Publications

Abstract

Co-speech gestures emerge from the interaction between visuospatial experience and speech formulation, but what happens when visual experience is absent from birth? Blind individuals gesture in ways consistent with their native language, albeit they gesture less frequently. However, nothing is known about whether their gesture form differs from that of sighted individuals. Using computer vision technologies, this study examines whether gesture kinematics are shaped by visuospatial experience. In an auditory motion-description task, we analyzed spontaneous path gestures—depicting motion trajectories—produced by 20 congenitally blind, 21 blindfolded, and 21 sighted Turkish speakers. We assessed the gestures’ alignment with actual motion paths, along with duration, size, and speed. Blind participants produced gestures that were more precisely aligned with the motion trajectories, as well as larger and longer. These findings show that altered spatial cognition in blindness enhances gesture precision. The study underscores the role of sensorimotor experience in shaping gesture form.

Abstract

Dynamic time warping (DTW) is a well-known algorithm used to assess the similarity between signals of varying lengths. Initially developed for automatic speech recognition, DTW has found applications in psycholinguistics, particularly in analyzing gesture form similarity. An open question in this domain is how effectively DTW captures gesture form similarity. Here, we validate DTW against human annotations of gesture form similarity across two multimodal interaction corpora and explore its utility as an automatic, continuous measure of gesture form similarity. Our findings reveal weak to moderate correlations between DTW distance and the number of similar gesture features – such as handshape, movement, orientation, and position – suggesting that DTW serves as a useful proxy for gesture form similarity. Additionally, we highlight the importance of qualitative analysis of raw data and DTW predictions in enhancing DTW’s predictive accuracy. Our study offers a rigorous validation of DTW as a measure of gesture form similarity and presents a detailed framework for preprocessing motion tracking data and calculating DTW distance. While none of the methods is perfect, the combination of automatic and manual measures provides a comprehensive approach to understanding and measuring gesture form similarity.

Abstract

A concurrent visuospatial working memory (vsWM) task has been shown to reduce predictive gaze behaviour in several visual world eye-tracking experiments. This reduction could be due to general aspects of prediction or an effect contingent on the additional demand of visually co-present objects. In an N400 event-related potentials study, L2 English participants heard the same sentences and completed the same vsWM task from a study which showed a reduction in predictive gaze behaviour, but without visually co-present objects. We observed robust effects of predictability but evidence against an influence of the vsWM task. These results suggest that vsWM does not interfere with the pre-activation of a target word without a co-present visual array. We conclude that previously observed effects of vsWM on prediction are instead likely specific to gaze behaviour and situations in which spoken language refers to a co-present relevant visual context.

Abstract

Background
Impaired plasticity has been implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD), which is reflected in impaired automatic sensory detection as measured using mismatch negativity (MMN). Intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) is used to treat MDD and its mechanism of action has been suggested to be plasticity dependent. Thus, we aimed at evaluating MMN as a MDD biomarker and predictor of antidepressant effect of iTBS.

Methods
This study comprised 46 patients with MDD and 64 healthy controls. The participants completed an auditory duration deviant MMN paradigm. In patients, MMN was recorded before and after a two-week intervention of twice-daily stimulation with a prolonged iTBS protocol, or sham, over the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). Depressive symptoms were assessed with the affective subscale of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS-affective) and through the self-report version of the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS-S).

Results
There were no differences in MMN amplitude at baseline between patients and controls, nor any correlations between depressive symptoms and MMN amplitude. MMN amplitude did not change after iTBS. However, in the active iTBS group a larger baseline MMN amplitude correlated significantly with greater reductions of depressive symptoms following iTBS, Δ-MADRS-S (r = 0.48, p = 0.021) and Δ-BPRS-affective (r = 0.46, p = 0.026). No correlation between baseline MMN amplitude and change of depressive symptoms was observed in the sham group.

Conclusion
Larger MMN amplitudes at baseline were associated with greater improvement in depressive symptoms only after active iTBS over the DMPFC. Indicating potential predictive properties of MMN in DMPFC iTBS in MDD, warranting replication in larger samples.

Abstract

Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging (RIFT) is a recent advance in frequency tagging that exploits novel, high-frequency displays to modulate luminance at imperceptibly high frequencies. RIFT goes beyond low-frequency tagging by allowing researchers to track neural responses to rhythmic stimulation while avoiding perceptual confounds. RIFT is thus a promising method to address central questions in rhythmic cognition, including attention, multimodal integration, and the neural mechanisms underlying oscillatory coordination in perception. However, setting up a RIFT study involves several technical and conceptual considerations. In an effort to make RIFT more accessible, we provide a comprehensive guide for implementing RIFT in cognitive neuroscience. On the basis of the joint experiences and data-driven insights of multiple laboratories, we provide practical recommendations derived from empirical datasets to improve reproducibility, covering hardware requirements, stimulus design, analysis approaches, and interpretation of results. We hope that this guide helps readers to both identify the conceptual areas where RIFT offers promising insights and navigate the technical caveats that come with the approach.

Abstract

This article provides an overview of diachronic stages in counting systems, from early pre-numerical tally, token, and measurement systems to concrete and abstract numeral systems. Numerals present strong variation within and across languages with phenomena that often reflect different stages of development, including range, abstractness, monomorphism versus composition, origins, base and underlying operations, and involvement in grammatical processes. The article outlines these phenomena and assesses their diachronic value.

Abstract

Data allow the identification of several stages in the evolution of counting systems. The pre-numerical token system as found in the Near East – containing symbols that convey quantity and commodity in one form – prepared the ground for numeracy in some languages. Certain aspects of the token system are found in measurement systems as well, where each commodity has its own linguistic units of quantification and conversion factors. While these systems were very early, they linger in numerous languages today, even those that feature full-fledged decimal numerals. Numerical systems are based on numerals and are sequential, but they may vary substantially, also reflecting here different stages of development. Concrete numerals, for example, continue the link between quantity and commodity found in measurement and token systems. Body-part numerals may have relatively high upper limits, but they need additional linguistic specification or gestures (multimodality) to convey precise information. Moreover, early abstract numeral systems in general have no or low bases and relatively low upper limits; they tend to be monomorphemic and to exclusively favor addition in compounds. Later systems by contrast typically are characterized by abstract and decimal numerals, (often combined) arithmetical operations, recursion, high upper limits (‘infinite’), and consistency. Because of this consistency at all levels – base, operations, recursion – the modern decimal system has a low level of complexity in comparison to early counting systems.

Abstract

Art can evoke strong emotional responses in humans. Here, we examine genetic contributions to chills, a marker of such responses. We gather self-reports from a genotyped sample of thousands of partly related individuals from the Netherlands (n = 15,606). Using genomic relationships based on common single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, we find that up to 29% of the variation in proneness to aesthetic (visual art and poetry) and music chills can be explained by familial relatedness effects, one-fourth of which is attributed to SNP variation. Furthermore, we reveal a moderate genetic correlation of .58 between aesthetic and music chills, pointing to shared genetic variation affecting susceptibility to strong emotional responses across different art forms. Finally, we find that a polygenic index (PGI) for openness to experience (n = 220,015) is associated with susceptibilities to both aesthetic and music chills. Our results show that additive genetic variation, but also familial relatedness beyond shared common SNPs, contributes to proneness to chills from artistic, poetic, and musical expressions. These results open up a promising path towards studying the human attitude towards art, via both state-of-the-art genomics and intergenerational models of transmission.

Abstract

Top-down effects of larger-grained linguistic chunks on their smaller-grained constituent parts have been established in both reading and speaking. However, typing as a domain of language production has been less thoroughly investigated in this regard. In the current paper, we present a copy task in which participants were shown a stimulus and asked to type it. Their keystrokes were recorded, allowing insight into both typing fluency (in interkey intervals, or IKIs) and latency to typing onset (in response times, or RTs). Critically, stimuli varied in both lexical status (words vs. non-words) and collocational status (frequently co-occurring vs. novel word pairs). As expected, non-words were reacted to and typed more slowly than words. At the group level, collocated word pairs were initiated and typed slightly faster than non-collocated pairs, but this effect was not statistically significant. However, evidence emerged for considerable individual differences in the trade-off between RTs and IKIs, suggesting that typers differ in the stage at which they benefit from top-down facilitation when typing collocated word pairs. This complements previous research on top-down effects and is consistent with the view that the mental processing blocks supporting written language production and comprehension may align—though the extent and timing of such alignment appear to vary across individuals.

