This study investigates the role of emotional linguistic input in learning novel words with abstract and concrete denotations. It is widely accepted that concrete concepts are processed more easily than abstract ones. Several theories of vocabulary acquisition additionally propose that learning of concrete concepts puts greater weight on sensorimotor information while abstract concepts put greater weight on emotional information. In this study, proficient adult speakers of English read novel words denoting concrete and abstract concepts (e.g., boat vs religion) embedded in informative passages with different emotional valence (positive, neutral and negative). After five exposures to each novel word in an emotionally consistent context, participants were tested on orthographic and semantic vocabulary learning and provided valence judgments of these novel words. Readers successfully learned orthographic form and meaning of novel words, with a concreteness advantage seen in both tasks measuring semantic learning. Critically, valence of linguistic contexts was more influential for novel words with concrete denotations. In line with previous reports, the transfer of context emotionality to novel words (i.e., semantic prosody) took place in concrete stimuli and not abstract stimuli, even though they were both embedded in emotional contexts. An equal advantage was seen for semantic learning of novel words with both concrete and abstract denotations seen in positive contexts. These findings provide counter-evidence to theories advocating greater reliance of abstract concept learning on emotional information. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / “The girl walked her plurk down the street.” Did you think of a dog? Adults are constantly learning new words by inferring the meaning through context. By making small changes to word and sentence stimuli we can study how semantic properties such as emotion (positive, neutral, or negative) and concreteness (e.g., "lamp" is a physical object that can be touched, making it high in concreteness, while "hope" cannot be touched and is therefore low in concreteness, or abstract) interact. In the current study, we manipulate contexts to vary in emotionality and words to vary in concreteness. Participants read short passages containing new words and were given a surprise test after that measured how well they learned the emotionality, forms, and meanings of the new words. This study presents new insight for theories of how new words are learned and stored in the brain and have implications for language learning materials.

This dissertation presents a study that explores a specific implementation of concreteness fading used in a serious game that teaches programming. Concreteness fading consists of first presenting concepts with concrete representations before swapping them gradually with their concrete, normal counterparts. The goal is to figure out how concreteness fading should be applied to a programming game to have it increase learning. Expert interviews are performed to discuss different aspects of how the technique is utilized in the game Reduct. Participants also play through the game before discussing it. Results show that some found the individual representations of mechanics within the game to be the biggest flaw while others pointed to how it handled the fading aspect. These generally come down to a lack of clarity, and should be considered when developing future games of this style.

In language, there exists a distinction between abstract words and concrete words. It can be said that abstract words refer to generic concepts, while concrete words pertain to physical actions or objects associated with physical movement. With respect to the linguistic community, it is often claimed that French words function at a higher degree of abstraction than English words. However, this claim lacks empirical evidence. The present study aims to examine the usage of concrete and abstract words in word association tasks, which are part of Cultura: an intercultural, web-based project that brings foreign language students from different countries and linguistic backgrounds together in a telecollaborative exchange of ideas. Specifically, this study examines the degrees of abstraction of generic nouns in French and English. / text

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In this thesis, I investigate idiom processing from two angles through three different studies. First, I approached idiom processing from a constraint-based perspective. According to this view, not all idioms are alike: they can differ regarding lexical, and linguistic characteristics, such as their level of familiarity. In this first study, I investigated the underlying processes during the comprehension of idioms with different characteristics. I used the Event Related Potential (ERP) technique, which has high temporal resolution, to investigate this issue. I provided evidence that idioms' characteristics impact their processing. More specifically, idioms which are more familiar to language users (i.e., the ones that are encountered more frequently) showed processing facilitation compared to less familiar idioms. Also, idioms with plausible literal interpretation showed processing advantages over idioms which are less likely to be interpreted literally. The second aim of the current thesis was to investigate idiom processing from an embodied account of language processing. According to this view, various sources of information (including linguistic, affective, and sensory-motor) are available and used during the comprehension of language. While, this view has become popular in many language processing studies, studies of idiom processing are still at the beginning of this journey. To be able to investigate idiom processing while considering the role of affective and sensory-motor factors, we require access to norming data. In the second (descriptive) study, I conducted a large-scale survey and collected measures of valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability for a set of English idioms, by both native speakers of English and proficient second language speakers. In the last study, I explored how the emotional status of idioms and their concreteness contributes to their processing, and whether this contribution is modulated by idiom familiarity. We found that the impact of non-linguistic sources of information (affective and sensory-motor) is determined by idiom familiarity, such that low familiar and high familiar idioms show different behaviour where these factors are concerned. For highly familiar idioms, behaviour aligns with the findings on word processing: for example, idioms with more positive valence showed facilitative processing. Unlike highly familiar idioms, valence had an inhibitory impact on idioms with low familiarity level, such that greater valence increased the reading time.

