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Int J Semiot Law 2021 Apr 3:1-25. Epub 2021 Apr 3.

Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Verona, Verona, Italy.

This paper focuses on two legal languages such as the legal English developed by the European Union institutions (Euro English) and the legal Chinese of Mainland China, to study whether the mental representations and the embodied simulation created by the conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, right, differ in any significant ways. By analysing the data contained in two large corpora, this study has found that, despite the common origin of the concept right in the two legal languages, they conceptualise it in a significantly different fashion. Finally, the findings of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue-hybridity and the Third Space. Read More

J Gen Psychol 2021 Apr 9:1-18. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

Recent research suggests that linguistic and musical information are processed by shared working memory resources in non-musicians. However, it is still unclear how musical information is actively maintained by those with extensive musical experience. Some evidence suggests that those with musical experience may utilize distinct processing systems for the active maintenance of linguistic and musical information. Read More

Med Educ Online 2021 Dec;26(1):1913784

Medical Education Development Centre, Gifu University, Gifu City, Japan.

International electives are recognized as a high-impact practice in clinical education. However, medical students' actual learning experiences during electives have not been explored fully. Specifically, drawing on language management theory, this exploratory case study investigates students' perceived learning outcomes and the managing processes by which they gained benefits from cross-cultural learning experiences in international electives. Read More

J Eye Mov Res 2020 Aug 26;13(6). Epub 2020 Aug 26.

Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Much reading research has found that informative parafoveal masks lead to a reading benefit for native speakers (see 1). However, little reading research has tested the impact of uninformative parafoveal masks during reading. Additionally, parafoveal processing research is primarily restricted to native speakers. Read More

J Eye Mov Res 2020 Dec 15;13(2). Epub 2020 Dec 15.

University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Viewing artworks may be subject to the same processes as everyday scene selection in respect of gaze behaviour. However, artists may employ carefully constructed composition in their paintings to lead the eyes of viewers along a predetermined path. This paper investigates whether composition is successful through comparison of expected scanpaths (constructed using the known intention of the artist) and actual scanpaths (as captured using an eye-tracker) based on a loci and sequence similarity index. Read More

Nat Commun 2021 04 7;12(1):2080. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

South Eastern Bantu-speaking (SEB) groups constitute more than 80% of the population in South Africa. Despite clear linguistic and geographic diversity, the genetic differences between these groups have not been systematically investigated. Based on genome-wide data of over 5000 individuals, representing eight major SEB groups, we provide strong evidence for fine-scale population structure that broadly aligns with geographic distribution and is also congruent with linguistic phylogeny (separation of Nguni, Sotho-Tswana and Tsonga speakers). Read More

J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 2021 Apr 8:1-14. Epub 2021 Apr 8.

Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Some studies have found that bilingualism promotes cognitive reserve.

Objective: We aimed to determine whether bilingualism, defined as regularly (i.e. Read More

Z Erziehwiss 2021 Apr 1:1-35. Epub 2021 Apr 1.

Multiple Repräsentationen, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Deutschland.

Many schools introduced distance learning as a result of the school closings due to the Corona pandemic in March 2020. Such instruction was often organized digitally without much prior preparation. As a result, an increased exchange between teachers in online communities was to be expected. Read More

Risk Manag Healthc Policy 2021 29;14:1319-1326. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

OPEN - Open Patient Data Explorative Network, Odense University Hospital, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense C, DK-5000, Denmark.

Purpose: The study aimed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the English version of the HCAT to produce a Danish HCAT version and to test the Danish version's reliability.

Methods: We used best-practice guidelines for linguistic translations and cultural adaptations. For cross-cultural adaptation, we conducted forward and back translation followed by expert committee review. Read More

BMC Bioinformatics 2021 Apr 6;22(1):178. Epub 2021 Apr 6.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Snellius Gebouw, Niels Bohrweg 1, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Background: The hallmarks of cancer provide a highly cited and well-used conceptual framework for describing the processes involved in cancer cell development and tumourigenesis. However, methods for translating these high-level concepts into data-level associations between hallmarks and genes (for high throughput analysis), vary widely between studies. The examination of different strategies to associate and map cancer hallmarks reveals significant differences, but also consensus. Read More

PLoS One 2021 6;16(4):e0249560. Epub 2021 Apr 6.

Department of Sexology, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University, Cracow, Poland.

