Publications

Abstract

This paper argues that speech-associated gestures can usefully inform studies exploring development of meaning in first and second language acquisition. The example domain is caused motion or placement meaning (putting a cup on a table) where acquisition problems have been observed and where adult native gesture use reflects crosslinguistically different placement verb semantics. Against this background, the paper summarises three studies examining the development of semantic representations in Dutch children acquiring Dutch, and adult learners’ acquiring Dutch and French placement verbs. Overall, gestures change systematically with semantic development both in children and adults and (1) reveal what semantic elements are included in current semantic representations, whether target-like or not, and (2) highlight developmental shifts in those representations. There is little evidence that gestures chiefly act as a support channel. Instead, the data support the theoretical notion that speech and gesture form an integrated system, opening new possibilities for studying the processes of acquisition.

Abstract

This study examines to what extent English speakers of L2 Dutch reconstruct the meanings of placement verbs when moving from a general L1 verb of caused motion (put) to two specific caused posture verbs (zetten/leggen ‘set/lay’) in the L2 and whether the existence of low-frequency cognate forms in the L1 (set/lay) alleviates the reconstruction problem. Evidence from speech and gesture indicates that English speakers have difficulties with the specific verbs in L2 Dutch, initially looking for means to express general caused motion in L1-like fashion through over-generalisation. The gesture data further show that targetlike forms are often used to convey L1-like meaning. However, the differentiated use of zetten for vertical placement and dummy verbs (gaan ‘go’ and doen ‘do’) and intransitive posture verbs (zitten/staan/liggen ‘sit, stand, lie’) for horizontal placement, and a positive correlation between appropriate verb use and target-like gesturing suggest a beginning sensitivity to the semantic parameters of the L2 verbs and possible reconstruction.

Abstract

In speaking and comprehending language, word information is retrieved from memory and combined into larger units (unification). Unification operations take place in parallel at the semantic, syntactic and phonological levels of processing. This article proposes a new framework that connects psycholinguistic models to a neurobiological account of language. According to this proposal the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) plays an important role in unification. Research in other domains of cognition indicates that left prefrontal cortex has the necessary neurobiological characteristics for its involvement in the unification for language. I offer here a psycholinguistic perspective on the nature of language unification and the role of LIFG.

Abstract

How does intention to speak become the action of speaking? It involves the generation of a preverbal message that is tailored to the requirements of a particular language, and through a series of steps, the message is transformed into a linear sequence of speech sounds (1, 2). These steps include retrieving different kinds of information from memory (semantic, syntactic, and phonological), and combining them into larger structures, a process called unification. Despite general agreement about the steps that connect intention to articulation, there is no consensus about their temporal profile or the role of feedback from later steps (3, 4). In addition, since the discovery by the French physician Pierre Paul Broca (in 1865) of the role of the left inferior frontal cortex in speaking, relatively little progress has been made in understanding the neural infrastructure that supports speech production (5). One reason is that the characteristics of natural language are uniquely human, and thus the neurobiology of language lacks an adequate animal model. But on page 445 of this issue, Sahin et al. (6) demonstrate, by recording neuronal activity in the human brain, that different kinds of linguistic information are indeed sequentially processed within Broca's area.

Abstract

Recognizing relational similarity relies on the ability to understand that defining object properties might not lie in the objects individually, but in the relations of the properties of various object to each other. This aptitude is highly relevant for many important human skills such as language, reasoning, categorization and understanding analogy and metaphor. In the current study, we investigated the ability to recognize relational similarities by testing five species of great apes, including human children in a spatial task. We found that all species performed better if related elements are connected by logico-causal as opposed to non-causal relations. Further, we find that only children above 4 years of age, bonobos and chimpanzees, unlike younger children, gorillas and orangutans display some mastery of reasoning by non-causal relational similarity. We conclude that recognizing relational similarity is not in its entirety unique to the human species. The lack of a capability for language does not prohibit recognition of simple relational similarities. The data are discussed in the light of the phylogenetic tree of relatedness of the great apes.

Abstract

There has been considerable controversy over the existence of cognitive differences across human cultures: some claim that human cognition is essentially universal [1,2], others that it reflects cultural specificities [3,4]. One domain of interest has been spatial cognition [5,6]. Despite the global universality of physical space, cultures vary as to how space is coded in their language. Some, for example, do not use egocentric ‘left, right, front, back’ constructions to code spatial relations, instead using allocentric notions like ‘north, south, east, west’ [4,6]: “The spoon is north of the bowl!” Whether or not spatial cognition also varies across cultures remains a contested question [7,8]. Here we investigate whether memory for movements of one's own body differs between cultures with contrastive strategies for coding spatial relations. Our results show that the ways in which we memorize movements of our own body differ in line with culture-specific preferences for how to conceive of spatial relations.

Abstract

The results of two self-paced reading experiments are reported, which investigated the on-line processing of subject-object ambiguities in Dutch relative clause constructions like Dat is de vrouw die de meisjes heeft/hebben gezien by German advanced second language (L2) learners of Dutch. Native speakers of both Dutch and German have been shown to have a preference for a subject versus an object reading of such temporarily ambiguous sentences, and so we provided an ideal opportunity for the transfer of first language (L1) processing preferences to take place. We also investigated whether the participants' working memory span would affect their processing of the experimental items. The results suggest that processing decisions may be affected by working memory when task demands are high and in this case, the high working memory span learners patterned like the native speakers of lower working memory. However, when reading for comprehension alone, and when only structural information was available to guide parsing decisions, working memory span had no effect on the L2 learners' on-line processing, and this differed from the native speakers' even though the L1 and the L2 are highly comparable.

Abstract

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. A vigorous ongoing debate surrounds the question of how such internal structure is best accounted for: by means of lexical entries and deterministic symbolic rules, or by means of probabilistic subsymbolic networks implicitly encoding structural similarities in connection weights. In this review, we separate the question of subsymbolic versus symbolic implementation from the question of deterministic versus probabilistic structure. We outline a growing body of evidence, mostly external to the above debate, indicating that morphological structure is indeed intrinsically graded. By allowing probability into the grammar, progress can be made towards solving some long-standing puzzles in morphological theory.

Abstract

When participants are presented simultaneously with spoken language and a visual display depicting objects to which that language refers, participants spontaneously fixate the visual referents of the words being heard [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6(1), 84–107; Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268(5217), 1632–1634]. We demonstrate here that such spontaneous fixation can be driven by partial semantic overlap between a word and a visual object. Participants heard the word ‘piano’ when (a) a piano was depicted amongst unrelated distractors; (b) a trumpet was depicted amongst those same distractors; and (c), both the piano and trumpet were depicted. The probability of fixating the piano and the trumpet in the first two conditions rose as the word ‘piano’ unfolded. In the final condition, only fixations to the piano rose, although the trumpet was fixated more than the distractors. We conclude that eye movements are driven by the degree of match, along various dimensions that go beyond simple visual form, between a word and the mental representations of objects in the concurrent visual field.

Abstract

Ten healthy adults encountered pictures of unfamiliar archaic tools and successfully learned either their name, verbal definition of their usage, or both. Neural representation of the newly acquired information was probed with magnetoencephalography in an overt picture-naming task before and after learning, and in two categorization tasks after learning. Within 400 ms, activation proceeded from occipital through parietal to left temporal cortex, inferior frontal cortex (naming) and right temporal cortex (categorization). Comparison of naming of newly learned versus familiar pictures indicated that acquisition and maintenance of word forms are supported by the same neural network. Explicit access to newly learned phonology when such information was known strongly enhanced left temporal activation. By contrast, access to newly learned semantics had no comparable, direct neural effects. Both the behavioral learning pattern and neurophysiological results point to fundamentally different implementation of and access to phonological versus semantic features in processing pictured objects.