It has long been held that concrete material has a processing advantage over abstract material, as predicted by Dual Coding Theory (Paivio,1991), although this has been challenged. For example, based on evidence for behavioural and neuroscientific studies, Kousta,, Vigliocco, Vinson, & Del Campo, (2011) proposed that emotional valance had a greater influence in the processing of abstract words, and that under some circumstances there may be no concreteness effect and might even be an abstractness effect. This would not be predicted by DCT. In addition, Isen and Daubman (1984) have claimed that emotional valence, and particularly positive emotion can influence cognitive processing. Specifically, they demonstrated that positive emotion was associated with more inclusive categorization of ambiguous category members. This current study was a 2 x 2 between group design to investigate the effect of positive and negative valence on recognition memory for concrete and abstract words and on categorization. Contrary to what was predicted by Dual Coding Theory, abstract words were generally better recognized than concrete, with there being an additional interaction with valence. A significant interaction between word type and valence on categorization was also found. Results partially support Kousta et al. (2011).

Reading comprehension proficiency is vital for learners to be successful in their academic career, however, South African studies have revealed that reading comprehension skills are severely underdeveloped in secondary school learners. Local research has investigated many contributing factors such as multilingualism and deficits with the national curriculum standards. Far fewer studies have examined the cognitive underpinnings that differentiate between English second language (ESL) learners who are proficient in reading comprehension and those who are not. Certain multi-coding theories assert that the integration of visual mental imagery and verbal information is essential for the formation of a comprehensive mental model, which forms the basis of reading comprehension. This study explored the relationship between visual reasoning ability and the reading comprehension proficiency in a group of 83 ESL learners from two urban Gauteng schools. One school represented learners who are proficient readers whilst the second group represented learners who are developing readers. The Non-Verbal Reasoning and the 3D Spatial Manipulation subtests from the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) battery were used to explore the learners’ ability to reason using visual-object and visual-spatial mental imagery. The Verbal Reasoning test was used to establish a baseline for the learners’ language skills. The items of the Reading Comprehension subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test battery (SDRT-RC) were evaluated for textual factors that contribute toward word concreteness effects. The relationships between the DAT subtests and the SDRT-RC Mixed, Abstract and Concrete Items subtests were discussed in light of multi-coding models of reading comprehension.

affect, concreteness, corpus linguistics, cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, stereotype accuracy, national character stereotypes, semantic prosody / Increasing use of natural language corpora and methods from corpus and computational linguistics as a supplement to traditional modes of scholarship in the social sciences and humanities has been labeled the "text as data movement." Corpora afford greater scope in terms of sample sizes, time, geography, and subject populations, as well as the opportunity to ecologically validate theories by testing their predictions within behaviour which is not elicited by an experimenter. Herein, five projects are presented, each either exploiting or taking inspiration from natural language data to make novel contributions to a subject matter area in the psychological sciences, including social psychology and psycholinguistics. Additionally, each project incorporates notions of word meaning grounded in psycholinguistic and psychoevolutionary theory, either the affective or sensorimotor connotations of words. This thesis ends with a discussion of the necessity of taking both experimental and observational approaches, as well as the challenge of how to link natural language data to psychological constructs. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The internet and modern computers are changing how scientists study the mind. Instead of doing experiments within a laboratory, it is more and more common for cognitive scientists to observe patterns in online language use. These patterns in language use are then used to comment on how the mind works. Online language use is created by diverse people as they go about their lives. This is valuable for scientists studying the mind. Our experiments are often limited by how many people and which people do experiments. Sometimes, experiments can be misleading because people don't act in the real world like they do in a lab. This thesis has five studies, each using online language use to comment on some part of how the mind works. Also, each study involves how words make people feel, or whether a word refers to something you can see or touch. Studying real people as they communicate offers new perspectives on old ideas or unanswered questions.

