Publications

Abstract

Introduction
Despite abundant research on the role of Broca's area in language processing, there is still no consensus on language specificity of this region and its connectivity network.

Methods
The present study employed the meta-analytic connectivity modeling procedure to identify and compare domain-specific (language-specific) and domain-general (shared between language and other domains) functional connectivity patterns of three subdivisions within the broadly defined Broca's area: pars opercularis (IFGop), pars triangularis (IFGtri), and pars orbitalis (IFGorb) of the left inferior frontal gyrus.

Results
The findings revealed a left-lateralized frontotemporal network for all regions of interest underlying domain-specific linguistic functions. The domain-general network, however, spanned frontoparietal regions that overlap with the multiple-demand network and subcortical regions spanning the thalamus and the basal ganglia.

Conclusions
The findings suggest that language specificity of Broca's area emerges within a left-lateralized frontotemporal network, and that domain-general resources are garnered from frontoparietal and subcortical networks when required by task demands.

Abstract

Exploring the semantic encoding of a group of crosslinguistically uncommon “spatial-coordinate demonstratives”, this work establishes the existence of demonstratives whose function is to project angular search domains, thus invoking proper coordinate systems (or “frames of reference”). What is special about these distinctions is that they rely on a spatial asymmetry in relativizing a demonstrative referent (representing the Figure) to the deictic center (representing the Ground). A semantic typology of such demonstratives is constructed based on the nature of the asymmetries they employ. A major distinction is proposed between asymmetries outside the deictic Figure-Ground array (e.g., features of the larger environment) and those within it (e.g., facets of the speaker/addressee dyad). A unique system of the latter type, present in Jahai, an Aslian (Mon-Khmer) language spoken by groups of hunter-gatherers in the Malay Peninsula, is introduced and explored in detail using elicited data as well as natural conversational data captured on video. Although crosslinguistically unusual, spatial-coordinate demonstratives sit at the interface of issues central to current discourse in semantic-pragmatic theory: demonstrative function, deictic layout, and spatial frames of reference.

Abstract

This article investigates hydrological lexicon in Jahai, a Mon-Khmer language of the Malay Peninsula. Setting out from an analysis of the structural and semantic properties as well as the indigenous vs. borrowed origin of lexicon related to drainage, it teases out a set of distinct lexical systems for reference to and description of hydrological features. These include (1) indigenous nominal labels subcategorised by metaphor, (2) borrowed nominal labels, (3) verbals referring to properties and processes of water, (4) a set of motion verbs, and (5) place names. The lexical systems, functionally diverse and driven by different factors, illustrate that principles and strategies of geographical categorisation can vary systematically and profoundly within a single language.

Abstract

This special issue is the outcome of collaborative work on the relationship between language and landscape, carried out in the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The contributions explore the linguistic categories of landscape terms and place names in nine genetically, typologically and geographically diverse languages, drawing on data from first-hand fieldwork. The present introductory article lays out the reasons why the domain of landscape is of central interest to the language sciences and beyond, and it outlines some of the major patterns that emerge from the cross-linguistic comparison which the papers invite. The data point to considerable variation within and across languages in how systems of landscape terms and place names are ontologised. This has important implications for practical applications from international law to modern navigation systems.

Abstract

This special issue is the outcome of collaborative work on the relationship between language and landscape, carried out in the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The contributions explore the linguistic categories of landscape terms and place names in nine genetically, typologically and geographically diverse languages, drawing on data from first-hand fieldwork. The present introductory article lays out the reasons why the domain of landscape is of central interest to the language sciences and beyond, and it outlines some of the major patterns that emerge from the cross-linguistic comparison which the papers invite. The data point to considerable variation within and across languages in how systems of landscape terms and place names are ontologised. This has important implications for practical applications from international law to modern navigation systems.

Abstract

Studies of agrammatic Broca's aphasia reveal a diverging pattern of performance in the comprehension of reflexive elements: offline, performance seems unimpaired, whereas online—and in contrast to both matching controls and Wernicke's patients—no antecedent reactivation is observed at the reflexive. Here we propose that this difference characterizes the agrammatic comprehension deficit as a result of slower-than-normal syntactic structure formation. To test this characterization, the comprehension of three Dutch agrammatic patients and matching control participants was investigated utilizing the cross-modal lexical decision (CMLD) interference task. Two types of reflexive-antecedent dependencies were tested, which have already been shown to exert distinct processing demands on the comprehension system as a function of the level at which the dependency was formed. Our hypothesis predicts that if the agrammatic system has a processing limitation such that syntactic structure is built in a protracted manner, this limitation will be reflected in delayed interpretation. Confirming previous findings, the Dutch patients show an effect of distinct processing demands for the two types of reflexive-antecedent dependencies but with a temporal delay. We argue that this delayed syntactic structure formation is the result of limited processing capacity that specifically affects the syntactic system.