The contemporary concept of sexual counseling for women with sexual problems, distress, and female sexual dysfunction (FSD) includes tailored medical and/or psychological intervention. The dual control model and the Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women (SESII-W) are helpful for identifying risk factors and tailoring therapy for FSD. The current study aimed to (1) validate the Polish translation of the SESII-W in a sample of Polish women, and (2) verify the usefulness of the SESII-W in clinical practice. Read More

Elife 2021 Apr 6;10. Epub 2021 Apr 6.

Robert J and Nancy D Carney Institute for Brain Science; Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, United States.

In cognitive neuroscience, computational modeling can formally adjudicate between theories and affords quantitative fits to behavioral/brain data. Pragmatically, however, the space of plausible generative models considered is dramatically limited by the set of models with known likelihood functions. For many models, the lack of a closed-form likelihood typically impedes Bayesian inference methods. Read More

Cybern Syst Anal 2021 Apr 1:1-10. Epub 2021 Apr 1.

Institute for Monitoring the Quality of Education of National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute,", Kyiv, Ukraine.

A combined approach has been developed to estimate the effectiveness of social transformations as a measure of inconsistency between the actions of the authorities and the expectations of society and the synergy (social activity) of people, based on formalized coordination of the results obtained by the method of expert assessments and methods of sentiment analysis and intelligent analysis of text messages from online open sources and social networks. These methods are implemented as a set of web services and applications in the development environment of the Advanced Analytics integrated online platform of the World Data Center "Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development." The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a quantitative assessment of the attitude of the population of Ukraine to the actions of the authorities concerned with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read More

J Gen Intern Med 2021 Apr 5. Epub 2021 Apr 5.

Women and Gender Studies, University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine, USA.

Background: Inequities in COVID-19 outcomes in the USA have been clearly documented for sex and race: men are dying at higher rates than women, and Black individuals are dying at higher rates than white individuals. Unexplored, however, is how sex and race interact in COVID-19 outcomes.

Objective: Use available data to characterize COVID-19 mortality rates within and between race and sex strata in two US states, with the aim of understanding how apparent sex disparities in COVID-19 deaths vary across race. Read More

Cognition 2021 Mar 31:104676. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, 1401 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Jacques Mehler's earliest work concerned the independence of syntactic and semantic representations in adult sentence understanding, probing for independent contributions of sentence structure and sentence meaning in the psychological processes that underlie linguistic perception (e.g., Mehler, 1963; Mehler & Miller, 1964). Read More

Children (Basel) 2021 Mar 9;8(3). Epub 2021 Mar 9.

Psychology Faculty, Universitat de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain.

Here, we studied the beginnings of language development, jointly assessing two groups of precursors, sociodemographic and pre-linguistic, that have previously been studied separately. Thus, the general objective of this study was to explore which factors best explained the acquisition of initial expressive vocabulary. The sample consisted of 504 participants from Catalan-speaking homes with ages ranging between 10 and 18 months. Read More

Brain Sci 2021 Mar 11;11(3). Epub 2021 Mar 11.

Clinical Neuropsychology Research Group, Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 80799 Munich, Germany.

Assessment of semantic processing capacities often relies on verbal tasks which are, however, sensitive to impairments at several language processing levels. Especially for persons with aphasia there is a strong need for a tool that measures semantic processing skills independent of verbal abilities. Furthermore, in order to assess a patient's potential for using alternative means of communication in cases of severe aphasia, semantic processing should be assessed in different nonverbal conditions. Read More

Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021 Mar 11;18(6). Epub 2021 Mar 11.

Department of Emergency Medicine, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei 104, Taiwan.

Early surgical intervention in hip fractures is associated with lower complications. This study aimed to determine the appropriate operation time among Asian geriatric patients. The data of 1118 elderly patients with hip fracture at Mackay Memorial Hospital from 1 January 2011, to 31 July 2019, were retrospectively examined. Read More

Cognition 2021 Mar 31;212:104697. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Quantitative Linguistics Group, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address:

In the last two decades, statistical clustering models have emerged as a dominant model of how infants learn the sounds of their language. However, recent empirical and computational evidence suggests that purely statistical clustering methods may not be sufficient to explain speech sound acquisition. To model early development of speech perception, the present study used a two-layer network trained with Rescorla-Wagner learning equations, an implementation of discriminative, error-driven learning. Read More

Qual Life Res 2021 Apr 2. Epub 2021 Apr 2.

