Publications

Abstract

Although there is broad agreement that top-down expectations can facilitate lexical-semantic processing, the mechanisms driving these effects are still unclear. In particular, while previous electroencephalography (EEG) research has demonstrated a reduction in the N400 response to words in a supportive context, it is often challenging to dissociate facilitation due to bottom-up spreading activation from facilitation due to top-down expectations. The goal of the current study was to specifically determine the cortical areas associated with facilitation due to top-down prediction, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings supplemented by EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a semantic priming paradigm. In order to modulate expectation processes while holding context constant, we manipulated the proportion of related pairs across 2 blocks (10 and 50% related). Event-related potential results demonstrated a larger N400 reduction when a related word was predicted, and MEG source localization of activity in this time-window (350-450 ms) localized the differential responses to left anterior temporal cortex. fMRI data from the same participants support the MEG localization, showing contextual facilitation in left anterior superior temporal gyrus for the high expectation block only. Together, these results provide strong evidence that facilitatory effects of lexical-semantic prediction on the electrophysiological response 350-450 ms postonset reflect modulation of activity in left anterior temporal cortex.

Abstract

Investigations of left hand praxis in imitation and object use in patients with callosal disconnection have yielded divergent results, inducing a debate between two theoretical positions. Whereas Liepmann suggested that the left hemisphere is motor dominant, others maintain that both hemispheres have equal motor competences and propose that left hand apraxia in patients with callosal disconnection is secondary to left hemispheric specialization for language or other task modalities. The present study aims to gain further insight into the motor competence of the right hemisphere by investigating pantomime of object use in split-brain patients. Three patients with complete callosotomy and, as control groups, five patients with partial callosotomy and nine healthy subjects were examined for their ability to pantomime object use to visual object presentation and demonstrate object manipulation. In each condition, 11 objects were presented to the subjects who pantomimed or demonstrated the object use with either hand. In addition, six object pairs were presented to test bimanual coordination. Two independent raters evaluated the videotaped movement demonstrations. While object use demonstrations were perfect in all three groups, the split-brain patients displayed apraxic errors only with their left hands in the pantomime condition. The movement analysis of concept and execution errors included the examination of ipsilateral versus contralateral motor control. As the right hand/left hemisphere performances demonstrated retrieval of the correct movement concepts, concept errors by the left hand were taken as evidence for right hemisphere control. Several types of execution errors reflected a lack of distal motor control indicating the use of ipsilateral pathways. While one split-brain patient controlled his left hand predominantly by ipsilateral pathways in the pantomime condition, the error profile in the other two split-brain patients suggested that the right hemisphere controlled their left hands. In the object use condition, in all three split-brain patients fine-graded distal movements in the left hand indicated right hemispheric control. Our data show left hand apraxia in split-brain patients is not limited to verbal commands, but also occurs in pantomime to visual presentation of objects. As the demonstration with object in hand was unimpaired in either hand, both hemispheres must contain movement concepts for object use. However, the disconnected right hemisphere is impaired in retrieving the movement concept in response to visual object presentation, presumably because of a deficit in associating perceptual object representation with the movement concepts.

Abstract

Since some patients with right hemisphere damage or with spontaneous callosal disconnection neglect the left half of space, it has been suggested that the left cerebral hemisphere predominantly attends to the right half of space. However, clinical investigations of patients having undergone surgical callosal section have not shown neglect when the hemispheres are tested separately. These observations question the validity of theoretical models that propose a left hemispheric specialisation for attending to the right half of space. The present study aims to investigate neglect and the use of space by either hand in gestural demonstrations in three split-brain patients as compared to five patients with partial callosotomy and 11 healthy subjects. Subjects were asked to demonstrate with precise gestures and without speaking the content of animated scenes with two moving objects. The results show that in the absence of primary perceptual or representational neglect, split-brain patients neglect left personal space in right-handed gestural demonstrations. Since this neglect of left personal space cannot be explained by directional or spatial akinesia, it is suggested that it originates at the conceptual level, where the spatial coordinates for right-hand gestures are planned. The present findings are at odds with the position that the separate left hemisphere possesses adequate mechanisms for acting in both halves of space and neglect results from right hemisphere suppression of this potential. Rather, the results provide support for theoretical models that consider the left hemisphere as specialised for processing the right half of space during the execution of descriptive gestures.

Abstract

The present study investigates the hand choice in iconic gestures that accompany speech. In 10 right-handed subjects gestures were elicited by verbal narration and by silent gestural demonstrations of animations with two moving objects. In both conditions, the left-hand was used as often as the right-hand to display iconic gestures. The choice of the right- or left-hands was determined by semantic aspects of the message. The influence of hemispheric language lateralization on the hand choice in co-speech gestures appeared to be minor. Instead, speaking seemed to induce a sequential organization of the iconic gestures.

Abstract

As visual media spread to all domains of public and scientific life, nonverbal behavior is taking its place as an important form of communication alongside the written and spoken word. An objective and reliable method of analysis for hand movement behavior and gesture is therefore currently required in various scientific disciplines, including psychology, medicine, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and computer science. However, no adequate common methodological standards have been developed thus far. Many behavioral gesture-coding systems lack objectivity and reliability, and automated methods that register specific movement parameters often fail to show validity with regard to psychological and social functions. To address these deficits, we have combined two methods, an elaborated behavioral coding system and an annotation tool for video and audio data. The NEUROGES–ELAN system is an effective and user-friendly research tool for the analysis of hand movement behavior, including gesture, self-touch, shifts, and actions. Since its first publication in 2009 in Behavior Research Methods, the tool has been used in interdisciplinary research projects to analyze a total of 467 individuals from different cultures, including subjects with mental disease and brain damage. Partly on the basis of new insights from these studies, the system has been revised methodologically and conceptually. The article presents the revised version of the system, including a detailed study of reliability. The improved reproducibility of the revised version makes NEUROGES–ELAN a suitable system for basic empirical research into the relation between hand movement behavior and gesture and cognitive, emotional, and interactive processes and for the development of automated movement behavior recognition methods.

Abstract

Humans are adept at understanding speech despite the fact that our natural listening environment is often filled with interference. An example of this capacity is phoneme restoration, in which part of a word is completely replaced by noise, yet listeners report hearing the whole word. The neurological basis for this unconscious fill-in phenomenon is unknown, despite being a fundamental characteristic of human hearing. Here, using direct cortical recordings in humans, we demonstrate that missing speech is restored at the acoustic-phonetic level in bilateral auditory cortex, in real-time. This restoration is preceded by specific neural activity patterns in a separate language area, left frontal cortex, which predicts the word that participants later report hearing. These results demonstrate that during speech perception, missing acoustic content is synthesized online from the integration of incoming sensory cues and the internal neural dynamics that bias word-level expectation and prediction.

Abstract

Speech perception is known to be influenced by listeners’ expectations of the speaker. This paper tests whether the demographic makeup of individuals’ communities can influence their perception of foreign sounds by influencing their expectations of the language. Using online experiments with participants from all across the U.S. and matched census data on the proportion of Spanish and other foreign language speakers in participants’ communities, this paper shows that the demo- graphic makeup of individuals’ communities influences their expectations of foreign languages to have an alveolar trill versus a tap (Experiment 1), as well as their consequent perception of these sounds (Experiment 2). Thus, the paper shows that while individuals’ expectations of foreign lan- guage to have a trill occasionally lead them to misperceive a tap in a foreign language as a trill, a higher proportion of non-trill language speakers in one’s community decreases this likelihood. These results show that individuals’ environment can influence their perception by shaping their linguistic expectations

Abstract

People differ in the size of their social network, and thus in the properties of the linguistic input they receive. This article examines whether differences in social network size influence individuals’ linguistic skills in their native language, focusing on global comprehension of evaluative language. Study 1 exploits the natural variation in social network size and shows that individuals with larger social networks are better at understanding the valence of restaurant reviews. Study 2 manipulated social network size by randomly assigning participants to learn novel evaluative words as used by two (small network) versus eight (large network) speakers. It replicated the finding from Study 1, showing that those exposed to a larger social network were better at comprehending the valence of product reviews containing the novel words that were written by novel speakers. Together, these studies show that the size of one's social network can influence success at language comprehension. They thus open the door to research on how individuals’ lifestyle and the nature of their social interactions can influence linguistic skills.

