Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Jiang, Jessica; Johnson, Jeremy; Levett, Benjamin A; Core, Lucy B; Volkmer, Anna; Koohi, Nehzat; Bamiou, Doris-Eva; Marshall, Charles R; Warren, Jason D; Hardy, Chris JD

doi: 10.1177/17470218241287349pmid: 39297359

Hearing is multifaceted, and the relative contributions of peripheral and central hearing loss are rarely considered together in the context of dementia. Here, we assessed peripheral (as measured with pure-tone audiometry) and central (as measured with dichotic listening) hearing in 19 patients with typical amnestic Alzheimer’s disease (tAD), 10 patients with logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), 11 patients with nonfluent/agrammatic variant PPA (nfvPPA), 15 patients with semantic variant PPA (svPPA), and 28 healthy age-matched individuals. Participants also underwent neuropsychological assessment and magnetic resonance image scanning, allowing us to use voxel-based morphometry to assess associations between hearing scores and grey matter volume. Dichotic listening was impaired in all patient groups relative to healthy controls. In the combined patient (but not healthy control) cohort, dichotic listening scores were significantly correlated with measures of global cognitive functioning and speech-based neuropsychological tasks. Pure-tone audiometry scores were not significantly elevated in any patient group relative to the healthy control group, and no significant correlations were observed between peripheral hearing and neuropsychological task performance in either the combined patient or healthy control cohorts. Neuroanatomically, dichotic listening performance was associated with grey matter volume in a bilateral fronto-temporoparietal network over the combined patient cohort, but no correlates were identified for pure-tone audiometry. Our findings highlight the importance of speech parsing mechanisms beyond elementary sound detection in driving cognitive test performance, underline the importance of assessing central hearing alongside peripheral hearing in people with dementia, and further delineate the complex auditory profiles of neurodegenerative dementias.

Barnas, Adam J; Greenberg, Adam S

doi: 10.1177/17470218241230988pmid: 38279526

Reallocating object-based attention across the visual field meridians is significantly faster horizontally than vertically (termed the shift direction anisotropy; SDA), implicating the meridians in reorienting object-based attention. Here, we tested the modulatory role of the meridians in the emergence of the SDA by manipulating meridian local feature contrast. Considering the notion of separate pools of attentional resources in each cortical hemisphere, we hypothesised that manipulating the horizontal meridian would selectively modulate the SDA. In four experiments, participants were presented with an “L”-shaped object and detected a target that appeared at either a cued location or at one of two equidistant non-cued locations at the far end of the horizontal or vertical object arm. Meridian local feature contrast was manipulated with perceptually strong enhancements (visible lines and colour contrast borders) and perceptually weak enhancements (illusory borders from line texture patterns and inducers). Weak enhancements of the meridians did not significantly modulate SDA magnitude; however, during perceptually strong enhancements of the horizontal meridian, the SDA was significantly reduced compared with both vertical meridian enhancement and no-enhancement conditions. Moreover, horizontal and vertical shift RTs were statistically equivalent when the horizontal meridian was enhanced with a visible line, our strongest manipulation, indicating the SDA was eliminated. These results suggest that the SDA emerges due to reallocating object-based attention across the horizontal meridian. We interpret this finding as evidence in support of the theory by which anatomical segregations of the visual system determine how pools of attentional resources resolve competition between and within cortical hemispheres.

Gaskell, M. Gareth

doi: 10.1177/17470218241284289pmid: 39257056

In this article, I review the evidence on the involvement of sleep and consolidation in word learning and processing during language comprehension, focusing on implications for theory. The theoretical basis for the review is a complementary systems account of word learning involving flexible (hippocampal) and stable (cortical) pathways to lexical knowledge. I argue that the accumulated data are consistent with a role for both pathways in both learning and recognition of lexical items, with sleep and consolidation supporting the transfer of recent experience between the pathways. The level of involvement of each pathway is dependent on key factors, such as consistency with prior knowledge in the case of learning, and reliance on context and/or automaticity in the case of recognition. As a consequence, the notion of a mental lexicon cannot really be restricted to just the listener’s stable knowledge about words: flexible knowledge and recent experiences are also important. Furthermore, I argue that the flexible pathway plays a critical role even in the absence of new lexical items. The available evidence suggests that this pathway encodes (and potentially consolidates) recent linguistic experiences, providing potential benefits to interpretation of subsequent language and the long-term retention of knowledge. In conclusion, I propose that a dual-pathway account incorporating both flexibility and stability is necessary to explain the learning, recognition, and interpretation of words.

Stacey, Jemaine E; Atkin, Christopher; Roberts, Katherine L; Henshaw, Helen; Allen, Harriet A; Badham, Stephen P

doi: 10.1177/17470218241295722pmid: 39439103

We investigated how presenting online health information in different modalities can influence memory, as this may be particularly important for older adults who may need to make regular decisions about health and could also face additional challenges such as memory deficits and sensory impairment (hearing loss). We tested whether, as predicted by some literature, older adults would disproportionately benefit from audio-visual (AV) information compared with visual-only (VO) or auditory-only (AO) information, relative to young adults. Participants were 78 young adults (aged 18–30 years old, M = 25.50 years), 78 older adults with normal hearing (aged 65–80 years old, M = 68.34 years), and 78 older adults who wear hearing aids (aged 65–79 years old, M = 70.89 years). There were no significant differences in the amount of information remembered across modalities (AV, VO, AO), no differences across participant groups, and we did not find the predicted interaction between participant group and modality. The older-adult groups performed worse than young adults on background measures of cognition, with the exception of a vocabulary test, suggesting that they may have been using strategies based on prior knowledge and experience to compensate for cognitive and/or sensory deficits. The findings indicate that cost-effective, text-based websites may be just as useful as those with edited videos for conveying health information to all age groups and hearing aid users.

Korochkina, Maria; Marelli, Marco; Brysbaert, Marc; Rastle, Kathleen

doi: 10.1177/17470218241229694pmid: 38262912

This article introduces the Children and Young People’s Books-Lexicon (CYP-LEX), a large-scale lexical database derived from books popular with children and young people in the United Kingdom. CYP-LEX includes 1,200 books evenly distributed across three age bands (7–9, 10–12, 13+) and comprises over 70 million tokens and over 105,000 types. For each word in each age band, we provide its raw and Zipf-transformed frequencies, all parts-of-speech in which it occurs with raw frequency and lemma for each occurrence, and measures of count-based contextual diversity. Together and individually, the three CYP-LEX age bands contain substantially more words than any other publicly available database of books for primary and secondary school children. Most of these words are very low in frequency, and a substantial proportion of the words in each age band do not occur on British television. Although the three age bands share some very frequent words, they differ substantially regarding words that occur less frequently, and this pattern also holds at the level of individual books. Initial analyses of CYP-LEX illustrate why independent reading constitutes a challenge for children and young people, and they also underscore the importance of reading widely for the development of reading expertise. Overall, CYP-LEX provides unprecedented information into the nature of vocabulary in books that British children aged 7+ read, and is a highly valuable resource for those studying reading and language development.

Afonso-Jaco, Amandine; Adam, Emma; Katz, Brian F.G.

doi: 10.1177/17470218241286704pmid: 39294108

Using new developments in the mental comparison task paradigm, this study addresses the question of the influence of prior visual experience in the natural use of mental perspective to achieve mental spatial tasks without any protocol-imposed perspective. During the experiment, 39 participants (11 early blind, 13 late blind, and 15 blindfolded-sighted) explored two corridor maps to memorise the spatial arrangement of 10 objects disposed along corridors. After the learning phase, several tasks addressing spatial memory and reasoning used in the mental spatial representation were performed. Blindfolded-sighted participants preferred an egocentric perspective, while the two visually impaired groups showed no overriding preference between egocentric and allocentric perspectives. Results showed a performance advantage for egocentric over allocentric perspectives, regardless of visual experience. Our results shed light on previous assumptions regarding cognitive mental map construction, suggesting the need to reflect on previous results and their dependence on imposed mental perspectives.

O’Leary, Ryan M; Capach, Nicole Hope; Hansen, Thomas A; Kinney, Alex J; Payne, Taylor A; Wingfield, Arthur; Svirsky, Mario A

doi: 10.1177/17470218241301415pmid: 39533975

Although cochlear implants (CI) successfully replace the sense of hearing, they do not restore natural hearing. Still, CI users adapt to this novel signal, reaching meaningful levels of speech recognition in clinical tests that focus on repetition of words and short sentences. However, many patients who score above average in clinical speech perception tests complain that everyday speech interactions are both difficult and cognitively draining. In part, this difficulty may be due to the naturally rapid pace of everyday discourse. We report a study in which 12 CI users aged 23 to 77, recalled multi-sentence discourse presented without interruption, or in the condition of interest, when passages were paused at major linguistic boundaries, with participants given control of when to initiate the next segment. Comprehension of the discourse structure was based on a formalised representational system that organises discourse elements hierarchically to index the relative importance of different elements to the overall understanding of the discourse. Results showed (a) better recall when CI users were allowed to control the discourse pace; (b) an overall effect of aging, with older CI users recalling discourse less accurately; (c) better recall for passages with higher average inter-word predictability; (d) a “semantic hierarchy effect” reflected by better recall of main ideas versus minor details; (e) an attenuation of the semantic hierarchy effect for low predictability passages. Results underscore the benefits of extra processing time in addressing CI listening challenges and highlight the limited ecological validity of single-word or single-sentence speech recognition tests.

