Picture Naming

Background: Semantic feature analysis (SFA) is a prominent treatment for the word retrieval deficits of aphasia. Generalisation of improved word retrieval on picture naming to discourse production has been an important factor for evaluating the effectiveness of SFA treatment. Unfortunately, generalisation of word retrieval improvements to discourse production following SFA has been modest.Aims: Because of the previous, albeit limited, success

Previous research has shown that word-to-picture matching for targets that cannot be named at pre-test results in improved naming relative to untreated control items for people with aphasia. This paper replicates and extends this finding and investigates its source. Is the effect a result of priming of semantic representations, or of post-semantic mechanisms in word retrieval?The first experiment shows that word-to-picture matching with unrelated distractors improves naming at short (2-3 minutes) and long (up to 25 minute) lags. There was no effect of being made aware of the relationship between word-to- picture matching and picture naming. People who have a semantic impairment improve only with a short lag between word-to-picture matching and naming. Participants with less semantic impairment show larger priming effects that are equal at short and long lags between word-to-picture matching and naming.The second experiment shows that the facilitation effect is just as large for word-to-picture matching with unrelated distractors as with semantically-related distractors. Furthermore, overall there was no difference between matching with coordinate items and with associated items.The results of these experiments show that facilitation of naming by word-to-picture matching in people with aphasia cannot be a result of the priming of semantic representations. Instead they are consistent with two effects: word-to-picture matching results in priming at a lemma level for aphasic people with a semantic impairment that is only found with a short lag between word-to-picture matching and naming. Word-to-picture matching causes priming of the lemma to output lexicon entry mapping that benefits participants with less semantic impairment that is evident at both a short and long lag between word-to-picture matching and naming. These findings fit well with previous research on repetition priming of naming with normal subjects.

"Research on bilingual language processing has demonstrated a robust processing advantage for cognates (e.g., guitarEnglish-guitarFrench). More recently this processing advantage has been shown for bilinguals whose language do not share a script, such as Chinese-English, Korean-English, and Japanese-English, bilinguals process cognates faster than matched noncognates in a range of tasks (e.g., Hoshino & Kroll, 2008; Jiang & Forster, 2001; Kim & Davies, 2003). However, little work has been done to establish to what extent the cognate processing advantage is modulated by the amount of linguistic overlap. For example, does the English word radio have a greater processing advantage for Japanese-English bilinguals than television because there is greater overlap with the Japanese cognate (e.g., ラジオ /rajio/ vs. テレビ /terebi/)? Importantly, the cognate advantage may be modulated by a range of other factors such as L2 (second language) proficiency and lexical variables (e.g., frequency).
Thus to give a more complete picture of the cognate advantage, instead of using the more traditional binary cognate/noncognate distinction, the current study makes use of continuous measures of phonological and semantic overlap, L2 proficiency and lexical variables in mixed effects modeling of data gained from two different tasks: L2 picture naming (Experiment 1) and L2 lexical decision (Experiment 2). Crucially, the use of a production and comprehension task allows us to assess the influence of task demands as a modulating factor of cross-linguistic similarity effects.
For the mixed effects models, cross-linguistic phonological and semantic similarity measures were gained by asking Japanese speakers of English to rate word pairs such as ラジオ/rajio/ - radio and 耳 /mimi/ - ear. The ratings show that cognates and noncognates vary in terms of their amount of phonological and semantic overlap. In Experiment 1, we observed an interaction between phonological and semantic similarity, such that increased ratings on both of these measures lead to faster picture naming times. In Experiment 2, much stronger effects of cross-linguistic similarity were observed, such that increased phonological similarity (e.g., radio-ラジオ /rajio/ vs. television-テレビ /terebi/) lead to faster lexical decision times, while increased semantic similarity lead to slower responses. Subsequent post-hoc analyses using measures of concreteness and number of L2 senses variables in mixed effects modeling confirmed that for abstract items a greater number of senses speeds responses in lexical decision, as found in previous research (e.g., Hino, Lupker & Pexman, 2002; Tokowicz & Kroll, 2007). Importantly, cross-linguistic semantic similarity also appears to predict responses in lexical decision.
These results, particularly the effects of semantic similarity, demonstrate the importance of task demands in modulating cross-linguistic similarity effects and suggest that studies move towards continuous measures of cross-linguistic similarity when investigating bilingual processing. These experiments also indicate how proficiency and variables such as word frequency modulate L2 word processing. The findings from the current study are explained in terms of interactive activation models for bilingual production (e.g., Costa, Santestebana and Caño, 2005) and comprehension (e.g., the revised Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) model; Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002)."

Effective literacy education in deaf students calls for psycholinguistic research revealing the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying their written language processing. When learning a written language, deaf students are often instructed to sign out printed text. The present fMRI study was intended to reveal the neural substrates associated with word signing by comparing it with picture signing. Native deaf signers were asked to overtly sign in Chinese Sign Language (CSL) common objects indicated with written words or presented as pictures. Except in left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule where word signing elicited greater activation than picture signing, the two tasks engaged a highly overlapping set of brain regions previously implicated in sign production. The results suggest that word signing in the deaf signers relies on meaning activation from printed visual forms, followed by similar production processes from meaning to signs as in picture signing. The...

