Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 164
  • Armeni, K. (2021). On model-based neurobiology of language comprehension: Neural oscillations, processing memory, and prediction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Arunkumar, M., Van Paridon, J., Ostarek, M., & Huettig, F. (2021). Do illiterates have illusions? A conceptual (non)replication of Luria (1976). Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 5, 143-158. doi:10.1007/s41809-021-00080-x.

    Abstract

    Luria (1976) famously observed that people who never learnt to read and write do not perceive visual illusions. We conducted a conceptual replication of the Luria study of the effect of literacy on the processing of visual illusions. We designed two carefully controlled experiments with 161 participants with varying literacy levels ranging from complete illiterates to high literates in Chennai, India. Accuracy and reaction time in the identification of two types of visual shape and color illusions and the identification of appropriate control images were measured. Separate statistical analyses of Experiments 1 and 2 as well as pooled analyses of both experiments do not provide any support for the notion that literacy effects the perception of visual illusions. Our large sample, carefully controlled study strongly suggests that literacy does not meaningfully affect the identification of visual illusions and raises some questions about other reports about cultural effects on illusion perception.
  • Bakker-Marshall, I., Takashima, A., Fernandez, C. B., Janzen, G., McQueen, J. M., & Van Hell, J. G. (2021). Overlapping and distinct neural networks supporting novel word learning in bilinguals and monolinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24(3), 524-536. doi:10.1017/S1366728920000589.

    Abstract

    This study investigated how bilingual experience alters neural mechanisms supporting novel word learning. We hypothesised that novel words elicit increased semantic activation in the larger bilingual lexicon, potentially stimulating stronger memory integration than in monolinguals. English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals were trained on two sets of written Swahili–English word pairs, one set on each of two consecutive days, and performed a recognition task in the MRI-scanner. Lexical integration was measured through visual primed lexical decision. Surprisingly, no group difference emerged in explicit word memory, and priming occurred only in the monolingual group. This difference in lexical integration may indicate an increased need for slow neocortical interleaving of old and new information in the denser bilingual lexicon. The fMRI data were consistent with increased use of cognitive control networks in monolinguals and of articulatory motor processes in bilinguals, providing further evidence for experience-induced neural changes: monolinguals and bilinguals reached largely comparable behavioural performance levels in novel word learning, but did so by recruiting partially overlapping but non-identical neural systems to acquire novel words.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2021). Formation of numerals in the romance languages. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.685.

    Abstract

    The Romance languages have a rich numeral system that includes cardinals—providing the bases on which the other types of numeral series are built—ordinals, fractions, collectives, approximatives, distributives, and multiplicatives. Latin plays a decisive and continued role in their formation, both as the language to which many numerals go back directly and as an ongoing source for lexemes and formatives. While the Latin numeral system was synthetic, with a distinct ending for each type of numeral, the Romance numerals often feature more than one (unevenly distributed) marker or structure per series, which feature varying degrees of inherited, borrowed, or innovative elements. Formal consistency is strongest in cardinals, followed by ordinals and then the other types of numeral, which also tend to be more analytic or periphrastic. From a morphological perspective, Romance numerals overall have moved away from the inherited syntheticity, but several series continue to be synthetic formations—at least in part—with morphological markers drawn from Latin that may have undergone functional change (e.g. distributive > ordinal > collective). The underlying syntax of Romance numerals is in line with the overall grammatical patterns of Romance languages, as reflected in the prevalence of word order (with arithmetical correlates), connectors, (partial) loss of agreement, and analyticity. Innovation is prominent in the formation of higher numerals with bases beyond ‘thousand’, of teens and decads in Romanian, and of vigesimals in numerous Romance varieties.
  • Coopmans, C. W., De Hoop, H., Kaushik, K., Hagoort, P., & Martin, A. E. (2021). Structure-(in)dependent interpretation of phrases in humans and LSTMs. In Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2021) (pp. 459-463).

    Abstract

    In this study, we compared the performance of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network to the behavior of human participants on a language task that requires hierarchically structured knowledge. We show that humans interpret ambiguous noun phrases, such as second blue ball, in line with their hierarchical constituent structure. LSTMs, instead, only do
    so after unambiguous training, and they do not systematically generalize to novel items. Overall, the results of our simulations indicate that a model can behave hierarchically without relying on hierarchical constituent structure.
  • Drijvers, L., Jensen, O., & Spaak, E. (2021). Rapid invisible frequency tagging reveals nonlinear integration of auditory and visual information. Human Brain Mapping, 42(4), 1138-1152. doi:10.1002/hbm.25282.

    Abstract

    During communication in real-life settings, the brain integrates information from auditory and visual modalities to form a unified percept of our environment. In the current magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we used rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT) to generate steady-state evoked fields and investigated the integration of audiovisual information in a semantic context. We presented participants with videos of an actress uttering action verbs (auditory; tagged at 61 Hz) accompanied by a gesture (visual; tagged at 68 Hz, using a projector with a 1440 Hz refresh rate). Integration ease was manipulated by auditory factors (clear/degraded speech) and visual factors (congruent/incongruent gesture). We identified MEG spectral peaks at the individual (61/68 Hz) tagging frequencies. We furthermore observed a peak at the intermodulation frequency of the auditory and visually tagged signals (fvisual – fauditory = 7 Hz), specifically when integration was easiest (i.e., when speech was clear and accompanied by a congruent gesture). This intermodulation peak is a signature of nonlinear audiovisual integration, and was strongest in left inferior frontal gyrus and left temporal regions; areas known to be involved in speech-gesture integration. The enhanced power at the intermodulation frequency thus reflects the ease of integration and demonstrates that speech-gesture information interacts in higher-order language areas. Furthermore, we provide a proof-of-principle of the use of RIFT to study the integration of audiovisual stimuli, in relation to, for instance, semantic context.
  • Duprez, J., Stokkermans, M., Drijvers, L., & Cohen, M. X. (2021). Synchronization between keyboard typing and neural oscillations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(5), 887-901. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01692.

    Abstract

    Rhythmic neural activity synchronizes with certain rhythmic behaviors, such as breathing, sniffing, saccades, and speech. The extent to which neural oscillations synchronize with higher-level and more complex behaviors is largely unknown. Here we investigated electrophysiological synchronization with keyboard typing, which is an omnipresent behavior daily engaged by an uncountably large number of people. Keyboard typing is rhythmic with frequency characteristics roughly the same as neural oscillatory dynamics associated with cognitive control, notably through midfrontal theta (4 -7 Hz) oscillations. We tested the hypothesis that synchronization occurs between typing and midfrontal theta, and breaks down when errors are committed. Thirty healthy participants typed words and sentences on a keyboard without visual feedback, while EEG was recorded. Typing rhythmicity was investigated by inter-keystroke interval analyses and by a kernel density estimation method. We used a multivariate spatial filtering technique to investigate frequency-specific synchronization between typing and neuronal oscillations. Our results demonstrate theta rhythmicity in typing (around 6.5 Hz) through the two different behavioral analyses. Synchronization between typing and neuronal oscillations occurred at frequencies ranging from 4 to 15 Hz, but to a larger extent for lower frequencies. However, peak synchronization frequency was idiosyncratic across subjects, therefore not specific to theta nor to midfrontal regions, and correlated somewhat with peak typing frequency. Errors and trials associated with stronger cognitive control were not associated with changes in synchronization at any frequency. As a whole, this study shows that brain-behavior synchronization does occur during keyboard typing but is not specific to midfrontal theta.
  • Eekhof, L. S., Kuijpers, M. M., Faber, M., Gao, X., Mak, M., Van den Hoven, E., & Willems, R. M. (2021). Lost in a story, detached from the words. Discourse Processes, 58(7), 595-616. doi:10.1080/0163853X.2020.1857619.

    Abstract

    This article explores the relationship between low- and high-level aspects of reading by studying the interplay between word processing, as measured with eye tracking, and narrative absorption and liking, as measured with questionnaires. Specifically, we focused on how individual differences in sensitivity to lexical word characteristics—measured as the effect of these characteristics on gaze duration—were related to narrative absorption and liking. By reanalyzing a large data set consisting of three previous eye-tracking experiments in which subjects (N = 171) read literary short stories, we replicated the well-established finding that word length, lemma frequency, position in sentence, age of acquisition, and orthographic neighborhood size of words influenced gaze duration. More importantly, we found that individual differences in the degree of sensitivity to three of these word characteristics, i.e., word length, lemma frequency, and age of acquisition, were negatively related to print exposure and to a lesser degree to narrative absorption and liking. Even though the underlying mechanisms of this relationship are still unclear, we believe the current findings underline the need to map out the interplay between, on the one hand, the technical and, on the other hand, the subjective processes of reading by studying reading behavior in more natural settings.

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    Analysis scripts and data
  • Eekhof, L. S., Van Krieken, K., Sanders, J., & Willems, R. M. (2021). Reading minds, reading stories: Social-cognitive abilities affect the linguistic processing of narrative viewpoint. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 698986. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.698986.

    Abstract

    Although various studies have shown that narrative reading draws on social-cognitive abilities, not much is known about the precise aspects of narrative processing that engage these abilities. We hypothesized that the linguistic processing of narrative viewpoint—expressed by elements that provide access to the inner world of characters—might play an important role in engaging social-cognitive abilities. Using eye tracking, we studied the effect of lexical markers of perceptual, cognitive, and emotional viewpoint on eye movements during reading of a 5,000-word narrative. Next, we investigated how this relationship was modulated by individual differences in social-cognitive abilities. Our results show diverging patterns of eye movements for perceptual viewpoint markers on the one hand, and cognitive and emotional viewpoint markers on the other. Whereas the former are processed relatively fast compared to non-viewpoint markers, the latter are processed relatively slow. Moreover, we found that social-cognitive abilities impacted the processing of words in general, and of perceptual and cognitive viewpoint markers in particular, such that both perspective-taking abilities and self-reported perspective-taking traits facilitated the processing of these markers. All in all, our study extends earlier findings that social cognition is of importance for story reading, showing that individual differences in social-cognitive abilities are related to the linguistic processing of narrative viewpoint.

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    supplementary material
  • Healthy Brain Study Consortium, Aarts, E., Akkerman, A., Altgassen, M., Bartels, R., Beckers, D., Bevelander, K., Bijleveld, E., Blaney Davidson, E., Boleij, A., Bralten, J., Cillessen, T., Claassen, J., Cools, R., Cornelissen, I., Dresler, M., Eijsvogels, T., Faber, M., Fernández, G., Figner, B., Fritsche, M. and 67 moreHealthy Brain Study Consortium, Aarts, E., Akkerman, A., Altgassen, M., Bartels, R., Beckers, D., Bevelander, K., Bijleveld, E., Blaney Davidson, E., Boleij, A., Bralten, J., Cillessen, T., Claassen, J., Cools, R., Cornelissen, I., Dresler, M., Eijsvogels, T., Faber, M., Fernández, G., Figner, B., Fritsche, M., Füllbrunn, S., Gayet, S., Van Gelder, M. M. H. J., Van Gerven, M., Geurts, S., Greven, C. U., Groefsema, M., Haak, K., Hagoort, P., Hartman, Y., Van der Heijden, B., Hermans, E., Heuvelmans, V., Hintz, F., Den Hollander, J., Hulsman, A. M., Idesis, S., Jaeger, M., Janse, E., Janzing, J., Kessels, R. P. C., Karremans, J. C., De Kleijn, W., Klein, M., Klumpers, F., Kohn, N., Korzilius, H., Krahmer, B., De Lange, F., Van Leeuwen, J., Liu, H., Luijten, M., Manders, P., Manevska, K., Marques, J. P., Matthews, J., McQueen, J. M., Medendorp, P., Melis, R., Meyer, A. S., Oosterman, J., Overbeek, L., Peelen, M., Popma, J., Postma, G., Roelofs, K., Van Rossenberg, Y. G. T., Schaap, G., Scheepers, P., Selen, L., Starren, M., Swinkels, D. W., Tendolkar, I., Thijssen, D., Timmerman, H., Tutunji, R., Tuladhar, A., Veling, H., Verhagen, M., Verkroost, J., Vink, J., Vriezekolk, V., Vrijsen, J., Vyrastekova, J., Van der Wal, S., Willems, R. M., & Willemsen, A. (2021). Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. PLoS One, 16(12): e0260952. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.

    Abstract

    The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30-39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods.

    https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/7955

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    supplementary material
  • Heidlmayr, K., Ferragne, E., & Isel, F. (2021). Neuroplasticity in the phonological system: The PMN and the N400 as markers for the perception of non-native phonemic contrasts by late second language learners. Neuropsychologia, 156: 107831. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107831.

