Publications

Abstract

Longitudinally collected VOT data from an early English-Italian bilingual who became increasingly English-dominant was analyzed. Stops in English were always produced with significantly longer VOT than in Italian. However, the speaker did not show any significant change in the VOT production in either language over time, despite the clear dominance of English in his every day language use later in his life. The results indicate that – unlike L2 learners – early bilinguals may remain unaffected by language use with respect to phonetic realization.

Abstract

Research on imitation in infancy has primarily focused on what and when infants imitate. More recently, however, the question why infants imitate has received renewed attention, partly motivated by the finding that infants sometimes selectively imitate the actions of others and sometimes faithfully imitate, or overimitate, the actions of others. The present study evaluates the hypothesis that this varying imitative behavior is related to infants' social traits. To do so, we assessed faithful and selective imitation longitudinally at 12 and 15 months, and extraversion at 15 months. At both ages, selective imitation was dependent on the causal structure of the act. From 12 to 15 months, selective imitation decreased while faithful imitation increased. Furthermore, infants high in extraversion were more faithful imitators than infants low in extraversion. These results demonstrate that the onset of faithful imitation is earlier than previously thought, but later than the onset of selective imitation. The observed relation between extraversion and faithful imitation supports the hypothesis that faithful imitation is driven by the social motivations of the infant. We call this relation the King Louie Effect: like the orangutan King Louie in The Jungle Book, infants imitate faithfully due to a growing interest in the interpersonal nature of interactions.

Abstract

Allergic disease is very common and carries substantial public-health burdens. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide associations with self-reported cat, dust-mite and pollen allergies in 53,862 individuals. We used generalized estimating equations to model shared and allergy-specific genetic effects. We identified 16 shared susceptibility loci with association P<5×10(-8), including 8 loci previously associated with asthma, as well as 4p14 near TLR1, TLR6 and TLR10 (rs2101521, P=5.3×10(-21)); 6p21.33 near HLA-C and MICA (rs9266772, P=3.2×10(-12)); 5p13.1 near PTGER4 (rs7720838, P=8.2×10(-11)); 2q33.1 in PLCL1 (rs10497813, P=6.1×10(-10)), 3q28 in LPP (rs9860547, P=1.2×10(-9)); 20q13.2 in NFATC2 (rs6021270, P=6.9×10(-9)), 4q27 in ADAD1 (rs17388568, P=3.9×10(-8)); and 14q21.1 near FOXA1 and TTC6 (rs1998359, P=4.8×10(-8)). We identified one locus with substantial evidence of differences in effects across allergies at 6p21.32 in the class II human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region (rs17533090, P=1.7×10(-12)), which was strongly associated with cat allergy. Our study sheds new light on the shared etiology of immune and autoimmune disease.

Abstract

When faced with the noun phrase (NP) versus sentence (S) coordination ambiguity as in, for example, The thief shot the jeweller and the cop hellip, readers prefer the reading with NP-coordination (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop yesterday") over one with two conjoined sentences (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop panicked"). A corpus study is presented showing that NP-coordinations are produced far more often than S-coordinations, which in frequency-based accounts of parsing might be taken to explain the NP-coordination preference. In addition, we describe an eye-tracking experiment investigating S-coordinated sentences such as Jasper sanded the board and the carpenter laughed, where the poor thematic fit between carpenter and sanded argues against NP-coordination. Our results indicate that information regarding poor thematic fit was used rapidly, but not without leaving some residual processing difficulty. This is compatible with claims that thematic information can reduce but not completely eliminate garden-path effects.

Abstract

This book is a collection of papers inspired by the linguistics career of Ivan Sag, written to celebrate his many contributions to the field. Ivan has been a professor of linguistics at Stanford University since 1979, has been the directory of the Symbolic Systems program (2005-2009), has authored, co-authored, or edited fifteen volumes in linguistics, and has been at the forefront of non-transformational approaches to syntax. Reflecting the breath of Ivan's theoretical interests and approaches to linguistic problems, the papers here tackle a range of grammar-related issues using corpora, intuitions, and laboratory experiments. They are united by their use of and commitment to rich datasets and the shared perspective that the best theories of grammar attempt to account for the full diversity and complexity of language data.

