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16504 papers
Semantic relations between words in a sentence are identified using a technique called dependency parsing. Algorithms called dependency parsers are used to map the words in a sentence to the said semantic roles and to identify the syntactic relations between words. Transition-based dependencies on Indian languages have been relatively less explored, partially attributed to lack of high quality treebanks. Graph Neural Network based parsing techniques have shown relatively high accuracy levels on English language and languages with similar syntactic structures (eg. Spanish), and have potential to show good accuracy with other language syntaxes. Hindi is a language with an extremely rich morphology and a FreeWord order. Such a language, also referred to as a Morphologically Rich, FreeWord Order (MoR-FWO) language, is immensely difficult to parse using traditional methods. Using Graph Neural Networks, we present a state-of-the-art dependency parser for Hindi. We compare performance and efficiency of two approaches in this project- a Machine Learning model and a Neural Network model.
This dataset is an extraction of the data contained in <em>LinkEast</em>, a lexical database of Eastern Polynesian languages. <em>LinkEast </em>is housed at the Université de la Polynésie française, within <em>Anareo</em>, a digital infrastructure dedicated to research on and documentation of the languages of French Polynesia. This data (v1.0) is based primarily on the Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia (Charpentier & François, 2015). References:<br> Charpentier, Jean-Michel, & François, Alexandre, 2015, <em>Atlas linguistique de la Polynésie française</em>, Berlin et Papeete, Mouton de Gruyter et Université de la Polynésie française.
Introduction: In musical affect research, there is considerable discussion on the best method to represent affective response. This discussion mainly revolves around the dimensional (valence, tension arousal, energy arousal) and discrete (anger, fear, sadness, happiness, tenderness) models of affect. Here, we compared these models' ability to capture self-reported affect in response to short, affectively ambiguous sounds. Methods: = 152), participants rated perceived and induced affect in response to single notes (Exp 1) and chromatic scales (Exp 2), which varied across instrument family and pitch register. Additionally, participants completed questionnaires measuring pre-existing mood, trait empathy, Big-Five personality, musical sophistication, and musical preferences. Results: Rater consistency and agreement were high across all affect scales. Correlation and principal component analyses showed that two dimensions or two affect categories captured most of the variation in affective response. Canonical correlation and regression analyses also showed that energy arousal varied in a manner that was not captured by discrete affect ratings. Furthermore, all sources of individual differences were moderately correlated with all affect scales, particularly pre-existing mood and dimensional affect. Discussion: We conclude that when it comes to single notes and chromatic scales, the dimensions of valence and energy arousal best capture the perceived and induced affective response to affectively ambiguous sounds, although the role of individual differences should also be considered.
Background and aims: A growing body of evidence indicates a connection between emotional processes and the emergence and progression of addiction. However, scant research has examined the involvement of emotional processing within the framework of problematic pornography use (PPU). This study aimed to examine the electrophysiological and subjective differences in emotional processing between male individuals with PPU and healthy controls (HCs) following exposure to everyday affective images. Methods: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 42 PPU participants (mean age = 20.14 years, SD = 1.35) and 45 HCs (mean age = 20.04 years, SD = 1.45) during an oddball task, in which unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images were presented as deviant stimuli, while a neutral kettle image served as the standard stimulus. The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) was employed to assess participants' subjective experience on the dimensions of valence and arousal. Results: Regarding subjective measures of emotion, individuals with PPU reported lower valence ratings for unpleasant images compared to HCs. In terms of electrophysiological measures of emotion, PPU participants reported larger P2 amplitudes for unpleasant pictures compared to both pleasant and neutral pictures. Moreover, HCs showed enhanced P3 amplitudes in response to pleasant images compared to neutral images, whereas this effect was not observed in PPU participants. Discussion and Conclusion: These findings indicate that individuals with PPU may display deficits in emotional processing characterized by enhanced responsiveness to negative stimuli and attenuated responsiveness to positive stimuli. The heightened sensitivity to negative stimuli may contribute to the inclination of individuals with PPU to engage in pornography as a coping mechanism for stress regulation. Conversely, their diminished sensitivity to positive stimuli presents a challenge in seeking alternative natural rewards to counter potentially addictive behaviors.
We introduce a novel dependency parser, the hexatagger, that constructs dependency trees by tagging the words in a sentence with elements from a finite set of possible tags. In contrast to many approaches to dependency parsing, our approach is fully parallelizable at training time, i.e., the structure-building actions needed to build a dependency parse can be predicted in parallel to each other. Additionally, exact decoding is linear in time and space complexity. Furthermore, we derive a probabilistic dependency parser that predicts hexatags using no more than a linear model with features from a pretrained language model, i.e., we forsake a bespoke architecture explicitly designed for the task. Despite the generality and simplicity of our approach, we achieve state-of-the-art performance of 96.4 LAS and 97.4 UAS on the Penn Treebank test set. Additionally, our parser’s linear time complexity and parallelism significantly improve computational efficiency, with a roughly 10-times speed-up over previous state-of-the-art models during decoding.
BACKGROUND: Olfactory disorders and affective symptoms are tightly related. However, the factors underlying this association are not yet understood. One candidate factor is "odor awareness": the degree of attention individuals pays to the odors. However, the association between odor awareness and olfactory abilities in individuals with affective symptoms has not been clarified yet. METHOD: The present study examined whether odor awareness may moderate (a) the relation between olfactory dysfunctions and depressive and anxiety symptoms; (b) the relation between the perceptual ratings of the odors and depressive and anxiety symptoms in a sample of healthy women (n = 214). Self-report measures of depression and anxiety were collected, whereas the Sniffin' Stick test was employed to measure olfactory abilities. RESULTS: Linear regression analysis revealed that individuals with higher depressive symptoms presented lower olfactory abilities and that odor awareness was a significant moderator of the association between depressive symptoms and olfactory abilities. Anxiety symptoms were not related to any of the olfactory abilities considered, and this relationship did not change according to odor awareness. The familiarity rating of the odor was significantly predicted by odor awareness. These results were confirmed by Bayesian statistics. LIMITATIONS: The sample was composed only of women. CONCLUSIONS: In a healthy population of women, only the presence of depressive symptoms is related to reduced olfactory performance. Odor awareness may be implicated in the development and maintenance of olfactory dysfunction; hence it could be used as a useful target for specific treatments in clinical settings.
