Andriy Myachykov
Northumbria University, Psychology, Faculty Member
- I'm a cognitive psychologist interested in how brain represents meaning.edit
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular... more
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contac
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular... more
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contac
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Phonology, Linguistics, Semantics (Computer Science), and 4 moreLexicon, C, N, and Q
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Syntax and Linguistics
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study investigates bilingualism-induced neuroplastic and cognitive-reserve effects in the Caudate Nucleus (CN), a structure believed to support both bilingual language control and domain-general executive functioning. We computed a... more
This study investigates bilingualism-induced neuroplastic and cognitive-reserve effects in the Caudate Nucleus (CN), a structure believed to support both bilingual language control and domain-general executive functioning. We computed a generalized bilingualism index incorporating several dimensions of bilingual experience in a sample of bilingual young adults and tested whether this index would predict behavioral executive performance (measured using a Flanker task) and volumetric differences in the CN. Moreover, we investigated whether bilingualism mitigates the relationship between CN volume and executive performance, a sign of cognitive reserve. Our results indicate that bilingualism facilitates executive performance and induces an inverted U-shaped neuroplastic trajectory in bilateral CN, consistently with the view that structural increases are replaced by functional improvements as bilingual experience progresses. The emergence of bilingualism-induced cognitive reserve effects...
Research Interests:
Neocortical structures of the left frontal lobe, middle frontal gyrus (MFG) in particular, have been suggested to be linked to the processing of punishing and unpleasant outcomes in decision tasks. To assess the role of left MFG (lMFG) in... more
Neocortical structures of the left frontal lobe, middle frontal gyrus (MFG) in particular, have been suggested to be linked to the processing of punishing and unpleasant outcomes in decision tasks. To assess the role of left MFG (lMFG) in communicative decisions, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to inhibit its function during communicational exchanges under two types of social contexts: formal and informal. Three groups of participants received an offline 1-Hz inhibitory rTMS of lMFG, right MFG as an active control site, or lMFG sham/placebo TMS as a passive control condition. Participants’ task included answering difficult general-knowledge questions, rating their confidence in their answers’ correctness, and, finally, deciding if they would report or withhold these answers in formal and informal social contexts. There were significantly more reported than withheld answers in the informal context in all groups. The formal context showed no differences bet...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We often refer to space when we talk about time. To support this, studies show that we tend to associate the past with the left and the future with the right, space. However, there is little research that compares the spatial mapping of... more
We often refer to space when we talk about time. To support this, studies show that we tend to associate the past with the left and the future with the right, space. However, there is little research that compares the spatial mapping of individual time units within the same methodological framework. Here, we used the same line-bisection paradigm to study horizontal spatial biases in various individual time units (i.e., hours, days, and months). Fifty-four adults processed temporal words and indicated their location on a horizontal line representing a time interval via a mouse click. Each word corresponded to one of the three conditions: left, right, or central position on the line. Our results show a reaction-time facilitation effect for hour and day units in congruent conditions (e.g., left semantic bias + left position on the line). Also, processing hour units shifted the response coordinates in the direction of the presumed spatial bias. Finally, the congruent combination of visu...
Research Interests:
Unlike concrete words related to sensory perception (e.g., hear, sun), abstract words (including the words with temporal semantics, e.g., year, tomorrow) do not have direct embodied sensory correlates. Nevertheless, existing research... more
Unlike concrete words related to sensory perception (e.g., hear, sun), abstract words (including the words with temporal semantics, e.g., year, tomorrow) do not have direct embodied sensory correlates. Nevertheless, existing research indicates that abstract concepts’ representations make regular reference to sensorimotor processes, e.g., visual perception. For example, regular expressions such as “the future is ahead” or “the flow of time” are common in different languages reflecting a relatively universal nature of space-time correspondences. Moreover, these regular correspondences are commonly demonstrated in experimental studies; for example — by registering attentional displacement during processing of past and future related words. Here, the main theoretical approaches as well as existing experimental data documenting neurocognitive foundations of space-time representations are reviewed. A detailed overview of research on spatial-conceptual mapping of time concepts in three-dim...
Research Interests:
Research on conversational pragmatics demonstrates how interlocutors tailor the information they share depending on the audience. Previous research showed that, in informal contexts, speakers often provide several alternative answers,... more
Research on conversational pragmatics demonstrates how interlocutors tailor the information they share depending on the audience. Previous research showed that, in informal contexts, speakers often provide several alternative answers, whereas in formal contexts, they tend to give only a single answer; however, the psychological underpinnings of these effects remain obscure. To investigate this answer selection process, we measured participants’ eye movements in different experimentally modelled social contexts. Participants answered general knowledge questions by providing responses with either single (one) or plural (three) alternatives. Then, a formal (job interview) or informal (conversation with friends) context was presented and participants decided either to report or withdraw their responses after considering the given social context. Growth curve analysis on the eye movements indicates that the selected response option attracted more eye movements. There was a discrepancy be...
Research Interests:
We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive... more
We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition‐related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, s...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychology and C
Introduction: Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with insomnia perceive their own facial appearance as more tired in comparison to others. Furthermore, facial perceptions of tiredness have been shown to rely on... more
Introduction: Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with insomnia perceive their own facial appearance as more tired in comparison to others. Furthermore, facial perceptions of tiredness have been shown to rely on preferential attention towards the eyes. The present study aimed to objectively explore whether individuals with insomnia differentially observe their own and others faces relative to normal-sleepers and more specifically whether people with insomnia display a self-specific or general attentional bias towards the eye-region. Methods: Twenty participants who met the DSM-V criteria for in- somnia (85% female, mean age 21.30 ± 3.91) and 20 normal-sleepers (75% female, mean age 24.50 ± 7.08) viewed 48 neutral facial photo- graphs (24 of themselves, 24 of another) each for periods of 4000 msec. Three interest-regions, examined for overall gaze duration (eyes, nose, mouth) were compared both between, and within groups. Results: A mixed ANOVA demonstrated that Indiv...
