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The semantic representation of abstract words is a topic of discussion within the embodied cognition framework. Existing theories propose the involvement of emotional, linguistic, and social experiences in abstract word representation. Focusing on ‘socialness’ — a variable with limited empirical evidence — our study explores whether abstract words are associated with richer social experiences. Two semantic categorization tasks (explicit and implicit) with socialness priming and a lexical decision task with socialness priming were conducted to examine the effect of socialness on abstract words recognition. Additionally, we run similar experiments with affective priming to examine the effect of valence on abstract words recognition. Our results indicate that only valence facilitates the recognition of abstract words and only in the explicit task. Conclusively, we find no evidence supporting a non-strategic effect of socialness and valence on abstract words recognition, thus challenging existing theories on the grounding of abstract words in social information and emotion.

The processing of time activates a spatial left-to-right mental timeline, where past events are "located" to the left and future events to the right. If past and future words activate this mental timeline, then the processing of such words should interfere with hand movements that go in the opposite direction. To test this hypothesis, we conducted 3 visual lexical decision tasks with conjugated (past/future) verbs and pseudoverbs. In Experiment 1, participants moved a pen to the right or left of a trackpad to indicate whether a visual stimulus was a real word or not. Grammatical time and hand movements for yes responses went in the same direction in the congruent condition (e.g., past tense/leftward movement) but in opposite directions in the incongruent condition. Analyses showed that space-time incongruency significantly increased reaction times. In Experiment 2, we investigated the role of movement in this effect. Participants performed the same task by responding with a trackpad or a mouse, both of which required lateral movement through space, or a static keypress. We again obtained the space-time congruency effect, but only when the decision required movement through space. In Experiments 1 and 2, stimuli were preceded by a temporal prime. In Experiment 3, participants performed the same task without any prime. Results replicated the congruency effect, demonstrating that it does not depend upon temporal word priming. Altogether, results suggest automatic activation of a left-right mental timeline during word recognition, reinforcing the claim that the concept of Time is grounded in movement through space.

Purpose: This study was designed to assess the efficiency of a French version of "GraphoGame" (GG) against an equally engaging math intervention ("Fiete Math," FM) in a large school sample of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in grade 1 (N = 921). Method: The intervention was implemented in two different cohorts who used GG or FM for about four months four times a week for 30 minutes. Gains in reading and mathematics were assessed before and after intervention. Given the nested nature of the data, results were analyzed using hierarchical linear mixed effect models with intervention and initial pretest level as fixed effects and individuals and classes as random effects. Results: We found positive intervention effects of GG on phoneme awareness (effect size, ES = 0.23), orthographic choice (ES = 0.27) and word reading fluency (ES = 0.18). FM had a significant effect on math achievement (ES = 0.28) but not number comparison. Correlations between intervention gains and game variables (overall accuracy, number of levels played) suggest that the effects of GG were specific. Conclusions: Positive effects for focused digital reading and math interventions were found in a large school sample of children from socially disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The present study investigated whether morphological processing in reading is influenced by the orthographic consistency of a language or its morphological complexity. Developing readers in Grade 3 and skilled adult readers participated in a reading aloud task in four alphabetic orthographies (English, French, German, Italian), which differ in terms of both orthographic consistency and morphological complexity. English is the least consistent, in terms of its spelling-to-sound relationships, as well as the most morphologically sparse, compared to the other three. Two opposing hypotheses were formulated. If orthographic consistency modulated the use of morphology in reading, readers of English should show more robust morphological processing than readers of the other three languages, because morphological units increase the reliability of spelling-to-sound mappings in the English language. In contrast, if the use of morphology in reading depended on the morphological complexity of a language, readers of French, German, and Italian should process morphological units in printed letter strings more efficiently than readers of English. Both developing and skilled readers of English showed greater morphological processing than readers of the other three languages. These results support the idea that the orthographic consistency of a language, rather than its morphological complexity, influences the extent to which morphology is used during reading. We explain our findings within the remit of extant theories of reading acquisition and outline their theoretical and educational implications.

