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The present study investigated whether working memory (WM) training enhances morphosyntactic processing in the second language (L2). L2 learners of Spanish in the treatment group completed WM updating pre/post tasks and a moving window task containing sentences with gender agreement. Moreover, the treatment group trained with two WM tasks for five consecutive days, they completed a posttest and a delayed posttest two months after. The results show that the treatment group presented transfer to untrained WM tasks at both posttests, while the control group did not. While neither group showed sensitivity to gender disagreement at pretest, the treatment group was sensitive to violations after training, and this improvement in morphosyntactic processing was sustained at the delayed posttest. The control group, however, remained insensitive at posttest. Taken together, the findings suggest that WM is a malleable system and WM training may be used as a cognitive tool to facilitate L2 morphosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transposing two words in a sentence (e.g. "cat" and "was" in "the white cat was big") creates a sequence that is harder to classify as ungrammatical than control sequences (e.g. "the white was cat slowly"), suggesting that word position coding is noisy and can be affected by syntactic expectations. In the present research, this transposed-word effect was examined more closely using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) formats which provided either clear temporal cues to word order but no spatial cues, or both types of cues. Compared to when all words were presented simultaneously, the two RSVP formats reduced the transposed-word effect to the same degree while having no parallel impact on another ungrammatical comparison condition involving no transposition. These results are discussed in the context of serial and parallel models of reading as well as models that propose a later processing stage for the locus of the transposed-word effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), people frequently have difficulty understanding nonliteral language, including irony and indirect requests. Despite the handicap that these disorders can represent in daily life, they are rarely treated clinically, and remediation studies are scarce. The present study thus aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an explicit metapragmatic therapy targeting nonliteral language comprehension and taking into account cognitive processes likely to underlie this comprehension (i.e., contextual processing, theory of mind, and executive functions). This study was registered on the ClinicalTrials.gov system (ID: NCT04708561) before participant recruitment. Two adults with severe TBI took part in the study. An ABA design with multiple baselines was used to assess the evolution of treated and non-treated written literal and nonliteral story comprehension, as well as ecological tasks and tasks assessing the cognitive processes of interest (theory of mind and executive functions). An interview was also conducted at the end of treatment to assess participant satisfaction. Therapy resulted in significant improvement in treated items, with one-month maintenance of gains and generalisation to untreated items in both participants. The generalisation to a working memory task was also observed in one participant. Finally, participant satisfaction with the treatment was high. Our study demonstrated for the first time the potential of a therapy targeting irony and indirect request comprehension in TBI individuals. Clinically, it offers concrete therapeutic avenues and fills a critical gap in the TBI population's evidence for the remediation of nonliteral language comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, especially in adverse listening conditions. However, we do not know whether gestures influence simultaneous interpreters' language comprehension in adverse listening conditions, and if so, whether this influence is modulated by interpreting experience, or by active simultaneous interpreting (SI). We exposed 24 interpreters and 24 bilinguals without interpreting experience to utterances with semantically related gestures, semantically unrelated gestures, or without gestures while engaging in comprehension (interpreters and bilinguals) or in SI (interpreters only). Tasks were administered in clear and noisy speech. Accuracy and reaction time were measured, and participants' gaze was tracked. During comprehension, semantically related gestures facilitated both groups' processing in noise. Facilitation was not modulated by interpreting experience. However, when interpreting noisy speech, interpreters did not benefit from gestures. This suggests that the comprehension component, and specifically crossmodal information processing, in SI differs from that of other language comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the use of reporting speech devices (RS) in narrative retells by Spanish-speaking children with (and without) Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). We assessed 50 7-year-old children (25 with DLD and 25 with TD) and analyzed the narrative retells' length and the RS forms introduced by children. In addition, we considered the Type of Reported Speech linguistic mechanism (TRSm) and the Type of Voice Assignment (TVA). Neither the number of RS sequences introduced, narrative retells' length, nor the number of original sequences exhibit significant