Objective: This study examined various dimensions of reinforcement learning in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Specific investigations included (1) speed of learning from reinforcement; (2) impact of concreteness of the reinforcer; (3) comparison of response to two types of shifts in reinforcement; and (4) relationship of reinforcement learning to parent reported social and behavioral functioning. Participants & Methods: Participants included 19 children with FASD without an intellectual disability, ages 11 to 17, and 19 age- and sex-matched Control participants (11 male, 8 female per group). Each participant completed two novel visual reinforcement learning discrimination tasks (counterbalanced), each administered twice. The first task involved categorical learning followed by either a reversal or a nonreversal shift. The second task involved a computerized probabilistic paradigm (70% contingent feedback) administered using either tokens or points, redeemable for a prize. Parents completed a history questionnaire, the Children’s Learning Questionnaire (McInerney, 2007), and the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). Results: The Control group demonstrated significantly stronger probabilistic reinforcement learning, although the groups showed similar rates of between-condition improvement (learning savings). Furthermore, the concreteness of the reinforcer (tokens vs. points) made no significant difference in learning characteristics for either group. In contrast to probabilistic reinforcement learning, there were no significant group differences in categorical discrimination or shift learning. The FASD group demonstrated the age-appropriate pattern of reversals faster than nonreversals, while there was no difference between the two types of shifts in the Control group. A priori identified parent reports were not significantly correlated with task performance when each group was examined separately. Conclusions: There was no support for the hypothesis that reinforcement learning occurs in a functionally different manner in children with FASD. Rather, reinforcement learning may take longer, paralleling the generally slower speed of all learning in these children, and be more dependent on recent information. This suggests that children with FASD without intellectual disability are able to learn from reinforcement if given sufficient consistent repetition. However, failure of reinforcement learning may occur for a variety of reasons not addressed in this study, including difficulty with transfer of learning or impulsivity.

La recherche dans le domaine de la mémoire sémantique a permis de documenter l’effet de concrétude (avantage pour les mots concrets relativement aux mots abstraits), et plus récemment, l’effet de concrétude inverse (avantage pour les mots abstraits relativement aux mots concrets). Ces effets, observés chez le sujet sain et dans différentes populations cliniques en neurologie, ont suscité de nombreuses interprétations théoriques, autant sur le plan cognitif que neuroanatomique. En effet, cette double dissociation entre les deux types de concepts suggère que leur traitement doit reposer au moins en partie sur des processus mentaux et neuroanatomiques distincts. Néanmoins, les origines de ces différences restent largement débattues et sont caractérisées par une absence notable de consensus. L’objectif principal de la présente thèse est d’explorer les substrats cérébraux sous-tendant la compréhension des concepts concrets et abstraits. Dans un premier temps, un article de revue de la littérature dresse un état des lieux des connaissances actuelles portant sur le traitement sémantique des mots concrets et abstraits ainsi que sur leurs fondements cérébraux. Cet article met une emphase particulière sur les différences inter-hémisphériques dans le traitement des mots concrets et abstraits (Article 1). Dans un deuxième temps, une étude expérimentale de la compréhension des mots concrets et abstraits a été réalisée auprès de populations cliniques rares, des patients ayant subi soit i) une résection unilatérale de la partie antérieure du lobe temporal (temporo-polaire), soit ii) une résection unilatérale de la région hippocampique (temporale interne) (Article 2). Le premier article fait ressortir la grande hétérogénéité des résultats dans le domaine, et suggère que les différences observées dans le traitement des mots concrets et abstraits peuvent difficilement être interprétées seulement en termes de différences inter-hémisphériques. Les résultats du second article indiquent qu’une lésion de la région temporale antérieure gauche ou droite entraîne une atteinte plus marquée des concepts concrets comparativement aux abstraits, alors qu’une lésion unilatérale des régions temporales internes affecte de manière équivalente le traitement sémantique des deux types de concepts. Les implications théoriques et cliniques de ces résultats sont discutées, ainsi que les limites et perspectives futures. / Research in the field of semantic memory has allowed to document the concreteness effect (advantage for concrete words relative to abstract words), and more recently, the reversal of the concreteness effect (advantage for abstract words relative to concrete words). These effects, observed in healthy subjects and in different clinical neurological populations, have yielded numerous theoretical interpretations, both on cognitive and on neuroanatomical levels. Indeed, this double dissociation between the two kinds of concepts suggests that their processing relies at least partly on distinct mental and neuroanatomical bases. Nevertheless, the origins of those differences remain largely debated and are marked by a notable lack of consensus. The principal goal of the present thesis is to explore the cerebral substrates underlying the comprehension of concrete and abstract concepts. First, a literature review summarizes current knowledge about the processing of concrete and abstract concepts as well as their neural bases. This article emphasizes in particular the inter-hemispheric differences in the processing of those concepts (Article 1). Secondly, an experimental study of the comprehension of concrete and abstract concepts was conducted with a rare clinical population, patients who have undergone either i) a unilateral resection of the anterior part of the temporal lobe (temporal pole), either ii) a unilateral resection of the hippocampal region (internal temporal structures) (Article 2). The first article highlights the important heterogeneity of the results in the field, and suggests that the observed differences in the processing of concrete and abstract concepts can hardly be explained solely in terms of inter-hemispheric differences. Results of the second article indicate that damage to anterior temporal regions, either left or right, can cause a more pronounced deficit of concrete concepts, as compared to abstract concepts, while damage to internal temporal regions affects the semantic processing of both kinds of concepts in an equivalent way. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed, and the limits and future research perspectives are also addressed.