Abstract

Asymmetry in white matter is believed to give rise to the brain's capacity for specialized processing and is involved in the lateralization of various cognitive processes, such as language and visuo-spatial reasoning. Although studies of white matter asymmetry have been previously documented, they have often been constrained by limited age ranges, sample sizes, or the scope of the tracts and structural features examined. While normative lifespan charts for brain structures are emerging, comprehensive charts detailing white matter asymmetries across numerous pathways and diverse structural measures have been notably absent. This study addresses this gap by leveraging a large-scale dataset of 35,120 typically developing and aging individuals, ranging from 0 to 100 years of age, from 50 primary neuroimaging studies. We generated comprehensive lifespan trajectories for 30 lateralized association and projection white matter tracts, examining six distinct microstructural and macrostructural features of these pathways. Our findings reveal that: (1) asymmetries are widespread across the brain's white matter and are present in all 30 pathways; (2) for a given pathway, the degree and direction of asymmetry differ between features of tissue microstructure and pathway macrostructure; (3) asymmetries vary across and within pathway types (association and projection tracts); and (4) these asymmetries are not static, following unique trajectories across the lifespan, with distinct changes during development, and a general trend of becoming more asymmetric with increasing age (particularly in later adulthood) across pathways. This study represents the most extensive characterization of white matter asymmetry across the lifespan to date, charting how lateralization patterns emerge, mature, and change throughout life. It provides a foundational resource for understanding the principles of white matter organization from early to late life, its relation to functional specialization and inter-individual variability, and offers a key reference for interpreting deviations during healthy development and aging as well as those associated with clinical populations.

Abstract

Humans typically move and vocalize in a time-synchronized fashion, aligning prominence-lending hand movements to acoustically emphasized syllables. This requires complex coordination. When speaking a foreign language, learners often place prominence on the wrong syllable in a word, which contributes to a noticeable foreign accent. In this pre-registered kinematic-acoustic study, we test whether a foreign accent is present in the timing of co-speech manual movements. Results demonstrate a ‘kinematic accent’ in Dutch learners of Spanish producing Spanish cognates (e.g., Spanish profeSOR - Dutch proFESsor). Dutch learners time the maximum extension of their co-speech movements closer to the prominent syllable in their native Dutch (i.e., on -fes), even when acoustically emphasizing the correct Spanish syllable (-sor). Conversely, when incorrectly acoustically emphasizing the Dutch target (-fes), the maximum extension of their hand movement is attracted to the Spanish target syllable (-sor). This reveals competing timing processes between movement and vocalization systems for foreign language learners, demonstrating that not only your spoken accent but also your co-speech manual kinematics may give away your native language.

Abstract

Human communication often involves spontaneous teaching, a capacity central to cultural evolution, in which representational gestures (e.g. showing how to break an egg) play a crucial role in conveying semantic information. While representational gestures have been studied towards young children, less is known about how they differ for older children versus adults and their cross-cultural variation. We asked 16 Italian and 16 Dutch adults, likely to differ in their gesture use, to demonstrate two novel logic puzzles to 9–10-year-old children and to other adults. Results show that even though Italian participants produced more representational gestures overall than Dutch participants, neither group increased them for children compared to adults. However, across both cultures, two-handed representational gestures were more frequent in child-directed demonstrations. Within representational gestures, Italians used fewer bracketed gestures (gestures in which one hand remains on hold while the other moves) than Dutch participants for adults, possibly to support grounding of reference on previous information. However, both groups used bracketed gestures for children at similar rates. Overall, the findings reveal that even though cultures differ in their gesture use, similar strategies enhancing iconicity seem to be employed in demonstrations to children.

Abstract

Kin terms appear among infants’ earliest words, yet a full mastery of kin concepts typically emerges only in late childhood. This prolonged developmental trajectory reflects not only children's acquisition of an abstract relational system of words, but also their growing understanding of social relationships and interactional norms. In this paper, we review research on kin term acquisition from three perspectives: word learning, language socialization, and social learning. We then outline the problem space for a contemporary study of kin term acquisition, highlighting the most urgent barriers to understanding the nature of kin representations and their development. We close by introducing findings from two pilot studies that shed light on how social, cultural, and linguistic experience shapes kin term acquisition. By bringing together insights from psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and infant social cognition, we aim to capture the richness of kin concepts in development and to offer a framework that can inspire future research across these fields.

Abstract

When asking for something significant from another person, speakers not only set the tilt of the question toward the affirmative or negative but also display an optimistic or pessimistic stance toward the request’s ultimate fulfillment. Existing sociological theories provide contrasting predictions about whether optimism or pessimism will dominate request behavior in routine social interactions. This paper evaluates the relative strength of these predictions using conversation analysis (CA), supplemented with structured coding and inferential statistics, to examine everyday requests in seven diverse language communities. We focus on two specific practices for making requests—the tilt of the requesting talk and the use of pre-requests. We find that speakers exhibit a systematic preference for requesting with optimistic stances despite frequently encountering resistance from interlocutors. Consonant with Cerulo’s concept of positive asymmetry, the details of everyday behavior reveal a pervasive bias wherein interactants treat socially desirable, cooperative outcomes as expected while disattending from potential resistance.

Abstract

Gesture and speech are tightly coordinated during communication, yet the mechanisms underlying this coordination remain debated. The interactive view proposes that gesture and speech can influence each other not only during planning but also during execution, whereas the ballistic view holds that interaction is limited to pre-execution stages. To test these competing theories, four experiments investigated whether disrupting one modality affects the execution of the other. Participants named and gesturally depicted geometric shapes and motion events while gesture or speech was disrupted using virtual reality, motion tracking, delayed visual or auditory feedback, and stimulus changes. In all experiments, disrupting one modality consistently prolonged the execution time of the other modality. Moreover, the magnitude of execution prolongation in one modality was related to that in the other. These results show that gesture and speech remain continuously and bidirectionally connected during execution, providing strong support for the interactive view.

Abstract

Sleep disturbances are among the most prevalent clinical features of FOXP1 syndrome, yet their nature and underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report that individuals with FOXP1 syndrome suffer from insomnia with sleep maintenance problems and early waking. Consistently, common variants in FOXP genes were associated with insomnia symptoms and short sleep. These sleep disturbances were recapitulated in Drosophila FoxP mutants, which exhibit severely fragmented and reduced sleep. FoxP loss also led to circadian arrhythmicity and impaired the plasticity of neuropeptide pigment dispersing factor–secreting (PDF-secreting) neurons in a non-cell-autonomous manner. FoxP was required during development for adult sleep integrity, particularly in peptidergic neurons. Transcriptomic analyses revealed a dysregulation of genes involved in peptidergic signaling, including hugin. FoxP was expressed in hugin+ neurons (afferent to PDF-secreting neurons) during development, and its knockdown in these cells was sufficient to induce sleep fragmentation. Our findings establish an evolutionarily conserved role for FOXP proteins in the peptidergic regulation of sleep.

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that neural activity tracks the syntactic structure of phrases and sentences in connected speech. This work has sparked intense debate, with some researchers aiming to account for the effect in terms of the overt or imposed prosodic properties of the speech signal. In this chapter, we present four types of arguments against attempts to explain putatively syntactic tracking effects in prosodic terms. The most important limitation of such prosodic accounts is that they are architecturally incomplete, as prosodic information does not arise in speech autonomously. Prosodic and syntactic structure are interrelated, so prosodic cues are informative about the intended syntactic analysis, and syntactic information can be used to aid speech perception. Rather than trying to attribute neural tracking effects exclusively to one linguistic component, we consider it more fruitful to think about ways in which the interaction between the components drives the neural signal.

Abstract

Current theories of speaking suggest that the structure of the lexicon is flexible and changes with exposure. We tested this claim in two experiments that investigated whether the word frequency effect was moderated by item repetition within and across experimental sessions. Participants named high frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) six times. In both experiments, participants were faster to name HF than LF pictures or words, but this effect was eliminated with repetition. Importantly, this word frequency effect was still absent when participants returned up to 2 weeks later and named old HF and LF pictures, whose names they had produced before, together with new HF and LF pictures, whose names they had not produced. These findings suggest that producing a word multiple times in short succession alters its long-term accessibility, making it easier to produce later.

Abstract

Word frequency (WF) and name agreement (NA) affect a word’s accessibility during speech production. Speakers are faster to name pictures with high-frequency (e.g. dog) compared to low-frequency names (e.g. rhinoceros) and those that a group of speakers tend to agree on the name of (high NA; e.g. arm) than those that they do not (low NA; e.g. sofa, couch). Recent accounts of lexical access suggest that the structure of the mental lexicon is flexible and changes with exposure. Consistent with this view, repetition priming studies have shown that low-frequency and low NA items benefit from repetition more than high-frequency and high NA items. But there is little evidence that repetition has long-term effects on WF and NA. We tested this issue in a two-session (online) picture naming study. In Session 1, participants named pictures varying in WF and NA three times each, and so we could test the short-term effects of repetition on WF and NA. We tested long-term effects of repetition by having participants name the same old items 1 week later in Session 2, together with new items that they had not named previously. In Session 1 the WF effect was eliminated by repetition, while the NA effect was reduced but still present. Thus, previous naming affected both the WF and NA effects. However, both effects reappeared in Session 2. These findings suggest that previous naming can reduce the WF and NA effect, thus affecting how easy it is to produce a word, but these effects are relatively short-lived.

