Dataset Information

Word Frequency Is Associated With Cognitive Effort During Verbal Working Memory: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Study.

ABSTRACT: Purpose:Psycholinguistic models traditionally view verbal working memory capacity as independent from linguistic features; connectionist models suggest otherwise. Moreover, lexical processing studies show high frequency words differ in cognitive effort from low frequency words, although these effects during concurrent processing of words in working memory are unknown. This novel study examines potential differences in cognitive effort, as measured by differences in HbO2 and Hb, for high frequency versus low frequency words during a working memory paradigm. Methods:A total of 21 neurologically typical participants (age 18-23) completed an auditory, n-back, working memory task comparing performance with high- as compared to low- frequency words. Hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex were recorded with a continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device. Behavioral data (accuracy, reaction time) were recorded using E-prime. Results:Differences in word frequency were evident at both behavioral and neurological levels. Participants were more accurate, albeit slower in identifying the target two back in a sequence for low- as compared to high-frequency words. Patterns of hemodynamic changes were also significantly different between HF and LF conditions. Conclusion:The results from this study indicate that the behavioral and neurological signatures inherent in holding high- versus low-frequency words in working memory differs significantly. Specifically, the findings from this study indicated that words differing in frequency place different demands on cognitive processing load in memory updating tasks.

SUBMITTER: Berglund-Barraza A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6923201 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Word Frequency Is Associated With Cognitive Effort During Verbal Working Memory: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Study.

Berglund-Barraza Amy A Tian Fenghua F Basak Chandramalika C Evans Julia L JL

Frontiers in human neuroscience 20191213

<h4>Purpose</h4>Psycholinguistic models traditionally view verbal working memory capacity as independent from linguistic features; connectionist models suggest otherwise. Moreover, lexical processing studies show high frequency words differ in cognitive effort from low frequency words, although these effects during concurrent processing of words in working memory are unknown. This novel study examines potential differences in cognitive effort, as measured by differences in HbO2 and Hb, for high ...[more]

PMID: 31920592

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Project description:Background and aimsPrevious research into word learning in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) indicates that the learning of word forms and meanings, rather than form-referent links, is problematic. This difficulty appears to arise with impaired encoding, while retention of word knowledge remains intact. Evidence also suggests that word learning skills may be related to verbal working memory. We aimed to substantiate these findings in the current study by exploring word learning over a series of days.MethodsFifty children with DLD (mean age 6; 11, 72% male) and 54 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age 6; 10, 56% male) were taught eight novel words across a four-day word learning protocol. Day 1 measured encoding, Days 2 and 3 measured re-encoding, and Day 4 assessed retention. At each day, word learning success was evaluated using Naming, Recognition, Description, and Identification tasks.ResultsChildren with DLD showed comparable performance to the TD group on the Identification task, indicating an intact ability to learn the form-referent links. In contrast, children with DLD performed significantly worse for Naming and Recognition (signifying an impaired ability to learn novel word forms), and for Description, indicating problems establishing new word meanings. These deficits for the DLD group were apparent at Days 1, 2, and 3 of testing, indicating impairments with initial encoding and re-encoding; however, the DLD and TD groups demonstrated a similar rate of learning. All children found the retention assessments at Day 4 difficult, and there were no significant group differences. Finally, verbal working memory emerged as a significant moderator of performance on the Naming and Recognition tasks, such that children with DLD and poor verbal working memory had the lowest levels of accuracy.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that children with DLD struggle with learning novel word forms and meanings, but are unimpaired in their ability to establish new form-referent links. The findings suggest that the word learning deficit may be attributed to problems with encoding, rather than with retention, of new word knowledge; however, further exploration is required given the poor performance of both groups for retention testing. Furthermore, we found evidence that an impaired ability to learn word forms may only be apparent in children who have DLD and low levels of verbal working memory.ImplicationsWhen working with children with DLD, speech-language pathologists should assess word learning using tasks that evaluate the ability to learn word forms, meanings, and form-referent links to develop a profile of individual word learning strengths and weaknesses. Clinicians should also assess verbal working memory to identify children at particular risk of word learning deficits. Future research should explore the notion of optimal intervention intensity for facilitating word learning in children with poor language and verbal working memory.

Project description:Abstract. Significance Advances in electronics have allowed the recent development of compact, high channel count time domain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS) systems. Temporal moment analysis has been proposed for increased brain sensitivity due to the depth selectivity of higher order temporal moments. We propose a general linear model (GLM) incorporating TD moment data and auxiliary physiological measurements, such as short separation channels, to improve the recovery of the HRF. Aims We compare the performance of previously reported multi-distance TD moment techniques to commonly used techniques for continuous wave (CW) fNIRS hemodynamic response function (HRF) recovery, namely block averaging and CW GLM. Additionally, we compare the multi-distance TD moment technique to TD moment GLM. Approach We augmented resting TD-fNIRS moment data (six subjects) with known synthetic HRFs. We then employed block averaging and GLM techniques with “short-separation regression” designed both for CW and TD to recover the HRFs. We calculated the root mean square error (RMSE) and the correlation of the recovered HRF to the ground truth. We compared the performance of equivalent CW and TD techniques with paired t-tests. Results We found that, on average, TD moment HRF recovery improves correlations by 98% and 48% for HbO and HbR respectively, over CW GLM. The improvement on the correlation for TD GLM over TD moment is 12% (HbO) and 27% (HbR). RMSE decreases 56% and 52% (HbO and HbR) for TD moment compared to CW GLM. We found no statistically significant improvement in the RMSE for TD GLM compared to TD moment. Conclusions Properly covariance-scaled TD moment techniques outperform their CW equivalents in both RMSE and correlation in the recovery of the synthetic HRFs. Furthermore, our proposed TD GLM based on moments outperforms regular TD moment analysis, while allowing the incorporation of auxiliary measurements of the confounding physiological signals from the scalp.

Dataset Information

Word Frequency Is Associated With Cognitive Effort During Verbal Working Memory: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Study.

Publications

Word Frequency Is Associated With Cognitive Effort During Verbal Working Memory: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Study.

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