Abstract

Thesaurus alignments play an important role in realising efficient access to heterogeneous Cultural Heritage data. Current technology, however, provides only limited value for such access as it fails to bridge the gap between theoretical study and user needs that stem from practical application requirements. In this paper, we explore common real-world problems of a library, and identify solutions that would greatly benefit from a more application embedded study, development, and evaluation of matching technology.

Abstract

The mechanisms underlying language production are often assumed to be universal, and hence not contingent on a speaker’s language. This assumption is problematic for at least two reasons. Given the typological diversity of the world’s languages, only a small subset of languages has actually been studied psycholinguistically. And, in some cases, these investigations have returned results that at least superficially raise doubt about the assumption of universal production mechanisms. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the need for more psycholinguistic work on a typologically more diverse set of languages. We summarize cross-linguistic work on sentence production (specifically: grammatical encoding), focusing on examples where such work has improved our theoretical understanding beyond what studies on English alone could have achieved. But cross-linguistic research has much to offer beyond the testing of existing hypotheses: it can guide the development of theories by revealing the full extent of the human ability to produce language structures. We discuss the potential for interdisciplinary collaborations, and close with a remark on the impact of language endangerment on psycholinguistic research on understudied languages.

Abstract

This study investigates neighbourhood density effects on lexical decision performance (both accuracy and response times) of aphasic patients. Given earlier results on lexical activation and deactivation in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, the prediction was that smaller neighbourhood density effects would be found for Broca's aphasic patients, compared to age-matched non-brain-damaged control participants, whereas enlarged density effects were expected for Wernicke's aphasic patients. The results showed density effects for all three groups of listeners, and overall differences in performance between groups, but no significant interaction between neighbourhood density and listener group. Several factors are discussed to account for the present results.

Abstract

This study investigates the relative contributions of auditory and cognitive factors to the common finding that an increase in speech rate affects elderly listeners more than young listeners. Since a direct relation between non-auditory factors, such as age-related cognitive slowing, and fast speech performance has been difficult to demonstrate, the present study took an on-line, rather than off-line, approach and focused on processing time. Elderly and young listeners were presented with speech at two rates of time compression and were asked to detect pre-assigned target words as quickly as possible. A number of auditory and cognitive measures were entered in a statistical model as predictors of elderly participants’ fast speech performance: hearing acuity, an information processing rate measure, and two measures of reading speed. The results showed that hearing loss played a primary role in explaining elderly listeners’ increased difficulty with fast speech. However, non-auditory factors such as reading speed and the extent to which participants were affected by
increased rate of presentation in a visual analog of the listening experiment also predicted fast
speech performance differences among the elderly participants. These on-line results confirm that slowed information processing is indeed part of elderly listeners’ problem keeping up with fast language

Abstract

The authors compared sublexical and supralexical approaches to morphological processing with unambiguous and ambiguous inflected words and words with ambiguous stems in 3 masked and unmasked priming experiments in Finnish. Experiment 1 showed equal facilitation for all prime types with a short 60-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) but significant facilitation for unambiguous words only with a long 300-ms SOA. Experiment 2 showed that all potential readings of ambiguous inflections were activated under a short SOA. Whereas the prime-target form overlap did not affect the results under a short SOA, it significantly modulated the results with a long SOA. Experiment 3 confirmed that the results from masked priming were modulated by the morphological structure of the words but not by the prime-target form overlap alone. The results support approaches in which early prelexical morphological processing is driven by morph-based segmentation and form is used to cue selection between 2 candidates only during later processing.

Abstract

English-learning 7.5-month-olds are heavily biased to perceive stressed syllables as word onsets. By 11 months, however, infants begin segmenting non-initially stressed words from speech.Using the same artificial language methodology as Johnson and Jusczyk (2001), we explored the possibility that the emergence of this ability is linked to a decreased reliance on prosodic cues to word boundaries accompanied by an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues. In a baseline study, where only statistical cues to word boundaries were present, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for statistical words. When conflicting stress cues were added to the speech stream, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for stress as opposed to statistical words. This was interpreted as evidence that 11-month-olds weight stress cues to word boundaries more heavily than statistical cues. Experiment 2 further investigated these results with a language containing convergent cues to word boundaries. The results of Experiment 2 were not conclusive. A third experiment using new stimuli and a different experimental design supported the conclusion that 11-month-olds rely more heavily on prosodic than statistical cues to word boundaries. We conclude that the emergence of the ability to segment non-initially stressed words from speech is not likely to be tied to an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues relative to stress cues, but instead may emerge due to an increased reliance on and integration of a broad array of segmentation cues.

Abstract

Retaining detailed representations of unstressed syllables is a logical prerequisite for infants' use of probabilistic phonotactics to segment iambic words from fluent speech. The head-turn preference study was used to investigate the nature of English- learners' representations of iambic word onsets. Fifty-four 10.5-month-olds were familiarized to passages containing the nonsense iambic word forms ginome and tupong. Following familiarization, infants were either tested on familiar (ginome and tupong) or near-familiar (pinome and bupong) versus unfamiliar (kidar and mafoos) words. Infants in the familiar test group (familiar vs. unfamiliar) oriented significantly longer to familiar than unfamiliar test items, whereas infants in the near-familiar test group (near-familiar vs. unfamiliar) oriented equally long to near-familiar and unfamiliar test items. Our results provide evidence that infants retain fairly detailed representations of unstressed syllables and therefore support the hypothesis that infants use phonotactic cues to find words in fluent speech.

Abstract

The nature of social life in human prehistory is elusive, yet knowing how kinship systems evolve is critical for understanding population history and cultural diversity. Post-marital residence rules specify sex-specific dispersal and kin association, influencing the pattern of genetic markers across populations. Cultural phylogenetics allows us to practise 'virtual archaeology' on these aspects of social life that leave no trace in the archaeological record. Here we show that early Austronesian societies practised matrilocal post-marital residence. Using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo comparative method implemented in a Bayesian phylogenetic framework, we estimated the type of residence at each ancestral node in a sample of Austronesian language trees spanning 135 Pacific societies. Matrilocal residence has been hypothesized for proto-Oceanic society (ca 3500 BP), but we find strong evidence that matrilocality was predominant in earlier Austronesian societies ca 5000-4500 BP, at the root of the language family and its early branches. Our results illuminate the divergent patterns of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers seen in the Pacific. The analysis of present-day cross-cultural data in this way allows us to directly address cultural evolutionary and life-history processes in prehistory.

Abstract

This article presents a psycholinguistically inspired approach to the syntax of clause-level coordination and coordinate ellipsis. It departs from the assumption that coordinations are structurally similar to so-called appropriateness repairs — an important type of self-repairs in spontaneous speech. Coordinate structures and appropriateness repairs can both be viewed as “update” constructions. Updating is defined as a special sentence production mode that efficiently revises or augments existing sentential structure in response to modifications in the speaker's communicative intention. This perspective is shown to offer an empirically satisfactory and theoretically parsimonious account of two prominent types of coordinate ellipsis, in particular “forward conjunction reduction” (FCR) and “gapping” (including “long-distance gapping” and “subgapping”). They are analyzed as different manifestations of “incremental updating” — efficient updating of only part of the existing sentential structure. Based on empirical data from Dutch and German, novel treatments are proposed for both types of clausal coordinate ellipsis. The coordination-as-updating perspective appears to explain some general properties of coordinate structure: the existence of the well-known “coordinate structure constraint”, and the attractiveness of three-dimensional representations of coordination. Moreover, two other forms of coordinate ellipsis — SGF (“subject gap in finite clauses with fronted verb”), and “backward conjunction reduction” (BCR) (also known as “right node raising” or RNR) — are shown to be incompatible with the notion of incremental updating. Alternative theoretical interpretations of these phenomena are proposed. The four types of clausal coordinate ellipsis — SGF, gapping, FCR and BCR — are argued to originate in four different stages of sentence production: Intending (i.e., preparing the communicative intention), conceptualization, grammatical encoding, and phonological encoding, respectively.

