Publications

Abstract

Semplates are a new descriptive and theoretical concept in lexical semantics, borne out of recent L&C work in several domains. A semplate can be defined as a configuration consisting of distinct layers of lexemes, each layer drawn from a different form class, mapped onto the same abstract semantic template. Within such a lexical layer, the sense relations between the lexical items are inherited from the underlying template. Thus, the whole set of lexical layers and the underlying template form a cross-categorial configuration in the lexicon. The goal of this task is to find new kinds of macrostructure in the lexicon, with a view to cross-linguistic comparison.

Abstract

This paper reports tentatively some features of Semnam, a Central Aslian language spoken by some 250 people in the Perak valley, Peninsular Malaysia. It outlines the unusually rich phonemic system of this hitherto undescribed language (e.g. a vowel system comprising 36 distinctive nuclei), and proposes a practical orthography for it. It also includes the c. 1,250- item wordlist on which the analysis is based, collected intermittently in the field 2006-2008.

Abstract

Large auditory-visual (AV) speech corpora are the grist of modern research in speech science, but no such corpus exists for Australian English. This is unfortunate, for speech science is the brains behind speech technology and applications such as text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker recognition and forensic identification, talking heads, and hearing prostheses. Advances in these research areas in Australia require a large corpus of Australian English. Here the authors describe a blueprint for building the Big Australian Speech Corpus (the Big ASC), a corpus of over 1,100 speakers from urban and rural Australia, including speakers of non-indigenous, indigenous, ethnocultural, and disordered forms of Australian English, each of whom would be sampled on three occasions in a range of speech tasks designed by the researchers who would be using the corpus.

Abstract

According to theories of embodied cognition, understanding a verb like throw involves unconsciously simulating the action throwing, using areas of the brain that support motor planning. If understanding action words involves mentally simulating our own actions, then the neurocognitive representation of word meanings should differ for people with different kinds of bodies, who perform actions in systematically different ways. In a test of the body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009), we used fMRI to compare premotor activity correlated with action verb understanding in right- and left-handers. Right-handers preferentially activated left premotor cortex during lexical decision on manual action verbs (compared with non-manual action verbs), whereas left-handers preferentially activated right premotor areas. This finding helps refine theories of embodied semantics, suggesting that implicit mental simulation during language processing is body-specific: Right and left-handers, who perform actions differently, use correspondingly different areas of the brain for representing action verb meanings.

Abstract

Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the mental representation of abstract concepts with positive or negative valence (e.g., honesty, sadness, intelligence). Mappings from spatial location to emotional valence differed between right- and left-handed participants. Right-handers tended to associate rightward space with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but left-handers showed the opposite pattern, associating rightward space with negative ideas and leftward with positive ideas. These contrasting mental metaphors for valence cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. Rather, right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis and provide evidence for the perceptuomotor basis of even the most abstract ideas.

Abstract

What is the relationship between motor action and emotion? Here we investigated whether people associate good things more strongly with the dominant side of their bodies, and bad things with the non-dominant side. To find out, we analyzed spontaneous gestures during speech expressing ideas with positive or negative emotional valence (e.g., freedom, pain, compassion). Samples of speech and gesture were drawn from the 2004 and 2008 US presidential debates, which involved two left-handers (Obama, McCain) and two right-handers (Kerry, Bush). Results showed a strong association between the valence of spoken clauses and the hands used to make spontaneous co-speech gestures. In right-handed candidates, right-hand gestures were more strongly associated with positive-valence clauses, and left-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses. Left-handed candidates showed the opposite pattern. Right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with their dominant hand: the hand they can use more fluently. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis, (Casasanto, 2009), and suggest a perceptuomotor basis for even our most abstract ideas.

Abstract

What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek-speaking children (N=99) watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer time, or a longer distance?) Results showed a reliable cross-dimensional asymmetry: for the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of language used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space-time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation.

Abstract

This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias – an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children’s early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which linguistic labels can be mapped. This early advantage for noun learning has been documented using multiple methods and across a diverse collection of language populations. However, past evidence bearing on a noun bias in Tseltal learners has been mixed. Tseltal grammatical features and child–caregiver interactional patterns dampen the salience of nouns and heighten the salience of verbs, leading to the prediction of a diminished noun bias and perhaps even an early predominance of verbs. We here analyze the use of noun and verb stems in children’s spontaneous speech from egocentric daylong recordings of 29 Tseltal learners between 0;9 and 4;4. We find weak to no evidence for a noun bias using two separate analytical approaches on the same data; one analysis yields a preliminary suggestion of a flipped outcome (i.e. a verb bias). We discuss the implications of these findings for broader theories of learning bias in early lexical development.

Abstract

In this paper we explore the feasibility of artificial (formal) grammar recognition (AGR) using spiking neural networks. A biologically inspired minicolumn architecture is designed as the basic computational unit. A network topography is defined based on the minicolumn architecture, here referred to as nodes, connected with excitatory and inhibitory connections. Nodes in the network represent unique internal states of the grammar’s finite state machine (FSM). Future work to improve the performance of the networks is discussed. The modeling framework developed can be used by neurophysiological research to implement network layouts and compare simulated performance characteristics to actual subject performance.

Abstract

The environment in which infants learn language is multimodal and rich with social cues. Yet, the effects of such cues, such as eye contact, on early speech perception have not been closely examined. This study assessed the role of ostensive speech, signalled through the speaker's eye gaze direction, on infants’ word segmentation abilities. A familiarisation-then-test paradigm was used while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Ten-month-old Dutch-learning infants were familiarised with audio-visual stories in which a speaker recited four sentences with one repeated target word. The speaker addressed them either with direct or with averted gaze while speaking. In the test phase following each story, infants heard familiar and novel words presented via audio-only. Infants’ familiarity with the words was assessed using event-related potentials (ERPs). As predicted, infants showed a negative-going ERP familiarity effect to the isolated familiarised words relative to the novel words over the left-frontal region of interest during the test phase. While the word familiarity effect did not differ as a function of the speaker's gaze over the left-frontal region of interest, there was also a (not predicted) positive-going early ERP familiarity effect over right fronto-central and central electrodes in the direct gaze condition only. This study provides electrophysiological evidence that infants can segment words from audio-visual speech, regardless of the ostensiveness of the speaker's communication. However, the speaker's gaze direction seems to influence the processing of familiar words.