    Abstract

    Second language (L2) learners frequently encounter persistent difficulty in perceiving certain non-native sound contrasts, i.e., a phenomenon called “phonological deafness”. However, if extensive L2 experience leads to neuroplastic changes in the phonological system, then the capacity to discriminate non-native phonemic contrasts should progressively improve. Such perceptual changes should be attested by modifications at the neurophysiological level. We designed an EEG experiment in which the listeners’ perceptual capacities to discriminate second language phonemic contrasts influence the processing of lexical-semantic violations. Semantic congruency of critical words in a sentence context was driven by a phonemic contrast that was unique to the L2, English (e.g.,/ɪ/-/i:/, ship – sheep). Twenty-eight young adult native speakers of French with intermediate proficiency in English listened to sentences that contained either a semantically congruent or incongruent critical word (e.g., The anchor of the ship/*sheep was let down) while EEG was recorded. Three ERP effects were found to relate to increasing L2 proficiency: (1) a left frontal auditory N100 effect, (2) a smaller fronto-central phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) effect and (3) a semantic N400 effect. No effect of proficiency was found on oscillatory markers. The current findings suggest that neuronal plasticity in the human brain allows for the late acquisition of even hard-wired linguistic features such as the discrimination of phonemic contrasts in a second language. This is the first time that behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the critical role of neural plasticity underlying L2 phonological processing and its interdependence with semantic processing has been provided. Our data strongly support the idea that pieces of information from different levels of linguistic processing (e.g., phonological, semantic) strongly interact and influence each other during online language processing.

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    supplementary material
  • Heyselaar, E., Peeters, D., & Hagoort, P. (2021). Do we predict upcoming speech content in naturalistic environments? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 36(4), 440-461. doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1859568.

    Abstract

    The ability to predict upcoming actions is a hallmark of cognition. It remains unclear, however, whether the predictive behaviour observed in controlled lab environments generalises to rich, everyday settings. In four virtual reality experiments, we tested whether a well-established marker of linguistic prediction (anticipatory eye movements) replicated when increasing the naturalness of the paradigm by means of immersing participants in naturalistic scenes (Experiment 1), increasing the number of distractor objects (Experiment 2), modifying the proportion of predictable noun-referents (Experiment 3), and manipulating the location of referents relative to the joint attentional space (Experiment 4). Robust anticipatory eye movements were observed for Experiments 1–3. The anticipatory effect disappeared, however, in Experiment 4. Our findings suggest that predictive processing occurs in everyday communication if the referents are situated in the joint attentional space. Methodologically, our study confirms that ecological validity and experimental control may go hand-in-hand in the study of human predictive behaviour.
  • Hoeksema, N., Verga, L., Mengede, J., Van Roessel, C., Villanueva, S., Salazar-Casals, A., Rubio-Garcia, A., Curcic-Blake, B., Vernes, S. C., & Ravignani, A. (2021). Neuroanatomy of the grey seal brain: Bringing pinnipeds into the neurobiological study of vocal learning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 376: 20200252. doi:10.1098/rstb.2020.0252.

    Abstract

    Comparative studies of vocal learning and vocal non-learning animals can increase our understanding of the neurobiology and evolution of vocal learning and human speech. Mammalian vocal learning is understudied: most research has either focused on vocal learning in songbirds or its absence in non-human primates. Here we focus on a highly promising model species for the neurobiology of vocal learning: grey seals. We provide a neuroanatomical atlas (based on dissected brain slices and magnetic resonance images), a labelled MRI template, a 3D model with volumetric measurements of brain regions, and histological cortical stainings. Four main features of the grey seal brain stand out. (1) It is relatively big and highly convoluted. (2) It hosts a relatively large temporal lobe and cerebellum, structures which could support developed timing abilities and acoustic processing. (3) The cortex is similar to humans in thickness and shows the expected six-layered mammalian structure. (4) Expression of FoxP2 - a gene involved in vocal learning and spoken language - is present in deeper layers of the cortex. Our results could facilitate future studies targeting the neural and genetic underpinnings of mammalian vocal learning, thus bridging the research gap from songbirds to humans and non-human primates.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.
  • Horan Skilton, A., & Peeters, D. (2021). Cross-linguistic differences in demonstrative systems: Comparing spatial and non-spatial influences on demonstrative use in Ticuna and Dutch. Journal of Pragmatics, 180, 248-265. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.001.

    Abstract

    In all spoken languages, speakers use demonstratives – words like this and that – to refer to entities in their immediate environment. But which factors determine whether they use one demonstrative (this) or another (that)? Here we report the results of an experiment examining the effects of referent visibility, referent distance, and addressee location on the production of demonstratives by speakers of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru), an Amazonian language with four demonstratives, and speakers of Dutch (Indo-European; Netherlands, Belgium), which has two demonstratives. We found that Ticuna speakers’ use of demonstratives displayed effects of addressee location and referent distance, but not referent visibility. By contrast, under comparable conditions, Dutch speakers displayed sensitivity only to referent distance. Interestingly, we also observed that Ticuna speakers consistently used demonstratives in all referential utterances in our experimental paradigm, while Dutch speakers strongly preferred to use definite articles. Taken together, these findings shed light on the significant diversity found in demonstrative systems across languages. Additionally, they invite researchers studying exophoric demonstratives to broaden their horizons by cross-linguistically investigating the factors involved in speakers’ choice of demonstratives over other types of referring expressions, especially articles.
  • Huizeling, E., Wang, H., Holland, C., & Kessler, K. (2021). Changes in theta and alpha oscillatory signatures of attentional control in older and middle age. European Journal of Neuroscience, 54(1), 4314-4337. doi:10.1111/ejn.15259.

    Abstract

    Recent behavioural research has reported age-related changes in the costs of refocusing attention from a temporal (rapid serial visual presentation) to a spatial (visual search) task. Using magnetoencephalography, we have now compared the neural signatures of attention refocusing between three age groups (19–30, 40–49 and 60+ years) and found differences in task-related modulation and cortical localisation of alpha and theta oscillations. Efficient, faster refocusing in the youngest group compared to both middle age and older groups was reflected in parietal theta effects that were significantly reduced in the older groups. Residual parietal theta activity in older individuals was beneficial to attentional refocusing and could reflect preserved attention mechanisms. Slowed refocusing of attention, especially when a target required consolidation, in the older and middle-aged adults was accompanied by a posterior theta deficit and increased recruitment of frontal (middle-aged and older groups) and temporal (older group only) areas, demonstrating a posterior to anterior processing shift. Theta but not alpha modulation correlated with task performance, suggesting that older adults' stronger and more widely distributed alpha power modulation could reflect decreased neural precision or dedifferentiation but requires further investigation. Our results demonstrate that older adults present with different alpha and theta oscillatory signatures during attentional control, reflecting cognitive decline and, potentially, also different cognitive strategies in an attempt to compensate for decline.

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  • Levshina, N. (2021). Cross-linguistic trade-offs and causal relationships between cues to grammatical subject and object, and the problem of efficiency-related explanations. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 648200. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648200.

    Abstract

    Cross-linguistic studies focus on inverse correlations (trade-offs) between linguistic variables that reflect different cues to linguistic meanings. For example, if a language has no case marking, it is likely to rely on word order as a cue for identification of grammatical roles. Such inverse correlations are interpreted as manifestations of language users’ tendency to use language efficiently. The present study argues that this interpretation is problematic. Linguistic variables, such as the presence of case, or flexibility of word order, are aggregate properties, which do not represent the use of linguistic cues in context directly. Still, such variables can be useful for circumscribing the potential role of communicative efficiency in language evolution, if we move from cross-linguistic trade-offs to multivariate causal networks. This idea is illustrated by a case study of linguistic variables related to four types of Subject and Object cues: case marking, rigid word order of Subject and Object, tight semantics and verb-medial order. The variables are obtained from online language corpora in thirty languages, annotated with the Universal Dependencies. The causal model suggests that the relationships between the variables can be explained predominantly by sociolinguistic factors, leaving little space for a potential impact of efficient linguistic behavior.
  • Levshina, N. (2021). Conditional inference trees and random forests. In M. Paquot, & T. Gries (Eds.), Practical Handbook of Corpus Linguistics (pp. 611-643). New York: Springer.
  • Levshina, N., & Moran, S. (2021). Efficiency in human languages: Corpus evidence for universal principles. Linguistics Vanguard, 7(s3): 20200081. doi:10.1515/lingvan-2020-0081.

    Abstract

    Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in communicative efficiency. It has been argued that language users act efficiently, saving effort for processing and articulation, and that language structure and use reflect this tendency. The emergence of new corpus data has brought to life numerous studies on efficient language use in the lexicon, in morphosyntax, and in discourse and phonology in different languages. In this introductory paper, we discuss communicative efficiency in human languages, focusing on evidence of efficient language use found in multilingual corpora. The evidence suggests that efficiency is a universal feature of human language. We provide an overview of different manifestations of efficiency on different levels of language structure, and we discuss the major questions and findings so far, some of which are addressed for the first time in the contributions in this special collection.
  • Levshina, N., & Moran, S. (Eds.). (2021). Efficiency in human languages: Corpus evidence for universal principles [Special Issue]. Linguistics Vanguard, 7(s3).
  • Levshina, N. (2021). Communicative efficiency and differential case marking: A reverse-engineering approach. Linguistics Vanguard, 7(s3): 20190087. doi:10.1515/lingvan-2019-0087.
  • Lopopolo, A., Van de Bosch, A., Petersson, K. M., & Willems, R. M. (2021). Distinguishing syntactic operations in the brain: Dependency and phrase-structure parsing. Neurobiology of Language, 2(1), 152-175. doi:10.1162/nol_a_00029.

    Abstract

    Finding the structure of a sentence — the way its words hold together to convey meaning — is a fundamental step in language comprehension. Several brain regions, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the left anterior temporal pole, are supposed to support this operation. The exact role of these areas is nonetheless still debated. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that different brain regions could be sensitive to different kinds of syntactic computations. We compare the fit of phrase-structure and dependency structure descriptors to activity in brain areas using fMRI. Our results show a division between areas with regard to the type of structure computed, with the left ATP and left IFG favouring dependency structures and left pSTG favouring phrase structures.
  • Mak, M., & Willems, R. M. (2021). Eyelit: Eye movement and reader response data during literary reading. Journal of open humanities data, 7: 25. doi:10.5334/johd.49.

    Abstract

    An eye-tracking data set is described of 102 participants reading three Dutch literary short stories each (7790 words in total per participant). The pre-processed data set includes (1) Fixation report, (2) Saccade report, (3) Interest Area report, (4) Trial report (aggregated data for each page), (5) Sample report (sampling rate = 500 Hz), (6) Questionnaire data on reading experiences and participant characteristics, and (7) word characteristics for all words (with the potential of calculating additional word characteristics). It is stored on DANS, and can be used to study word characteristics or literary reading and all facets of eye movements.
  • Mak, M., & Willems, R. M. (2021). Mental simulation during literary reading. In D. Kuiken, & A. M. Jacobs (Eds.), Handbook of empirical literary studies (pp. 63-84). Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Abstract

    Readers experience a number of sensations during reading. They do
    not – or do not only – process words and sentences in a detached, abstract
    manner. Instead they “perceive” what they read about. They see descriptions of
    scenery, feel what characters feel, and hear the sounds in a story. These sensa-
    tions tend to be grouped under the umbrella terms “mental simulation” and
    “mental imagery.” This chapter provides an overview of empirical research on
    the role of mental simulation during literary reading. Our chapter also discusses
    what mental simulation is and how it relates to mental imagery. Moreover, it
    explores how mental simulation plays a role in leading models of literary read-
    ing and investigates under what circumstances mental simulation occurs dur-
    ing literature reading. Finally, the effect of mental simulation on the literary
    reader’s experience is discussed, and suggestions and unresolved issues in this
    field are formulated.
  • Mickan, A., McQueen, J. M., Valentini, B., Piai, V., & Lemhöfer, K. (2021). Electrophysiological evidence for cross-language interference in foreign-language attrition. Neuropsychologia, 155: 107795. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107795.

    Abstract

    Foreign language attrition (FLA) appears to be driven by interference from other, more recently-used languages (Mickan et al., 2020). Here we tracked these interference dynamics electrophysiologically to further our understanding of the underlying processes. Twenty-seven Dutch native speakers learned 70 new Italian words over two days. On a third day, EEG was recorded as they performed naming tasks on half of these words in English and, finally, as their memory for all the Italian words was tested in a picture-naming task. Replicating Mickan et al., recall was slower and tended to be less complete for Italian words that were interfered with (i.e., named in English) than for words that were not. These behavioral interference effects were accompanied by an enhanced frontal N2 and a decreased late positivity (LPC) for interfered compared to not-interfered items. Moreover, interfered items elicited more theta power. We also found an increased N2 during the interference phase for items that participants were later slower to retrieve in Italian. We interpret the N2 and theta effects as markers of interference, in line with the idea that Italian retrieval at final test is hampered by competition from recently practiced English translations. The LPC, in turn, reflects the consequences of interference: the reduced accessibility of interfered Italian labels. Finally, that retrieval ease at final test was related to the degree of interference during previous English retrieval shows that FLA is already set in motion during the interference phase, and hence can be the direct consequence of using other languages.

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    data via Donders Repository
  • Misersky, J., Slivac, K., Hagoort, P., & Flecken, M. (2021). The State of the Onion: Grammatical aspect modulates object representation during event comprehension. Cognition, 214: 104744. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104744.