Abstract

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from these different modalities, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, such as eye
gaze, may influence this processing. We address this question by simulating a triadic communication context in which a
speaker alternated her gaze between two different recipients. Participants thus viewed speech-only or speech+gesture
object-related utterances when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (averted gaze). Two object images followed
each message and participants’ task was to choose the object that matched the message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly slower than addressees for speech-only
utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped them up to a level identical to
that of addressees. That is, when speech processing suffers due to not being addressed, gesture processing remains intact and enhances the comprehension of a speaker’s message

Abstract

The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis proposes that gestures function at the level of speech production, aiding in the retrieval of lexical items from the mental lexicon. However, empirical evidence for this account is mixed, and some critics argue that a more likely function of gestures during lexical retrieval is a communicative one. The present study was designed to test these predictions against each other by keeping lexical retrieval difficulty constant while varying social context. Participants' gestures were analysed during tip of the tongue experiences when communicating with a partner face-to-face (FTF), while being separated by a screen, or on their own by speaking into a voice recorder. The results show that participants in the FTF context produced significantly more representational gestures than participants in the solitary condition. This suggests that, even in the specific context of lexical retrieval difficulties, representational gestures appear to play predominantly a communicative role.

Abstract

While people around the world mentally represent time in terms of space, there is substantial cross-cultural
variability regarding which temporal constructs are mapped onto which parts in space. Do particular spatial
layouts of time – as expressed through metaphors in language – shape temporal focus? We trained native
English speakers to use spatiotemporal metaphors in a way such that the flow of time is reversed, representing
the future behind the body (out of visible space) and the past ahead of the body (within visible space). In a
task measuring perceived relevance of past events, people considered past events and present (or immediate
past) events to be more relevant after using the reversed metaphors compared to a control group that used canonical metaphors spatializing the past behind and the future ahead of the body (Experiment 1). In a control measure in which temporal information was removed, this effect disappeared (Experiment 2). Taken
together, these findings suggest that the degree to which people focus on the past may be shaped by the
visibility of the past in spatiotemporal metaphors used in language.

Abstract

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable disorder and several genes increasing disease risk have been identified. The dopamine transporter gene, SLC6A3/DAT1, has been studied most extensively in ADHD research. Interestingly, a different haplotype of this gene (formed by genetic variants in the 3' untranslated region and intron 8) is associated with childhood ADHD (haplotype 10-6) and adult ADHD (haplotype 9-6). The expression of DAT1 is highest in striatal regions in the brain. This part of the brain is of interest to ADHD because of its role in reward processing is altered in ADHD patients; ADHD patients display decreased striatal activation during reward processing. To better understand how the DAT1 gene exerts effects on ADHD, we studied the effect of this gene on reward-related brain functioning in the area of its highest expression in the brain, the striatum, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In doing so, we tried to resolve inconsistencies observed in previous studies of healthy individuals and ADHD-affected children. In a sample of 87 adult ADHD patients and 77 healthy comparison subjects, we confirmed the association of the 9-6 haplotype with adult ADHD. Striatal hypoactivation during the reward anticipation phase of a monetary incentive delay task in ADHD patients was again shown, but no significant effects of DAT1 on striatal activity were found. Although the importance of the DAT1 haplotype as a risk factor for adult ADHD was again demonstrated in this study, the mechanism by which this gene increases disease risk remains largely unknown.

Abstract

In the visual world paradigm, participants are more likely to fixate a visual referent that has some semantic relationship with a heard word, than they are to fixate an unrelated referent [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language. A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 813–839]. Here, this method is used to examine the psychological validity of models of high-dimensional semantic space. The data strongly suggest that these corpus-based measures of word semantics predict fixation behavior in the visual world and provide further evidence that language-mediated eye movements to objects in the concurrent visual environment are driven by semantic similarity rather than all-or-none categorical knowledge. The data suggest that the visual world paradigm can, together with other methodologies, converge on the evidence that may help adjudicate between different theoretical accounts of the psychological semantics.

Abstract

Stimulus-related changes in cerebral blood oxygenation were measured using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging sequentially covering visual occipital areas in contiguous sections. During dynamic imaging, healthy subjects silently viewed pseudowords, single false fonts, or length-matched strings of the same false fonts. The paradigm consisted of a sixfold alternation of an activation and a control task. With pseudowords as activation vs single false fonts as control, responses were seen mainly in medial occipital cortex. These responses disappeared when pseudowords were alternated with false font strings as the control and reappeared when false font strings instead of pseudowords served as activation and were alternated with single false fonts. The string-length contrast alone, therefore, is sufficient to account for the activation pattern observed in medial visual cortex when word-like stimuli are contrasted with single characters.

Abstract

This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of 30 hemodynamic experiments comparing first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing in a range of tasks. The results suggest that reliably stronger activation during L2 processing is found (a) only for task-specific subgroups of L2 speakers and (b) within some, but not all regions that are also typically activated in native language processing. A tentative interpretation based on the functional roles of frontal and temporal regions is suggested.

Abstract

This volume is a harvest of articles from the first conference in a series on the cognitive neuroscience of language. The first conference focused on the cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition (henceforth SLA). It brought together experts from as diverse fields as second language acquisition, bilingualism, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroanatomy. The articles and discussion articles presented here illustrate state-of-the-art findings and represent a wide range of theoretical approaches to classic as well as newer SLA issues. The theoretical themes cover age effects in SLA related to the so-called Critical Period Hypothesis and issues of ultimate attainment and focus both on age effects pertaining to childhood and to aging. Other familiar SLA topics are the effects of proficiency and learning as well as issues concerning the difference between the end product and the process that yields that product, here discussed in terms of convergence and degeneracy. A topic more related to actual usage of a second language once acquired concerns how multilingual speakers control and regulate their two languages.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss an inherent difficulty of PET (and fMRI) research in language production. On the one hand, language production presupposes some degree of freedom for the subject, on the other hand, interpretability of results presupposes restrictions of this freedom. This difficulty is reflected in the existing PET literature in some neglect of the general principle to design experiments in such a way that the results do not allow for alternative interpretations. It is argued that by narrowing down the scope of experiments a gain in interpretability can be achieved.

Abstract

Models of cognitive processes often include simplifications, idealisations, and fictionalisations, so how should we learn about cognitive processes from such models? Particularly in cognitive science, when many features of the target system are unknown, it is not always clear which simplifications, idealisations, and so on, are appropriate for a research question, and which are highly misleading. Here we use a case-study from studies of language evolution, and ideas from philosophy of science, to illustrate a robustness approach to learning from models. Robust properties are those that arise across a range of models, simulations and experiments, and can be used to identify key causal structures in the models, and the phenomenon, under investigation. For example, in studies of language evolution, the emergence of compositional structure is a robust property across models, simulations and experiments of cultural transmission, but only under pressures for learnability and expressivity. This arguably illustrates the principles underlying real cases of language evolution. We provide an outline of the robustness approach, including its limitations, and suggest that this methodology can be productively used throughout cognitive science. Perhaps of most importance, it suggests that different modelling frameworks should be used as tools to identify the abstract properties of a system, rather than being definitive expressions of theories.

Abstract

Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.