Abstract

Heschl's gyrus (HG) is a core region of the auditory cortex whose morphology is highly variable across individuals. This variability has been linked to sound perception ability in both speech and music domains. Previous studies show that variations in morphological features of HG, such as cortical surface area and thickness, are heritable. To identify genetic variants that affect HG morphology, we conducted a genome-wide association scan (GWAS) meta-analysis in 3054 healthy individuals using HG surface area and thickness as quantitative traits. None of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showed association P values that would survive correction for multiple testing over the genome. The most significant association was found between right HG area and SNP rs72932726 close to gene DCBLD2 (3q12.1; P=2.77x10(-7)). This SNP was also associated with other regions involved in speech processing. The SNP rs333332 within gene KALRN (3q21.2; P=2.27x10(-6)) and rs143000161 near gene COBLL1 (2q24.3; P=2.40x10(-6)) were associated with the area and thickness of left HG, respectively. Both genes are involved in the development of the nervous system. The SNP rs7062395 close to the X-linked deafness gene POU3F4 was associated with right HG thickness (Xq21.1; P=2.38x10(-6)). This is the first molecular genetic analysis of variability in HG morphology

Abstract

Modulations of occipito-parietal α-band (8–14 Hz) power that are opposite in direction (α-enhancement vs. α-suppression) and origin of generation (ipsilateral vs. contralateral to the locus of attention) are a robust correlate of anticipatory visuospatial attention. Yet, the neural generators of these α-band modulations, their interdependence across homotopic areas, and their respective contribution to subsequent perception remain unclear. To shed light on these questions, we employed magnetoencephalography, while human volunteers performed a spatially cued detection task. Replicating previous findings, we found α-power enhancement ipsilateral to the attended hemifield and contralateral α-suppression over occipitoparietal sensors. Source localization (beamforming) analysis showed that α-enhancement and suppression were generated in 2 distinct brain regions, located in the dorsal and ventral visual streams, respectively. Moreover, α-enhancement and suppression showed different dynamics and contribution to perception. In contrast to the initial and transient dorsal α-enhancement, α-suppression in ventro-lateral occipital cortex was sustained and influenced subsequent target detection. This anticipatory biasing of ventrolateral extrastriate α-activity probably reflects increased receptivity in the brain region specialized in processing upcoming target features. Our results add to current models on the role of α-oscillations in attention orienting by showing that α-enhancement and suppression can be dissociated in time, space, and perceptual relevance.

Abstract

Rapid response to danger holds an evolutionary advantage. In this positron emission tomography study, phobics were exposed to masked visual stimuli with timings that either allowed awareness or not of either phobic, fear-relevant (e.g., spiders to snake phobics), or neutral images. When the timing did not permit awareness, the amygdala responded to both phobic and fear-relevant stimuli. With time for more elaborate processing, phobic stimuli resulted in an addition of an affective processing network to the amygdala activity, whereas no activity was found in response to fear-relevant stimuli. Also, right prefrontal areas appeared deactivated, comparing aware phobic and fear-relevant conditions. Thus, a shift from top-down control to an affectively driven system optimized for speed was observed in phobic relative to fear-relevant aware processing.

Abstract

Real-time estimation of what we will do next is a crucial prerequisite
of purposive behavior. During the planning of goal-oriented actions, for
instance, the temporal and causal organization of upcoming subsequent
moves needs to be predicted based on our knowledge of events. A forward
computation of sequential structure is also essential for planning
contiguous discourse segments and syntactic patterns in language. The
neural encoding of sequential event knowledge and its domain dependency
is a central issue in cognitive neuroscience. Converging evidence shows
the involvement of a dedicated neural substrate, including the
prefrontal cortex and Broca's area, in the representation and the
processing of sequential event structure. After reviewing major
representational models of sequential mechanisms in action and language,
we discuss relevant neuropsychological and neuroimaging findings on the
temporal organization of sequencing and sequence processing in both
domains, suggesting that sequential event knowledge may be modularly
organized through prefrontal and frontal subregions.

Abstract

Neuronal populations code similar concepts by similar activity patterns across the human brain's semantic networks. However, it is unclear to what extent such meaning-to-symbol mapping reflects distributional statistics, or experiential information grounded in sensorimotor and emotional knowledge. We asked whether integrating distributional and experiential data better distinguished conceptual categories than each method taken separately. We examined the similarity structure of fMRI patterns elicited by visually presented action- and object-related words using representational similarity analysis (RSA). We found that the distributional and experiential/integrative models respectively mapped the high-dimensional semantic space in left inferior frontal, anterior temporal, and in left precentral, posterior inferior/middle temporal cortex. Furthermore, results from model comparisons uncovered category-specific similarity patterns, as both distributional and experiential models matched the similarity patterns for action concepts in left fronto-temporal cortex, whilst the experiential/integrative (but not distributional) models matched the similarity patterns for object concepts in left fusiform and angular gyrus.

