Publications with Fulltext
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/6
Browse
20 results
Search Results
Publication Open Access The relationship between co-speech gesture production and macrolinguistic discourse abilities in people with focal brain injury(Elsevier, 2018) Chatterjee, Anjan; Department of Psychology; Akbıyık, Seda; Karaduman, Ayşenur; Göksun, Tilbe; Master Student; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; N/A; 47278Brain damage is associated with linguistic deficits and might alter co-speech gesture production. Gesture production after focal brain injury has been mainly investigated with respect to intrasentential rather than discourse-level linguistic processing. In this study, we examined 1) spontaneous gesture production patterns of people with left hemisphere damage (LHD) or right hemisphere damage (RHD) in a narrative setting, 2) the neural structures associated with deviations in spontaneous gesture production in these groups, and 3) the relationship between spontaneous gesture production and discourse level linguistic processes (narrative complexity and evaluation competence). Individuals with LHD or RHD (17 people in each group) and neurotypical controls (n = 13) narrated a story from a picture book. Results showed that increase in gesture production for LHD individuals was associated with less complex narratives and lesions of individuals who produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals overlapped in frontal-temporal structures and basal ganglia. Co-speech gesture production of RHD individuals positively correlated with their evaluation competence in narrative. Lesions of RHD individuals who produced more gestures overlapped in the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule. Overall, LHD individuals produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals. The groups did not differ in their use of different gesture forms except that LHD individuals produced more deictic gestures per utterance than RHD individuals and controls. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that co-speech gesture production interacts with macro-linguistic levels of discourse and this interaction is affected by the hemispheric lateralization of discourse abilities.Publication Open Access Shifting evaluation windows: predictable forward primes with long SOAs eliminate the impact of backward primes(Public Library of Science, 2013) Fockenberg, Daniel A.; Koole, Sander L.; Lakens, Daniël; Department of Psychology; Semin, Gün Refik; Researcher; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 58066Recent work suggests that people evaluate target stimuli within short and flexible time periods called evaluation windows. Stimuli that briefly precede a target (forward primes) or briefly succeed a target (backward primes) are often included in the target's evaluation. In this article, the authors propose that predictable forward primes act as ""go"" signals that prepare target processing, such that earlier forward primes pull the evaluation windows forward in time. Earlier forward primes may thus reduce the impact of backward primes. This shifting evaluation windows hypothesis was tested in two experiments using an evaluative decision task with predictable (vs. unpredictable) forward and backward primes. As expected, a longer time interval between a predictable forward prime and a target eliminated backward priming. In contrast, the time interval between an unpredictable forward primes and a target had no effects on backward priming. These findings suggest that predictable features of dynamic stimuli can shape target extraction by determining which information is included (or excluded) in rapid evaluation processes.Publication Open Access Children's associations between space and pitch are differentially shaped by language(Wiley, 2022) Dolscheid, S.; Çelik, S.; Erkan, H.; Majid A.; Department of Psychology; Küntay, Aylin C.; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 178879Musical properties, such as auditory pitch, are not expressed in the same way across cultures. In some languages, pitch is expressed in terms of spatial height (high vs. low), whereas others rely on thickness vocabulary (thick = low frequency vs. thin = high frequency). We investigated how children represent pitch in the face of this variable linguistic input by examining the developmental trajectory of linguistic and non-linguistic space-pitch associations in children who acquire Dutch (a height-pitch language) or Turkish (a thickness-pitch language). Five-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and 11-year-olds were tested for their understanding of pitch terminology and their associations of spatial dimensions with auditory pitch when no language was used. Across tasks, thickness-pitch associations were more robust than height-pitch associations. This was true for Turkish children, and also Dutch children not exposed to thickness-pitch vocabulary. Height-pitch associations, on the other hand, were not reliable-not even in Dutch-speaking children until age 11-the age when they demonstrated full comprehension of height-pitch terminology. Moreover, Turkish-speaking children reversed height-pitch associations. Taken together, these findings suggest thickness-pitch associations are acquired in similar ways by children from different cultures, but the acquisition of height-pitch associations is more susceptible to linguistic input. Overall, then, despite cross-cultural stability in some components, there is variation in how children come to represent musical pitch, one of the building blocks of music. Research Highlights Children from diverse cultures differ in their understanding of music vocabulary and in their nonlinguistic associations between spatial dimensions and auditory pitch. Height-pitch mappings are acquired late and require additional scaffolding from language, whereas thickness-pitch mappings are acquired early and are less susceptible to language input. Space-pitch mappings are not static from birth to adulthood, but change over development, suggesting music cognition is shaped by cross-cultural experience.Publication Open Access Comorbid anxiety increases suicidal risk in bipolar depression: analysis of 9720 adolescent inpatients(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), 2020) Patel, Rikinkumar S.; Amuk Williams, Özge Ceren; School of MedicineObjective: to evaluate the risk of association between suicidal behaviors and comorbid anxiety disorders in adolescents with bipolar depression. Methods: we conducted a cross-sectional study using the nationwide inpatient sample (NIS) from the United States. This study included 9720 adolescent inpatients with bipolar depression and further grouped by co-diagnosis of anxiety disorders. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the odds ratio (OR) of suicidal behaviors due to comorbid anxiety after controlling demographic confounders and psychiatric comorbidities. Results: out of total inpatients, 34.8% (n= 3385) had comorbid anxiety disorders with a predominance in females (70.3%) and White patients (67.7%). About 54.1% of inpatients with comorbid anxiety had suicidal behaviors versus 44.6% in the non-anxiety cohort (p< 0.001). Comorbid anxiety disorders were associated with 1.35 times higher odds (95% CI 1.23-1.47,p< 0.001) for suicidal behaviors. Conclusion: suicidal behaviors are significantly prevalent in bipolar depression adolescents with comorbid anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders are an independent risk factor in bipolar depression that increase the risk of suicidal behaviors by 35%. This necessitates careful assessment and management of comorbid anxiety disorders in bipolar youth to mitigate suicidality.Publication Open Access Differential roles of gestures on spatial language in neurotypical elderly adults and individuals with focal brain injury(Routledge, 2019) Chatterjee, Anjan; Department of Psychology; Göksun, Tilbe; Özer, Demet; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; 47278; N/AGestures might serve communicative functions by supplementing spoken expressions or restorative functions by facilitating speech production. Also, speakers with speech deficits use gestures to compensate for their speech impairments. In this study, we examined gesture use in speakers with and without speech impairments and how spoken spatial expressions changed when gestures were restrained. Six patients with speech problems and with left frontal and/or temporal lesions and 20 neurotypical controls described motion events in 3 different conditions (spontaneous gesture, only speech, and only gesture). In addition to the group analyses, we ran case analyses. Results showed that patients used more gestures compared to controls. Gestures served both communicative and restorative functions for patients whereas controls only used gestures for communicative purposes. Case analyses revealed that there were differential patterns among patients. Overall, gesture production is multifunctional and gestures serve different functions for different populations as well as within a population.Publication Open Access Aging, gesture production, and disfluency in speech: a comparison of younger and older adults(Wiley, 2022) Department of Psychology; Göksun, Tilbe; Arslan, Burcu; Faculty Member; PhD Student; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; 47278; N/AAge-related changes are observed in the speech and gestures of neurotypical individuals. Older adults are more disfluent in speech and use fewer representational gestures (e.g., holding two hands close to each other to mean small), compared to younger adults. Using gestures, especially representational gestures, is common in difficult tasks to aid the conceptualization process and to facilitate lexical access. This study investigates how aging can affect gesture production and the co-occurrence between gesture and speech disfluency. We elicited speech and gesture samples from younger and older adults (N = 60) by using a painting description task that provided concrete and abstract contexts. Results indicated that albeit the two age groups revealed comparable overall speech disfluency and gesture rates, they differed in terms of how their disfluencies and gestures were distributed across specific categories. Moreover, the proportion of speech disfluencies that occur with a gesture was significantly higher for younger than older adults. However, the two age groups were comparable in terms of the proportion of gestures that were accompanied by a speech disfluency. These findings suggest that younger adults' language production system might be better at benefiting from other modalities, that is, gesture, to resolve temporary problems in speech planning. However, from a gesture perspective, it might be difficult to differentiate between gestures' self-oriented and communicative functions and understand their role in speech facilitation. Focusing on specific cases where speech disfluency and gestures co-occur and considering individual differences might bring insight into multimodal communication.Publication Open Access Influence of causal language on causal understanding: a comparison between Swiss German and Turkish(Elsevier, 2021) Ger, Ebru; Stuber, Larissa; Stoll, Sabine; Daum, Moritz M.; Department of Psychology; Küntay, Aylin C.; Göksun, Tilbe; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 178879; 47278Young children have difficulties in understanding untypical causal relations. Although we know that hearing a causal description facilitates this understanding, less is known about what particular features of causal language are responsible for this facilitation. Here, we asked two questions. First, do syntactic and morphological cues in the grammatical structure of sentences facilitate the extraction of causal meaning? Second, do these different cues influence this facilitation to different degrees? We studied children learning either Swiss German or Turkish, two languages that differ in their expression of causality. Swiss German predominantly uses lexical causatives (e.g., schniidä [cut]), which lack a formal marker to denote causality. Turkish, alongside lexical causatives, uses morphological causatives, which formally mark causation (e.g., ye [eat] vs. yeDIr [feed]). We tested 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children's understanding of untypical cause–effect relations described with either noncausal language (e.g., Here is a cube and