A behavioural exploration of language aptitude and experience, cognition and more using Graph Analysis

Alessandra Rampinini, Irene Balboni, Narly Golestani, Raphael Berthele (Corresponding author)

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

Language aptitude has recently regained interest in cognitive neuroscience. Traditional language aptitude testing included phonemic coding ability, associative memory, grammatical sensitivity and inductive language learning. Moreover, domain-general cognitive abilities are associated with individual differences in language aptitude, together with factors that have yet to be elucidated. Beyond domain-general cognition, it is also likely that aptitude and experience in domain-specific but non-linguistic fields (e.g. music or numerical processing) influence and are influenced by language aptitude. We investigated some of these relationships in a sample of 152 participants, using exploratory graph analysis, across different levels of regularisation, i.e. sensitivity. We carried out a meta cluster analysis in a second step to identify variables that are robustly grouped together. We discuss the data, as well as their meta-network groupings, at a baseline network sensitivity level, and in two analyses, one including and the other excluding dyslexic readers. Our results show a stable association between language and cognition, and the isolation of multilingual language experience, musicality and literacy. We highlight the necessity of a more comprehensive view of language and of cognition as multivariate systems.
Original languageEnglish
Article number149109
Number of pages23
JournalBrain Research
Volume1842
Early online date2 Jul 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2 Jul 2024

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 501030 Cognitive science
  • 602040 Psycholinguistics

Keywords

  • Behavioural testing
  • Deep phenotyping
  • General cognition
  • Language aptitude
  • Literacy
  • Memory
  • Network analysis

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