Abstract

Speaking requires the temporally coordinated planning of core linguistic information, from conceptual meaning to articulation. Recent neurophysiological results suggested that these operations involve a cascade of neural events with subsequent onset times, whilst competing evidence suggests early parallel neural activation. To test these hypotheses, we examined the sources of neuromagnetic activity recorded from 34 participants overtly naming 134 images from 4 object categories (animals, tools, foods and clothes). Within each category, word length and phonological neighbourhood density were co-varied to target phonological/phonetic processes. Multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA) searchlights in source space decoded object categories in occipitotemporal and middle temporal cortex, and phonological/phonetic variables in left inferior frontal (BA 44) and motor cortex early on. The findings suggest early activation of multiple variables due to intercorrelated properties and interactivity of processing, thus raising important questions about the representational properties of target words during the preparatory time enabling overt speaking.

Abstract

People often describe things that are similar as close and things that are dissimilar as far apart. Does the way people talk about similarity reveal something fundamental about the way they conceptualize it? Three experiments tested the relationship between similarity and spatial proximity that is encoded in metaphors in language. Similarity ratings for pairs of words or pictures varied as a function of how far apart the stimuli appeared on the computer screen, but the influence of distance on similarity differed depending on the type of judgments the participants made. Stimuli presented closer together were rated more similar during conceptual judgments of abstract entities or unseen object properties but were rated less similar during perceptual judgments of visual appearance. These contrasting results underscore the importance of testing predictions based on linguistic metaphors experimentally and suggest that our sense of similarity arises from our ability to combine available perceptual information with stored knowledge of experiential regularities.

Abstract

The idea that language shapes the way we think, often associated with Benjamin Whorf, has long been decried as not only wrong but also fundamentally wrong-headed. Yet, experimental evidence has reopened debate about the extent to which language influences nonlinguistic cognition, particularly in the domain of time. In this article, I will first analyze an influential argument against the Whorfian hypothesis and show that its anti-Whorfian conclusion is in part an artifact of conflating two distinct questions: Do we think in language? and Does language shape thought? Next, I will discuss crosslinguistic differences in spatial metaphors for time and describe experiments that demonstrate corresponding differences in nonlinguistic mental representations. Finally, I will sketch a simple learning mechanism by which some linguistic relativity effects appear to arise. Although people may not think in language, speakers of different languages develop distinctive conceptual repertoires as a consequence of ordinary and presumably universal neural and cognitive processes.

Abstract

How do we construct abstract ideas like justice, mathematics, or time-travel? In this paper we investigate whether mental representations that result from physical experience underlie people’s more abstract mental representations, using the domains of space and time as a testbed. People often talk about time using spatial language (e.g., a long vacation, a short concert). Do people also think about time using spatial representations, even when they are not using language? Results of six psychophysical experiments revealed that people are unable to ignore irrelevant spatial information when making judgments about duration, but not the converse. This pattern, which is predicted by the asymmetry between space and time in linguistic metaphors, was demonstrated here in tasks that do not involve any linguistic stimuli or responses. These findings provide evidence that the metaphorical relationship between space and time observed in language also exists in our more basic representations of distance and duration. Results suggest that our mental representations of things we can never see or touch may be built, in part, out of representations of physical experiences in perception and motor action.

Abstract

Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study oral language processing in illiterate subjects who, for social reasons, had never entered school and had no knowledge of reading or writing. In a brain activation study using PET and statistical parametric mapping, we compared word and pseudoword repetition in literate and illiterate subjects. Our study confirms behavioural evidence of different phonological processing in illiterate subjects. During repetition of real words, the two groups performed similarly and activated similar areas of the brain. In contrast, illiterate subjects had more difficulty repeating pseudowords correctly and did not activate the same neural structures as literates. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that learning the written form of language (orthography) interacts with the function of oral language. Our results indicate that learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult human brain.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI), an unexpected failure to develop appropriate language skills despite adequate non-verbal intelligence, is a heterogeneous multifactorial disorder with a complex genetic basis. We identified a homozygous microdeletion of 21,379 bp in the ZNF277 gene (NM_021994.2), encompassing exon 5, in an individual with severe receptive and expressive language impairment. The microdeletion was not found in the proband’s affected sister or her brother who had mild language impairment. However, it was inherited from both parents, each of whom carries a heterozygous microdeletion and has a history of language problems. The microdeletion falls within the AUTS1 locus, a region linked to autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). Moreover, ZNF277 is adjacent to the DOCK4 and IMMP2L genes, which have been implicated in ASD. We screened for the presence of ZNF277 microdeletions in cohorts of children with SLI or ASD and panels of control subjects. ZNF277 microdeletions were at an increased allelic frequency in SLI probands (1.1%) compared with both ASD family members (0.3%) and independent controls (0.4%). We performed quantitative RT-PCR analyses of the expression of IMMP2L, DOCK4 and ZNF277 in individuals carrying either an IMMP2L_DOCK4 microdeletion or a ZNF277 microdeletion. Although ZNF277 microdeletions reduce the expression of ZNF277, they do not alter the levels of DOCK4 or IMMP2L transcripts. Conversely, IMMP2L_DOCK4 microdeletions do not affect the expression levels of ZNF277. We postulate that ZNF277 microdeletions may contribute to the risk of language impairments in a manner that is independent of the autism risk loci previously described in this region.

