Publications

Abstract

This paper presents a Native Language Identification (NLI) system based on TF-IDF weighting schemes and using linear classifiers - support vector machines, logistic regressions and perceptrons. The system was one of the participants of the 2013 NLI Shared Task in the closed-training track, achieving 0.814 overall accuracy for a set of 11 native languages. This accuracy was only 2.2 percentage points lower than the winner's performance. Furthermore, with subsequent evaluations using 10-fold cross-validation (as given by the organizers) on the combined training and development data, the best average accuracy obtained is 0.8455 and the features that contributed to this accuracy are the TF-IDF of the combined unigrams and bigrams of words.

Abstract

We present and solve the speaker diarization problem in a novel way. We hypothesize that the gesturer is the speaker and that identifying the gesturer can be taken as identifying the active speaker. We provide evidence in support of the hypothesis from gesture literature and audio-visual synchrony studies. We also present a vision-only diarization algorithm that relies on gestures (i.e. upper body movements). Experiments carried out on 8.9 hours of a publicly available dataset (the AMI meeting data) show that diarization error rates as low as 15% can be achieved.

Abstract

How are space and time related in the brain? This study contrasts two proposals that make different predictions about the interaction between spatial and temporal magnitudes. Whereas ATOM implies that space and time are symmetrically related, Metaphor Theory claims they are asymmetrically related. Here we investigated whether space and time activate the same neural structures in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and whether the activation is symmetric or asymmetric across domains. We measured participants’ neural activity while they made temporal and spatial judgments on the same visual stimuli. The behavioral results replicated earlier observations of a space-time asymmetry: Temporal judgments were more strongly influenced by irrelevant spatial information than vice versa. The BOLD fMRI data indicated that space and time activated overlapping clusters in the IPC and that, consistent with Metaphor Theory, this activation was asymmetric: The shared region of IPC was activated more strongly during temporal judgments than during spatial judgments. We consider three possible interpretations of this neural asymmetry, based on 3 possible functions of IPC.

Abstract

This paper presents the Demo / Kemo corpus of Dutch and Korean emotional speech. The corpus has been specifically developed for the purpose of cross-linguistic comparison, and is more balanced than any similar corpus available so far: a) it contains expressions by both Dutch and Korean actors as well as judgments by both Dutch and Korean listeners; b) the same elicitation technique and recording procedure was used for recordings of both languages; c) the same nonsense sentence, which was constructed to be permissible in both languages, was used for recordings of both languages; and d) the emotions present in the corpus are balanced in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance. The corpus contains a comparatively large number of emotions (eight) uttered by a large number of speakers (eight Dutch and eight Korean). The counterbalanced nature of the corpus will enable a stricter investigation of language-specific versus universal aspects of emotional expression than was possible so far. Furthermore, given the carefully controlled phonetic content of the expressions, it allows for analysis of the role of specific phonetic features in emotional expression in Dutch and Korean.

Abstract

Researchers in human language processing and acquisition are making an increasing use of computational models. Computer simulations provide a valuable platform to reproduce hypothesised learning mechanisms that are otherwise very difficult, if not impossible, to verify on human subjects. However, computational models come with problems and risks. It is difficult to (automatically) extract essential information about the developing internal representations from a set of simulation runs, and often researchers limit themselves to analysing learning curves based on empirical recognition accuracy through time. The associated risk is to erroneously deem a specific learning behaviour as generalisable to human learners, while it could also be a mere consequence (artifact) of the implementation of the artificial learner or of the input coding scheme. In this paper a set of simulation runs taken from the ACORNS project is investigated. First a look `inside the box' of the learner is provided by employing novel quantitative methods for analysing changing structures in large data sets. Then, the obtained findings are discussed in the perspective of their ecological validity in the field of child language acquisition.

Abstract

The shape of pitch contours has been shown to have an effect on the perceived duration of vowels. For instance, vowels with high level pitch and vowels with falling contours sound longer than vowels with low level pitch. Depending on whether the
comparison is between level pitches or between level and dynamic contours, these findings have been interpreted in two ways. For inter-level comparisons, where the duration results are the reverse of production results, a hypercorrection strategy in production has been proposed [1]. By contrast, for comparisons between level pitches and dynamic contours, the
longer production data for dynamic contours have been held responsible. We report an experiment with Dutch and Chinese listeners which aimed to show that production data and perception data are each other’s opposites for high, low, falling and rising contours. We explain the results, which are consistent with earlier findings, in terms of the compensatory listening strategy of [2], arguing that the perception effects are due to a perceptual compensation of articulatory strategies and
constraints, rather than that differences in production compensate for psycho-acoustic perception effects.

Abstract

This corpus-based study shows that the presence and duration of schwa in Dutch word-initial syllables are affected by a word’s predictability and its morphological structure. Schwa is less reduced in words that are more predictable given the following word. In addition, schwa may be longer if the syllable forms a prefix, and in prefixes the duration of schwa is positively correlated with the frequency of the word relative to its stem. Our results suggest that the conditions which favor reduced realizations are more complex than one would expect on the basis of the current literature.