    Abstract

    The present ERP study assessed whether grammatical aspect is used as a cue in online event comprehension, in particular when reading about events in which an object is visually changed. While perfective aspect cues holistic event representations, including an event's endpoint, progressive aspect highlights intermediate phases of an event. In a 2 × 3 design, participants read SVO sentences describing a change-of-state event (e.g., to chop an onion), with grammatical Aspect manipulated (perfective “chopped” vs progressive “was chopping”). Thereafter, they saw a Picture of an object either having undergone substantial state-change (SC; a chopped onion), no state-change (NSC; an onion in its original state) or an unrelated object (U; a cactus, acting as control condition). Their task was to decide whether the object in the Picture was mentioned in the sentence. We focused on N400 modulation, with ERPs time-locked to picture onset. U pictures elicited an N400 response as expected, suggesting detection of categorical mismatches in object type. For SC and NSC pictures, a whole-head follow-up analysis revealed a P300, implying people were engaged in detailed evaluation of pictures of matching objects. SC pictures received most positive responses overall. Crucially, there was an interaction of Aspect and Picture: SC pictures resulted in a higher amplitude P300 after sentences in the perfective compared to the progressive. Thus, while the perfective cued for a holistic event representation, including the resultant state of the affected object (i.e., the chopped onion) constraining object representations online, the progressive defocused event completion and object-state change. Grammatical aspect thus guided online event comprehension by cueing the visual representation(s) of an object's state.
  • Montero-Melis, G. (2021). Consistency in motion event encoding across languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 625153. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.625153.

    Abstract

    Syntactic templates serve as schemas, allowing speakers to describe complex events in a systematic fashion. Motion events have long served as a prime example of how different languages favor different syntactic frames, in turn biasing their speakers towards different event conceptualizations. However, there is also variability in how motion events are syntactically framed within languages. Here we measure the consistency in event encoding in two languages, Spanish and Swedish. We test a dominant account in the literature, namely that variability within a language can be explained by specific properties of the events. This event-properties account predicts that descriptions of one and the same event should be consistent within a language, even in languages where there is overall variability in the use of syntactic frames. Spanish and Swedish speakers (N=84) described 32 caused motion events. While the most frequent syntactic framing in each language was as expected based on typology (Spanish: verb-framed, Swedish: satellite-framed, cf. Talmy, 2000), Swedish descriptions were substantially more consistent than Spanish descriptions. Swedish speakers almost invariably encoded all events with a single syntactic frame and systematically conveyed manner of motion. Spanish descriptions, in contrast, varied much more regarding syntactic framing and expression of manner. Crucially, variability in Spanish descriptions was not mainly a function of differences between events, as predicted by the event-properties account. Rather, Spanish variability in syntactic framing was driven by speaker biases. A similar picture arose for whether Spanish descriptions expressed manner information or not: Even after accounting for the effect of syntactic choice, a large portion of the variance in Spanish manner encoding remained attributable to differences among speakers. The results show that consistency in motion event encoding starkly differs across languages: Some languages (like Swedish) bias their speakers towards a particular linguistic event schema much more than others (like Spanish). Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the typology of event framing, theories on the relationship between language and thought, and speech planning. In addition, the tools employed here to quantify variability can be applied to other domains of language.

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    data and analysis scripts
  • Nieuwland, M. S. (2021). How ‘rational’ is semantic prediction? A critique and re-analysis of. Cognition, 215: 104848. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104848.

    Abstract

    In a recent article in Cognition, Delaney-Busch et al. (2019) claim evidence for ‘rational’, Bayesian adaptation of semantic predictions, using ERP data from Lau, Holcomb, and Kuperberg (2013). Participants read associatively related and unrelated prime-target word pairs in a first block with only 10% related trials and a second block with 50%. Related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, and this difference was strongest in the second block, suggesting greater engagement in predictive processing. Using a rational adaptor model, Delaney-Busch et al. argue that the stronger N400 reduction for related words in the second block developed as a function of the number of related trials, and concluded therefore that participants predicted related words more strongly when their predictions were fulfilled more often. In this critique, I discuss two critical flaws in their analyses, namely the confounding of prediction effects with those of lexical frequency and the neglect of data from the first block. Re-analyses suggest a different picture: related words by themselves did not yield support for their conclusion, and the effect of relatedness gradually strengthened in othe two blocks in a similar way. Therefore, the N400 did not yield evidence that participants rationally adapted their semantic predictions. Within the framework proposed by Delaney-Busch et al., presumed semantic predictions may even be thought of as ‘irrational’. While these results yielded no evidence for rational or probabilistic prediction, they do suggest that participants became increasingly better at predicting target words from prime words.
  • Nieuwland, M. S. (2021). Commentary: Rational adaptation in lexical prediction: The influence of prediction strength. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 735849. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735849.
  • Ortega, G., & Ostarek, M. (2021). Evidence for visual simulation during sign language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(10), 2158-2166. doi:10.1037/xge0001041.

    Abstract

    What are the mental processes that allow us to understand the meaning of words? A large body of evidence suggests that when we process speech, we engage a process of perceptual simulation whereby sensorimotor states are activated as a source of semantic information. But does the same process take place when words are expressed with the hands and perceived through the eyes? To date, it is not known whether perceptual simulation is also observed in sign languages, the manual-visual languages of deaf communities. Continuous flash suppression is a method that addresses this question by measuring the effect of language on detection sensitivity to images that are suppressed from awareness. In spoken languages, it has been reported that listening to a word (e.g., “bottle”) activates visual features of an object (e.g., the shape of a bottle), and this in turn facilitates image detection. An interesting but untested question is whether the same process takes place when deaf signers see signs. We found that processing signs boosted the detection of congruent images, making otherwise invisible pictures visible. A boost of visual processing was observed only for signers but not for hearing nonsigners, suggesting that the penetration of the visual system through signs requires a fully fledged manual language. Iconicity did not modulate the effect of signs on detection, neither in signers nor in hearing nonsigners. This suggests that visual simulation during language processing occurs regardless of language modality (sign vs. speech) or iconicity, pointing to a foundational role of simulation for language comprehension.

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  • Ostarek, M., & Bottini, R. (2021). Towards strong inference in research on embodiment – Possibilities and limitations of causal paradigms. Journal of Cognition, 4(1): 5. doi:10.5334/joc.139.

    Abstract

    A central question in the cognitive sciences is which role embodiment plays for high-
    level cognitive functions, such as conceptual processing. here, we propose that one
    reason why progress regarding this question has been slow is a lacking focus on what
    platt (1964) called “strong inference”. strong inference is possible when results from an
    experimental paradigm are not merely consistent with a hypothesis, but they provide
    decisive evidence for one particular hypothesis compared to competing hypotheses. We
    discuss how causal paradigms, which test the functional relevance of sensory-motor
    processes for high-level cognitive functions, can move the field forward. in particular,
    we explore how congenital sensory-motor disorders, acquired sensory-motor deficits,
    and interference paradigms with healthy participants can be utilized as an opportunity
    to better understand the role of sensory experience in conceptual processing. Whereas
    all three approaches can bring about valuable insights, we highlight that the study of
    congenitally and acquired sensorimotor disorders is particularly effective in the case
    of conceptual domains with strong unimodal basis (e.g., colors), whereas interference
    paradigms with healthy participants have a broader application, avoid many of the
    practical and interpretational limitations of patient studies, and allow a systematic
    and step-wise progressive inference approach to causal mechanisms.
  • Poletiek, F. H., Monaghan, P., van de Velde, M., & Bocanegra, B. R. (2021). The semantics-syntax interface: Learning grammatical categories and hierarchical syntactic structure through semantics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(7), 1141-1155. doi:10.1037/xlm0001044.

    Abstract

    Language is infinitely productive because syntax defines dependencies between grammatical categories of words and constituents, so there is interchangeability of these words and constituents within syntactic structures. Previous laboratory-based studies of language learning have shown that complex language structures like hierarchical center embeddings (HCE) are very hard to learn, but these studies tend to simplify the language learning task, omitting semantics and focusing either on learning dependencies between individual words or on acquiring the category membership of those words. We tested whether categories of words and dependencies between these categories and between constituents, could be learned simultaneously in an artificial language with HCE’s, when accompanied by scenes illustrating the sentence’s intended meaning. Across four experiments, we showed that participants were able to learn the HCE language varying words across categories and category-dependencies, and constituents across constituents-dependencies. They also were able to generalize the learned structure to novel sentences and novel scenes that they had not previously experienced. This simultaneous learning resulting in a productive complex language system, may be a consequence of grounding complex syntax acquisition in semantics.
  • Pouw, W., Proksch, S., Drijvers, L., Gamba, M., Holler, J., Kello, C., Schaefer, R. S., & Wiggins, G. A. (2021). Multilevel rhythms in multimodal communication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 376: 20200334. doi:10.1098/rstb.2020.0334.

    Abstract

    It is now widely accepted that the brunt of animal communication is conducted via several modalities, e.g. acoustic and visual, either simultaneously or sequentially. This is a laudable multimodal turn relative to traditional accounts of temporal aspects of animal communication which have focused on a single modality at a time. However, the fields that are currently contributing to the study of multimodal communication are highly varied, and still largely disconnected given their sole focus on a particular level of description or their particular concern with human or non-human animals. Here, we provide an integrative overview of converging findings that show how multimodal processes occurring at neural, bodily, as well as social interactional levels each contribute uniquely to the complex rhythms that characterize communication in human and non-human animals. Though we address findings for each of these levels independently, we conclude that the most important challenge in this field is to identify how processes at these different levels connect.
  • Preisig, B., Riecke, L., Sjerps, M. J., Kösem, A., Kop, B. R., Bramson, B., Hagoort, P., & Hervais-Adelman, A. (2021). Selective modulation of interhemispheric connectivity by transcranial alternating current stimulation influences binaural integration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(7): e2015488118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2015488118.

    Abstract

    Brain connectivity plays a major role in the encoding, transfer, and
    integration of sensory information. Interregional synchronization
    of neural oscillations in the γ-frequency band has been suggested
    as a key mechanism underlying perceptual integration. In a recent
    study, we found evidence for this hypothesis showing that the
    modulation of interhemispheric oscillatory synchrony by means of
    bihemispheric high-density transcranial alternating current stimulation
    (HD-TACS) affects binaural integration of dichotic acoustic features.
    Here, we aimed to establish a direct link between oscillatory
    synchrony, effective brain connectivity, and binaural integration.
    We experimentally manipulated oscillatory synchrony (using bihemispheric
    γ-TACS with different interhemispheric phase lags) and
    assessed the effect on effective brain connectivity and binaural integration
    (as measured with functional MRI and a dichotic listening
    task, respectively). We found that TACS reduced intrahemispheric
    connectivity within the auditory cortices and antiphase (interhemispheric
    phase lag 180°) TACS modulated connectivity between the
    two auditory cortices. Importantly, the changes in intra- and interhemispheric
    connectivity induced by TACS were correlated with
    changes in perceptual integration. Our results indicate that γ-band
    synchronization between the two auditory cortices plays a functional
    role in binaural integration, supporting the proposed role
    of interregional oscillatory synchrony in perceptual integration.
  • Santin, M., Van Hout, A., & Flecken, M. (2021). Event endings in memory and language. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 36(5), 625-648. doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1868542.

    Abstract

    Memory is fundamental for comprehending and segmenting the flow of activity around us into units called “events”. Here, we investigate the effect of the movement dynamics of actions (ceased, ongoing) and the inner structure of events (with or without object-state change) on people's event memory. Furthermore, we investigate how describing events, and the meaning and form of verb predicates used (denoting a culmination moment, or not, in single verbs or verb-satellite constructions), affects event memory. Before taking a surprise recognition task, Spanish and Mandarin speakers (who lexicalise culmination in different verb predicate forms) watched short videos of events, either in a non-verbal (probe-recognition) or a verbal experiment (event description). Results show that culminated events (i.e. ceased change-of-state events) were remembered best across experiments. Language use showed to enhance memory overall. Further, the form of the verb predicates used for denoting culmination had a moderate effect on memory.
  • Sauppe, S., & Flecken, M. (2021). Speaking for seeing: Sentence structure guides visual event apprehension. Cognition, 206: 104516. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104516.

    Abstract

    Human experience and communication are centred on events, and event apprehension is a rapid process that draws on the visual perception and immediate categorization of event roles (“who does what to whom”). We demonstrate a role for syntactic structure in visual information uptake for event apprehension. An event structure foregrounding either the agent or patient was activated during speaking, transiently modulating the apprehension of subsequently viewed unrelated events. Speakers of Dutch described pictures with actives and passives (agent and patient foregrounding, respectively). First fixations on pictures of unrelated events that were briefly presented (for 300 ms) next were influenced by the active or passive structure of the previously produced sentence. Going beyond the study of how single words cue object perception, we show that sentence structure guides the viewpoint taken during rapid event apprehension.

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  • Schubotz, L., Holler, J., Drijvers, L., & Ozyurek, A. (2021). Aging and working memory modulate the ability to benefit from visible speech and iconic gestures during speech-in-noise comprehension. Psychological Research, 85, 1997-2011. doi:10.1007/s00426-020-01363-8.