Abstract

Previous work has shown that Dutch listeners use prosodic information in the speech signal to optimise morphological processing: Listeners are sensitive to prosodic differences between a noun stem realised in isolation and a noun stem realised as part of a plural form (in which the stem is followed by an unstressed syllable). The present study, employing a lexical decision task, provides an additional demonstration of listeners' sensitivity to prosodic cues in the stem. This sensitivity is shown for two languages that differ in morphological productivity: Dutch and English. The degree of morphological productivity does not correlate with listeners' sensitivity to prosodic cues in the stem, but it is reflected in differential sensitivities to the word-specific log odds ratio of encountering an unshortened stem (i.e., a stem in isolation) versus encountering a shortened stem (i.e., a stem followed by a suffix consisting of one or more unstressed syllables). In addition to being sensitive to the prosodic cues themselves, listeners are also sensitive to the probabilities of occurrence of these prosodic cues.

Abstract

It has recently been shown that listeners use systematic differences in vowel length and intonation to resolve ambiguities between onset-matched simple words (Davis, Marslen-Wilson, & Gaskell, 2002; Salverda, Dahan, & McQueen, 2003). The present study shows that listeners also use prosodic information in the speech signal to optimize morphological processing. The precise acoustic realization of the stem provides crucial information to the listener about the morphological context in which the stem appears and attenuates the competition between stored inflectional variants. We argue that listeners are able to make use of prosodic information, even though the speech signal is highly variable within and between speakers, by virtue of the relative invariance of the duration of the onset. This provides listeners with a baseline against which the durational cues in a vowel and a coda can be evaluated. Furthermore, our experiments provide evidence for item-specific prosodic effects.

Abstract

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, is creating a state-of-the-art web environment for the ISO TC 37 (terminology and other language and content resources) metadata registry. This Data Category Registry (DCR) is called ISOcat and encompasses data categories for a broad range of language resources. Under the governance of the DCR Board, ISOcat provides an open work space for creating data category specifications, defining Data Category Selections (DCSs) (domain-specific groups of data categories), and standardising selected data categories and DCSs. Designers visualise future interactivity among the DCR, reference registries and ontological knowledge spaces

Abstract

In Dutch, high-frequency words with the suffix -lijk are often highly reduced in spontaneous unscripted speech. This study addressed socio-geographic variation in the reduction of such words against the backdrop of the variation in their use in written and spoken Dutch. Multivariate analyses of the frequencies with which the words were used in a factorially contrasted set of subcorpora revealed signi ficant variation involving the speaker's country, sex, and education level for spoken Dutch, and involving country and register for written Dutch. Acoustic analyses revealed that Dutch men reduced most often, while Flemish highly educated women reduced least. Two linguistic context effects emerged, one prosodic, and the other pertaining to the flow of information. Words in sentence final position showed less reduction, while words that were better predictable from the preceding word in the sentence(based on mutual information) tended to be reduced more often. The increased probability of reduction for forms that are more predictable in context, combined with the loss of the suffix in the more extremely reduced forms, suggests that highfrequency words in -lijk are undergoing a process of erosion that causes them to gravitate towards monomorphemic function words.

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5–9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the definiteness of the object NP as a cue to interpretation. Study 2 investigated three- and five-year-old children's (N=47) ability to override an instrumental interpretation of ambiguous PPs in order to process attributes of the referential scene. The results showed that while five-year-olds are capable of incorporating aspects of the referential scene into their interpretations, three-year-olds are not as successful. Overall, the results suggest that children are attuned very early to the lexico-semantic co-occurrences that have been shown to aid ambiguity resolution in adults, but that more diffuse cues to interpretation are used only later in development

Abstract

To compare abstract structural and lexicalist accounts of syntactic processes in sentence formulation, we examined the effectiveness of nonidiomatic and idiomatic phrasal verbs in inducing structural generalizations. Three experiments made use of a syntactic priming paradigm in which participants recalled sentences they had read in rapid serial visual presentation. Prime and target sentences contained phrasal verbs with particles directly following the verb (pull off a sweatshirt) or following the direct object (pull a sweatshirt off). Idiomatic primes used verbs whose figurative meaning cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal meaning of the main verb (e.g., pull off a robbery) and are commonly treated as stored lexical units. Particle placement in sentences was primed by both nonidiomatic and idiomatic verbs. Experiment 1 showed that the syntax of idiomatic and nonidiomatic phrasal verbs is amenable to priming, and Experiments 2 and 3 compared the priming patterns created by idiomatic and nonidiomatic primes. Despite differences in idiomaticity and structural flexibility, both types of phrasal verbs induced structural generalizations and differed little in their ability to do so. The findings are interpreted in terms of the role of abstract structural processes in language production.

Abstract

Source monitoring can be influenced by information that is external to the study context, such as beliefs and general knowledge (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). We investigated the extent to which metamnemonic judgments predict memory for items and sources when schematic information about the sources is or is not provided at encoding. Participants made judgments of learning (JOLs) to statements presented by two speakers and were informed of the occupation of each speaker either before or after the encoding session. Replicating earlier work, prior knowledge decreased participants' tendency to erroneously attribute statements to schematically consistent but episodically incorrect speakers. The origin of this effect can be understood by examining the relationship between JOLs and performance: JOLs were equally predictive of item and source memory in the absence of prior knowledge, but were exclusively predictive of source memory when participants knew of the relationship between speakers and statements during study. Background knowledge determines the information that people solicit in service of metamnemonic judgments, suggesting that these judgments reflect control processes during encoding that reduce schematic errors.

Abstract

Children begin to talk at about age one. The vocabulary they need to do so must be built on perceptual evidence and, indeed, infants begin to recognize spoken words long before they talk. Most of the utterances infants hear, however, are continuous, without pauses between words, so constructing a vocabulary requires them to decompose continuous speech in order to extract the individual words. Here, we present electrophysiological evidence that 10-month-old infants recognize two-syllable words they have previously heard only in isolation when these words are presented anew in continuous speech. Moreover, they only need roughly the first syllable of the word to begin doing this. Thus, prelinguistic infants command a highly efficient procedure for segmentation and recognition of spoken words in the absence of an existing vocabulary, allowing them to tackle effectively the problem of bootstrapping a lexicon out of the highly variable, continuous speech signals in their environment.

Abstract

Recognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress-based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong-weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong-weak words but also words with a weak-strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak-strong word segmentation in Dutch 10-month-olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak-strong words.

Abstract

The paper investigates the use of manner verbs (e.g. marcher 'to walk', courir 'to run') with so-called locative prepositions (e.g. dans 'in', sous 'under') in the descriptions of motion in French, as in Il a couru dans le bureau 'He ran in (to) the office', to explore the type of events such constructions express and the factors that influence their interpretation. Based on an extensive corpus survey, the study shows that, contrary to the general claim according to which such constructions express typically motion in some location, they are also frequently used to express change of location. The study discusses the interplay of various factors that contribute to the interpretation of these constructions, including semantic, aspectual and pragmatic factors.

Abstract

Little is known about the genetic contribution to individual differences in neural networks subserving cognition function. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) twin study, we found a significant genetic influence on brain activation in neural networks supporting digit working memory tasks. Participants activating frontal-parietal networks responded faster than individuals relying more on language-related brain networks.There were genetic influences on brain activation in language-relevant brain circuits that were atypical for numerical working memory tasks as such. This suggests that differences in cognition might be related to brain activation patterns that differ qualitatively among individuals.