Quality of Life Office, School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Background: Head and neck cancers (HNC) and their treatments cause dysfunction and distress. Ongoing psychological assessment using disease-specific patient-reported measures may optimize clinical decision-making, facilitate interventions to reduce psychosocial burden. As most such measures are developed in English, non-English speaking patients are disadvantaged. Read More

J Speech Lang Hear Res 2021 Mar 31:1-13. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

Purpose This study explored the neural marker indexing deficits in discriminating lexical tone changes in Mandarin-speaking children with developmental language disorders (DLDs) using mismatch negativity, an event-related potential component for auditory change detection. Mandarin has four lexical tones characterized by a high-level tone (T1), high-rising tone (T2), low-dipping tone (T3), and high-falling tone (T4), in which the T2/T3 contrast is acoustically less discriminable in developmental groups. Therefore, this study further examined how deficits in children with DLD would vary with tonal contrasts' acoustic saliency. Read More

PLoS One 2021 31;16(3):e0248755. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Oncology and Palliative Care Units, Civil Hospital Carpi, USL, Carpi, Italy.

Early palliative/supportive care (ePSC) is a medical intervention focused on patient's needs, that integrates standard oncological treatment, shortly after a diagnosis of advanced/metastatic cancer. ePSC improves the appropriate management of cancer pain. Understanding the semantic and emotional impact of the words used by patients to describe their pain may further improve its assessment in the ePSC setting. Read More

Sci Rep 2021 Mar 30;11(1):7181. Epub 2021 Mar 30.

Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.

During language comprehension, the brain processes not only word meanings, but also the grammatical structure-the "syntax"-that strings words into phrases and sentences. Yet the neural basis of syntax remains contentious, partly due to the elusiveness of experimental designs that vary structure independently of meaning-related variables. Here, we exploit Arabic's grammatical properties, which enable such a design. Read More

J Gen Intern Med 2021 Mar 29. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Background: Most medical schools offer medical Spanish education to teach patient-physician communication skills with the growing Spanish-speaking population. Medical Spanish courses that lack basic standards of curricular structure, faculty educators, learner assessment, and institutional credit may increase student confidence without sufficiently improving skills, inadvertently exacerbating communication problems with linguistic minority patients.

Objective: To conduct a national environmental scan of US medical schools' medical Spanish educational efforts, examine to what extent existing efforts meet basic standards, and identify next steps in improving the quality of medical Spanish education. Read More

BMJ 2021 03 29;372:n71. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Centre for Journalology, Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada; School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.

BMJ 2021 03 29;372:n160. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

BMC Bioinformatics 2021 Mar 29;22(1):165. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, 518055, Guangdong, China.

Background: Exploring the relationship between disease and gene is of great significance for understanding the pathogenesis of disease and developing corresponding therapeutic measures. The prediction of disease-gene association by computational methods accelerates the process.

Results: Many existing methods cannot fully utilize the multi-dimensional biological entity relationship to predict disease-gene association due to multi-source heterogeneous data. Read More

Prof Inferm 2020 Oct-Dec;73(4):296-304

Department of Health Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.

Introduction: Falls in hospitals are a major problem also in pediatric settings. No Pediatric Fall Risk Assessment Scales (PFRAS) are validated in Italian.

Goals: to perform the Italian validation of the Humpty-Dumpty Falls Scale (HDFS); to assess its predictive performance; to estimate the frequency of falls in hospitalized children and to analyze possible associations between children's clinical variables and falls. Read More

Int J Speech Lang Pathol 2021 Mar 29:1-11. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Department of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, Medical Unit, Speech and Language Pathology and Stockholm Craniofacial Team, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, and.

The aim was to evaluate the effect of a motor-based, hierarchically structured intervention directed at active nasal fricatives substituting /s/ in young children with normal palatal function. An experimental single-subject design was replicated across three children, aged 4-6 years, with normal palatal function, who substituted oral /s/ with active nasal fricatives. Treatment was performed weekly by a speech-language pathologist and included home training conducted by parents. Read More

Front Psychol 2021 10;12:590155. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.

Processes governing the creation, perception and production of spoken words are sensitive to the patterns of speech sounds in the language user's lexicon. Generative linguistic theory suggests that listeners infer constraints on possible sound patterning from the lexicon and apply these constraints to all aspects of word use. In contrast, emergentist accounts suggest that these phonotactic constraints are a product of interactive associative mapping with items in the lexicon. Read More