TY - JOUR A1 - Zakariás, Lilla A1 - Keresztes, Attila A1 - Marton, Klara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Positive effects of a computerised working memory and executive function JF - Neuropsychological rehabilitation N2 - Aphasia, the language disorder following brain damage, is frequently accompanied by deficits of working memory (WM) and executive functions (EFs). Recent studies suggest that WM, together with certain EFs, can play a role in sentence comprehension in individuals with aphasia (IWA), and that WM can be enhanced with intensive practice. Our aim was to investigate whether a combined WM and EF training improves the understanding of spoken sentences in IWA. We used a pre-post-test case control design. Three individuals with chronic aphasia practised an adaptive training task (a modified n-back task) three to four times a week for a month. Their performance was assessed before and after the training on outcome measures related to WM and spoken sentence comprehension. One participant showed significant improvement on the training task, another showed a tendency for improvement, and both of them improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension. The third participant did not improve on the training task, however, she showed improvement on one measure of spoken sentence comprehension. Compared to controls, two individuals improved at least in one condition of the WM outcome measures. Thus, our results suggest that a combined WM and EF training can be beneficial for IWA. KW - Aphasia rehabilitation KW - transfer effect KW - updating training KW - interference control KW - sentence comprehension deficit Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09602011.2016.1159579 SN - 0960-2011 SN - 1464-0694 VL - 28 IS - 3 SP - 369 EP - 386 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Räling, Romy A1 - Schröder, Astrid A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - The origins of age of acquisition and typicality effects: Semantic processing in aphasia and the ageing brain JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Age of acquisition (AOA) has frequently been shown to influence response times and accuracy rates in word processing and constitutes a meaningful variable in aphasic language processing, while its origin in the language processing system is still under debate. To find out where AOA originates and whether and how it is related to another important psycholinguistic variable, namely semantic typicality (TYP), we studied healthy, elderly controls and semantically impaired individuals using semantic priming. For this purpose, we collected reaction times and accuracy rates as well as event-related potential data in an auditory category-member-verification task. The present results confirm a semantic origin of TYP, but question the same for AOA while favouring its origin at the phonology-semantics interface. The data are further interpreted in consideration of recent theories of ageing. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Ageing KW - Aphasia KW - N400 KW - Semantic typicality KW - Age of acquisition Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.04.019 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 86 SP - 80 EP - 92 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - GEN A1 - Räling, Romy A1 - Hanne, Sandra A1 - Schröder, Astrid A1 - Keßler, Carla A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Judging the animacy of words : The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task N2 - The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 305 KW - Age of acquisition KW - Animacy decision KW - Semantic classification task KW - Typicality Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-98402 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Raeling, Romy A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - How pitch change and final lengthening cue boundary perception in German: converging evidence from ERPs and prosodic judgements JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - This study examines the role of pitch and final lengthening in German intonation phrase boundary (IPB) perception. Since a prosody-related event-related potential (ERP) component termed Closure Positive Shift reflects the processing of major prosodic boundaries, we combined ERP and behavioural measures (i.e. a prosodic judgement task) to systematically test the impact of sole and combined cue occurrences on IPB perception. In two experiments we investigated whether adult listeners perceived an IPB in acoustically manipulated speech material that contained none, one, or two of the prosodic boundary cues. Both ERP and behavioural results suggest that pitch and final lengthening cues have to occur in combination to trigger IPB perception. Hence, the combination of behavioural and electrophysiological measures provides a comprehensive insight into prosodic boundary cue perception in German and leads to an argument in favour of interrelated cues from the frequency (i.e. pitch change) and the time (i.e. final lengthening) domain. KW - Speech perception KW - prosody KW - Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique KW - Closure Positive Shift (CPS) KW - prosodic boundary cues Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1157195 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 31 SP - 904 EP - 920 PB - Begell House CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Spalek, Katharina T1 - The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives JF - Language and cognition : an interdisciplinary journal of language and cognitive science N2 - The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element. KW - focus particles KW - alternative-set semantics KW - probe recognition task KW - lexical decision task KW - competitive inhibition Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2015.25 SN - 1866-9808 SN - 1866-9859 VL - 8 SP - 59 EP - 95 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Spalek, Katharina T1 - The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 517 KW - focus particles KW - alternative-set semantics KW - probe recognition task KW - lexical decision task KW - competitive inhibition Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413420 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 517 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dix, Annika A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - van der Meer, Elke T1 - The role of fluid intelligence and learning in analogical reasoning: How to become neurally efficient? JF - Neurobiology of learning and memory N2 - This study on analogical reasoning evaluates the impact of fluid intelligence on adaptive changes in neural efficiency over the course of an experiment and specifies the underlying cognitive processes. Grade 10 students (N = 80) solved unfamiliar geometric analogy tasks of varying difficulty. Neural efficiency was measured by the event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha band, an indicator of cortical activity. Neural efficiency was defined as a low amount of cortical activity accompanying high performance during problem-solving. Students solved the tasks faster and more accurately the higher their FI was. Moreover, while high FI led to greater cortical activity in the first half of the experiment, high FI was associated with a neurally more efficient processing (i.e., better performance but same amount of cortical activity) in the second half of the experiment. Performance in difficult tasks improved over the course of the experiment for all students while neural efficiency increased for students with higher but decreased for students with lower fluid intelligence. Based on analyses of the alpha sub-bands, we argue that high fluid intelligence was associated with a stronger investment of attentional resource in the integration of information and the encoding of relations in this unfamiliar task in the first half of the experiment (lower-2 alpha band). Students with lower fluid intelligence seem to adapt their applied strategies over the course of the experiment (i.e., focusing on task-relevant information; lower-1 alpha band). Thus, the initially lower cortical activity and its increase in students with lower fluid intelligence might reflect the overcoming of mental overload that was present in the first half of the experiment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Analogical reasoning KW - Short-term learning KW - Fluid intelligence KW - Neural efficiency KW - Alpha ERD/ERS Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2016.07.019 SN - 1074-7427 SN - 1095-9564 VL - 134 SP - 236 EP - 247 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER -