RESUMO
This study examines the neural dynamics underlying the prosodic (duration) and the semantic dimensions in Spanish sentence perception. Specifically, we investigated whether adult listeners are aware of changes in the duration of a pretonic syllable of words that were either semantically predictable or unpredictable from the preceding sentential context. Participants listened to the sentences with instructions to make prosodic or semantic judgments, while their EEG was recorded. For both accuracy and RTs, the results revealed an interaction between duration and semantics. ERP analysis exposed an interactive effect between task, duration and semantic, showing that both processes share neural resources. There was an enhanced negativity on semantic process (N400) and an extended positivity associated with anomalous duration. Source estimation for the N400 component revealed activations in the frontal gyrus for the semantic contrast and in the parietal postcentral gyrus for duration contrast in the metric task, while activation in the sub-lobar insula was observed for the semantic task. The source of the late positive components was located on posterior cingulate. Hence, the ERP data support the idea that semantic and prosodic levels are processed by similar neural networks, and the two linguistic dimensions influence each other during the decision-making stage in the metric and semantic judgment tasks.
RESUMO
Resumen El objetivo de este estudio, consistió en evaluar la familiaridad subjetiva (FS) de 827 palabras en 187 niños de segundo grado de educación primaria de la ciudad de Medellín. Las palabras, fueron extraídas de diferentes textos escolares y se ajustaron a tres parámetros psicolingüísticos: consistencia ortográfica, estructura silábica y longitud. En la prueba realizada, los niños debían indicar si conocían nada, poco, mucho o muchísimo cada una de las palabras seleccionadas. De acuerdo con esto, se asignó un valor numérico a cada palabra. Un análisis estadístico de las medianas de las palabras, permitió seleccionar 405 palabras con FS alta y 422 palabras con FS baja. Los resultados, muestran que los parámetros psicolingüísticos propuestos se relacionan con la FS.
Abstract The aim of this study was to assess the subjective familiarity of 827 words in 187 second-grade children from the city of Medellín. The words were taken from textbooks and adjusted to three psycholinguistic parameters: orthographic consistency, syllabic structure and length. In these tests, the children had to indicate whether they knew each of the words and according to their responses, a numerical value was assigned. A statistical analysis of the medians allowed the selection of 405 words of high subjective familiarity y 422 words of low subjective familiarity. The results show that the proposed psycholinguistic parameters relate to subjective familiarity.
Assuntos
Psicolinguística/métodos , Psicolinguística/estatística & dados numéricos , Comportamento Infantil/psicologiaRESUMO
This study longitudinally examined the production of pointing in four Spanish 1-year-old and four Spanish 2-year-old children in interactive situations with their mothers at home over the course of one year. Three aspects were analyzed: a) the functions of the pointing gesture, their accurate comprehension by the interlocutor (mother or child), and their order of emergence in the child; b) whether or not there were differences in the production of pointing according to who initiated the interaction; and c) whether maternal and child speech were related to maternal and child pointing production. The results showed that the pointing function of showing is the most frequent for both children and mothers from groups 1 and 2, and the first to emerge followed by the informing, requesting object, requesting action, and requesting cooperation functions. The accuracy with which these intentions were comprehended was found to be very high for both mother and child. Pointing production was greater when the speaker initiated the interaction than when the other person did, indicating that gestures follow the turn-taking system. Finally, the production of pointing to showing in children and mothers was found to be related to maternal and child speech, while pointing to request cooperation triggered the process of joint activity between mother and child.