Abstract
The association between a word and typical location (e.g., cloud—up) appears to modulate healthy individuals’ response times and visual attention. This study examined whether similar effects can be observed in a clinical population characterized by difficulties in both spatial representation and lexical processing. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants categorized spoken words as either up-associated or down-associated. Parkinson’s disease patients exhibited a tendency to maintain their visual attention in the upper half of the screen, however, this tendency was significantly lower when participants categorized concepts as down-associated. Instead, the control group showed no preference for either the upper or lower half of the screen. We argue that Parkinson’s disease patients present an over-reliance on space during word categorization as a form of cognitive compensation. Such compensation reveals that this clinical population may use spatial anchoring when categorizing words with a spatial association, even in the absence of explicit spatial cues.
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Notes
In “Appendix”, we present a regression model that directly compares experimental conditions, time windows and groups. The results point to the same conclusions.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID; National Agency for Research and Development, Government of Chile) under grant FONDECYT N°1150336 “Representaciones espaciales en la comprensión del lenguaje en pacientes con enfermedad de Parkinson” to BR. Support from ANID/PIA/Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence FB0003 to EG is also gratefully acknowledged.
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Appendix
Appendix
We present the results from a GLMM analysis that directly contrast the experimental groups. We followed a model comparison approach given the highly complex random structure this analysis demands if all random factors justified by the design are included. We compared four models of increasingly complex random structure: (1) a random intercept model only, (2) a main effect random slopes model, (3) a model with all two-way interactions as random slopes, and (4) a model with all three-way interactions as random slopes. Model comparison revealed that the most parsimonious model was that with main effects as random slopes. All our data and code are available at https://osf.io/gyqmf/.
β | se | z | p | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
(Intercept) | − 5.210 | 0.844 | − 6.17 | 0.000*** |
Word | − 0.097 | 0.065 | − 1.50 | 0.135 |
Region | 0.590 | 0.196 | 3.01 | 0.003** |
Time window contrast | − 0.237 | 0.101 | − 2.35 | 0.019* |
Group | 0.409 | 0.844 | 0.48 | 0.628 |
Word * region | 0.182 | 0.041 | 4.47 | 0.000*** |
Word * time window contrast | − 0.059 | 0.078 | − 0.75 | 0.451 |
Word * group | 0.153 | 0.065 | 2.35 | 0.019* |
Region * time window contrast | 0.012 | 0.078 | 0.16 | 0.877 |
Region * group | − 0.391 | 0.196 | − 2.00 | 0.045** |
Time window contrast * Group | − 0.011 | 0.101 | − 0.11 | 0.915 |
Word * region * time window contrast | 0.102 | 0.078 | 1.31 | 0.192 |
Word * region * group | − 0.096 | 0.041 | − 2.36 | 0.018* |
Word * time window contrast * group | 0.081 | 0.078 | 1.03 | 0.304 |
Region * time window contrast * group | − 0.027 | 0.078 | − 0.35 | 0.728 |
Word * region * time window contrast * group | − 0.035 | 0.078 | − 0.45 | 0.652 |
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Riffo, B., Guerra, E., Rojas, C. et al. Strategic Spatial Anchoring as Cognitive Compensation During Word Categorization in Parkinson’s Disease: Evidence from Eye Movements. J Psycholinguist Res 49, 823–836 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09718-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09718-3