Abstract

Models of language learning often assume that we learn from all the input we receive. This assumption is particularly strong in the domain of short-term and long-term grammatical convergence, where researchers argue that grammatical convergence is mostly an automatic process insulated from social factors. This paper shows that the degree to which individuals learn from grammatical input is modulated by social and contextual factors, such as the degree to which the speaker is liked and their social standing. Furthermore, such modulation is found in experiments that test generalized learning rather than convergence during the interaction. This paper thus shows the importance of the social context in grammatical learning, and indicates that the social context should be integrated into models of language learning.

Abstract

The first, theoretical part of this paper sketches a framework for phonological encoding in which the speaker successively generates phonological syllables in connected speech. The final stage of this process, phonetic encoding, consists of accessing articulatory gestural scores for each of these syllables in a "mental syllabary". The second, experimental part studies various predictions derived from this theory. The main finding is a syllable frequency effect: words ending in a high-frequent syllable are named faster than words ending in a low-frequent syllable. As predicted, this syllable frequency effect is independent of and additive to the effect of word frequency on naming latency. The effect, moreover, is not due to the complexity of the word-final syllable. In the General Discussion, the syllabary model is further elaborated with respect to phonological underspecification and activation spreading. Alternative accounts of the empirical findings in terms of core syllables and demisyllables are considered.

Abstract

This paper describes the terminology used to describe parts of the body in Ye´lıˆ Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea). The terms are nouns, which display complex patterns of suppletion in possessive and locative uses. Many of the terms are compounds, many unanalysable. Semantically, visible body parts divide into three main types: (i) a partonomic subsystem dividing the body into nine major parts: head, neck, two upper limbs, trunk, two upper legs, two lower legs, (ii) designated surfaces (e.g. ‘lower belly’), (iii) collections of surface features (‘face’), (iv) taxonomic subsystems (e.g. ‘big toe’ being a kind of ‘toe’). With regards to (i), the lack of any designation for ‘foot’ or ‘hand’ is notable, as is the absence of a term for ‘leg’ as a whole (although this is a lexical not a conceptual gap, as shown by the alternate taboo vocabulary). Ye´lıˆ Dnye body part terms do not have major extensions to other domains (e.g. spatial relators). Indeed, a number of the terms are clearly borrowed from outside human biology (e.g. ‘wing butt’ for shoulder).

Abstract

This commentary raises two issues: (1) Language processing is hastened not only by internal pressures but also externally by turntaking in language use; (2) the theory requires nested levels of processing, but linguistic levels do not fully nest; further, it would seem to require multiple memory buffers, otherwise there’s no obvious treatment for discontinuous structures, or for verbatim recall.

Abstract

This is a translation of Levinson and Brown (1994).

Abstract

Sometimes it is thought that there are serious differences between theories of discourse that turn on the role of cognition in the theory. This is largely a misconception: for example, with its emphasis on participants’ own understandings, its principles of recipient design and projection, Conversation Analysis is hardly anti-cognitive. If there are genuine disagreements they rather concern a preference for ‘lean’ versus ‘rich’ metalanguages and different methodologies. The possession of a multi-levelled model, separating out what the individual brings to interaction from the emergent properties of interaction, would make it easier to resolve some of these issues. Meanwhile, these squabbles on the margins distract us from a much more central and more interesting issue: is there a very special cognition-for-interaction, which underlies and underpins all language and discourse? Prime facie evidence suggests that there is, and different approaches can contribute to our understanding of it.

Abstract

Most approaches to spatial language have assumed that the simplest spatial notions are (after Piaget) topological and universal (containment, contiguity, proximity, support, represented as semantic primitives suchas IN, ON, UNDER, etc.). These concepts would be coded directly in language, above all in small closed classes suchas adpositions—thus providing a striking example of semantic categories as language-specific projections of universal conceptual notions. This idea, if correct, should have as a consequence that the semantic categories instantiated in spatial adpositions should be essentially uniform crosslinguistically. This article attempts to verify this possibility by comparing the semantics of spatial adpositions in nine unrelated languages, with the help of a standard elicitation procedure, thus producing a preliminary semantic typology of spatial adpositional systems. The differences between the languages turn out to be so significant as to be incompatible withstronger versions of the UNIVERSAL CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES hypothesis. Rather, the language-specific spatial adposition meanings seem to emerge as compact subsets of an underlying semantic space, withcertain areas being statistical ATTRACTORS or FOCI. Moreover, a comparison of systems withdifferent degrees of complexity suggests the possibility of positing implicational hierarchies for spatial adpositions. But such hierarchies need to be treated as successive divisions of semantic space, as in recent treatments of basic color terms. This type of analysis appears to be a promising approachfor future work in semantic typology.

Abstract

Yélî Dnye, the language of Rossel Island, Louisiade archipelago, Papua New Guinea, is a non-Austronesian isolate of considerable interest for the prehistory of the area. The kin term, clan, and kinship systems have some superficial similarities with surrounding Austronesian ones, but many underlying differences. The terminology, here properly described for the first time, is highly complex, and seems adapted to a dual descent system, with Crow-type skewing reflecting matrilineal descent, but a system of reciprocals also reflecting the "unity of the patriline." It may be analyzed in three mutually consistent ways: as a system of classificatory reciprocals, as a clan-based sociocentric system, and as collapses and skewings across a genealogical net. It makes an interesting contrast to the Trobriand system, and suggests that the alternative types of account offered by Edmund Leach and Floyd Lounsbury for the Trobriand system both have application to the Rossel system. The Rossel system has features (e.g., patrilineal biases, dual descent, collective [dyadic] kin terms, terms for alternating generations) that may be indicative of pre-Austronesian social systems of the area

Abstract

This paper confronts Kant’s (1768) view of human conceptions of space as fundamentally divided along the three planes of the human body with an empirical case study in the Mayan community of Tenejapa in southern Mexico, whose inhabitants do not use left/right distinctions to project regions in space. Tenejapans have names for the left hand and the right hand, and also a term for hand/arm in general, but they do not generalize the distinction to spatial regions -- there is no linguistic expression glossing as 'to the left' or 'on the left-hand side', for example. Tenejapans also show a remarkable indifference to incongruous counterparts. Nor is there any system of value associations with the left and the right. The Tenejapan evidence that speaks to these Kantian themes points in two directions: (a) Kant was wrong to think that the structure of spatial regions founded on the human frame, and in particular the distinctions based on left and right, are in some sense essential human intuitions; (b) Kant may have been right to think that the left/right opposition, the perception of enantiomorphs, clockwiseness, East-West dichotomies, etc., are intimately connected to an overall system of spatial conception.

Abstract

Most language usage is interactive, involving rapid turn-taking. The turn-taking system has a number of striking properties: turns are short and responses are remarkably rapid, but turns are of varying length and often of very complex construction such that the underlying cognitive processing is highly compressed. Although neglected in cognitive science, the system has deep implications for language processing and acquisition that are only now becoming clear. Appearing earlier in ontogeny than linguistic competence, it is also found across all the major primate clades. This suggests a possible phylogenetic continuity, which may provide key insights into language evolution.

Abstract

Oscillatory neural dynamics have been steadily receiving more attention as a robust and temporally precise signature of network activity related to language processing. We have recently proposed that oscillatory dynamics in the beta and gamma frequency ranges measured during sentence-level comprehension might be best explained from a predictive coding perspective. Under our proposal we related beta oscillations to both the maintenance/change of the neural network configuration responsible for the construction and representation of sentence-level meaning, and to top–down predictions about upcoming linguistic input based on that sentence-level meaning. Here we zoom in on these particular aspects of our proposal, and discuss both old and new supporting evidence. Finally, we present some preliminary magnetoencephalography data from an experiment comparing Dutch subject- and object-relative clauses that was specifically designed to test our predictive coding framework. Initial results support the first of the two suggested roles for beta oscillations in sentence-level language comprehension.