differences between both groups. We found a mean correlation among groups' differences and TRSm (Spearman: 0356 rho>: 0011). Although both groups behave in a very similar way in some indicators, we found slight differences that characterize different communicative profiles for DLD and TD. The results have implications for planning DLD language interventions, mainly in those designed to improve DLD grammar and narrative usages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The diagnosis of auditory processing disorder (APD) is controversial particularly due to the influence of higher order factors of language and cognition on the diagnostic APD testing. As a result, there might be a need for testing for other domains (e.g., cognition) along with conducting the diagnostic APD testing to rule out the influence of other domains. In order to make recommendations on whether cognitive testing is needed along with the auditory processing testing, as a starting point, the current study was conducted to examine the relationship between cognitive abilities and basic auditory processing in young adults. Method: A total of 38 young adults with normal audiometric thresholds between 250 and 8000 Hz participated in this study. They were tested on their executive function, language, processing speed, working memory, and episodic memory components of cognitive testing and tests for temporal fine structure and spectrotemporal sensitivity for auditory processing testing. Results: No significant correlation was found between the cognitive tests and the tests for basic auditory processing in young adults. Conclusions: These findings present contrast to the existing findings in children and older adults where a stronger correlation between cognitive abilities and auditory processing has been found. The current findings suggest that testing for cognitive abilities may not be needed when testing for basic auditory processing in young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Anomia, or word-finding difficulty, is a prevalent and persistent feature of aphasia, a neurogenic language disorder affecting millions of people in the United States. Anomia assessments are essential for measuring performance and monitoring outcomes in clinical settings. This study aims to evaluate the reliability of response time (RT) annotation based on spectrograms and assess the predictive utility of proxy RTs collected during computerized naming tests. Method: Archival data from 10 people with aphasia were used. Trained research assistants phonemically transcribed participants’ responses, and RTs were generated from the onset of picture stimulus to the initial phoneme of the first complete attempt. RTs were measured in two ways: hand-generated RTs (from spectrograms) and proxy RTs (automatically extracted online). Interrater agreement was evaluated based on interclass correlation coefficients and generalizability theory tools including variance partitioning and the ϕ-coefficient. The predictive utility of proxy RTs was evaluated within a linear mixed-effects framework. Results: RT annotation reliability showed near-perfect agreement across research assistants (ϕ-coefficient = .93), and the variance accounted for by raters was negligible. Furthermore, proxy RTs significantly and strongly predicted handannotated RTs (R² = ~0.82), suggesting their utility as an alternative measure. Conclusions: The study confirms the reliability of RT annotation and demonstrates the predictive utility of proxy RTs in estimating RTs during computerized naming tests. Incorporating proxy RTs can enhance clinical assessments, providing additional information for cognitive measurement. Further research with larger samples and exploring the impact of using proxy RTs in different psychometric models could optimize clinical protocols and improve communication interventions for individuals with aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Shared reading provides preschool-age children with the opportunity to learn novel, low-frequency words. Abundant empirical evidence demonstrates that children can learn the meanings of such words during shared reading, referred to as “semantic learning.” However, less is known about whether children learn the spellings of words during shared reading, referred to as “orthographic learning,” and whether this learning is related to early word reading. The present study tested relations between individual differences in 4- to 6-year-old children’s semantic and, critically, orthographic learning during shared reading and their early word reading skill. Method: In an adaptation of the self-teaching paradigm, children listened to a storybook about novel inventions referred to with nonword names. Children then completed orthographic and semantic choice tests, as well as standardized measures of early word reading and phonological awareness. Results: Individual differences in orthographic, but not semantic, learning during shared reading were related to early word reading, after controls for age and phonological awareness. Conclusions: This study provides a novel test of learning during shared reading, helping to specify the relation between orthographic and semantic learning and early word reading skill. These findings hold implications for theoretical perspectives on relations between learning during shared reading and early word reading, as well as implications for educational practice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work has found that individuals with aphasia demonstrate