Abstract

Heterozygous mutations of the human FOXP2 gene cause a developmental disorder involving impaired learning and production of fluent spoken language. Previous investigations of its aetiology have focused on disturbed function of neural circuits involved in motor control. However, Foxp2 expression has been found in the cochlea and auditory brain centers and deficits in auditory processing could contribute to difficulties in speech learning and production. Here, we recorded auditory brainstem responses (ABR) to assess two heterozygous mouse models carrying distinct Foxp2 point mutations matching those found in humans with FOXP2-related speech/language impairment. Mice which carry a Foxp2-S321X nonsense mutation, yielding reduced dosage of Foxp2 protein, did not show systematic ABR differences from wildtype littermates. Given that speech/language disorders are observed in heterozygous humans with similar nonsense mutations (FOXP2-R328X), our findings suggest that auditory processing deficits up to the midbrain level are not causative for FOXP2-related language impairments. Interestingly, however, mice harboring a Foxp2-R552H missense mutation displayed systematic alterations in ABR waves with longer latencies (significant for waves I, III, IV) and smaller amplitudes (significant for waves I, IV) suggesting that either the synchrony of synaptic transmission in the cochlea and in auditory brainstem centers is affected, or fewer auditory nerve fibers and fewer neurons in auditory brainstem centers are activated compared to wildtypes. Therefore, the R552H mutation uncovers possible roles for Foxp2 in the development and/or function of the auditory system. Since ABR audiometry is easily accessible in humans, our data call for systematic testing of auditory functions in humans with FOXP2 mutations.

Abstract

The chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling disorder of unknown etiology. The symptomatology of CFS (central fatigue, impaired concentration, attention and memory) suggests that this disorder could be related to alterations at the level of the central nervous system. In this study, we have used an automated and unbiased morphometric technique to test whether CFS patients display structural cerebral abnormalities. We mapped structural cerebral morphology and volume in two cohorts of CFS patients (in total 28 patients) and healthy controls (in total 28 controls) from high-resolution structural magnetic resonance images, using voxel-based morphometry. Additionally, we recorded physical activity levels to explore the relation between severity of CFS symptoms and cerebral abnormalities. We observed significant reductions in global gray matter volume in both cohorts of CFS patients, as compared to matched control participants. Moreover, the decline in gray matter volume was linked to the reduction in physical activity, a core aspect of CFS. These findings suggest that the central nervous system plays a key role in the pathophysiology of CFS and point to a new objective and quantitative tool for clinical diagnosis of this disabling disorder.

Abstract

We have used implicit motor imagery to investigate the neural correlates of motor planning independently from actual movements. Subjects were presented with drawings of left or right hands and asked to judge the hand laterality, regardless of the stimulus rotation from its upright orientation. We paired this task with a visual imagery control task, in which subjects were presented with typographical characters and asked to report whether they saw a canonical letter or its mirror image, regardless of its rotation. We measured neurovascular activity with fast event-related fMRI, distinguishing responses parametrically related to motor imagery from responses evoked by visual imagery and other task-related phenomena. By quantifying behavioral and neurovascular correlates of imagery on a trial-by-trial basis, we could discriminate between stimulusrelated, mental rotation-related, and response-related neural activity. We found that specific portions of the posterior parietal and precentral cortex increased their activity as a function of mental rotation only during the motor imagery task. Within these regions, the parietal cortex was visually responsive, whereas the dorsal precentral cortex was not. Response- but not rotation-related activity was found around the left central sulcus (putative primary motor cortex) during both imagery tasks. Our study provides novel evidence on the topography and content of movement representations in the human brain. During intended action, the posterior parietal cortex combines somatosensory and visuomotor information, whereas the dorsal premotor cortex generates the actual motor plan, and the primary motor cortex deals with movement execution. We discuss the relevance of these results in the context of current models of action planning.

Abstract

We present a coding system combined with an annotation tool for the analysis of gestural behavior. The NEUROGES coding system consists of three modules that progress from gesture kinetics to gesture function. Grounded on empirical neuropsychological and psychological studies, the theoretical assumption behind NEUROGES is that its main kinetic and functional movement categories are differentially associated with specific cognitive, emotional, and interactive functions. ELAN is a free, multimodal annotation tool for digital audio and video media. It supports multileveled transcription and complies with such standards as XML and Unicode. ELAN allows gesture categories to be stored with associated vocabularies that are reusable by means of template files. The combination of the NEUROGES coding system and the annotation tool ELAN creates an effective tool for empirical research on gestural behavior.

Abstract

Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, argues that natural selection is a universal acid that eats through other theories, because it can explain just about everything, even the structure of the mind. Emanuel (Manny) Schegloff (1987) in ‘Between Micro and Macro: Context and Other Connections’ opposes the importation of ‘macro’ (sociological/sociolinguistic) factors into the ‘micro’ (interaction analysis), suggesting that one might reverse the strategy instead. Like Darwin, he is coy about whether he just wants his own turf, but the idea opens up the possibility of interactional reductionism. I will argue against interactional reductionism on methodological grounds: Don't bite off more than you can chew! Instead I'll support the good old Durkheimian strategy of looking for intermediate variables between systems of different orders. I try and make the case with data from Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea.

Abstract

This short report draws attention to an interesting kind of configuration in the lexicon that seems to have escaped theoretical or systematic descriptive attention. These configurations, which we dub SEMPLATES, consist of an abstract structure or template, which is recurrently instantiated in a number of lexical sets, typically of different form classes. A number of examples from different language families are adduced, and generalizations made about the nature of semplates, which are contrasted to other, perhaps similar, phenomena

Abstract

Most neuroimaging studies are performed using one imaging method only, either functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), or magnetoencephalography (MEG). Information on both location and timing has been sought by recording fMRI and EEG, simultaneously, or MEG and fMRI in separate sessions. Such approaches assume similar active areas whether detected via hemodynamic or electrophysiological signatures. Direct comparisons, after independent analysis of data from each imaging modality, have been conducted primarily on low-level sensory processing. Here, we report MEG (timing and location) and fMRI (location) results in 11 subjects when they named pictures that depicted an action or an object. The experimental design was exactly the same for the two imaging modalities. The MEG data were analyzed with two standard approaches: a set of equivalent current dipoles and a distributed minimum norm estimate. The fMRI blood-oxygenlevel dependent (BOLD) data were subjected to the usual random-effect contrast analysis. At the group level, MEG and fMRI data showed fairly good convergence, with both overall activation patterns and task effects localizing to comparable cortical regions. There were some systematic discrepancies, however, and the correspondence was less compelling in the individual subjects. The present analysis should be helpful in reconciling results of fMRI and MEG studies on high-level cognitive functions

Abstract

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

Abstract

One of the defining features of human language is displacement, the ability to make reference to absent entities. Here we show that prelinguistic, 12-month-old infants already can use a nonverbal pointing gesture to make reference to absent entities. We also show that chimpanzees—who can point for things they want humans to give them—do not point to refer to absent entities in the same way. These results demonstrate that the ability to communicate about absent but mutually known entities depends not on language, but rather on deeper social-cognitive skills that make acts of linguistic reference possible in the first place. These nonlinguistic skills for displaced reference emerged apparently only after humans' divergence from great apes some 6 million years ago.

Abstract

The posterior medial parietal cortex and left prefrontal cortex (PFC) have both been implicated in the recollection of past episodes. In a previous study, we found the posterior precuneus and left lateral inferior frontal cortex to be activated during episodic source memory retrieval. This study further examines the role of posterior precuneal and left prefrontal activation during episodic source memory retrieval using a similar source memory paradigm but with longer latency between encoding and retrieval. Our results suggest that both the precuneus and the left inferior PFC are important for regeneration of rich episodic contextual associations and that the precuneus activates in tandem with the left inferior PFC during correct source retrieval. Further, results suggest that the left ventro-lateral frontal region/ frontal operculum is involved in searching for task-relevant information (BA 47) and subsequent monitoring or scrutiny (BA 44/45) while regions in the dorsal inferior frontal cortex are important for information selection (BA 45/46).