Abstract

For native speakers, many studies suggest a link between oscillatory neural activity in the beta frequency range and syntactic processing. For late second language (L2) learners on the other hand, the extent to which the neural architecture supporting syntactic processing is similar to or different from that of native speakers is still unclear. In a series of four experiments, we used electroencephalography to investigate the link between beta oscillatory activity and the processing of grammatical gender agreement in Dutch determiner-noun pairs, for Dutch native speakers, and for German L2 learners of Dutch. In Experiment 1 we show that for native speakers, grammatical gender agreement violations are yet another among many syntactic factors that modulate beta oscillatory activity during sentence comprehension. Beta power is higher for grammatically acceptable target words than for those that mismatch in grammatical gender with their preceding determiner. In Experiment 2 we observed no such beta modulations for L2 learners, irrespective of whether trials were sorted according to objective or subjective syntactic correctness. Experiment 3 ruled out that the absence of a beta effect for the L2 learners in Experiment 2 was due to repetition of the target nouns in objectively correct and incorrect determiner-noun pairs. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that when L2 learners are required to explicitly focus on grammatical information, they show modulations of beta oscillatory activity, comparable to those of native speakers, but only when trials are sorted according to participants’ idiosyncratic lexical representations of the grammatical gender of target nouns. Together, these findings suggest that beta power in L2 learners is sensitive to violations of grammatical gender agreement, but only when the importance of grammatical information is highlighted, and only when participants' subjective lexical representations are taken into account.

Abstract

The apolipoprotein E {varepsilon}4 (APOE {varepsilon}4) is the main known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Genetic assessments in combination with other diagnostic tools, such as neuroimaging, have the potential to facilitate early diagnosis. In this large-scale functional MRI (fMRI) study, we have contrasted 30 APOE {varepsilon}4 carriers (age range: 49–74 years; 19 females), of which 10 were homozygous for the {varepsilon}4 allele, and 30 non-carriers with regard to brain activity during a semantic categorization task. Test groups were closely matched for sex, age and education. Critically, both groups were cognitively intact and thus symptom-free of Alzheimer's disease. APOE {varepsilon}4 carriers showed reduced task-related responses in the left inferior parietal cortex, and bilaterally in the anterior cingulate region. A dose-related response was observed in the parietal area such that diminution was most pronounced in homozygous compared with heterozygous carriers. In addition, contrasts of processing novel versus familiar items revealed an abnormal response in the right hippocampus in the APOE {varepsilon}4 group, mainly expressed as diminished sensitivity to the relative novelty of stimuli. Collectively, these findings indicate that genetic risk translates into reduced functional brain activity, in regions pertinent to Alzheimer's disease, well before alterations can be detected at the behavioural level.

Abstract

Classically, infants are thought to point for 2 main reasons: (a) They point imperatively when they want an adult to do something for them (e.g., give them something; “Juice!”), and (b) they point declaratively when they want an adult to share attention with them to some interesting event or object (“Look!”). Here we demonstrate the existence of another motive for infants' early pointing gestures: to inform another person of the location of an object that person is searching for. This informative motive for pointing suggests that from very early in ontogeny humans conceive of others as intentional agents with informational states and they have the motivation to provide such information communicatively

Abstract

This article is about whether the factors which drive online sharing of non-scholarly content also apply to academic journal titles. It uses Altmetric scores as a measure of online attention to articles from Frontiers in Psychology published in 2013 and 2014. Article titles with result-oriented positive framing and more interesting phrasing receive higher Altmetric scores, i.e., get more online attention. Article titles with wordplay and longer article titles receive lower Altmetric scores. This suggests that the same factors that affect how widely non-scholarly content is shared extend to academia, which has implications for how academics can make their work more likely to have more impact.

Abstract

Sound symbolism is increasingly understood as involving iconicity, or perceptual analogies and cross-modal correspondences between form and meaning, but the search for its functional and neural correlates is ongoing. Here we study how people learn sound-symbolic words, using behavioural, electrophysiological and individual difference measures. Dutch participants learned Japanese ideophones —lexical sound-symbolic words— with a translation of either the real meaning (in which form and meaning show cross-modal correspondences) or the opposite meaning (in which form and meaning show cross-modal clashes). Participants were significantly better at identifying the words they learned in the real condition, correctly remembering the real word pairing 86.7% of the time, but the opposite word pairing only 71.3% of the time. Analysing event-related potentials (ERPs) during the test round showed that ideophones in the real condition elicited a greater P3 component and late positive complex than ideophones in the opposite condition. In a subsequent forced choice task, participants were asked to guess the real translation from two alternatives. They did this with 73.0% accuracy, well above chance level even for words they had encountered in the opposite condition, showing that people are generally sensitive to the sound-symbolic cues in ideophones. Individual difference measures showed that the ERP effect in the test round of the learning task was greater for participants who were more sensitive to sound symbolism in the forced choice task. The main driver of the difference was a lower amplitude of the P3 component in response to ideophones in the opposite condition, suggesting that people who are more sensitive to sound symbolism may have more difficulty to suppress conflicting cross-modal information. The findings provide new evidence that cross-modal correspondences between sound and meaning facilitate word learning, while cross-modal clashes make word learning harder, especially for people who are more sensitive to sound symbolism.

Abstract

The existence of sound-symbolism (or a non-arbitrary link between form and meaning) is well-attested. However, sound-symbolism has mostly been investigated with nonwords in forced choice tasks, neither of which are representative of natural language. This study uses ideophones, which are naturally occurring sound-symbolic words that depict sensory information, to investigate how sensitive Dutch speakers are to sound-symbolism in Japanese in a learning task. Participants were taught 2 sets of Japanese ideophones; 1 set with the ideophones’ real meanings in Dutch, the other set with their opposite meanings. In Experiment 1, participants learned the ideophones and their real meanings much better than the ideophones with their opposite meanings. Moreover, despite the learning rounds, participants were still able to guess the real meanings of the ideophones in a 2-alternative forced-choice test after they were informed of the manipulation. This shows that natural language sound-symbolism is robust beyond 2-alternative forced-choice paradigms and affects broader language processes such as word learning. In Experiment 2, participants learned regular Japanese adjectives with the same manipulation, and there was no difference between real and opposite conditions. This shows that natural language sound-symbolism is especially strong in ideophones, and that people learn words better when form and meaning match. The highlights of this study are as follows: (a) Dutch speakers learn real meanings of Japanese ideophones better than opposite meanings, (b) Dutch speakers accurately guess meanings of Japanese ideophones, (c) this sensitivity happens despite learning some opposite pairings, (d) no such learning effect exists for regular Japanese adjectives, and (e) this shows the importance of sound-symbolism in scaffolding language learning

Abstract

The posterior medial parietal cortex and the left prefrontal cortex have both been implicated in the recollection of past episodes. In order to clarify their functional significance, we performed this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, which employed event-related source memory and item recognition retrieval of words paired with corresponding imagined or viewed pictures. Our results suggest that episodic source memory is related to a functional network including the posterior precuneus and the left lateral prefrontal cortex. This network is activated during explicit retrieval of imagined pictures and results from the retrieval of item-context associations. This suggests that previously imagined pictures provide a context with which encoded words can be more strongly associated.

Abstract

Physiological data from a range of human populations living in different environments can provide valuable information for testing evolutionary hypotheses about human adaptation. By taking into account the effects of population history, phylogenetic comparative methods can help us determine whether variation results from selection due to particular environmental variables. These selective forces could even be due to cultural traits-which means that gene-culture co-evolution may be occurring. In this paper, we outline two examples of the use of these approaches to test adaptive hypotheses that explain global variation in two physiological traits: the first is lactose digestion capacity in adults, and the second is population sex-ratio at birth. We show that lower than average sex ratio at birth is associated with high fertility, and argue that global variation in sex ratio at birth has evolved as a response to the high physiological costs of producing boys in high fertility populations.

Abstract

The time course of spoken word recognition depends largely on the frequencies of a word and its competitors, or neighbors (similar-sounding words). However, variability in natural lexicons makes systematic analysis of frequency and neighbor similarity difficult. Artificial lexicons were used to achieve precise control over word frequency and phonological similarity. Eye tracking provided time course measures of lexical activation and competition (during spoken instructions to perform visually guided tasks) both during and after word learning, as a function of word frequency, neighbor type, and neighbor frequency. Apparent shifts from holistic to incremental competitor effects were observed in adults and neural network simulations, suggesting such shifts reflect general properties of learning rather than changes in the nature of lexical representations.

Abstract

Tests of causal attribution often use verbal vignettes, with covariation information provided through statements quantified with natural language expressions. The effect of covariation information has typically been taken to show that set size information affects attribution. However, recent research shows that quantifiers provide information about discourse focus as well as covariation information. In the attribution literature, quantifiers are used to depict covariation, but they confound quantity and focus. In four experiments, we show that focus explains all (Experiment 1) or some (Experiments 2, 3 and 4) of the impact of covariation information on the attributions made, confirming the importance of the confound. Attribution experiments using vignettes that present covariation information with natural language quantifiers may overestimate the impact of set size information, and ignore the impact of quantifier-induced focus.

