Levels of Abstractness in Semantic Noun and Verb Processing: The Role of Sensory-Perceptual and Sensory-Motor Information

Abstract

Word count abstract: 248 (max. 250) Word count manuscript text: 4977 (max. 5000) Vonk-Psycholinguistic features in PPA 2 AbstractObjective: To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables-lexical frequency, age of acquisition, and neighborhood density-on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain. Method:We administered a lexical-decision task-with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, age of acquisition, and orthographic neighborhood density effects-to 41 individuals with the three variants of PPA (13 non-fluent, 14 logopenic, and 14 semantic) and 25 controls. Results:Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexicalsemantic processing, but age of acquisition and neighborhood density also played an independent role.The effect of these latter two features differed across PPA variants and is consistent with the atrophy pattern of each variant. That is, individuals with non-fluent and logopenic PPA experienced a neighborhood density effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with semantic PPA experienced an age of acquisition effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing. Conclusions:The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) versus lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

Action Semantic Deficits and Impaired Motor Skills in Autistic Adults Without Intellectual Impairment

“…Analysis of carefully orthogonalized word categories does indeed suggest that action and object words diverge along the semantic as opposed to grammatical line (Moseley and Pulvermüller, 2014), though dissociations between nouns and verbs as grammatical categories might appear as emergent properties of the more fundamental difference in action and object associations. The primacy of the semantic as opposed to grammatical dissociation has been supported by a number of studies (Barber et al, 2010; Vigliocco et al, 2011; Kemmerer et al, 2012; Fargier and Laganaro, 2015; Lobben and D’Ascenzo, 2015; Popp et al, 2016; Zhao et al, 2017; Vonk et al, 2019), though others reflect both semantic and grammatical divisions (Yudes et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2017). We would as such doubt that our findings reflect a general verb deficit in autism, but as debate surrounding the amodal vs. modal organization of language continues, we cannot speak conclusively on this matter.…”

Polish norms for a set of colored drawings of 168 objects and 146 actions with predictors of naming performance

“…In this way, the CLT database can be a valuable tool in research looking at how grammatical class affects language processing (for a review of behavioral and neuroimaging findings, see: Vigliocco et al, 2011 ). Even though our cognitive system does not seem to organize conceptual and lexical knowledge by grammatical class (e.g., verbs vs. nouns; see Vigliocco et al, 2011 ; Vonk et al, 2019 ), there are still well-documented differences in how we process nouns and verbs and their corresponding concepts (Gentner, 1982 , 2006 ; Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001 ). These differences have been proposed to reflect the varying difficulty or task demands associated with processing words pertaining to distinct grammatical classes.…”

“…These differences have been proposed to reflect the varying difficulty or task demands associated with processing words pertaining to distinct grammatical classes. Differences in difficulty of processing of these two classes of words are related to the fact that verbs tend to be more morphologically complex and less imageable (Mätzig et al, 2009 ; for a discussion see: Khwaileh et al, 2018 ) or more abstract (Akinina et al, 2015 ; Vonk et al, 2019 ). To fully grasp the fine-grained differences in naming objects (using nouns) and actions (using verbs), it is crucial that the experimental stimuli be matched as closely as possible in respect to dimensions known to affect naming speed.…”

“…This pattern of results is in line with previous studies that showed a stronger relationship between Imageability and Naming latencies in nouns than in verbs (Chiarello et al, 1999 ) and a general tendency for nouns to be more imaginable than verbs (Bird et al, 2001 ; Simonsen et al, 2013 ). Interestingly, it has been shown that when Imageability is controlled for, differences in how nouns and verbs are processed disappear (Vonk et al, 2019 ; for a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies see Vigliocco et al, 2011 ). This was explained by referring to words’ concreteness, which is closely linked to Imageability (Vonk et al, 2019 ): concrete words are easier to imagine than abstract concepts.…”

Motor features of abstract verbs determine their representations in the motor system

“…Previous studies overlooked differences in modality-specific features (e.g., emotional feature or motor feature ) when selecting abstract verbs. Additionally, some recent studies have found that abstract words with modality-specific features show differences in reaction time or neural activities (for behavioral studies, see: Vonk et al, 2019 ; Jin and Li, 2022 ; Muraki et al, 2020a ; for neuroimaging studies, see: Moseley et al, 2012 ; Harpaintner et al, 2020 ; Muraki et al, 2020b ; Conca et al, 2021b ). For example, Muraki et al (2020a , b) investigated behavioral and neural differences in a go/no-go syntactic classification task among abstract verbs, that is, emotional abstract verbs (e.g., annoy ), psychological abstract verbs (e.g., accept ), and non-embodied abstract verbs (e.g., allow ).…”