Objective: Near-misses are a structural characteristic of gambling products that can be engineered within modern digital games. Over a series of pre-registered experiments using an online slot machine simulation, we investigated the impact of near-miss outcomes, on subjective ratings (motivation, valence) and two behavioural measures (speed of gambling, bet size).Method: Participants were recruited using Prolific and gambled on an online 3-reel slot machine simulator that delivered a 1 in 3 rate of X-X-O near-misses. Study 1 measured trial-by-trial subjective ratings of valence and motivation (Study 1a, n = 169; Study 1b, n = 148). Study 2 measured spin initiation latencies (n = 170) as a function of the previous trial outcome. Study 3 measured bet size (n = 172) as a function of the previous trial outcome.Results: In Study 1a, near-misses increased the motivation to continue gambling relative to full-misses, supporting H1. On valence ratings, near-misses were rated significantly more positively from full-misses, in the opposite direction to H2; this effect was confirmed in a close replication (Study 1b). In Study 2, participants gambled faster following near-misses relative to full-misses, supporting H3. In Study 3, participants significantly increased their bet size following near-misses relative to full-misses, supporting H4.Conclusion: Across all dependent variables, near-miss outcomes yielded statistically significant differences from objectively-equivalent full-miss outcomes, corroborating the ‘near miss effect’ across both subjective and behavioral measures, and in the environment of online gambling. The unexpected findings on valence ratings are considered in terms of boundary conditions for the near-miss effect, and competing theoretical accounts based on frustration/regret, goal generalization, and skill acquisition.
Previous studies showed that socially anxious individuals tend to have problems with facial expression processing, especially negative expressions. The present study aimed to investigate whether/how acute aerobic exercise intervention affects the emotional evaluation of socially anxious individuals. Participants needed to rate the emotional valence of facial expressions (happy, neutral, angry) on a 7-point Likert scale (from entirely negative to entirely positive) after 30 min of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and rest interventions on separate days. Results showed a significant decrease in the valence rating of happy faces (i.e., less positively) and a significant increase in the valence rating of angry faces (i.e., less negatively) after acute aerobic exercise as compared with after rest for the social anxiety group. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the two intervention conditions for the control group. These results showed that acute aerobic exercise effectively moderates the emotional valence rating of facial expressions in socially anxious individuals, decreasing the emotion evaluation of facial expressions.
Academic success in adolescence is a strong predictor of well-being and health in adulthood. A healthy lifestyle and moderate/high levels of physical activity can influence academic performance. Therefore, we aimed to assess the relationship between the physical activity levels and body image and academic performance in public school adolescents. The sample consisted of 531 secondary school students in Porto (296 girls and 235 boys) aged between 15 and 20 years. The study variables and instruments were satisfaction with body image (The Body Image Rating Scale), assessment of physical activity (International Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (IPAQ-A), assessment of academic performance (academic achievement), school motivation (Academic Scale Motivation). The statistical analysis performed was descriptive analysis, an analysis of covariance, and a logistic regression. Regarding the results obtained, although there was no association between physical activity level and academic performance, it was observed in 10th grade students that the school average was higher for those practicing group or individual sports compared to students practicing artistic expression. Regarding the level of satisfaction with body image, we found different results in both genders. Our results support the importance of an active lifestyle, with the presence of regular physical activity being an important factor in improving academic performance.
Emotional arousal is known to enhance episodic memory in young adults. However, compared to valence, little is known about how healthy aging impacts arousal-enhanced memory effects. Furthermore, while emotion regulation is believed to improve with age, it is unclear how individual differences in emotion regulation influence arousal-enhanced memory. In this large-scale online study, we investigated the impact of age and individual differences in emotion regulation on arousal-enhanced memory. During encoding, participants made arousal ratings about negative, neutral, and positive images, and we compared their subsequent memory of high and low-arousal images. We found the impact of emotional arousal on memory was reduced with age, especially for older adults who habitually suppress their emotions. Our findings show that arousal-related memory benefits are reduced with advancing age, and that individual differences in habitual usage of emotion regulation impact these age-related alterations.
Abstract We extend a pair of continuous combinator-based constituency parsers (one binary and one multi-branching) into a discontinuous pair. Our parsers iteratively compose constituent vectors from word embeddings without any grammar constraints. Their empirical complexities are subquadratic. Our extension includes 1) a swap action for the orientation-based binary model and 2) biaffine attention for the chunker-based multi-branching model. In tests conducted with the Discontinuous Penn Treebank and TIGER Treebank, we achieved state-of-the-art discontinuous accuracy with a significant speed advantage.
Overgeneralization of conditioned fear is associated with anxiety disorders (AD). Most results stem from studies done in adult patients, but studies with children are rare, although the median onset of anxiety disorders lies already in childhood. Thus, the goal of the present study was to examine fear learning and generalization in youth participants, aged 10-17 years, with AD (n = 39) compared to healthy controls (HC) (n = 40). A discriminative fear conditioning and generalization paradigm was used. Ratings of arousal, valence, and US expectancy (the probability of an aversive noise following each stimulus) were measured, hypothesizing that children with AD compared to HC would show heightened ratings of arousal and US expectancy, and decreased positive valence ratings, respectively, as well as overgeneralization of fear. The results indicated that children with AD rated all stimuli as more arousing and less pleasant, and demonstrated higher US expectancy ratings to all stimuli when compared to HC. Thus, rather than displaying qualitatively different generalization patterns (e.g., a linear vs. quadratic slope of the gradient), differences between groups were more quantitative (similar, but parallel shifted gradient). Therefore, overgeneralization of conditioned fear does not seem to be a general marker of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents.