Abstract

A key question in categorisation is to what extent people categorise in the same way, or differently. This paper examines categorisation of the body in Punjabi, an Indo-European language spoken in Pakistan and India. First, an inventory of body part terms is presented, illustrating how Punjabi speakers segment and categorise the body. There are some noteworthy terms in the inventory, which illustrate categories in Punjabi that are unusual when compared to other languages presented in this volume. Second, Punjabi speakers’ conceptualisation of the relationship between body parts is explored. While some body part terms are viewed as being partonomically related, others are viewed as being in a locative relationship. It is suggested that there may be key ways in which languages differ in both the categorisation of the body into parts, and in how these parts are related to one another.

Abstract

For several languages, a preference for subject relative clauses over object relative clauses has been reported. However, Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers (2002) showed that there is no such preference for relative clauses with an animate subject and an inanimate object. A Dutch object relative clause as …de rots, die de wandelaars beklommen hebben… (‘the rock, that the hikers climbed’) did not show longer reading times than its subject relative clause counterpart …de wandelaars, die de rots beklommen hebben… (‘the hikers, who climbed the rock’). In the present paper, we explore the factors that might contribute to this modulation of the usual preference for subject relative clauses. Experiment 1 shows that the animacy of the antecedent per se is not the decisive factor. On the contrary, in relative clauses with an inanimate antecedent and an inanimate relative-clause-internal noun phrase, the usual preference for subject relative clauses is found. In Experiments 2 and 3, subject and object relative clauses were contrasted in which either the subject or the object was inanimate. The results are interpreted in a framework in which the choice for an analysis of the relative clause is based on the interplay of animacy with topichood and verb semantics. This framework accounts for the commonly reported preference for subject relative clauses over object relative clauses as well as for the pattern of data found in the present experiments.

Abstract

The anticipation of the forthcoming behaviour of social interaction partners is a useful ability supporting interaction and communication between social partners. Associations and prediction based on the production system (in line with views that listeners use the production system covertly to anticipate what the other person might be likely to say) are two potential factors, which have been proposed to be involved in anticipatory language processing. We examined the influence of both factors on the degree to which listeners predict upcoming linguistic input. Are listeners more likely to predict book as an appropriate continuation of the sentence “The boy reads a”, based on the strength of the association between the words read and book (strong association) and read and letter (weak association)? Do more proficient producers predict more? What is the interplay of these two influences on prediction? The results suggest that associations influence language-mediated anticipatory eye gaze in two-year-olds and adults only when two thematically appropriate target objects compete for overt attention but not when these objects are presented separately. Furthermore, children’s prediction abilities are strongly related to their language production skills when appropriate target objects are presented separately but not when presented together. Both influences on prediction in language processing thus appear to be context-dependent. We conclude that multiple factors simultaneously influence listeners’ anticipation of upcoming linguistic input and that only such a dynamic approach to prediction can capture listeners’ prowess at predictive language processing.

Abstract

Other-initiated repair is an essential interactional practice to secure mutual understanding in everyday interaction. This article presents evidence from a large conversational corpus of a sign language, showing that signers of Argentine Sign Language (Lengua de Señas Argentina or ‘LSA’), like users of spoken languages, use a systematic set of linguistic formats and practices to indicate troubles of signing, seeing and understanding. The general aim of this article is to provide a general overview of the different visual-gestural linguistic patterns of other-initiated repair sequences in LSA. It also describes the quantitative distribution of other-initiated repair formats based on a collection of 213 cases. It describes the multimodal components of open and restricted types of repair initiators, and reports a previously undescribed implicit practice to initiate repair in LSA in comparison to explicitly produced formats. Part of a special issue presenting repair systems across a range of languages, this article contributes to a better understanding of the phenomenon of other-initiated repair in terms of visual and gestural practices in human interaction in both signed and spoken languages

Abstract

The human capacity for acquiring speech and language must derive, at least in part, from the genome. In 2001, a study described the first case of a gene, FOXP2, which is thought to be implicated in our ability to acquire spoken language. In the present article, we discuss how this gene was discovered, what it might do, how it relates to other genes, and what it could tell us about the nature of speech and language development. We explain how FOXP2 could, without being specific to the brain or to our own species, still provide an invaluable entry-point into understanding the genetic cascades and neural pathways that contribute to our capacity for speech and language.

Abstract

Replication of linkage results for complex traits has been exceedingly difficult, owing in part to the inability to measure the precise underlying phenotype, small sample sizes, genetic heterogeneity, and statistical methods employed in analysis. Often, in any particular study, multiple correlated traits have been collected, yet these have been analyzed independently or, at most, in bivariate analyses. Theoretical arguments suggest that full multivariate analysis of all available traits should offer more power to detect linkage; however, this has not yet been evaluated on a genomewide scale. Here, we conduct multivariate genomewide analyses of quantitative-trait loci that influence reading- and language-related measures in families affected with developmental dyslexia. The results of these analyses are substantially clearer than those of previous univariate analyses of the same data set, helping to resolve a number of key issues. These outcomes highlight the relevance of multivariate analysis for complex disorders for dissection of linkage results in correlated traits. The approach employed here may aid positional cloning of susceptibility genes in a wide spectrum of complex traits.

Abstract

I argue that cue integration, a psychophysiological mechanism from vision and multisensory perception, offers a computational linking hypothesis between psycholinguistic theory and neurobiological models of language. I propose that this mechanism, which incorporates probabilistic estimates of a cue's reliability, might function in language processing from the perception of a phoneme to the comprehension of a phrase structure. I briefly consider the implications of the cue integration hypothesis for an integrated theory of language that includes acquisition, production, dialogue and bilingualism, while grounding the hypothesis in canonical neural computation.

Abstract

A perceptual learning experiment provides evidence that the mental lexicon cannot consist solely of detailed acoustic traces of recognition episodes. In a training lexical decision phase, listeners heard an ambiguous [f–s] fricative sound, replacing either [f] or [s] in words. In a test phase, listeners then made lexical decisions to visual targets following auditory primes. Critical materials were minimal pairs that could be a word with either [f] or [s] (cf. English knife–nice), none of which had been heard in training. Listeners interpreted the minimal pair words differently in the second phase according to the training received in the first phase. Therefore, lexically mediated retuning of phoneme perception not only influences categorical decisions about fricatives (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003), but also benefits recognition of words outside the training set. The observed generalization across words suggests that this retuning occurs prelexically. Therefore, lexical processing involves sublexical phonological abstraction, not only accumulation of acoustic episodes.

Abstract

The speech perception system must be flexible in responding to the variability in speech sounds caused by differences among speakers and by language change over the lifespan of the listener. Indeed, listeners use lexical knowledge to retune perception of novel speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). In that study, Dutch listeners made lexical decisions to spoken stimuli, including words with an ambiguous fricative (between [f] and [s]), in either [f]- or [s]-biased lexical contexts. In a subsequent categorization test, the former group of listeners identified more sounds on an [εf] - [εs] continuum as [f] than the latter group. In the present experiment, listeners received the same exposure and test stimuli, but did not make lexical decisions to the exposure items. Instead, they counted them. Categorization results were indistinguishable from those obtained earlier. These adjustments in fricative perception therefore do not depend on explicit judgments during exposure. This learning effect thus reflects automatic retuning of the interpretation of acoustic-phonetic information.

Abstract

Magnuson, McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin [Cogn. Sci. 27 (2003) 285] suggest that they have evidence of lexical feedback in speech perception, and that this evidence thus challenges the purely feedforward Merge model [Behav. Brain Sci. 23 (2000) 299]. This evidence is open to an alternative explanation, however, one which preserves the assumption in Merge that there is no lexical-prelexical feedback during on-line speech processing. This explanation invokes the distinction between perceptual processing that occurs in the short term, as an utterance is heard, and processing that occurs over the longer term, for perceptual learning.