Abstract

SATB2-associated syndrome is an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental syndrome caused by genetic alterations in the transcription factor SATB2. The associated phenotype is variable, and genotype-phenotype correlation studies have not yet been able to explain differences in severity and symptoms across affected individuals. While haploinsufficiency is the most often described disease mechanism, with the majority of variants consisting of whole- or partial-gene deletions and protein truncating variants with predicted loss-of-function, approximately one-third of affected individuals carry a SATB2 missense variant with an unknown effect. In this study, we sought to functionally characterize these missense variants to uncover associated pathogenic mechanisms. We combined a set of human cell-based experiments to screen 31 etiological SATB2 missense variants for effects on nuclear localization, global chromatin binding, and transcriptional activity. Our data indicate partial loss-of-function effects for most of the studied missense variants, but identify at least eight variants with increased SATB2 function showing a combination (or subset) of features that include stronger co-localization with DNA, decreased nuclear protein mobility suggesting increased overall chromatin binding, and maintained or increased transcriptional activity. These results demonstrate that phenotypes associated with variants in SATB2 may have distinct underlying disease mechanisms, and the data could provide a resource for future studies investigating disease variability and potential therapies for this condition.

Abstract

Large language models are interesting, but linguistics and cognitive science should be cautious about centering any new technology as a magic bullet. Doing so reinforces the historically “narrow focus” of linguistics identified in the target article, rather than expanding our understanding of human language. We argue that centering values instead of technology is the best way to future-proof scholarly work and to keep finding out new things about language.

Abstract

The emergence of human language is a complex process, and to investigate the role of iconicity in this, researchers have combined insights from computational models with empirical observations from laboratory experiments. This chapter provides an overview of the most important insights on the interaction between iconicity and other linguistic properties such as combinatoriality and systematicity. In the experimental and computational work reported, it is shown how iconicity can affect the way in which emerging languages are learned and used. The chapter also discusses how computational methods can help to better understand the gradient and subjective nature of iconicity.

Abstract

Multimodal language models (MLMs) increasingly demonstrate human-like communication, yet their use of everyday perspectival words remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we compare humans and MLMs in their use of three word types, which we predict impose increasing cognitive demands: vocabulary (e.g., ’boat’ or ’cup’), possessives (e.g., ’mine’ vs. ’yours’), and demonstratives (e.g., ’this one’ vs. ’that one’). Testing seven MLMs against human participants, we find that perspectival words are harder than vocabulary words for both groups. The gap is even larger for MLMs: while models approach human-level performance on using vocabulary, they exhibit clear deficits with possessives and even greater difficulties with demonstratives. Ablation analyses point to limitations in perspective-taking and spatial reasoning as key sources of these gaps in MLMs. Instruction-based prompting helps close the gap for possessives but still leaves demonstratives far below human performance. These results show that, unlike vocabulary, perspectival words pose a greater challenge in human communication—and this difficulty is further amplified in MLMs, revealing a crucial shortfall in their pragmatic and social-cognitive abilities.

Abstract

Developmental stuttering is a common childhood condition characterized by disfluencies in speech, such as blocks, prolongations, and repetitions. While most children who stutter do so only transiently, there are some for whom stuttering persists into adulthood. Rare-variant screens in families including multiple relatives with persistent stuttering have so far identified six genes carrying putative pathogenic variants hypothesized to act in a monogenic fashion. Here, we applied a complementary study design, searching instead for de novo variants in exomes of 85 independent parent-child trios, each with a child with transient or persistent stuttering. Exome sequencing analysis yielded a pathogenic variant in SPTBN1 as well as likely pathogenic variants in PRPF8, TRIO, and ZBTB7A - four genes previously implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders with or without speech problems. Our results also highlighted two further genes of interest for stuttering: FLT3 and IREB2. We used extensive bioinformatic approaches to investigate overlaps in brain-related processes among the twelve genes associated with monogenic forms of stuttering. Analyses of gene-expression datasets of the developing and adult human brain, and data from a genome-wide association study of human brain structural connectivity, did not find links of monogenic stuttering to specific brain processes. Overall, our results provide the first direct genetic link between stuttering and other neurodevelopmental disorders, including speech delay and aphasia. In addition, we systematically demonstrate a dissimilarity in biological pathways associated with the genes thus far implicated in monogenic forms of stuttering, indicating heterogeneity in the etiological basis of this condition.

Abstract

Neurovariability refers to the naturally occurring differences in brain structure and functional organisation across individuals. Rather than being noise, this variability reflects an adaptive feature of human neurobiology, supporting diversity, flexibility, learning, and resilience across evolution and lifespan. Here, we summarise the anatomical, functional, and evolutionary foundations of neurovariability, its relevance to health and disease, and the current limitations of methods for quantifying it. By understanding neurovariability as an emergent property of complex systems, we highlight its importance in advancing personalised neuroscience.

Abstract

Humans represent word knowledge in different modalities, including spoken and written forms. Language processing, such as reading comprehension, benefits from the synchronous retrieval of both forms. However, it is unknown how spoken and written words are best acquired and linked for subsequent synchronous retrieval. In the present study, we examine whether presentational timing affects word-form acquisition and linking. We test whether synchronous or asynchronous presentation of novel written and spoken forms leads to better retention. In two exploratory (Experiment 1 = 30, Experiment 2 = 48) and one pre-registered (Experiment 3 = 142) three-session experiments, participants studied Chinese words. During study, written (Pinyin) and spoken forms were presented simultaneously or asynchronously, with spoken preceding written forms and vice versa. In both exploratory experiments, we observed a recall advantage for spoken-first presentation at test, which required generating written forms when cued with the corresponding spoken forms. Experiment 3 assessed the robustness of these effects across tasks: the recall task used before and two recognition tasks (forced choice and match/mismatch). Replicating the earlier results, spoken-first learning enhanced later recall. However, recognition was unaffected by presentational timing. This dissociation suggests that only tasks with higher cognitive demands – such as recall – are sensitive to differences in presentational timing, whereas recognition tasks are not. The recall advantage for spoken-first aligns with prediction-based accounts of learning and highlights the importance of timing in linking novel word forms. These findings have implications for models of word learning and for instructional approaches in (foreign) language acquisition and rehabilitation.

Abstract

Disfluencies in speech frequently occur before the production of longer and more complex speech content. Listeners are thought to use the distribution of disfluencies in the comprehension of speech to inform their predictions. Here, we investigated whether the presence of disfluencies in speech affects word processing also in naturalistic listening conditions. Participants (n = 36) listened to the spoken recall of the events of a television series while undergoing fMRI. We modelled word processing effort using parametric modulations for word length, frequency, entropy, as well as surprisal and presence/absence of a disfluency. To investigate the effects of disfluencies on word processing, we tested the interaction between disfluency and frequency, and disfluency and surprisal. Words preceded by a disfluency were associated with increased activity in the left and right STG. Lower word frequency was associated with an increase in activity in the left mid STG. Increased word surprisal elicited a similar distribution of activity, with bilateral superior temporal activation. The effect of surprisal was reduced after a disfluency in a cluster in the left posterior temporal lobe, while the effect of frequency increased following disfluencies in the left superior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal cortex. Therefore, the presence of a disfluency affects the response to upcoming input, suggesting that it prepares the listener for higher complexity in the upcoming speech, by potentially allocating increased attention resources that facilitate integration in context.

Abstract

When speakers refer to objects in the world, they frequently overinform. Contrary to classical theories in linguistics, we hypothesise that overinformativeness is an efficient means of facilitating listener comprehension: speakers use redundancy to provide their listeners with search-efficient perceptual information. In Experiment One (N = 72), we operationalise search efficiency as the ease or difficulty of perceptual discrimination. We borrow methods from psychophysics to manipulate discriminability across attributes (material, colour) and across sensory modalities (audition, vision). We show that across both attributes and modalities, speakers overinform more often when the redundant information helps the listener perceptually discriminate the referent, thus aiding listener-search. Contrary to our expectations, we also find that speakers disproportionately overinform with colour information (relative to material). In Experiment Two (N = 97), we investigate the disproportionate use of colour directly, addressing explanations that appeal to colour’s perceptual salience by 1) dampening colour’s perceptual distinctiveness, and 2) controlling linguistic complexity both in terms of language production and retrieval effort. Contrary to widespread explanations, these factors cannot explain the disproportionate use of colour: colour is privileged in reference.