Abstract

Research has shown that Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasic patients show different impairments in auditory lexical processing. The results of an experiment with form-overlapping primes showed an inhibitory effect of form-overlap for control adults and a weak inhibition trend for Broca’s aphasic patients, but a facilitatory effect of form-overlap was found for Wernicke’s aphasic participants. This suggests that Wernicke’s aphasic patients are mainly impaired in suppression of once-activated word candidates and selection of one winning candidate, which may be related to their problems in auditory language comprehension.

Abstract

In everyday life people have to deal with tasks such as finding a novel path to a certain goal location, finding one’s way back, finding a short cut, or making a detour. In all of these tasks people acquire route knowledge. For finding the same way back they have to remember locations of objects like buildings and additionally direction changes. In three experiments using recognition tasks as well as conscious and unconscious spatial priming paradigms memory processes underlying wayfinding behaviour were investigated. Participants learned a route through a virtual environment with objects either placed at intersections (i.e., decision points) where another route could be chosen or placed along the route (non-decision points). Analyses indicate first that objects placed at decision points are recognized faster than other objects. Second, they indicate that the direction in which a route is travelled is represented only at locations that are relevant for wayfinding (e.g., decision points). The results point out the efficient way in which memory for object location and memory for route direction interact.

Abstract

An audio and video corpus of speech addressed to 28 11-month-olds is described. The corpus allows comparisons between adult speech directed towards infants, familiar adults and unfamiliar adult addressees, as well as of caregivers’ word teaching strategies across word classes. Summary data show that infant-directed speech differed more from speech to unfamiliar than familiar adults; that word teaching strategies for nominals versus verbs and adjectives differed; that mothers mostly addressed infants with multi-word utterances; and that infants’ vocabulary size was unrelated to speech rate, but correlated positively with predominance of continuous caregiver speech (not of isolated words) in the input.

Abstract

There is evidence for cognitive as well as neural plasticity across the adult life span, although aging is associated with certain constraints on plasticity. In the current paper, we argue that the age-related reduction in cognitive plasticity may be due to (a) deficits in general processing resources, and (b) failure to engage in task-relevant cognitive operations. Memory-training research suggests that age-related processing deficits (e.g., executive functions, speed) hinder older adults from utilizing mnemonic techniques as efficiently as the young, and that this age difference is reflected by diminished frontal activity during mnemonic use. Additional constraints on memory plasticity in old age are related to difficulties that are specific to the task, such as creating visual images, as well as in binding together the information to be remembered. These deficiencies are paralleled by reduced activity in occipito-parietal and medial–temporal regions, respectively. Future attempts to optimize intervention-related gains in old age should consider targeting both general processing and task-specific origins of age-associated reductions in cognitive plasticity.

Abstract

Second language (L2) research often involves analyses of acoustic measures of fluency. The studies investigating fluency, however, have been difficult to compare because the measures of fluency that were used differed widely. One of the differences between studies concerns the lower cut-off point for silent pauses, which has been set anywhere between 100 ms and 1000 ms. The goal of this paper is to find an optimal cut-off point. We calculate acoustic measures of fluency using different pause thresholds and then relate these measures to a measure of L2 proficiency and to ratings on fluency.

Abstract

Anthropology began by comparing aspects of kinship across cultures, while linguists interested in semantic domains such as kinship necessarily compare across languages. In this chapter I show how phylogenetic comparative methods from evolutionary biology can be used to study evolutionary processes relating to kinship and kinship terminologies across language and culture.