Abstract

This commentary on Gow and Olson [2015. Sentential influences on acoustic-phonetic processing: A Granger causality analysis of multimodal imaging data. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1029498] questions in three ways their conclusion that speech perception is based on interactive processing. First, it is not clear that the data presented by Gow and Olson reflect normal speech recognition. Second, Gow and Olson's conclusion depends on still-debated assumptions about the functions performed by specific brain regions. Third, the results are compatible with feedforward models of speech perception and appear inconsistent with models in which there are online interactions about phonological content. We suggest that progress in the neuroscience of speech perception requires the generation of testable hypotheses about the function(s) performed by inter-regional connections

Abstract

Although word boundaries are rarely clearly marked, listeners can rapidly recognize the individual words of spoken sentences. Some theories explain this in terms of competition between multiply activated lexical hypotheses; others invoke sensitivity to prosodic structure. We describe a connectionist model, SHORTLIST, in which recognition by activation and competition is successful with a realistically sized lexicon. Three experiments are then reported in which listeners detected real words embedded in nonsense strings, some of which were themselves the onsets of longer words. Effects both of competition between words and of prosodic structure were observed, suggesting that activation and competition alone are not sufficient to explain word recognition in continuous speech. However, the results can be accounted for by a version of SHORTLIST that is sensitive to prosodic structure.

Abstract

Spoken word recognition consists of two major component processes. First, at the prelexical stage, an abstract description of the utterance is generated from the information in the speech signal. Second, at the lexical stage, this description is used to activate all the words stored in the mental lexicon which match the input. These multiple candidate words then compete with each other. We review evidence which suggests that positive (match) and negative (mismatch) information of both a segmental and a suprasegmental nature is used to constrain this activation and competition process. We then ask whether, in addition to the necessary influence of the prelexical stage on the lexical stage, there is also feedback from the lexicon to the prelexical level. In two phonetic categorization experiments, Dutch listeners were asked to label both syllable-initial and syllable-final ambiguous fricatives (e.g., sounds ranging from [f] to [s]) in the word–nonword series maf–mas, and the nonword–word series jaf–jas. They tended to label the sounds in a lexically consistent manner (i.e., consistent with the word endpoints of the series). These lexical effects became smaller in listeners’ slower responses, even when the listeners were put under pressure to respond as fast as possible. Our results challenge models of spoken word recognition in which feedback modulates the prelexical analysis of the component sounds of a word whenever that word is heard

Abstract

On the basis of evidence from studies of the naming and reading of numerals, Ferrand (1999) argued that the naming of objects is slower than reading their names, due to a greater response uncertainty in naming than in reading, rather than to an obligatory conceptual preparation for naming, but not for reading. We manipulated the need for conceptual preparation, while keeping response uncertainty constant in the naming and reading of complex numerals. In Experiment 1, participants named three-digit Arabic numerals either as house numbers or clock times. House number naming latencies were determined mostly by morphophonological factors, such as morpheme frequency and the number of phonemes, whereas clock time naming latencies revealed an additional conceptual involvement. In Experiment 2, the numerals were presented in alphabetic format and had to be read aloud. Reading latencies were determined mostly by morphophonological factors in both modes. These results suggest that conceptual preparation, rather than response uncertainty, is responsible for the difference between naming and reading latencies.

Abstract

The Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) assumes that words in a bilingual’s languages have separate word form representations but shared conceptual representations. Two routes lead from an L2 word form to its conceptual representation: the word association route, where concepts are accessed through the corresponding L1 word form, and the concept mediation route, with direct access from L2 to concepts. To investigate word association, we presented proficient late German-Dutch bilinguals with L2 non-cognate word pairs in which the L1 translation of the first word rhymed with the second word (e.g. GRAP (joke) – Witz – FIETS (bike)). If the first word in a pair activated its L1 equivalent, then a phonological priming effect on the second word was expected. Priming was observed in lexical decision but not in semantic decision (living/non-living) on L2 words. In a control group of Dutch native speakers, no priming effect was found. This suggests that proficient bilinguals still make use of their L1 word form lexicon to process L2 in lexical decision.

Abstract

According to Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) speakers generate the phonological and phonetic representations of successive syllables of a word in sequence and only begin to speak after having fully planned at least one complete phonological word. Therefore, speech onset latencies should be longer for long than for short words. We tested this prediction in four experiments in which Dutch participants named or categorized objects with monosyllabic or disyllabic names. Experiment 1 yielded a length effect on production latencies when objects with long and short names were tested in separate blocks, but not when they were mixed. Experiment 2 showed that the length effect was not due to a difference in the ease of object recognition. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 1 using a within-participants design. In Experiment 4, the long and short target words appeared in a phrasal context. In addition to the speech onset latencies, we obtained the viewing times for the target objects, which have been shown to depend on the time necessary to plan the form of the target names. We found word length effects for both dependent variables, but only when objects with short and long names were presented in separate blocks. We argue that in pure and mixed blocks speakers used different response deadlines, which they tried to meet by either generating the motor programs for one syllable or for all syllables of the word before speech onset. Computer simulations using WEAVER++ support this view.

Abstract

A series of experiments was carried out investigating the time course of phonological encoding in language production, i.e., the question of whether all parts of the phonological form of a word are created in parallel, or whether they are created in a specific order. a speech production task was used in which the subjects in each test trial had to say one out of three or five response words as quickly as possible. In one condition, information was provided about part of the forms of the words to be uttered, in another condition this was not the case. The production of disyllabic words was speeded by information about their first syllable, but not by information about their second syllable. Experiments using trisyllabic words showed that a facilitatory effect could be obtained from information about the second syllable of the words, provided that the first syllable was also known. These findings suggest that the syllables of a word must be encoded strictly sequentially, according to their order in the word.

Abstract

Recently, a new theory of timing in sentence production has been proposed by Ferreira (1993). This theory assumes that at the phonological level, each syllable of an utterance is assigned one or more abstract timing units depending on its position in the prosodic structure. The number of timing units associated with a syllable determines the time interval between its onset and the onset of the next syllable. An interesting prediction from the theory, which was confirmed in Ferreira's experiments with speakers of American English, is that the time intervals between syllable onsets should only depend on the syllables' positions in the prosodic structure, but not on their segmental content. However, in the present experiments, which were carried out in Dutch, the intervals between syllable onsets were consistently longer for phonetically long syllables than for short syllables. The implications of this result for models of timing in sentence production are discussed.

Abstract

Primate visual cortex is hierarchically organized. Bottom-up and top-down influences are exerted through distinct frequency channels, as was recently revealed in macaques by correlating inter-areal influences with laminar anatomical projection patterns. Because this anatomical data cannot be obtained in human subjects, we selected seven homologous macaque and human visual areas, and we correlated the macaque laminar projection patterns to human inter-areal directed influences as measured with magnetoencephalography. We show that influences along feedforward projections predominate in the gamma band, whereas influences along feedback projections predominate in the alpha-beta band. Rhythmic inter-areal influences constrain a functional hierarchy of the seven homologous human visual areas that is in close agreement with the respective macaque anatomical hierarchy. Rhythmic influences allow an extension of the hierarchy to 26 human visual areas including uniquely human brain areas. Hierarchical levels of ventral- and dorsal-stream visual areas are differentially affected by inter-areal influences in the alpha-beta band.

Abstract

Objective To elucidate the influence of common genetic variants on childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, to identify genetic variants that explain its high heritability, and to investigate the genetic overlap of ADHD symptom scores with ADHD diagnosis. Method Within the EArly Genetics and Lifecourse Epidemiology (EAGLE) consortium, genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and ADHD symptom scores were available for 17,666 children (< 13 years) from nine population-based cohorts. SNP-based heritability was estimated in data from the three largest cohorts. Meta-analysis based on genome-wide association (GWA) analyses with SNPs was followed by gene-based association tests, and the overlap in results with a meta-analysis in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) case-control ADHD study was investigated. Results SNP-based heritability ranged from 5% to 34%, indicating that variation in common genetic variants influences ADHD symptom scores. The meta-analysis did not detect genome-wide significant SNPs, but three genes, lying close to each other with SNPs in high linkage disequilibrium (LD), showed a gene-wide significant association (p values between 1.46×10-6 and 2.66×10-6). One gene, WASL, is involved in neuronal development. Both SNP- and gene-based analyses indicated overlap with the PGC meta-analysis results with the genetic correlation estimated at 0.96. Conclusion The SNP-based heritability for ADHD symptom scores indicates a polygenic architecture and genes involved in neurite outgrowth are possibly involved. Continuous and dichotomous measures of ADHD appear to assess a genetically common phenotype. A next step is to combine data from population-based and case-control cohorts in genetic association studies to increase sample size and improve statistical power for identifying genetic variants.