a car) or causal language using a pseudo-verb (e.g., lexical: The cube gorps the car). We tested 135 Turkish-learning children (noncausal, lexical, and morphological conditions) and 90 Swiss-German-learning children (noncausal and lexical conditions). Children in both language groups performed better in the causal language condition(s) than in the noncausal language condition. Furthermore, Turkish-learning children's performance in both the lexical and morphological conditions was similar to that of Swiss-German-learning children in the lexical condition and did not differ from each other. These findings suggest that the structural cues of causal language support children's understanding of untypical causal relations regardless of the type of construction.Publication Open Access Disability among Syrian refugees living in Sultanbeyli, Istanbul: results from a population based survey(Public Library of Science, 2021) Polack, S.; Scherer, N.; Yonso, H.; Volkan, S.; Pivato, I.; Shaikhani, A.; Boggs, D.; Beck, A.H.; Atijosan Ayodele, O.; Deniz, G.; Örücü, A.; Akıncı, İ.; Hameed, S.; Patterson A.; Department of Psychology; Acartürk, Ceren; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 39271Objectives: to estimate the prevalence of disability among Syrian refugees living in Sultanbeyli district, Istanbul and compare people with and without disabilities in terms of demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Methods: using the municipality refugee database as the sampling frame, 80 clusters of 50 people (aged 2+ years) were selected using probability proportionate to size sampling of clusters and random selection of households within clusters. Disability assessment included: i) self-reported difficulties in functioning (using the Washington Group Short Set-Enhanced tool and Child Functioning Modules), ii) Rapid Assessment of Musculoskeletal Impairment and iii) screening for symptoms of common mental disorders for children aged 8–17. Results: the overall prevalence of disability was 24.7% (95% CI 22.1–27.4), when including people self-reporting a lot of difficulty/cannot do in at least functional domain (15%, 95% CI 13.1–17.2), moderate/severe MSI (8.7%, 95% CI 7.6–9.9), and/or symptomatic anxiety, depression and PTSD among children 8–17 (21.0%, 95% CI 18.2–23.9). Men with disabilities were significantly less likely to be in paid work compared to their peers without disabilities (aOR 0.3 95% CI 0.2–0.5). Overall 60% of households included at least one person with a disability. Households with at least one person with a disability had a significantly higher dependency ratio, lower proportion of working-age adults in paid work, and were more likely to be female headed and in receipt of social protection schemes (p<0.05). Conclusion: disability is common among Syrian refugees in Sultanbeyli. People with disabilities in this setting experience greater vulnerability to poverty and exclusion from work, highlighting an urgent need for inclusive services, programmes and policies that are developed and implemented in partnership with people with disabilities.Publication Open Access Any way the wind blows: children's inferences about force and motion events(Elsevier, 2019) George, Nathan R.; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Department of Psychology; Göksun, Tilbe; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 47278Goksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013) used force dynamics, or the semantic categories defined by spatial arrays of forces, to study the development of preschoolers' predictions about the outcomes of forces working in concert. The current study extends this approach to problems requiring inferences about causal factors. In total, 30 5- and 6-year-old children were asked to identify and coordinate forces to achieve a result. Problems varied in the number and orientation of forces, mirroring spatial arrays characteristic of categories like prevent (i.e., opposing forces). Children successfully inferred causes of single- and dual-force events, performing best when problems reflected the spatial arrays of forces described in language. Results support force dynamics as a valuable framework for the development of force and motion representations.Publication Open Access Acute dissociative reaction to spontaneous delivery in a case of total denial of pregnancy: diagnostic and forensic aspects(Routledge, 2017) Aydın, N.; van der Hart, O.; Frankel, A.S.; Şar, M.; Omay, O.; N/A; Şar, Vedat; Faculty Member; School of Medicine; 8542This article presents the history of a 21-year-old female college student with total denial of pregnancy who experienced an acute dissociative reaction during the spontaneous delivery at home without medical assistance where the newborn died immediately. Psychiatric examination, self-report questionnaires, legal documents, and witness reports have been reviewed in evaluation of the case. Evidence pointed to total denial of pregnancy, that is, until delivery. The diagnoses of an acute dissociative reaction to stress (remitted) and a subsequent PTSD were established in a follow-up examination conducted 7months after the delivery. Notwithstanding the inherently dissociative nature of total denial of pregnancy, no other evidence has been found about pre-existing psychopathology. For causing the newborn's death, the patient faced charges for aggravated murder, which were later on reduced into involuntary manslaughter. Given the physical incapacity to perform voluntary acts due to the loss of control over her actions during the delivery, and the presence of an acute dissociative reaction to unexpected delivery, the legal case represents an intricate overlap between insanity and incapacitation defenses. The rather broad severity spectrum of acute dissociative conditions requires evaluation of the limits and conditions of appropriate legal defenses by mental health experts and lawyers. Denial of pregnancy as a source of potential stress has attracted little interest in psychiatric literature although solid research exists which documented that it is not infrequent. Arguments are presented to introduce this condition as a diagnostic category of female reproductive psychiatry with a more neutral label: unperceived pregnancy.