Föcker, Julia; Huang, Leyu; Caling, Alliza L; Fischer, Marieke; Ihle, Andreas; Hodgson, Timothy; Kattner, Florian

doi: 10.1177/17470218241300115pmid: 39501663

The ability to focus on task-relevant information while ignoring distractors is essential in many everyday life situations. The question of how profound and moderate visual deprivation impacts the engagement with a demanding memory task (top-down control) while ignoring task-irrelevant perceptual information (bottom-up) is not thoroughly understood. In this experiment, 17 blind individuals, 17 visually impaired individuals and 17 sighted controls were asked to recall the sequence of eight auditorily presented digits. Following digit presentation, two auditory distractor streams including a repetitive presentation of the same syllables (steady-state sounds) or different syllables (changing-state sounds) occurred spoken in different emotional prosodies (happy, fearful, angry, and neutral). Blind individuals not only showed overall superior serial recall performance but also displayed sustained memory retention for items presented more recently in the sequence (specifically at the fifth to the eighth digit positions) compared with sighted and visually impaired individuals. Furthermore, blind individuals showed a weaker serial position effect compared with visually impaired and sighted individuals. Emotional prosody also impacted serial recall differently in blind, visually impaired and sighted controls: Sighted and visually impaired participants exhibited improved serial recall when steady-state sounds carried a fearful or angry prosody. By contrast, in the steady-state condition, emotional prosody had no effect on serial recall performance in blind individuals. These findings may be linked to the enhanced ability of blind individuals to flexibly apply a combination of strategies, such as association and grouping.

Man, Hillarie; Parker, Adam J; Taylor, J. S. H.

doi: 10.1177/17470218241229442pmid: 38247168

Theories suggest that efficient recognition of English words depends on flexible letter-position coding, demonstrated by the fact that transposed-letter primes (e.g., JUGDE-judge) facilitate written word recognition more than substituted-letter primes (e.g., JUFBE-judge). The multiple route model predicts that reading experience should drive more flexible letter-position coding as readers transition from decoding words letter-by-letter to recognising words as wholes. This study therefore examined whether letter-position is coded flexibly in second-language English sentence reading for native Chinese speakers, and if this is influenced by English proficiency. Eye movements were measured while 54 adult native Chinese speakers read English sentences including either a real word (e.g., cheaply), a transposed-letter nonword (e.g., “chepaly”), or a substituted-letter nonword (e.g., “chegely”). Flexible letter-position coding was observed in initial and later processing stages—reading times were longer for substituted-letter than transposed-letter nonwords. In addition, reading times were longer in both initial and later processing stages for transposed-letter nonwords than real words, indicating that, despite encoding letter-position flexibly, readers processed letter-position. Although pre-registered frequentist analyses suggested that English proficiency did not predict overall reading times, Bayes Factors indicated that there was evidence for such a relationship. It is therefore likely that this proficiency analysis suffered from low power. Finally, neither frequentist nor Bayes Factor analyses suggested that English proficiency influenced the difference in reading times between different target word types, i.e., the nature of letter-position coding. Overall, these results suggest that highly proficient L2 learners code letter-position flexibly.

Yong, Min Hooi; Waqas, Muhammad; Ruffman, Ted

doi: 10.1177/17470218241235811pmid: 38356176

Evidence has shown that older adults have lower accuracy in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks compared with young adults, but we are still unclear whether the difficulty in decoding mental states in older adults stems from not looking at the critical areas, and more so from the ageing Asian population. Most ToM studies use static images or short vignettes to measure ToM but these stimuli are dissimilar to everyday social interactions. We investigated this question using a dynamic task that measured both accuracy and error types, and examined the links between accuracy and error types to eye gaze fixation at critical areas (e.g., eyes, mouth, body). A total of 82 participants (38 older, 44 young adults) completed the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) task on the eye tracker. Results showed that older adults had a lower overall accuracy with more errors in the ipo-ToM (under-mentalising) and no-ToM (lack of mentalisation) conditions compared with young adults. We analysed the eye gaze data using principal components analysis and found that increasing age and looking less at the face were related to lower MASC accuracy in our participants. Our findings suggest that ageing deficits in ToM are linked to a visual attention deficit specific to the perception of socially relevant nonverbal cues.