Abstract

This study examined whether compensation for coarticulation in fricative–vowel syllables is phonologically mediated or a consequence of auditory processes. Smits (2001a) had shown that compensation occurs for anticipatory lip rounding in a fricative caused by a following rounded vowel in Dutch. In a first experiment, the possibility that compensation is due to general auditory processing was investigated using nonspeech sounds. These did not cause context effects akin to compensation for coarticulation, although nonspeech sounds influenced speech sound identification in an integrative fashion. In a second experiment, a possible phonological basis for compensation for coarticulation was assessed by using audiovisual speech. Visual displays, which induced the perception of a rounded vowel, also influenced compensation for anticipatory lip rounding in the fricative. These results indicate that compensation for anticipatory lip rounding in fricative–vowel syllables is phonologically mediated. This result is discussed in the light of other compensation-for-coarticulation findings and general theories of speech perception.

Abstract

We investigated how spoken words are recognized when they have been altered by phonological assimilation. Previous research has shown that there is a process of perceptual compensation for phonological assimilations. Three recently formulated proposals regarding the mechanisms for compensation for assimilation make different predictions with regard to the level at which compensation is supposed to occur as well as regarding the role of specific language experience. In the present study, Hungarian words and nonwords, in which a viable and an unviable liquid assimilation was applied, were presented to Hungarian and Dutch listeners in an identification task and a discrimination task. Results indicate that viably changed forms are difficult to distinguish from canonical forms independent of experience with the assimilation rule applied in the utterances. This reveals that auditory processing contributes to perceptual compensation for assimilation, while language experience has only a minor role to play when identification is required.

Abstract

In a series of 5 experiments, we investigated whether the processing of phonologically assimilated utterances is influenced by language learning. Previous experiments had shown that phonological assimilations, such as /lean#bacon/→[leam bacon], are compensated for in perception. In this article, we investigated whether compensation for assimilation can occur without experience with an assimilation rule using automatic event-related potentials. Our first experiment indicated that Dutch listeners compensate for a Hungarian assimilation rule. Two subsequent experiments, however, failed to show compensation for assimilation by both Dutch and Hungarian listeners. Two additional experiments showed that this was due to the acoustic properties of the assimilated utterance, confirming earlier reports that phonetic detail is important in compensation for assimilation. Our data indicate that compensation for assimilation can occur without experience with an assimilation rule, in line with phonetic–phonological theories that assume that speech production is influenced by speech-perception abilities.

Abstract

Vowel normalization in speech perception was investigated in three experiments. The range of the second formant in a carrier phrase was manipulated and this affected the perception of a target vowel in a compensatory fashion: A low F2 range in the carrier phrase made it more likely that the target vowel was perceived as a front vowel, that is, with a high F2. Recent experiments indicated that this effect might be moderated by the lexical status of the constituents of the carrier phrase. Manipulation of the lexical status in the present experiments, however, did not affect vowel normalization. In contrast, the range of vowels in the carrier phrase did influence vowel normalization. If the carrier phrase consisted of mid-to-high front vowels only, vowel categories shifted only for mid-to-high front vowels. It is argued that these results are a challenge for episodic models of word recognition.

Abstract

In everyday speech, words may be reduced. Little is known about the consequences of such reductions for spoken word comprehension. This study investigated /t/-lenition in Dutch in two corpus studies and three perceptual experiments. The production studies revealed that /t/-lenition is most likely to occur after [s] and before bilabial consonants. The perception experiments showed that listeners take into account both phonological context, phonetic detail, and the lexical status of the form in the interpretation of codas that may or may not contain a lenited word-final /t/. These results speak against models of word recognition that make hard decisions on a prelexical level.

Abstract

Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a priming paradigm, we manipulated whether native Swedish adult learners of L2 Spanish were primed to use path or manner during L2 descriptions of scenes depicting caused motion events (encoding phase). Subsequently, participants engaged in a nonverbal task, arranging events on the screen according to similarity (test phase). Path versus manner priming affected how participants judged event similarity during the test phase. The effects we find support the hypotheses that (a) speakers create or select ad hoc conceptual categories that are based on linguistic knowledge to carry out nonverbal tasks, and that (b) short-term, recent L2 experience can affect this ad hoc process. These findings further suggest that cognition can flexibly draw on linguistic categories that have been implicitly highlighted during recent exposure.

Abstract

The inhibitory mechanisms that prevent gene expression programs from one tissue to be expressed in another are poorly understood. Foxp1/2/4 are forkhead transcription factors that repress gene expression and are individually important for endoderm development. We show that combined loss of all three Foxp1/2/4 family members in the developing anterior foregut endoderm leads to a loss of lung endoderm lineage commitment and subsequent development. Foxp1/2/4 deficient lungs express high levels of transcriptional regulators not normally expressed in the developing lung, including Pax2, Pax8, Pax9 and the Hoxa9-13 cluster. Ectopic expression of these transcriptional regulators is accompanied by decreased expression of lung restricted transcription factors including Nkx2-1, Sox2, and Sox9. Foxp1 binds to conserved forkhead DNA binding sites within the Hoxa9-13 cluster, indicating a direct repression mechanism. Thus, Foxp1/2/4 are essential for promoting lung endoderm development by repressing expression of non-pulmonary transcription factors

Abstract

In discourse, older adults tend to be more verbose and more disfluent than young adults, especially when the task is difficult and when it places few constraints on the content of the utterance. This may be due to (a) language-specific deficits in planning the content and syntactic structure of utterances or in selecting and retrieving words from the mental lexicon, (b) a general deficit in inhibiting irrelevant information, or (c) the selection of a specific speech style. The possibility that older adults have a deficit in lexical retrieval is supported by the results of picture naming studies, in which older adults have been found to name objects less accurately and more slowly than young adults, and by the results of definition naming studies, in which older adults have been found to experience more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states than young adults. The available evidence suggests that these age differences are largely due to weakening of the connections linking word lemmas to phonological word forms, though adults above 70 years of age may have an additional deficit in lemma selection.

Abstract

The recognition of a word makes available its semantic and
syntactic properties. Using electrophysiological recordings, we
investigated whether one set of these properties is available
earlier than the other set. Dutch participants saw nouns on a
computer screen and performed push-button responses: In
one task, grammatical gender determined response hand
(left/right) and semantic category determined response execution
(go/no-go). In the other task, response hand depended
on semantic category, whereas response execution depended
on gender. During the latter task, response preparation occurred
on no-go trials, as measured by the lateralized
readiness potential: Semantic information was used for
response preparation before gender information inhibited
this process. Furthermore, an inhibition-related N2 effect
occurred earlier for inhibition by semantics than for inhibition
by gender. In summary, electrophysiological measures
of both response preparation and inhibition indicated that
the semantic word property was available earlier than the
syntactic word property when participants read single
words.

Abstract

Objectives: Metallic compounds present in the oral and maxillofacial regions (OMRs) cause large artefacts during MR scanning. We quantitatively assessed these artefacts embedded within a phantom according to standards set by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).
Methods: Seven metallic dental materials (each of which was a 10-mm(3) cube embedded within a phantom) were scanned [i.e. aluminium (Al), silver alloy (Ag), type IV gold alloy (Au), gold-palladium-silver alloy (Au-Pd-Ag), titanium (Ti), nickel-chromium alloy (NC) and cobalt-chromium alloy (CC)] and compared with a reference image. Sequences included gradient echo (GRE), fast spin echo (FSE), gradient recalled acquisition in steady state (GRASS), a spoiled GRASS (SPGR), a fast SPGR (FSPGR), fast imaging employing steady state (FIESTA) and echo planar imaging (EPI; axial/sagittal planes). Artefact areas were determined according to the ASTM-F2119 standard, and artefact volumes were assessed using OsiriX MD software (Pixmeo, Geneva, Switzerland).
Results: Tukey-Kramer post hoc tests were used for statistical comparisons. For most materials, scanning sequences eliciting artefact volumes in the following (ascending) order FSE-T-1/FSE-T-2 < FSPGR/SPGR < GRASS/GRE < FIESTA < EPI. For all scanning sequences, artefact volumes containing Au, Al, Ag and Au-Pd-Ag were significantly smaller than other materials (in which artefact volume size increased, respectively, from Ti < NC < CC). The artefact-specific shape (elicited by the cubic sample) depended on the scanning plane (i.e. a circular pattern for the axial plane and a "clover-like" pattern for the sagittal plane).
Conclusions: The availability of standardized information on artefact size and configuration during MRI will enhance diagnosis when faced with metallic compounds in the OMR.

