Embodied cognition holds that one\'s body, actions, perceptions, and situations are integrated into the cognitive process and emphasizes the fact that sensorimotor systems play a role in language comprehension. Previous studies verified the embodied effect in literal language processing but few of them paid attention to metaphors in embodied cognition. The present study aims to explore the embodied effect in the comprehension of Chinese action-verb metaphor. Participants watched a video containing icons and corresponding actions to learn the relationship between them and how to perform these actions in the learning phase and in the test phase, a series of action-describing metaphor phrases were presented to participants with either the icons as primes or no prime at all. The results confirmed the embodied effect as the reaction times (RTs) were significantly shorter when action prime matched the action-verb in the following action-verb metaphor than that of no-prime condition, which are consistent with the facilitation observed in previous relevant studies in embodied cognition. In conclusion, this study verified the embodied effect in the comprehension of Chinese action-verb metaphor, offering further support to embodied cognition and providing a new interpretation for the metaphoric meaning construction of Chinese action-verbs.

This study investigates the impact of segmental accuracy and nucleus placement on the comprehensibility of English as an International Language (EIL), with the aim of informing phonological norms and teaching models. Speech samples from 59 EIL speakers with varying levels of segmental accuracy were collected during a reading task, involving reading a passage in three different versions of speech, each version lasting approximately 30 to 40 s. To directly compare the impact of nuclear stress placement on comprehensibility, based on these samples, two versions of stimuli were created, each differing only in their placement of nuclear stress - either correct or incorrect. The correctness of placements was determined by seven native speakers of English. Eight native English speakers, aged 19-24, and eight EIL speakers, aged 20-24 with an upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency level, rated the comprehensibility of the two versions of speech. Results suggest that while correct nucleus placement enhances comprehensibility for native English listeners, it has little influence on EIL listeners. Segmental accuracy in EIL speech impacts comprehensibility substantially more than nucleus placement on both native and EIL listeners, indicating that English language teaching should focus on minimizing segmental errors to improve comprehensibility for EIL speakers, despite the benefits of correct nucleus placement.

UNASSIGNED: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) with heterogeneous clinical presentations. There are no clear testing parameters for its diagnosis, and the complex pathophysiology of IBS and the limited time that doctors have to spend with patients makes it difficult to adequately educate patients in the outpatient setting. An increased awareness of IBS means that patients are more likely to self-diagnose and self-manage IBS based on their own symptoms. These factors may make patients more likely to turn to Internet resources. Wikipedia is the most popular online encyclopedia among English-speaking users, with numerous validations. However, in Mandarin-speaking regions, the Baidu Encyclopedia is most commonly used. There have been no studies on the reliability, readability, and objectivity of IBS information on the two sites. This is an urgent issue as these platforms are accessed by approximately 1.45 billion people.
UNASSIGNED: We compared the IBS content on Wikipedia (in English) and Baidu Baike (in Chinese), two online encyclopedias, in terms of reliability, readability, and objectivity.
UNASSIGNED: The Baidu Encyclopedia (in Chinese) and Wikipedia (in English) were evaluated based on the Rome IV IBS definitions and diagnoses. All possible synonyms and derivatives for IBS and IBS-related FGIDs were screened and identified. Two gastroenterology experts evaluated the scores of articles for both sites using the DISCERN instrument, the Journal of the American Medical Association scoring system (JAMA), and the Global Quality Score (GQS).
UNASSIGNED: Wikipedia scored higher overall with DISCERN (p < .0001), JAMA (p < .0001) and GQS (p < .05) than the Baidu Encyclopedia. Specifically, Wikipedia scored higher in DISCERN Section 1 (p < .0001), DISCERN Section 2 (p < .01), DISCERN Section 3 (p < .001), and the General DISCERN score (p < .0001) than the Baidu Encyclopedia. Both sites had low DISCERN Section 2 scores (p = .18). Wikipedia also had a larger percentage of high quality scores in total DISCERN, DISCERN Section 1, and DISCERN Section 3 (p < .0001, P < .0001, P < .0004, respectively, based on the above 3 (60%) rule).
UNASSIGNED: Wikipedia provides more reliable, higher quality, and more objective IBS-related health information than the Baidu Encyclopedia. However, there should be improvements in the information quality for both sites. Medical professionals and institutions should collaborate with these online platforms to offer better health information for IBS.