Abstract

While infants' sensitivity to visual speech cues and the benefit of these cues have been well-established by behavioural studies, there is little evidence on the effect of visual speech cues on infants' neural processing of continuous auditory speech. In this study, we investigated whether visual speech cues, such as the movements of the lips, jaw, and larynx, facilitate infants' neural speech tracking. Ten-month-old Dutch-learning infants watched videos of a speaker reciting passages in infant-directed speech while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. In the videos, either the full face of the speaker was displayed or the speaker's mouth and jaw were masked with a block, obstructing the visual speech cues. To assess neural tracking, speech-brain coherence (SBC) was calculated, focusing particularly on the stress and syllabic rates (1–1.75 and 2.5–3.5 Hz respectively in our stimuli). First, overall, SBC was compared to surrogate data, and then, differences in SBC in the two conditions were tested at the frequencies of interest. Our results indicated that infants show significant tracking at both stress and syllabic rates. However, no differences were identified between the two conditions, meaning that infants' neural tracking was not modulated further by the presence of visual speech cues. Furthermore, we demonstrated that infants' neural tracking of low-frequency information is related to their subsequent vocabulary development at 18 months. Overall, this study provides evidence that infants' neural tracking of speech is not necessarily impaired when visual speech cues are not fully visible and that neural tracking may be a potential mechanism in successful language acquisition.

Abstract

Expressions of politeness such as 'please' are prominent elements of interactional conduct that are explicitly targeted in early socialization and are subject to cultural expectations around socially desirable behavior. Yet their specific interactional functions remain poorly understood. Using conversation analysis supplemented with systematic coding, this study investigates when and where interactants use 'please' in everyday requests. We find that 'please' is rare, occurring in only 7 percent of request attempts. Interactants use 'please' to manage face-threats when a request is ill fitted to its immediate interactional context. Within this, we identify two environments in which 'please' prototypically occurs. First, 'please' is used when the requestee has demonstrated unwillingness to comply. Second, 'please' is used when the request is intrusive due to its incompatibility with the requestee’s engagement in a competing action trajectory. Our findings advance research on politeness and extend Goffman’s theory of face-work, with particular salience for scholarship on request behavior.

Abstract

RNA interference (RNAi) is a set of mechanisms which regulate gene expression in eukaryotes. Key elements of RNAi are small sense and antisense RNAs from 19 to 26 nucleotides generated from double-stranded RNAs. miRNAs are a major type of RNAi-associated small RNAs and are found in most eukaryotes studied to date. To investigate whether small RNAs associated with RNAi appear to be present in all eukaryotic lineages, and therefore present in the ancestral eukaryote, we studied two deep-branching protozoan parasites, Giardia intestinalis and Trichomonas vaginalis. Little is known about endogenous small RNAs involved in RNAi of these organisms. Using Illumina Solexa sequencing and genome-wide analysis of small RNAs from these distantly related deep-branching eukaryotes, we identified 10 strong miRNA candidates from Giardia and 11 from Trichomonas. We also found evidence of Giardia siRNAs potentially involved in the expression of variant-specific-surface proteins. In addition, 8 new snoRNAs from Trichomonas are identified. Our results indicate that miRNAs are likely to be general in ancestral eukaryotes, and therefore are likely to be a universal feature of eukaryotes.

Abstract

This paper investigates L2 learners’ use of intonation in reference maintenance in comparison to native speakers at three longitudinal points. Nominal referring expressions were elicited from two untutored Turkish learners of Dutch and five native speakers of Dutch via a film retelling task, and were analysed in terms of pitch span and word duration. Effects of two types of change in information states were examined, between new and given and between new and accessible. We found native-like use of word duration in both types of change early on but different performances between learners and development over time in one learner in the use of pitch span. Further, the use of morphosyntactic devices had different effects on the two learners. The inter-learner differences and late systematic use of pitch span, in spite of similar use of pitch span in learners’ L1 and L2, suggest that learning may play a role in the acquisition of intonation as a device for reference maintenance.

Abstract

This paper presents a model specification for group comparisons regarding a functional trend over time within a trial and learning across a series of trials in intensive binary longitudinal eye-tracking data. The functional trend and learning effects are modeled using by-variable smooth functions. This model specification is formulated as a generalized additive mixed model, which allowed for the use of the freely available mgcv package (Wood in Package ‘mgcv.’ https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/mgcv/mgcv.pdf, 2023) in R. The model specification was applied to intensive binary longitudinal eye-tracking data, where the questions of interest concern differences between individuals with and without brain injury in their real-time language comprehension and how this affects their learning over time. The results of the simulation study show that the model parameters are recovered well and the by-variable smooth functions are adequately predicted in the same condition as those found in the application.

Abstract

This study investigates young children’s comprehension of spatial terms in two languages that categorize space strikingly differently. English makes a distinction between actions resulting in containment (put in) versus support or surface attachment (put on), while Korean makes a cross-cutting distinction between tight-fit relations (kkita) versus loose-fit or other contact relations (various verbs). In particular, the Korean verb kkita refers to actions resulting in a tight-fit relation regardless of containment or support. In a preferential looking study we assessed the comprehension of in by 20 English learners and kkita by 10 Korean learners, all between 18 and 23 months. The children viewed pairs of scenes while listening to sentences with and without the target word. The target word led children to gaze at different and language-appropriate aspects of the scenes. We conclude that children are sensitive to language-specific spatial categories by 18–23 months.