Abstract

Eye gaze is a powerful ostensive cue in infant-caregiver interactions, with demonstrable effects on language acquisition. While the link between gaze following and later vocabulary is well-established, the effects of eye gaze on other aspects of language, such as speech processing, are less clear. In this EEG study, we examined the effects of the speaker’s eye gaze on ten-month-old infants’ neural tracking of naturalistic audiovisual speech, a marker for successful speech processing. Infants watched videos of a speaker telling stories, addressing the infant with direct or averted eye gaze. We assessed infants’ speech-brain coherence at stress (1–1.75 Hz) and syllable (2.5–3.5 Hz) rates, tested for differences in attention by comparing looking times and EEG theta power in the two conditions, and investigated whether neural tracking predicts later vocabulary. Our results showed that infants’ brains tracked the speech rhythm both at the stress and syllable rates, and that infants’ neural tracking at the syllable rate predicted later vocabulary. However, speech-brain coherence did not significantly differ between direct and averted gaze conditions and infants did not show greater attention to direct gaze. Overall, our results suggest significant neural tracking at ten months, related to vocabulary development, but not modulated by speaker’s gaze.

Abstract

Tense/aspect morphology on verbs is often thought to depend on event features like telicity, but it is not known how speakers identify these features in visual scenes. To examine this question, we asked Japanese speakers to describe computer-generated animations of simple actions with variation in visual features related to telicity. Experiments with adults and children found that they could use goal information in the animations to select appropriate past and progressive verb forms. They also produced a large number of different verb forms. To explain these findings, a deep-learning model of verb production from visual input was created that could produce a human-like distribution of verb forms. It was able to use visual cues to select appropriate tense/aspect morphology. The model predicted that video duration would be related to verb complexity, and past tense production would increase when it received the endpoint as input. These predictions were confirmed in a third study with Japanese adults. This work suggests that verb production could be tightly linked to visual heuristics that support the understanding of events.

Abstract

RNAs processing other RNAs is very general in eukaryotes, but is not clear to what extent it is ancestral to eukaryotes. Here we focus on pre-mRNA splicing, one of the most important RNA-processing mechanisms in eukaryotes. In most eukaryotes splicing is predominantly catalysed by the major spliceosome complex, which consists of five uridine-rich small nuclear RNAs (U-snRNAs) and over 200 proteins in humans. Three major spliceosomal introns have been found experimentally in Giardia; one Giardia U-snRNA (U5) and a number of spliceosomal proteins have also been identified. However, because of the low sequence similarity between the Giardia ncRNAs and those of other eukaryotes, the other U-snRNAs of Giardia had not been found. Using two computational methods, candidates for Giardia U1, U2, U4 and U6 snRNAs were identified in this study and shown by RT-PCR to be expressed. We found that identifying a U2 candidate helped identify U6 and U4 based on interactions between them. Secondary structural modelling of the Giardia U-snRNA candidates revealed typical features of eukaryotic U-snRNAs. We demonstrate a successful approach to combine computational and experimental methods to identify expected ncRNAs in a highly divergent protist genome. Our findings reinforce the conclusion that spliceosomal small-nuclear RNAs existed in the last common ancestor of eukaryotes.

Abstract

This study examines the perception of paralinguistic intonational meanings deriving from Ohala’s Frequency Code (Experiment 1) and Gussenhoven’s Effort Code (Experiment 2) in British English and Dutch. Native speakers of British English and Dutch listened to a number of stimuli in their native language and judged each stimulus on four semantic scales deriving from these two codes: SELF-CONFIDENT versus NOT SELF-CONFIDENT, FRIENDLY versus NOT FRIENDLY (Frequency Code); SURPRISED versus NOT SURPRISED, and EMPHATIC versus NOT EMPHATIC (Effort Code). The stimuli, which were lexically equivalent across the two languages, differed in pitch contour, pitch register and pitch span in Experiment 1, and in pitch register, peak height, peak alignment and end pitch in Experiment 2. Contrary to the traditional view that the paralinguistic usage of intonation is similar across languages, it was found that British English and Dutch listeners differed considerably in the perception of “confident,” “friendly,” “emphatic,” and “surprised.” The present findings support a theory of paralinguistic meaning based on the universality of biological codes, which however acknowledges a languagespecific component in the implementation of these codes.

Abstract

The current study investigated how the role of pitch in one’s native language and L2 experience influenced musical melodic processing by testing Turkish and Mandarin Chinese advanced and beginning learners of English as an L2. Pitch has a lower functional load and shows a simpler pattern in Turkish than in Chinese as the former only contrasts between presence and the absence of pitch elevation, while the latter makes use of four different pitch contours lexically. Using the Musical Ear Test as the tool, we found that the Chinese listeners outperformed the Turkish listeners, and the advanced L2 learners outperformed the beginning learners. The Turkish listeners were further tested on their discrimination of bisyllabic Chinese lexical tones, and again an L2 advantage was observed. No significant difference was found for working memory between the beginning and advanced L2 learners. These results suggest that richness of tonal inventory of the native language is essential for triggering a music processing advantage, and on top of the tone language advantage, the L2 experience yields a further enhancement. Yet, unlike the tone language advantage that seems to relate to pitch expertise, learning an L2 seems to improve sound discrimination in general, and such improvement exhibits in non-native lexical tone discrimination.