Current large language models (LLMs) rely on word prediction as their backbone pretraining task. Although word prediction is an important mechanism underlying language processing, human language comprehension occurs at multiple levels, involving the integration of words and sentences to achieve a full understanding of discourse. This study models language comprehension by using the next sentence prediction (NSP) task to investigate mechanisms of discourse-level comprehension. We show that NSP pretraining enhanced a model\'s alignment with brain data especially in the right hemisphere and in the multiple demand network, highlighting the contributions of nonclassical language regions to high-level language understanding. Our results also suggest that NSP can enable the model to better capture human comprehension performance and to better encode contextual information. Our study demonstrates that the inclusion of diverse learning objectives in a model leads to more human-like representations, and investigating the neurocognitive plausibility of pretraining tasks in LLMs can shed light on outstanding questions in language neuroscience.

Speech comprehension in noise depends on complex interactions between peripheral sensory and central cognitive systems. Despite having normal peripheral hearing, older adults show difficulties in speech comprehension. It remains unclear whether the brain\'s neural responses could indicate aging. The current study examined whether individual brain activation during speech perception in different listening environments could predict age. We applied functional near-infrared spectroscopy to 93 normal-hearing human adults (20 to 70 years old) during a sentence listening task, which contained a quiet condition and 4 different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR = 10, 5, 0, -5 dB) noisy conditions. A data-driven approach, the region-based brain-age predictive modeling was adopted. We observed a significant behavioral decrease with age under the 4 noisy conditions, but not under the quiet condition. Brain activations in SNR = 10 dB listening condition could successfully predict individual\'s age. Moreover, we found that the bilateral visual sensory cortex, left dorsal speech pathway, left cerebellum, right temporal-parietal junction area, right homolog Wernicke\'s area, and right middle temporal gyrus contributed most to prediction performance. These results demonstrate that the activations of regions about sensory-motor mapping of sound, especially in noisy conditions, could be sensitive measures for age prediction than external behavior measures.

UNASSIGNED: With the increasing popularity of the internet, a growing number of patients and their companions are actively seeking health-related information online.
UNASSIGNED: The aim of this study was to assess the quality and readability of online information about Alzheimer\'s disease (AD) in China.
UNASSIGNED: A total of 263 qualified AD-related web pages from different businesses, governments, and hospitals were obtained. The quality of the web pages was assessed using the DISCERN tool, and the readability of the web pages was assessed using a readability measurement website suitable for the Chinese language. The differences in readability and quality between different types of web pages were investigated, and the correlation between quality and readability was analyzed.
UNASSIGNED: The mean overall DISCERN score was 40.93±7.5. The government group scored significantly higher than the commercial and hospital groups. The mean readability score was 12.74±1.27, and the commercial group had the lowest readability score. There was a positive correlation between DISCERN scores and readability scores.
UNASSIGNED: This study presents an evaluation of the quality and readability of health information pertaining to AD in China. The findings indicate that there is a need to enhance the quality and readability of web pages about AD in China. Recommendations for improvement are proposed in light of these findings.

This study aims to investigate the brain networks engaged in the comprehension of indirect language, as well as the individual difference in this capacity. Specially, we aim to determine whether the difference is solely influenced by the difference in individuals\' default network (DN)/language network or whether it also relies on the networks associated with processing of complex cognitive tasks, particularly the multiple demand network (MDN). Conversational indirectness scale (CIS) scores in the interpretation dimension were used as a behavioral indicator of the indirect comprehension tendency. Reading time difference between indirect replies and direct replies collected through a self-paced reading experiment was deemed as a behavioral indicator of comprehension speed of indirect replies comprehension. The two behavioral indicators were combined with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). The behaviour-rfMRI analysis showed that ALFF value of right SPL and the functional connectivity (FC) between the right SPL and right IPL/SMA/ITG/Precuneus/bilateral IFG were positively correlated with the interpretation dimension of CIS scores. In addition, the ALFF value of right fusiform gyrus, the FC between the right fusiform gyrus and right precuneus, and the FCs between right SPL and right IPL/Precuneus/IFG were negatively correlated with indirect replies comprehension speed. Overlapping of these regions with large-scale brain network revealed that the right SPL was mainly located in the MDN, and the right fusiform gyrus was mainly located in the language network. Additionally, the areas showing functional connectivity with these regions were primarily located in the MDN, with a smaller subset located in the DN. Our findings suggest that the ability of individuals to actively and rapidly acquire indirect meaning relies not only on the support of the DN and the language network, but also requires collective support from the MDN.