Abstract Ellipsis refers to a linguistic mismatch between sound and meaning. In order to fill the research gap in exploring the cause of ellipsis concerning research methods, the study herein attempts to further this issue with an empirical approach. A complex network approach is used to describe the structural patterns of ellipsis language from a macroscopic perspective and different scales of microscopic granularity. According to previous theoretical foundations on ellipsis, two syntactic network models are established, one is derived from the treebank of spoken conversation in modern Chinese; the other is obtained from the same treebank, but with all its elliptical structures added. Twelve kinds of network measures are used to approach the structural similarities and differences between the two networks. Research results suggested that elliptical structures did not change the network topology extracted from the communication system, nor the relevant importance of the linguistic element for transmitting the information. More specifically, the linguistic elements functioned as good ‘spreaders’, transitivity, connectedness, efficiency, and stability in information transmission of the communication system are not affected by elliptical structures.
Abstract Listening to music is an enjoyable behaviour that engages multiple networks of brain regions. As such, the act of music listening may offer a way to interrogate network activity, and to examine the reconfigurations of brain networks that have been observed in healthy aging. The present study is an exploratory examination of brain network dynamics during music listening in healthy older and younger adults. Network measures were extracted and analyzed together with behavioural data using a combination of hidden Markov modelling and partial least squares. We found age- and preference-related differences in fMRI data collected during music listening in healthy younger and older adults. Both age groups showed higher occupancy (the proportion of time a network was active) in a temporal-mesolimbic network while listening to self-selected music. Activity in this network was strongly positively correlated with liking and familiarity ratings in younger adults, but less so in older adults. Additionally, older adults showed a higher degree of correlation between liking and familiarity ratings consistent with past behavioural work on age-related dedifferentiation. We conclude that, while older adults do show network and behaviour patterns consistent with dedifferentiation, activity in the temporal-mesolimbic network is relatively robust to dedifferentiation. These findings may help explain how music listening remains meaningful and rewarding in old age.
Emotional prospective mental imagery, in which we simulate possible future events within our minds, have a pronounced impact on behavior. For example, repeated engagement in positive prospective imagery can lead to behavioral activation, while negative prospective imagery can lead to catastrophizing and avoidance. Physiological arousal boosts memory consolidation, creating emotional memories. Thus, if emotional prospective imagery produces an arousal response, the memory consolidation of these simulations of the future may be boosted, offering a possible underlying mechanism for the impact of emotional prospective imagery on behavior. In order to examine the feasibility of arousal as a possible mechanism behind the impact of emotional prospective imagery on behavior, sixty participants produced autobiographical prospective imagery of 30 scenes (10 positive, 10 neutral, and 10 negative), during which arousal responses (skin conductance) were measured, and ratings for subjective arousal, valence, and imagery vividness were collected. Moreover, because vividness of prospective imagery has been related to anxiety and depression, the study examined this relation also for event-related autobiographical prospective imagery. The results showed that emotional prospective imagery were associated with higher subjective arousal ratings as compared to neutral imagery. Physiological arousal responses showed a similar pattern, but further data is needed for a firm conclusion. Nevertheless, arousal-boosted consolidation remains a possible contributing mechanism for the impact of emotional prospective imagery on behavior. Moreover, results suggest both anxiety and depression may entail a reduced ability to invent prospective life situations. However, only anxiety was associated with less vivid imaginations, unless the imaginations were of negative content. Hence, anxious individuals may experience negative prospective imagery more vividly than imagery with neutral and positive content.
Music is a complex phenomenon that elicits a range of emotional responses, influenced by numerous variables, such as rhythm, melody and harmony. One interesting aspect of music is listeners' ability to predict its continuation as it unfolds - an inherent attribute hypothesized to contribute to our emotional response to music. In this study, we investigated this link by examining the relationship between temporal predictability - the ability to predict the timing of the next event - and the ongoing changes in music-induced pleasantness. Temporal predictability was operationalized as the degree to which taps of 20 musically trained participants, who tapped to the beat along three naturalistic and highly contrastive musical pieces, were aligned. We then examined the degree to which this measure could explain the ongoing emotional experience, as reflected in continuous measures of arousal and valence, in a separate group of 40 participants that listened to these pieces. Our findings reveal a positive correlation between fluctuations in reported valence and temporal predictability, even when controlling for a set of other musical features, in four out of five musical sections. The only exception being a lyrical slow section. These findings were further supported by a large online database of annotated musical emotions (n = 1780 songs), where a consistent and robust correlation between valence ratings and an automatically extracted feature of pulse clarity was demonstrated. Overall, our findings shed light on the significance of temporal predictability as a contributing factor to the hedonic experience of music, especially within the tempo range of salient beat perception.
The goal of visual word sense disambiguation is to find the image that best matches the provided description of the word’s meaning. It is a challenging problem, requiring approaches that combine language and image understanding. In this paper, we present our submission to SemEval 2023 visual word sense disambiguation shared task. The proposed system integrates multimodal embeddings, learning to rank methods, and knowledge-based approaches. We build a classifier based on the CLIP model, whose results are enriched with additional information retrieved from Wikipedia and lexical databases. Our solution was ranked third in the multilingual task and won in the Persian track, one of the three language subtasks.
Purpose: Emerging bilingual children represent a diverse population with regard to their language learning histories and individual factors. When assessing a bilingual child, it is important to accurately differentiate typical second-language learning characteristics from differences that indicate a disorder. The Iranian scholarly and clinical communities have established essential linguistic norms and identified linguistic and nonlinguistic indicators of speech and language disorder in Farsi-speaking children. The community has also developed assessment tools that are useful when evaluating the language skills of bilingual Farsi-English–speaking children. Method: We present some relevant characteristics of the Farsi-speaking community and summarize the literature related to linguistic norms and the characteristics of the Farsi language, particularly related to the phonological and morphosyntactic structure of Farsi. To illustrate the diversity in bilingual children's profiles and the need for individualized assessment, we present two case studies of sequential emerging Farsi–English bilingual children. Results: We present the children's assessment results and report clinical indicators of a language disorder. The case examples are used to highlight several recommendations for conducting individualized and culturally sensitive assessments. Conclusions: This tutorial highlights the need for a comprehensive and individualized assessment of a bilingual child. Specific assessment tools and procedures are outlined to support clinicians in completing accurate and sensitive evaluations of Farsi–English bilingual children.