impaired performance, relative to controls, on listening tasks where target speech is masked by other intelligible speech (Villard & Kidd, 2019). While this deficit may be due in part to impaired cognitive skills (e.g., attention, memory), the current study examined whether impaired linguistic-semantic processing could be a contributing factor as well. This study compared the effect of semantic relatedness between target and masker words on performance on a speech-on-speech masking task, in listeners with aphasia vs. age-matched controls. Additionally, the study compared performance on a remote vs. an in-lab version of the experiment, with the goal of establishing the validity of remote listening experiments in these populations. Eight persons with aphasia (PWA) and eight age-matched controls (AMC) participated in the remote version of the experiment; similarly, eight PWA and eight AMC participated in the in-lab version of the experiment. In both versions, participants listened to short target sentences while ignoring maskers. Maskers consisted of either intelligible speech from the same semantic category as the target (e.g., target and maskers were all fruits), intelligible speech from a distant semantic category from the target (e.g., target was a fruit; maskers were articles of clothing), or speech-shaped, speech envelope-modulated noise. Procedures and stimuli were kept as similar as possible between the remote and in-lab versions of the experiment. In-lab results revealed a significant effect of group, such that PWA performed more poorly than AMC, as well as a significant effect of masking condition, such that participants performed more poorly on speech masking vs. noise masking conditions. No significant differences between same-category and different-category maskers were observed. A comparison of remote vs. in-lab results revealed similar patterns of performance between the two settings but suggested that remote testing resulted in overall noisier data. These findings add to the existing body of knowledge about auditory masking in aphasia. Furthermore, they help lead to a clearer understanding of barriers to social engagement and community participation in PWA by characterizing challenges associated with communicating in noisy settings. The study also provided qualified support for the use of remote testing paradigms for listening experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two studies, we investigated the effects of workplace bullying on objective measures of cognitive functioning. In Study 1, 47 university employees, self-identified as current targets of bullying (n = 24) or non-targets (n = 23), completed objectively scored cognitive tasks assessing general attention and three components of working memory (central executive, visuospatial sketchpad, and phonological loop). T-test analyses showed that self-identified targets performed more poorly on the suite of tests compared to non-bullied counterparts, primarily driven by deficits in central executive functioning. Study 2 recruited 70 retail and hospitality workers who completed the cognitive tasks plus measures of preoccupying cognitions and exposure to negative acts. As hypothesised, we found significant indirect effects demonstrating that preoccupying cognitions explained the negative relationship between bullying and the three aspects of working memory. The magnitude of the cognitive deficits observed here, and their potential significance for job performance, highlights the importance of primary bullying prevention within organisations. Secondary and tertiary prevention efforts should also consider cognitive impairments experienced by targets and look for opportunities to reduce preoccupying cognitions, which compete for limited cognitive resources, to mitigate the erosive effects of bullying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impaired lexical retrieval is common in persons with low-grade glioma (LGG). Several studies have reported a discrepancy between subjective word-finding difficulties and results on formal tests. Analysis of spontaneous speech might be more sensitive to signs of word-finding difficulties, hence we aimed to explore disfluencies in a spontaneous-speech task performed by participants with presumed LGG before and after surgery. Further, we wanted to explore how the presence of disfluencies in spontaneous speech differed in the participants with and without objectively established lexical-retrieval impairment and with and without self-reported subjective experience of impaired language, speech and communication. Speech samples of 26 persons with presumed low-grade glioma were analysed with regard to disfluency features. The post-operative speech samples had a higher occurrence of fillers, implying more disfluent language production. The participants performed worse on two of the word fluency tests, and after surgery the number of participants who were assessed as having an impaired lexical retrieval had increased from 6 to 12. The number of participants who experienced a change in their language, speech or communication had increased from 9 to 12. Additional comparisons showed that those with impaired lexical retrieval had a higher proportion of false starts after surgery than those with normal lexical retrieval, and differences in articulation rate and speech rate, favouring those not having experienced any change in language, speech or communication. Taken together, the findings from this study strengthen the existing claim that temporal aspects