Browsing by Subject "language"
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Item Comparison of rhyming and word generation with FMRI(Wiley Open Access, 2000-06-06) Lurito, Joseph T.; Kareken, David A.; Lowe, Mark J.; Chen, Shen Hsing A.; Mathews, Vincent P.; Neurology, School of MedicineFunctional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) has been successfully used to non‐invasively map language function, but has several disadvantages. These include severe motion sensitivity, which limits overt verbal responses in behavioral paradigms, such as word generation. The lack of overt responses prevents behavioral validation, making data interpretation difficult. Our objective was to compare the FMRI activation patterns of a novel silent rhyme determination task requiring a non‐verbal response, to covert word generation from visually presented letters. Five strongly right‐handed subjects performed both tasks during multi‐slice coronal echo‐planar T2*–weighted FMRI. Single subject activation maps were generated for each task by correlation analysis of single pixel time series to a boxcar reference function. These maps for the two tasks were separately interpolated to 2563, transformed into Talairach space, summed, and thresholded at t>6. Combined activation maps from both tasks showed similar robust perisylvian language area activation, including inferior frontal gyrus, posterior superior temporal lobe, and fusiform gyrus. Subjects performed well on the rhyming task, which activated left hemisphere cortical regions more selectively than the word generation task. The rhyming task showed less activation than the word generation task in areas typically not considered specifically related to language function, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. The rhyming task is a useful tool for brain mapping and clinical applications, potentially more specific to cortical language areas than verbal fluency.Item A cross-linguistic fMRI study of perception of intonation and emotion in Chinese(Wiley, 2003-02-11) Gandour, Jack; Wong, Donald; Dzemidzic, Mario; Lowe, Mark; Tong, Yunxia; Li, Xiaojian; Anatomy and Cell Biology, School of MedicineConflicting data from neurobehavioral studies of the perception of intonation (linguistic) and emotion (affective) in spoken language highlight the need to further examine how functional attributes of prosodic stimuli are related to hemispheric differences in processing capacity. Because of similarities in their acoustic profiles, intonation and emotion permit us to assess to what extent hemispheric lateralization of speech prosody depends on functional instead of acoustical properties. To examine how the brain processes linguistic and affective prosody, an fMRI study was conducted using Chinese, a tone language in which both intonation and emotion may be signaled prosodically, in addition to lexical tones. Ten Chinese and 10 English subjects were asked to perform discrimination judgments of intonation (I: statement, question) and emotion (E: happy, angry, sad) presented in semantically neutral Chinese sentences. A baseline task required passive listening to the same speech stimuli (S). In direct between‐group comparisons, the Chinese group showed left‐sided frontoparietal activation for both intonation (I vs. S) and emotion (E vs. S) relative to baseline. When comparing intonation relative to emotion (I vs. E), the Chinese group demonstrated prefrontal activation bilaterally; parietal activation in the left hemisphere only. The reverse comparison (E vs. I), on the other hand, revealed that activation occurred in anterior and posterior prefrontal regions of the right hemisphere only. These findings show that some aspects of perceptual processing of emotion are dissociable from intonation, and, moreover, that they are mediated by the right hemisphere.Item Executive Functioning Skills in Preschool-Age Children With Cochlear Implants(ASHA Publications, 2014-08) Beer, Jessica; Kronenberger, William G.; Castellanos, Irina; Colson, Bethany G.; Henning, Shirley C.; Pisoni, David B.; Department of Otolaryngology--Head & Neck Surgery, School of MedicinePurpose The purpose of this study was to determine whether deficits in executive functioning (EF) in children with cochlear implants (CIs) emerge as early as the preschool years. Method Two groups of children ages 3 to 6 years participated in this cross-sectional study: 24 preschoolers who had CIs prior to 36 months of age and 21 preschoolers with normal hearing (NH). All were tested on normed measures of working memory, inhibition-concentration, and organization-integration. Parents completed a normed rating scale of problem behaviors related to EF. Comparisons of EF skills of children with CIs were made to peers with NH and to published nationally representative norms. Results Preschoolers with CIs showed significantly poorer performance on inhibition-concentration and working memory compared with peers with NH and with national norms. No group differences were found in visual memory or organization-integration. When data were controlled for language, differences in performance measures of EF remained, whereas differences in parent-reported problems with EF were no longer significant. Hearing history was generally unrelated to EF. Conclusions This is the first study to demonstrate that EF deficits found in older children with CIs begin to emerge as early as preschool years. The ability to detect these deficits early has important implications for early intervention and habilitation after cochlear implantation.Item Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication: Translating Health Discourse Research into Action(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Connor, UllaThe Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organization created to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. ICIC conducts internationally recognized research on language and intercultural communication and applies its expertise to benefit the wider community. The Center also offers group training programs and individualized tutoring in language for specific purposes and intercultural communication to students, faculty, medical residents, postdoctoral researchers, and business professionals in the community as well as international language educators. ICIC’s research focuses on health discourse from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric. The Center’s strong linguistic background provides a unique multimodal approach to the study of factors and forms of interaction and communication that impact medication adherence, risk comprehension, and patient disease management and decision-making. In keeping with the Signature Center Initiative mandate to conduct research that translates into practice, the results of ICIC’s research translate into action in the form of training to healthcare providers and guidelines for patient-tailored language and communication strategies. This poster features results from recent ICIC research projects, among them a study of linguistic indicators related to diabetes patient self-management and an intercultural analysis of sources of medical information in Spanish-speaking diabetes patients. Also featured are ongoing and future projects: a psychosociolinguistic study of patient voices to be applied to the development of patient-tailored messaging and the health-literacy oriented redesign of the Walther Cancer Center information portal for patients.Item Language vs. Behaviors: A Holistic Approach to Studying Racism(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Gillard, LaccyRacism has always been an issue in the history of the United States. However, this country has evolved and transformed in ways that have greatly limited old time blatant racism. Consequently in today’s age, racism has converted into an implicit and arguably more insidious form, as it is not as obvious to identify. Subtle and implicit racial bias has become all the more difficult to identify or discuss given the popular belief that we will live in a post-racial society. Researchers from different disciplines have taken different approaches to understand and confront these implicit racial biases. In particular, social psychologists are interested in answering questions about social behavior. They seek to objectively and systematically measure and assess implicit racism through the use of experiments and implicit measures. Conversely, rhetoricians are interested in how language and symbols create perceptions of reality and understandings of the world. They aim to understand how language not only shapes our beliefs about racial matters but also reveals our attitudes and ways of thinking. Rhetoricians study language and symbol use in areas such as political discourse, educational discourse, media texts, and sites like civil rights museums which participate in shaping collective memories. This research will highlight the different methods to address implicit racism used by researchers in social psychology and rhetoric. The contribution of this research is not only to consider the unique intellectual insights of each field but also to argue for the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches to studying racism. Social scientific and humanities research complement one another’s aims. Therefore, together they provide a more complete understanding of and way to confront social problems such as implicit racism.Item Neural basis of first and second language processing of sentence-level linguistic prosody(Wiley, 2006-05-22) Gandour, Jackson; Tong, Yunxia; Talavage, Thomas; Wong, Donald; Dzemidzic, Mario; Xu, Yisheng; Li, Xiaojian; Lowe, Mark; Anatomy and Cell Biology, School of MedicineA fundamental question in multilingualism is whether the neural substrates are shared or segregated for the two or more languages spoken by polyglots. This study employs functional MRI to investigate the neural substrates underlying the perception of two sentence‐level prosodic phenomena that occur in both Mandarin Chinese (L1) and English (L2): sentence focus (sentence‐initial vs. ‐final position of contrastive stress) and sentence type (declarative vs. interrogative modality). Late‐onset, medium proficiency Chinese‐English bilinguals were asked to selectively attend to either sentence focus or sentence type in paired three‐word sentences in both L1 and L2 and make speeded‐response discrimination judgments. L1 and L2 elicited highly overlapping activations in frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. Furthermore, region of interest analyses revealed that for both languages the sentence focus task elicited a leftward asymmetry in the supramarginal gyrus; both tasks elicited a rightward asymmetry in the mid‐portion of the middle frontal gyrus. A direct comparison between L1 and L2 did not show any difference in brain activation in the sentence type task. In the sentence focus task, however, greater activation for L2 than L1 occurred in the bilateral anterior insula and superior frontal sulcus. The sentence focus task also elicited a leftward asymmetry in the posterior middle temporal gyrus for L1 only. Differential activation patterns are attributed primarily to