Abstract

FOXP2, the first gene to have been implicated in a developmental communication disorder, offers a unique entry point into neuromolecular mechanisms influencing human speech and language acquisition. In multiple members of the well-studied KE family, a heterozygous missense mutation in FOXP2 causes problems in sequencing muscle movements required for articulating speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia), accompanied by wider deficits in linguistic and grammatical processing. Chromosomal rearrangements involving this locus have also been identified. Analyses of FOXP2 coding sequence in typical forms of specific language impairment (SLI), autism, and dyslexia have not uncovered any etiological variants. However, no previous study has performed mutation screening of children with a primary diagnosis of verbal dyspraxia, the most overt feature of the disorder in affected members of the KE family. Here, we report investigations of the entire coding region of FOXP2, including alternatively spliced exons, in 49 probands affected with verbal dyspraxia. We detected variants that alter FOXP2 protein sequence in three probands. One such variant is a heterozygous nonsense mutation that yields a dramatically truncated protein product and cosegregates with speech and language difficulties in the proband, his affected sibling, and their mother. Our discovery of the first nonsense mutation in FOXP2 now opens the door for detailed investigations of neurodevelopment in people carrying different etiological variants of the gene. This endeavor will be crucial for gaining insight into the role of FOXP2 in human cognition.

Abstract

Four groups of second language (L2) learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German, and Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in an online reading time experiment with sentences involving long-distance wh-dependencies. Although the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing, the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategorizer, regardless of whether the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. This finding is argued to support the hypothesis that nonnative comprehenders underuse syntactic information in L2 processing.

Abstract

Comprehension of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) requires reevaluation of recently processed constituents, which often necessitates retrieval of information about the elided constituent from memory. A. E. Martin and B. McElree (2008) argued that representations formed during comprehension are content addressable and that VPE antecedents are retrieved from memory via a cue-dependent direct-access pointer rather than via a search process. This hypothesis was further tested by manipulating the location of interfering material—either before the onset of the antecedent (proactive interference; PI) or intervening between antecedent and ellipsis site (retroactive interference; RI). The speed–accuracy tradeoff procedure was used to measure the time course of VPE processing. The location of the interfering material affected VPE comprehension accuracy: RI conditions engendered lower accuracy than PI conditions. Crucially, location did not affect the speed of processing VPE, which is inconsistent with both forward and backward search mechanisms. The observed time-course profiles are consistent with the hypothesis that VPE antecedents are retrieved via a cue-dependent direct-access operation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract

Understanding the lyrics of many contemporary songs is difficult, and an earlier study [Hidalgo-Barnes, M., Massaro, D.W., 2007. Read my lips: an animated face helps communicate musical lyrics. Psychomusicology 19, 3–12] showed a benefit for lyrics recognition when seeing a computer-animated talking head (Baldi) mouthing the lyrics along with hearing the singer. However, the contribution of visual information was relatively small compared to what is usually found for speech. In the current experiments, our goal was to determine why the face appears to contribute less when aligned with sung lyrics than when aligned with normal speech presented in noise. The first experiment compared the contribution of the talking head with the originally sung lyrics versus the case when it was aligned with the Festival text-to-speech synthesis (TtS) spoken at the original duration of the song’s lyrics. A small and similar influence of the face was found in both conditions. In the three experiments, we compared the presence of the face when the durations of the TtS were equated with the duration of the original musical lyrics to the case when the lyrics were read with typical TtS durations and this speech embedded in noise. The results indicated that the unusual temporally distorted durations of musical lyrics decreases the contribution of the visible speech from the face.

Abstract

In a phonological priming experiment using spoken Dutch words, Dutch listeners were taught varying expectancies and relatedness relations about the phonological form of target words, given particular primes. They learned to expect that, after a particular prime, if the target was a word, it would be from a specific phonological category. The expectancy either involved phonological overlap (e.g., honk-vonk, “base-spark”; expected related) or did not (e.g., nest-galm, “nest-boom”; expected unrelated, where the learned expectation after hearing nest was a word rhyming in -alm). Targets were occasionally inconsistent with expectations. In these inconsistent expectancy trials, targets were either unrelated (e.g., honk-mest, “base-manure”; unexpected unrelated), where the listener was expecting a related target, or related (e.g., nest-pest, “nest-plague”; unexpected related), where the listener was expecting an unrelated target. Participant expectations and phonological relatedness were thus manipulated factorially for three types of phonological overlap (rhyme, one onset phoneme, and three onset phonemes) at three interstimulus intervals (ISIs; 50, 500, and 2,000 msec). Lexical decisions to targets revealed evidence of expectancy-based strategies for all three types of overlap (e.g., faster responses to expected than to unexpected targets, irrespective of phonological relatedness) and evidence of automatic phonological processes, but only for the rhyme and three-phoneme onset overlap conditions and, most strongly, at the shortest ISI (e.g., faster responses to related than to unrelated targets, irrespective of expectations). Although phonological priming thus has both automatic and strategic components, it is possible to cleave them apart.

Abstract

The strongest support for feedback in speech perception comes from evidence of apparent lexical influence on prelexical fricative-stop compensation for coarticulation. Lexical knowledge (e.g., that the ambiguous final fricative of Christma? should be [s]) apparently influences perception of following stops. We argue that all such previous demonstrations can be explained without invoking lexical feedback. In particular, we show that one demonstration [Magnuson, J. S., McMurray, B., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Aslin, R. N. (2003). Lexical effects on compensation for coarticulation: The ghost of Christmash past. Cognitive Science, 27, 285–298] involved experimentally-induced biases (from 16 practice trials) rather than feedback. We found that the direction of the compensation effect depended on whether practice stimuli were words or nonwords. When both were used, there was no lexically-mediated compensation. Across experiments, however, there were lexical effects on fricative identification. This dissociation (lexical involvement in the fricative decisions but not in the following stop decisions made on the same trials) challenges interactive models in which feedback should cause both effects. We conclude that the prelexical level is sensitive to experimentally-induced phoneme-sequence biases, but that there is no feedback during speech perception.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Human and animal prion diseases are under genetic control, but apart from PRNP (the gene that encodes the prion protein), we understand little about human susceptibility to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prions, the causal agent of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).METHODS: We did a genome-wide association study of the risk of vCJD and tested for replication of our findings in samples from many categories of human prion disease (929 samples) and control samples from the UK and Papua New Guinea (4254 samples), including controls in the UK who were genotyped by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. We also did follow-up analyses of the genetic control of the clinical phenotype of prion disease and analysed candidate gene expression in a mouse cellular model of prion infection. FINDINGS: The PRNP locus was strongly associated with risk across several markers and all categories of prion disease (best single SNP [single nucleotide polymorphism] association in vCJD p=2.5 x 10(-17); best haplotypic association in vCJD p=1 x 10(-24)). Although the main contribution to disease risk was conferred by PRNP polymorphic codon 129, another nearby SNP conferred increased risk of vCJD. In addition to PRNP, one technically validated SNP association upstream of RARB (the gene that encodes retinoic acid receptor beta) had nominal genome-wide significance (p=1.9 x 10(-7)). A similar association was found in a small sample of patients with iatrogenic CJD (p=0.030) but not in patients with sporadic CJD (sCJD) or kuru. In cultured cells, retinoic acid regulates the expression of the prion protein. We found an association with acquired prion disease, including vCJD (p=5.6 x 10(-5)), kuru incubation time (p=0.017), and resistance to kuru (p=2.5 x 10(-4)), in a region upstream of STMN2 (the gene that encodes SCG10). The risk genotype was not associated with sCJD but conferred an earlier age of onset. Furthermore, expression of Stmn2 was reduced 30-fold post-infection in a mouse cellular model of prion disease. INTERPRETATION: The polymorphic codon 129 of PRNP was the main genetic risk factor for vCJD; however, additional candidate loci have been identified, which justifies functional analyses of these biological pathways in prion disease.

