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"Semantic memory."
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Memorization and the compound-phrase distinction : an investigation of complex constructions in German, French and English
\"Over the last decades, it has been hotly debated whether and how compounds, i.e. word-formations, and phrases differ from each other. The book discusses this issue by investigating compounds and phrases from a structural, semantic-functional and, crucially, cognitive perspective. The analysis focuses on compounds and phrases that are composed of either an adjective and a noun or two nouns in German, French and English. Having distinguished compounds from phrases on structural and semantic-functional grounds, the author claims that compounds are by their nature more appropriate to be stored in the mental lexicon than phrases and supports his argument with empirical evidence from new psycholinguistic studies. In sum, the book maintains the separation between compounds and phrases and reflects upon its cognitive consequences\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Neuropsychological predictors of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to dementia at different timepoints
Impairment of episodic memory is largely considered the main cognitive marker of prodromic Alzheimer's disease (AD). Nevertheless, the neuropathological process in AD starts several years before and, apart from biomarkers well defined in the Amyloid (A), Tauopathy (T), Neurodegeneration (N) framework, early clinical and neuropsychological markers able to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD before the appearance of memory disorders are lacking in clinical practice. Investigations on semantic memory have shown promising results in providing an earlier marker of dementia in MCI patients.
A total of 253 MCI subjects were followed up every 6 months for 6 years-186 converted to dementia and 67 remained stable at the sixth year of follow-up. Twenty-seven patients progressed in the first 2 years (fast converters), 107 in the third to fourth year (intermediate converters), and 51 after the fourth year of follow-up (slow converters).
Stable MCI subjects performed better than fast decliners in Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), several long-term memory scores, and category verbal fluency test (CFT); stable and intermediate converters differ only in MMSE and CFT tests; and stable and slow converters differ only in MMSE and phonological/semantic discrepancy score.
Early impairment of semantic memory could predict the evolution to AD before the onset of episodic memory disorders, and the discrepancy between phonological and semantic verbal fluency could be able to detect this impairment in advance in respect of simple CFT tests. The assessment of different aspects of semantic memory and its degradation could represent an early cognitive marker to intercept MCI due to AD in clinical practice.
Journal Article
The Tip of the Tongue State
This book brings together the body of empirical findings and theoretical interpretations of the tip of the tongue (TOT) experience - when a well-known or familiar word cannot immediately be recalled. Although research has been published on TOTs for over a century, the experience retains its fascination for both cognitive and linguistic researchers.
After a review of various research procedures used to study TOTs, the book offers a summary of attempts to manipulate this rare cognitive experience through cue and prime procedures. Various aspects of the inaccessible target word are frequently available - such as first letter and syllable number - even in the absence of actual retrieval, and the book explores the implications of these bits of target-word information for mechanisms for word storage and retrieval. It also examines: what characteristics of a word make it potentially more vulnerable to a TOT; why words related to the target word (called \"interlopers\") often come to mind; the recovery process, when the momentarily-inaccessible word is recovered shortly after the TOT is first experienced; and efforts to evaluate individual differences in the likelihood to experience TOTs.
eBook
Different Markers of Semantic–Lexical Impairment Allow One to Obtain Different Information on the Conversion from MCI to AD: A Narrative Review of an Ongoing Research Program
Background: In this narrative review, we have surveyed results obtained from a research program dealing with the role of semantic memory disorders as a predictor of progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Objectives: In this research program, we have taken into account many different putative markers, provided of a different complexity in the study of the semantic network. These markers ranged from the number of words produced on a semantic fluency task to the following: (a) the discrepancy between scores obtained on semantic vs. phonemic word fluency tests; (b) the presence, at the single-word level, of features (such as a loss of low typical words on a category verbal fluency task) typical of a degraded semantic system; or (c) the presence of more complex phenomena (such as the semantic distance between consecutively produced word pairs) concerning the organization of the semantic network. In the present review, all these studies have been presented, providing separate subsections for (a) methods, (b) results, and (c) a short discussion. Some tentative general conclusions have been drawn at the end of the review. We found that at baseline all these markers are impaired in MCI patients who will later convert to AD, but also that they do not necessarily show a linear worsening during the progression to AD and allow one to make different predictions about the time of development of AD. Our conclusions were that, rather than searching for the best marker of conversion, we should use a range of different markers allowing us to obtain the information most appropriate to the goal of our investigation.
Journal Article
Episodic-semantic linkage for $1000: New semantic knowledge is more strongly coupled with episodic memory in trivia experts
Some people exhibit impressive memory for a wide array of semantic knowledge. What makes these trivia experts better able to learn and retain novel facts? We hypothesized that new semantic knowledge may be more strongly linked to its episodic context in trivia experts. We designed a novel online task in which 132 participants varying in trivia expertise encoded “exhibits” of naturalistic facts with related photos in one of two “museums.” Afterward, participants were tested on cued recall of facts and recognition of the associated photo and museum. Greater trivia expertise predicted higher cued recall for novel facts. Critically, trivia experts but not non-experts showed superior fact recall when they remembered both features (photo and museum) of the encoding context. These findings illustrate enhanced links between episodic memory and new semantic learning in trivia experts, and show the value of studying trivia experts as a special population that can shed light on the mechanisms of memory.