of language and speech are important when assessing persons with gliomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disfluencies may reflect various mechanisms: word-finding difficulties, planning strategies, inter-individual cognitive variability, etc. In the current paper, we examined disfluency production in patients with a behavioural variant of Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (bvFTLD), compared to patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy older adults. We showed that bvFTLD participants have lower speech rate and produce more incomplete utterances. However, those measures were not correlated with naming and fluency tasks. On the contrary, AD participants did not differ from healthy controls on disfluency production, but discourse measures were correlated with the participants' lexical-semantic impairment. This provides evidence for different causes of disfluency in AD and FTLD, and a distinct role of each disfluency phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We provide a novel application of psycholinguistic theories and methods to the field of auditory training to provide preliminary data regarding which minimal pair contrasts are more difficult for listeners with typical hearing to distinguish in real-time. Design: Using eye-tracking, participants heard a word and selected the corresponding image from a display of four: the target word, two unrelated words, and a word from one of four contrast categories (i.e., voiced-initial [e.g., peachbeach], voiced-final [e.g., back-bag], manner-initial [e.g., talk-sock], and mannerfinal [e.g., bat-bass]). Results: Fixations were monitored to measure how strongly words compete for recognition depending on the contrast type (voicing, manner) and location (word-initial or final). Manner contrasts competed more for recognition than did voicing contrasts, and contrasts that occurred in word-final position were harder to distinguish than word-initial position. Conclusion: These results are an important initial step toward creating an evidence-based hierarchy for auditory training for individuals who use cochlear implants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder of musical pitch processing. Its linguistic consequences have been examined separately for speech intonations and lexical tones. However, in a tonal language such as Chinese, the processing of intonations and lexical tones interacts with each other during online speech perception. Whether and how the musical pitch disorder might affect linguistic pitch processing during online speech perception remains unknown. Method: We investigated this question with intonation (question vs. statement) and lexical tone (rising Tone 2 vs. falling Tone 4) identification tasks using the same set of sentences, comparing behavioral and event-related potential measurements between Mandarin-speaking amusics and matched controls. We specifically focused on the amusics without behavioral lexical tone deficits (the majority, i.e., pure amusics). Results: Results showed that, despite relative to normal performance when tested in word lexical tone test, pure amusics demonstrated inferior recognition than controls during sentence tone and intonation identification. Compared to controls, pure amusics had larger N400 amplitudes in question stimuli during tone task and smaller P600 amplitudes in intonation task. Conclusion: These data indicate that musical pitch disorder affects both tone and intonation processing during sentence processing even for pure amusics, whose lexical tone processing was intact when tested with words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic factors influence the likelihood of occurrence of stuttering instances on a certain word within an utterance. However, studies on the relationship between stuttering instances and linguistic factors of Turkish-speaking individuals are scarce. This study aimed to determine the syllable- and word-based measures of stuttering speech samples of Turkish-speaking school-aged children who stutter. Stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and lexical categories were identified after transcription of 61 children's spontaneous speech samples (age range = 6–16). Syllable-, word- and utterance-level measures were employed. Syllable-based and word-based stuttering frequency findings were significantly different (p <.001); SLDs were more likely to occur at the utterance-initial (p <.001) and word-initial (p <.001) positions; content words were more likely to be stuttered and, there was a relation between the occurrence of SLDs and utterance length (p =.001). Since there is great variability between word-based and syllable-based measures, and SLDs tend to occur at word onsets, using word-based measures in Turkish would provide a measure of stuttering frequency that is comparable to the literature. Moreover, findings support that phrases requiring greater demands on utterance planning increase the possibility of occurrence of stuttering instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experience with an object's photograph changes 9‐month‐olds' preference for the referent object, confirming they can represent objects from pictures. However, picture‐based representations appear weaker than object‐based representations. The current study's first objective was to investigate age differences in object recognition memory after familiarization with objects' pictures. The second objective was to test whether age differences in object permanence sensitivity