Abstract Continuity and discontinuity (maintaining or shifting deictic centres across segments) are important aspects of discourse relations. Yet they have been attributed to these relations in very different ways. This calls for an analysis of individual instances of discourse relations with respect to their continuity dimensions. To this end, we operationalise Givón’s (1993) continuity dimensions ( time, space, reference, action, perspective, modality, and speech act ), decomposing them into distinctive features that allow a consistent and accurate classification of the continuity dimensions in discourse relation tokens. This inventory was applied to five representative relation types ( causal, contrastive, conditional, elaboration, and temporal ) from the RST Discourse Treebank ( Carlson & Marcu 2001 ). We found that relations can simultaneously be more continuous for some dimensions but more discontinuous for others. What is more, discourse relations typically vary widely in different continuity dimensions and thus cannot be described as fully continuous or discontinuous, neither on the level of the entire relation type nor for one of its particular dimensions. Using examples of causal, conditional, and contrastive relations, we also illustrate how the results of our analysis can be used to verify hypotheses about correlations between continuity and discourse relations.
Abstract Traffic congestion can lead to negative driving emotions, significantly increasing the likelihood of traffic accidents. Reducing negative driving emotions as a means to mitigate speeding, reckless overtaking, and aggressive driving behaviors is a viable approach. Among the potential methods, affective speech has been considered one of the most promising. However, research on humor-based affective speech interventions in the context of driving negative emotions is scarce, and the utilization of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for emotion detection in humorous audio studies remains largely unexplored. Therefore, our study first designed a highly realistic experiment scenario to induce negative emotions experienced by drivers in congested traffic conditions. Subsequently, we collected drivers’ EEG signals and subjective questionnaire ratings during the driving process. By employing one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t tests, we analyzed the data to validate the success of our experiment in inducing negative emotions in drivers during congested road conditions and to assess the effectiveness of humorous audio in regulating drivers’ negative emotions. The results indicated that humorous audio effectively alleviated drivers’ negative emotions in congested road conditions, with a 145.84% increase in arousal and a 93.55% increase in valence ratings compared to control conditions. However, it should be noted that humorous audio only restored drivers’ emotions to the level experienced during normal driving. Our findings offer novel insights into regulating drivers’ negative emotions during congested road conditions.
Pleasant touching is an important aspect of social interactions that is widely used as a caregiving technique. To address the problems resulting from a lack of available human caregivers, previous research has attempted to develop robots that can perform this kind of pleasant touch. However, it remains unclear whether robots can provide such a pleasant touch in a manner similar to humans. To investigate this issue, we compared the effect of the speed of gentle strokes on the back between human and robot agents on the emotional responses of human participants (n = 28). A robot or a human stroked on the participants’ back at two different speeds (i.e., 2.6 and 8.5 cm/s). The participants’ subjective (valence and arousal ratings) and physiological (facial electromyography (EMG) recorded from the corrugator supercilii and zygomatic major muscles and skin conductance response) emotional reactions were measured. The subjective ratings demonstrated that the speed of 8.5 cm/s was more pleasant and arousing than the speed of 2.6 cm/s for both human and robot strokes. The corrugator supercilii EMG showed that the speed of 8.5 cm/s resulted in reduced activity in response to both human and robot strokes. These results demonstrate similar speed-dependent modulations of stroke on subjective and physiological positive emotional responses across human and robot agents and suggest that robots can provide a pleasant touch similar to that of humans.
This research paper investigates the function of diminutive morphology in English and Urdu languages with a focus on production, similarities, and differences in inflectional bound morphemes in the noun and adjective categories, and studies the usage patterns and impacts of diminutive forms in Urdu and English on interpersonal communication. The researchers, who are native Urdu speakers and English as a second language speakers, analyze the form and meaning of diminutive morphemes in both languages using Booij’s (2018) Construction Morphology model. Multiple sources are consulted for data collection, including corpora, dictionaries, linguistic databases, literary works, and language resources. The findings suggest that both English and Urdu retain a morphological function, but English has fewer inflectional morphemes than Urdu. Conversely, Urdu employs a large variety of suffixes, particularly for denoting the diminutive aspect, which distinguishes its semantic and pragmatic expressions from those of English. Despite both languages having inflections and using gradient production, English has lost more inflections due to undergoing more periods of change. Further, the usage patterns and impacts of diminutive forms in Urdu and English contribute to the richness and complexity of interpersonal communication. These provide speakers with a range of linguistic resources to express nuances of meaning, convey emotions, and shape social interactions. The paper concludes by noting that this research can help language learners and language scholars better understand the complexities of morphological structures in languages.
Along with concerns regarding societal aging, the dietary requirements of older adults have become a priority. Older adults in Korea experience difficulties consuming animal protein sources as they age. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a senior-friendly food product using mackerel. Accordingly, carbohydrates and proteins were added to the brine solution before saturated vapor treatment. Calcium lactate and poly-gamma-glutamic acid were added to the sauce, and when compared to four commercial products (GT_R, GT_K, PC_K, and AC_G) in an acceptance test, the product was found to exhibit the highest overall liking score (p < 0.001). Higher flavor-liking and familiarity ratings were found to increase purchase intention, while higher flavor-liking, overall-liking, and familiarity ratings increased recommendation intention. Those in mid-to-late adulthood preferred the GT_R and PC_K samples, whereas the AC_G sample was preferred by those in very late adulthood. AC_G sample analysis suggested that those in the very late adulthood group had a relatively higher acceptance of spiciness. In this study, a calcium-added mackerel stew product was manufactured, meeting the standards for senior-friendly food in Korea. It will serve as a baseline for further research on fish- and mackerel-based foods for older adults, which is in its early stages.
