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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1978

[Semantics of psychopathological expressions. 2. Productive interpretation and narrative semantics in delirious expressions].

The second part of "The semantics of psychopathological statements" concerns delirious utterances. The relations between the utterance act and the statements implicity constitute the delirium in the operational texture of the psychopathological process. Only the productive interpretation can relate the links between the diegetic elements of the utterance to the ensuing reading effects the words of which diachronically constitute a delusion. The meaning effects of the clinical statements, i.e. the symptoms and their narration have recurring repercussions on the semantics of the delirium process.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Analysis of the semantic structures of medical reference languages: part 2. Analysis of the semantic power of MeSH, ICD and SNOMED.

Three medical reference languages, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), were compared through an analysis of their structures. They were found to differ in the degrees of complexity and specificity of meaning that they could convey. This variation in semantic power has been correlated with their different functions.

Classification↗
PubMed1976

[Elementary logic and semantic fields in aphasia].

Modern linguistics, like genetic psychology, postulate a non-linguistic basis for the structurisation of the semantic fields. If such is the case, it should be possible to observe in aphasia, where semantic deficiency predominates, a related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic. Paraxodically, such disturbances have been observed both in Broca's aphasia and in the predominantly semantic aphasia of Wernicke. A qualitative analysis shows that quantitatively identical results in the semantic aphasias of Broca and Wernicke are the result of phenomenological convergence. The related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic appears characteristic of the semantic deficiency which, in aphasic semiology, is marked by the substitution of one word for another. These finding support the theory of the relative autonomy of phonemic and semantic disorders in Wernicke's aphasia. They confirm the linguistic and genetic theory that the structure of vocabulatory is based on extralinguistic factors. They do not however provide an explantation for semantic disorders in aphasia. Further research is required to discover on what functional system articulation of the symbolic function and general operative capacity is based.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

[Verbal and non-verbal aspects of semantic disintegration in aphasia (author's transl)].

After a review of the explanations offered in the literature on the nature of aphasic disintegration, the author suggests that a nuclear impairment of semantic level of language integration may exist in many forms of aphasia. This hypothesis is supported by personal observations on verbal and non-verbal aspects of semantic impairment in aphasia. The incidence of semantic troubles is very high both at the level of verbal production and comprehension and at a non-verbal study of the "areas of meaning". No relationship was found between the incidence of semantic troubles and the ("fluent" or "non-fluent") clinical form of aphasia. A definite relationship exists between production of semantic paraphasias at the expressive level and number of semantic errors obtained as a verbal comprehension task, and between verbal semantic disorders and pathological performances at the non-verbal task of "semantic relationships".

Aphasia↗
PubMed1978

"Semantic" and "acoustic" errors of aphasic and schizophrenic patients in a sound-picture matching task.

Broca's aphasics, Wernicke's aphasics, brain-damaged patients without aphasia, and chronic schizophrenics were tested on a task to match meaningful sounds to one of four pictures. One of the depicted objects was the natural source of the sound, one was an object belonging to the same semantic category as the correct object, one was an object producing acoustically similar sounds as the correct object, and one was an object not related either semantically or acoustically to the correct object. In one item set the "semantic" distractors produced a sound completely different from the presented one; in another item set the "semantic" distractors made practically no specific sounds at all. Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics were shown to have significantly higher total error scores than brain-damaged patients without aphasia and to make significantly more "semantic" errors only on the first item set and "acoustic" errors on both item sets than the brain-damaged patients without aphasia. However, after correcting for guessing the differences between groups with respect to "semantic" and "acoustic" errors vanished. The aphasics' difficulties in coping with the sound-picture matching task might be difficulties in processing the acoustic dimensions of the items. It is, however, suggested that the impairment is not perceptual but of the cognitive kind repeatedly demonstrated in tasks which require the analytic extraction of features of the stimulus or of the concept represented by the stimulus.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1978

Semantic representations of drug terms by industrial workers.

Studied semantic representations of drug terms as a function of reported use of illicit drugs, with young-adult industrial workers as the Ss (college students served in a preliminary study). Procedures for describing semantic organizations included the semantic differential, similarity ratings, sorting, and verbal production of drug names. In general, structured representations of drug terms were produced, in line with the categories: illicit drugs, medicinal drugs, alcohol products, and substances containing nicotine or caffeine. Increased drug use was accompanied by more positive evaluations of illicit drugs on the semantic differential and more extensive clustering on the verbal production task. It was concluded that use of illicit drugs is accompanied by distinctive semantic representations, that these patterns mainly involve drugs used illicitly, and that they are most apparent on tasks in which responses are least constrained, such as verbal production.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Semantic disorders of auditory language comprehension in right brain-damaged patients.