with picture‐based representations match those found with object‐based representations, whereby 7‐month‐olds search more for familiar hidden objects but 11‐month‐olds search more for novel ones. Six‐ and 11‐month‐olds were familiarized with an object's photo and tested on their representation of the real object by comparing their reaching for it versus a novel object. Objects were visible under conditions testing recognition memory and hidden under conditions testing object permanence. Like 9‐month‐olds, 6‐ and 11‐month‐olds preferred novelty with visible objects, showing early object recognition after picture familiarization, as well as developmental continuity. Unlike 9‐month‐olds, who switched to preferring familiarity with hidden objects, 6‐ and 11‐month‐olds switched to null preference. This pattern fails to match 7‐ and 11‐month‐olds' hidden‐object preferences after familiarization with real objects, revealing discontinuity in sensitivity to object permanence after picture familiarization, and suggesting that picture‐based representations are weaker than object‐based ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to explore how well persons with anomic aphasia communicate information during discourse regarding quantity, quality, and efficiency compared to neurotypical controls, to investigate the influence of discourse tasks on informativeness and efficiency and to examine impact factors like aphasia severity and cognitive ability. Method: Language samples of four discourse tasks from 31 persons with anomic aphasia and 31 neurotypical controls were collected from Mandarin AphasiaBank. Correct information unit (CIU) analysis measures including the total number of CIUs, percentage of CIUs, CIUs per minute, and words per minute were calculated. Group differences and the effects of discourse tasks on informativeness and efficiency were investigated. Correlations of CIU analysis measures with aphasia severity and cognitive ability were examined. Results: Persons with anomic aphasia showed lower efficiency in conveying information than controls. They underperformed controls on all CIU analysis measures when executing story narrative tasks. Discourse tasks influenced the informativeness and efficiency of both groups. Neurotypical controls delivered the greatest quantity of information most efficiently when narrating stories. Persons with anomic aphasia exhibited reduced quantity of information during procedural discourse and displayed superior information quality in sequential-picture descriptions. Discourse information may be impacted by aphasia severity and cognitive ability, with varying effects depending on the task. Conclusions: Persons with anomic aphasia are inefficient in communicating discourse messages and perform poorly on all measures in story narratives. When measuring discourse information, the effects of discourse tasks and factors like aphasia severity and cognitive ability should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study was designed to examine the hypothesis that discourse task types influence language performance in Mandarin Chinese--speaking people and to reveal the discourse task-specific linguistic properties of persons with anomic aphasia compared to neurotypical controls. Method: Language samples from persons with aphasia (n = 31) and age- and education-matched controls (n = 31) across four discourse tasks (sequential-picture description, single-picture description, story narrative, and procedural discourse) were collected from Mandarin AphasiaBank. Task-specific distributions of parts of speech were analyzed using mosaic plots. The main effects of tasks in each group and the between-group differences within each task for several typical linguistic variables were evaluated, including the mean length of utterance, tokens, moving-average type-token ratio, words per minute, propositional density, noun--verb ratio, noun percentage, and verb percentage. Results: The results revealed an impact of discourse tasks on most language variables in both groups. In the healthy controls, story narratives yielded the highest total words and lowest verb percentage. In the aphasia group, procedural discourse elicited the fewest total words and densest expressions, whereas their single-picture descriptions had the highest noun--verb ratio. For all tasks, the aphasia group performed worse than the control group in the mean length of utterance, tokens, moving-average type-token ratio, and words per minute. For noun--verb ratio, noun percentage, and verb percentage, only one task (i.e., single-picture description) showed significant between-group differences. Conclusion: The selection of discourse tasks should be addressed in assessments and interventions for Mandarin Chinese--speaking individuals with aphasia to obtain more accurate and feasible outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Narrative discourse, or storytelling, is used in daily conversation and requires higher‐level language and social communication skills that are not always captured by standardised assessments of language. Many autistic individuals and individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) have difficulties with both social communication and language skills, and narrative discourse analysis offers an ecologically relevant approach to assessing those challenges. Aims: This study investigated narrative discourse in individuals with autism and FASD, as well as an age‐ and sex‐matched comparison group. Methods and Procedures: Narratives from 45 