Abstract

Purpose
To point out the advantages and drawbacks of high-dose rate brachytherapy in the treatment of mobile tongue cancer and indicate the clinical importance of modular lead-lined spacers when applying this technique to patients.
Methods
First, all basic steps to construct the modular spacer are shown. Second, we simulate and evaluate the dose rate reduction for a wide range of spacer configurations.
Results
With increasing distance to the source absorbed doses dropped considerably. Significantly more shielding was obtained when lead was added to the spacer and this effect was most pronounced on shorter (i.e. more clinically relevant) distances to the source.
Conclusions
The modular spacer represents an important addition to the planning and treatment stages of mobile tongue cancer using HDR-ISBT.

Abstract

Muscular hypertrophy in callipyge sheep results from a single nucleotide substitution located in the genomic interval between the imprinted Delta, Drosophila, Homolog-like 1 (DLK1) and Maternally Expressed Gene 3 (MEG3). The mechanism linking the mutation to muscle hypertrophy is unclear but involves DLK1 overexpression. The mutation is contained within CLPG1 transcripts produced from this region. Herein we show that CLPG1 is expressed prenatally in the hypertrophy-responsive longissimus dorsi muscle by all four possible genotypes, but postnatal expression is restricted to sheep carrying the mutation. Surprisingly, the mutation results in nonimprinted monoallelic transcription of CLPG1 from only the mutated allele in adult sheep, whereas it is expressed biallelically during prenatal development. We further demonstrate that local CpG methylation is altered by the presence of the mutation in longissimus dorsi of postnatal sheep. For 10 CpG sites flanking the mutation, methylation is similar prenatally across genotypes, but doubles postnatally in normal sheep. This normal postnatal increase in methylation is significantly repressed in sheep carrying one copy of the mutation, and repressed even further in sheep with two mutant alleles. The attenuation in methylation status in the callipyge sheep correlates with the onset of the phenotype, continued CLPG1 transcription, and high-level expression of DLK1. In contrast, normal sheep exhibit hypermethylation of this locus after birth and CLPG1 silencing, which coincides with DLK1 transcriptional repression. These data are consistent with the notion that the callipyge mutation inhibits perinatal nucleation of regional chromatin condensation resulting in continued elevated transcription of prenatal DLK1 levels in adult callipyge sheep. We propose a model incorporating these results that can also account for the enigmatic normal phenotype of homozygous mutant sheep.

Abstract

Recent research has revealed that the way phonology is constructed during word production differs across languages. Dutch and English native speakers are suggested to incrementally insert phonemes into a metrical frame, whereas Mandarin Chinese speakers use syllables and Japanese speakers use a unit called the mora (often a CV cluster such as "ka" or "ki"). The present study is concerned with the question how bilinguals construct phonology in their L2 when the phonological unit size differs from the unit in their L1. Japanese English bilinguals of varying proficiency read aloud English words preceded by masked primes that overlapped in just the onset (e.g., bark-BENCH) or the onset plus vowel corresponding to the mora-sized unit (e.g., bell-BENCH). Low proficient Japanese English bilinguals showed CV priming but did not show onset priming, indicating that they use their L1 phonological unit when reading L2 English words. In contrast, high-proficient Japanese English bilinguals showed significant onset priming. The size of the onset priming effect was correlated with the length of time spent in English-speaking countries, which suggests that extensive exposure to L2 phonology may play a key role in the emergence of a language-specific phonological unit in L2 word production.

Abstract

Children are able to take multiple perspectives in talking about entities and events. But the nature of children's sensitivities to the complex patterns of perspective-taking in adult language is unknown. We examine perspective-taking in four- and six-year-old Tamil-speaking children describing placement events, as reflected in the use of a general placement verb (veyyii ‘put’) versus two fine-grained caused posture expressions specifying orientation, either vertical (nikka veyyii ‘make stand’) or horizontal (paDka veyyii ‘make lie’). We also explore whether animacy systematically promotes shifts to a fine-grained perspective. The results show that four- and six-year-olds switch perspectives as flexibly and systematically as adults do. Animacy influences shifts to a fine-grained perspective similarly across age groups. However, unexpectedly, six-year-olds also display greater overall sensitivity to orientation, preferring the vertical over the horizontal caused posture expression. Despite early flexibility, the factors governing the patterns of perspective-taking on events are undergoing change even in later childhood, reminiscent of U-shaped semantic reorganizations observed in children's lexical knowledge. The present study points to the intriguing possibility that mechanisms that operate at the level of semantics could also influence subtle patterns of lexical choice and perspective-shifts.

Abstract

English, and a variety of Germanic languages, allow constructions such as the bottle floated into the cave , whereas languages such as Spanish, French, and Hindi are highly restricted in allowing manner of motion verbs to occur with path phrases. This typological observation has been accounted for in terms of the conflation of complex meaning in basic or derived verbs [Talmy, L., 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 57–149; Levin, B., Rappaport-Hovav, M., 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Semantics Interface. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA], or the presence of path “satellites” with special grammatical properties in the lexicon of languages such as English, which allow such phrasal combinations [cf. Talmy, L., 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 57–149; Talmy, L., 1991. Path to realisation: via aspect and result. In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, pp. 480–520]. I use data from Hindi to show that there is little empirical support for the claim that the constraint on the phrasal combination is correlated with differences in verb meaning or the presence of satellites in the lexicon of a language. However, proposals which eschew lexicalization accounts for more general aspectual constraints on the manner verb + path phrase combination in Spanish-type languages (Aske, J., 1989. Path Predicates in English and Spanish: A Closer look. In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, pp. 1–14) cannot account for the full range of data in Hindi either. On the basis of these facts, I argue that an empirically adequate account can be formulated in terms of a general mapping constraint, formulated in terms of whether the lexical requirements of the verb strictly or weakly constrain its syntactic privileges of occurrence. In Hindi, path phrases can combine with manner of motion verbs only to the degree that they are compatible with the semantic profile of the verb. Path phrases in English, on the other hand, can extend the verb's “semantic profile” subject to certain constraints. I suggest that path phrases are licensed in English by the semantic requirements of the “construction” in which they appear rather than by the selectional requirements of the verb (Fillmore, C., Kay, P., O'Connor, M.C., 1988, Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions. Language 64, 501–538; Jackendoff, 1990, Semantic Structures. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Goldberg, 1995, Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London).

Abstract

In linguistic theories of how sentences encode meaning, a distinction is often made between the context-free rule-based combination of lexical–semantic features of the words within a sentence (‘‘semantics’’), and the contributions made by wider context (‘‘pragmatics’’). In psycholinguistics, this distinction has led to the view that listeners initially compute a local, context-independent meaning of a phrase or sentence before relating it to the wider context. An important aspect of such a two-step perspective on interpretation is that local semantics cannot initially be overruled by global contextual factors. In two spoken-language event-related potential experiments, we tested the viability of this claim by examining whether discourse context can overrule the impact of the core lexical–semantic feature animacy, considered to be an innate organizing principle of cognition. Two-step models of interpretation predict that verb–object animacy violations, as in ‘‘The girl comforted the clock,’’ will always perturb the unfolding interpretation process, regardless of wider context. When presented in isolation, such anomalies indeed elicit a clear N400 effect, a sign of interpretive problems. However, when the anomalies were embedded in a supportive context (e.g., a girl talking to a clock about his depression), this N400 effect disappeared completely. Moreover, given a suitable discourse context (e.g., a story about an amorous peanut), animacyviolating predicates (‘‘the peanut was in love’’) were actually processed more easily than canonical predicates (‘‘the peanut was salted’’). Our findings reveal that discourse context can immediately overrule local lexical–semantic violations, and therefore suggest that language comprehension does not involve an initially context-free semantic analysis.

