The concurrent use of three implicit measures (eye movements, pupillometry, and event-related potentials) to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge in normal adults

Abstract

Recent years have seen the advent and proliferation of the use of implicit techniques to study learning and cognition. One such application is the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge. Other implicit assessment techniques that may be well-suited to other testing situations or to use with varied participant groups have not been used as widely to study receptive vocabulary knowledge. We sought to develop additional implicit techniques to study receptive vocabulary knowledge that could augment the knowledge gained from the use of the ERP technique. Specifically, we used a simple forced-choice paradigm to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge in normal adult participants using eye movement monitoring (EM) and pupillometry. In the same group of participants, we also used an N400 semantic incongruity ERP paradigm to assess their knowledge of two groups of words: those expected to be known to the participants (high-frequency, familiar words) and those expected to be unknown (low-frequency, unfamiliar words). All three measures showed reliable differences between the known and unknown words. EM and pupillometry thus may provide insight into receptive vocabulary knowledge similar to that from ERPs. The development of additional implicit assessment techniques may increase the feasibility of receptive vocabulary testing across a wider range of participant groups and testing situations, and may make the conduct of such testing more accessible to a wider range of researchers, clinicians, and educators.

Implicit Measures of Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge in Individuals With Level 3 Autism

“…Overall, Ledoux et al (2016) demonstrated that all three measures showed effects that are consistent with prior work using EMs, PD, and ERPs as implicit measures of language, indicating that they can be used together to assess receptive vocabulary in TD adults. Critically, although the participants made behavioral responses throughout the tasks, all three implicit measures demonstrated the participants’ ability to distinguish between ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ words without relying on behavioral responses.…”

“…We have previously demonstrated the complementary use of EMs, PD, and ERPs as implicit measures of receptive vocabulary knowledge in TD adults using high-frequency ‘known’ words (eg, airplane ) and low-frequency ‘unknown’ words (eg, cherimoya) (Ledoux et al, 2016). In a visual world paradigm, during which EM and PD data were collected, four pictures were followed by a spoken word matching one of the pictures.…”

“…Note that in both Ledoux et al (2016) and this report, we use ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ to refer to presumed participant knowledge of these sets of words. In the Methods section, we describe the assessments of true word status that were conducted with the caregivers of participants in this study to corroborate this presumption.…”

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…One limitation of this paradigm is that it can only be used with individuals who are familiar with the words or pictures being presented. Prior work has shown that N400 effects do not occur if the lexical item is outside the individual's vocabulary range 32,35 . Therefore it is important that participants either have average to above-average verbal and reading abilities, or that care is taken to ensure that all stimuli used in the experiment fall within the vocabulary range of the individual.…”

Application of Supervised Machine Learning for Behavioral Biomarkers of Autism Spectrum Disorder Based on Electrodermal Activity and Virtual Reality

“…Recent progress in social cognitive neuroscience (SCN), a field of study including biological processes and cognitionbased aspects (Lieberman, 2010), is confuting the majority of social cognition models that suggest that humans can analyze and correctly verbalize their beliefs, feelings, and behaviors (Nosek et al, 2011), showing that our social interactions are mostly governed by unconscious processes that happen without conscious awareness or control (Forscher et al, 2019). To study the unconscious processes, several implicit measures, including brain images, behavior, and psychophysiological tracking, have been developed as alternative research methods to explicit measures since they are able to capture implied brain processes (Ledoux et al, 2016).…”