Abstract

Contemporary artificial intelligence models owe much of their success and discontents to connectionism, a framework in cognitive science that has been (and continues to be) highly influential. Herein, we analyze artificial neural networks: (a) when used as scientific instruments of study and (b) when functioning as emergent arbiters of the zeitgeist in the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences. Building on our previous work with respect to analogizing between artificial neural networks and cognition, brains, or behavior (Guest & Martin, 2023), we use metatheoretical analysis techniques (Guest, 2024), including formal logic, to characterize two distinct tendencies within connectionism that we dub classical and modern, with divergent properties, for example, goals, mechanisms, and scientific questions. We also demonstrate how we, as a field, often fail to follow important lines of argument to their end—this results in a paradoxical praxis. By engaging more deeply with (meta)theory surrounding artificial neural networks, our field can obviate the cycle of artificial intelligence winters and summers, which need not be inevitable

Abstract

Lateralization is a hallmark of brain organization, yet the structural basis underlying this phenomenon remains a critical, unresolved question in cognitive and systems neuroscience. In this study, we applied multivariate machine learning techniques to investigate variations of global brain asymmetry and their associations with cognitive functions, aging, and aging-related diseases, using large-scale datasets. Our findings revealed substantial and previously unknown structural differences between the hemispheres, and established key associations between structural asymmetries and lateralized functions. At the population level, we identified unique aging trajectories of hemispheric differences and uncovered diagnosis-specific variations in patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and in APOE ε4 carriers at genetic risk. Notably, we identified a “left hemi-aging” pattern that challenges the conventional “right hemi-aging” model. Together, these results advance our understanding of functional lateralization in the human brain and highlight the potential of global brain asymmetry as a biomarker for brain aging and related diseases.

Abstract

Theories of predictive processing propose that sensory systems constantly predict incoming signals, based on spatial and temporal context. However, evidence for prediction in sensory cortex largely comes from artificial experiments using simple, highly predictable stimuli, that arguably encourage prediction. Here, we test for sensory prediction during natural scene perception. Specifically, we use deep generative modelling to quantify the spatial predictability of receptive field (RF) patches in natural images, and compared those predictability estimates to brain responses in the mouse visual cortex—while rigorously accounting for established tuning to a rich set of low-level image features and their local statistical context—in a large scale survey of high-density recordings from the Allen Institute Brain Observatory. This revealed four insights. First, cortical responses across the mouse visual system are shaped by sensory predictability, with more predictable image patches evoking weaker responses. Secondly, visual cortical neurons are primarily sensitive to the predictability of higher-level image features, even in neurons in the primary visual areas that are preferentially tuned to low-level visual features. Third, unpredictability sensitivity is stronger in the superficial layers of primary visual cortex, in line with predictive coding models. Finally, these spatial prediction effects are independent of recent experience, suggesting that they rely on long-term priors about the structure of the visual world. Together, these results suggest visual cortex might predominantly predict sensory information at higher levels of abstraction—a pattern bearing striking similarities to recent, successful techniques from artificial intelligence for predictive self-supervised learning.

Abstract

It has been argued that lexical access in bilinguals is language nonselective. However, little is known about how the input modality (spoken or written) affects cross-language activation during listening and reading. The current study characterizes the nature of within- and cross-language competition for spoken and written words in adults who are bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English. Using a recently developed cross-modality version of the Visual World Paradigm, we found that competition differs for spoken and written words. For spoken words, the auditory stimulus unfolds overtime giving an additional boost to within- and cross-language competition. Conversely, written words can be seen at once, and thus, incremental processing is less of a factor, resulting in less competition within a language and no competition across languages. The findings show that word recognition is fundamentally language nonselective but can behave in selective ways depending on the modality of the input and language experience.

Abstract

Population isolation and bottlenecks can affect cultural evolution. This has been shown in bird vocal dialects but is less studied in mammals. The isolated and weakly structured population of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Mediterranean Sea provide an opportunity to address this knowledge gap. We studied dialect variation in this population using the species’ primary social vocalization, stereotyped patterns of clicks called codas. We analysed 5291 codas recorded over 112 days between 2003 and 2021 from both the western and eastern deep-water basins of the Mediterranean Sea. We confirmed previous studies showing the dominance of codas with a 3+1 pattern but also identified two distinct dialect groups. The 2+1 and slow 3+1 coda types identified the western dialect while the 8I and fast 3++1 coda types identified the eastern dialect. Notably, groups recorded in the east occasionally produced the ‘western’ slow 3+1 coda types but the converse was not true, suggesting a directionality in dialect formation. The similarities between the apparent effects of isolation on sperm whale dialects and isolation effects reported in studies of the cultural evolution of both bird song dialects and human languages suggest convergences in vocal dialect evolution across social taxa.

Abstract

Our ability to produce words and sentences relies on lexical retrieval and structural assembly processes, which are supported by domain-general skills. In the present study, we adopted an individual-differences approach to examine how linguistic experience and domain-general skills jointly contribute to language production at different levels of complexity. Our participants (n = 169) completed three production tasks that capitalized on lexical retrieval (picture naming) and structural assembly (phrase generation and sentence generation) processes, respectively. In addition, they completed 15 tests measuring linguistic experience, processing speed, working memory, and nonverbal reasoning. Our analyses of speech onset latencies and speech durations showed that linguistic experience was primarily associated with faster speech initiation, particularly in picture naming, consistent with its role in supporting efficient lexical access. In contrast, processing speed emerged as a robust predictor of both earlier speech initiation and shorter utterance durations, with effects that were disproportionately larger for phrase and sentence production than for picture naming, highlighting its role in coordinating multiword structural assembly under time pressure. Working memory was linked to a redistribution of planning across time, with higher capacity associated with longer onset latencies but shorter speech durations. By integrating multiple predictors, our study provides novel insights into the cognitive architecture underlying language production and highlights the value of a holistic individual-differences approach.

Abstract

Traditional psycholinguistic approaches to language have examined production and comprehension in isolation. However, these processes are tightly intertwined and embedded in social interactions. In this Review, we summarize empirical work that highlights the behavioural and cognitive complexities of communicating meaning in face-to-face conversation and that should be captured by psycholinguistic accounts and paradigms. To begin, we consider the implications of conceptualizing language as a situated joint action. Then, we summarize work on three defining features of conversation. First, visual bodily signals play an integral role in composing and comprehending meaning and achieving mutual understanding. Second, addressee feedback signals understanding or difficulty understanding, and the monitoring of interlocutors for such signals adds demands on cognitive resources. Third, multi-party interactions require participants to keep track of and adapt to multiple people’s understanding, signals and shared knowledge. In closing, we point to issues that require further research and the development of experimental paradigms that can capture defining features of face-to-face conversation while maintaining experimental control.

Abstract

Online education, smartphones, and generative AI have dramatically changed what and how we read. Amid this backdrop of changing media and habits, this book addresses the question: What do we know about the cognitive benefits of reading? And how might this change in a digital age? Presenting a synthesis of research spanning psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and education, it offers a clear and accessible account of how reading transforms the human mind and brain. It demonstrates the profound cognitive enhancements on memory, attention, language processing, reasoning, and intellectual growth resulting from reading, beyond knowledge acquisition. This is an essential guide for students, educators, and researchers alike interested in the science of reading.

Abstract

Language processing is facilitated by the prediction of upcoming linguistic content. Natural speech is full of disfluencies that have potential predictive power for the listener. The extent to which different pragmatic cues, such as disfluencies, are integrated with semantic context to inform predictions is, however, currently unknown. Here we combine electroencephalography (EEG), eye tracking and virtual reality to investigate to what extent predictive processing during naturalistic language comprehension is influenced by hesitation disfluencies in speech. Participants (n= 64) listened to sentences spoken by a virtual agent in various virtual scenes (e.g., office, street) while their eye-movements and EEG were recorded. Spoken sentences were predictable or unpredictable based on the verb constraints, and were either fluent or disfluent with a hesitation disfluency (“uhh”) preceding the noun phrase. Referents were visible or absent in the scene to be congruent or incongruent with listeners’ predictions, respectively. In predictable but not unpredictable sentences, fixations towards the referent increased before it was mentioned, which confirmed that participants predicted the referent. After hesitation onset, fixations towards the referent no longer increased but shifted towards the virtual speaker. EEG data at noun onset (N400 amplitudes and alpha and theta frequency power) provided no evidence that listeners discard their prediction after hearing a hesitation disfluency. Rather, the disfluency further facilitates predictable noun processing, possibly through mechanisms of increased attention and processing time.