Tinnitus is a multifactorial phenomenon and psychological, audiological, or medical factors can facilitate its onset or maintenance. A growing body of research investigates individuals' perceptions, associations, and experiences of living with tinnitus. This body of research examines tinnitus as a condition rather than a symptom. We examine a sample of chronic tinnitus patients in terms of associations that are induced by neutral sounds. In particular, we investigate how patients with chronic tinnitus ascribe meaning to those neutral sounds. The present study uses Mayring's content analysis to explore the content of psychological associations underlying valence ratings of everyday neutral sounds. Nine tinnitus patients completed a hearing exercise, during which they listened to seven neutral sounds, following which we examined their sound-induced associations using semi-structured interviews. Three groups of factors influenced patients' associations and valence ratings of neutral sounds: affect, episodic memory, and 'other'. The former two factors further comprised two subcategories. In line with previous psychoaudiological research designs, our findings suggest that neutral, everyday auditory stimuli evoke strong affective reactions-possibly through serving as retrieval cues for episodic memories. Based on these findings, we discuss our results in the context of previous psychoaudiological findings and propose further research concerning psychological associations that may specifically underlie the tinnitus sound.
Extensive research has shown that children's early words are learned through sensorimotor experience. Thus, early-acquired words tend to have more concrete meanings. Abstract word meanings tend to be learned later but less is known about their acquisition. We collected meaning-specific concreteness ratings and examined their relationship with age-of-acquisition data from large-scale vocabulary testing with children in grade 2 to college age. Earlier-acquired meanings were rated as more concrete while later-acquired meanings as more abstract, particularly for words typically considered to be concrete. The results suggest that sensorimotor experiences are important to early-acquired word meanings, and other experiences (e.g., linguistic) are important to later-acquired meanings, consistent with a multi-representational view of lexical semantics.
Individuals differ in the tendency to derive pleasure out of motive-specific incentives, such as being socially included or attaining power. Multiple theoretical approaches have proposed that such motive-specific positive affective contingencies (PACs) are central building blocks of motive dispositions and personality more broadly. In the current research, we put this claim to test and investigated individual differences with regard to motive-specific PACs in the affiliation and power domains. We measured PACs via spontaneous emotional reactions to motive-specific cues, as assessed by affect ratings and electromyographic (EMG) recordings of smile responses. Both of these PAC operationalizations were highly internally consistent and moderately to highly stable across time. Furthermore, motive-specific PACs were linked in a manner consistent with theory to measures of motive dispositions and to personality traits with motivational underpinnings (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, and narcissism). Finally, in the affiliation domain, motive-specific PACs were linked to objectively assessed, key motivational outcomes (i.e., attentional orientation, behavior in daily life, and in the laboratory). Taken together, the findings underscore the relevance of affective contingencies for the understanding of personality and motivated behavior.
Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) is increasingly prevalent in the United States, while perceived addiction risk and treatment-seeking are declining. Emotional salience of cannabis-use-related problems and benefits likely contribute to motivation to change, but measurement of this process has been limited. The present study sought to validate a novel assessment of emotional appraisal of self-referential cannabis-use-related information across subjective and neurophysiological units of analysis. Non-treatment-seeking individuals with DSM-5 severe CUD (N = 42) completed a task that presented auditory self-referential, personalized cannabis-use-related problem and benefit statements, as well as neutral self-referential statements, during electroencephalography recording. The late positive potential (LPP) was used as a neurophysiological measure of emotional salience. Valence/arousal ratings of each statement, along with their motivational importance in sustaining vs. reducing cannabis use, were also obtained. As predicted, valence and arousal ratings significantly differentiated cannabis-use-related problems and benefits from neutral statements. Partially consistent with predictions, the LPP to cannabis-use-related benefits was significantly larger than LPPs to cannabis-use-related problems and neutral statements, which did not differ from each other. Bonferroni-adjusted exploratory correlations revealed that the LPP to cannabis-use-related problems was sensitive to recent cannabis use frequency. These results provide some support for the validity of this novel multi-method assessment of emotional reactivity to personalized cannabis-use-related self-referential information in non-treatment-seeking individuals with severe CUD. The dissociation between subjective and neurophysiological reactivity to self-referential cannabis-related problem statements should be further explored.
Nowadays it is seen the active development of text sentiment analysis tools, which help solve a huge range of problems, ranging from emotional tone or polarity to the nature of the analyzed text. Although significant advances have been made in sentiment analysis for languages with abundant computing resources, the problem still remains relevant for resource-poor languages, where Uzbek is one of them. The lack of complete linguistic databases and tools for this language represents a major obstacle for the scientific community.The present study aims to address this limitation by introducing a rule-based approach for sentiment analysis in the Uzbek language. In particular, the methodology uses three key vocabularies: the first includes a comprehensive list of more than 300 affixes used to generate word forms; the second focuses on cataloging exception words that defy standard morphological rules; and the third contains a list of word roots, some of the word roots are already marked with positive or negative sentiment polarity.When combined, morphological analysis with these lexical resources can effectively recognize tonal orientation in Uzbek sentences. This is especially important given the agglutinative nature of language and complex morphological structures that add layers of subtle meaning, influencing the interpretation of sentiments.
The article presents a comprehensive overview of the research conducted on phytonyms. By analyzing the lexicographic description of phytonyms in the Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, the research uncovers the multifaceted attributes associated with various plant species. The article outlines the development of a linguistic database using MS Access DBMS, highlighting the structure of tables, relationships, and data input processes. This systematic approach allows for the efficient management and utilization of the collected information. The research contributes to the broader understanding of lexical semantics, lexicographic principles, and the practical application of information technology in linguistics.
PET/CT scanners with a long axial field-of-view (LAFOV) provide increased sensitivity, enabling the adjustment of imaging parameters by reducing the injected activity or shortening the acquisition time. This study aimed to evaluate the limitations of reduced [18F]FDG activity doses on image quality, lesion detectability, and the quantification of lesion uptake in the Biograph Vision Quadra, as well as to assess the benefits of the recently introduced ultra-high sensitivity mode in a clinical setting. A number of 26 patients who underwent [18F]FDG-PET/CT (3.0 MBq/kg, 5 min scan time) were included in this analysis. The PET raw data was rebinned for shorter frame durations to simulate 5 min scans with lower activities in the high sensitivity (HS) and ultra-high sensitivity (UHS) modes. Image quality, noise, and lesion detectability (n = 82) were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale. The coefficient of variation (CoV), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), tumor-to-background ratio (TBR), and standardized uptake values (SUV) including SUVmean, SUVmax, and SUVpeak were evaluated. Subjective image ratings were generally superior in UHS compared to the HS mode. At 0.5 MBq/kg, lesion detectability decreased to 95% (HS) and to 98% (UHS). SNR was comparable at 1.0 MBq/kg in HS (5.7 ± 0.6) and 0.5 MBq/kg in UHS (5.5 ± 0.5). With lower doses, there were negligible reductions in SUVmean and SUVpeak, whereas SUVmax increased steadily. Reducing the [18F]FDG activity to 1.0 MBq/kg (HS/UHS) in a LAFOV PET/CT provides diagnostic image quality without statistically significant changes in the uptake parameters. The UHS mode improves image quality, noise, and lesion detectability compared to the HS mode.