Abstract

The goal of this study is to examine how the degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation varies as a function of prosodic factors such as nuclear-pitch accent (accented vs. unaccented), level of prosodic boundary (Prosodic Word vs. Intermediate Phrase vs. Intonational Phrase), and position-in-prosodic-domain (initial vs. final). It is hypothesized that vowels in prosodically stronger locations (e.g., in accented syllables and at a higher prosodic boundary) are not only coarticulated less with their neighboring vowels, but they also exert a stronger influence on their neighbors. Measurements of tongue position for English /a i/ over time were obtained with Carsten’s electromagnetic articulography. Results showed that vowels in prosodically stronger locations are coarticulated less with neighboring vowels, but do not exert a stronger influence on the articulation of neighboring vowels. An examination of the relationship between coarticulation and duration revealed that (a) accent-induced coarticulatory variation cannot be attributed to a duration factor and (b) some of the data with respect to boundary effects may be accounted for by the duration factor. This suggests that to the extent that prosodically conditioned coarticulatory variation is duration-independent, there is no absolute causal relationship from duration to coarticulation. It is proposed that prosodically conditioned V-to-V coarticulatory reduction is another type of strengthening that occurs in prosodically strong locations. The prosodically driven coarticulatory patterning is taken to be part of the phonetic signatures of the hierarchically nested structure of prosody.

Abstract

This study tests whether potential differences in the perceptual robustness of speech sounds influence continuous-speech processes. Two phoneme-monitoring experiments examined place assimilation in Korean. In Experiment 1, Koreans monitored for targets which were either labials (/p,m/) or alveolars (/t,n/), and which were either unassimilated or assimilated to a following /k/ in two-word utterances. Listeners detected unaltered (unassimilated) labials faster and more accurately than assimilated labials; there was no such advantage for unaltered alveolars. In Experiment 2, labial–velar differences were tested using conditions in which /k/ and /p/ were illegally assimilated to a following /t/. Unassimilated sounds were detected faster than illegally assimilated sounds, but this difference tended to be larger for /k/ than for /p/. These place-dependent asymmetries suggest that differences in the perceptual robustness of segments play a role in shaping phonological patterns.

Abstract

Models of speech production assume that syllables play a functional role in the process of word-form encoding in speech production. In this study, we investigate this claim and specifically provide evidence about the level at which syllables come into play. We report two studies using an odd-man-out variant of the implicit priming paradigm to examine the role of the syllable during the process of word formation. Our results show that this modified version of the implicit priming paradigm can trace the emergence of syllabic structure during spoken word generation. Comparing these results to prior syllable priming studies, we conclude that syllables emerge at the interface between phonological and phonetic encoding. The results are discussed in terms of the WEAVER++ model of lexical access.

Abstract

The present study concerns individual differences in gesture production. We used correlational and multiple regression analyses to examine the relationship between individuals’ cognitive abilities and empathy levels and their gesture frequency and saliency. We chose predictor variables according to experimental evidence of the functions of gesture in speech production and communication. We examined 3 types of gestures: representational gestures, conduit gestures, and palm-revealing gestures. Higher frequency of representational gestures was related to poorer visual and spatial working memory, spatial transformation ability, and conceptualization ability; higher frequency of conduit gestures was related to poorer visual working memory, conceptualization ability, and higher levels of empathy; and higher frequency of palm-revealing gestures was related to higher levels of empathy. The saliency of all gestures was positively related to level of empathy. These results demonstrate that cognitive abilities and empathy levels are related to individual differences in gesture frequency and saliency

Abstract

This study investigated the motor strategy involved in mental rotation tasks by examining 2 types of spontaneous gestures (hand–object interaction gestures, representing the agentive hand action on an object, vs. object-movement gestures, representing the movement of an object by itself) and different types of verbal descriptions of rotation. Hand–object interaction gestures were produced earlier than object-movement gestures, the rate of both types of gestures decreased, and gestures became more distant from the stimulus object over trials (Experiments 1 and 3). Furthermore, in the first few trials, object-movement gestures increased, whereas hand–object interaction gestures decreased, and this change of motor strategies was also reflected in the type of verbal description of rotation in the concurrent speech (Experiment 2). This change of motor strategies was hampered when gestures were prohibited (Experiment 4). The authors concluded that the motor strategy becomes less dependent on agentive action on the object, and also becomes internalized over the course of the experiment, and that gesture facilitates the former process. When solving a problem regarding the physical world, adults go through developmental processes similar to internalization and symbolic distancing in young children, albeit within a much shorter time span.