    Abstract

    When comprehending speech-in-noise (SiN), younger and older adults benefit from seeing the speaker’s mouth, i.e. visible speech. Younger adults additionally benefit from manual iconic co-speech gestures. Here, we investigate to what extent younger and older adults benefit from perceiving both visual articulators while comprehending SiN, and whether this is modulated by working memory and inhibitory control. Twenty-eight younger and 28 older adults performed a word recognition task in three visual contexts: mouth blurred (speech-only), visible speech, or visible speech + iconic gesture. The speech signal was either clear or embedded in multitalker babble. Additionally, there were two visual-only conditions (visible speech, visible speech + gesture). Accuracy levels for both age groups were higher when both visual articulators were present compared to either one or none. However, older adults received a significantly smaller benefit than younger adults, although they performed equally well in speech-only and visual-only word recognition. Individual differences in verbal working memory and inhibitory control partly accounted for age-related performance differences. To conclude, perceiving iconic gestures in addition to visible speech improves younger and older adults’ comprehension of SiN. Yet, the ability to benefit from this additional visual information is modulated by age and verbal working memory. Future research will have to show whether these findings extend beyond the single word level.

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  • Slivac, K., Hervais-Adelman, A., Hagoort, P., & Flecken, M. (2021). Linguistic labels cue biological motion perception and misperception. Scientific Reports, 11: 17239. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-96649-1.

    Abstract

    Linguistic labels exert a particularly strong top-down influence on perception. The potency of this influence has been ascribed to their ability to evoke category-diagnostic features of concepts. In doing this, they facilitate the formation of a perceptual template concordant with those features, effectively biasing perceptual activation towards the labelled category. In this study, we employ a cueing paradigm with moving, point-light stimuli across three experiments, in order to examine how the number of biological motion features (form and kinematics) encoded in lexical cues modulates the efficacy of lexical top-down influence on perception. We find that the magnitude of lexical influence on biological motion perception rises as a function of the number of biological motion-relevant features carried by both cue and target. When lexical cues encode multiple biological motion features, this influence is robust enough to mislead participants into reporting erroneous percepts, even when a masking level yielding high performance is used.
  • Todorova, L. (2021). Language bias in visually driven decisions: Computational neurophysiological mechanisms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Trujillo, J. P., Ozyurek, A., Holler, J., & Drijvers, L. (2021). Speakers exhibit a multimodal Lombard effect in noise. Scientific Reports, 11: 16721. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-95791-0.

    Abstract

    In everyday conversation, we are often challenged with communicating in non-ideal settings, such as in noise. Increased speech intensity and larger mouth movements are used to overcome noise in constrained settings (the Lombard effect). How we adapt to noise in face-to-face interaction, the natural environment of human language use, where manual gestures are ubiquitous, is currently unknown. We asked Dutch adults to wear headphones with varying levels of multi-talker babble while attempting to communicate action verbs to one another. Using quantitative motion capture and acoustic analyses, we found that (1) noise is associated with increased speech intensity and enhanced gesture kinematics and mouth movements, and (2) acoustic modulation only occurs when gestures are not present, while kinematic modulation occurs regardless of co-occurring speech. Thus, in face-to-face encounters the Lombard effect is not constrained to speech but is a multimodal phenomenon where the visual channel carries most of the communicative burden.

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  • Van Bergen, G., & Hogeweg, L. (2021). Managing interpersonal discourse expectations: a comparative analysis of contrastive discourse particles in Dutch. Linguistics, 59(2), 333-360. doi:10.1515/ling-2021-0020.

    Abstract

    In this article we investigate how speakers manage discourse expectations in dialogue by comparing the meaning and use of three Dutch discourse particles, i.e. wel, toch and eigenlijk, which all express a contrast between their host utterance and a discourse-based expectation. The core meanings of toch, wel and eigenlijk are formally distinguished on the basis of two intersubjective parameters: (i) whether the particle marks alignment or misalignment between speaker and addressee discourse beliefs, and (ii) whether the particle requires an assessment of the addressee’s representation of mutual discourse beliefs. By means of a quantitative corpus study, we investigate to what extent the intersubjective meaning distinctions between wel, toch and eigenlijk are reflected in statistical usage patterns across different social situations. Results suggest that wel, toch and eigenlijk are lexicalizations of distinct generalized politeness strategies when expressing contrast in social interaction. Our findings call for an interdisciplinary approach to discourse particles in order to enhance our understanding of their functions in language.
  • Van Paridon, J., Ostarek, M., Arunkumar, M., & Huettig, F. (2021). Does neuronal recycling result in destructive competition? The influence of learning to read on the recognition of faces. Psychological Science, 32, 459-465. doi:10.1177/0956797620971652.

    Abstract

    Written language, a human cultural invention, is far too recent for dedicated neural
    infrastructure to have evolved in its service. Culturally newly acquired skills (e.g. reading) thus ‘recycle’ evolutionarily older circuits that originally evolved for different, but similar functions (e.g. visual object recognition). The destructive competition hypothesis predicts that this neuronal recycling has detrimental behavioral effects on the cognitive functions a cortical network originally evolved for. In a study with 97 literate, low-literate, and illiterate participants from the same socioeconomic background we find that even after adjusting for cognitive ability and test-taking familiarity, learning to read is associated with an increase, rather than a decrease, in object recognition abilities. These results are incompatible with the claim that neuronal recycling results in destructive competition and consistent with the possibility that learning to read instead fine-tunes general object recognition mechanisms, a hypothesis that needs further neuroscientific investigation.

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  • Vega-Mendoza, M., Pickering, M. J., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2021). Concurrent use of animacy and event-knowledge during comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials. Neuropsychologia, 152: 107724. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107724.

    Abstract

    In two ERP experiments, we investigated whether readers prioritize animacy over real-world event-knowledge during sentence comprehension. We used the paradigm of Paczynski and Kuperberg (2012), who argued that animacy is prioritized based on the observations that the ‘related anomaly effect’ (reduced N400s for context-related anomalous words compared to unrelated words) does not occur for animacy violations, and that animacy violations but not relatedness violations elicit P600 effects. Participants read passive sentences with plausible agents (e.g., The prescription for the mental disorder was written by the psychiatrist) or implausible agents that varied in animacy and semantic relatedness (schizophrenic/guard/pill/fence). In Experiment 1 (with a plausibility judgment task), plausible sentences elicited smaller N400s relative to all types of implausible sentences. Crucially, animate words elicited smaller N400s than inanimate words, and related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, but Bayesian analysis revealed substantial evidence against an interaction between animacy and relatedness. Moreover, at the P600 time-window, we observed more positive ERPs for animate than inanimate words and for related than unrelated words at anterior regions. In Experiment 2 (without judgment task), we observed an N400 effect with animacy violations, but no other effects. Taken together, the results of our experiments fail to support a prioritized role of animacy information over real-world event-knowledge, but they support an interactive, constraint-based view on incremental semantic processing.
  • Willems, R. M., & Peelen, M. V. (2021). How context changes the neural basis of perception and language. iScience, 24(5): 102392. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102392.

    Abstract

    Cognitive processes—from basic sensory analysis to language understanding—are typically contextualized. While the importance of considering context for understanding cognition has long been recognized in psychology and philosophy, it has not yet had much impact on cognitive neuroscience research, where cognition is often studied in decontextualized paradigms. Here, we present examples of recent studies showing that context changes the neural basis of diverse cognitive processes, including perception, attention, memory, and language. Within the domains of perception and language, we review neuroimaging results showing that context interacts with stimulus processing, changes activity in classical perception and language regions, and recruits additional brain regions that contribute crucially to naturalistic perception and language. We discuss how contextualized cognitive neuroscience will allow for discovering new principles of the mind and brain.
  • Zora, H., & Csépe, V. (2021). Perception of Prosodic Modulations of Linguistic and Paralinguistic Origin: Evidence From Early Auditory Event-Related Potentials. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 15: 797487. doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.797487.

    Abstract

    How listeners handle prosodic cues of linguistic and paralinguistic origin is a central question for spoken communication. In the present EEG study, we addressed this question by examining neural responses to variations in pitch accent (linguistic) and affective (paralinguistic) prosody in Swedish words, using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. The results indicated that changes in pitch accent and affective prosody elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at around 200 ms, confirming the brain’s pre-attentive response to any prosodic modulation. The MMN amplitude was, however, statistically larger to the deviation in affective prosody in comparison to the deviation in pitch accent and affective prosody combined, which is in line with previous research indicating not only a larger MMN response to affective prosody in comparison to neutral prosody but also a smaller MMN response to multidimensional deviants than unidimensional ones. The results, further, showed a significant P3a response to the affective prosody change in comparison to the pitch accent change at around 300 ms, in accordance with previous findings showing an enhanced positive response to emotional stimuli. The present findings provide evidence for distinct neural processing of different prosodic cues, and statistically confirm the intrinsic perceptual and motivational salience of paralinguistic information in spoken communication.
  • Aparicio, X., Heidlmayr, K., & Isel, F. (2017). Inhibition efficiency in highly proficient bilinguals and simultaneous interpreters: Evidence from language switching and stroop tasks. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 46, 1427-1451. doi:10.1007/s10936-017-9501-3.

    Abstract

    The present behavioral study aimed to examine the impact of language control expertise on two domain-general control processes, i.e. active inhibition of competing representations and overcoming of inhibition. We compared how Simultaneous Interpreters (SI) and Highly Proficient Bilinguals—two groups assumed to differ in language control capacity—performed executive tasks involving specific inhibition processes. In Experiment 1 (language decision task), both active and overcoming of inhibition processes are involved, while in Experiment 2 (bilingual Stroop task) only interference suppression is supposed to be required. The results of Experiment 1 showed a language switching effect only for the highly proficient bilinguals, potentially because overcoming of inhibition requires more cognitive resources than in SI. Nevertheless, both groups performed similarly on the Stroop task in Experiment 2, which suggests that active inhibition may work similarly in both groups. These contrasting results suggest that overcoming of inhibition may be harder to master than active inhibition. Taken together, these data indicate that some executive control processes may be less sensitive to the degree of expertise in bilingual language control than others. Our findings lend support to psycholinguistic models of bilingualism postulating a higher-order mechanism regulating language activation.
  • Armeni, K., Willems, R. M., & Frank, S. (2017). Probabilistic language models in cognitive neuroscience: Promises and pitfalls. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 83, 579-588. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.09.001.

    Abstract

    Cognitive neuroscientists of language comprehension study how neural computations relate to cognitive computations during comprehension. On the cognitive part of the equation, it is important that the computations and processing complexity are explicitly defined. Probabilistic language models can be used to give a computationally explicit account of language complexity during comprehension. Whereas such models have so far predominantly been evaluated against behavioral data, only recently have the models been used to explain neurobiological signals. Measures obtained from these models emphasize the probabilistic, information-processing view of language understanding and provide a set of tools that can be used for testing neural hypotheses about language comprehension. Here, we provide a cursory review of the theoretical foundations and example neuroimaging studies employing probabilistic language models. We highlight the advantages and potential pitfalls of this approach and indicate avenues for future research
  • De Boer, M., Kokal, I., Blokpoel, M., Liu, R., Stolk, A., Roelofs, K., Van Rooij, I., & Toni, I. (2017). Oxytocin modulates human communication by enhancing cognitive exploration. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 86, 64-72. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.09.010.

    Abstract

    Oxytocin is a neuropeptide known to influence how humans share material resources. Here we explore whether oxytocin influences how we share knowledge. We focus on two distinguishing features of human communication, namely the ability to select communicative signals that disambiguate the many-to-many mappings that exist between a signal’s form and meaning, and adjustments of those signals to the presumed cognitive characteristics of the addressee (“audience design”). Fifty-five males participated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled experiment involving the intranasal administration of oxytocin. The participants produced novel non-verbal communicative signals towards two different addressees, an adult or a child, in an experimentally-controlled live interactive setting. We found that oxytocin administration drives participants to generate signals of higher referential quality, i.e. signals that disambiguate more communicative problems; and to rapidly adjust those communicative signals to what the addressee understands. The combined effects of oxytocin on referential quality and audience design fit with the notion that oxytocin administration leads participants to explore more pervasively behaviors that can convey their intention, and diverse models of the addressees. These findings suggest that, besides affecting prosocial drive and salience of social cues, oxytocin influences how we share knowledge by promoting cognitive exploration
  • Bosker, H. R., & Kösem, A. (2017). An entrained rhythm's frequency, not phase, influences temporal sampling of speech. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2416-2420). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-73.

    Abstract

    Brain oscillations have been shown to track the slow amplitude fluctuations in speech during comprehension. Moreover, there is evidence that these stimulus-induced cortical rhythms may persist even after the driving stimulus has ceased. However, how exactly this neural entrainment shapes speech perception remains debated. This behavioral study investigated whether and how the frequency and phase of an entrained rhythm would influence the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. In two behavioral experiments, participants were presented with slow and fast isochronous tone sequences, followed by Dutch target words ambiguous between as /ɑs/ “ash” (with a short vowel) and aas /a:s/ “bait” (with a long vowel). Target words were presented at various phases of the entrained rhythm. Both experiments revealed effects of the frequency of the tone sequence on target word perception: fast sequences biased listeners to more long /a:s/ responses. However, no evidence for phase effects could be discerned. These findings show that an entrained rhythm’s frequency, but not phase, influences the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. These outcomes are compatible with theories suggesting that sensory timing is evaluated relative to entrained frequency. Furthermore, they suggest that phase tracking of (syllabic) rhythms by theta oscillations plays a limited role in speech parsing.
  • Bouhali, F., Mongelli, V., & Cohen, L. (2017). Musical literacy shifts asymmetries in the ventral visual cortex. NeuroImage, 156, 445-455. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.04.027.

