Background: Lexical access problems of inflected verbs are common in aphasia. Previous research addressed these problems either in purely linguistic terms (e.g., verb movement) or in terms of lexical characteristics (e.g., frequency). We propose a new measure of verb complexity, which combines linguistic and lexical characteristics and is formulated in terms of Shannon’s information theory. Aims: We aim to explore the complexity of individual verbs and verb paradigms and its effect on lexical access, both in unimpaired people and people with aphasia (PWA). We apply information theory to investigate the impact of verb complexity on reaction time (RT) for lexical decision. Methods & Procedures: 20 non-fluent aphasic subjects and 11 age-matched and education-matched peers performed an auditory lexical decision task containing 286 real and 286 phonotactically legal non-word past tense forms (regulars and irregulars). RTs and error rates were measured. Two information-theoretic measures were calculated: inflectional entropy (reflecting probabilistic variability of forms within a given verbal family) and information load (I) (reflecting complexity of an individual verb form). The effect for these and other more traditional measures on RT were measured. Outcomes & Results: Linear mixed model analyses to the data for each group with participant and verb as crossed random effects were performed. Results show that for all groups inflectional entropy had a facilitatory effect on RT. There was a group effect for inflectional entropy indicating that for the patients with aphasia the effect of inflectional entropy was less pronounced. At the same time, I did correlate with latencies for healthy adults but not for individuals with aphasia. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that the decrease in lexical processing capacity characteristic for PWA has a measurable effect that can be calculated using information theoretical means. According to our model, these individuals have particular difficulties with processing lexical items of higher complexity, as measured by individual I, and benefit less from the support normally provided (in comprehension) by other members of the corresponding lexical network. Finally, the proposed information-theoretic complexity measures, which encompass both frequency effects and linguistic parameters, provide a superior measure of lexical access, and have a better explanatory power for the analyses of access problems found in non-fluent aphasia, compared to analyses based on frequency only.
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Teacher education enables students to grow from ‘novice’ into ‘starting expert’ teachers. In this study, students’ textual peer feedback on video recordings of their teaching practice was analysed to determine the growth of their expertise in relation to blended curriculum design. The degree to which curriculum and literature influenced their feedback was assessed by semantic network analysis of prominent words from the literature that was studied, as well as the lexical richness andsemantic cohesion of students’ peer feedback and reflections. The lexical richness and the semantic cohesion increased significantly by the end of the semester. This means that students incorporated new vocabulary and maintained semantic consistency while using the new words. Regarding the semantic network analysis, we found stronger connections between the topics being discussed by the students at the end of the semester. Active use of video and peer feedback enhances students’ activeknowledge base, thus furthering effective teaching.
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Particle verbs (e.g., look up) are lexical items for which particle and verb share a single lexical entry. Using event-related brain potentials, we examined working memory and long-term memory involvement in particle-verb processing. Dutch participants read sentences with head verbs that allow zero, two, or more than five particles to occur downstream. Additionally, sentences were presented for which the encountered particle was semantically plausible, semantically implausible, or forming a non-existing particle verb. An anterior negativity was observed at the verbs that potentially allow for a particle downstream relative to verbs that do not, possibly indexing storage of the verb until the dependency with its particle can be closed. Moreover, a graded N400 was found at the particle (smallest amplitude for plausible particles and largest for particles forming non-existing particle verbs), suggesting that lexical access to a shared lexical entry occurred at two separate time points.
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Communication between healthcare professionals and deaf patients has been particularly challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have explored the possibility to automatically translate phrases that are frequently used in the diagnosis and treatment of hospital patients, in particular phrases related to COVID-19, from Dutch or English to Dutch Sign Language (NGT). The prototype system we developed displays translations either by means of pre-recorded videos featuring a deaf human signer (for a limited number of sentences) or by means of animations featuring a computer-generated signing avatar (for a larger, though still restricted number of sentences). We evaluated the comprehensibility of the signing avatar, as compared to the human signer. We found that, while individual signs are recognized correctly when signed by the avatar almost as frequently as when signed by a human, sentence comprehension rates and clarity scores for the avatar are substantially lower than for the human signer. We identify a number of concrete limitations of the JASigning avatar engine that underlies our system. Namely, the engine currently does not offer sufficient control over mouth shapes, the relative speed and intensity of signs in a sentence (prosody), and transitions between signs. These limitations need to be overcome in future work for the engine to become usable in practice.
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Research into automatic text simplification aims to promote access to information for all members of society. To facilitate generalizability, simplification research often abstracts away from specific use cases, and targets a prototypical reader and an underspecified content creator. In this paper, we consider a real-world use case – simplification technology for use in Dutch municipalities – and identify the needs of the content creators and the target audiences in this scenario. The stakeholders envision a system that (a) assists the human writer without taking over the task; (b) provides diverse outputs, tailored for specific target audiences; and (c) explains the suggestions that it outputs. These requirements call for technology that is characterized by modularity, explainability, and variability. We argue that these are important research directions that require further exploration
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From the introduction: "There are two variants of fronto-temporal dementia: a behavioral variant (behavioral FTD, bvFTD, Neary et al. (1998)), which causes changes in behavior and personality but leaves syntax, phonology and semantics relatively intact, and a variant that causes impairments in the language processing system (Primary Progessive Aphasia, PPA (Gorno-Tempini et al., 2004). PPA can be subdivided into subtypes fluent (fluent but empty speech, comprehension of word meaning is affected / `semantic dementia') and non-fluent (agrammatism, hesitant or labored speech, word finding problems). Some identify logopenic aphasia as a FTD-variant: fluent aphasia with anomia but intact object recognition and underlying word meaning."
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The presentation of management information on screens and paper is aimed at the initiation of control actions in order to bring about predefinied goals. The terms and concepts used in this control information can be interptreted in different ways. It is of vital importance that adequate definitions for these terms and concepts are provided, because of the area of tension betrween those that control and those being controlled. The creation of a common conceptual framework and the maintenance of concepts and definitions can be supported by the construction of an organization-specific lexicon and the use of modern IT tools.
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ion of verb agreement by hearing learners of a sign language. During a 2-year period, 14 novel learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) with a spoken language background performed an elicitation task 15 times. Seven deaf native signers and NGT teachers performed the same task to serve as a benchmark group. The results obtained show that for some learners, the verb agreement system of NGT was difficult to master, despite numerous examples in the input. As compared to the benchmark group, learners tended to omit agreement markers on verbs that could be modified, did not always correctly use established locations associated with discourse referents, and made characteristic errors with respect to properties that are important in the expression of agreement (movement and orientation). The outcomes of the study are of value to practitioners in the field, as they are informative with regard to the nature of the learning process during the first stages of learning a sign language.
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Abstract van Poster presentatie. Our student-interpreters feel ill prepared for assignments that involve sign supported speech (Anonymous, 2015). This is probably due to the fact that there is no single way of communicating in sign supported speech (Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999). Our study investigates if and how we could prepare our students within a fouryear bachelor curriculum.
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