Abstract

In the current paper, we asked at what level in the speech planning process speakers retrieve stored syllables. There is evidence that syllable structure plays an essential role in the phonological encoding of words (e.g., online syllabification and phonological word formation). There is also evidence that syllables are retrieved as whole units. However, findings that clearly pinpoint these effects to specific levels in speech planning are scarce. We used a naming variant of the implicit priming paradigm to contrast voice onset latencies for frequency-manipulated disyllabic Dutch pseudo-words. While prior implicit priming studies only manipulated the item's form and/or syllable structure overlap we introduced syllable frequency as an additional factor. If the preparation effect for syllables obtained in the implicit priming paradigm proceeds beyond phonological planning, i.e., includes the retrieval of stored syllables, then the preparation effect should differ for high- and low frequency syllables. The findings reported here confirm this prediction: Low-frequency syllables benefit significantly more from the preparation than high-frequency syllables. Our findings support the notion of a mental syllabary at a post-lexical level, between the levels of phonological and phonetic encoding.

Abstract

When we speak, we spontaneously produce gestures (co-speech gestures). Co-speech gestures and speech production are closely interlinked. However, the exact nature of the link is still under debate. To addressed the question that whether co-speech gestures originate from the speech production system or from a system independent of the speech production, the present study examined the relationship between co-speech and co-thought gestures. Co-thought gestures, produced during silent thinking without speaking, presumably originate from a system independent of the speech production processes. We found a positive correlation between the production frequency of co-thought and co-speech gestures, regardless the communicative function that co-speech gestures might serve. Therefore, we suggest that co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures originate from a common system that is independent of the speech production processes

Abstract

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty with neurodevelopmental origins, manifesting as reduced accuracy and speed in reading and spelling. It is substantially heritable and frequently co-occurs with other neurodevelopmental conditions, particularly attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Here, we investigate the genetic structure underlying dyslexia and a range of psychiatric traits using results from genome-wide association studies of dyslexia, ADHD, autism, anorexia nervosa, anxiety, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder,
schizophrenia, and Tourette syndrome. Genomic Structural Equation Modelling (GenomicSEM) showed heightened support for a model consisting of five correlated latent genomic factors described as: F1) compulsive disorders (including obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, Tourette syndrome), F2) psychotic disorder (including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia), F3) internalising disorders (including anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder), F4) neurodevelopmental traits (including autism, ADHD), and F5) attention and learning difficulties (including ADHD, dyslexia). ADHD loaded more strongly on the attention and learning difficulties latent factor (F5) than on the neurodevelopmental traits latent factor (F4). The attention and learning difficulties latent factor (F5) was positively correlated with internalising disorders (.40), neurodevelopmental traits (.25) and psychotic disorders (.17) latent factors, and negatively correlated with the compulsive disorders (–.16) latent factor. These factor correlations are mirrored in genetic correlations observed between the attention and learning difficulties latent factor and other cognitive, psychological and wellbeing traits. We further investigated genetic variants underlying both dyslexia and ADHD, which implicated 49 loci (40 not previously found in GWAS of the individual traits) mapping to 174 genes (121 not found in GWAS of individual traits) as potential pleiotropic variants. Our study confirms the increased genetic relation between dyslexia and ADHD versus other psychiatric traits and uncovers novel pleiotropic variants affecting both traits. In future, analyses including additional co-occurring traits such as dyscalculia and dyspraxia will allow a clearer definition of the attention and learning difficulties latent factor, yielding further insights into factor structure and pleiotropic effects.

Abstract

Clashen proposes two distinct processing routes, for regularly and irregularly inflected forms, respectively, and thus is apparently making a psychological claim. We argue his position, which embodies a strictly linguistic perspective, does not constitute a psychological processing model.

Abstract

Our knowledge of RNA biology within eukaryotes has exploded over the last five years. Within new research we see that some features that were once thought to be part of multicellular life have now been identified in several protist lineages. Hence, it is timely to ask which features of eukaryote RNA biology are ancestral to all eukaryotes. We focus on RNA-based regulation and epigenetic mechanisms that use small regulatory ncRNAs and long ncRNAs, to highlight some of the many questions surrounding eukaryotic ncRNA evolution.

Abstract

Importance
Previous studies indicated that female sex might be a modifier in Stargardt disease, which is an ABCA4-associated retinopathy.

Objective
To investigate whether women are overrepresented among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy who are carrying at least 1 mild allele or carrying nonmild alleles.

Data Sources
Literature data, data from 2 European centers, and a new study. Data from a Radboudumc database and from the Rotterdam Eye Hospital were used for exploratory hypothesis testing.

Study Selection
Studies investigating the sex ratio in individuals with ABCA4-AR and data from centers that collected ABCA4 variant and sex data. The literature search was performed on February 1, 2023; data from the centers were from before 2023.

Data Extraction and Synthesis
Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted to test whether the proportions of women among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy with mild and nonmild variants differed from 0.5, including subgroup analyses for mild alleles. Sensitivity analyses were performed excluding data with possibly incomplete variant identification. χ2 Tests were conducted to compare the proportions of women in adult-onset autosomal non–ABCA4-associated retinopathy and adult-onset ABCA4-associated retinopathy and to investigate if women with suspected ABCA4-associated retinopathy are more likely to obtain a genetic diagnosis. Data analyses were performed from March to October 2023.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Proportion of women per ABCA4-associated retinopathy group. The exploratory testing included sex ratio comparisons for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy vs those with other autosomal retinopathies and for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy who underwent genetic testing vs those who did not.