Abstract

The Possible-Word Constraint (PWC; Norris, McQueen, Cutler, and Butterfield 1997) suggests that segmentation of continuous speech operates with a universal constraint that feasible words should contain a vowel. Single consonants, because they do not constitute syllables, are treated as non-viable residues. Two word-spotting experiments are reported that investigate whether the PWC really is a language-universal principle. According to the PWC, Slovak listeners should, just like Germans, be slower at spotting words in single consonant contexts (not feasible words) as compared to syllable contexts (feasible words)—even if single consonants can be words in Slovak. The results confirm the PWC in German but not in Slovak.

Abstract

Non-native (L2) speakers of English often experience difficulties in producing English interdental fricatives (e.g. the voiceless [θ]), and this leads to frequent substitutions of these fricatives (e.g. with [t], [s], and [f]). Differences in the choice of [θ]-substitutions across L2 speakers with different native (L1) language backgrounds have been extensively explored. However, even within one foreign accent, more than one substitution choice occurs, but this has been less systematically studied. Furthermore, little is known about whether the substitutions of voiceless [θ] are phonetically clear instances of [t], [s], and [f], as they are often labelled. In this study, we attempted a phonetic approach to examine language-specific preferences for [θ]-substitutions by carrying out acoustic measurements of L1 and L2 realizations of these sounds. To this end, we collected a corpus of spoken English with L1 speakers (UK-English), and Dutch and German L2 speakers. We show a) that the distribution of differential substitutions using identical materials differs between Dutch and German L2 speakers, b) that [t,s,f]-substitutes differ acoustically from intended [t,s,f], and c) that L2 productions of [θ] are acoustically comparable to L1 productions.

Abstract

Certain categories of language learners need feedback on the grammatical structure of sentences they wish to produce. In contrast with the usual NLP approach to this problem—parsing student-generated texts—we propose a generation-based approach aiming at preventing errors (“scaffolding”). In our ICALL system, students construct sentences by composing syntactic trees out of lexically anchored “treelets” via a graphical drag&drop user interface. A natural-language generator computes all possible grammatically well-formed sentences entailed by the student-composed tree, and intervenes immediately when the latter tree does not belong to the set of well-formed alternatives. Feedback is based on comparisons between the student-composed tree and the well-formed set. Frequently occurring errors are handled in terms of “malrules.” The system (implemented in JAVA and C++) currently focuses constituent order in German as L2.

Abstract

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) regularly use the base form of verbs (e.g., dance) instead of inflected forms (e.g., danced). We propose an account of this behavior in which children with DLD have difficulty processing novel inflected verbs in their input. This leads the inflected form to face stronger competition from alternatives. Competition is resolved by the production of a more accessible alternative with high semantic overlap with the inflected form: in English, the bare form. We test our account computationally by training a nonparametric Bayesian model that infers the productivity of the inflectional suffix (-ed). We systematically vary the number of novel types of inflected verbs in the input to simulate the input as processed by children with and without DLD. Modeling results are consistent with our hypothesis, suggesting that children’s inconsistent use of inflectional morphemes could stem from inferences they make on the basis of impoverished data.

Abstract

This thesis focuses on one aspect of interactional competence: competence to manage knowledge distribution in conversation. In order to be considered competent in everyday interaction, participants need not only to index one another's knowledge states but also to engage in dynamic negotiation of knowledge distribution. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis, the thesis investigates how participants' orientations to knowledge distribution, 'epistemicity', are manifested. The thesis examines three interactional environments: assessment sequences, informing sequences and polar question-answer sequences. A systematic analysis reveals that interactants orient to different aspects of knowledge in different environments, employing different grammatical resources. When they assess an object, they are concerned about who possesses 'epistemic primacy'. Japanese final particles and the practices of intensification serve together to claim epistemic primacy and provide support for the claim. It is also reported that interactants are oriented to achieve 'epistemic congruence' − consensus regarding how knowledge is distributed among them. When one provides the other with new information, the exchange commonly develops into a four-turn sequence, instead of a minimal adjacency pair. It is shown that this sequence organization allows interactants to achieve a balance between territories of experience, affiliation and empathy. In polar question-answer sequences, how (un)expected or novel a given piece of information is becomes an issue. Answers are found to be formulated such that they adopt epistemic stances that are assertive enough to match the level of (un)certainty expressed by questioners. The thesis contributes to our understanding of how social interaction is organized. It becomes clear from the findings that a wide range of aspects of language use and interactional organization are dominated by interactants' orientations to epistemicity. Participants manage knowledge distribution in everyday interaction, which may be the most fundamental means of managing their social statuses and relations.

Abstract

Using the visual-word paradigm, the present study investigated the effects of word onset and offset masking on the time course of non-native spoken-word recognition in the presence of background noise. In two experiments, Dutch non-native listeners heard English target words, preceded by carrier sentences that were noise-free (Experiment 1) or contained intermittent noise (Experiment 2). Target words were either onset- or offset-masked or not masked at all. Results showed that onset masking delayed target word recognition more than offset masking did, suggesting that – similar to natives – non-native listeners strongly rely on word onset information during word recognition in noise.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Thesaurus alignment plays an important role in realising efficient access to heterogeneous Cultural Heritage data. Current ontology alignment techniques, however, provide only limited value for such access as they consider little if any requirements from realistic use cases or application scenarios. In this paper, we focus on two real-world scenarios in a library context: thesaurus merging and book re-indexing. We identify their particular requirements and describe our approach of deploying and evaluating thesaurus alignment techniques in this context. We have applied our approach for the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative, and report on the performance evaluation of participants’ tools wrt. the application scenario at hand. It shows that evaluations of tools requires significant effort, but when done carefully, brings many benefits.