A test of auditory language comprehension was given to 110 right brain-damaged patients and to 94 normal controls in order to check if patients with lesions of the right (nondominant) hemisphere make a significantly higher number of semantic errors than normals. Confirmation of the hypothesis was obtained, but the relationship between semantic errors and lesion of the right hemisphere did not seem a simple and direct one. In fact, most of the lexical-semantic errors were due to associated variables (such as unilateral spatial agnosia and general mental deterioration) and not to the lesion of the right hemisphere per se. These data do not suggest a specific semantic capacity of the nondominant hemisphere but rather stress the fragility of the lexical-semantic organization at the cortical level.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1975

The usefulness of the semantic differential with "mild grade' mental defectives.

Although the semantic differential has been quite widely used with mental defectives, its usefulness (in its traditional form) with such a population has not been conclusively demonstrated. The semantic differential was developed and shown to be valid as an index of representational mediation processes. However, there is also evidence of a mediational deficiency among retardates which, therefore, ought to be reflected in retardates' responses to the semantic differential. Thus, the present study was designed to test two hypotheses: (a) that mild grade retardates, in comparison with subjects of average intelligence, would show less discrimination in the use of the semantic differential, and (b) that such discriminative deficiencies would in turn predispose toward a polarized response bias among the retarded. The results, which support both hypotheses, are discussed in terms of their implications for the usefulness of an unmodified semantic differential with the mentally subnormal.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Adult aphasics: relationship between convergent and divergent semantic behavior.

The purpose of the present study was to empirically evaluate the relationship between the ability of 30 aphasic subjects to produce a number and a variety of semantic responses with their ability to produce highly, knowledge-oriented, automatic responses. That is, the relationship between divergent and convergent semantic behaviors was explored. Use of both types of tasks will more adequately reflect the semantic strategies needed for spontaneous communication in day-to-day life situations. Results of the present study show that divergent and convergent behavior seem to require separate and distinct abilities for aphasic subjects. The strong and significant correlations between subject performance on the verbal, gestural and graphic convergent variables and subject ability to produce a number and a variety of relevant semantic responses confirms the fact that aphasia is both a divergent and a convergent semantic disorder. The findings of the present study therefore indicate the need to create diagnostic and therapeutic paradigms with divergent tasks that emphasize a variety, quantity and relevance of output from the same source, as well as the more traditional convergent tasks that are more highly knowledge oriented.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

The semantic perception of life, death and suicide.

Gathered semantic distance scores between pairs of concepts (life and death, life and suicide, and death and suicide) from suicidal, psychosomatic, and hospitalized patients (N = 45). It was hypothesized that suicidal individuals would show greater semantic identity between these concepts than would the other patients. It was thought that such semantic identity on the part of the other patients. It was thought that such semantic identity on the part of the suicidal individuals would reflect their inability to discriminate between these concepts. However, it was found that the suicidal individuals differentiated between life and death to a significantly greater degree than did the comparison groups. It may be that suicidal decisions are based more on being confronted by definite clear alternative states of existence than by confusion between them.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

The heart of what's the matter. The semantics of illness in Iran.

Our understanding of the psychosocial and cultural dimensions of disease and illness is limited not merely by a lack of empirical knowledge but also by an inadequate medical semantics. The empiricist theories of medical language commonly employed both by comparative ethnosemantic studies and by medical theory are unable to account for the integration of illness and the language of high medical traditions into distinctive social and symbolic contexts. A semantic network analysis conceives the meaning of illness categories to be constituted not primarily as an ostensive relationship between signs and natural disease entities but as a 'syndrome' of symbols and experiences which typically 'run together' for the members of a society. Such analysis dirests our attention to the patterns of associations which provide meaning to elements of a medical lexicon and to the constitution of that meaning through the use of medical discourse to articulate distinctive configurations of social stress and to negotiate relief for the sufferer. This paper provides a critical discussion of medical semantics and develops a semantic network analysis of 'heart distress', a folk illness in Iran.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

The semantic structure in deaf children.

The investigation proposed to qualify the semantic structure of the language of 33 deaf children utilizing the semantic differential procedure. The ratings of the deaf children were analyzed using factor analysis. The results revealed that the semantic system of the deaf children contained the Evaluation and Potency dimensions evident in the semantic systems of normal hearing children as reported by DiVesta (1966). Several other factors reliably demonstrated by others to be included in the meaning systems of normal hearing children, however, were not evident in the meaning systems of these deaf children.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Pragmatic-semantic and syntactic factors influencing ear differences in dichotic listening.

