accuracy scores and qualitative error types were analysed. Outcomes & Results: A positive effect of instrumentality was found in both groups of individuals with aphasia. A negative effect of verb-noun name relation was found in non-fluent aphasia and was larger for verbs with a smaller overlap with the instrument noun. In both aphasia groups, semantically related errors were more numerous for non-instrumental than instrumental verbs, whereas phonological errors were more numerous for name-related than non-name-related instrumental verbs. Conclusions: The positive effect of instrumentality on verb retrieval may be attributed to a facilitatory effect of richer conceptual representations of instrumental verbs. The negative effect of name relation on verb retrieval may be explained by interference of the phonological form of the instrument noun. These factors influence verb retrieval in aphasia and should be taken into account when developing testing/treatment materials and stimuli for experimental studies.

Effects of representational distance between meanings on the neural correlates of semantic ambiguity

Psycholinguistic research demonstrates that representational distance between meanings influences recognition of ambiguous words. Our goal was to investigate whether the neural correlates of ambiguity are also modulated by representational distance as a function of syntactic similarity (i.e., grammatical class) and meaning dominance. In an event-related fMRI experiment, participants completed a visual lexical decision task that included balanced and unbalanced noun-noun and noun-verb homonyms, unambiguous words, and nonwords. Syntactic similarity effects were observed in left inferior frontal regions, with greater activation for noun-verb than noun-noun homonyms. Meaning dominance effects were observed in left middle and superior temporal regions, with greater activation for balanced than unbalanced homonyms. These findings indicate that the behavioral cost associated with processing ambiguous word meanings, modulated by syntactic similarity and meaning dominance, is reflected in the neural systems underlying ambiguity processing, as frontal and temporal regions are recruited by increased competition as a function of representational distance.

Modulating the interhemispheric balance in healthy participants with transcranial direct current stimulation: No significant effects on word or sentence processing

HighlightsWe compared bilateral tDCS to left anodal and right cathodal tDCS over IFG.tDCS did not show any significant effects at either single‐word or sentence level.The null result contributes to debates on tDCS and language in healthy individuals. Abstract Patient studies and brain stimulation evidence suggest that language processing can be enhanced by altering the interhemispheric balance: namely, preferentially enhancing left‐hemisphere activity while suppressing right‐hemisphere activity. To our knowledge, no study has yet compared the effects of such bilateral brain stimulation to both logically necessary control conditions (separate left‐ and right‐hemisphere stimulation). This study did so in a between‐group sham‐controlled design, applying transcranial direct current stimulation over Broca’s area and/or its homologue in 72 healthy participants. The effects were measured not only in a single‐word‐level task but also in a sentence‐level task, rarely tested previously. We did not find either any significant overall effects of stimulation or greater stimulation effects in the bilateral compared to control groups. This null result, obtained in a large sample, contributes to the debate on whether tDCS can modulate language processing in healthy individuals.

Verb Argument Structure in Narrative Speech: Mining AphasiaBank.

Previous research has found that verb argument structure characteristics (such as the number of participant roles in the situation described by the verb) can facilitate or hinder aphasic language production and comprehension in constrained laboratory tasks. This research needs to be complemented by studies of narrative or unrestricted speech, which can capture the spontaneous selection of verbs and grammatical structures by people with aphasia and may be particularly sensitive to the relative cost of access to different verb types in more natural conditions. Focusing on the number of subcategorization options, we investigated verb argument structure effects in a large sample of narratives from AphasiaBank, by speakers with aphasia, as well as control speakers without brain damage. Verb argument structure complexity did not negatively affect verb selection in any type of aphasia. However, people with aphasia, particularly with Brocas aphasia, used verbs in less complex and diverse ways, with fewer arguments and less diverse subcategorization options. In line with previous research, this suggests that deficits in verb use in aphasia are likely due to difficulties with the online application of or partial damage to verb argument structure knowledge.

Fishing is not wrestling: Neural underpinnings of the verb instrumentality effect

Abstract Previous clinical research has shown a positive effect of instrumentality on verb retrieval in individuals with aphasia. Performance on instrumental verbs incorporating an obligatory tool into their conceptual representation (e.g., to cut) is more accurate compared to non-instrumental verbs (e.g., to tear), possibly due to more specific conceptual representations of instrumental verbs. Seeking the neural correlates of the differences between instrumental and non-instrumental verbs, we conducted an fMRI study with 16 German speakers who performed a verb-object matching task with instrumental and non-instrumental verbs. We found that an extensive neural network including but not limited to frontal and temporal language-related areas was more involved in the semantic processing of non-instrumental compared to instrumental verbs. We argue that this reflects a greater load associated with the processing of less semantically structured/restricted representations of non-instrumental verbs. The unavailability of additional neural resources needed for the processing of non-instrumental verbs in individuals with aphasia may lead to better behavioral performance on instrumental than non-instrumental verbs.