Abstract

This special issue “Evolutionary Approaches to Cross-Cultural Anthropology” brings together scholars from the fields of behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and cultural evolution whose cross-cultural work draws on evolutionary theory and methods. The papers here are a subset of those presented at a symposium we organized for the 2011 meeting of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research held in Charleston, South Carolina. Collectively, our authors show how an engagement with cultural variation has enriched evolutionary anthropology, and these papers showcase how cross-cultural research can benefit from the theoretical and methodological contributions of an evolutionary approach.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cognitive consequences at school age associated with prenatal methylmercury (MeHg) exposure may need to take into account nutritional and sociodemographic cofactors as well as relevant genetic polymorphisms. METHODS: A subsample (n = 1,311) of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (Bristol, UK) was selected, and mercury (Hg) concentrations were measured in freeze-dried umbilical cord tissue as a measure of MeHg exposure. A total of 1135 children had available data on 247 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within relevant genes, as well as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores at age 8 years. Multivariate regression models were used to assess the associations between MeHg exposure and IQ and to determine possible gene-environment interactions. RESULTS: Hg concentrations indicated low background exposures (mean = 26 ng/g, standard deviation = 13). Log10-transformed Hg was positively associated with IQ, which attenuated after adjustment for nutritional and sociodemographic cofactors. In stratified analyses, a reverse association was found in higher social class families (for performance IQ, P value for interaction = 0.0013) among whom there was a wider range of MeHg exposure. Among 40 SNPs showing nominally significant main effects, MeHg interactions were detected for rs662 (paraoxonase 1) and rs1042838 (progesterone receptor) (P <} 0.05) and for rs3811647 (transferrin) and rs2049046 (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) (P {< 0.10). CONCLUSIONS: In this population with a low level of MeHg exposure, there were only equivocal associations between MeHg exposure and adverse neuropsychological outcomes. Heterogeneities in several relevant genes suggest possible genetic predisposition to MeHg neurotoxicity in a substantial proportion of the population. Future studies need to address this possibility.

Abstract

The current study investigates auditory-motor coupling in musically trained participants using a Stroop-type task that required the execution of simple finger sequences according to aurally presented number sequences (e.g., "2," " 4," "5," "3," "1"). Digital remastering was used to manipulate the pitch contour of the number sequences such that they were either congruent or incongruent with respect to the resulting action sequence. Conservatoire-level violinists showed a strong effect of congruency manipulation (increased response time for incongruent vs. congruent trials), in comparison to a control group of non-musicians. In Experiment 2, this paradigm was used to determine whether pedagogical background would influence this effect in a group of young violinists. Suzuki-trained violinists differed significantly from those with no musical background, while traditionally-trained violinists did not. The findings extend previous research in this area by demonstrating that obligatory audio-motor coupling is directly related to a musicians' expertise on their instrument of study and is influenced by pedagogy.

Abstract

Both emotion and reward are primary modulators of cognition: Emotional word content enhances word processing, and reward expectancy similarly amplifies cognitive processing from the perceptual up to the executive control level. Here, we investigate how these primary regulators of cognition interact. We studied how the anticipation of gain or loss modulates the neural time course (event-related potentials, ERPs) related to processing of emotional words. Participants performed a semantic categorization task on emotional and neutral words, which were preceded by a cue indicating that performance could lead to monetary gain or loss. Emotion-related and reward-related effects occurred in different time windows, did not interact statistically, and showed different topographies. This speaks for an independence of reward expectancy and the processing of emotional word content. Therefore, privileged processing given to emotionally valenced words seems immune to short-term modulation of reward. Models of language comprehension should be able to incorporate effects of reward and emotion on language processing, and the current study argues for an architecture in which reward and emotion do not share a common neurobiological mechanism

Abstract

[Seven one-page psycholinguistic sketches]

Abstract

Science is currently under-utilized as a tool for effective policy and program design. A key part of this research-to-practice gap lies in the ineffectiveness of current models of science translation. Drawing on theory and methods from anthropology and cognitive linguistics, this study explores the role of cultural models and metaphor in the practice of science communication and translation. Qualitative interviews and group sessions, along with quantitative framing experiments, were used to design and test the effectiveness of a set of explanatory metaphors in translating the science of executive function. Developmental and cognitive scientists typically define executive function as a multi-dimensional set of related abilities that include working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. The study finds one metaphor in particular—the brain's air traffic control system—to be effective in bridging gaps between expert and public understandings on this issue and in so doing improving the accessibility of scientific information to members of the public as they reason about public policy issues. Findings suggest both a specific tool that can be used in efforts to translate the science of executive function and a theory and methodology that can be employed to design and test metaphors as communication devices on other science and social issues.