This study examined the effect of context on the prediction of emotional words with varying valences. It investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the processing differences of emotion words with different valences in both predictable and unpredictable contexts. Additionally, it aimed to address the conflicting results regarding the processing time in predictive contexts reported in previous studies.
Participants were instructed to carefully read the text that included the specified emotion words. Event-related potentials elicited by emotional words were measured. To ensure that the participants can read the text carefully, 33% of the texts are followed by comprehension problems. After reading the text, the comprehension questions were answered based on the text content.
The study revealed that the N400 amplitude elicited by an unpredictable context was greater than that elicited by a predictable context. Additionally, the N400 amplitude triggered by positive emotion words was larger than that triggered by negative emotion words. However, there was no significant difference in late positive component amplitude observed between contextual prediction and emotional word valence.
The present study suggests that predictive processing takes place at an intermediate stage of speech processing, approximately 400 ms after stimulus onset. Furthermore, the presence of a predictive context enhances the processing of emotional information. Notably, brain activity is more pronounced during the processing of positive emotional stimuli compared to negative emotional stimuli. Additionally, the facilitative effect of a predictable context diminishes in the advanced phase of Chinese speech comprehension.

Linguistic communication requires interlocutors to consider differences in each other\'s knowledge (perspective-taking). However, perspective-taking might either be spontaneous or strategic. We monitored listeners\' eye movements in a referential communication task. A virtual speaker gave temporally ambiguous instructions with scalar adjectives (\"big\" in \"big cubic block\"). Scalar adjectives assume a contrasting object (a small cubic block). We manipulated whether the contrasting object (a small triangle) for a competitor object (a big triangle) was in common ground (visible to both speaker and listener) or was occluded so it was in the listener\'s privileged ground, in which case perspective-taking would allow earlier reference-resolution. We used a complex visual context with multiple objects, making strategic perspective-taking unlikely when all objects are in the listener\'s referential domain. A turn-taking, puzzle-solving task manipulated whether participants could anticipate a more restricted referential domain. Pieces were either confined to a small area (requiring fine-grained coordination) or distributed across spatially distinct regions (requiring only coarse-grained coordination). Results strongly supported spontaneous perspective-taking: Although comprehension was less time-locked in the coarse-grained condition, participants in both conditions used perspective information to identify the target referent earlier when the competitor contrast was in privileged ground, even when participants believed instructions were computer-generated.

A core aspect of human speech comprehension is the ability to incrementally integrate consecutive words into a structured and coherent interpretation, aligning with the speaker\'s intended meaning. This rapid process is subject to multidimensional probabilistic constraints, including both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic information within specific contexts, and it is their interpretative coherence that drives successful comprehension. To study the neural substrates of this process, we extract word-by-word measures of sentential structure from BERT, a deep language model, which effectively approximates the coherent outcomes of the dynamic interplay among various types of constraints. Using representational similarity analysis, we tested BERT parse depths and relevant corpus-based measures against the spatiotemporally resolved brain activity recorded by electro-/magnetoencephalography when participants were listening to the same sentences. Our results provide a detailed picture of the neurobiological processes involved in the incremental construction of structured interpretations. These findings show when and where coherent interpretations emerge through the evaluation and integration of multifaceted constraints in the brain, which engages bilateral brain regions extending beyond the classical fronto-temporal language system. Furthermore, this study provides empirical evidence supporting the use of artificial neural networks as computational models for revealing the neural dynamics underpinning complex cognitive processes in the brain.