Abstract

Adult-to-child interactions are often characterized by prosodically-exaggerated speech accompanied by visually captivating co-speech gestures. In a series of adult studies, we have shown that these gestures are linked in a sophisticated manner to the prosodic structure of adults' utterances. In the current study, we use the Preferential Looking Paradigm to demonstrate that two-year-olds can use the alignment of these gestures to speech to deduce the meaning of words.

Abstract

Speakers express word meaning through systematic but non-canonical acoustic variation of tone of voice (ToV), i.e., variation of speaking rate, pitch, vocal effort, or loudness. Words are, for example, pronounced at a higher pitch when referring to small than to big referents. In the present study, we examined whether listeners can use ToV to learn the meaning of novel adjectives (e.g., “blicket”). During training, participants heard sentences such as “Can you find the blicket one?” spoken with ToV representing hot-cold, strong-weak, and big-small. Participants’ eye movements to two simultaneously shown objects with properties representing the relevant two endpoints (e.g., an elephant and an ant for big-small) were monitored. Assignment of novel adjectives to endpoints was counterbalanced across participants. During test, participants heard the sentences spoken with a neutral ToV, while seeing old or novel picture pairs varying along the same dimensions (e.g., a truck and a car for big-small). Participants had to click on the adjective’s referent. As evident from eye movements, participants did not infer the intended meaning during first exposure, but learned the meaning with the help of ToV during training. At test listeners applied this knowledge to old and novel items even in the absence of informative ToV.

Abstract

This study investigates the time-course of information processing in both visual as well as in the auditory speech as used for word identification in face-to-face communication. It extends the limited previous research on this topic and provides a valuable database for future research in audiovisual speech perception. An evaluation of models of speech perception by ear and eye in their ability to account for the audiovisual gating data shows a superior role of the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP) [1] over additive models of perception. A new dynamic version of the FLMP seems to be a promising model to account for the complex interplay of perceptual and cognitive information in audiovisual spoken word recognition.

Abstract

In face-to-face communication, information from the face as well as from the voice contributes to the identification of spoken words. This dissertation investigates the time-course of the evaluation and integration of visual and auditory speech in audiovisual word identification. A large-scale audiovisual gating study extends previous research on this topic by (1) using a set of words that includes all possible initial consonants in English in three vowel contexts, (2) tracking the information processing for individual words not only across modalities, but also over time, and (3) testing quantitative models of the time-course of multimodal word recognition. There was an advantage in accuracy for audiovisual speech over auditory-only and visual-only speech. Auditory performance was, however, close to ceiling while performance on visual-only trials was near the floor of the scale, but well above chance. Visual information was used at all gates to identify the presented words. Information theoretic feature analyses of the confusion matrices revealed that the auditory signal is highly informative about voicing, manner, frication, duration, and place of articulation. Visual speech is mostly informative about place of articulation, but also about frication and duration. The auditory signal provides more information about the place of articulation for back consonants, whereas the visual signal provides more information for the labial consonants. The data were sufficient to discriminate between models of audiovisual word recognition. The Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP; Massaro, 1998) gave a better account of the confusion matrix data than additive models of perception. A dynamic version of the FLMP was expanded to account for the evaluation and integration of information over time. This dynamic FLMP provided a better description of the data than dynamic additive competitor models. The present study builds a good foundation to investigate the role of the complex interplay between stimulus information and the structure of the lexicon. It provides an important step in building a formal representation of a lexical dynamic FLMP that can account not only for the time-course of speech information and its perceptual processing, but also for lexical influences.

Abstract

Mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene are found at a relatively high frequency in glioma, with the most common being the de2-7 EGFR (or EGFRvIII). This mutation arises from an in-frame deletion of exons 2–7, which removes 267 amino acids from the extracellular domain of the receptor. Despite being unable to bind ligand, the de2-7 EGFR is constitutively active at a low level. Transfection of human glioma cells with the de2-7 EGFR has little effect in vitro, but when grown as tumor xenografts this mutated receptor imparts a dramatic growth advantage. We have now mapped the phosphorylation pattern of de2-7 EGFR, both in vivo and in vitro, using a panel of antibodies unique to the different phosphorylated tyrosine residues. Phosphorylation of de2-7 EGFR was detected constitutively at all tyrosine sites surveyed both in vitro and in vivo, including tyrosine 845, a known target in the wild-type EGFR for src kinase. There was a substantial upregulation of phosphorylation at every tyrosine residue of the de2-7 EGFR when cells were grown in vivo compared to the receptor isolated from cells cultured in vitro. Upregulation of phosphorylation could be mimicked in vitro by the addition of specifi c components of the ECM such as collagen via an integrin-dependent mechanism. Since this increase in in vivo phosphorylation enhances de2-7 EGFR signaling, this observation explains why the growth enhancement mediated by de2-7 EGFR is largely restricted to the in vivo environment. In a second set of experiments we analyzed the interaction between EGFRvIII and ErbB2. Co-expression of these proteins in NR6 cells, a mouse fi broblast line devoid of ErbB family members, dramatically enhanced in vivo tumorigenicity of these cells compared to cells expressing either protein alone. Detailed analysis of these xenografts demonstrated that EGFRvIII could heterodimerize and transphosphorylate the ErbB2. Since both EGFRvIII and ErbB2 are commonly expressed at gliomas, this data suggests that the co-expression of these two proteins may enhance glioma tumorigenicity.