Abstract

Why do languages have the categories they do? It has been argued that spatial terms in the world’s languages reflect categories that support highly informative communication, and that this accounts for the spatial categories found across languages. However, this proposal has been tested against only nine languages, and in a limited fashion. Here, we consider two new languages: Maijɨki, an under-documented language of Peruvian Amazonia, and English. We analyze spatial data from these two new languages and the original nine, using thorough and theoretically targeted computational tests. The results support the hypothesis that spatial terms across dissimilar languages enable near-optimally informative communication, over an influential competing hypothesis

Abstract

We present empirical data showing that the relative frequency with which a verb normally appears in a syntactic construction predicts young children's ability to remember and repeat sentences instantiating that construction. Children aged 2;10–5;8 years were asked to repeat grammatical and ungrammatical sentential complement sentences (e.g., ‘I think + S’). The sentences contained complement-taking verbs (CTVs) used with differing frequencies in children's natural speech. All children repeated sentences containing high frequency CTVs (e.g., think) more accurately than those containing low frequency CTVs (e.g., hear), and made more sophisticated corrections to ungrammatical sentences containing high frequency CTVs. The data suggest that, like adults, children are sensitive to lexico-constructional collocations. The implications for language acquisition are discussed.

Abstract

This article reviews research that has investigated the role of verbal working memory (VWM) in sentence comprehension in both typical and atypical developmental populations. Two theoretical approaches that specify different roles for VWM in sentence comprehension are considered: (i) capacity-limit approaches, which treat VWM as a theoretical primitive that causally constrains language processing and acquisition, and (ii) the experience-based approach, which argues that VWM is an emergent property of long-term linguistic knowledge. The empirical literature relevant to these different approaches is then reviewed. Although there has been considerable recent research on the topic, it is concluded that the current role of working memory in sentence comprehension in development is unclear, calling for a greater number of controlled systematic developmental studies on the topic.

Abstract

This research investigated the developing inter-relationships between language, graphic symbolism and symbolic play both concurrently and longitudinally from the fourth to the fifth year of childhood. Sixty children (n = 60) aged between 3 and 4 years completed multiple assessments of language and assessments of graphic symbolism, symbolic play and non-verbal intelligence. A year later, 31 children (n = 31) were re-tested using the same assessments. The findings revealed that skills within each symbolic domain were inter-related during the fourth year, appearing to develop in a domain-general type fashion based upon a common underlying symbolic mechanism. However, between the fourth and the fifth years, only language had predictive validity, suggesting a shift towards the verbal mediation of symbolic play and graphic symbolism as language becomes progressively internalized (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978).

Abstract

The distinction between finite and non-finite verb forms is well-established but not particularly well-defined. It cannot just be a matter of verb morphology, because it is also made when there is hardly any morphological difference: by far most English verb forms can be finite as well as non-finite. More importantly, many structural phenomena are clearly associated with the presence or absence of finiteness, a fact which is clearly reflected in the early stages of first and second language acquisition. In syntax, these include basic word order rules, gapping, the licensing of a grammatical subject and the licensing of expletives. In semantics, the specific interpretation of indefinite noun phrases is crucially linked to the presence of a finite element. These phenomena are surveyed, and it is argued that finiteness (a) links the descriptive content of the sentence (the 'sentence basis') to its topic component (in particular, to its topic time), and (b) it confines the illocutionary force to that topic component. In a declarative main clause, for example, the assertion is confined to a particular time, the topic time. It is shown that most of the syntactic and semantic effects connected to finiteness naturally follow from this assumption.