Abstract This study represents the first stage of evaluating whether cognitive training interventions may be facilitated by the presence of a socially assistive robot (SAR) and gamification. Our experimental setup involves using a SAR providing feedback to a gamified visuospatial working memory task, administered according to a differential outcomes training (DOT) protocol. The study’s main objective was to investigate whether performance and attitude towards the task would be affected by different robotic setups (none, simulated or physical) and in relation to different challenge levels. We measured performance accuracy on the gamified visuospatial memory task and self-reported affective ratings, which are relevant for assessing attitude towards the task and providing indicators to the potential for using a SAR for a longer-term cognitive intervention. Additionally, we conducted exploratory analyses of eye movement strategies for memory encoding during the task. The results demonstrated a significant differential outcomes effect (DOE) on memory performance accuracy, regardless of Robot type and Challenge level, providing evidence that a DOE can still be obtained when a SAR interacts with participants. Moreover, the results from the affective ratings revealed that participants accompanied by the physical robot reported lower levels of stress and increased levels of control. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, a DOE using a SAR in a gamified context. This result, coupled with positive subjective reporting of the human–robot interactive experience of participants, demonstrates the potential for using a SAR to: (i) promote positive attitudes for a DOT-based cognitive intervention, without (ii) negatively affecting task performance.
Acute stress alters olfactory perception. However, little is known about the neural processing of olfactory stimuli after acute stress exposure and the role of cortisol in such an effect. Here, we used an event-related olfactory fMRI paradigm to investigate brain responses to odors of different valence (unpleasant, pleasant, or neutral) in healthy young adults following an acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST) induction (N = 22) or a non-stressful resting condition (N = 22). We obtained the odor pleasantness, intensity, and familiarity ratings after the acute stress induction or resting condition. We also measured the participants' perceived stress and salivary cortisol at four time points during the procedure. We found a stress-related decrease in brain activation in response to the pleasant, but not to the neutral or unpleasant odor stimuli in the right piriform cortex extending to the right amygdala, the right orbitofrontal cortex, and the right insula. In addition, activation of clusters within the regions of interest were negatively associated with individual baseline-to-peak increase in salivary cortisol levels after stress. We also found increased functional connectivity between the right piriform cortex and the right insula after stress when the pleasant odor was presented. The strength of the connectivity was positively correlated with increased perceived stress levels immediately after stress exposure. These results provide novel evidence for the effects of acute stress in attenuating the neural processing of a pleasant olfactory stimulus. Together with previous findings, the effect of acute stress on human olfactory perception appears to depend on both the valence and the concentration (e.g., peri-threshold or suprathreshold levels) of odor stimuli.
Abstract Mental processes underlying people’s responses to Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA) have rarely been studied. In cognitive psychology, one of the most popular and successful mental process models is the drift diffusion model. It decomposes response time (RT) data to distinguish how fast information is accessed and processed (“drift rate”), and how much information is accessed and processed (“boundary separation”). We examined whether the drift diffusion model could be successfully applied to people’s RTs for EMA questions and could shed light on between- and within-person variation in the mental process components underlying momentary reports. We analyzed EMA data (up to 6 momentary surveys/day for one week) from 954 participants in the Understanding America Study (29,067 completed measurement occasions). An item-response-theory diffusion model was applied to RTs associated with 5 momentary negative affect ratings. As hypothesized, both diffusion model parameters showed moderate stability across EMA measurement occasions. Drift rate and boundary separation together explained a majority of the variance in the observed RTs and demonstrated correspondence across different sets of EMA items, both within and between individuals. The parameters related in theoretically expected ways to within-person changes in activities (momentary work and recreation) and person-level characteristics (neuroticism and depression). Drift rate increased and boundary separation decreased over the study, suggesting that practice effects in EMA consist of multiple distinctive cognitive processes. The results support the reliability and validity of the diffusion model parameters derived from EMA and provide initial evidence that the model may enhance understanding of process underlying EMA affect ratings.
Fear overgeneralization and perceived uncertainty about future outcomes have been suggested as risk factors for clinical anxiety. However, little is known regarding how they influence each other. In this study, we investigated whether different levels of threat uncertainty influence fear generalization. Three groups of healthy participants underwent a differential fear conditioning protocol followed by a generalization test. All groups learned to associate one female face (conditioned stimulus, CS+) with a female scream (unconditioned stimulus, US), whereas the other face (CS-) was not associated with the scream. In order to manipulate threat uncertainty, one group (low uncertainty, n = 26) received 80%, the second group (moderate uncertainty, n = 32) received 60%, and the third group (high uncertainty, n = 30) 40% CS-US contingency. In the generalization test, all groups saw CS+ and CS- again along with four morphs resembling the CSs in steps of 20%. Subjective (expectancy, valence, and arousal ratings), psychophysiological (skin conductance response, SCR), and visuocortical (steady-state visual evoked potentials, ssVEPs) indices of fear were registered. Participants expected the US according to their reinforcement schedules and the discriminative responses to CS+/CS- increased with more uncertainty in skin conductance. However, acquisition of conditioned fear was not evident in ssVEPs. During the generalization test, we found no effect of threat uncertainty in any of the measured variables, but the strength of generalization for threat expectancy ratings was positively correlated with dispositional intolerance of uncertainty. This study suggests that mere threat uncertainty does not modulate fear generalization.