Abstract

This article explores the contrastive function of demonstratives in two languages, Tiriyó (Cariban, northern Brazil) and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands). The contrastive function has to a large extent been neglected in the theoretical literature on demonstrative functions, although preliminary investigations suggest that there are significant differences in demonstrative use in contrastive versus noncontrastive contexts. Tiriyó and Lavukaleve have what seem at first glance to be rather similar three-term demonstrative systems for exophoric deixis, with a proximal term, a distal term, and a middle term. However, under contrastive usage, significant differences between the two systems become apparent. In presenting an analysis of the contrastive use of demonstratives in these two languages, this article aims to show that the contrastive function is an important parameter of variation in demonstrative systems.

Abstract

Both local discourse and world knowledge are known to influence sentence processing. We investigated how these two sources of information conspire in language comprehension. Two types of critical sentences, correct and world knowledge anomalies, were preceded by either a neutral or a local context. The latter made the world knowledge anomalies more acceptable or plausible. We predicted that the effect of world knowledge anomalies would be weaker for the local context. World knowledge effects have previously been observed in the left inferior frontal region (Brodmann's area 45/47). In the current study, an effect of world knowledge was present in this region in the neutral context. We also observed an effect in the right inferior frontal gyrus, which was more sensitive to the discourse manipulation than the left inferior frontal gyrus. In addition, the left angular gyrus reacted strongly to the degree of discourse coherence between the context and critical sentence. Overall, both world knowledge and the discourse context affect the process of meaning unification, but do so by recruiting partly different sets of brain areas.

Abstract

The dendritic cell receptor DC-SIGN mediates pathogen recognition by binding to glycans characteristic of pathogen surfaces, including those found on HIV. Clustering of carbohydrate-binding sites in the receptor tetramer is believed to be critical for targeting of pathogen glycans, but the arrangement of these sites remains poorly understood. Surface force measurements between apposed lipid bilayers displaying the extracellular domain of DC-SIGN and a neoglycolipid bearing an oligosaccharide ligand provide evidence that the receptor is in an extended conformation and that glycan docking is associated with a conformational change that repositions the carbohydrate-recognition domains during ligand binding. The results further show that the lateral mobility of membrane-bound ligands enhances the engagement of multiple carbohydrate-recognition domains in the receptor oligomer with appropriately spaced ligands. These studies highlight differences between pathogen targeting by DC-SIGN and receptors in which binding sites at fixed spacing bind to simple molecular patterns

Abstract

Understanding foreign speech is difficult, in part because of unusual mappings between sounds and words. It is known that listeners in their native language can use lexical knowledge (about how words ought to sound) to learn how to interpret unusual speech-sounds. We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken.

Abstract

Two experiments examined how Dutch listeners deal with the effects of connected-speech processes, specifically those arising from word-final /t/ reduction (e.g., whether Dutch [tas] is tas, bag, or a reduced-/t/ version of tast, touch). Eye movements of Dutch participants were tracked as they looked at arrays containing 4 printed words, each associated with a geometrical shape. Minimal pairs (e.g., tas/tast) were either both above (boven) or both next to (naast) different shapes. Spoken instructions (e.g., “Klik op het woordje tas boven de ster,” [Click on the word bag above the star]) thus became unambiguous only on their final words. Prior to disambiguation, listeners' fixations were drawn to /t/-final words more when boven than when naast followed the ambiguous sequences. This behavior reflects Dutch speech-production data: /t/ is reduced more before /b/ than before /n/. We thus argue that probabilistic knowledge about the effect of following context in speech production is used prelexically in perception to help resolve lexical ambiguities caused by continuous-speech processes.

Abstract

World knowledge influences how we perceive the world. This study shows that this influence is at least partly mediated by declarative memory. Dutch and German participants categorized hues from a yellow-to-orange continuum on stimuli that were prototypically orange or yellow and that were also associated with these color labels. Both groups gave more “yellow” responses if an ambiguous hue occurred on a prototypically yellow stimulus. The language groups were also tested on a stimulus (traffic light) that is associated with the label orange in Dutch and with the label yellow in German, even though the objective color is the same for both populations. Dutch observers categorized this stimulus as orange more often than German observers, in line with the assumption that declarative knowledge mediates the influence of world knowledge on color categorization.

Abstract

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the extent to which objects that are about to be named are processed prior to fixation. Participants named pairs or triplets of objects. One of the objects, initially seen extrafoveally (the interloper), was replaced by a different object (the target) during the saccade toward it. The interloper-target pairs were identical or unrelated objects or visually and conceptually unrelated objects with homophonous names (e.g., animal-baseball bat). The mean latencies and gaze durations for the targets were shorter in the identity and homophone conditions than in the unrelated condition. This was true when participants viewed a fixation mark until the interloper appeared and when they fixated on another object and prepared to name it while viewing the interloper. These results imply that objects that are about to be named may undergo far-reaching processing, including access to their names, prior to fixation.

Abstract

This study uses the morphological family size effect as a tool for exploring the degree of isomorphism in the networks of morphologically related words in the Hebrew and Dutch mental lexicon. Hebrew and Dutch are genetically unrelated, and they structure their morphologically complex words in very different ways. Two visual lexical decision experiments document substantial cross-language predictivity for the family size measure after partialing out the effect of word frequency and word length. Our data show that the morphological family size effect is not restricted to Indo-European languages but extends to languages with non-concatenative morphology. In Hebrew, a new inhibitory component of the family size effect emerged that arises when a Hebrew root participates in different semantic fields.

Abstract

Two construals of agency are evaluated as possible innate biases guiding case-marking in children. A BROAD construal treats agentive arguments of multi-participant and single-participant events as being similar. A NARROWER construal is restricted to agents of multi-participant events. In Hindi, ergative case-marking is associated with agentive participants of multi-participant, perfective actions. Children relying on a broad or narrow construal of agent are predicted to overextend ergative case-marking to agentive participants of transitive imperfective actions and/or intransitive actions. Longitudinal data from three children acquiring Hindi (1;7 to 3;9) reveal no overextension errors, suggesting early sensitivity to distributional patterns in the input.

Abstract

An influential claim in the child language literature posits that children use structural cues in the input language to acquire verb meaning (Gleitman, 1990). One such cue is the number of arguments co-occurring with the verb, which provides an indication as to the event type associated with the verb (Fisher, 1995). In some languages however (e.g. Hindi), verb arguments are ellipted relatively freely, subject to certain discourse-pragmatic constraints. In this paper, we address three questions: Is the pervasive argument ellipsis characteristic of adult Hindi also found in Hindi-speaking caregivers’ input ? If so, do children consequently make errors in verb transitivity? How early do children learning a split-ergative language, such as Hindi, exhibit sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic influences on argument realization? We show that there is massive argument ellipsis in caregivers’ input to 3–4 year-olds. However, children acquiring Hindi do not make transitivity errors in their own speech. Nor do they elide arguments randomly. Rather, even at this early age, children appear to be sensitive to discourse-pragmatics in their own spontaneous speech production. These findings in a split-ergative language parallel patterns of argument realization found in children acquiring both nominative-accusative languages (e.g. Korean) and ergative-absolutive languages (e.g. Tzeltal, Inuktitut).