adolescents and adults, 11 with autism, 11 with FASD and 23 age‐ and sex‐matched comparison participants were elicited using a wordless storybook. They were then transcribed orthographically, formatted to the Systematic Analyses of Language Transcript (SALT) convention and scored based on the SALT Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS), a standardised language analysis protocol. In addition to the NSS total score, which assesses the overall structure and cohesion of the narratives produced, local and global measures of language ability were also employed. The local language measures included the number of mental state and temporal relation terms produced, while the global language measures included mean length of utterance, total different words, total words, total utterances, rate of speech, the number of mazes (e.g., repetitions, 'um', 'uh' or self‐corrections) per total word and the NSS total score. Outcomes and Results: Using the SALT Language Sample Analysis tool, our results revealed that on global language measures, group differences were found on rate of speech, number of mazes per total words and the description of conflict/resolution in the narratives produced. The autism group produced significantly more mazes per total word and scored higher on the NSS conflict/resolution category score compared to the FASD and comparison groups. Both the autism and FASD groups spoke at a lower rate than the comparison group. On local language measures of narrative production, all groups were comparable, on average. Conclusions and Implications: While many aspects of narrative discourse in the autism and FASD groups were similar to each other and to the comparison group, we observed group differences on global measures of narrative production and significant individual variability within groups, suggesting that narrative abilities considered at an individual level may provide important clinical information for intervention planning. Future research should also consider additional variables that influence narrative discourse, such as motivation, distractibility or decision‐making of individual participants. What this paper adds: What is already known on the subject: Narrative discourse, or storytelling, is used in daily conversational interactions and reveals higher‐level language skills that may not be well captured by standardised assessments of language. Many autistic individuals and individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) show difficulty with pragmatic and expressive language skills. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: We found that many aspects of the narratives produced by the adolescents/young adults in the autism and FASD groups were comparable to each other and to the neurotypical group. However, the groups differed on three global measures of narrative production: rate of speech, number of mazes per total words and the description of conflict/resolution in the narratives produced. Also, significant variability was observed within groups, suggesting that narrative abilities should be considered at an individual level as opposed to their clinical groups. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: This study showed that narrative discourse is an appropriate task that can be added to routine clinical assessments of language abilities in autistic adolescents/young adults as well as those with FASD or typical development and has the potential to reveal higher‐level, real‐world language skills. An important clinical implication of this study is that narrative language abilities should be considered at an individual level and individual‐tailored interventions based on ability level due to the variability observed across individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as vocalization proceeds in a continuous stream in speech, so too do movements of the hands, face, and body in sign languages. Here, we use motion-capture technology to distinguish lexical signs in sign language from other common types of expression in the signing stream. One type of expression is constructed action, the enactment of (aspects of) referents and events by (parts of) the body. Another is classifier constructions, the manual representation of analogue and gradient motions and locations simultaneously with specified referent morphemes. The term signing is commonly used for all of these, but we show that not all visual signals in sign languages are of the same type. In this study of Israeli Sign Language, we use motion capture to show that the motion of lexical signs differs significantly along several kinematic parameters from that of the two other modes of expression: constructed action and the classifier forms. In so doing, we show how motion-capture technology can help to define the universal linguistic category "word," and to distinguish it from the expressive gestural elements that are commonly found across sign languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glossolalia can be regarded as an instance of speech production in which practitioners produce syllables in seemingly random sequences. However, a closer inspection of glossalalia's statistical properties reveals that sequences show a Zipfian pattern similar to natural languages, with some syllables being more probable than others. It is well established that statistical properties of sequences are implicitly learned, and that these statistical properties correlate with changes in kinematic and speech behavior. For speech, this means that more