Linguistic research has increasingly focused on the language of older adults, although findings remain controversial on whether language skills decline with age. Additionally, extant studies only deal with certain aspects of language, such as lexis or syntax, and few have systematically investigated this topic. This paper assumed a holistic perspective and dependency network approach to explore healthy older adults’ oral language at lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels. By constructing English and Chinese dependency treebanks, and corresponding dependency networks, of 100 healthy older adults and comparing them with those of all age groups, we found that 1) many parents appear before their dependents in the older adults’ English treebank due to the massive use of articles before nouns; in the Chinese treebank, the reverse applies because of the large number of aspect markers; 2) the mean dependency distance (MDD) of English older treebank is longer than that of the all-age group. Furthermore, there are many compound and complex sentences in older adults’ speech; the MDD of the Chinese treebank is shorter, while the syntactic structure conforms to grammatical rules; 3) the average degree (<k>)s of both English and Chinese older adults’ dependency networks are higher and clustering coefficient (C)s slightly lower, indicating strong connectivity of words in the two networks and coherence in participants’ speech. In conclusion, there was no significant deterioration in the oral language of healthy older adults, although cross-language comparisons show very fine, detailed, and revealing differences between English and Chinese treebanks and networks.
Sentiment is a pervasive feature in natural language text, yet it is an open question how sentiment is represented within Large Language Models (LLMs). In this study, we reveal that across a range of models, sentiment is represented linearly: a single direction in activation space mostly captures the feature across a range of tasks with one extreme for positive and the other for negative. Through causal interventions, we isolate this direction and show it is causally relevant in both toy tasks and real world datasets such as Stanford Sentiment Treebank. Through this case study we model a thorough investigation of what a single direction means on a broad data distribution. We further uncover the mechanisms that involve this direction, highlighting the roles of a small subset of attention heads and neurons. Finally, we discover a phenomenon which we term the summarization motif: sentiment is not solely represented on emotionally charged words, but is additionally summarized at intermediate positions without inherent sentiment, such as punctuation and names. We show that in Stanford Sentiment Treebank zero-shot classification, 76% of above-chance classification accuracy is lost when ablating the sentiment direction, nearly half of which (36%) is due to ablating the summarized sentiment direction exclusively at comma positions.
Psycholinguistic research on isiXhosa and related Bantu languages is scarce. For research on lexical processing in particular, a prerequisite is data on lexical properties that impact word recognition, such as word frequency and neighbourhood density. This paper describes the derivation of these and related lexical statistics from a newly created 4.8-million-word isiXhosa corpus. It then reviews the potential applications of such a lexical database for research on language acquisition, language development, and language processing. The paper closes with recommendations for further work in this domain.
We present CamelParser2.0, an open-source Python-based Arabic dependency parser targeting two popular Arabic dependency formalisms, the Columbia Arabic Treebank (CATiB), and Universal Dependencies (UD). The CamelParser2.0 pipeline handles the processing of raw text and produces tokenization, part-of-speech and rich morphological features. As part of developing CamelParser2.0, we explore many system design hyper-parameters, such as parsing model architecture and pretrained language model selection, achieving new state-of-the-art performance across diverse Arabic genres under gold and predicted tokenization settings.
Assessing integrated reading-into-writing task performances is known to be challenging, and analytic rating scales have been found to better facilitate the scoring of these performances than other common types of rating scales. However, little is known about how specific operationalizations of the reading-into-writing construct in analytic rating scales may affect rating quality, and by extension score inferences and uses. Using two different analytic rating scales as proxies for two approaches to reading-into-writing construct operationalization, this study investigated the extent to which these approaches affect rating reliability and consistency. Twenty raters rated a set of reading-into-writing performances twice, each time using a different analytic rating scale, and completed post-rating questionnaires. The findings resulting from our convergent explanatory mixed-method research design show that both analytic rating scales functioned well, further supporting the use of analytic rating scales for scoring reading-into-writing. Raters reported that either type of analytic rating scale prompted them to attend to the reading-related aspects of reading-into-writing, although rating these aspects remained more challenging than judging writing-related aspects. The two scales differed, however, in the extent to which they led raters to uniform interpretations of performance difficulty levels. This study has implications for reading-into-writing scale design and rater training.
Automated Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ) generation is a rapidly growing field in Natural Language Processing (NLP) that aims to assist educators and trainers in creating high-quality, efficient, and effective assessment materials. This is achieved by analyzing large amounts of textual data, such as educational content, and identifying key concepts and relationships between them. The process of generating MCQs automatically can be broken down into several steps, including text summarization, keyword extraction, distractor generation, and sentence mapping. A new approach is proposed for Text summarization is based on NLP models like XLNet and YAKE is used for keyword extraction. Distractor generation is done using lexical databases such as ConceptNet and WordNet. Sentence mapping is used to identify the main concepts and relationships within a text, which can then be used to formulate questions and options for the multiple-choice questions. The output is a set of MCQs that are semantically related to the input text and can be used for educational and training purposes.
Chloé Braud, Yang Janet Liu, Eleni Metheniti, Philippe Muller, Laura Rivière, Attapol Rutherford, Amir Zeldes. Proceedings of the 3rd Shared Task on Discourse Relation Parsing and Treebanking (DISRPT 2023). 2023.
Tupí-Guaraní is one of the largest branches of the Tupían language family, but despite its relevance there is no consensus about its origins in terms of age, homeland, and expansion. Linguistic classifications vary significantly, with archaeological studies suggesting incompatible date ranges while ethnographic literature confirms the close similarities as a result of continuous inter-family contact. To investigate this issue, we use a linguistic database of cognate data, employing Bayesian phylogenetic methods to infer a dated tree and to build a phylogeographic expansion model. Results suggest that the branch originated around 2500 BP in the area of the upper course of the Tapajós-Xingu basins, with a split between Southern and Northern varieties beginning around 1750 BP. We analyse the difficulties in reconciling archaeological and linguistic data for this group, stressing the importance of developing an interdisciplinary unified model that incorporates evidence from both disciplines.