    Abstract

    The acquisition of literacy has a profound impact on the functional specialization and lateralization of the visual cortex. Due to the overall lateralization of the language network, specialization for printed words develops in the left occipitotemporal cortex, allegedly inducing a secondary shift of visual face processing to the right, in literate as compared to illiterate subjects. Applying the same logic to the acquisition of high-level musical literacy, we predicted that, in musicians as compared to non-musicians, occipitotemporal activations should show a leftward shift for music reading, and an additional rightward push for face perception. To test these predictions, professional musicians and non-musicians viewed pictures of musical notation, faces, words, tools and houses in the MRI, and laterality was assessed in the ventral stream combining ROI and voxel-based approaches. The results supported both predictions, and allowed to locate the leftward shift to the inferior temporal gyrus and the rightward shift to the fusiform cortex. Moreover, these laterality shifts generalized to categories other than music and faces. Finally, correlation measures across subjects did not support a causal link between the leftward and rightward shifts. Thus the acquisition of an additional perceptual expertise extensively modifies the laterality pattern in the visual system

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  • Bulut, T., Hung, Y., Tzeng, O., & Wu, D. (2017). Neural correlates of processing sentences and compound words in Chinese. PLOS ONE, 12(12): e0188526. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0188526.
  • Coco, M. I., Araujo, S., & Petersson, K. M. (2017). Disentangling stimulus plausibility and contextual congruency: Electro-physiological evidence for differential cognitive dynamics. Neuropsychologia, 96, 150-163. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.12.008.

    Abstract

    Expectancy mechanisms are routinely used by the cognitive system in stimulus processing and in anticipation of appropriate responses. Electrophysiology research has documented negative shifts of brain activity when expectancies are violated within a local stimulus context (e.g., reading an implausible word in a sentence) or more globally between consecutive stimuli (e.g., a narrative of images with an incongruent end). In this EEG study, we examine the interaction between expectancies operating at the level of stimulus plausibility and at more global level of contextual congruency to provide evidence for, or against, a disassociation of the underlying processing mechanisms. We asked participants to verify the congruency of pairs of cross-modal stimuli (a sentence and a scene), which varied in plausibility. ANOVAs on ERP amplitudes in selected windows of interest show that congruency violation has longer-lasting (from 100 to 500 ms) and more widespread effects than plausibility violation (from 200 to 400 ms). We also observed critical interactions between these factors, whereby incongruent and implausible pairs elicited stronger negative shifts than their congruent counterpart, both early on (100–200 ms) and between 400–500 ms. Our results suggest that the integration mechanisms are sensitive to both global and local effects of expectancy in a modality independent manner. Overall, we provide novel insights into the interdependence of expectancy during meaning integration of cross-modal stimuli in a verification task
  • Dai, B., McQueen, J. M., Hagoort, P., & Kösem, A. (2017). Pure linguistic interference during comprehension of competing speech signals. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141, EL249-EL254. doi:10.1121/1.4977590.

    Abstract

    Speech-in-speech perception can be challenging because the processing of competing acoustic and linguistic information leads to informational masking. Here, a method is proposed to isolate the linguistic component of informational masking while keeping the distractor's acoustic information unchanged. Participants performed a dichotic listening cocktail-party task before and after training on 4-band noise-vocoded sentences that became intelligible through the training. Distracting noise-vocoded speech interfered more with target speech comprehension after training (i.e., when intelligible) than before training (i.e., when unintelligible) at −3 dB SNR. These findings confirm that linguistic and acoustic information have distinct masking effects during speech-in‐speech comprehension
  • Fitz, H., & Chang, F. (2017). Meaningful questions: The acquisition of auxiliary inversion in a connectionist model of sentence production. Cognition, 166, 225-250. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.008.

    Abstract

    Nativist theories have argued that language involves syntactic principles which are unlearnable from the input children receive. A paradigm case of these innate principles is the structure dependence of auxiliary inversion in complex polar questions (Chomsky, 1968, 1975, 1980). Computational approaches have focused on the properties of the input in explaining how children acquire these questions. In contrast, we argue that messages are structured in a way that supports structure dependence in syntax. We demonstrate this approach within a connectionist model of sentence production (Chang, 2009) which learned to generate a range of complex polar questions from a structured message without positive exemplars in the input. The model also generated different types of error in development that were similar in magnitude to those in children (e.g., auxiliary doubling, Ambridge, Rowland, & Pine, 2008; Crain & Nakayama, 1987). Through model comparisons we trace how meaning constraints and linguistic experience interact during the acquisition of auxiliary inversion. Our results suggest that auxiliary inversion rules in English can be acquired without innate syntactic principles, as long as it is assumed that speakers who ask complex questions express messages that are structured into multiple propositions
  • Frank, S. L., & Willems, R. M. (2017). Word predictability and semantic similarity show distinct patterns of brain activity during language comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(9), 1192-1203. doi:10.1080/23273798.2017.1323109.

    Abstract

    We investigate the effects of two types of relationship between the words of a sentence or text – predictability and semantic similarity – by reanalysing electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from studies in which participants comprehend naturalistic stimuli. Each content word's predictability given previous words is quantified by a probabilistic language model, and semantic similarity to previous words is quantified by a distributional semantics model. Brain activity time-locked to each word is regressed on the two model-derived measures. Results show that predictability and semantic similarity have near identical N400 effects but are dissociated in the fMRI data, with word predictability related to activity in, among others, the visual word-form area, and semantic similarity related to activity in areas associated with the semantic network. This indicates that both predictability and similarity play a role during natural language comprehension and modulate distinct cortical regions.
  • Franken, M. K., Eisner, F., Schoffelen, J.-M., Acheson, D. J., Hagoort, P., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). Audiovisual recalibration of vowel categories. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 655-658). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-122.

    Abstract

    One of the most daunting tasks of a listener is to map a
    continuous auditory stream onto known speech sound
    categories and lexical items. A major issue with this mapping
    problem is the variability in the acoustic realizations of sound
    categories, both within and across speakers. Past research has
    suggested listeners may use visual information (e.g., lipreading)
    to calibrate these speech categories to the current
    speaker. Previous studies have focused on audiovisual
    recalibration of consonant categories. The present study
    explores whether vowel categorization, which is known to show
    less sharply defined category boundaries, also benefit from
    visual cues.
    Participants were exposed to videos of a speaker
    pronouncing one out of two vowels, paired with audio that was
    ambiguous between the two vowels. After exposure, it was
    found that participants had recalibrated their vowel categories.
    In addition, individual variability in audiovisual recalibration is
    discussed. It is suggested that listeners’ category sharpness may
    be related to the weight they assign to visual information in
    audiovisual speech perception. Specifically, listeners with less
    sharp categories assign more weight to visual information
    during audiovisual speech recognition.
  • Franken, M. K., Acheson, D. J., McQueen, J. M., Eisner, F., & Hagoort, P. (2017). Individual variability as a window on production-perception interactions in speech motor control. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 142(4), 2007-2018. doi:10.1121/1.5006899.

    Abstract

    An important part of understanding speech motor control consists of capturing the
    interaction between speech production and speech perception. This study tests a
    prediction of theoretical frameworks that have tried to account for these interactions: if
    speech production targets are specified in auditory terms, individuals with better
    auditory acuity should have more precise speech targets, evidenced by decreased
    within-phoneme variability and increased between-phoneme distance. A study was
    carried out consisting of perception and production tasks in counterbalanced order.
    Auditory acuity was assessed using an adaptive speech discrimination task, while
    production variability was determined using a pseudo-word reading task. Analyses of
    the production data were carried out to quantify average within-phoneme variability as
    well as average between-phoneme contrasts. Results show that individuals not only
    vary in their production and perceptual abilities, but that better discriminators have
    more distinctive vowel production targets (that is, targets with less within-phoneme
    variability and greater between-phoneme distances), confirming the initial hypothesis.
    This association between speech production and perception did not depend on local
    phoneme density in vowel space. This study suggests that better auditory acuity leads
    to more precise speech production targets, which may be a consequence of auditory
    feedback affecting speech production over time.
  • Grabot, L., Kösem, A., Azizi, L., & Van Wassenhove, V. (2017). Prestimulus Alpha Oscillations and the Temporal Sequencing of Audio-visual Events. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1566-1582. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01145.

    Abstract

    Perceiving the temporal order of sensory events typically depends on participants' attentional state, thus likely on the endogenous fluctuations of brain activity. Using magnetoencephalography, we sought to determine whether spontaneous brain oscillations could disambiguate the perceived order of auditory and visual events presented in close temporal proximity, that is, at the individual's perceptual order threshold (Point of Subjective Simultaneity [PSS]). Two neural responses were found to index an individual's temporal order perception when contrasting brain activity as a function of perceived order (i.e., perceiving the sound first vs. perceiving the visual event first) given the same physical audiovisual sequence. First, average differences in prestimulus auditory alpha power indicated perceiving the correct ordering of audiovisual events irrespective of which sensory modality came first: a relatively low alpha power indicated perceiving auditory or visual first as a function of the actual sequence order. Additionally, the relative changes in the amplitude of the auditory (but not visual) evoked responses were correlated with participant's correct performance. Crucially, the sign of the magnitude difference in prestimulus alpha power and evoked responses between perceived audiovisual orders correlated with an individual's PSS. Taken together, our results suggest that spontaneous oscillatory activity cannot disambiguate subjective temporal order without prior knowledge of the individual's bias toward perceiving one or the other sensory modality first. Altogether, our results suggest that, under high perceptual uncertainty, the magnitude of prestimulus alpha (de)synchronization indicates the amount of compensation needed to overcome an individual's prior in the serial ordering and temporal sequencing of information
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). It is the facts, stupid. In J. Brockman, F. Van der Wa, & H. Corver (Eds.), Wetenschappelijke parels: het belangrijkste wetenschappelijke nieuws volgens 193 'briljante geesten'. Amsterdam: Maven Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). Don't forget neurobiology: An experimental approach to linguistic representation. Commentary on Branigan and Pickering "An experimental approach to linguistic representation". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40: e292. doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000401.

    Abstract

    Acceptability judgments are no longer acceptable as the holy grail for testing the nature of linguistic representations. Experimental and quantitative methods should be used to test theoretical claims in psycholinguistics. These methods should include not only behavior, but also the more recent possibilities to probe the neural codes for language-relevant representation
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). The core and beyond in the language-ready brain. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 81, 194-204. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.048.

    Abstract

    In this paper a general cognitive architecture of spoken language processing is specified. This is followed by an account of how this cognitive architecture is instantiated in the human brain. Both the spatial aspects of the networks for language are discussed, as well as the temporal dynamics and the underlying neurophysiology. A distinction is proposed between networks for coding/decoding linguistic information and additional networks for getting from coded meaning to speaker meaning, i.e. for making the inferences that enable the listener to understand the intentions of the speaker
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). The neural basis for primary and acquired language skills. In E. Segers, & P. Van den Broek (Eds.), Developmental Perspectives in Written Language and Literacy: In honor of Ludo Verhoeven (pp. 17-28). Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/z.206.02hag.

    Abstract

    Reading is a cultural invention that needs to recruit cortical infrastructure that was not designed for it (cultural recycling of cortical maps). In the case of reading both visual cortex and networks for speech processing are recruited. Here I discuss current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of spoken language that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind model. More areas than Broca’s and Wernicke’s region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication. The consequences of this architecture for reading are discussed.
  • Hartung, F. (2017). Getting under your skin: The role of perspective and simulation of experience in narrative comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hartung, F., Hagoort, P., & Willems, R. M. (2017). Readers select a comprehension mode independent of pronoun: Evidence from fMRI during narrative comprehension. Brain and Language, 170, 29-38. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2017.03.007.

    Abstract

    Perspective is a crucial feature for communicating about events. Yet it is unclear how linguistically encoded perspective relates to cognitive perspective taking. Here, we tested the effect of perspective taking with short literary stories. Participants listened to stories with 1st or 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist, while undergoing fMRI. When comparing action events with 1st and 3rd person pronouns, we found no evidence for a neural dissociation depending on the pronoun. A split sample approach based on the self-reported experience of perspective taking revealed 3 comprehension preferences. One group showed a strong 1st person preference, another a strong 3rd person preference, while a third group engaged in 1st and 3rd person perspective taking simultaneously. Comparing brain activations of the groups revealed different neural networks. Our results suggest that comprehension is perspective dependent, but not on the perspective suggested by the text, but on the reader’s (situational) preference
  • Hartung, F., Withers, P., Hagoort, P., & Willems, R. M. (2017). When fiction is just as real as fact: No differences in reading behavior between stories believed to be based on true or fictional events. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 1618. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01618.