Abstract

Language and action systems are highly interlinked. A critical piece of evidence is that speech and its accompanying gestures are tightly synchronized. Five experiments were conducted to test 2 hypotheses about the synchronization of speech and gesture. According to the interactive view, there is continuous information exchange between the gesture and speech systems, during both their planning and execution phases. According to the ballistic view, information exchange occurs only during the planning phases of gesture and speech, but the 2 systems become independent once their execution has been initiated. In all experiments, participants were required to point to and/or name a light that had just lit up. Virtual reality and motion tracking technologies were used to disrupt their gesture or speech execution. Participants delayed their speech onset when their gesture was disrupted. They did so even when their gesture was disrupted at its late phase and even when they received only the kinesthetic feedback of their gesture. Also, participants prolonged their gestures when their speech was disrupted. These findings support the interactive view and add new constraints on models of speech and gesture production

Abstract

Koriat (1981) demonstrated that an association from the target to a preceding prime, in the absence of an association from the prime to the target, facilitates lexical decision and referred to this effect as "backward priming". Backward priming is of relevance, because it can provide information about the mechanism underlying semantic priming effects. Following Neely (1991), we distinguish three mechanisms of priming: spreading activation, expectancy, and semantic matching/integration. The goal was to determine which of these mechanisms causes backward priming, by assessing effects of backward priming on a language-relevant ERP component, the N400, and reaction time (RT). Based on previous work, we propose that the N400 priming effect reflects expectancy and semantic matching/integration, but in contrast with RT does not reflect spreading activation. Experiment 1 shows a backward priming effect that is qualitatively similar for the N400 and RT in a lexical decision task. This effect was not modulated by an ISI manipulation. Experiment 2 clarifies that the N400 backward priming effect reflects genuine changes in N400 amplitude and cannot be ascribed to other factors. We will argue that these backward priming effects cannot be due to expectancy but are best accounted for in terms of semantic matching/integration.

Abstract

In a semantic priming paradigm, the effects of different levels of processing on the N400 were assessed by changing the task demands. In the lexical decision task, subjects had to discriminate between words and nonwords and in the physical task, subjects had to discriminate between uppercase and lowercase letters. The proportion of related versus unrelated word pairs differed between conditions. A lexicality test on reaction times demonstrated that the physical task was performed nonlexically. Moreover, a semantic priming reaction time effect was obtained only in the lexical decision task. The level of processing clearly affected the event-related potentials. An N400 priming effect was only observed in the lexical decision task. In contrast, in the physical task a P300 effect was observed for either related or unrelated targets, depending on their frequency of occurrence. Taken together, the results indicate that an N400 priming effect is only evoked when the task performance induces the semantic aspects of words to become part of an episodic trace of the stimulus event.

Abstract

We present results from two cross‐modal morphological priming experiments investigating regular person and number inflection on finite verbs in German. We found asymmetries in the priming patterns between different affixes that can be predicted from the structure of the paradigm. We also report data from language disorders which indicate that inflectional errors produced by language‐impaired adults and children tend to occur within a given paradigm dimension, rather than randomly across the paradigm. We conclude that morphological paradigms are used by the human language processor and can be systematically affected in language disorders.

Abstract

Background. Facial emotion recognition deficits are common after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and linked to poor social outcomes. We examine whether emotion recognition deficits extend to facial expressions depicted by emoji.
Methods. Fifty-one individuals with moderate-severe TBI (25 female) and fifty-one neurotypical peers (26 female) viewed photos of human faces and emoji. Participants selected the best-fitting label from a set of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, neutral, surprise, happy) or social emotions (embarrassed, remorseful, anxious, neutral, flirting, confident, proud).
Results. We analyzed the likelihood of correctly labeling an emotion by group (neurotypical, TBI), stimulus condition (basic faces, basic emoji, social emoji), sex (female, male), and their interactions. Participants with TBI did not significantly differ from neurotypical peers in overall emotion labeling accuracy. Both groups had poorer labeling accuracy for emoji compared to faces. Participants with TBI (but not neurotypical peers) had poorer accuracy for labeling social emotions depicted by emoji compared to basic emotions depicted by emoji. There were no effects of participant sex.
Discussion. Because emotion representation is more ambiguous in emoji than human faces, studying emoji use and perception in TBI is an important consideration for understanding functional communication and social participation after brain injury.

Abstract

Purpose

Real-world communication is situated in rich multimodal contexts, containing speech and gesture. Speakers often convey unique information in gesture that is not present in the speech signal (e.g., saying “He searched for a new recipe” while making a typing gesture). We examine the narrative retellings of participants with and without moderate-severe traumatic brain injury across three timepoints over two online Zoom sessions to investigate whether people with TBI can integrate information from co-occurring speech and gesture and if information from gesture persists across delays.

Methods

60 participants with TBI and 60 non-injured peers watched videos of a narrator telling four short stories. On key details, the narrator produced complementary gestures that conveyed unique information. Participants retold the stories at three timepoints: immediately after, 20-min later, and one-week later. We examined the words participants used when retelling these key details, coding them as a Speech Match (e.g., “He searched for a new recipe”), a Gesture Match (e.g., “He searched for a new recipe online), or Other (“He looked for a new recipe”). We also examined whether participants produced representative gestures themselves when retelling these details.