The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing in the visual and auditory modality. French and German adults performed a visual and auditory lexical decision task that involved the same translation-equivalent items. The focus of the study was on nonwords, which were constructed in a way that made it possible to independently investigate the role of stems and suffixes in the visual and auditory domain. Results revealed a stem-by-modality and a suffix-by-modality interaction, indicating that morphology plays a more prominent role in the visual than in the auditory domain. Moreover, a significant language-by-stem interaction indicated more robust morphological processing in German than in French. The latter result supports the idea that morphological processing is influenced by the morphological productivity of a language.

The present study explored the role of constituent frequency and distractor type in complex word learning. Skilled readers were trained to associate novel letter strings with one out of two pictures, with one picture serving as the target, and the other as a distractor. A facilitatory effect of first-constituent frequency was found only in trials where distractors promoted first-constituent learning, and a facilitatory effect of second-constituent frequency only in trials where distractors promoted second-constituent learning, but not vice versa. Learning occurred in the absence of any pre-existing knowledge about the constituent morphemes and any explicit reference to the constituents during learning. The results point to the important role of constituent frequency and distractor type in novel word learning and provide insights into the mechanisms involved in the implicit acquisition of morphological knowledge in adult learners, that we suspect to be a key aspect of language learning in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we concurrently investigated 3 possible causes of dyslexia--a phonological deficit, visual stress, and a reduced visual attention span--in a large population of 164 dyslexic and 118 control French children, aged between 8 and 13 years old. We found that most dyslexic children showed a phonological deficit, either in terms of response accuracy (92.1% of the sample), speed (84.8%), or both (79.3%). Deficits in visual attention span, as measured by partial report ability, affected 28.1% of dyslexic participants, all of which also showed a phonological deficit. Visual stress, as measured by subjective reports of visual discomfort, affected 5.5% of dyslexic participants, not more than controls (8.5%). Although phonological variables explained a large amount of variance in literacy skills, visual variables did not explain any additional variance. Finally, children with comorbid phonological and visual deficits did not show more severe reading disability than children with a pure phonological deficit. These results (a) confirm the importance of phonological deficits in dyslexia; (b) suggest that visual attention span may play a role, but a minor one, at least in this population; (c) do not support any involvement of visual stress in dyslexia. Among the factors that may explain some differences with previously published studies, the present sample is characterized by very stringent inclusion criteria, in terms of the severity of reading disability and in terms of exclusion of comorbidities. This may exacerbate the role of phonological deficits to the detriment of other factors playing a role in reading acquisition.

A letter-search task was used to test the hypothesis that affixes are chunked during morphological processing and that such chunking might operate differently for prefixes and suffixes. Participants had to detect a letter target that was embedded either in a prefix or suffix (e.g., "R" in "propoint" or "filmure") or in a non-prefix beginning or non-suffix ending (e.g., "R" in "cropoint" or "filmire"). Prefixed and suffixed letter-strings comprised real stems and affixes but never formed a real word. Effects of letter cluster frequency were also investigated by manipulating the frequency of non-affix beginnings and endings. Letter search took longer in suffixes compared with non-suffix endings but not for prefixes compared with non-prefix beginnings. Moreover, performance was not affected by letter cluster frequency. We interpret our findings in the light of recent accounts of morpho-orthographic segmentation and the different function of prefixes and suffixes.

The present study used a variant of masked priming to track the development of 2 marker effects of orthographic and phonological processing from Grade 1 through Grade 5 in a cross-sectional study. Pseudohomophone (PsH) priming served as a marker for phonological processing, whereas transposed-letter (TL) priming was a marker for coarse-grained orthographic processing. The results revealed a clear developmental picture. First, the PsH priming effect was significant and remained stable across development, suggesting that phonology not only plays an important role in early reading development but continues to exert a robust influence throughout reading development. This finding challenges the view that more advanced readers should rely less on phonological information than younger readers. Second, the TL priming effect increased monotonically with grade level and reading age, which suggests greater reliance on coarse-grained orthographic coding as children become better readers. Thus, TL priming effects seem to be a good marker effect for children's ability to use coarse-grained orthographic coding to speed up direct lexical access in alphabetic languages. The results were predicted by the dual-route model of orthographic processing, which suggests that direct orthographic access is achieved through coarse-grained orthographic coding that tolerates some degree of flexibility in letter order.