Results
Women were significantly overrepresented in the mild variant group (proportion, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.56-0.62; P < .001) but not in the nonmild variant group (proportion, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.46-0.54; P = .89). Sensitivity analyses confirmed these results. Subgroup analyses on mild variants showed differences in the proportions of women. Furthermore, in the Radboudumc database, the proportion of adult women among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy (652/1154 = 0.56) was 0.10 (95% CI, 0.05-0.15) higher than among individuals with other retinopathies (280/602 = 0.47).

Conclusions and Relevance
This meta-analysis supports the likelihood that sex is a modifier in developing ABCA4-associated retinopathy for individuals with a mild ABCA4 allele. This finding may be relevant for prognosis predictions and recurrence risks for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy. Future studies should further investigate whether the overrepresentation of women is caused by differences in the disease mechanism, by differences in health care–seeking behavior, or by health care discrimination between women and men with ABCA4-AR.

Abstract

To answer a question, speakers must determine their response and formulate it in words. But do they decide on a response before formulation, or do they formulate different potential answers before selecting one? We addressed this issue in a verbal question-answering experiment. Participants answered questions more quickly when they had one potential answer (e.g., Which tourist attraction in Paris is very tall?) than when they had multiple potential answers (e.g., What is the name of a Shakespeare play?). Participants also answered more quickly when the set of potential answers were on average short rather than long, regardless of whether there was only one or multiple potential answers. Thus, participants were not affected by the linguistic complexity of unselected but plausible answers. These findings suggest that participants select a single answer before formulation.

Abstract

Research suggests that interlocutors manage the timing demands of conversation by preparing what they want to say early. In three experiments, we used a verbal question-answering task to investigate what aspects of their response speakers prepare early. In all three experiments, participants answered more quickly when the critical content (here, barks) necessary for answer preparation occurred early (e.g., Which animal barks and is also a common household pet?) rather than late (e.g., Which animal is a common household pet and also barks?). In the individual experiments, we found no convincing evidence that participants were slower to produce longer answers, consisting of multiple words, than shorter answers, consisting of a single word. There was also no interaction between these two factors. A combined analysis of the first two experiments confirmed this lack of interaction, and demonstrated that participants were faster to answer questions when the critical content was available early rather than late and when the answer was short rather than long. These findings provide tentative evidence for an account in which interlocutors prepare the content of their answer as soon as they can, but sometimes do not prepare its length (and thus form) until they are ready to speak.

Abstract

Name agreement (NA) refers to the degree to which speakers agree on a picture’s name. A robust finding is that speakers are faster to name pictures with high agreement (HA) than those with low agreement (LA). This NA effect is thought to occur because LA pictures strongly activate several names, and so speakers need time to select one. HA pictures, in contrast, strongly activate a single name and so there is no need to select one name out of several alternatives. Recent models of lexical access suggest that the structure of the mental lexicon changes with experience. Thus, speakers should consider a range of names when naming LA pictures, but the extent to which they consider each of these names should change with experience. We tested these hypotheses in two picture-naming experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were faster to name LA than HA pictures when they named each picture once. Importantly, they were faster to produce modal names (provided by most participants) than alternative names for LA pictures, consistent with the view that speakers activate multiple names for LA pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were familiarised with the modal name before the experiment and named each picture three times. Although there was still an NA effect when participants named the pictures the first time, it was reduced in comparison to Experiment 1 and was further reduced with each picture repetition.Thus, familiarisation and repetition reduced the NA effect, but did not eliminate it, suggesting speakers activate a range of plausible names.

Abstract

In natural communication, we typically both see and hear our conversation partner. Speech comprehension thus requires the integration of auditory and visual information from the speech signal. This is for instance evidenced by the Manual McGurk effect, where the perception of lexical stress is biased towards the syllable that has a beat gesture aligned to it. However, there is considerable individual variation in how heavily gestural timing is weighed as a cue to stress. To assess within-individualconsistency, this study investigated the test-retest reliability of the Manual McGurk effect. We reran an earlier Manual McGurk experiment with the same participants, over 1.5 years later. At the group level, we successfully replicated the Manual McGurk effect with a similar effect size. However, a correlation of the by-participant effect sizes in the two identical experiments indicated that there was only a weak correlation between both tests, suggesting that the weighing of gestural information in the perception of lexical stress is stable at the group level, but less so in individuals. Findings are discussed in comparison to other measures of audiovisual integration in speech perception. Index Terms: Audiovisual integration, beat gestures, lexical stress, test-retest reliability

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that cooperative breeding facilitates the emergence of prosocial behavior by presenting cottontop tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) with the option to provide food rewards to pair-bonded mates. In Experiment 1, tamarins could provide rewards to mates at no additional cost while obtaining rewards for themselves. Contrary to the hypothesis, tamarins did not demonstrate a preference to donate rewards, behaving similar to chimpanzees in previous studies. In Experiment 2, the authors eliminated rewards for the donor for a stricter test of prosocial behavior, while reducing separation distress and food preoccupation. Again, the authors found no evidence for a donation preference. Furthermore, tamarins were significantly less likely to deliver rewards to mates when the mate displayed interest in the reward. The results of this study contrast with those recently reported for cooperatively breeding common marmosets, and indicate that prosocial preferences in a food donation task do not emerge in all cooperative breeders. In previous studies, cottontop tamarins have cooperated and reciprocated to obtain food rewards; the current findings sharpen understanding of the boundaries of cottontop tamarins’ food-provisioning behavior.