predictable items are phonetically shorter. Accordingly, we hypothesized for glossolalia that if practitioners have learned a serial pattern in glossolalia in the same manner as in natural languages, its statistical properties should correlate with its phonetic characteristics. Our hypothesis was supported. We find significantly shorter syllables associated with higher syllable probabilities in glossolalia. We discuss this finding in relation to theories about the sources of probability-related changes in the speech signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study focuses on 7- to 9-year-old children attending primary school in Swedish areas of low socioeconomic status, where most children's school language is their second language. The aim was to better understand what factors influence these children's narrative listening comprehension both in an ideal listening condition (in quiet) and for the primary school classroom, a typical listening condition (with multitalker babble noise). Method: A total of 86 typically developing 7- to 9-year-olds performed a narrative listening comprehension test (Lyssna, Förstå och Minnas [LFM]; English translation: Listen, Comprehend, and Remember) in two listening conditions: quiet and multitalker babble noise. They also performed the crosslinguistic nonword repetition test and a digit span backwards (DSB) test. A predictive statistical model including these factors, the children's degree of school language exposure, parental education level, and age was derived. Results: Listening condition had the strongest predictive value for LFM performance, followed by school language exposure and nonword repetition accuracy. Parental education level was also a significant predictor. There was a significant three-way interaction effect between listening condition, age, and DSB performance. Conclusions: Multitalker babble noise has a negative effect on children's narrative listening comprehension. The effect of multitalker babble noise could be explained by age differences in the ability to allocate working memory capacity during the narrative listening comprehension task, suggesting that younger children may be more vulnerable for missing information when listening in background noise than their older peers. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25209248 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: ChatGPT, a recently released chatbot from OpenAI, has found applications in various aspects of life, including academic research. This study investigated the knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of researchers towards using ChatGPT and other chatbots in academic research. Methods: A pre-designed, self-administered survey using Google Forms was employed to conduct the study. The questionnaire assessed participants' knowledge of ChatGPT and other chatbots, their awareness of current chatbot and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and their attitudes towards ChatGPT and its potential research uses. Results: Two hundred researchers participated in the survey. A majority were female (57.5%), and over two-thirds belonged to the medical field (68%). While 67% had heard of ChatGPT, only 11.5% had employed it in their research, primarily for rephrasing paragraphs and finding references. Interestingly, over one-third supported the notion of listing ChatGPT as an author in scientific publications. Concerns emerged regarding AI's potential to automate researcher tasks, particularly in language editing, statistics, and data analysis. Additionally, roughly half expressed ethical concerns about using AI applications in scientific research. Conclusion: The increasing use of chatbots in academic research necessitates thoughtful regulation that balances potential benefits with inherent limitations and potential risks. Chatbots should not be considered authors of scientific publications but rather assistants to researchers during manuscript preparation and review. Researchers should be equipped with proper training to utilize chatbots and other AI tools effectively and ethically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people with aphasia (PWA) show deficits in sentence production and comprehension, in part, due to an inefficient mapping between messages and syntactic structures. Structural priming—the tendency to repeat previously encountered sentence structures—has been shown to support implicit syntactic learning within and across production and comprehension modalities in healthy adults. Structural priming is also effective in facilitating sentence production and comprehension in PWA. However, less is known about whether priming in one modality changes PWA's performance in the other modality, crucial evidence needed for applying structural priming as a cost-effective intervention strategy for PWA. This study examined (a) whether production to comprehension cross-modality priming is effective in PWA, (b) whether priming-induced changes in syntactic comprehension lasted in the absence of an immediate prime, and (c) whether there is a significant correlation between individuals' priming effects and the change in their comprehension following priming. Thirteen PWA and 13 age-matched control participants completed a pre-test, a production-to-comprehension priming block, and a post-test. In the pre- and post-tests, participants completed a sentence-picture matching task with sentences involving interpretations of an ambiguous prepositional phrase (e.g., The teacher is poking the monk with a