Abstract

We report a genome-wide assessment of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) in schizophrenia. We investigated SNPs using 871 patients and 863 controls, following up the top hits in four independent cohorts comprising 1,460 patients and 12,995 controls, all of European origin. We found no genome-wide significant associations, nor could we provide support for any previously reported candidate gene or genome-wide associations. We went on to examine CNVs using a subset of 1,013 cases and 1,084 controls of European ancestry, and a further set of 60 cases and 64 controls of African ancestry. We found that eight cases and zero controls carried deletions greater than 2 Mb, of which two, at 8p22 and 16p13.11-p12.4, are newly reported here. A further evaluation of 1,378 controls identified no deletions greater than 2 Mb, suggesting a high prior probability of disease involvement when such deletions are observed in cases. We also provide further evidence for some smaller, previously reported, schizophrenia-associated CNVs, such as those in NRXN1 and APBA2. We could not provide strong support for the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients have a significantly greater “load” of large (>100 kb), rare CNVs, nor could we find common CNVs that associate with schizophrenia. Finally, we did not provide support for the suggestion that schizophrenia-associated CNVs may preferentially disrupt genes in neurodevelopmental pathways. Collectively, these analyses provide the first integrated study of SNPs and CNVs in schizophrenia and support the emerging view that rare deleterious variants may be more important in schizophrenia predisposition than common polymorphisms. While our analyses do not suggest that implicated CNVs impinge on particular key pathways, we do support the contribution of specific genomic regions in schizophrenia, presumably due to recurrent mutation. On balance, these data suggest that very few schizophrenia patients share identical genomic causation, potentially complicating efforts to personalize treatment regimens.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a common developmental disorder haracterized by difficulties in language acquisition despite otherwise normal development and in the absence of any obvious explanatory factors. We performed a high-density screen of SLI1, a region of chromosome 16q that shows highly significant and consistent linkage to nonword repetition, a measure of phonological short-term memory that is commonly impaired in SLI. Using two independent language-impaired samples, one family-based (211 families) and another selected from a population cohort on the basis of extreme language measures (490 cases), we detected association to two genes in the SLI1 region: that encoding c-maf-inducing protein (CMIP, minP = 5.5 × 10−7 at rs6564903) and that encoding calcium-transporting ATPase, type2C, member2 (ATP2C2, minP = 2.0 × 10−5 at rs11860694). Regression modeling indicated that each of these loci exerts an independent effect upon nonword repetition ability. Despite the consistent findings in language-impaired samples, investigation in a large unselected cohort (n = 3612) did not detect association. We therefore propose that variants in CMIP and ATP2C2 act to modulate phonological short-term memory primarily in the context of language impairment. As such, this investigation supports the hypothesis that some causes of language impairment are distinct from factors that influence normal language variation. This work therefore implicates CMIP and ATP2C2 in the etiology of SLI and provides molecular evidence for the importance of phonological short-term memory in language acquisition.

Abstract

The ability to design tailored messages for specific listeners is an important aspect of
human communication. The present study investigates whether a mere belief about an
addressee’s identity influences the generation and production of a communicative message in
a novel, non-verbal communication task. Participants were made to believe they were playing a game with a child or an adult partner, while a confederate acted as both child
and adult partners with matched performance and response times. The participants’ belief
influenced their behavior, spending longer when interacting with the presumed child
addressee, but only during communicative portions of the game, i.e. using time as a tool
to place emphasis on target information. This communicative adaptation attenuated with
experience, and it was related to personality traits, namely Empathy and Need for Cognition
measures. Overall, these findings indicate that novel nonverbal communicative interactions
are selected according to a socio-centric perspective, and they are strongly
influenced by participants’ traits.

Abstract

The present study discusses psycholinguistic evidence for a difference between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology by investigating the processing of Finnish inflected and cliticized words. The data are derived from three sources of Finnish: from single-word reading performance in an agrammatic deep dyslectic speaker, as well as from visual lexical decision and wordness/learnability ratings of cliticized vs. inflected items by normal Finnish speakers. The agrammatic speaker showed awareness of the suffixes in multimorphemic words, including clitics, since he attempted to fill in this slot with morphological material. However, he never produced a clitic — either as the correct response or as an error — in any morphological configuration (simplex, derived, inflected, compound). Moreover, he produced more nominative singular errors for case-inflected nouns than he did for the cliticized words, a pattern that is expected if case-inflected forms were closely associated with their lexical heads, i.e., if they were paradigmatic and cliticized words were not. Furthermore, a visual lexical decision task with normal speakers of Finnish, showed an additional processing cost (longer latencies and more errors on cliticized than on case-inflected noun forms). Finally, a rating task indicated no difference in relative wordness between these two types of words. However, the same cliticized words were judged harder to learn as L2 items than the inflected words, most probably due to their conceptual/semantic properties, in other words due to their lack of word-level translation equivalents in SAVE languages. Taken together, the present results suggest that the distinction between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology is psychologically real.

Abstract

In general, language comprehension is surprisingly reliable. Listeners very rapidly extract meaning from the unfolding speech signal, on a word-by-word basis, and usually successfully. Research on ‘semantic illusions’ however suggests that under certain conditions, people fail to notice that the linguistic input simply doesn't make sense. In the current event-related brain potentials (ERP) study, we examined whether listeners would, under such conditions, spontaneously detect an anomaly in which a human character central to the story at hand (e.g., “a tourist”) was suddenly replaced by an inanimate object (e.g., “a suitcase”). Because this replacement introduced a very powerful coherence break, we expected listeners to immediately notice the anomaly and generate the standard ERP effect associated with incoherent language, the N400 effect. However, instead of the standard N400 effect, anomalous words elicited a positive ERP effect from about 500–600 ms onwards. The absence of an N400 effect suggests that subjects did not immediately notice the anomaly, and that for a few hundred milliseconds the comprehension system has converged on an apparently coherent but factually incorrect interpretation. The presence of the later ERP effect indicates that subjects were processing for comprehension and did ultimately detect the anomaly. Therefore, we take the absence of a regular N400 effect as the online manifestation of a temporary semantic illusion. Our results also show that even attentive listeners sometimes fail to notice a radical change in the nature of a story character, and therefore suggest a case of short-lived ‘semantic change deafness’ in language comprehension.

Abstract

Human communication has been described as involving the coding-decoding of a conventional symbol system, which could be supported by parts of the human motor system (i.e. the “mirror neurons system”). However, this view does not explain how these conventions could develop in the first place. Here we target the neglected but crucial issue of how people organize their non-verbal behavior to communicate a given intention without pre-established conventions. We have measured behavioral and brain responses in pairs of subjects during communicative exchanges occurring in a real, interactive, on-line social context. In two fMRI studies, we found robust evidence that planning new communicative actions (by a sender) and recognizing the communicative intention of the same actions (by a receiver) relied on spatially overlapping portions of their brains (the right posterior superior temporal sulcus). The response of this region was lateralized to the right hemisphere, modulated by the ambiguity in meaning of the communicative acts, but not by their sensorimotor complexity. These results indicate that the sender of a communicative signal uses his own intention recognition system to make a prediction of the intention recognition performed by the receiver. This finding supports the notion that our communicative abilities are distinct from both sensorimotor processes and language abilities.

Abstract

Speech perception requires the decoding of complex acoustic patterns. According to most cognitive models of spoken word recognition, this complexity is dealt with before lexical access via a process of abstraction from the acoustic signal to pre-lexical categories. It is currently unclear how these categories are implemented in the auditory cortex. Recent advances in animal neurophysiology and human functional imaging have made it possible to investigate the processing of speech in terms of probabilistic cortical maps rather than simple cognitive subtraction, which will enable us to relate neurometric data more directly to behavioural studies. We suggest that integration of insights from cognitive science, neurophysiology and functional imaging is necessary for furthering our understanding of pre-lexical abstraction in the cortex.

Abstract

The acoustic realisation of a speech sound varies, often showing allophonic variation triggered by surrounding sounds. Listeners recognise words and sounds well despite such variation, and even make use of allophonic variability in processing. This study reports five experiments on processing of the reduced/unreduced allophonic alternation of Japanese high vowels. The results show that listeners use phonological knowledge of their native language during phoneme processing and word recognition. However, interactions of the phonological and acoustic effects differ in these two processes. A facilitatory phonological effect and an inhibitory acoustic effect cancel one another out in phoneme processing; while in word recognition, the facilitatory phonological effect overrides the inhibitory acoustic effect. Four potential models of the processing of allophonic variation are discussed. The results can be accommodated in two of them, but require additional assumptions or modifications to the models, and primarily support lexical specification of allophonic variability.