Abstract

Structural neuroimaging data have been used to compute an estimate of the biological age of the brain (brain-age) which has been associated with other biologically and behaviorally meaningful measures of brain development and aging. The ongoing research interest in brain-age has highlighted the need for robust and publicly available brain-age models pre-trained on data from large samples of healthy individuals. To address this need we have previously released a developmental brain-age model. Here we expand this work to develop, empirically validate, and disseminate a pre-trained brain-age model to cover most of the human lifespan. To achieve this, we selected the best-performing model after systematically examining the impact of seven site harmonization strategies, age range, and sample size on brain-age prediction in a discovery sample of brain morphometric measures from 35,683 healthy individuals (age range: 5–90 years; 53.59% female). The pre-trained models were tested for cross-dataset generalizability in an independent sample comprising 2101 healthy individuals (age range: 8–80 years; 55.35% female) and for longitudinal consistency in a further sample comprising 377 healthy individuals (age range: 9–25 years; 49.87% female). This empirical examination yielded the following findings: (1) the accuracy of age prediction from morphometry data was higher when no site harmonization was applied; (2) dividing the discovery sample into two age-bins (5–40 and 40–90 years) provided a better balance between model accuracy and explained age variance than other alternatives; (3) model accuracy for brain-age prediction plateaued at a sample size exceeding 1600 participants. These findings have been incorporated into CentileBrain (https://centilebrain.org/#/brainAGE2), an open-science, web-based platform for individualized neuroimaging metrics.

Abstract

Languages differ in the constitution of their phonemic repertoire and in the relative distinctiveness of phonemes within the repertoire. In the present study, we asked whether such differences constrain spoken-word recognition, via two word reconstruction experiments, in which listeners turned non-words into real words by changing single sounds. The experiments were carried out in Dutch (which has a relatively balanced vowel-consonant ratio and many similar vowels) and in Spanish (which has many more consonants than vowels and high distinctiveness among the vowels). Both Dutch and Spanish listeners responded significantly faster and more accurately when required to change vowels as opposed to consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they more often altered vowels than consonants. Vowel information thus appears to constrain lexical selection less tightly (allow more potential candidates) than does consonant information, independent of language-specific phoneme repertoire and of relative distinctiveness of vowels.

Abstract

Spraak is continu, er zijn geen betrouwbare signalen waardoor de luisteraar weet waar het ene woord eindigt en het volgende begint. Voor volwassen luisteraars is het segmenteren van gesproken taal in afzonderlijke woorden dus niet onproblematisch, maar voor een kind dat nog geen woordenschat bezit, vormt de continuïteit van spraak een nog grotere uitdaging. Desalniettemin produceren de meeste kinderen hun eerste herkenbare woorden rond het begin van het tweede levensjaar. Aan deze vroege spraakproducties gaat een formidabele perceptuele prestatie vooraf. Tijdens het eerste levensjaar - met name gedurende de tweede helft - ontwikkelt de spraakperceptie zich van een algemeen fonetisch discriminatievermogen tot een selectieve gevoeligheid voor de fonologische contrasten die in de moedertaal voorkomen. Recent onderzoek heeft verder aangetoond dat kinderen, lang voordat ze ook maar een enkel woord kunnen zeggen, in staat zijn woorden die kenmerkend zijn voor hun moedertaal te onderscheiden van woorden die dat niet zijn. Bovendien kunnen ze woorden die eerst in isolatie werden aangeboden herkennen in een continue spraakcontext. Het dagelijkse taalaanbod aan een kind van deze leeftijd maakt het in zekere zin niet gemakkelijk, bijvoorbeeld doordat de meeste woorden niet in isolatie voorkomen. Toch wordt het kind ook wel houvast geboden, onder andere doordat het woordgebruik beperkt is.

Abstract

English listeners largely disregard suprasegmental cues to stress in recognizing words. Evidence for this includes the demonstration of Fear et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 1893–1904 (1995)] that cross-splicings are tolerated between stressed and unstressed full vowels (e.g., au- of autumn, automata). Dutch listeners, however, do exploit suprasegmental stress cues in recognizing native-language words. In this study, Dutch listeners were presented with English materials from the study of Fear et al. Acceptability ratings by these listeners revealed sensitivity to suprasegmental mismatch, in particular, in replacements of unstressed full vowels by higher-stressed vowels, thus evincing greater sensitivity to prosodic goodness than had been shown by the original native listener group.

Abstract

Two phoneme goodness rating experiments addressed the role of orthographic knowledge in the evaluation of speech sounds. Ratings for the best tokens of /s/ were higher in words spelled with S (e.g., bless) than in words where /s/ was spelled with C (e.g., voice). This difference did not appear for analogous nonwords for which every lexical neighbour had either S or C spelling (pless, floice). Models of phonemic processing incorporating obligatory influence of lexical information in phonemic processing cannot explain this dissociation; the data are consistent with models in which phonemic decisions are not subject to necessary top-down lexical influence.

Abstract

An acoustically invariant one-word segment occurred in two versions of one syntactic context. In one version, the preceding intonation contour indicated that a stress would fall at the point where this word occurred. In the other version, the preceding contour predicted reduced stress at that point. Reaction time to the initial phoneme of the word was faster in the former case, despite the fact that no acoustic correlates of stress were present. It is concluded that a part of the sentence comprehension process is the prediction of upcoming sentence accents.

Abstract

Psycholinguists are saddled with a paradox. Their aim is to construct a model of human language processing, which will hold equally well for the processing of any language, but this aim cannot be achieved just by doing experiments in any language. They have to compare processing of many languages, and actively search for effects which are specific to a single language, even though a model which is itself specific to a single language is really the last thing they want.

Abstract

Language production and comprehension are intimately interrelated; and models of production and comprehension should, we argue, be constrained by common architectural guidelines. Levelt et al.'s target article adopts as guiding principle Ockham's razor: the best model of production is the simplest one. We recommend adoption of the same principle in comprehension, with consequent simplification of some well-known types of models.