Abstract

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

Abstract

There is a strong relation between children’s exposure to
spatial terms and their later memory accuracy. In the current
study, we tested whether the production of spatial terms by
children themselves predicts memory accuracy and whether
and how language modality of these encodings modulates
memory accuracy differently. Hearing child speakers of
Turkish and deaf child signers of Turkish Sign Language
described pictures of objects in various spatial relations to each
other and later tested for their memory accuracy of these
pictures in a surprise memory task. We found that having
described the spatial relation between the objects predicted
better memory accuracy. However, the modality of these
descriptions in sign, speech, or speech-plus-gesture did not
reveal differences in memory accuracy. We discuss the
implications of these findings for the relation between spatial
language, memory, and the modality of encoding.

Abstract

The ”download first, then process paradigm” is still the predominant working method amongst the research community. The web-based paradigm, however, offers many advantages from a tool development and data management perspective as they allow a quick adaptation to changing research environments. Moreover, new ways of combining tools and data are increasingly becoming available and will eventually enable a true web-based workflow approach, thus challenging the ”download first, then process” paradigm. The necessary infrastructure for managing, exploring and enriching language resources via the Web will need to be delivered by projects like CLARIN and DARIAH

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a unifying approach to tackle data heterogeneity issues for lexica and related resources. We present LEXUS, our software that implements the Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) to uniformly describe and manage lexica of different structures. LEXUS also makes use of a central Data Category Registry (DCR) to address terminological issues with regard to linguistic concepts as well as the handling of working and object languages. Finally, we report on ViCoS, a LEXUS extension, providing support for the definition of arbitrary semantic relations between lexical entries or parts thereof.

Abstract

To achieve true interoperability for valuable linguistic resources different levels of variation need to be addressed. ISO Technical Committee 37, Terminology and other language and content resources, is developing a Data Category Registry. This registry will provide a reusable set of data categories. A new implementation, dubbed ISOcat, of the registry is currently under construction. This paper shortly describes the new data model for data categories that will be introduced in this implementation. It goes on with a sketch of the standardization process. Completed data categories can be reused by the community. This is done by either making a selection of data categories using the ISOcat web interface, or by other tools which interact with the ISOcat system using one of its various Application Programming Interfaces. Linguistic resources that use data categories from the registry should include persistent references, e.g. in the metadata or schemata of the resource, which point back to their origin. These data category references can then be used to determine if two or more resources share common semantics, thus providing a level of interoperability close to the source data and a promising layer for semantic alignment on higher levels

Abstract

We present a software module, the LAT Bridge, which enables bidirectionalcommunication between the annotation and exploration tools developed at the MaxPlanck Institute for Psycholinguistics as part of our Language ArchivingTechnology (LAT) tool suite. These existing annotation and exploration toolsenable the annotation, enrichment, exploration and archive management oflinguistic resources. The user community has expressed the desire to usedifferent combinations of LAT tools in conjunction with each other. The LATBridge is designed to cater for a number of basic data interaction scenariosbetween the LAT annotation and exploration tools. These interaction scenarios(e.g. bootstrapping a wordlist, searching for annotation examples or lexicalentries) have been identified in collaboration with researchers at ourinstitute.We had to take into account that the LAT tools for annotation and explorationrepresent a heterogeneous application scenario with desktop-installed andweb-based tools. Additionally, the LAT Bridge has to work in situations wherethe Internet is not available or only in an unreliable manner (i.e. with a slowconnection or with frequent interruptions). As a result, the LAT Bridge’sarchitecture supports both online and offline communication between the LATannotation and exploration tools.

Abstract

Many theories hold that semantic variation in the world’s languages can be explained in terms of a universal conceptual space that is partitioned differently by different languages. Recent work has supported this view in the semantic domain of containers (Malt et al., 1999), and assumed it in the domain of spatial relations (Khetarpal et al., 2009), based in both cases on similarity judgments derived from pile-sorting of stimuli. Here, we reanalyze data from these two studies and find a more complex picture than these earlier studies suggested. In both cases we find that sorting is similar across speakers of different languages (in line with the earlier studies), but nonetheless reflects the sorter’s native language (in contrast with the earlier studies). We conclude that there are cross-culturally shared conceptual tendencies that can be revealed by pile-sorting, but that these tendencies may be modulated to some extent by language. We discuss the implications of these findings for accounts of semantic variation.