Abstract

Do all components of a sign contribute equally to its recognition? In the present study, misperceptions in the sign-spotting task (based on the word-spotting task; Cutler & Norris, 1988) were analyzed to address this question. Three groups of deaf signers of British Sign Language (BSL) with different ages of acquisition (AoA) saw BSL signs combined with nonsense signs, along with combinations of two nonsense signs. They were asked to spot real signs and report what they had spotted. We will present an analysis of false alarms to the nonsense-sign combinations—that is, misperceptions of nonsense signs as real signs (cf. van Ooijen, 1996). Participants modified the movement and handshape parameters more than the location parameter. Within this pattern, however, there were differences as a function of AoA. These results show that the theoretical distinctions between form-based parameters in sign-language models have consequences for online processing. Vowels and consonants have different roles in speech recognition; similarly, it appears that movement, handshape, and location parameters contribute differentially to sign recognition.

Abstract

Prior research has indicated that readers and listeners can use information in the prior discourse to rapidly predict specific upcoming words, as the text is unfolding. Here we used event-related potentials to explore whether the ability to make rapid online predictions depends on a reader's working memory capacity (WMC). Readers with low WMC were hypothesized to differ from high WMC readers either in their overall capability to make predictions (because of their lack of cognitive resources). High and low WMC participants read highly constraining stories that supported the prediction of a specific noun, mixed with coherent but essentially unpredictive ‘prime control’ control stories that contained the same content words as the predictive stories. To test whether readers were anticipating upcoming words, critical nouns were preceded by a determiner whose gender agreed or disagreed with the gender of the expected noun. In predictive stories, both high and low WMC readers displayed an early negative deflection (300–600 ms) to unexpected determiners, which was not present in prime control stories. Only the low WMC participants displayed an additional later negativity (900–1500 ms) to unexpected determiners. This pattern of results suggests that WMC does not influence the ability to anticipate upcoming words per se, but does change the way in which readers deal with information that disconfirms the generated prediction.

Abstract

What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses of speech- gesture pairs that depict 10 different motion events from 20 Turkish and 20 English speakers. We find that the gestural representations of the same events differ across languages when they are encoded by different syntactic frames (i.e., verb-framed or satellite-framed). However, where there are similarities across languages, such as omission of a certain element of the event in the linguistic encoding, gestural representations also look similar and omit the same content. The results are discussed in terms of what gestures reveal about the influence of language specific encoding on on-line thinking patterns and the underlying interactions between speech and gesture during the speaking process.

Abstract

We present two simple arguments for the potential relevance of a neurobiological analogue of the finite-state architecture. The first assumes the classical cognitive framework, is wellknown, and is based on the assumption that the brain is finite with respect to its memory organization. The second is formulated within a general dynamical systems framework and is based on the assumption that the brain sustains some level of noise and/or does not utilize infinite precision processing. We briefly review the classical cognitive framework based on Church–Turing computability and non-classical approaches based on analog processing in dynamical systems. We conclude that the dynamical neurobiological analogue of the finitestate architecture appears to be relevant, at least at an implementational level, for cognitive brain systems

Abstract

While autism is one of the most intensively researched psychiatric disorders, little is known about reasoning skills of people with autism. The focus of this study was on defeasible inferences, that is inferences that can be revised in the light of new information. We used a behavioral task to investigate (a) conditional reasoning and (b) the suppression of conditional inferences in high-functioning adults with autism. In the suppression task a possible exception was made salient which could prevent a conclusion from being drawn. We predicted that the autism group would have difficulties dealing with such exceptions because they require mental flexibility to adjust to the context, which is often impaired in autism. The findings confirm our hypothesis that high-functioning adults with autism have a specific difficulty with exception-handling during reasoning. It is suggested that defeasible reasoning is also involved in other cognitive domains. Implications for neural underpinnings of reasoning and autism are discussed.

Abstract

Although people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have severe problems with pragmatic aspects of language, little is known about their pragmatic reasoning. We carried out a behavioral study on highfunctioning adults with autistic disorder (n = 11) and Asperger syndrome (n = 17) and matched controls (n = 28) to investigate whether they are capable of deriving scalar implicatures, which are generally considered to be pragmatic inferences. Participants were presented with underinformative sentences like ‘‘Some sparrows are birds’’. This sentence is logically true, but pragmatically inappropriate if the scalar implicature ‘‘Not all sparrows are birds’’ is derived. The present findings indicate that the combined ASD group was just as likely as controls to derive scalar implicatures, yet there was a difference between participants with autistic disorder and Asperger syndrome, suggesting a potential differentiation between these disorders in pragmatic reasoning. Moreover, our results suggest that verbal intelligence is a constraint for task performance in autistic disorder but not in Asperger syndrome.

Abstract

One of the most influential recent accounts of pronoun case-marking errors in young children's speech is Schütze & Wexler's (1996) Agreement/Tense Omission Model (ATOM). The ATOM predicts that the rate of agreeing verbs with non-nominative subjects will be so low that such errors can be reasonably disregarded as noise in the data. The present study tests this prediction on data from 12 children between the ages of 1;8.22 and 3;0.10. This is done, first, by identifying children who produced a reasonably large number of non-nominative 3psg subjects; second, by estimating the expected rate of agreeing verbs with masculine and feminine non-nominative subjects in these children's speech; and, third, by examining the actual rate at which agreeing verb forms occurred with non-nominative subjects in those areas of the data in which the expected error rate was significantly greater than 10%. The results show, first, that only three of the children produced enough non-nominative subjects to allow a reasonable test of the ATOM to be made; second, that for all three of these children, the only area of the data in which the expected frequency of agreeing verbs with non-nominative subjects was significantly greater than 10% was their use of feminine case-marked subjects; and third, that for all three of these children, the rate of agreeing verbs with non-nominative feminine subjects was over 30%. These results raise serious doubts about the claim that children's use of non-nominative subjects can be explained in terms of AGR optionality, and suggest the need for a model of pronoun case-marking error that can explain why some children produce agreeing verb forms with non-nominative subjects as often as they do.

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between word repetition, predictability from neighbouring words, and articulatory reduction in Dutch. For the seven most frequent words ending in the adjectival suffix -lijk, 40 occurrences were randomly selected from a large database of face-to-face conversations. Analysis of the selected tokens showed that the degree of articulatory reduction (as measured by duration and number of realized segments) was affected by repetition, predictability from the previous word and predictability from the following word. Interestingly, not all of these effects were significant across morphemes and target words. Repetition effects were limited to suffixes, while effects of predictability from the previous word were restricted to the stems of two of the seven target words. Predictability from the following word affected the stems of all target words equally, but not all suffixes. The implications of these findings for models of speech production are discussed.

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of lexical frequency on the durational reduction of morphologically complex words in spoken Dutch. The hypothesis that high-frequency words are more reduced than low-frequency words was tested by comparing the durations of affixes occurring in different carrier words. Four Dutch affixes were investigated, each occurring in a large number of words with different frequencies. The materials came from a large database of face-to-face conversations. For each word containing a target affix, one token was randomly selected for acoustic analysis. Measurements were made of the duration of the affix as a whole and the durations of the individual segments in the affix. For three of the four affixes, a higher frequency of the carrier word led to shorter realizations of the affix as a whole, individual segments in the affix, or both. Other relevant factors were the sex and age of the speaker, segmental context, and speech rate. To accommodate for these findings, models of speech production should allow word frequency to affect the acoustic realizations of lower-level units, such as individual speech sounds occurring in affixes.