Abstract

Nobel's legacy, or the metamorphosis of what is idealistic Ever since the first Nobel prize in literature was awarded to Prudhomme in 1901, the decisions of the Swedish Academy have been subject to criticism. What is surprising in the changing decision policy as well as in its criticism is the fact that Alfred Nobel's original intentions are hardly ever taken into account: the Nobel prize is a philanthropic prize, it is not meant to select and honour the most eminent literary work but the work with maximal benefit to human beings. What is even more surprising is the fact that no one seems to care that the donator's Last Will is regularly broken.

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the implications of the fact that adult second language learners (outside the classroom) universally develop a well-structured, efficient and simple form of language–the Basic Variety (BV). Three questions are asked as to (1) the structural properties of the BV, (2) the status of these properties and (3) why some structural properties of ‘fully fledged’ languages are more complex. First, we characterize the BV in four respects: its lexical repertoire, the principles according to which utterances are structured, and temporality and spatiality expressed. The organizational principles proposed are small in number, and interact. We analyse this interaction, describing how the BV is put to use in various complex verbal tasks, in order to establish both what its communicative potentialities are, and also those discourse contexts where the constraints come into conflict and where the variety breaks down. This latter phenomenon provides a partial answer to the third question,concerning the relative complexity of ‘fully fledged’ languages–they have devices to deal with such cases. As for the second question, it is argued firstly that the empirically established continuity of the adult acquisition process precludes any assignment of the BV to a mode of linguistic expression (e.g., ‘protolanguage’) distinct from that of ‘fully fledged’ languages and, moreover, that the organizational constraints of the BV belong to the core attributes of the human language capacity, whereas a number of complexifications not attested in the BV are less central properties of this capacity. Finally, it is shown that the notion of feature strength, as used in recent versions of Generative Grammar, allows a straightforward characterization of the BV as a special case of an I-language, in the sense of this theory. Under this perspective, the acquisition of an Ilanguage beyond the BV can essentially be described as a change in feature strength.

Abstract

Starting with Ross (1970), various proposals have been made to classify elliptical coordinations and to characterize different languages according to the types of ellipses which they admit. Sanders (1977) discusses four of these proposals, shows that they are inadequate on various grounds and proposes a fifth typology whose central claim is 'evidently correct', as he states (p. 258). In the following, I shall briefly outline this typology and then show that it is inadequate, too. Since there is only one language 1 know — German — I will take all my examples from this language. Moreover, all examples will be straightforward and easy to be judged.

Abstract

Warning others about unexpected negative action outcomes is a paradigm case of communicative helping and prospective action understanding. The current study addressed the ontogeny of warning in infants’ gestural communication. We found that 12- and 18-month-olds (n = 84) spontaneously warned an adult by pointing out to her an aversive object hidden in her way (Problem condition). In control conditions the object was either positive (No Problem condition) or the adult had witnessed its’ placing (Problem known condition), which resulted in significantly less pointing. Results show that infants intervene spontaneously and with foresight through communication, in order to help others avoid a problem before it has occurred. These acts of warning entail an understanding of others’ negatively defined goals (to avoid an outcome) and their incorrect representations of reality. Findings support theories of altruism and social-pragmatic competencies in infancy.

Abstract

People tend to associate the abstract concepts of “good” and “bad” with their fluent and disfluent sides of space, as determined by their natural handedness or by experimental manipulation (Casasanto, 2011). Here we investigated influences of spatial perspective taking on the spatialization of “good” and “bad.” In the first experiment, participants indicated where a schematically drawn cartoon character would locate “good” and “bad” stimuli. Right-handers tended to assign “good” to the right and “bad” to the left side of egocentric space when the character shared their spatial perspective, but when the character was rotated 180° this spatial mapping was reversed: good was assigned to the character’s right side, not the participant’s. The tendency to spatialize valence from the character’s perspective was stronger in the second experiment, when participants were shown a full-featured photograph of the character. In a third experiment, most participants not only spatialized “good” and “bad” from the character’s perspective, they also based their judgments on a salient attribute of the character’s body (an injured hand) rather than their own body. Taking another’s spatial perspective encourages people to compute space-valence mappings using an allocentric frame of reference, based on the fluency with which the other person could perform motor actions with their right or left hand. When people reason from their own spatial perspective, their judgments depend, in part, on the specifics of their bodies; when people reason from someone else’s perspective, their judgments may depend on the specifics of the other person’s body, instead. - See more at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00266