Abstract

We examined the morphosyntactic prediction ability of child heritage speakers and the role of reading skills and language experience in predictive processing. Using visual world eye-tracking, we focused on predictive use of case-marking cues in Turkish with monolingual (N=49, Mage=83 months) and heritage children, who were early bilinguals of Turkish and Dutch (N=30, Mage=90 months). We found quantitative differences in magnitude of the prediction ability of monolingual and heritage children; however, their overall prediction ability was on par. The heritage speakers’ prediction ability was facilitated by their reading skills in Dutch, but not in Turkish as well as by their heritage language exposure, but not by engagement in literacy activities. These findings emphasize the facilitatory role of reading skills and spoken language experience in predictive processing. This study is the first to show that in a developing bilingual mind, effects of reading-on-prediction can take place across modalities and across languages.

Abstract

Children often use gestures to express concepts before expressing them in speech, particularly in domains rich in visual-spatial information. For example, spatial relations such as left-right are cognitively and linguistically challenging for children. Consequently, 8-year-olds struggle to convey these complex relations verbally, but they frequently rely on gestures to describe these spatial concepts informatively. This study builds on this prior work on the descriptions of left-right relations to investigate further (1) the differing functions of gestures (complementary or redundant) in relation to speech in both children and adults; (2) the change in semantic information conveyed in both of these types of gestures in childhood to adulthood, aiming to shed light on the interaction between spatial language and spatial cognitive development. Eight-year-old and adult monolingual Turkish speakers described pictures of objects in left-right spatial relations shown among a quartet of other types of spatial relations between these objects. Results demonstrated that when describing left-right relations between objects, children, compared to adults, provided more under-informative descriptions (i.e., using “side” instead of “left-right”) in speech but used complementary gestures to convey missing information multimodally. Adults already used informative spatial terms in speech and used gestures mostly redundantly. Moreover, children showed a preference for iconic gestures depicting the relative locations of objects over directional pointing gestures indicating single locations, especially when gestures complemented speech. In contrast, adults showed no reliable preference for either gesture type. These results indicate the significance of gestures as mechanisms of change, alongside speech, in spatial language and cognition, particularly in the context of describing cognitively complex left-right spatial relations between objects.

Abstract

Iconicity, the resemblance between linguistic form and meaning, is pervasive in sign languages, offering a natural testbed for visual grounding in vision–language models (VLMs). We introduce the Visual Iconicity Challenge, a video-based benchmark that adapts psycholinguistic measures to evaluate VLMs on three tasks: (i) phonological sign-form prediction, (ii) transparency (inferring meaning from visual form), and (iii) graded iconicity ratings. We assess 17 state-of-the-art VLMs in zero- and few-shot settings on Sign Language of the Netherlands and compare them to human baselines. VLMs mirror human phonological difficulty patterns (e.g., handshape harder than location) and achieve moderate to strong alignment with human iconicity ratings. However, they still fail to infer lexical meaning from visual form alone and show a systematic object-based bias that inverts the human preference for action-based signs. Crucially, models with stronger phonological form prediction correlate better with human iconicity judgments, indicating shared sensitivity to visually grounded structure. Our findings validate these diagnostic tasks, show that explicit reasoning narrows the open-to-closed-model calibration gap, and motivate human-centric signals for modelling iconicity in multimodal models.

Abstract

Language differs from other cultural domains in its high degree of normativity and conventionality; hence, many linguistic innovations by young children are considered acquisition errors that do not diffuse into language communities. Moreover, young children’s cognitive-pragmatic limitations hinder their ability to introduce structure into novel communication systems. Consequently, children are unlikely agents of language change or drivers of language emergence.

Abstract

Background
Social anxiety (SA) is marked by a persistent fear of social scrutiny, but its neurocognitive mechanisms remain incompletely understood. We tested whether SA is associated with altered engagement of theory of mind (ToM) systems supporting inferences about others’ thoughts and emotions or with broader interpretive tendencies biasing social information processing toward more internally guided responses.
Methods
Functional magnetic resonance imaging, heart rate, and pupil diameter were recorded from 43 individuals with elevated SA and 43 control individuals with low SA during viewing of a nonverbal animated film. ToM engagement was assessed via scene-specific neural activation, while broader interpretive processing was indexed using dynamic intersubject correlation (ISC), quantifying the degree to which neural responses were shared versus idiosyncratic across viewers over time.
Results
Participants with elevated SA showed reduced activation in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus during ToM-relevant scenes, as well as preserved engagement of the broader ToM network. Dynamic ISC analyses revealed increased alignment in early sensory regions and reduced alignment in higher-order regions outside the ToM network, consistent with more individualized processing at higher levels. These effects occurred without group differences in autonomic arousal or pupil-linked attention, and an exploratory comparison with an autism cohort revealed opposite alignment patterns in overlapping higher-order regions.
Conclusions
SA is associated with focal alterations in ToM-related processing and broader shifts in movie-driven neural alignment across the cortical hierarchy. Divergent alignment patterns in SA and autism suggest that movie-driven neural alignment may serve as a transdiagnostic marker distinguishing mechanistically distinct forms of atypical social cognition.

Abstract

This study explores how accents influence hiring decisions, focusing on evaluations made by non-native speakers. A total of 391 Turkish-speaking university students assessed candidates for tutoring positions for English (a language-relevant role) and math (a non-language-related role). Candidates spoke either Standard American English (SAE), signaling native speaker status, or Turkish-accented English (TAE), reflecting ingroup membership. Results showed that SAE speakers were consistently rated as more competent and preferred for both English and math tutoring positions, regardless of the group membership implied in their CVs. The effect of accents on hiring decisions was mediated by higher competence attribution to standard accents. The findings highlight the strong influence of standard accents in competence attributions, which can overshadow other group membership cues and job specifications, even among non-native evaluators. The results underscore the pervasive nature of accent biases in professional settings, suggesting that competence perceptions tied to standard accents may fuel discrimination across diverse contexts.

Abstract

Rhythm is a fundamental aspect of human behaviour, and musical rhythm provides one of its most elaborate instances. Unlike speech, this rhythmic behaviour is characterized by the production of temporal patterns structured around small-integer ratios, which emerge early in life and change systematically across development. Whether such developmental trajectories are uniquely human or reflect broader biological constraints remains an open question. Here, we adopt a comparative developmental approach to map the ontogeny of rhythmic structure in the vocalizations of a non-human primate, the singing lemur Indri indri. We recorded songs from individuals of different age classes and quantified temporal organization by measuring inter-onset intervals between successive note onsets. From these intervals, we computed rhythmic ratios between adjacent units and assessed their correspondence to small-integer values. We find that isochrony (1:1 ratios), a core feature of human rhythm, is present from the earliest stages of vocal production. Over development, indris produce an increasing diversity of rhythmic structures corresponding to simple numerical relationships between adjacent intervals. This similarity to humans contrasts with three key differences. First, in indri, binary ratios (1:2 and 2:1) emerge gradually. Second, rhythmic precision around small-integer ratios does not systematically increase with age. Third, developmental trajectories differ between males and females. Together, these findings reveal both shared and divergent developmental pathways of rhythm production in humans and non-human primates, suggesting that early-emerging temporal regularity (i.e., isochrony) may reflect conserved biological constraints, whereas later-developing aspects of rhythmic structure are shaped by species-specific developmental processes.

Abstract

Children’s exposure to language is shaped by interactional needs in conversation. Prior research has largely focused on how such language influences word learning and long-term lexical knowledge. However, the effects of interactional language are likely to go far beyond word learning. Earlier studies showed that in conversation, from around age 2;6 children who are watching a conversation are more likely to spontaneously switch their gaze to an upcoming responder when they hear a question compared to when they hear a non-question. However, what information drives these predictions remains unclear. Tracking the eye gaze behavior of Dutch children (1–4-year-olds) and adults, the purpose of this research was to examine whether participant’s predictions are driven by individually informative linguistic cues, comparing two cues associated with interrogatives: one lexical cue (subject pronoun) and one canonically associated prosodic cue (utterance-final intonation). We find that from age children 2;0 make more and earlier anticipations of an upcoming addressee response when hearing the early lexical cue (you vs. I subject pronouns), but we have no evidence that their predictions are changed by the later prosodic cue. Further, we investigated how cue use depends on linguistic context by comparing semantically meaningful (Study 1) and non-meaningful (Study 2) context. Only in meaningful contexts did participants show a pronoun advantage in predicting conversational structure. This suggests that using these cues relies on broader linguistic context. The findings take us a step closer to understanding how linguistic and interactional skills become intertwined in development.