Abstract

In four experiments, listeners’ response times to detect vowel targets in spoken input were measured. The first three experiments were conducted in English. In two, one using real words and the other, nonwords, detection accuracy was low, targets in initial syllables were detected more slowly than targets in final syllables, and both response time and missed-response rate were inversely correlated with vowel duration. In a third experiment, the speech context for some subjects included all English vowels, while for others, only five relatively distinct vowels occurred. This manipulation had essentially no effect, and the same response pattern was again observed. A fourth experiment, conducted in Spanish, replicated the results in the first three experiments, except that miss rate was here unrelated to vowel duration. We propose that listeners’ responses to vowel targets in naturally spoken input are effectively cautious, reflecting realistic appreciation of vowel variability in natural context.

Abstract

Dutch listeners were slower to make judgements about the semantic relatedness between a spoken target word (e.g. atLEET, 'athlete') and a previously presented visual prime word (e.g. SPORT 'sport') when the spoken word was mis-stressed. The adverse effect of mis-stressing confirms the role of stress information in lexical recognition in Dutch. However, although the erroneous stress pattern was always initially compatible with a competing word (e.g. ATlas, 'atlas'), mis-stressed words did not produced high false alarm rates in unrelated pairs (e.g. SPORT - atLAS). This suggests that stress information did not completely rule out segmentally matching but suprasegmentally mismatching words, a finding consistent with spoken-word recognition models involving multiple activation and inter-word competition.

Abstract

Three experiments addressed the question of whether pitch-accent information may be exploited in the process of recognizing spoken words in Tokyo Japanese. In a two-choice classification task, listeners judged from which of two words, differing in accentual structure, isolated syllables had been extracted ~e.g., ka from baka HL or gaka LH!; most judgments were correct, and listeners’ decisions were correlated with the fundamental frequency characteristics of the syllables. In a gating experiment, listeners heard initial fragments of words and guessed what the words were; their guesses overwhelmingly had the same initial accent structure as the gated word even when only the beginning CV of the stimulus ~e.g., na- from nagasa HLL or nagashi LHH! was presented. In addition, listeners were more confident in guesses with the same initial accent structure as the stimulus than in guesses with different accent. In a lexical decision experiment, responses to spoken words ~e.g., ame HL! were speeded by previous presentation of the same word ~e.g., ame HL! but not by previous presentation of a word differing only in accent ~e.g., ame LH!. Together these findings provide strong evidence that accentual information constrains the activation and selection of candidates for spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Three experiments, in which Japanese listeners detected Japanese words embedded in nonsense sequences, examined the perceptual consequences of vowel devoicing in that language. Since vowelless sequences disrupt speech segmentation [Norris et al. (1997). Cognit. Psychol. 34, 191– 243], devoicing is potentially problematic for perception. Words in initial position in nonsense sequences were detected more easily when followed by a sequence containing a vowel than by a vowelless segment (with or without further context), and vowelless segments that were potential devoicing environments were no easier than those not allowing devoicing. Thus asa, “morning,” was easier in asau or asazu than in all of asap, asapdo, asaf, or asafte, despite the fact that the /f/ in the latter two is a possible realization of fu, with devoiced [u]. Japanese listeners thus do not treat devoicing contexts as if they always contain vowels. Words in final position in nonsense sequences, however, produced a different pattern: here, preceding vowelless contexts allowing devoicing impeded word detection less strongly (so, sake was detected less accurately, but not less rapidly, in nyaksake—possibly arising from nyakusake—than in nyagusake). This is consistent with listeners treating consonant sequences as potential realizations of parts of existing lexical candidates wherever possible.

Abstract

Two lexical decision studies examined the effects of single-phoneme mismatches on lexical activation in spoken-word recognition. One study was carried out in English, and involved spoken primes and visually presented lexical decision targets. The other study was carried out in Dutch, and primes and targets were both presented auditorily. Facilitation was found only for spoken targets preceded immediately by spoken primes; no facilitation occurred when targets were presented visually, or when intervening input occurred between prime and target. The effects of vowel mismatches and consonant mismatches were equivalent.

Abstract

Simulations explored the inability of the TRACE model of spoken-word recognition to model the effects on human listening of acoustic-phonetic mismatches in word forms. The source of TRACE's failure lay not in its interactive connectivity, not in the presence of interword competition, and not in the use of phonemic representations, but in the need for continuously optimised interpretation of the input. When an analogue of TRACE was allowed to cycle to asymptote on every slice of input, an acceptable simulation of the subcategorical mismatch data was achieved. Even then, however, the simulation was not as close as that produced by the Merge model.

Abstract

A number of researchers have claimed that questions and other constructions with long distance dependencies (LDDs) are acquired relatively early, by age 4 or even earlier, in spite of their complexity. Analysis of LDD questions in the input available to children suggests that they are extremely stereotypical, raising the possibility that children learn lexically specific templates such as WH do you think S-GAP? rather than general rules of the kind postulated in traditional linguistic accounts of this construction. We describe three elicited imitation experiments with children aged from 4;6 to 6;9 and adult controls. Participants were asked to repeat prototypical questions (i.e., questions which match the hypothesised template), unprototypical questions (which depart from it in several respects) and declarative counterparts of both types of interrogative sentences. The children performed significantly better on the prototypical variants of both constructions, even when both variants contained exactly the same lexical material, while adults showed prototypicality e¤ects for LDD questions only. These results suggest that a general declarative complementation construction emerges quite late in development (after age 6), and that even adults rely on lexically specific templates for LDD questions.