Abstract

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

Abstract

The previous literature has suggested that the hand movement in co-speech gestures and signs consists of a series of phases with qualitatively different dynamic characteristics. In this paper, we propose a syntagmatic rule system for movement phases that applies to both co-speech gestures and signs. Descriptive criteria for the rule system were developed for the analysis video-recorded continuous production of signs and gesture. It involves segmenting a stream of body movement into phases and identifying different phase types. Two human coders used the criteria to analyze signs and cospeech gestures that are produced in natural discourse. It was found that the criteria yielded good inter-coder reliability. These criteria can be used for the technology of automatic recognition of signs and co-speech gestures in order to segment continuous production and identify the potentially meaningbearing phase.

Abstract

Previous studies on Cantonese Chinese showed that rising
question intonation contours on low-toned words lead to
frequent misperceptions of the tones. Here we explored the
processing consequences of this interaction between tone and
intonation by comparing the processing and identification of
monosyllabic critical words at the end of questions and
statements, using a tone identification task, and ERPs as an
online measure of speech comprehension. Experiment 1
yielded higher error rates for the identification of low tones at
the end of questions and a larger N400-P600 pattern, reflecting
processing difficulty and reanalysis, compared to other
conditions. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of
immediate lexical context on the tone by intonation interaction.
Increasing contextual constraints led to a reduction in errors
and the disappearance of the P600 effect. These results
indicate that there is an immediate interaction between tone,
intonation, and context in online speech comprehension. The
difference in performance and activation patterns between the
two experiments highlights the significance of context in
understanding a tone language, like Cantonese-Chinese.

Abstract

This paper examines the language-specific aspect of the TIME PASSING IS MOTION metaphor and suggests that the temporal construal of time can be influenced by a person's second language. Ahrens and Huang (2002) have analyzed the source domain of MOTION for the TIME metaphor into two special cases. In the special case one, TIME PASSING is an object that moves towards an ego. For example, qimuokao kuai dao le "the final exam is approaching." In the special case two, TIME PASSING is a point (that a plural ego is attached to) that moves across a landscape. For example, women kuai dao qimuokao le "we are approaching the final exam." In addition, in English, the ego in the special case one faces the future while in Chinese, the ego faces the past. The current experiment hypothesizes that English influences the choice of the orientation of the ego in native Chinese speakers who speak English as the second language. 54 subjects are asked to switch the clock time one hour forward. Results show that native Chinese speakers living in the Chinese speaking country tend to move the clock one hour forward to the past (92%) while native Chinese speakers living in an English speaking country are less likely to do so (60%). This implies that the experience of English influences the conceptualization of time in Mandarin Chinese.

Abstract

Research in body language with use of gesture recognition and speech analysis has gained much attention in the recent times, influencing disciplines related to image and speech processing.

This study aims to design the Media Query Language (MQL) (Lenkiewicz, et al. 2012) combined with the Linguistic Media Query Interface (LMQI) for Elan (Wittenburg, et al. 2006). The system integrated with the new achievements in audio-video recognition will allow querying media files with predefined gesture phases (or motion primitives) and speech characteristics as well as combinations of both. For the purpose of this work the predefined motions and speech characteristics are called patterns for atomic elements and actions for a sequence of patterns. The main assumption is that a user-customized library of patterns and actions and automated media annotation with LMQI will reduce annotation time, hence decreasing costs of creation of annotated corpora. Increase of the number of annotated data should influence the speed and number of possible research in disciplines in which human multimodal interaction is a subject of interest and where annotated corpora are required.

Abstract

Digital processing of medical images has helped physicians and patients during past years by allowing examination and diagnosis on a very precise level. Nowadays possibly the biggest deal of support it can offer for modern healthcare is the use of high performance computing architectures to treat the huge amounts of data that can be collected by modern acquisition devices. This paper presents a parallel processing implementation of an image segmentation algorithm that operates on a computer cluster equipped with 10 processing units. Thanks to well-organized distribution of the workload we manage to significantly shorten the execution time of the developed algorithm and reach a performance gain very close to linear.

Abstract

Young children demonstrate the ability to make inferences about the preferences of other agents based on their choices. However, there exists no overarching account of what children are doing when they learn about preferences or how they use that knowledge. We use a rational model of preference learning, drawing on ideas from economics and computer science, to explain the behavior of children in several recent experiments. Specifically, we show how a simple econometric model can be extended to capture two- to four-year-olds’ use of statistical information in inferring preferences, and their generalization of these preferences.

Abstract

We examined how communicators can switch between speaker and listener role with such accurate timing. During conversations, the majority of role transitions happens with a gap or overlap of only a few hundred milliseconds. This suggests that listeners can predict when the turn of the current speaker is going to end. Our hypothesis is that listeners know when a turn ends because they know how it ends. Anticipating the last words of a turn can help the next speaker in predicting when the turn will end, and also in anticipating the content of the turn, so that an appropriate response can be prepared in advance. We used the stimuli material of an earlier experiment (De Ruiter, Mitterer & Enfield, 2006), in which subjects were listening to turns from natural conversations and had to press a button exactly when the turn they were listening to ended. In the present experiment, we investigated if the subjects can complete those turns when only an initial fragment of the turn is presented to them. We found that the subjects made better predictions about the last words of those turns that had more accurate responses in the earlier button press experiment.