Abstract

Purpose:
Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) sometimes experience difficulties with turn-taking. Smooth turn-taking requires efficient use of linguistic information in real-time interaction. Children as young as 2 years of age already use linguistic cues to predict upcoming conversational structure; for example, they anticipate more speaker switches following questions than nonquestions (question advantage), especially questions with the second-person pronoun (“you”) than questions with the first-person pronoun (“I”; pronoun advantage). We investigated whether children with DLD were less efficient than their typically developing (TD) peers in using these linguistic cues to predict conversational structure in real time.
Method:
We tracked the gaze of 23 three-year-olds with DLD and 23 TD peers while they watched two characters in conversation. We compared the size and timing of the question advantage and the pronoun advantage in both groups of children.
Results:
We find no evidence that the sizes of the question advantage and pronoun advantage differed between children with DLD and their TD peers. However, the timing of their anticipatory looks to the addressee differed; TD children already looked more at the addressee for questions than nonquestions while the speaker was still talking, while children with DLD began looking more at the addressee after the speaker finished their turn. In their use of the pronoun cue, both groups of children already looked more at the addressee while the speaker was still talking.
Conclusions:
Three-year-olds with and without DLD thus use linguistic cues to predict conversational structure in real time. The outcomes suggest, however, that children with DLD may be slower in their predictions. This slower processing may contribute to the turn-taking difficulties sometimes observed in children with DLD.

Abstract

A hallmark of human cognition is the ability to segment streams of dynamic stimuli into discrete event units. Currently, most of the evidence about event segmentation comes from English speakers. Could cross-linguistic differences in how events are encoded affect how speakers of different languages form cognitive event units? Here, we address this question by comparing how English and Turkish speakers segment and represent motion events. We find robust differences in the way speakers of these two languages form linguistic event units when describing these events (Experiment 1). Nevertheless, these differences do not affect non-linguistic event unit formation as measured by a classic event segmentation task (Experiment 2) and an event enumeration task (Experiment 3). We conclude that conceptual and linguistic event units are related but distinct levels of event structure. These results have implications for theories of event cognition, as well as the broad relation between language and thought.

Abstract

The concept of common ground has proved to be invaluable for many linguistic purposes, for the explication of, among other things, presupposition, implicature cancellation, and discourse entailments. It has been hoped that speech acts could be characterized purely in terms of context change, with assertions adding beliefs, promises, commitments, and so forth, to the common ground. But consideration shows that our current concepts of common ground are very under-developed. Moreover, the different types of speech act are very diverse and culturally variable. Most important, speech acts are properly construed as a species of action, and the common ground as a set of propositions merely records the current score or state of play. The idea then arises of supplementing the context change theory of speech acts with an Austinian overlay. But the Austinian concept of speech act is too atomistic, too ungrounded in the empirical study of conversation, and doesn’t accord with the larger plan-motivated unfolding of discourse, due to its action characteristics. The paper concludes that while a better theory of common ground is highly desirable, it will not alone offer a theory of speech acts.

Abstract

Dyslexia is a specific difficulty in learning to read that affects 5–10% of school-aged children and is strongly influenced by genetic factors. While previous studies have identified common genetic variants associated with dyslexia, the role of rare variants has only recently begun to emerge from pedigree studies and has yet to be systematically tested in larger cohorts. Here, we present a whole-exome sequencing (WES) study of 53 individuals with dyslexia, followed by an analysis in 38 cases with reading difficulties and 82 controls assessed with reading measures. Of the 22 genes that had high-impact variants filtered through stringent bioinformatic approaches in at least three dyslexia cases, five genes were validated in the follow-up analysis: CACNA1D, CACNA1G, CLDN3, CNGB1, and CP. Notably, a specific variant (7-73769649-G-A; c.C401T; p.P134L) in the CLDN3 gene was identified in six independent cases, showing a four-fold higher frequency compared to population reference datasets. CACNA1D and CACNA1G encode subunits of voltage-gated calcium channels expressed in neurons, and variants in both genes have been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and epilepsy. Segregation analyses in available family members were consistent with patterns of dominant inheritance with variable expressivity. In total, high-impact variants in the five genes of interest were found in 26% (N = 14) of individuals of the discovery cohort. Overall, our findings support the involvement of rare variants in developmental dyslexia and indicate that larger WES studies may uncover additional associated genes.

Abstract

A decade of ManyBabies research, testing thousands of babies across hundreds of labs, has shown that some, but not all findings in infant research replicate well. Collectively, these projects have shown us that our methods carry limitations that larger samples alone cannot resolve. Here we present three lessons that point toward a more reliable, inclusive developmental science.

Abstract

According to Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., and Meyer, A. S. [(1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38.] theory of lexical access, word production begins with the selection of a lemma, which gives access to the syntactic properties of the word. The notion of the lemma is well motivated on theoretical grounds and within Roelofs’ computational model WEAVER++, which captures central aspects of the theory [Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42(1–3), 107–142.; Roelofs, A. (2014). A dorsal-pathway account of aphasic language production: The WEAVER++/ARC model. Cortex, 59, 33–48.]. But what is the evidence for access to syntactic word representations? The author provides a comprehensive review of the relevant experimental evidence and concludes that, in spite of much research effort, it is still unknown whether or not speakers access abstract syntactic information during single-word access, and that further work within the established research paradigms is unlikely to change this picture. A fruitful way forward may be to broaden the perspective and explore how the syntactic properties of lexical items are retrieved when speakers produce longer utterances, where access to syntactic information is mandatory.

Abstract

The tendency to favour members of one’s own group, also known as in-group bias, is ubiquitous in social mammals from rats to humans. This preference for in-group members (which often translates into aggression against out-group members) plays a major role in mammalian social life, and governs how individuals and groups perceive and behave toward others. Understanding how such social dynamics emerge, evolve, and impact behaviour is crucial for evolutionary theory and for the design of more mammal-like agents. Yet current swarm robots are typically extremely social and cooperative, and do not differentiate between individual robots. Here, we introduce two cognitive and social layers to a swarm engaged in a foraging task and a communication game: robot individuation (a partner-specific memory) and evolving sociality (a partner-specific tendency to interact based on previous interactions). We test whether social asymmetries such as in-group bias can spontaneously emerge from repeated local interactions without implicit group markers or pre-assigned identity tags, and study its strength and stability over varying conditions: cognitive (memory size and degree of decay), social (group size and innate sociality) and environmental (spread of resources). We show that implementing these two mammal-like features leads to the spontaneous emergence of in-group bias, which is robust across ecologies. These results shed light on the evolution of social asymmetries, and pave the way for modelling the complex social dynamics of mammals.

Abstract

Background

The factors that contribute to language alternation by bilingual speakers with aphasia have been debated. Some studies suggest that atypical language mixing results from impairments in language control, while others posit that mixing is a way to enhance communicative effectiveness. To address this question, most prior research examined the appropriateness of language mixing in connected speech tasks.
Aims

The goal of this study was to provide new insight into the question whether language mixing in aphasia reflects a strategy to enhance verbal effectiveness or involuntary behaviour resulting from impaired language control.
Methods & procedures

Semi-structured web-based interviews with bilingual speakers with aphasia (N = 19) with varying language backgrounds were conducted. The interviews were transcribed and coded for: (1) Self-reports regarding language control and compensation, (2) instances of language mixing, and (3) in two cases, instances of repair initiation.
Outcomes & results

The results showed that several participants reported language control difficulties but that the knowledge of additional languages could also be recruited to compensate for lexical retrieval problems. Most participants showed no or very few instances of mixing and the observed mixes appeared to adhere to the pragmatic context and known functions of switching. Three participants exhibited more marked switching behaviour and reported corresponding difficulties with language control. Instances of atypical mixing did not coincide with clear problems initiating conversational repair.
Conclusions

Our study highlights the variability in language mixing patterns of bilingual speakers with aphasia. Furthermore, most of the individuals in the study appeared to be able to effectively control their languages, and to alternate between their languages for compensatory purposes. Control deficits resulting in atypical language mixing were observed in a small number of participants.