disparities between L1 and L2 in the phonetic manifestation of sentence focus. Such phonetic divergences lead to increased computational demands for processing L2. These findings support the view that L1 and L2 are mediated by a unitary neural system despite late age of acquisition, although additional neural resources may be required in task‐specific circumstances for unequal bilinguals.Item Neural correlates of segmental and tonal information in speech perception(Wiley, 2003-10-27) Gandour, Jack; Xu, Yisheng; Wong, Donald; Dzemidzic, Mario; Lowe, Mark; Li, Xiaojian; Tong, Yunxia; Anatomy and Cell Biology, School of MedicineThe Chinese language provides an optimal window for investigating both segmental and suprasegmental units. The aim of this cross‐linguistic fMRI study is to elucidate neural mechanisms involved in extraction of Chinese consonants, rhymes, and tones from syllable pairs that are distinguished by only one phonetic feature (minimal) vs. those that are distinguished by two or more phonetic features (non‐minimal). Triplets of Chinese monosyllables were constructed for three tasks comparing consonants, rhymes, and tones. Each triplet consisted of two target syllables with an intervening distracter. Ten Chinese and English subjects were asked to selectively attend to targeted sub‐syllabic components and make same‐different judgments. Direct between‐group comparisons in both minimal and non‐minimal pairs reveal increased activation for the Chinese group in predominantly left‐sided frontal, parietal, and temporal regions. Within‐group comparisons of non‐minimal and minimal pairs show that frontal and parietal activity varies for each sub‐syllabic component. In the frontal lobe, the Chinese group shows bilateral activation of the anterior middle frontal gyrus (MFG) for rhymes and tones only. Within‐group comparisons of consonants, rhymes, and tones show that rhymes induce greater activation in the left posterior MFG for the Chinese group when compared to consonants and tones in non‐minimal pairs. These findings collectively support the notion of a widely distributed cortical network underlying different aspects of phonological processing. This neural network is sensitive to the phonological structure of a listener's native language.Item Patient–Provider Language Concordance and Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review, Evidence Map, and Research Agenda(Sage, 2019) Hsueh, Loretta; Hirsh, Adam T.; Maupomé, Gerardo; Stewart, Jesse C.; Psychology, School of ScienceAlthough patient–provider language concordance has the potential to reduce health disparities for people with limited English proficiency, no previous work has synthesized this literature. Our systematic review sought to describe the characteristics of studies examining relationships between language concordance and health outcomes, summarize the nature of observed associations, and propose an evidence map and research agenda. A comprehensive search of published articles identified 38 quantitative studies for inclusion. Most studies were cross-sectional, conducted in primary care, concentrated in Western states, and focused on Spanish speakers and physician providers. Results were split between supporting a positive association versus no association of language concordance with patient behaviors, provider behaviors, interpersonal processes of care, and clinical outcomes. Several methodological limitations were identified. Based on these results, we developed an evidence map, identified knowledge gaps, and proposed a research agenda. There is a particular need for quasi-experimental longitudinal studies with well-characterized samples.Item The Rivers of the Anthropocene Literature Database and the Transmission of Environmental Concepts(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Salla, KeenanThe Rivers of the Anthropocene project aims to conduct a comparative study of two rivers, the Ohio in the United States and the Tyne in the United Kingdom, over the course of the industrial era and show how those rivers have been affected by anthropogenic action. Through this comparison the project aims to open a dialogue between the humanities and the sciences by breaking down barriers between what is considered historical and scientific data. A key component in this task is the creation of a database of literature published about the rivers in question. To this end, this phase of the project has collected metadata from several library catalogs operated by a number of government and non-profit agencies, filling in gaps in the metadata relevant to the project along the way. As one of the key focuses of the project is how ideas are transmitted across not only academic disciplines, but between academia, government and the public; I have analyzed a selection of government publications over time looking for changes in vocabulary and context associated with changing ideas about the environment and compared them to other textual analysis tools like Google’s N-gram. In doing this I have uncovered some interesting relationships between language and policy.Item The Teenage Dialect(2008-07-07T16:50:34Z) Telley, Sarah Ann; Lovejoy, Kim Brian, 1952-This study investigated teenage language and its functions. More specifically, after conducting a data analysis which revealed the most common features of “teen speak,” the features were dissected for their usage patterns and significance within the realm of adolescent life and development. The research was based on linguist Marcel Danesi’s model of teenage language, which provided a comparative basis for analysis and categorization.