bat). Participants were free to choose a picture corresponding to a high attachment (HA; e.g., the teacher is using the bat to poke the monk) or a low attachment (LA; e.g., the monk is holding the bat) interpretation. In the priming block, participants produced LA sentences as primes and then completed a sentence-picture matching task for comprehension targets, similar to the pre-test. Age-matched controls and PWA showed a significant priming effect when comparing the priming block to the pre-test. In both groups, the priming effect persisted when comparing picture selections in the pre- and post-tests. At the individual level, age-matched controls who showed larger priming effects also selected more LA pictures in the post-test compared to the pre-test, indicating that the priming effect accounted for the magnitude of change from the pre- to post-test. This correlation was also found in PWA. These findings suggest that production-to-comprehension structural priming is effective and persistent in PWA and controls, in line with the view that structural priming is a form of implicit learning. Further, the findings suggest that syntactic representations are shared between modalities, and therefore, production influences future comprehension. Cross-modality structural priming may have clinical potential to improve sentence processing in PWA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We examined which measures of complexity are most informative when studying language produced in interaction. Specifically, using these measures, we explored whether native and nonnative speakers modified the higher level properties of their production beyond the acoustic–phonetic level based on the language background of their conversation partner. Method: Using a subset of production data from the Wildcat Corpus that used Diapix, an interactive picture matching task, to elicit production, we compared English language production at the dyad and individual level across three different pair types: eight native pairs (English–English), eight mixed pairs (four English–Chinese and four English–Korean), and eight nonnative pairs (four Chinese–Chinese and four Korean–Korean). Results: At both the dyad and individual levels, native speakers produced longer and more clausally dense speech. They also produced fewer silent pauses and fewer linguistic mazes relative to nonnative speakers. Speakers did not modify their production based on the language background of their interlocutor. Conclusions: The current study examines higher level properties of language production in true interaction. Our results suggest that speakers’ productions were determined by their own language background and were independent of that of their interlocutor. Furthermore, these demonstrated promise for capturing syntactic characteristics of language produced in true dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Narrative tasks provide sensitive measures in detecting language disorders and are fundamental for linguistic evaluation in children with language fragilities. • The literature on children with CIs has shown the predictive role of a composite measure of receptive language on narrative abilities. • Both children with CIs and DLD display fragilities in narration, both in the morphological and syntactic components. • Fragilities in the production of morphological elements are different among the groups. • Morphosyntactic comprehension predicted the number of pronouns produced only in the group with typical hearing. The narrative skills of children with cochlear implants (CIs) are fragile, but the factors at play and whether these difficulties could be similar to those detected in language impairment are not clear. The present study aims to assess, at the microstructural level, narrative skills, comparing children with CIs with children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or Typical Development (TD). Furthermore, the relationship between verbal (lexical and morphosyntactic) comprehension and narrative skills across groups is investigated. The narratives of 19 children with CIs (M age = 62.42 months, SD = 6.83), 13 children with DLD (M age = 65.38 months, SD = 4.27), and 18 preschool children with TD (M age = 63.67 months, SD = 4.31) were assessed in a standardized task. Articles, prepositions, pronouns, gender and number agreement, accuracy in the use of verbs, and number of arguments in each sentence were analysed. Lexical and morphosyntactic comprehension were also assessed. Performance was compared across groups using ANOVAs or Kruskal–Wallis tests. The role of lexical and morphosyntactic comprehension in predicting each morphological and syntactic element in the narrative task was examined using linear regressions. Data analysis showed that both children with CIs and DLD had fragilities in narration, both in the morphological and syntactic components. Although some differences between children with CIs and those with DLD emerged in descriptive analyses, these were not statistically significant. Regressions showed that morphosyntactic comprehension predicted the number of pronouns produced only in the TD group. The scarce differences between CI and DLD groups and the absence of an effect of morphosyntactic comprehension on pronoun production may be due to their low production of these elements in the narrative task and/or to a difficulty in managing pronouns in an expressive task regardless of their ability to comprehend them. Potential implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]