Abstract

Although we usually have no trouble finding the right antecedent for a pronoun, the co-reference relations between pronouns and antecedents in everyday language are often ‘formally’ ambiguous. But a pronoun is only really ambiguous if a reader or listener indeed perceives it to be ambiguous. Whether this is the case may depend on at least two factors: the language processing skills of an individual reader, and the contextual bias towards one particular referential interpretation. In the current study, we used event related brain potentials (ERPs) to explore how both these factors affect the resolution of referentially ambiguous pronouns. We compared ERPs elicited by formally ambiguous and non-ambiguous pronouns that were embedded in simple sentences (e.g., “Jennifer Lopez told Madonna that she had too much money.”). Individual differences in language processing skills were assessed with the Reading Span task, while the contextual bias of each sentence (up to the critical pronoun) had been assessed in a referential cloze pretest. In line with earlier research, ambiguous pronouns elicited a sustained, frontal negative shift relative to non-ambiguous pronouns at the group-level. The size of this effect was correlated with Reading Span score, as well as with contextual bias. These results suggest that whether a reader perceives a formally ambiguous pronoun to be ambiguous is subtly co-determined by both individual language processing skills and contextual bias.

Abstract

Do negative quantifiers like “few” reduce people’s ability to rapidly evaluate incoming language with respect to world knowledge? Previous research has addressed this question by examining whether online measures of quantifier comprehension match the “final” interpretation reflected in verification judgments. However, these studies confounded quantifier valence with its impact on the unfolding expectations for upcoming words, yielding mixed results. In the current event-related potentials study, participants read negative and positive quantifier sentences matched on cloze probability and on truth-value (e.g., “Most/Few gardeners plant their flowers during the spring/winter for best results”). Regardless of whether participants explicitly verified the sentences or not, true-positive quantifier sentences elicited reduced N400s compared with false-positive quantifier sentences, reflecting the facilitated semantic retrieval of words that render a sentence true. No such facilitation was seen in negative quantifier sentences. However, mixed-effects model analyses (with cloze value and truth-value as continuous predictors) revealed that decreasing cloze values were associated with an interaction pattern between truth-value and quantifier, whereas increasing cloze values were associated with more similar truth-value effects regardless of quantifier. Quantifier sentences are thus understood neither always in 2 sequential stages, nor always in a partial-incremental fashion, nor always in a maximally incremental fashion. Instead, and in accordance with prediction-based views of sentence comprehension, quantifier sentence comprehension depends on incorporation of quantifier meaning into an online, knowledge-based prediction for upcoming words. Fully incremental quantifier interpretation occurs when quantifiers are incorporated into sufficiently strong online predictions for upcoming words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract

Recent proposals hold that the cognitive systems underlying language production exhibit computational properties that facilitate communicative efficiency, i.e., an efficient trade-off between production ease and robust information transmission. We contribute to the cross-linguistic evaluation of the communicative efficiency hypothesis by investigating speakers’ preferences in the production of a typologically rare head-marking alternation that occurs in relative clause constructions in Yucatec Maya. In a sentence recall study, we find that speakers of Yucatec Maya prefer to use reduced forms of relative clause verbs when the relative clause is more contextually expected. This result is consistent with communicative efficiency and thus supports its typological generalizability. We compare two types of cue to the presence of a relative clause, pragmatic cues previously investigated in other languages and a highly predictive morphosyntactic cue specific to Yucatec. We find that Yucatec speakers’ preferences for a reduced verb form are primarily conditioned on the more informative cue. This demonstrates the role of both general principles of language production and their language-specific realizations.

Abstract

We propose that speech comprehension involves the activation of token representations of the phonological forms of current lexical hypotheses, separately from the ongoing construction of a conceptual interpretation of the current utterance. In a series of cross-modal priming experiments, facilitation of lexical decision responses to visual target words (e.g., time) was found for targets that were semantic associates of auditory prime words (e.g., date) when the primes were isolated words, but not when the same primes appeared in sentence contexts. Identity priming (e.g., faster lexical decisions to visual date after spoken date than after an unrelated prime) appeared, however, both with isolated primes and with primes in prosodically neutral sentences. Associative priming in sentence contexts only emerged when sentence prosody involved contrastive accents, or when sentences were terminated immediately after the prime. Associative priming is therefore not an automatic consequence of speech processing. In no experiment was there associative priming from embedded words (e.g., sedate-time), but there was inhibitory identity priming (e.g., sedate-date) from embedded primes in sentence contexts. Speech comprehension therefore appears to involve separate distinct activation both of token phonological word representations and of conceptual word representations. Furthermore, both of these types of representation are distinct from the long-term memory representations of word form and meaning.

Abstract

This study demonstrates that listeners use lexical knowledge in perceptual learning of speech sounds. Dutch listeners first made lexical decisions on Dutch words and nonwords. The final fricative of 20 critical words had been replaced by an ambiguous sound, between [f] and [s]. One group of listeners heard ambiguous [f]-final words (e.g., [WI tlo?], from witlof, chicory) and unambiguous [s]-final words (e.g., naaldbos, pine forest). Another group heard the reverse (e.g., ambiguous [na:ldbo?], unambiguous witlof). Listeners who had heard [?] in [f]-final words were subsequently more likely to categorize ambiguous sounds on an [f]–[s] continuum as [f] than those who heard [?] in [s]-final words. Control conditions ruled out alternative explanations based on selective adaptation and contrast. Lexical information can thus be used to train categorization of speech. This use of lexical information differs from the on-line lexical feedback embodied in interactive models of speech perception. In contrast to on-line feedback, lexical feedback for learning is of benefit to spoken word recognition (e.g., in adapting to a newly encountered dialect).

Abstract

Participants made visual lexical decisions to upper-case words and nonwords, and then categorized an ambiguous N–H letter continuum. The lexical decision phase included different exposure conditions: Some participants saw an ambiguous letter “?”, midway between N and H, in N-biased lexical contexts (e.g., REIG?), plus words with unambiguousH(e.g., WEIGH); others saw the reverse (e.g., WEIG?, REIGN). The first group categorized more of the test continuum as N than did the second group. Control groups, who saw “?” in nonword contexts (e.g., SMIG?), plus either of the unambiguous word sets (e.g., WEIGH or REIGN), showed no such subsequent effects. Perceptual learning about ambiguous letters therefore appears to be based on lexical knowledge, just as in an analogous speech experiment (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003) which showed similar lexical influence in learning about ambiguous phonemes. We argue that lexically guided learning is an efficient general strategy available for exploitation by different specific perceptual tasks.

Abstract

Speech perception involves prediction, but how is that prediction implemented? In cognitive models prediction has often been taken to imply that there is feedback of activation from lexical to pre-lexical processes as implemented in interactive-activation models (IAMs). We show that simple activation feedback does not actually improve speech recognition. However, other forms of feedback can be beneficial. In particular, feedback can enable the listener to adapt to changing input, and can potentially help the listener to recognise unusual input, or recognise speech in the presence of competing sounds. The common feature of these helpful forms of feedback is that they are all ways of optimising the performance of speech recognition using Bayesian inference. That is, listeners make predictions about speech because speech recognition is optimal in the sense captured in Bayesian models.

Abstract

Regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are typically activated in many different cognitive functions. In most studies, the focus has been on the role of specific PFC regions in specific cognitive domains, but more recently similarities in PFC activations across cognitive domains have been stressed. Such similarities may suggest that a region mediates a common function across a variety of cognitive tasks. In this study, we compared the activation patterns associated with tests of working memory, semantic memory and episodic memory. The results converged on a general involvement of four regions across memory tests. These were located in left frontopolar cortex, left mid-ventrolateral PFC, left mid-dorsolateral PFC and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These findings provide evidence that some PFC regions are engaged during many different memory tests. The findings are discussed in relation to theories about the functional contribition of the PFC regions and the architecture of memory.

Abstract

Cognitive studies show that both younger and older adults can increase their memory performance after training in using a visuospatial mnemonic, although age-related memory deficits tend to be magnified rather than reduced after training. Little is known about the changes in functional brain activity that accompany training-induced memory enhancement, and whether age-related activity changes are associated with the size of training-related gains. Here, we demonstrate that younger adults show increased activity during memory encoding in occipito-parietal and frontal brain regions after learning the mnemonic. Older adults did not show increased frontal activity, and only those elderly persons who benefited from the mnemonic showed increased occipitoparietal activity. These findings suggest that age-related differences in cognitive reserve capacity may reflect both a frontal processing deficiency and a posterior production deficiency.