Abstract

Since the cognitive revolution, a widely held assumption has been that—whereas content may vary across cultures—cognitive processes would be universal, especially those on the more basic levels. Even if scholars do not fully subscribe to this assumption, they often conceptualize, or tend to investigate, cognition as if it were universal (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). The insight that universality must not be presupposed but scrutinized is now gaining ground, and cognitive diversity has become one of the hot (and controversial) topics in the field (Norenzayan & Heine, 2005). We argue that, for scrutinizing the cultural dimension of cognition, taking an anthropological perspective is invaluable, not only for the task itself, but for attenuating the home-field disadvantages that are inescapably linked to cross-cultural research (Medin, Bennis, & Chandler, 2010).

Abstract

Visual and auditory channels have different affordances and
this is mirrored in what information is available for linguistic
encoding. The visual channel has high spatial acuity, whereas
the auditory channel has better temporal acuity. These
differences may lead to different conceptualizations of events
and affect multimodal language production. Previous studies of
motion events typically present visual input to elicit speech and
gesture. The present study compared events presented as audio-
only, visual-only, or multimodal (visual+audio) input and
assessed speech and co-speech gesture for path and manner of
motion in Turkish. Speakers with audio-only input mentioned
path more and manner less in verbal descriptions, compared to
speakers who had visual input. There was no difference in the
type or frequency of gestures across conditions, and gestures
were dominated by path-only gestures. This suggests that input
modality influences speakers’ encoding of path and manner of
motion events in speech, but not in co-speech gestures.

Abstract

Grice in pragmatics and Levelt in psycholinguistics have proposed models of human communication where the starting point of communicative action is an individual intention. This assumption, though, has to face serious objections with regard to the alleged existence of explicit representations of the communicative goals to be pursued. Here evidence is surveyed which shows that in fact speaking may ordinarily be a quite automatic activity prompted by contextual cues and driven by behavioural schemata abstracted away from social regularities. On the one hand, this means that there could exist no intentions in the sense of explicit representations of communicative goals, following from deliberate reasoning and triggering the communicative action. On the other hand, however, there are reasons to allow for a weaker notion of intention than this, according to which communication is an intentional affair, after all. Communicative action is said to be intentional in this weaker sense to the extent that it is subject to a double mechanism of control, with respect both to present-directed and future-directed intentions.

Abstract

The results of a word-spotting experiment are presented in which Dutch listeners tried to spot different types of bisyllabic Dutch words embedded in different types of nonsense contexts. Embedded verbs were not reliably harder to spot than embedded nouns; this suggests that nouns and verbs are recognised via the same basic processes. Iambic words were no harder to spot than trochaic words, suggesting that trochaic words are not in principle easier to recognise than iambic words. Words were harder to spot in consonantal contexts (i.e., contexts which themselves could not be words) than in longer contexts which contained at least one vowel (i.e., contexts which, though not words, were possible words of Dutch). A control experiment showed that this difference was not due to acoustic differences between the words in each context. The results support the claim that spoken-word recognition is sensitive to the viability of sound sequences as possible words.

Abstract

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have long been an architecture of interest for computational models of human sentence processing. The recently introduced Transformer architecture outperforms RNNs on many natural language processing tasks but little is known about its ability to model human language processing. We compare Transformer- and RNN-based language models’ ability to account for measures of human reading effort. Our analysis shows Transformers to outperform RNNs in explaining self-paced reading times and neural activity during reading English sentences, challenging the widely held idea that human sentence processing involves recurrent and immediate processing and provides evidence for cue-based retrieval.

Abstract

This study addresses the question whether visually grounded speech recognition (VGS) models learn to capture sentence semantics without access to any prior linguistic knowledge. We produce synthetic and natural spoken versions of a well known semantic textual similarity database and show that our VGS model produces embeddings that correlate well with human semantic similarity judgements. Our results show that a model trained on a small image-caption database outperforms two models trained on much larger databases, indicating that database size is not all that matters. We also investigate the importance of having multiple captions per image and find that this is indeed helpful even if the total number of images is lower, suggesting that paraphrasing is a valuable learning signal. While the general trend in the field is to create ever larger datasets to train models on, our findings indicate other characteristics of the database can just as important.

Abstract

Words are reduced in spontaneous speech. If reductions are constrained by functional (i.e., perception and production) constraints, they should not be arbitrary. This hypothesis was tested by examing the pronunciations of high- to mid-frequency words in a Dutch and a German spontaneous speech corpus. In logistic-regression models the "reduction likelihood" of a phoneme was predicted by fixed-effect predictors such as position within the word, word length, word frequency, and stress, as well as random effects such as phoneme identity and word. The models for Dutch and German show many communalities. This is in line with the assumption that similar functional constraints influence reductions in both languages.

Abstract

Language emergence is characterized by a high degree of lex-
ical variation. It has been suggested that the speed at which
lexical conventionalization occurs depends partially on social
structure. In large communities, individuals receive input from
many sources, creating a pressure for lexical convergence.
In small, insular communities, individuals can remember id-
iolects and share common ground with interlocuters, allow-
ing these communities to retain a high degree of lexical vari-
ation. We look at lexical variation in Kata Kolok, a sign lan-
guage which emerged six generations ago in a Balinese vil-
lage, where women tend to have more tightly-knit social net-
works than men. We test if there are differing degrees of lexical
uniformity between women and men by reanalyzing a picture
description task in Kata Kolok. We find that women’s produc-
tions exhibit less lexical uniformity than men’s. One possible
explanation of this finding is that women’s more tightly-knit
social networks allow for remembering idiolects, alleviating
the pressure for lexical convergence, but social network data
from the Kata Kolok community is needed to support this ex-
planation.