Results

Despite recalling fewer story details, participants with TBI were as likely as non-injured peers to report information from gesture in their narrative retellings. All participants were more likely to report information from gesture and produce representative gestures themselves one-week later compared to immediately after hearing the story.

Conclusion

We demonstrated that speech-gesture integration is intact after TBI in narrative retellings. This finding has exciting implications for the utility of gesture to support comprehension and memory after TBI and expands our understanding of naturalistic multimodal language processing in this population.

Abstract

Impaired facial affect recognition is common after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and linked to poor social outcomes. We explored whether perception of emotions depicted by emoji is also impaired after TBI. Fifty participants with TBI and 50 non-injured peers generated free-text labels to describe emotions depicted by emoji and rated their levels of valence and arousal on nine-point rating scales. We compared how the two groups’ valence and arousal ratings were clustered and examined agreement in the words participants used to describe emoji. Hierarchical clustering of affect ratings produced four emoji clusters in the non-injured group and three emoji clusters in the TBI group. Whereas the non-injured group had a strongly positive and a moderately positive cluster, the TBI group had a single positive valence cluster, undifferentiated by arousal. Despite differences in cluster numbers, hierarchical structures of the two groups’ emoji ratings were significantly correlated. Most emoji had high agreement in the words participants with and without TBI used to describe them. Participants with TBI perceived emoji similarly to non-injured peers, used similar words to describe emoji, and rated emoji similarly on the valence dimension. Individuals with TBI showed small differences in perceived arousal for a minority of emoji. Overall, results suggest that basic recognition processes do not explain challenges in computer-mediated communication reported by adults with TBI. Examining perception of emoji in context by people with TBI is an essential next step for advancing our understanding of functional communication in computer-mediated contexts after brain injury.

Abstract

Three dual-task experiments investigated the capacity demands of phoneme selection in picture naming. On each trial, participants named a target picture (Task 1) and carried out a tone discrimination task (Task 2). To vary the time required for phoneme selection, the authors combined the targets with phonologically related or unrelated distractor pictures (Experiment 1) or words, which were clearly visible (Experiment 2) or masked (Experiment 3). When pictures or masked words were presented, the tone discrimination and picture naming latencies were shorter in the related condition than in the unrelated condition, which indicates that phoneme selection requires central processing capacity. However, when the distractor words were clearly visible, the facilitatory effect was confined to the picture naming latencies. This pattern arose because the visible related distractor words facilitated phoneme selection but slowed down speech monitoring processes that had to be completed before the response to the tone could be selected.

Abstract

Contemporary methods of computational cognitive modeling have recently been criticized by Addyman and French (2012) on the grounds that they have not kept up with developments in computer technology and human–computer interaction. They present a manifesto for change according to which, it is argued, modelers should devote more effort to making their models accessible, both to non-modelers (with an appropriate easy-to-use user interface) and modelers alike. We agree that models, like data, should be freely available according to the normal standards of science, but caution against confusing implementations with specifications. Models may embody theories, but they generally also include implementation assumptions. Cognitive modeling methodology needs to be sensitive to this. We argue that specification, replication and experimentation are methodological approaches that can address this issue.

Abstract

Previous electroencephalography studies have yielded evidence for automatic processing of syntax and lexical stress. However, these studies looked at both effects in isolation, limiting their generalizability to everyday language comprehension. In the current study, we investigated automatic processing of grammatical agreement in the face of variation in lexical stress. Using an oddball paradigm, we measured the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) in Dutch-speaking participants while they listened to Dutch subject–verb sequences (linguistic context) or acoustically similar sequences in which the subject was replaced by filtered noise (nonlinguistic context). The verb forms differed in the inflectional suffix, rendering the subject–verb sequences grammatically correct or incorrect, and leading to a difference in the stress pattern of the verb forms. We found that the MMNs were modulated in both the linguistic and nonlinguistic condition, suggesting that the processing load induced by variation in lexical stress can hinder early automatic processing of grammatical agreement. However, as the morphological differences between the verb forms correlated with differences in number of syllables, an interpretation in terms of the prosodic structure of the sequences cannot be ruled out. Future research is needed to determine which of these factors (i.e., lexical stress, syllabic structure) most strongly modulate early syntactic processing.

Abstract

Since the cognitive revolution, language and action have been compared as cognitive systems, with cross-domain convergent views recently gaining renewed interest in biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Language and action are both combinatorial systems whose mode of combination has been argued to be hierarchical, combining elements into constituents of increasingly larger size. This structural similarity has led to the suggestion that they rely on shared cognitive and neural resources. In this article, we compare the conceptual and formal properties of hierarchy in language and action using set theory. We show that the strong compositionality of language requires a particular formalism, a magma, to describe the algebraic structure corresponding to the set of hierarchical structures underlying sentences. When this formalism is applied to actions, it appears to be both too strong and too weak. To overcome these limitations, which are related to the weak compositionality and sequential nature of action structures, we formalize the algebraic structure corresponding to the set of actions as a trace monoid. We aim to capture the different system properties of language and action in terms of the distinction between hierarchical sets and hierarchical sequences and discuss the implications for the way both systems could be represented in the brain.