In a three-factorial experiment sequences of 3 words were presented dichotically. The sequences consisted of two uninflected nouns denoting a person or a group of persons and 1 verb denoting an interaction. The three factors were Ear, Syntactic Structuredness vs. Unstructuredness and Semantic-Pragmatic Structuredness vs. Unstructuredness. The sequences in the syntactic unstructuredness condition are spoken in staccato form without sentence intonation and the order of the 2 nouns and the verb was at random; in the syntactic structuredness condition the sequences were spoken fluently and with sentence intonation and the order was always N-V-N. Semantic-pragmatic structuredness of the sequences means that one of the two potential actor-object-relations between the two nouns of a sequence was more probable than the other. The results show that it is only the left hemisphere that is responsive to syntactic structuredness, while the two hemispheres seems to be equally responsive to semantic-pragmatic structuredness. But it is possible that the two hemispheres differ in the manner in which they make use of semantic structures: the left hemisphere in a selective manner, appropriate for the solution of a specific task, and the right hemisphere in a more diffuse and global manner.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Semantic relations used by normal and language-impaired children at stage I.

Two-word utterances of four language-impaired children at Brown's Stage I level of linguistic development were compared with two-word utterances of four young normal children at the same linguistic level to determine any differences between the two groups in the use of a set of 10 basic semantic relations. Type-token ratios for each semantic relation were used to compare use of semantic relations between groups. A significant difference was obtained for only one relation, with the language-impaired group demonstrating greater diversity in the use of the introducer + entity relation than the normal group. The findings indicated that at Stage I level of linguistic development, the language-impaired children demonstrated a linguistic system no different than the system of normal Stage I children. The findings are discussed relative to possible cognitive and linguistic strategies involved in language acquisition. It is suggested that some language-impaired children rather than being deficient in their ability to understand and code the basic semantic relations demonstrate a deficit in the higher, more complex aspects of the linguistic coding system.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1992

Progressive loss of semantic memory in a case of Alzheimer's disease.

The breakdown of semantic memory in a patient with Alzheimer's disease was monitored by using a word-picture matching task. Performance deteriorated from a time when target pictures were selected virtually without error to a time when targets and semantically related distractor pictures were selected equally often. From this point, selection deteriorated rapidly to random. Knowledge of category membership and semantic features declined together over the same period. No consistency in item selection could be discerned, and successful selection in early tests was not influenced by either the name frequency or the familiarity of the target. The findings are argued to support a theory of access to semantic memory which is non-hierarchical.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1975

[Acoustic and semantic disturbances of comprehension in aphasia].

The authors carried out a verbal auditory comprehension test on 115 aphasic patients, 44 patients suffering from a left hemispheric lesion without aphasia and 120 normal subjects used as acontrol group. The test also revealed either disorders in acoustico-phonemic discrimination or difficulities in semantic differentiation. The main aim of the research was to check experimentally the theory propounded by Alajouanine and colleagues (1964) according to which, in Wernicke's aphasia, it is possible to demonstrate a twofold correlation between disorders of comprehension and speech disorders both phonemic and semantic. Only one part of the theory of Alajouanine and colleagues has been confirmed by our experiments for our results have shown that there is a very close correlation between semantic paraphasias and disorders of semantic differentiation whilst no correlation can be found between phonemic paraphasias and disturbances in auditory phonemic discrimination.

Aphasia↗
PubMed2026

PheBee: A Graph-Aware System for Scalable, Traceable, and Semantic Phenotyping.

OBJECTIVES: Phenotype-driven workflows in clinical and translational research require standardized ontology-based representation, ontology-aware cohort discovery, and provenance inspection for each assertion. Existing approaches optimize either for semantic traversal or scalable batch analytics, but not both. We describe PheBee, a hybrid system that links semantic assertions to scalable evidence storage via a deterministic identifier, preserving provenance while supporting ontology-aware discovery at cohort scale. MATERIALS AND METHODS: PheBee represents phenotype assertions in a knowledge graph as ontology-linked nodes with clinical modifier context (e.g., negated, family history), and stores supporting evidence records in a scalable row-oriented evidence table for cohort-scale access. The two layers are connected by a deterministic identifier enabling stable joins across repeated ingestions without duplicating high-volume evidence in the graph. We evaluated PheBee using synthetic datasets designed to exercise end-to-end ingestion and query workflows. RESULTS: Functional evaluation validated hierarchical term expansion, qualifier-aware retrieval, duplicate-free assertion handling under re-ingestion, and privacy-conscious management of subjects shared across multiple research projects. At scale (10,000 subjects producing 12M evidence records) PheBee completed ingestion in ~30 minutes and responded to interactive queries within 6 seconds under concurrent load. DISCUSSION: PheBee exposes a unified API for ontology-aware cohort discovery with hierarchical term expansion, subject-centric retrieval of phenotypes and clinical modifiers, and evidence and provenance queries. Its data model aligns with GA4GH Phenopackets, facilitating interoperability with phenotype exchange standards. CONCLUSION: By combining ontology-aware semantics with scalable, provenance-bearing evidence storage, PheBee provides a practical open-source foundation for phenotype-driven research workflows that demand both semantic precision and cohort-scale traceability.

cohort studies↗