Abstract

Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat, like in dance. These abilities are modulated by musical training and vary significantly in untrained individuals. The causes of this variability are multidimensional and typically hard to grasp in single tasks. To date we lack a comprehensive model capturing the rhythmic fingerprints of both musicians and non-musicians. Here we harnessed machine learning to extract a parsimonious model of rhythmic abilities, based on behavioral testing (with perceptual and motor tasks) of individuals with and without formal musical training (n = 79). We demonstrate that variability in rhythmic abilities and their link with formal and informal music experience can be successfully captured by profiles including a minimal set of behavioral measures. These findings highlight that machine learning techniques can be employed successfully to distill profiles of rhythmic abilities, and ultimately shed light on individual variability and its relationship with both formal musical training and informal musical experiences.

Abstract

This study focusses on the optimal paradigm for simultaneous assessment of auditory and phonemic discrimination in clinical populations. We investigated (a) whether pitch and phonemic deviants presented together in one sequence are able to elicit mismatch negativities (MMNs) in healthy adults and (b) whether MMN elicited by a change in pitch is modulated by the presence of the phonemic deviants.

Abstract

Based on recent findings showing electrophysiological changes in adult language learners after relatively short periods of training, we hypothesized that adult Dutch learners of German would show responses to German gender and adjective declension violations after brief instruction. Adjective declension in German differs from previously studied morphosyntactic regularities in that the required suffixes depend not only on the syntactic case, gender, and number features to be expressed, but also on whether or not these features are already expressed on linearly preceding elements in the noun phrase. Violation phrases and matched controls were presented over three test phases (pretest and training on the first day, and a posttest one week later). During the pretest, no electrophysiological differences were observed between violation and control conditions, and participants’ classification performance was near chance. During the training and posttest phases, classification improved, and there was a P600-like violation response to declension but not gender violations. An error-related response during training was associated with improvement in grammatical discrimination from pretest to posttest. The results show that rapid changes in neuronal responses can be observed in adult learners of a complex morphosyntactic rule, and also that error-related electrophysiological responses may relate to grammar acquisition.

Abstract

Previous studies have examined cross-serial and embedded complement clauses in West Germanic in order to distinguish between different types of working memory models of human sentence processing, as well as different formal language models. Here, adult plasticity in the use of these constructions is investigated by examining the response of German-speaking learners of Dutch using magnetoencephalography (MEG). In three experimental sessions spanning their initial acquisition of Dutch, participants performed a sentence-scene matching task with Dutch sentences including two different verb constituent orders (Dutch verb order, German verb order), and in addition rated similar constructions in a separate rating task. The average planar gradient of the evoked field to the initial verb within the cluster revealed a larger evoked response for the German order relative to the Dutch order between 0.2 to 0.4 s over frontal sensors after 2 weeks, but not initially. The rating data showed that constructions consistent with Dutch grammar, but inconsistent with the German grammar were initially rated as unacceptable, but this preference reversed after 3 months. The behavioural and electrophysiological results suggest that cortical responses to verb order preferences in complement clauses can change within 3 months after the onset of adult language learning, implying that this aspect of grammatical processing remains plastic into adulthood.

Abstract

Background: Previous research has found that newborn infants can match phonetic information in the lips and voice from as young as ten weeks old. There is evidence that access to visual speech is necessary for normal speech development. Although we have an understanding of this early sensitivity, very little research has investigated older children's ability to speechread whole words. Aims: The aim of this study was to identify aspects of preschool children's linguistic knowledge and processing ability that may contribute to speechreading ability. We predicted a significant correlation between receptive vocabulary and speechreading, as well as phonological working memory to be a predictor of speechreading performance. Methods & Procedures: Seventy-six children (n = 76) aged between 2;10 and 4;11 years participated. Children were given three pictures and were asked to point to the picture that they thought that the experimenter had silently mouthed (ten trials). Receptive vocabulary and phonological working memory were also assessed. The results were analysed using Pearson correlations and multiple regressions. Outcomes & Results: The results demonstrated that the children could speechread at a rate greater than chance. Pearson correlations revealed significant, positive correlations between receptive vocabulary and speechreading score, phonological error rate and age. Further correlations revealed significant, positive relationships between The Children's Test of Non-Word Repetition (CNRep) and speechreading score, phonological error rate and age. Multiple regression analyses showed that receptive vocabulary best predicts speechreading ability over and above phonological working memory. Conclusions & Implications: The results suggest that preschool children are capable of speechreading, and that this ability is related to vocabulary size. This suggests that children aged between 2;10 and 4;11 are sensitive to visual information in the form of audio-visual mappings. We suggest that current and future therapies are correct to include visual feedback as a therapeutic tool; however, future research needs to be conducted in order to elucidate further the role of speechreading in development.

Abstract

The recent Bayesian approaches to language evolution and change seem to suggest that genetic biases can impact on the characteristics of language, but, at the same time, that its cultural transmission can partially free it from these same genetic constraints. One of the current debates centres on the striking differences between sampling and a posteriori maximising Bayesian learners, with the first converging on the prior bias while the latter allows a certain freedom to language evolution. The present paper shows that this difference disappears if populations more complex than a single teacher and a single learner are considered, with the resulting behaviours more similar to the sampler. This suggests that generalisations based on the language produced by Bayesian agents in such homogeneous single agent chains are not warranted. It is not clear which of the assumptions in such models are responsible, but these findings seem to support the rising concerns on the validity of the “acquisitionist” assumption, whereby the locus of language change and evolution is taken to be the first language acquirers (children) as opposed to the competent language users (the adults).

Abstract

Linguistic fieldwork is increasingly moving forward from the traditional model of lone fieldworker with a notebook to collaborative projects with key roles for native speakers and other experts and involving the use of different kinds of stimulus-based elicitation methods as well as extensive video documentation. Several cohorts of colleagues and students have been influenced by this inclusive and interdisciplinary view of linguistic fieldwork. We describe the challenges and benefits of doing multi-methods collaborative fieldwork. As linguistics inevitably moves into the direction of multiple methods, interdisciplinarity and team science, now is the time to reflect critically on how best to contribute to a cumulative science of language.