Research Interests:
This theoretical review clarifies the concept of "language attrition " by defining the phenomenological and contextual features of its utilization, discussing the definition of contradictions, and suggesting potential directions... more
This theoretical review clarifies the concept of "language attrition " by defining the phenomenological and contextual features of its utilization, discussing the definition of contradictions, and suggesting potential directions for future research. Taking into account existing data, we regard the existing approaches to language attrition and analyze the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon. This analysis seems to be the first step in building up an integral theoretical model summarizing the available empirical data. It helps to apply a neurobiological approach, allowing to identify neural markers of language attrition at different levels of language processing and within different language categories. To this end, we propose specific experimental approaches to recording neural traces of attrition and formulate working hypotheses based on proposed experimental paradigms.
Research Interests:
We investigated the contribution of bilingual experience to the development of cognitive reserve (CR) when compared with other, traditionally more researched, CR proxies, in a sample of cognitively healthy senior (60 +) bilingual... more
We investigated the contribution of bilingual experience to the development of cognitive reserve (CR) when compared with other, traditionally more researched, CR proxies, in a sample of cognitively healthy senior (60 +) bilingual speakers. Participants performed in an online study where, in addition to a wide inventory of factors known to promote CR, we assessed several factors related to their second language (L2) use. In addition, participants’ inhibitory executive control was measured via the Flanker Task. We used Structural Equation Modeling to derive a latent composite measure of CR informed by traditional CR proxies (i.e., occupational complexity, marital status, current and retrospective socio-economic status, physical exercise, perceived positive support, maximal educational attainment, frequency of leisure activities and extent of social network). We examined whether bilingualism may act as a mediator of the effects of such proxies on cognitive performance therefore assessi...
Research Interests:
One of the most intriguing and challenging questions in the interdisciplinary study of mental processes and underlying brain mechanisms is how language is related to thought. The ques-tion is by no means new. Scholars have attempted to... more
One of the most intriguing and challenging questions in the interdisciplinary study of mental processes and underlying brain mechanisms is how language is related to thought. The ques-tion is by no means new. Scholars have attempted to unravel the relationship between language and thought since the early days of Western philosophy. Recent theories range from strictly modular accounts of linguistic processing to fully integrated theo-ries, according to which linguistic processes strongly interact with more general cognitive mechanisms such as attention, memory, and action control. Unfortunately, theoretical exchange between proponents of these different views is often lacking. In part, this is due to the interdisciplinary nature of the question itself. As a result, researchers representing various disciplines often fail to engage in an exchange of theoretical views, research ideas, and methodological expertise. The present Frontiers ’ Special Topic
This article was submitted to
Research Interests:
This chapter offers a review of experimental evidence about the role of the speaker’s attention in the choice of syntactic structure and the corresponding word order during sentence production. Here, we describe how the speaker’s... more
This chapter offers a review of experimental evidence about the role of the speaker’s attention in the choice of syntactic structure and the corresponding word order during sentence production. Here, we describe how the speaker’s syntactic choices reflect the regular mapping mechanism that reflects the features of the described event in the produced sentence. One of the most important event parameters that the speaker considers is the changing salience status of the event’s referents. This chapter summarizes current theoretical debate about the interplay between attention and sentence production mechanisms. Finally, it reviews the corresponding experimental evidence from languages with both restricted and flexible word orders.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We investigated the role of executive control processes in the activation of manual affordances in two experiments combining stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and dual-task paradigms. We registered an inverse SRC effect in the... more
We investigated the role of executive control processes in the activation of manual affordances in two experiments combining stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and dual-task paradigms. We registered an inverse SRC effect in the presence of a parallel backward-counting task in Experiment 1, and a cancellation of the SRC effect in Experiment 2 when a parallel Stroop-like task was used. We interpret our data as supporting a self-inhibition account of the affordance activation control. Accordingly, the role of executive processes is to prevent self-inhibition in supraliminal conditions: when cognitive resources are depleted by a parallel task, the self-inhibition mechanism becomes active and irrelevantly potentiated affordances are inhibited, leading to the emergence of an inverse SRC effect. In addition, the difference between data patterns observed in the two experiments suggests that the exact roles of the executive processes involved during the activation of affordances may diffe...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Cognition, Medicine, Stroop effect, and 3 morePsychological, Affordance, and C
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The decay in the proficiency of the native language (L1), known as first language attrition, is one of the least understood phenomena associated with the acquisition of a second language (L2). Indeed, the exact cause for the deterioration... more
The decay in the proficiency of the native language (L1), known as first language attrition, is one of the least understood phenomena associated with the acquisition of a second language (L2). Indeed, the exact cause for the deterioration in L1 performance, be that either the interference from L2 acquisition or the less frequent use of L1, still remains elusive. In this opinion paper, we focus on one largely understudied aspect of L1 attrition—namely, the erosion of the L1 orthographic knowledge under the influence of L2 orthography. In particular, we propose to study differences in orthographic processing between mono- and bilingual populations as an approach, which, in turn, will allow to address both cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying L1 attrition. We discuss relevant experimental paradigms, variable manipulations and appropriate research methods that may help disentangle the largely debated question of L2 interference vs. L1 disuse, clarifying the nature of t...