Abstract

Sensory feedback is essential for the fine-tuning of motor actions, and speech production is no exception. It depends on continuous self-monitoring to ensure that produced sounds match intended targets. Delaying auditory feedback (DAF) disrupts this alignment and impairs fluency, providing a powerful tool to investigate sensorimotor control. We combined functional and diffusion-weighted MRI in 31 participants performing a word-production task under delayed (DAF) and immediate (no-DAF) auditory feedback. While all participants slowed their speech under DAF, the extent of this effect varied across individuals and was quantified using a susceptibility index. At the group level, DAF > no-DAF elicited increased activation in a right-lateralized network encompassing the superior temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, supplementary motor area, and left cerebellum. Incorporating individual differences revealed that higher susceptibility was associated with greater activation in left-hemisphere speech motor homologues and larger volume of the right long segment of the arcuate fasciculus, a whitematter pathway connecting auditory and motor speech regions. This pattern suggests that susceptibility reflects increased recruitment of neural resources and a stronger reliance on auditory-motor coupling. In contrast, resilience was associated with greater engagement of the bilateral angular gyrus and higher fiber density in the right posterior AF, which connects auditory and somatosensory speech regions. This finding indicates that resilience is supported by a posterior temporo-parietal circuit that efficiently integrates multimodal sensory feedback. Together, these findings link functional dynamics with underlying structural connectivity to reveal how a right-lateralized network supports speech control, while accounting for individual differences in susceptibility to fluency disruption.

Abstract

Speakers sometimes produce lexical errors, such as saying “salt” instead of “pepper.” This study aimed to better understand the origin of lexical errors by assessing whether they arise from a hasty selection and premature decision to speak (premature selection hypothesis) or from momentary attentional disengagement from the task (attentional lapse hypothesis). We analyzed data from a speeded picture naming task (Lampe et al., 2023) and investigated whether lexical errors are produced as fast as target (i.e., correct) responses, thus arising from premature selection, or whether they are produced more slowly than target responses, thus arising from lapses of attention. Using ex-Gaussian analyses, we found that lexical errors were slower than targets in the tail, but not in the normal part of the response time distribution, with the tail effect primarily resulting from errors that were not coordinates, that is, members of the target’s semantic category. Moreover, we compared the coordinate errors and target responses in terms of their word-intrinsic properties and found that they were overall more frequent, shorter, and acquired earlier than targets. Given the present findings, we conclude that coordinate errors occur due to a premature selection but in the context of intact attentional control, following the same lexical constraints as targets, while other errors, given the variability in their nature, may vary in their origin, with one potential source being lapses of attention.

Abstract

Languages are complex adaptive systems that culturally evolve under different pressures and conditions. Social structure, and in particular population size, network connectivity, and heterogeneity, play an important role in shaping human language across multiple levels of analysis. These factors impact evolutionary and communicative dynamics such as the degree of variability versus uniformity in the linguistic community, and the rate at which innovations spread and languages change. They also influence the very structure of languages by shaping the degree of systematicity and transparency of grammars. Synthesizing observational, experimental, and computational approaches, we shed light on the complex relationship between language evolution and network structure.

Abstract

Language is often regarded as a defining trait of our species, but what are its core properties? In 1960, Hockett published ‘The origin of speech’ enumerating 13 design features presumed to be common to all languages, and which, taken together, separate language from other communication systems. Here. we review which features still hold true in light of new evidence from cognitive science, linguistics, animal cognition, and anthropology, and demonstrate how a revised understanding of language highlights three core aspects: that language is inherently multimodal and semiotically diverse; that it functions as a tool for semantic, pragmatic, and social inference, as well as facilitating categorization; and that the processes of interaction and transmission give rise to central design features of language.

Abstract

Little is known about how or when language and visuospatial processing lateralise in the brain, and if individual differences in lateralisation are related to early language or visuospatial abilities. We explored if patterns of language and visuospatial lateralisation are related to cognitive skills in young children. A large sample of 3-year-olds (n = 136) attempted two functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) tasks to estimate language and visuospatial lateralisation. At the group level, language was lateralised to the left hemisphere, but visuospatial processing was weakly lateralised to the right hemisphere. The relationship between patterns of lateralisation and cognitive skills was investigated using regression analyses with novel calculations of how typical a child’s lateralisation pattern was, the degree of crowding of both functions to one hemisphere, or how strongly both functions were lateralised. Language and visuospatial abilities were not predicted by any of these measures. Degree of visuospatial lateralisation, and not language lateralisation, was associated with higher language ability. Future research should investigate if patterns of lateralisation are related to cognitive skills in older children, when lateralisation is more established.

Abstract

Vocal individuality has important biological functions in mammals: at crucial stages of development, it ensures feeding and is a prerequisite for auditory-based mother–pup recognition. Is vocal individuality only shaped by maturation or also by the degree of conspecific acoustic input? Here, we test how the neonatal auditory environment shapes development and individualization of calls in harbour seal pups (Phoca vitulina). To simulate low- versus high-conspecific acoustic density, 18 pups heard playbacks of calls from either 2 or 30 conspecifics. We recorded calls before and after playback exposure and extracted 12 acoustic parameters. Supervised machine learning and discriminant function analyses showed greater individual distinctiveness in both groups after playback, indicating a developmental trend toward individualization. Notably, pups exposed to less-variable input showed higher individuality. Euclidean distances on call parameters showed that both groups diverged from the playback signals. Distances on within-pup and between-pups housed together revealed opposite trajectories in the two groups: after the exposure, less-variable auditory input determined steadier individual calls, while more-variable auditory input scattered calls across the acoustic space. Altogether, our findings indicate that auditory input modulates vocal development in pups, making harbour seals a promising model for unravelling how neonatal environment affects vocal plasticity in a non-human mammal.

Abstract

* = Joint first authorship I risultati evidenziano l’utilità e l’adattabilità dei materiali nella pratica clinica logopedica (con alcune differenze in funzione del setting di impiego e della popolazione coinvolta) e incoraggia la prosecuzione del progetto e l’implementazione dei materiali, con l’obiettivo di favorire la partecipazione sociale delle PcA.

Abstract

This study examines actions that are not directly articulated by speakers but are nonetheless oriented to by participants. Specifically, we examine situations in which a speaker is launching a request project, approaching a request indirectly, with a preliminary, or with further “upstream work,” but without ever making an actual request. Prior literature has argued that indirectness and preliminaries afford speakers with deniability and thus allow them to avoid accountability for requesting. We argue that, although these ways of approaching and projecting a request create greater opportunities for alignment and affiliation, they do not allow speakers to evade accountability. Data are in English and Italian.

Abstract

Explaining how children build a language system is a central goal of research in language acquisition, with broad implications for language evolution, adult language processing, and artificial intelligence (AI). Here, we propose a constructivist framework for future theory-building in language acquisition. We describe four components of constructivism, drawing on wide-ranging evidence to argue that theories based on these components will be well suited to explaining developmental change. We show how adopting a constructivist framework both provides plausible answers to old questions (e.g., how children build linguistic representations from their input) and generates new questions (e.g., how children adapt to the affordances provided by different cultures and languages).

Abstract

Our goal in this chapter was to test a usage-based computational model of vocabulary learning (CLASSIC). CLASSIC simulates variation in vocabulary growth as a product of interactions between linguistic input quantity and the child’s current knowledge state, using an associative learning mechanism with a fixed capacity limited processing window. We directly compared the model’s results to those from children taking part in a number of empirical tasks and showed that, simply by varying the amount of input received by the model, we can successfully simulate a number of effects that we see in the children’s performance: individual differences in the rate of vocabulary growth between 19 and 30 months of age; correlations between vocabulary size, familiar word processing speed (as measured by Looking-While-Listening tasks) and phonological working memory capacity (as measured by non-word repetition tasks), and the effect of processing speed and non-word repetition performance on subsequent vocabulary growth. The results suggest that exposure to linguistic input, read through a fixed capacity processing constraint, leads learners to store phonological knowledge in chunks of information of varying size, and it is this stored knowledge that, at least partially, determines familiar word processing speed, non-word repetition performance, and vocabulary growth.

Abstract

Common ground is the information that the participants in a conversation treat as background information for the purposes of their interaction. We review two traditions of research on common ground. The formal tradition, consisting mainly of theoretical linguists and philosophers of language, has developed increasingly sophisticated formal models of common ground to generate predictions about an expanding range of empirical phenomena. Meanwhile, the psycholinguistic tradition has focused on a narrower range of phenomena while developing more realistic theories of the psychological mechanisms that allow us to select and represent common ground. After summarizing these two traditions, we consider several reasons why they should be reintegrated, and we argue that the best way to bring them back together would be to adopt a cognitive-pluralist approach, whereby language users have access to a variety of mechanisms for managing background information, which are more or less available and efficient depending on the communicative situation and the kind of information mentally represented as well as the cognitive demands of each mechanism.