This article reviews recent research on perception of tangible pictures in sighted and blind people. Haptic picture naming accuracy is dependent upon familiarity and access to semantic memory, just as in visual recognition. Performance is high when haptic picture recognition tasks do not depend upon semantic memory. Viewpoint matters for the ease or difficulty of interpreting haptic pictures of solid objects. Top views were easiest for sighted and blind persons when geometrical solids had constant crosssections in the vertical axis. The presence or absence of viewpoint effects depends upon the nature of the solids that are represented. Congenitally blind people do not spontaneously produce perspective drawings, but recent data suggests that depictions including linear perspective can be understood after minimal experience. The results suggest that two-dimensional configurations are not necessarily problematic for touch. Touch is a remarkable sense, and it is just beginning to reveal...

To investigate the hypothesis that in multilingual speakers different languages are represented in distinct brain regions, 12 multilingual right-handed men performed a word fluency task, a picture naming task, a comprehension reading task, and their respective control tasks in three languages (Dutch, French, and English) while whole-head functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied. In general, all language tasks revealed predominantly overlapping regions of activation for the different languages. Cerebral activation during use of the foreign languages showed a tendency toward a more extensive recruitment of the areas activated in the native language and the activation of a greater number of regions. Word generation in the foreign languages elicited additional bilateral inferior frontal activation, including Broca's area and left middle temporal gyrus activation; in the native language, additional postcentral activation was found. Picture naming in the foreign langua...

Despite recent developments in integrating autonomous and human-like robots into many aspects of everyday life, social interactions with robots are still a challenge. Here, we focus on a central tool for social interaction: verbal communication. We assess the extent to which humans co-represent (simulate and predict) a robot's verbal actions. During a joint picture naming task, participants took turns in naming objects together with a social robot (Pepper, Softbank Robotics). Previous findings using this task with human partners revealed internal simulations on behalf of the partner down to the level of selecting words from the mental lexicon, reflected in partner-elicited inhibitory effects on subsequent naming. Here, with the robot, the partner-elicited inhibitory effects were not observed. Instead, naming was facilitated, as revealed by faster naming of word categories co-named with the robot. This facilitation suggests that robots, unlike humans, are not simulated down to th...

Background: Neuroimaging research on language recovery in patients with aphasia due to left hemisphere damage has generated some intriguing results. However, it is still not clear what role the right hemisphere plays in supporting recovered language functions in the chronic phase for patients with different site and size of lesion when different tasks are used. Aims: The present study aimed at exploring the role of perilesional, ipsilesional, and contralesional activation in participants with aphasia with different site and size of lesion using two different language tasks. All participants were in the chronic stage with well- recovered or significant improvements in language functions. Methods & Procedures: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to characterise brain activations in eight stroke patients and eight age/gender-matched controls during semantic judgement and oral picture naming. An event-related design using jittered interstimulus intervals (ISIs) was employed to present the stimuli. Outcomes & Results: The fMRI scans of both language tasks in patients revealed differences in activation pattern relative to the normal control participants. The nature of this difference was task specific. During the semantic judgement task patients without lesions involving the left frontal region activated the left inferior frontal gyrus similar to observations in the normal control participants. Participants with left frontal lesions activated contralesional regions in addition to perilesional left frontal regions. During the picture-naming task all participants activated bilateral brain regions irrespective of the site or size of lesion, consistent with other published studies utilising this task. Subsequent regions of interest analysis and laterality index analysis revealed that patients with large lesions produced greater right hemisphere activation than patients with small lesions. Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrate that recovery is task, lesion site, and size specific. Further, the results also indicate a role for both activation of homologous contralesional cortex and activity of left hemisphere regions (perilesional and ipsilesional) as efficient mechanisms for supporting language functions in chronic stroke patients.

The present multiple case study investigates the production of compound words in three Greek-speaking individuals with agrammatism, as a symptom either of stroke-induced aphasia or Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). Two off-line tasks were conducted, a picture naming and a production by definition task, using different types of compounds, in order to examine patients' ability to produce complex morphological structures and the impact of specific compound properties. Results showed that all patients’ performance was significantly more impaired compared to healthy controls. Qualitative analysis revealed different error patterns for each pathological condition, suggesting that agrammatism in stroke-induced and primary progressive aphasia does not necessarily result in the same deficits when it comes to morphological processing. Moreover, heterogeneous results emerged for the two PPA patients which further highlight the progressive nature of PPA as a crucial factor in complex word retrieval.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of conceptual and perceptual properties of words on the speed and accuracy of lexical retrieval of children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) during a picture-naming task. Participants consisted of 13 3–5-year-old ...