    Abstract

    Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a ‘newspaper’ versus ‘literature’ comparison. In the present study, we investigated the effect of reader’s expectation to whether information is true or fictional with a subtler manipulation by labelling short stories as either based on true or fictional events. In addition, we tested whether narrative perspective or individual preference in perspective taking affects reading true or fictional stories differently. In an online experiment, participants (final N=1742) read one story which was introduced as based on true events or as fictional (factor fictionality). The story could be narrated in either 1st or 3rd person perspective (factor perspective). We measured immersion in and appreciation of the story, perspective taking, as well as memory for events. We found no evidence that knowing a story is fictional or based on true events influences reading behavior or experiential aspects of reading. We suggest that it is not whether a story is true or fictional, but rather expectations towards certain reading situations (e.g. reading newspaper or literature) which affect behavior by activating appropriate reading goals. Results further confirm that narrative perspective partially influences perspective taking and experiential aspects of reading
  • Heyselaar, E., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2017). How social opinion influences syntactic processing – An investigation using virtual reality. PLoS One, 12(4): e0174405. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0174405.
  • Heyselaar, E., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2017). In dialogue with an avatar, language behavior is identical to dialogue with a human partner. Behavior Research Methods, 49(1), 46-60. doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0688-7.

    Abstract

    The use of virtual reality (VR) as a methodological tool is becoming increasingly popular in behavioral research as its flexibility allows for a wide range of applications. This new method has not been as widely accepted in the field of psycholinguistics, however, possibly due to the assumption that language processing during human-computer interactions does not accurately reflect human-human interactions. Yet at the same time there is a growing need to study human-human language interactions in a tightly controlled context, which has not been possible using existing methods. VR, however, offers experimental control over parameters that cannot be (as finely) controlled in the real world. As such, in this study we aim to show that human-computer language interaction is comparable to human-human language interaction in virtual reality. In the current study we compare participants’ language behavior in a syntactic priming task with human versus computer partners: we used a human partner, a human-like avatar with human-like facial expressions and verbal behavior, and a computer-like avatar which had this humanness removed. As predicted, our study shows comparable priming effects between the human and human-like avatar suggesting that participants attributed human-like agency to the human-like avatar. Indeed, when interacting with the computer-like avatar, the priming effect was significantly decreased. This suggests that when interacting with a human-like avatar, sentence processing is comparable to interacting with a human partner. Our study therefore shows that VR is a valid platform for conducting language research and studying dialogue interactions in an ecologically valid manner.
  • Heyselaar, E. (2017). Influences on the magnitude of syntactic priming. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Heyselaar, E., Segaert, K., Walvoort, S. J., Kessels, R. P., & Hagoort, P. (2017). The role of nondeclarative memory in the skill for language: Evidence from syntactic priming in patients with amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 101, 97-105. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.033.

    Abstract

    Syntactic priming, the phenomenon in which participants adopt the linguistic behaviour of their partner, is widely used in psycholinguistics to investigate syntactic operations. Although the phenomenon of syntactic priming is well documented, the memory system that supports the retention of this syntactic information long enough to influence future utterances, is not as widely investigated. We aim to shed light on this issue by assessing patients with Korsakoff's amnesia on an active-passive syntactic priming task and compare their performance to controls matched in age, education, and premorbid intelligence. Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome display deficits in all subdomains of declarative memory, yet their nondeclarative memory remains intact, making them an ideal patient group to determine which memory system supports syntactic priming. In line with the hypothesis that syntactic priming relies on nondeclarative memory, the patient group shows strong priming tendencies (12.6% passive structure repetition). Our healthy control group did not show a priming tendency, presumably due to cognitive interference between declarative and nondeclarative memory. We discuss the results in relation to amnesia, aging, and compensatory mechanisms.
  • Hirschmann, J., Schoffelen, J.-M., Schnitzler, A., & Van Gerven, M. A. J. (2017). Parkinsonian rest tremor can be detected accurately based on neuronal oscillations recorded from the subthalamic nucleus. Clinical Neurophysiology, 128, 2029-2036. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2017.07.419.

    Abstract

    Objective: To investigate the possibility of tremor detection based on deep brain activity.
    Methods: We re-analyzed recordings of local field potentials (LFPs) from the subthalamic nucleus in 10
    PD patients (12 body sides) with spontaneously fluctuating rest tremor. Power in several frequency bands
    was estimated and used as input to Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) which classified short data segments
    as either tremor-free rest or rest tremor. HMMs were compared to direct threshold application to individual
    power features.
    Results: Applying a threshold directly to band-limited power was insufficient for tremor detection (mean
    area under the curve [AUC] of receiver operating characteristic: 0.64, STD: 0.19). Multi-feature HMMs, in
    contrast, allowed for accurate detection (mean AUC: 0.82, STD: 0.15), using four power features obtained
    from a single contact pair. Within-patient training yielded better accuracy than across-patient training
    (0.84 vs. 0.78, p = 0.03), yet tremor could often be detected accurately with either approach. High frequency
    oscillations (>200 Hz) were the best performing individual feature.
    Conclusions: LFP-based markers of tremor are robust enough to allow for accurate tremor detection in
    short data segments, provided that appropriate statistical models are used.
    Significance: LFP-based markers of tremor could be useful control signals for closed-loop deep brain
    stimulation.
  • Ito, A., Martin, A. E., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32, 954-965. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1242761.

    Abstract

    Current psycholinguistic theory proffers prediction as a central, explanatory mechanism in language
    processing. However, widely-replicated prediction effects may not mean that prediction is
    necessary in language processing. As a case in point, C. D. Martin et al. [2013. Bilinguals reading
    in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do.
    Journal of
    Memory and Language, 69
    (4), 574

    588. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001] reported ERP evidence for
    prediction in native- but not in non-native speakers. Articles mismatching an expected noun
    elicited larger negativity in the N400 time window compared to articles matching the expected
    noun in native speakers only. We attempted to replicate these findings, but found no evidence
    for prediction irrespective of language nativeness. We argue that pre-activation of phonological
    form of upcoming nouns, as evidenced in article-elicited effects, may not be a robust
    phenomenon. A view of prediction as a necessary computation in language comprehension
    must be re-evaluated.
  • Ito, A., Martin, A. E., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: A rebuttal to DeLong, Urbach & Kutas (2017). Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(8), 974-983. doi:10.1080/23273798.2017.1323112.
  • Kita, S., Alibali, M. W., & Chu, M. (2017). How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis. Psychological Review, 124(3), 245-266. doi:10.1037/rev0000059.

    Abstract

    People spontaneously produce gestures during speaking and thinking. The authors focus here on gestures that depict or indicate information related to the contents of concurrent speech or thought (i.e., representational gestures). Previous research indicates that such gestures have not only communicative functions, but also self-oriented cognitive functions. In this article, the authors propose a new theoretical framework, the gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis, which explains the self-oriented functions of representational gestures. According to this framework, representational gestures affect cognitive processes in 4 main ways: gestures activate, manipulate, package, and explore spatio-motoric information for speaking and thinking. These four functions are shaped by gesture's ability to schematize information, that is, to focus on a small subset of available information that is potentially relevant to the task at hand. The framework is based on the assumption that gestures are generated from the same system that generates practical actions, such as object manipulation; however, gestures are distinct from practical actions in that they represent information. The framework provides a novel, parsimonious, and comprehensive account of the self-oriented functions of gestures. The authors discuss how the framework accounts for gestures that depict abstract or metaphoric content, and they consider implications for the relations between self-oriented and communicative functions of gestures
  • Kösem, A., & Van Wassenhove, V. (2017). Distinct contributions of low and high frequency neural oscillations to speech comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(5), 536-544. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1238495.

    Abstract

    In the last decade, the involvement of neural oscillatory mechanisms in speech comprehension has been increasingly investigated. Current evidence suggests that low-frequency and high-frequency neural entrainment to the acoustic dynamics of speech are linked to its analysis. One crucial question is whether acoustical processing primarily modulates neural entrainment, or whether entrainment instead reflects linguistic processing. Here, we review studies investigating the effect of linguistic manipulations on neural oscillatory activity. In light of the current findings, we argue that theta (3–8 Hz) entrainment may primarily reflect the analysis of the acoustic features of speech. In contrast, recent evidence suggests that delta (1–3 Hz) and high-frequency activity (>40 Hz) are reliable indicators of perceived linguistic representations. The interdependence between low-frequency and high-frequency neural oscillations, as well as their causal role on speech comprehension, is further discussed with regard to neurophysiological models of speech processing
  • Kunert, R., & Jongman, S. R. (2017). Entrainment to an auditory signal: Is attention involved? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(1), 77-88. doi:10.1037/xge0000246.

    Abstract

    Many natural auditory signals, including music and language, change periodically. The effect of such auditory rhythms on the brain is unclear however. One widely held view, dynamic attending theory, proposes that the attentional system entrains to the rhythm and increases attention at moments of rhythmic salience. In support, 2 experiments reported here show reduced response times to visual letter strings shown at auditory rhythm peaks, compared with rhythm troughs. However, we argue that an account invoking the entrainment of general attention should further predict rhythm entrainment to also influence memory for visual stimuli. In 2 pseudoword memory experiments we find evidence against this prediction. Whether a pseudoword is shown during an auditory rhythm peak or not is irrelevant for its later recognition memory in silence. Other attention manipulations, dividing attention and focusing attention, did result in a memory effect. This raises doubts about the suggested attentional nature of rhythm entrainment. We interpret our findings as support for auditory rhythm perception being based on auditory-motor entrainment, not general attention entrainment.
  • Kunert, R. (2017). Music and language comprehension in the brain. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lam, N. H. L. (2017). Comprehending comprehension: Insights from neuronal oscillations on the neuronal basis of language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lam, K. J. Y., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Dijkstra, T., & Rueschemeyer, S. A. (2017). Making sense: motor activation and action plausibility during sentence processing. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(5), 590-600. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1164323.

    Abstract

    The current electroencephalography study investigated the relationship between the motor and (language) comprehension systems by simultaneously measuring mu and N400 effects. Specifically, we examined whether the pattern of motor activation elicited by verbs depends on the larger sentential context. A robust N400 congruence effect confirmed the contextual manipulation of action plausibility, a form of semantic congruency. Importantly, this study showed that: (1) Action verbs elicited more mu power decrease than non-action verbs when sentences described plausible actions. Action verbs thus elicited more motor activation than non-action verbs. (2) In contrast, when sentences described implausible actions, mu activity was present but the difference between the verb types was not observed. The increased processing associated with a larger N400 thus coincided with mu activity in sentences describing implausible actions. Altogether, context-dependent motor activation appears to play a functional role in deriving context-sensitive meaning
  • Lewis, A. G., Schoffelen, J.-M., Hoffmann, C., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., & Schriefers, H. (2017). Discourse-level semantic coherence influences beta oscillatory dynamics and the N400 during sentence comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(5), 601-617. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1211300.

    Abstract

    In this study, we used electroencephalography to investigate the influence of discourse-level semantic coherence on electrophysiological signatures of local sentence-level processing. Participants read groups of four sentences that could either form coherent stories or were semantically unrelated. For semantically coherent discourses compared to incoherent ones, the N400 was smaller at sentences 2–4, while the visual N1 was larger at the third and fourth sentences. Oscillatory activity in the beta frequency range (13–21 Hz) was higher for coherent discourses. We relate the N400 effect to a disruption of local sentence-level semantic processing when sentences are unrelated. Our beta findings can be tentatively related to disruption of local sentence-level syntactic processing, but it cannot be fully ruled out that they are instead (or also) related to disrupted local sentence-level semantic processing. We conclude that manipulating discourse-level semantic coherence does have an effect on oscillatory power related to local sentence-level processing.
  • Lewis, A. G. (2017). Explorations of beta-band neural oscillations during language comprehension: Sentence processing and beyond. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lockwood, G. (2017). Talking sense: The behavioural and neural correlates of sound symbolism. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Lopopolo, A., Frank, S. L., Van den Bosch, A., & Willems, R. M. (2017). Using stochastic language models (SLM) to map lexical, syntactic, and phonological information processing in the brain. PLoS One, 12(5): e0177794. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0177794.

    Abstract

    Language comprehension involves the simultaneous processing of information at the phonological, syntactic, and lexical level. We track these three distinct streams of information in the brain by using stochastic measures derived from computational language models to detect neural correlates of phoneme, part-of-speech, and word processing in an fMRI experiment. Probabilistic language models have proven to be useful tools for studying how language is processed as a sequence of symbols unfolding in time. Conditional probabilities between sequences of words are at the basis of probabilistic measures such as surprisal and perplexity which have been successfully used as predictors of several behavioural and neural correlates of sentence processing. Here we computed perplexity from sequences of words and their parts of speech, and their phonemic transcriptions. Brain activity time-locked to each word is regressed on the three model-derived measures. We observe that the brain keeps track of the statistical structure of lexical, syntactic and phonological information in distinct areas.

    Additional information

    Data availability
  • Martin, A. E., Huettig, F., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). Can structural priming answer the important questions about language? A commentary on Branigan and Pickering "An experimental approach to linguistic representation". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40: e304. doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000528.