Abstract

Speech errors follow the phonotactics of the language being spoken. For example, in English, if [n] is mispronounced as [n] the [n] will always appear in a syllable coda. The authors created an analogue to this phenomenon by having participants recite lists of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in 4 sessions on different days. In the first 2 experiments, some consonants were always onsets, some were always codas, and some could be both. In a third experiment, the set of possible onsets and codas depended on vowel identity. In all 3 studies, the production errors that occurred respected the "phonotactics" of the experiment. The results illustrate the implicit learning of the sequential constraints present in the stimuli and show that the language production system adapts to recent experience.

Abstract

Developing efficient electromagnetic interference shielding materials has become significantly important in present times. This paper reports a series of (Ba1-xCax)(Ti0.9Sn0.1)O3 (BCTS) ((x =0, 0.01, 0.05, & 0.1)ceramics synthesized by conventional method which were studied for electromagnetic interference shielding (EMI) applications in X-band (8-12.4 GHz). EMI shielding properties and all S parameters (S11 & S12) of BCTS ceramic pellets were measured in the frequency range (8-12.4 GHz) using a Vector Network Analyser (VNA). The BCTS ceramic pellets for x = 0.05 showed maximum total effective shielding of 46 dB indicating good shielding behaviour for high-frequency applications. However, the development of lead-free ceramics with different concentrations usually requires iterative experiments resulting in, longer development cycles and higher costs. To address this, we used a machine learning (ML) strategy to predict the EMI shielding for different concentrations and experimentally verify the concentration predicted to give the best EMI shielding. The ML model predicted BCTS ceramics with concentration (x = 0.06, 0.07, 0.08, and 0.09) to have higher shielding values. On experimental verification, a shielding value of 58 dB was obtained for x = 0.08, which was significantly higher than what was obtained experimentally before applying the ML approach. Our results show the potential of using ML in accelerating the process of optimal material development, reducing the need for repeated experimental measures significantly.

Abstract

In a production experiment on Bulgarian that was based on a previous study on Dutch [1], we investigated the role of prosody when linguistic and extra-linguistic information coincide or contradict. Speakers described abnormally colored fruits in conditions where contrastive focus and discourse relations were varied. We found that the coincidence of contrast and abnormality enhances accentuation in Bulgarian as it did in Dutch. Surprisingly, when both factors are in conflict, the prosodic prominence of abnormality often overruled focus accentuation in both Bulgarian and Dutch, though the languages also show marked differences.

Abstract

Ultimate attainment in adult second language learners often differs tremendously from the end state typically achieved by young children learning their first language (L1) or a second language (L2). The research summarized in this article concentrates on developmental steps and orders of acquisition attested in learners of different ages. Findings from a longitudinal study concerned with the acquisition of verbal morpho-syntax in German as an L2 by two young Russian learners (8 and 14 years old) are compared to findings from the acquisition of the same target language by younger children and by untutored adult learners. The study focuses on the acquisition of verbal morphology, the role of auxiliary verbs and the position of finite and non finite verbs in relation to negation and additive scope particles.

Abstract

Based on their longitudinal analysis of the acquisition of Dutch, English, French, and German, Klein and Perdue (1997) described a “basic learner variety” as valid cross-linguistically and comprising a limited number of shared syntactic patterns interacting with two types of constraints: (a) semantic—the NP whose referent has highest control comes first, and (b) pragmatic—the focus expression is in final position. These authors hypothesized that “the topic-focus structure also plays an important role in some other respects. . . . Thus, negation and (other) scope particles occur at the topic-focus boundary” (p. 318). This poses the problem of the interaction between the core organizational principles of the basic variety and optional items such as negative particles and scope particles, which semantically affect the whole or part of the utterance in which they occur. In this article, we test the validity of these authors' hypothesis for the acquisition of the additive scope particle also (and its translation equivalents). Our analysis is based on the European Science Foundation (ESF) data originally used to define the basic variety, but we also included some more advanced learner data from the same database. In doing so, we refer to the analyses of Dimroth and Klein (1996), which concern the interaction between scope particles and the part of the utterance they affect, and we make a distinction between maximal scope—that which is potentially affected by the particle—and the actual scope of a particle in relation to an utterance in a given discourse context

Abstract

Human language offers a variety of ways to create meaning, one of which is referring to entities, objects, or events in the world. One such meaning maker is understanding to whom or to what a pronoun in a discourse refers to. To understand a pronoun, the brain must access matching entities or concepts that have been encoded in memory from previous linguistic context. Models of language processing propose that internally stored linguistic concepts, accessed via exogenous cues such as phonological input of a word, are represented as (a)synchronous activities across a population of neurons active at specific frequency bands. Converging evidence suggests that delta band activity (1–3 Hz) is involved in temporal and representational integration during sentence processing. Moreover, recent advances in the neurobiology of memory suggest that recollection engages neural dynamics similar to those which occurred during memory encoding. Integrating from these two research lines, we here tested the hypothesis that neural dynamic patterns, especially in delta frequency range, underlying referential meaning representation, would be reinstated during pronoun resolution. By leveraging neural decoding techniques (i.e., representational similarity analysis) on a magnetoencephalogram data set acquired during a naturalistic story-listening task, we provide evidence that delta-band activity underlies referential meaning representation. Our findings suggest that, during spoken language comprehension, endogenous linguistic representations such as referential concepts may be proactively retrieved and represented via activation of their underlying dynamic neural patterns.

Abstract

Kyeei Yao, an age group leader, oversees a festival in Akpafu-Mempeasem, Volta Region, Ghana. The expensive draped cloth, Ashanti-inspired wreath, strings of beads that are handed down through the generations, and digital wristwatch work together to remind us that culture is a moving target, always renewing and reshaping itself. Kããã is a Siwu ideophone for "looking attentively".