Abstract

All languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here we aim to provide experimental evidence that demonstrative choice is jointly determined by spatial considerations (e.g., whether the referent is near or far) and socio-cognitive factors (e.g.,the listener’s attention focus). We also test whether demonstrative choice varies depending on the speaker’s use of pointing, to provide evidence for a multimodal account of demonstrative systems. We focus on the Turkish system and compare it with the Spanish one to better understand the cross-linguistic variability of 3-term demonstrative systems. Corpus studies have suggested that the Turkish proximal ‘bu’ and distal ‘o’ mark a spatial contrast between near and far space, whereas the medial ‘s¸u’ is used to direct the listener’s attention to a new referent. Supporting this analysis, an online experiment using a picture-based demonstrative-choice task revealed that the medial form ‘s¸u’ was preferred when the listener was looking at the wrong object. The results of a second experiment using video stimuli further showed that the medial ‘s¸u’ was preferred when the speaker pointed to the referent to direct the listener’s attention, whereas the proximal demonstrative was used in near space and the distal in far space, mostly in joint attention and without pointing. The results of a third experiment in Spanish showed radically different patterns of demonstrative-pointing use. The medial ‘ese’ was preferred in joint attention, whereas the proximal ‘este’ and distal ‘aquel’ were selected to direct the listener’s attention towards the intended referent but without an effect of pointing. Our results confirm that demonstrative choice within a given system is determined by both spatial and socio-cognitive factors, interacting with pointing patterns and varying across languages. Leveraging recent experimental work in several languages, we interpret these findings as further evidence for the weighted parameters framework (e.g., referent position and listener attention), which explains demonstrative choice beyond previous categorical analyses.

Abstract

The study of great ape cognition offers insights into the evolutionary origins of human intelligence, but is hindered by small sample sizes and restricted access to data. To address this, we present the EVApeCognition Dataset, a publicly available resource comprising 262 experimental datasets from 150 scientific publications from the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center (2004–2021) in Leipzig, Germany. Eighty-one apes participated in 150 studies, with a majority (N = 78) participating in more than one study. Publication of the dataset aims to make these unique datasets accessible for future meta-analyses and correlational analyses, helping us better understand how our great ape relatives think, learn, and behave.

Abstract

Despite decades of research, we still know less than we would like about the association between joint attention (JA) and language acquisition. One reason for this is that we still have not agreed how to define, operationalize, and measure joint attention. The goal of this study is to examine the impact of applying two different joint attention operationalization schemes—reflecting distinct theoretical perspectives—to the same dataset of video-recordings of semi-naturalistic toy-play interactions between 12-month-old children and their caregivers (N = 39). We identified joint attention around relevant naming events to determine how these choices affect interpretations of the role of joint attention in vocabulary acquisition. We compared a gaze-based coding scheme, consistent with associative accounts of joint attention, with a socially coordinated joint attention coding scheme, based on social-pragmatic theories that require, in addition to gaze overlap, evidence of shared awareness. We then extracted two measures from each scheme: average joint attention event duration and the temporal overlap between joint attention events and naming events (JA overlap). We found that while measures of joint attention were predictive of later expressive vocabulary above and beyond language-based measures in both coding schemes, model comparison based on AIC/BIC indicated that joint attention defined as coordinated JA was preferred over joint attention defined as gaze overlap. Furthermore, the best fitting model predicting later vocabulary favored predictors based on the coordinated JA scheme. Our results suggest that a social operationalization of joint attention leads to better predictors of later vocabulary size than a gaze-based operationalization of joint attention. In addition, the current study emphasizes the critical role of methodological choices in understanding how and why joint attention is associated with vocabulary size.

Abstract

Joint attention (JA), the shared focus between a caregiver and their child on an object or event, has been shown to be crucial for language development and other early cognitive processes. However, JA research is often only measured in cross-sectional samples, which do not allow the differentiation between intra- and inter-individual differences. In addition, most studies focus on narrow participant groups, and sign language users represent one understudied group. However, signers offer a particularly valuable perspective for JA research, as the use of a visual-manual language may uniquely influence gaze and JA. This longitudinal study investigates the developmental trajectory of gaze and multimodal JA behaviours in seven native signing deaf-caregiver-hearing-child dyads between 12 and 24 months of child age during naturalistic interactions. Results show that while gaze and general JA properties remain stable across the second year of life, significant changes emerge in how children initiate JA. Over time, the native signing children in this study increasingly take on an active role in their interactions, being more frequently and more successfully initiators of JA and exploring different multimodal behaviours. These findings suggest that modality-specific experiences may shape developmental pathways and emphasise the importance of studying JA in diverse populations. Further longitudinal research is needed to disentangle the effect of language modality and individual differences in JA development.

Abstract

The human brain is thought to constantly predict future words during language processing. Recently, a new approach emerged that aims to capture neural prediction directly by using vector representations of words (embeddings) to predict brain activity prior to word onset. Two findings have been proposed as hallmarks of neural next-word prediction: (i) significant encoding prior to word onset and (ii) its modulation by word predictability. However, natural language is rife with temporal correlations, where upcoming words share statistical information with preceding ones. This raises a critical question: do these these hallmarks emerge from the brain actively predicting future content, or might they be equally well explained by the regression model exploiting these inherent stimulus dependencies? To distinguish between these alternatives, we applied the same encoding analysis to passive control systems, i.e., representational systems that encode the stimulus but cannot predict upcoming words. We show that both hallmarks emerge in two such control systems, namely in word embeddings themselves and in speech acoustics. We further show that proposed methods to correct for these dependencies are insufficient, as the effects persist even after such corrections. Together, these results suggests that pre-onset prediction of brain activity might reflect dependencies in natural language rather than predictive computations. This questions the extent to which this new encoding-based method can be used to study prediction in the brain.

Abstract

Autistic individuals often show differential sensory perception, including hypo- or hypersensitivities to sound. Previous research also suggests that autistic individuals often have difficulty processing intentional and affective cues in speech acoustics. However, general speech processing difficulties remain underexplored. We investigated self-reported auditory perception using the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Questionnaire among autistic (self-identifying (n = 18) and clinically diagnosed (n = 45)) and non-autistic adults (N = 66). The study was conducted in the Netherlands, but the questionnaire and call for participation were in English and open to anyone regardless of country of residence. Both clinically diagnosed and self-identifying individuals with autism reported significantly lower scores on the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Questionnaire score and on the Speech subscale compared with non-autistic individuals, indicating challenges in overall quality of auditory perception, speech comprehension. Clinically diagnosed individuals also showed lower scores on the quality and spatial subscales compared with non-autistic individuals. Post hoc analysis further suggested that speech hearing is particularly challenging for many autistic individuals. In addition, our finding that self-identifying and clinically diagnosed autistic individuals show similar patterns of hearing difficulties emphasizes the need for more inclusive research practices that collect the experiences of all the individuals in the autistic community in the study of sensory perception in autism.

Abstract

Language comprehension requires the integration of information from a wide variety of sources, including sensory input and memory. The present study contributes to a growing literature examining how probability and uncertainty shape language comprehension in close collaboration with grammatical knowledge, wherein the specifics of when and how these sources of information come together during sentence processing remain opaque. Here we asked how morphosyntax and lexical surprisal impact subject-verb agreement in Dutch: an online self-paced reading experiment tested whether lexical surprisal affects the use of grammatical information. Using a combination of model-comparison and permutation testing, we showed that reading times cannot be explained by a dichotomous interactive, nor by a purely additive account. While both factors must be modeled in order to best describe reading time data, the data provided evidence that lexical surprisal is leveraged more reliably when the constraints placed by the grammar are obeyed. We propose a novel “structure bottleneck”, where the use of probabilistic cues is conditionalized on grammatical status of a subject-verb agreement relation. Viewed in the context of previous findings, the results are consistent with an account of language comprehension wherein grammatical and contextual probabilistic cues are weighted based on their reliability.

Abstract

Quantifiers specify semantic relations between sentence constituents. Due to their abstract meanings, they form a learning challenge for children. This challenge is made more difficult by the fact that different universal quantifiers instantiate slightly different meanings. We investigated what evidence is available in the input that might help children learn the meaning of universal quantifiers by exploring the use of these words in naturalistic child-ambient language in English and Dutch. The cross-linguistic component in this analysis is relevant because languages differ in how they carve up the space of universal quantification. Our analysis revealed language- and quantifier-specific patterns in frequency, variability, and contexts of use. We discuss how these quantifier-specific usage patterns lead to quantifier-specific developmental trajectories and challenges.

Abstract

Simultaneous constructions present a unique linguistic property in sign languages where multiple body articulators (hands, torso, head, facial expression, and eye gaze) are used to structure linguistic information not only linearly, as is done in speech, but also simultaneously. Simultaneous constructions allow a more direct encoding of scenes and events by using various iconic strategies to depict multiple event elements (e.g. referents and their actions), their spatial relations and temporal overlap, mirroring how they are perceived in the world; that is, simultaneously. The chapter provides an overview of how iconicity is operationalized in simultaneous constructions and the methods used to study their function, and discusses the history and future directions of the study of iconicity as a structuring principle in sign languages.