    Abstract

    While structural priming makes a valuable contribution to psycholinguistics, it does not allow direct observation of representation, nor escape “source ambiguity.” Structural priming taps into implicit memory representations and processes that may differ from what is used online. We question whether implicit memory for language can and should be equated with linguistic representation or with language processing.
  • Nieuwland, M. S., & Martin, A. E. (2017). Neural oscillations and a nascent corticohippocampal theory of reference. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(5), 896-910. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01091.

    Abstract

    The ability to use words to refer to the world is vital to the communicative power of human language. In particular, the anaphoric use of words to refer to previously mentioned concepts (antecedents) allows dialogue to be coherent and meaningful. Psycholinguistic theory posits that anaphor comprehension involves reactivating a memory representation of the antecedent. Whereas this implies the involvement of recognition memory, or the mnemonic sub-routines by which people distinguish old from new, the neural processes for reference resolution are largely unknown. Here, we report time-frequency analysis of four EEG experiments to reveal the increased coupling of functional neural systems associated with referentially coherent expressions compared to referentially problematic expressions. Despite varying in modality, language, and type of referential expression, all experiments showed larger gamma-band power for referentially coherent expressions compared to referentially problematic expressions. Beamformer analysis in high-density Experiment 4 localised the gamma-band increase to posterior parietal cortex around 400-600 ms after anaphor-onset and to frontaltemporal cortex around 500-1000 ms. We argue that the observed gamma-band power increases reflect successful referential binding and resolution, which links incoming information to antecedents through an interaction between the brain’s recognition memory networks and frontal-temporal language network. We integrate these findings with previous results from patient and neuroimaging studies, and we outline a nascent cortico-hippocampal theory of reference.
  • Peeters, D., Snijders, T. M., Hagoort, P., & Ozyurek, A. (2017). Linking language to the visual world: Neural correlates of comprehending verbal reference to objects through pointing and visual cues. Neuropsychologia, 95, 21-29. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.12.004.

    Abstract

    In everyday communication speakers often refer in speech and/or gesture to objects in their immediate environment, thereby shifting their addressee's attention to an intended referent. The neurobiological infrastructure involved in the comprehension of such basic multimodal communicative acts remains unclear. In an event-related fMRI study, we presented participants with pictures of a speaker and two objects while they concurrently listened to her speech. In each picture, one of the objects was singled out, either through the speaker's index-finger pointing gesture or through a visual cue that made the object perceptually more salient in the absence of gesture. A mismatch (compared to a match) between speech and the object singled out by the speaker's pointing gesture led to enhanced activation in left IFG and bilateral pMTG, showing the importance of these areas in conceptual matching between speech and referent. Moreover, a match (compared to a mismatch) between speech and the object made salient through a visual cue led to enhanced activation in the mentalizing system, arguably reflecting an attempt to converge on a jointly attended referent in the absence of pointing. These findings shed new light on the neurobiological underpinnings of the core communicative process of comprehending a speaker's multimodal referential act and stress the power of pointing as an important natural device to link speech to objects.
  • Rommers, J., Dickson, D. S., Norton, J. J. S., Wlotko, E. W., & Federmeier, K. D. (2017). Alpha and theta band dynamics related to sentential constraint and word expectancy. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(5), 576-589. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1183799.

    Abstract

    Despite strong evidence for prediction during language comprehension, the underlying
    mechanisms, and the extent to which they are specific to language, remain unclear. Re-analysing
    an event-related potentials study, we examined responses in the time-frequency domain to
    expected and unexpected (but plausible) words in strongly and weakly constraining sentences,
    and found results similar to those reported in nonverbal domains. Relative to expected words,
    unexpected words elicited an increase in the theta band (4–7 Hz) in strongly constraining
    contexts, suggesting the involvement of control processes to deal with the consequences of
    having a prediction disconfirmed. Prior to critical word onset, strongly constraining sentences
    exhibited a decrease in the alpha band (8–12 Hz) relative to weakly constraining sentences,
    suggesting that comprehenders can take advantage of predictive sentence contexts to prepare
    for the input. The results suggest that the brain recruits domain-general preparation and control
    mechanisms when making and assessing predictions during sentence comprehension
  • Rommers, J., Meyer, A. S., & Praamstra, P. (2017). Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking. Neuropsychologia, 95, 101-110. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.12.013.

    Abstract

    Speakers usually begin to speak while only part of the utterance has been planned. Earlier work has shown that speech planning processes are reflected in speakers’ eye movements as they describe visually presented objects. However, to-be-named objects can be processed to some extent before they have been fixated upon, presumably because attention can be allocated to objects covertly, without moving the eyes. The present study investigated whether EEG could track speakers’ covert attention allocation as they produced short utterances to describe pairs of objects (e.g., “dog and chair”). The processing difficulty of each object was varied by presenting it in upright orientation (easy) or in upside down orientation (difficult). Background squares flickered at different frequencies in order to elicit steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). The N2pc component, associated with the focusing of attention on an item, was detectable not only prior to speech onset, but also during speaking. The time course of the N2pc showed that attention shifted to each object in the order of mention prior to speech onset. Furthermore, greater processing difficulty increased the time speakers spent attending to each object. This demonstrates that the N2pc can track covert attention allocation in a naming task. In addition, an effect of processing difficulty at around 200–350 ms after stimulus onset revealed early attention allocation to the second to-be-named object. The flickering backgrounds elicited SSVEPs, but SSVEP amplitude was not influenced by processing difficulty. These results help complete the picture of the coordination of visual information uptake and motor output during speaking.
  • Schoffelen, J.-M., Hulten, A., Lam, N. H. L., Marquand, A. F., Udden, J., & Hagoort, P. (2017). Frequency-specific directed interactions in the human brain network for language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(30), 8083-8088. doi:10.1073/pnas.1703155114.

    Abstract

    The brain’s remarkable capacity for language requires bidirectional interactions between functionally specialized brain regions. We used magnetoencephalography to investigate interregional interactions in the brain network for language while 102 participants were reading sentences. Using Granger causality analysis, we identified inferior frontal cortex and anterior temporal regions to receive widespread input and middle temporal regions to send widespread output. This fits well with the notion that these regions play a central role in language processing. Characterization of the functional topology of this network, using data-driven matrix factorization, which allowed for partitioning into a set of subnetworks, revealed directed connections at distinct frequencies of interaction. Connections originating from temporal regions peaked at alpha frequency, whereas connections originating from frontal and parietal regions peaked at beta frequency. These findings indicate that the information flow between language-relevant brain areas, which is required for linguistic processing, may depend on the contributions of distinct brain rhythms

    Additional information

    pnas.201703155SI.pdf
  • Schoot, L. (2017). Language processing in a conversation context. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Shitova, N., Roelofs, A., Schriefers, H., Bastiaansen, M., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2017). Control adjustments in speaking: Electrophysiology of the Gratton effect in picture naming. Cortex, 92, 289-303. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2017.04.017.

    Abstract

    Accumulating evidence suggests that spoken word production requires different amounts of top-down control depending on the prevailing circumstances. For example, during Stroop-like tasks, the interference in response time (RT) is typically larger following congruent trials than following incongruent trials. This effect is called the Gratton effect, and has been taken to reflect top-down control adjustments based on the previous trial type. Such control adjustments have been studied extensively in Stroop and Eriksen flanker tasks (mostly using manual responses), but not in the picture-word interference (PWI) task, which is a workhorse of language production research. In one of the few studies of the Gratton effect in PWI, Van Maanen and Van Rijn (2010) examined the effect in picture naming RTs during dual-task performance. Based on PWI effect differences between dual-task conditions, they argued that the functional locus of the PWI effect differs between post-congruent trials (i.e., locus in perceptual and conceptual encoding) and post-incongruent trials (i.e., locus in word planning). However, the dual-task procedure may have contaminated the results. We therefore performed an EEG study on the Gratton effect in a regular PWI task. We observed a PWI effect in the RTs, in the N400 component of the event-related brain potentials, and in the midfrontal theta power, regardless of the previous trial type. Moreover, the RTs, N400, and theta power reflected the Gratton effect. These results provide evidence that the PWI effect arises at the word planning stage following both congruent and incongruent trials, while the amount of top-down control changes depending on the previous trial type.
  • Shitova, N., Roelofs, A., Schriefers, H., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2017). Control adjustments in speaking: Electrophysiology of the Gratton effect in picture naming. Cortex, 92, 289-303. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2017.04.017.

    Abstract

    Accumulating evidence suggests that spoken word production requires different amounts of top-down control depending on the prevailing circumstances. For example, during Stroop-like tasks, the interference in response time (RT) is typically larger following congruent trials than following incongruent trials. This effect is called the Gratton effect, and has been taken to reflect top-down control adjustments based on the previous trial type. Such control adjustments have been studied extensively in Stroop and Eriksen flanker tasks (mostly using manual responses), but not in the picture–word interference (PWI) task, which is a workhorse of language production research. In one of the few studies of the Gratton effect in PWI, Van Maanen and Van Rijn (2010) examined the effect in picture naming RTs during dual-task performance. Based on PWI effect differences between dual-task conditions, they argued that the functional locus of the PWI effect differs between post-congruent trials (i.e., locus in perceptual and conceptual encoding) and post-incongruent trials (i.e., locus in word planning). However, the dual-task procedure may have contaminated the results. We therefore performed an electroencephalography (EEG) study on the Gratton effect in a regular PWI task. We observed a PWI effect in the RTs, in the N400 component of the event-related brain potentials, and in the midfrontal theta power, regardless of the previous trial type. Moreover, the RTs, N400, and theta power reflected the Gratton effect. These results provide evidence that the PWI effect arises at the word planning stage following both congruent and incongruent trials, while the amount of top-down control changes depending on the previous trial type.
  • Silva, S., Inácio, F., Folia, V., & Petersson, K. M. (2017). Eye movements in implicit artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(9), 1387-1402. doi:10.1037/xlm0000350.

    Abstract

    Artificial grammar learning (AGL) has been probed with forced-choice behavioral tests (active tests). Recent attempts to probe the outcomes of learning (implicitly acquired knowledge) with eye-movement responses (passive tests) have shown null results. However, these latter studies have not tested for sensitivity effects, for example, increased eye movements on a printed violation. In this study, we tested for sensitivity effects in AGL tests with (Experiment 1) and without (Experiment 2) concurrent active tests (preference- and grammaticality classification) in an eye-tracking experiment. Eye movements discriminated between sequence types in passive tests and more so in active tests. The eye-movement profile did not differ between preference and grammaticality classification, and it resembled sensitivity effects commonly observed in natural syntax processing. Our findings show that the outcomes of implicit structured sequence learning can be characterized in eye tracking. More specifically, whole trial measures (dwell time, number of fixations) showed robust AGL effects, whereas first-pass measures (first-fixation duration) did not. Furthermore, our findings strengthen the link between artificial and natural syntax processing, and they shed light on the factors that determine performance differences in preference and grammaticality classification tests
  • Silva, S., Petersson, K. M., & Castro, S. L. (2017). The effects of ordinal load on incidental temporal learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(4), 664-674. doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1146909.

    Abstract

    How can we grasp the temporal structure of events? A few studies have indicated that representations of temporal structure are acquired when there is an intention to learn, but not when learning is incidental. Response-to-stimulus intervals, uncorrelated temporal structures, unpredictable ordinal information, and lack of metrical organization have been pointed out as key obstacles to incidental temporal learning, but the literature includes piecemeal demonstrations of learning under all these circumstances. We suggest that the unacknowledged effects of ordinal load may help reconcile these conflicting findings, ordinal load referring to the cost of identifying the sequence of events (e.g., tones, locations) where a temporal pattern is embedded. In a first experiment, we manipulated ordinal load into simple and complex levels. Participants learned ordinal-simple sequences, despite their uncorrelated temporal structure and lack of metrical organization. They did not learn ordinal-complex sequences, even though there were no response-to-stimulus intervals nor unpredictable ordinal information. In a second experiment, we probed learning of ordinal-complex sequences with strong metrical organization, and again there was no learning. We conclude that ordinal load is a key obstacle to incidental temporal learning. Further analyses showed that the effect of ordinal load is to mask the expression of temporal knowledge, rather than to prevent learning.
  • Silva, S., Folia, V., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2017). The P600 in Implicit Artificial Grammar Learning. Cognitive Science, 41(1), 137-157. doi:10.1111/cogs.12343.

    Abstract

    The suitability of the Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) paradigm to capture relevant aspects of the acquisition of linguistic structures has been empirically tested in a number of EEG studies. Some have shown a syntax-related P600 component, but it has not been ruled out that the AGL P600 effect is a response to surface features (e.g., subsequence familiarity) rather than the underlying syntax structure. Therefore, in this study, we controlled for the surface characteristics of the test sequences (associative chunk strength) and recorded the EEG before (baseline preference classification) and
    after (preference and grammaticality classification) exposure to a grammar. A typical, centroparietal P600 effect was elicited by grammatical violations after exposure, suggesting that the AGL P600 effect signals a response to structural irregularities. Moreover, preference and grammaticality classification showed a qualitatively similar ERP profile, strengthening the idea that the implicit structural mere
    exposure paradigm in combination with preference classification is a suitable alternative to the traditional grammaticality classification test.
  • Simon, E., & Sjerps, M. J. (2017). Phonological category quality in the mental lexicon of child and adult learners. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(4), 474-499. doi:10.1177/1367006915626589.

