Experimental psycholinguistics: interfaces and multidisciplinarity

Abstract

The round-table Psicolinguística Experimental em Interfaces (Experimental Psycholinguistics in Interfaces) proposed by Abralin aims to present the advances in three very productive and important areas that are in interfaced with Experimental Psycholinguistics: Neurosciences, multimodal processing and Language Acquisition (LA). Prof. Dr. Lilian Hübner (PUCRS) presents experiments that focus on the comprehension and production of language in participants with different socioeconomic and educational levels. There are also discussions about research on patients with Alzheimer's disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and the post-stroke language impairment. The second interface, discussed by Prof. Dr. Erica Rodrigues (PUCRJ), approach-es the multimodality of linguistic processing, arguing that non-linguistic aspects (such as images and graphics) should be considered to understand completely linguistic processing. Finally, Prof. Dr. Cristina Name emphasizes the performance of experimental psycholinguistics in the area of Language Acquisition, with emphasis in prosody in Infant-Directed Speech (IDS).

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Psycholinguistics is the area of ​​Cognitive Sciences that aims to clarify how the production, understanding and storage of language occur, through mental representations1 and language processing (WARREN, 2013[1]). This rich academic field considers as objects the studies of all linguistic cognitive processes and any anatomical structure or physiological phenomenon that may interfere or facilitate the understanding of how humans interact with language.

Because it is related to such a wide range of knowledge, it seems inevitable that Psycholinguistics is tangent to other areas of science, especially to Health - mainly, within the Neurosciences. This intersection allows the development of methods, tools and hypotheses for psycholinguistic studies, and the products of those investigations are beneficial for several disciplines in the science field.

Initially, Lilian Hübner presents experimental data on how education[2], socioeconomic status and reading and writing habits are closely related to the development or not of dementia. It is important to note that socioeconomic aspects are considered in this assessment, because they are in general linked to schooling (SOUSA; HÜBNER, 2017[3]).

The different sensorial interactions with the language (speech, hearing, writing and reading) seem to have a brain protection role, preventing or postponing dementia stages (STERN, 2012[6]). Thus, people with few reading habits or with little or no schooling tend to be more likely to develop dementia (ARDILA et al., 2000[4]; ARDILA et al., 2010[5]).

An important concept in studies that consider the functioning of cognitive abilities is verbal fluency (VF)2. In her lecture, Lilian Hübner confirms how VF tasks can be useful to assess atypical linguistic processing, which may assist in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment at different levels.

In addition, it is demonstrated that reading and writing habits, that is, literacy levels, have a greater impact on phonemic fluency as compared to categorical or free VF. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the encoding of stimuli in short-term memory is acoustic in nature; therefore, it is more common that there is confusion between sounds due to the error in recovering words.

On the other hand, long-term memory is coded mainly in a semantic way, that is, based on the meaning of words (STERNBERG, 2010[7]). Moreover, literacy, fostered by higher reading and writing habits, may support word generation in VF based on the initial letter or phoneme sound.

These data are in conformity with the order of the symptoms of dementia: short-term memory is affected before long-term memory (ABREU; FORLENZA; BARROS, 2005[8]). Therefore, if the acoustic information is closer to the type of memory initially affected by dementia, it will also be impaired primarily.

Lilian Hübner presents experimental psycholinguistics not only as an area of ​​application for Health Sciences, but also as a contributor to the construction of anatomophysiological knowledge. The multidisciplinary importance is evident when research in psycholinguistics is highlighted, which allows a deeper understanding about the functions of human`s anatomy structures

In short, psycholinguistic studies in interface with neurosciences present important data and validations for the areas of Linguistics and Health, in general, since they help the understanding of cognitive processes and the effects that these processes have on individuals.

In the lecture by Erica Rodrigues, a multimodal proposal for a psycholinguistic approach is introduced in the reading task, in which non-linguistic stimuli are as important for information processing as parsing3. The researcher argues that the text, despite containing mainly verbal elements, it is also composed with a group of visual stimuli that actively contribute to the construction of meaning and, consequently, to the reader's interpretation.

Multimodality has gained some expressiveness in recent decades and it is a model that considers different modes of stimuli contributing to the processing of information. In the case of a written text, for example, images, graphics or even the set of verbal stimuli influence the way a reader interprets the information.

However, Erica Rodrigues highlights the fact that almost all academic papers that discuss multimodality are in Applied Linguistics, such as those by Queiroz (2005[9]) and Duarte (2008[10]). Fragoso's recent work (2015[11]) solely contributes in the area of ​​psycholinguistics.

In fact, experimental psycholinguistics seems to have the power to deliver great contributions in the context of processing multimodal information, since it considers sensory perception and has instruments capable of evaluating the interaction between stimuli and those who receive them.

Empirically, Rodrigues' lecture exposes very relevant works, which use the eye tracking4 technique to investigate multimodal understanding, with focus on reading graphs and statistical literacy. That is done by observing the processing of linguistic and non-linguistic information contained in the understanding and reading graphs.

The conclusion reached is favorable to the adoption of multimodality: non-verbal stimuli are not only considered, but also have the ability to make linguistic information`s processing less or more complex for the reader (FRAGOSO, 2015[11]).

Cristina Name discusses the characteristics of Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and, later, its role in Language Acquisition (AL). Compared to Adult-Directed Speech, IDS is marked by shorter and simpler sentences. In addition, a high number of questions integrate this type of speech, which is curious, because it is known that very young children will not actually have an effective response posture when provoked.

The most recent research on IDS developed by Profª. Dr. Cristina Name uses as methodology the evaluation of phonetic and prosodic questions specific to this type of speech in the Praat5 software.

It was evaluated that in Brazilian Portuguese there is a great predominance of rising melodic contours in interrogatives (MORAES, 2008[12]), which converges with another characteristic of IDS: the higher pitch6. In addition, the IDS also presents evidence of a wide pitch range, what is also similar to features of interrogative sentences.

However, considering only the questions, most of them are composed of WH-questions, which mostly have falling melodic contour. This raises the hypotheses that if the questions are not addressed in the expectation of a verbal response, the intention of adults - and older children - may be simply to interact with the child. Usually, the answer to a WH-question requires much more phonetic, phonological, visual and semantic stimuli than a Y/N question. After all, Y/N answers are binary and usually short, whereas answers to the WH-question can articulate much more meanings and signifiers.

Nevertheless, the IDS emphasizes certain melodic characteristics, which has been speculated by Language Acquisition as important for the child's initial ability to distinguish different types of sentences from each other (declarative vs. interrogative; WH- vs. Y/N questions).

Although not universally used, IDS appears to be more efficient for the interaction with babies, from newborns to fifteen-months ones. That is because they prefer and respond better to stimuli with characteristics of this type of speech, as shown by the works of Cooper and Aslin (1990; 1994[13,14]).

Name's brilliantly exemplifies how much and how studies in the area of ​​prosody can contribute to Experimental Psycholinguistics (and vice versa).