Abstract

The ability to extract word forms from continuous speech is a prerequisite for constructing a vocabulary and emerges in the first year of life. Electrophysiological (ERP) studies of speech segmentation by 9- to 12-month-old listeners in several languages have found a left-localized negativity linked to word onset as a marker of word detection. We report an ERP study showing significant evidence of speech segmentation in Dutch-learning 7-month-olds. In contrast to the left-localized negative effect reported with older infants, the observed overall mean effect had a positive polarity. Inspection of individual results revealed two participant sub-groups: a majority showing a positive-going response, and a minority showing the left negativity observed in older age groups. We retested participants at age three, on vocabulary comprehension and word and sentence production. On every test, children who at 7 months had shown the negativity associated with segmentation of words from speech outperformed those who had produced positive-going brain responses to the same input. The earlier that infants show the left-localized brain responses typically indicating detection of words in speech, the better their early childhood language skills.

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined the recent claim (Stewart, Pickering, & Sanford, 2000) that verb-based implicit causality information is used during sentence–final clausal integration only. We did so by looking for mid-sentence reading delays caused by pronouns that are inconsistent with the bias of a preceding implicit causality verb (e.g., “David praised Linda because he…”). In a self-paced reading task, such pronouns immediately slowed down reading, at the two words immediately following the pronoun. In eye tracking, bias-inconsistent pronouns also immediately perturbed the reading process, as indexed by significant delays in various first pass measures at and shortly after the critical pronoun. Hence, readers can recruit verb-based implicit causality information in the service of comprehension rapidly enough to impact on the interpretation of a pronoun early in the subordinate clause. We take our results to suggest that implicit causality is used proactively, allowing readers to focus on, and perhaps even predict, who or what will be talked about next.

Abstract

Individuals speak incrementally when they interleave planning and articulation. Eyetracking, along with the measurement of speech onset latencies, can be used to gain more insight into the degree of incrementality adopted by speakers. In the current article, two eyetracking experiments are reported in which pairs of complex numerals were named (arabic format, Experiment 1) or read aloud (alphabetic format, Experiment 2) as house numbers and as clock times. We examined whether the degree of incrementality is differentially influenced by the production task (naming vs. reading) and mode (house numbers vs. clock time expressions), by comparing gaze durations and speech onset latencies. In both tasks and modes, dissociations were obtained between speech onset latencies (reflecting articulation) and gaze durations (reflecting planning), indicating incrementality. Furthermore, whereas none of the factors that determined gaze durations were reflected in the reading and naming latencies for the house numbers, the dissociation between gaze durations and response latencies for the clock times concerned mainly numeral length in both tasks. These results suggest that the degree of incrementality is influenced by the type of utterance (house number vs. clock time) rather than by task (reading vs. naming). The results highlight the importance of the utterance structure in determining the degree of incrementality.

Abstract

Words can be distinguished by segmental differences or by suprasegmental differences or both. Studies from English suggest that suprasegmentals play little role in human spoken-word recognition; English stress, however, is nearly always unambiguously coded in segmental structure (vowel quality); this relationship is less close in Dutch. The present study directly compared the effects of segmental and suprasegmental mispronunciation on word recognition in Dutch. There was a strong effect of suprasegmental mispronunciation, suggesting that Dutch listeners do exploit suprasegmental information in word recognition. Previous findings indicating the effects of mis-stressing for Dutch differ with stress position were replicated only when segmental change was involved, suggesting that this is an effect of segmental rather than suprasegmental processing.