    Abstract

    Aims and objectives: The aim was to identify which criteria children use to decide on the category membership of native and non-native vowels, and to get insight into the organization of phonological representations in the bilingual mind. Methodology: The study consisted of two cross-language mispronunciation detection tasks in which L2 vowels were inserted into L1 words and vice versa. In Experiment 1, 10- to 12-year-old Dutch-speaking children were presented with Dutch words which were either pronounced with the target Dutch vowel or with an English vowel inserted in the Dutch consonantal frame. Experiment 2 was a mirror of the first, with English words which were pronounced “correctly” or which were “mispronounced” with a Dutch vowel. Data and analysis: Analyses focused on extent to which child and adult listeners accepted substitutions of Dutch vowels by English ones, and vice versa. Findings: The results of Experiment 1 revealed that between the age of ten and twelve children have well-established phonological vowel categories in their native language. However, Experiment 2 showed that in their non-native language, children tended to accept mispronounced items which involve sounds from their native language. At the same time, though, they did not fully rely on their native phonemic inventory because the children accepted most of the correctly pronounced English items. Originality: While many studies have examined native and non-native perception by infants and adults, studies on first and second language perception of school-age children are rare. This study adds to the body of literature aimed at expanding our knowledge in this area. Implications: The study has implications for models of the organization of the bilingual mind: while proficient adult non-native listeners generally have clearly separated sets of phonological representations for their two languages, for non-proficient child learners the L1 phonology still exerts a strong influence on the L2 phonology.
  • Soutschek, A., Burke, C. J., Beharelle, A. R., Schreiber, R., Weber, S. C., Karipidis, I. I., Ten Velden, J., Weber, B., Haker, H., Kalenscher, T., & Tobler, P. N. (2017). The dopaminergic reward system underpins gender differences in social preferences. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 819-827. doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0226-y.

    Abstract

    Women are known to have stronger prosocial preferences than men, but it remains an open question as to how these behavioural differences arise from differences in brain functioning. Here, we provide a neurobiological account for the hypothesized gender difference. In a pharmacological study and an independent neuroimaging study, we tested the hypothesis that the neural reward system encodes the value of sharing money with others more strongly in women than in men. In the pharmacological study, we reduced receptor type-specific actions of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to reward processing, which resulted in more selfish decisions in women and more prosocial decisions in men. Converging findings from an independent neuroimaging study revealed gender-related activity in neural reward circuits during prosocial decisions. Thus, the neural reward system appears to be more sensitive to prosocial rewards in women than in men, providing a neurobiological account for why women often behave more prosocially than men.

    A large body of evidence suggests that women are often more prosocial (for example, generous, altruistic and inequality averse) than men, at least when other factors such as reputation and strategic considerations are excluded1,2,3. This dissociation could result from cultural expectations and gender stereotypes, because in Western societies women are more strongly expected to be prosocial4,5,6 and sensitive to variations in social context than men1. It remains an open question, however, whether and how on a neurobiological level the social preferences of women and men arise from differences in brain functioning. The assumption of gender differences in social preferences predicts that the neural reward system’s sensitivity to prosocial and selfish rewards should differ between women and men. Specifically, the hypothesis would be that the neural reward system is more sensitive to prosocial than selfish rewards in women and more sensitive to selfish than prosocial rewards in men. The goal of the current study was to test in two independent experiments for the hypothesized gender differences on both a pharmacological and a haemodynamic level. In particular, we examined the functions of the neurotransmitter dopamine using a dopamine receptor antagonist, and the role of the striatum (a brain region strongly innervated by dopamine neurons) during social decision-making in women and men using neuroimaging.

    The neurotransmitter dopamine is thought to play a key role in neural reward processing7,8. Recent evidence suggests that dopaminergic activity is sensitive not only to rewards for oneself but to rewards for others as well9. The assumption that dopamine is sensitive to both self- and other-related outcomes is consistent with the finding that the striatum shows activation for both selfish and shared rewards10,11,12,13,14,15. The dopaminergic response may represent a net signal encoding the difference between the value of preferred and unpreferred rewards8. Regarding the hypothesized gender differences in social preferences, this account makes the following predictions. If women prefer shared (prosocial) outcomes2, women’s dopaminergic signals to shared rewards will be stronger than to non-shared (selfish) rewards, so reducing dopaminergic activity should bias women to make more selfish decisions. In line with this hypothesis, a functional imaging study reported enhanced striatal activation in female participants during charitable donations11. In contrast, if men prefer selfish over prosocial rewards, dopaminergic activity should be enhanced to selfish compared to prosocial rewards. In line with this view, upregulating dopaminergic activity in a sample of exclusively male participants increased selfish behaviour in a bargaining game16. Thus, contrary to the hypothesized effect in women, reducing dopaminergic neurotransmission should render men more prosocial. Taken together, the current study tested the following three predictions: we expected the dopaminergic reward system (1) to be more sensitive to prosocial than selfish rewards in women and (2) to be more sensitive to selfish than prosocial rewards in men. As a consequence of these two predictions, we also predicted (3) dopaminoceptive regions such as the striatum to show stronger activation to prosocial relative to selfish rewards in women than in men.

    To test these predictions, we conducted a pharmacological study in which we reduced dopaminergic neurotransmission with amisulpride. Amisulpride is a dopamine antagonist that is highly specific for dopaminergic D2/D3 receptors17. After receiving amisulpride or placebo, participants performed an interpersonal decision task18,19,20, in which they made choices between a monetary reward only for themselves (selfish reward option) and sharing money with others (prosocial reward option). We expected that blocking dopaminergic neurotransmission with amisulpride, relative to placebo, would result in fewer prosocial choices in women and more prosocial choices in men. To investigate whether potential gender-related effects of dopamine are selective for social decision-making, we also tested the effects of amisulpride on time preferences in a non-social control task that was matched to the interpersonal decision task in terms of choice structure.

    In addition, because dopaminergic neurotransmission plays a crucial role in brain regions involved in value processing, such as the striatum21, a gender-related role of dopaminergic activity for social decision-making should also be reflected by dissociable activity patterns in the striatum. Therefore, to further test our hypothesis, we investigated the neural correlates of social decision-making in a functional imaging study. In line with our predictions for the pharmacological study, we expected to find stronger striatum activity during prosocial relative to selfish decisions in women, whereas men should show enhanced activity in the striatum for selfish relative to prosocial choices.

    Additional information

    Supplementary Information
  • Ye, Z., Stolk, A., Toni, I., & Hagoort, P. (2017). Oxytocin modulates semantic integration in speech comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29, 267-276. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01044.

    Abstract

    Listeners interpret utterances by integrating information from multiple sources including word level semantics and world knowledge. When the semantics of an expression is inconsistent with his or her knowledge about the world, the listener may have to search through the conceptual space for alternative possible world scenarios that can make the expression more acceptable. Such cognitive exploration requires considerable computational resources and might depend on motivational factors. This study explores whether and how oxytocin, a neuropeptide known to influence socialmotivation by reducing social anxiety and enhancing affiliative tendencies, can modulate the integration of world knowledge and sentence meanings. The study used a betweenparticipant double-blind randomized placebo-controlled design. Semantic integration, indexed with magnetoencephalography through the N400m marker, was quantified while 45 healthymale participants listened to sentences that were either congruent or incongruent with facts of the world, after receiving intranasally delivered oxytocin or placebo. Compared with congruent sentences, world knowledge incongruent sentences elicited a stronger N400m signal from the left inferior frontal and anterior temporal regions and medial pFC (the N400m effect) in the placebo group. Oxytocin administration significantly attenuated the N400meffect at both sensor and cortical source levels throughout the experiment, in a state-like manner. Additional electrophysiological markers suggest that the absence of the N400m effect in the oxytocin group is unlikely due to the lack of early sensory or semantic processing or a general downregulation of attention. These findings suggest that oxytocin drives listeners to resolve challenges of semantic integration, possibly by promoting the cognitive exploration of alternative possible world scenarios.
  • Takashima, A., Bakker, I., Van Hell, J. G., Janzen, G., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). Interaction between episodic and semantic memory networks in the acquisition and consolidation of novel spoken words. Brain and Language, 167, 44-60. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2016.05.009.

    Abstract

    When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and again after a delay of one week. Words learned with meanings were remembered better than those learned without meanings. Both episodic (hippocampus-dependent) and semantic (dependent on distributed neocortical areas) memory systems were utilised during recognition of the novel words. The extent to which the two systems were involved changed as a function of time and the amount of associated information, with more involvement of both systems for the meaningful words than for the form-only words after the one-week delay. These results suggest that the reason the meaningful words were remembered better is that their retrieval can benefit more from these two complementary memory systems
  • Tan, Y., Martin, R. C., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2017). Semantic and syntactic interference in sentence comprehension: A comparison of working memory models. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 198. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00198.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the nature of the underlying working memory system supporting sentence processing through examining individual differences in sensitivity to retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Interference effects occur when readers incorrectly retrieve sentence constituents which are similar to those required during integrative processes. We examined interference arising from a partial match between distracting constituents and syntactic and semantic cues, and related these interference effects to performance on working memory, short-term memory (STM), vocabulary, and executive function tasks. For online sentence comprehension, as measured by self-paced reading, the magnitude of individuals' syntactic interference effects was predicted by general WM capacity and the relation remained significant when partialling out vocabulary, indicating that the effects were not due to verbal knowledge. For offline sentence comprehension, as measured by responses to comprehension questions, both general WM capacity and vocabulary knowledge interacted with semantic interference for comprehension accuracy, suggesting that both general WM capacity and the quality of semantic representations played a role in determining how well interference was resolved offline. For comprehension question reaction times, a measure of semantic STM capacity interacted with semantic but not syntactic interference. However, a measure of phonological capacity (digit span) and a general measure of resistance to response interference (Stroop effect) did not predict individuals' interference resolution abilities in either online or offline sentence comprehension. The results are discussed in relation to the multiple capacities account of working memory (e.g., Martin and Romani, 1994; Martin and He, 2004), and the cue-based retrieval parsing approach (e.g., Lewis et al., 2006; Van Dyke et al., 2014). While neither approach was fully supported, a possible means of reconciling the two approaches and directions for future research are proposed.
  • Tsuji, S., Fikkert, P., Minagawa, Y., Dupoux, E., Filippin, L., Versteegh, M., Hagoort, P., & Cristia, A. (2017). The more, the better? Behavioral and neural correlates of frequent and infrequent vowel exposure. Developmental Psychobiology, 59, 603-612. doi:10.1002/dev.21534.

    Abstract

    A central assumption in the perceptual attunement literature holds that exposure to a speech sound contrast leads to improvement in native speech sound processing. However, whether the amount of exposure matters for this process has not been put to a direct test. We elucidated indicators of frequency-dependent perceptual attunement by comparing 5–8-month-old Dutch infants’ discrimination of tokens containing a highly frequent [hɪt-he:t] and a highly infrequent [hʏt-hø:t] native vowel contrast as well as a non-native [hɛt-hæt] vowel contrast in a behavioral visual habituation paradigm (Experiment 1). Infants discriminated both native contrasts similarly well, but did not discriminate the non-native contrast. We sought further evidence for subtle differences in the processing of the two native contrasts using near-infrared spectroscopy and a within-participant design (Experiment 2). The neuroimaging data did not provide additional evidence that responses to native contrasts are modulated by frequency of exposure. These results suggest that even large differences in exposure to a native contrast may not directly translate to behavioral and neural indicators of perceptual attunement, raising the possibility that frequency of exposure does not influence improvements in discriminating native contrasts.

    Additional information

    dev21534-sup-0001-SuppInfo-S1.docx
  • Udden, J., Ingvar, M., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2017). Broca’s region: A causal role in implicit processing of grammars with crossed non-adjacent dependencies. Cognition, 164, 188-198. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.010.

    Abstract

    Non-adjacent dependencies are challenging for the language learning machinery and are acquired later than adjacent dependencies. In this transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study, we show that participants successfully discriminated between grammatical and non-grammatical sequences after having implicitly acquired an artificial language with crossed non-adjacent dependencies. Subsequent to transcranial magnetic stimulation of Broca’s region, discrimination was impaired compared to when a language-irrelevant control region (vertex) was stimulated. These results support the view that Broca’s region is engaged in structured sequence processing and extend previous functional neuroimaging results on artificial grammar learning (AGL) in two directions: first, the results establish that Broca’s region is a causal component in the processing of non-adjacent dependencies, and second, they show that implicit processing of non-adjacent dependencies engages Broca’s region. Since patients with lesions in Broca’s region do not always show grammatical processing difficulties, the result that Broca’s region is causally linked to processing of non-adjacent dependencies is a step towards clarification of the exact nature of syntactic deficits caused by lesions or perturbation to Broca’s region. Our findings are consistent with previous results and support a role for Broca’s region in general structured sequence processing, rather than a specific role for the processing of hierarchically organized sentence structure.

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