Abstract

We lezen en horen dagelijks duizenden woorden zonder dat het ons enige moeite lijkt te kosten. Toch speelt zich in ons brein ondertussen een complex mentaal proces af, waarbij tal van andere woorden dan het aangeboden woord, ook actief worden. Dit gebeurt met name wanneer die andere woorden overeenkomen met de feitelijk aangeboden woorden in spelling, uitspraak of betekenis. Deze activatie als gevolg van gelijkenis strekt zich zelfs uit tot andere talen: ook daarin worden gelijkende woorden actief. Waar liggen de grenzen van dit activatieproces? Activeer je bij het verwerken van het Engelse woord 'steam' ook het Nederlandse woord 'stram'(een zogenaamd 'buurwoord)? En activeer je bij 'clock' zowel 'clockwork' als 'klokhuis' ( twee morfolologische familieleden uit verschillende talen)? Kimberley Mulder onderzocht hoe het leesproces van Nederlands-Engelse tweetaligen wordt beïnvloed door zulke relaties. In meerdere experimentele studies vond ze dat tweetaligen niet alleen morfologische familieleden en orthografische buren activeren uit de taal waarin ze op dat moment lezen, maar ook uit de andere taal die ze kennen. Het lezen van een woord beperkt zich dus geenszins tot wat je eigenlijk ziet, maar activeert een heel netwerk van woorden in je brein.

Abstract

The phonological system of a sign language comprises meaningless sub-lexical units that define the structure of a sign. A number of studies have examined how learners of a sign language as a first language (L1) acquire these components. However, little is understood about the mechanism by which hearing adults develop visual phonological categories when learning a sign language as a second language (L2). Developmental studies have shown that sign complexity and iconicity, the clear mapping between the form of a sign and its referent, shape in different ways the order of emergence of a visual phonology. The aim of the present dissertation was to investigate how these two factors affect the development of a visual phonology in hearing adults learning a sign language as L2. The empirical data gathered in this dissertation confirms that sign structure and iconicity are important factors that determine L2 phonological development. Non-signers perform better at discriminating the contrastive features of phonologically simple signs than signs with multiple elements. Handshape was the parameter most difficult to learn, followed by movement, then orientation and finally location which is the same order of acquisition reported in L1 sign acquisition. In addition, the ability to access the iconic properties of signs had a detrimental effect in phonological development because iconic signs were consistently articulated less accurately than arbitrary signs. Participants tended to retain the iconic elements of signs but disregarded their exact phonetic structure. Further, non-signers appeared to process iconic signs as iconic gestures at least at the early stages of sign language acquisition. The empirical data presented in this dissertation suggest that non-signers exploit their gestural system as scaffolding of the new manual linguistic system and that sign L2 phonological development is strongly influenced by the structural complexity of a sign and its degree of iconicity.

Abstract

Natural sign languages and gestures are complex communicative systems that allow the incorporation of features of a referent into their structure. They differ, however, in that signs are more conventionalised because they consist of meaningless phonological parameters. There is some evidence that despite non-signers finding iconic signs more memorable they can have more difficulty at articulating their exact phonological components. In the present study, hearing non-signers took part in a sign repetition task in which they had to imitate as accurately as possible a set of iconic and arbitrary signs. Their renditions showed that iconic signs were articulated significantly less accurately than arbitrary signs. Participants were recalled six months later to take part in a sign generation task. In this task, participants were shown the English translation of the iconic signs they imitated six months prior. For each word, participants were asked to generate a sign (i.e., an iconic gesture). The handshapes produced in the sign repetition and sign generation tasks were compared to detect instances in which both renditions presented the same configuration. There was a significant correlation between articulation accuracy in the sign repetition task and handshape overlap. These results suggest some form of gestural interference in the production of iconic signs by hearing non-signers. We also suggest that in some instances non-signers may deploy their own conventionalised gesture when producing some iconic signs. These findings are interpreted as evidence that non-signers process iconic signs as gestures and that in production, only when sign and gesture have overlapping features will they be capable of producing the phonological components of signs accurately.

Abstract

Japanese listeners detected Japanese words embedded at the end of nonsense sequences (e.g., kaba 'hippopotamus' in gyachikaba). When the final portion of the preceding context together with the initial portion of the word (e.g., here, the sequence chika) was compatible with many lexical competitors, recognition of the embedded word was more difficult than when such a sequence was compatible with few competitors. This clear effect of competition, established here for preceding context in Japanese, joins similar demonstrations, in other languages and for following contexts, to underline that the functional architecture of the human spoken-word recognition system is a universal one.