Background When receiving mismatching nonverbal and verbal signals, most people tend to base their judgment regarding the current emotional state of others primarily on nonverbal information. However, individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) have been described as having difficulties interpreting nonverbal signals. Recognizing emotional states correctly is highly important for successful social interaction. Alterations in perception of nonverbal emotional cues presumably contribute to misunderstanding and impairments in social interactions. Methods To evaluate autism-specific differences in the relative impact of nonverbal and verbal cues, 18 adults with HFA (14 male and four female subjects, mean age 36.7 years (SD 11.4) and 18 age, gender and IQ-matched typically developed controls [14 m/4 f, mean age 36.4 years (SD 12.2)] rated the emotional state of speakers in video sequences with partly mismatching emotional signals. Standardized linear regression coefficients were calculated as a measure of the reliance on the nonverbal and verbal components of the videos for each participant. Regression coefficients were then compared between groups to test the hypothesis that autistic adults base their social evaluations less strongly on nonverbal information. Further exploratory analyses were performed for differences in valence ratings and response times. Results Compared to the typically developed control group, nonverbal cue reliance was reduced in adults with high-functioning autism [ t (23.14) = −2.44, p = 0.01 (one-sided)]. Furthermore, the exploratory analyses showed a tendency to avoid extreme answers in the HFA group, observable via less positive as well as less negative valence ratings in response to emotional expressions of increasingly strong valence. In addition, response time was generally longer in HFA compared to the control group [ F (1, 33) = 10.65, p = 0.004]. Conclusion These findings suggest reduced impact of nonverbal cues and longer processing times in the analysis of multimodal emotional information, which may be associated with a subjectively lower relevance of this information and/or more processing difficulties for people with HFA. The less extreme answering tendency may indicate a lower sensitivity for nonverbal valence expression in HFA or result from a tendency to avoid incorrect answers when confronted with greater uncertainty in interpreting emotional states.
Introduction Deep brain stimulation (DBS) studies in Parkinson's Disease (PD) targeting the subthalamic nucleus (STN) have characterized its spectral properties across cognitive processes. In emotional evaluation tasks, specific alpha frequency (8–12 Hz) event-related de-synchronization (ERD) (reduced power) has been demonstrated. The time-locked stimulation of STN relative to stimuli onset has shown subjective positive valence shifts with 10 Hz but not with 130 Hz. However, neurophysiological effects of stimulation on power modulation have not been investigated. We aim to investigate effects of acute stimulation of the right STN on concurrent power modulation in the contralateral STN and frontal scalp EEG. From our previous study, we had a strong a priori hypothesis that negative imagery without stimulation would be associated with alpha ERD; negative imagery with 130 Hz stimulation would be also associated with alpha ERD given the lack of its effect on subjective valence ratings; negative imagery with 10 Hz stimulation was to be associated with enhanced alpha power given the shift in behavioral valence ratings. Methods Twenty-four subjects with STN DBS underwent emotional picture-viewing tasks comprising neutral and negative pictures. In a subset of these subjects, the negative images were associated with time-locked acute stimulation at either 10 or 130 Hz. Power of signals was estimated relative to the baseline and subjected to non-parametric statistical testing. Results As hypothesized, in 130 Hz stimulation condition, we show a decrease in alpha power to negative vs. neutral images irrespective of stimulation. In contrast, this alpha power decrease was no longer evident in the negative 10 Hz stimulation condition consistent with a predicted increase in alpha power. Greater beta power in the 10 Hz stimulation condition along with correlations between beta power across the 10 Hz stimulation and unstimulated conditions suggest physiological and cognitive generalization effects. Conclusion Acute alpha-specific frequency stimulation presumably was associated with a loss of this expected decrease or desynchronization in alpha power to negative images suggesting the capacity to facilitate the synchronization of alpha and enhance power. Acute time-locked stimulation has the potential to provide causal insights into the spectral frequencies and temporal dynamics of emotional processing.
Oscillatory synchronization in the theta-frequency band was found to play a causal role in binding information of different modalities in declarative memory. Moreover, there is first evidence from a laboratory study that theta-synchronized (vs. asynchronized) multimodal input in a classical fear conditioning paradigm resulted in better discrimination of a threat-associated stimulus when compared to perceptually similar stimuli never associated with the aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). Effects manifested in affective ratings and ratings of contingency knowledge. However, theta-specificity was not addressed so far. Thus, in the present pre-registered web-based fear conditioning study, we compared synchronized (vs. asynchronized) input in a theta-frequency band vs. the same synchronization manipulation in a delta frequency. Based on our previous laboratory design, five visual gratings of different orientations (25°, 35°, 45°, 55°, 65°) served as conditioned stimuli (CS) with only one (CS+) paired with the auditory aversive US. Both CS and US were luminance or amplitude modulated, respectively, in a theta (4 Hz) or delta (1.7 Hz) frequency. In both frequencies, CS-US pairings were presented either in-phase (0° phase lag) or out-of-phase (90°, 180°, 270°), resulting in four independent groups (each group N = 40). Phase synchronization augmented the discrimination of CSs in CS-US contingency knowledge but did not affect valence and arousal ratings. Interestingly, this effect occurred independent of frequency. In sum, the current study proves the ability to successfully conduct complex generalization fear conditioning in an online setting. Based on this prerequisite, our data supports a causal role of phase synchronization in the declarative CS-US associations for low frequencies rather than in the specific theta-frequency band.
Social support offers protection from depression and anxiety, possibly through its beneficial effects upon cognitive reappraisal. The present study evaluates potential mechanisms of social support, utilizing a reappraisal task in 121 undergraduates elevated on neuroticism. Participants were instructed to reinterpret stressful images with (Social Condition) and without (Solo Condition) the reminder of a social support figure. Aversiveness, negative affect, and positive affect ratings, as well as written reappraisal responses, were collected trial-by-trial. Results indicated that participants reported lower aversiveness and negative affect and higher positive affect when reinterpreting images in the Social Condition compared to the Solo Condition. Analyses of adherence ratings of written reappraisals revealed that participants generated reinterpretations more in the Social Condition than in the Solo Condition. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that Condition was indirectly associated with reappraisal efficacy as measured by aversiveness and affect ratings through reappraisal adherence. Results suggest that cognitive reappraisal with the influence of social support may be more effective than cognitive reappraisal without such social influence, and thus may be a suitable target for interventions for depression and anxiety.