Journal Article
Artificial Subjectivity: Personal Semantic Memory Model for Cognitive Agents
Personal semantic memory is a way of inducing subjectivity in intelligent agents. Personal semantic memory has knowledge related to personal beliefs, self-knowledge, preferences, and perspectives in humans. Modeling this cognitive feature in the intelligent agent can help them in perception, learning, reasoning, and judgments. This paper presents a methodology for the development of personal semantic memory in response to external information. The main contribution of the work is to propose and implement the computational version of personal semantic memory. The proposed model has modules for perception, learning, sentiment analysis, knowledge representation, and personal semantic construction. These modules work in synergy for personal semantic knowledge formulation, learning, and storage. Personal semantics are added to the existing body of knowledge qualitatively and quantitatively. We performed multiple experiments where the agent had conversations with the humans. Results show an increase in personal semantic knowledge in the agent’s memory during conversations with an F1 score of 0.86. These personal semantics evolved qualitatively and quantitatively with time during experiments. Results demonstrated that agents with the given personal semantics architecture possessed personal semantics that can help the agent to produce some sort of subjectivity in the future.
Journal Article
Vector-Space Models of Semantic Representation From a Cognitive Perspective
Models that represent meaning as high-dimensional numerical vectors—such as latent semantic analysis (LSA), hyperspace analogue to language (HAL), bound encoding of the aggregate language environment (BEAGLE), topic models, global vectors (GloVe), and word2vec—have been introduced as extremely powerful machine-learning proxies for human semantic representations and have seen an explosive rise in popularity over the past 2 decades. However, despite their considerable advancements and spread in the cognitive sciences, one can observe problems associated with the adequate presentation and understanding of some of their features. Indeed, when these models are examined from a cognitive perspective, a number of unfounded arguments tend to appear in the psychological literature. In this article, we review the most common of these arguments and discuss (a) what exactly these models represent at the implementational level and their plausibility as a cognitive theory, (b) how they deal with various aspects of meaning such as polysemy or compositionality, and (c) how they relate to the debate on embodied and grounded cognition. We identify common misconceptions that arise as a result of incomplete descriptions, outdated arguments, and unclear distinctions between theory and implementation of the models. We clarify and amend these points to provide a theoretical basis for future research and discussions on vector models of semantic representation.
Journal Article
Semantic memory: A review of methods, models, and current challenges
Adult semantic memory has been traditionally conceptualized as a relatively static memory system that consists of knowledge about the world, concepts, and symbols. Considerable work in the past few decades has challenged this static view of semantic memory, and instead proposed a more fluid and flexible system that is sensitive to context, task demands, and perceptual and sensorimotor information from the environment. This paper (1) reviews traditional and modern computational models of semantic memory, within the umbrella of network (free association-based), feature (property generation norms-based), and distributional semantic (natural language corpora-based) models, (2) discusses the contribution of these models to important debates in the literature regarding knowledge representation (localist vs. distributed representations) and learning (error-free/Hebbian learning vs. error-driven/predictive learning), and (3) evaluates how modern computational models (neural network, retrieval-based, and topic models) are revisiting the traditional “static” conceptualization of semantic memory and tackling important challenges in semantic modeling such as addressing temporal, contextual, and attentional influences, as well as incorporating grounding and compositionality into semantic representations. The review also identifies new challenges regarding the abundance and availability of data, the generalization of semantic models to other languages, and the role of social interaction and collaboration in language learning and development. The concluding section advocates the need for integrating representational accounts of semantic memory with process-based accounts of cognitive behavior, as well as the need for explicit comparisons of computational models to human baselines in semantic tasks to adequately assess their psychological plausibility as models of human semantic memory.
Journal Article
Associative Agreement as a Predictor of Naming Ability in Alzheimer's Disease: A Case for the Semantic Nature of Associative Links
We aimed to address the long-standing issue of the nature of the relationships that link a cue word to words associated with it. In keeping with a recently proposed neuropsychological model of semantic memory (Zannino et al., 2015), we provide support for the hypothesis that associative links are semantic in nature and not lexical. In support of this hypothesis, we demonstrate a relationship in healthy subjects between the probability of producing word X in response to cue word Y in a free association task and the probability of using word X to describe the meaning of word Y. Furthermore, we provide evidence that associative measures are altered in people suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) and predict their level of performance in a picture-naming task. We provide a parsimonious account of the experimental data gathered form these different sources of evidence according to the hypothesis that the links between a cue word and its associates can be viewed as binding a concept (the cue) to pieces of information regarding its meaning (the associates).
Journal Article
The Role of Pedagogical Documentation in Early Childhood Education in Indonesia
Considering the significance of pedagogical documentation in the early childhood education/care system, the current study examines the influence of pedagogical documentation on children's semantic memory, observed activities and evaluated skills and qualities per their teachers and caretakers. This study also examines the interactive effect of the learning environment with pedagogical documentation to enhance children's semantic memory, observed activities, and evaluated skills and qualities. A mixed-method approach has been utilized to examine the proposed associations. Learning events were organized for children aged 36 to 72 months in the kindergartens and preschools in Mataram, Indonesia. After four weeks of observations, the teachers and caretakers of the children recorded their responses regarding children's semantic memory, observed activities, skills, and qualities. The data were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results showed a significant increase in children's semantic memory, evaluated skills and qualities, and a positive change in their routine activities. Simultaneously, results also presented the significant role of the learning environment in enhancing positive outcomes of the pedagogical documentation in the early childhood education/care system.
Journal Article