Abstract

In everyday communication, people not only use speech but
also hand gestures to convey information. One intriguing
question in gesture research has been why gestures take the
specific form they do. Previous research has identified the
speaker-gesturer’s communicative intent as one factor
shaping the form of iconic gestures. Here we investigate
whether communicative intent also shapes the form of
pointing gestures. In an experimental setting, twenty-four
participants produced pointing gestures identifying a referent
for an addressee. The communicative intent of the speakergesturer
was manipulated by varying the informativeness of
the pointing gesture. A second independent variable was the
presence or absence of concurrent speech. As a function of their communicative intent and irrespective of the presence of speech, participants varied the durations of the stroke and the post-stroke hold-phase of their gesture. These findings add to our understanding of how the communicative context influences the form that a gesture takes.

Abstract

Cognitive neuroscience approaches the brain as a cognitive system: a system that functionally is conceptualized in terms of information processing. We outline some aspects of this concept and consider a physical system to be an information processing device when a subclass of its physical states can be viewed as representational/cognitive and transitions between these can be conceptualized as a process operating on these states by implementing operations on the corresponding representational structures. We identify a generic and fundamental problem in cognition: sequentially organized structured processing. Structured sequence processing provides the brain, in an essential sense, with its processing logic. In an approach addressing this problem, we illustrate how to integrate levels of analysis within a framework of adaptive dynamical systems. We note that the dynamical system framework lends itself to a description of asynchronous event-driven devices, which is likely to be important in cognition because the brain appears to be an asynchronous processing system. We use the human language faculty and natural language processing as a concrete example through out.

Abstract

Recent FMRI studies indicate that language related brain regions are engaged in artificial grammar (AG) processing. In the present study we investigate the Reber grammar by means of formal analysis and network simulations. We outline a new method for describing the network dynamics and propose an approach to grammar extraction based on the state-space dynamics of the network. We conclude that statistical frequency-based and rule-based acquisition procedures can be viewed as complementary perspectives on grammar learning, and more generally, that classical cognitive models can be viewed as a special case of a dynamical systems perspective on information processing

Abstract

A fundamental ability of speakers is to
quickly retrieve words from long-term memory. According to a prominent theory, concepts activate multiple associated words, which enter into competition for selection. Previous electrophysiological studies have provided evidence for the activation of multiple alternative words, but did not identify brain responses refl ecting competition. We report a magnetoencephalography study examining the timing and neural substrates of lexical activation and competition. The degree of activation of competing words was
manipulated by presenting pictures (e.g., dog) simultaneously with distractor
words. The distractors were semantically related to the picture name (cat), unrelated (pin), or identical (dog). Semantic distractors are stronger competitors to the picture name, because they receive additional activation from the picture, whereas unrelated distractors do not. Picture naming times were longer with semantic than with unrelated and identical distractors. The patterns of phase-locked and non-phase-locked activity were distinct
but temporally overlapping. Phase-locked activity in left middle temporal
gyrus, peaking at 400 ms, was larger on unrelated than semantic and identical trials, suggesting differential effort in processing the alternative words activated by the picture-word stimuli. Non-phase-locked activity in the 4-10 Hz range between 400-650 ms in left superior frontal gyrus was larger on semantic than unrelated and identical trials, suggesting different
degrees of effort in resolving the competition among the alternatives
words, as refl ected in the naming times. These findings characterize distinct
patterns of brain activity associated with lexical activation and competition
respectively, and their temporal relation, supporting the theory that words are selected by competition.

Abstract

Music is a pervasive phenomenon in human culture, and musical
rhythm is virtually present in all musical traditions. Research
on the evolution and cognitive underpinnings of rhythm
can benefit from a number of approaches. We outline key concepts
and definitions, allowing fine-grained analysis of rhythmic
cognition in experimental studies. We advocate comparative
animal research as a useful approach to answer questions
about human music cognition and review experimental evidence
from different species. Finally, we suggest future directions
for research on the cognitive basis of rhythm. Apart from
research in semi-natural setups, possibly allowed by “drum set
for chimpanzees” prototypes presented here for the first time,
mathematical modeling and systematic use of circular statistics
may allow promising advances.

Abstract

Dutch listeners' looks to printed words were tracked while they listened to instructions to click with their mouse on one of them. When presented with targets from word pairs where the first two syllables were segmentally identical but differed in stress location, listeners used stress information to recognize the target before segmental information disambiguated the words. Furthermore, the amount of lexical competition was influenced by the presence or absence of word-initial stress.

Abstract

Segmental as well as suprasegmental information is used by Dutch listeners to recognize words. The time-course of the effect of suprasegmental stress information on spoken-word recognition was investigated in a previous study, in which we tracked Dutch listeners' looks to arrays of four printed words as they listened to spoken sentences. Each target was displayed along with a competitor that did not differ segmentally in its first two syllables but differed in stress placement (e.g., 'CENtimeter' and 'sentiMENT'). The listeners' eye-movements showed that stress information is used to recognize the target before distinct segmental information is available. Here, we examine the role of durational information in this effect. Two experiments showed that initial-syllable duration, as a cue to lexical stress, is not interpreted dependent on the speaking rate of the preceding carrier sentence. This still held when other stress cues like pitch and amplitude were removed. Rather, the speaking rate of the preceding carrier affected the speed of word recognition globally, even though the rate of the target itself was not altered. Stress information modulated lexical competition, but did so independently of the rate of the preceding carrier, even if duration was the only stress cue present.