Abstract

Comprehenders predict what a speaker is likely to say when listening to non-native (L2) and native (L1) utterances. But what are the characteristics of L2 prediction, and how does it relate to L1 prediction? We addressed this question in a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, which tested when L2 English comprehenders integrated perspective into their predictions. Male and female participants listened to male and female speakers producing sentences (e.g., I would like to wear the nice…) about stereotypically masculine (target: tie; distractor: drill) and feminine (target: dress; distractor: hairdryer) objects. Participants predicted associatively, fixating objects semantically associated with critical verbs (here, the tie and the dress). They also predicted stereotypically consistent objects (e.g., the tie rather than the dress, given the male speaker). Consistent predictions were made later than associative predictions, and were delayed for L2 speakers relative to L1 speakers. These findings suggest prediction involves both automatic and non-automatic stages.

Abstract

Word frequency plays a key role in theories of lexical access, which assume that the word frequency effect (WFE, faster access to high-frequency than low-frequency words) occurs as a result of differences in the representation and processing of the words. In a seminal paper, Jescheniak and Levelt (1994) proposed that the WFE arises during the retrieval of word forms, rather than the retrieval of their syntactic representations (their lemmas) or articulatory commands. An important part of Jescheniak and Levelt's argument was that they found a stable WFE in a picture naming task, which requires complete lexical access, but not in a gender decision task, which only requires access to the words' lemmas and not their word forms. We report two attempts to replicate this pattern, one with new materials, and one with Jescheniak and Levelt's orginal pictures. In both studies we found a strong WFE when the pictures were shown for the first time, but much weaker effects on their second and third presentation. Importantly these patterns were seen in both the picture naming and the gender decision tasks, suggesting that either word frequency does not exclusively affect word form retrieval, or that the gender decision task does not exclusively tap lemma access.

Abstract

Although previous research has demonstrated that language comprehension can be egocentric, there is little evidence for egocentricity during prediction. In particular, comprehenders do not appear to predict egocentrically when the context makes it clear what the speaker is likely to refer to. But do comprehenders predict egocentrically when the context does not make it clear? We tested this hypothesis using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm, in which participants heard sentences containing the gender-neutral pronoun They (e.g. They would like to wear…) while viewing four objects (e.g. tie, dress, drill, hairdryer). Two of these objects were plausible targets of the verb (tie and dress), and one was stereotypically compatible with the participant's gender (tie if the participant was male; dress if the participant was female). Participants rapidly fixated targets more than distractors, but there was no evidence that participants ever predicted egocentrically, fixating objects stereotypically compatible with their own gender. These findings suggest that participants do not fall back on their own egocentric perspective when predicting, even when they know that context does not make it clear what the speaker is likely to refer to.

Abstract

The ABCA4 gene is the most frequently mutated Mendelian retinopathy-associated gene. Biallelic variants lead to a variety of phenotypes, however, for thousands of cases the underlying variants remain unknown. Here, we aim to shed further light on the missing heritability of ABCA4-associated retinopathy by analyzing a large cohort of macular dystrophy probands. A total of 858 probands were collected from 26 centers, of whom 722 carried no or one pathogenic ABCA4 variant while 136 cases carried two ABCA4 alleles, one of which was a frequent mild variant, suggesting that deep-intronic variants (DIVs) or other cis-modifiers might have been missed. After single molecule molecular inversion probes (smMIPs)-based sequencing of the complete 128-kb ABCA4 locus, the effect of putative splice variants was assessed in vitro by midigene splice assays in HEK293T cells. The breakpoints of copy number variants (CNVs) were determined by junction PCR and Sanger sequencing. ABCA4 sequence analysis solved 207/520 (39.8%) naïve or unsolved cases and 70/202 (34.7%) monoallelic cases, while additional causal variants were identified in 54/136 (39.7%) of probands carrying two variants. Seven novel DIVs and six novel non-canonical splice site variants were detected in a total of 35 alleles and characterized, including the c.6283-321C>G variant leading to a complex splicing defect. Additionally, four novel CNVs were identified and characterized in five alleles. These results confirm that smMIPs-based sequencing of the complete ABCA4 gene provides a cost-effective method to genetically solve retinopathy cases and that several rare structural and splice altering defects remain undiscovered in STGD1 cases.

Abstract

In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables all beginning with the same consonant) than in an unpredictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables beginning with different consonants). In Experiment 1, the listeners’ native language was Dutch, in which vowel and consonant repertoires are similar in size. The difference between predictable and unpredictable contexts was comparable for vowel and consonant targets. In Experiments 2 and 3, the listeners’ native language was Spanish, which has four times as many consonants as vowels; here effects of an unpredictable consonant context on vowel detection were significantly greater than effects of an unpredictable vowel context on consonant detection. This finding suggests that listeners’ processing of phonemes takes into account the constitution of their language’s phonemic repertoire and the implications that this has for contextual variability.

Abstract

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the MIR137, TCF4, and ZNF804A genes show genome-wide association to schizophrenia. However, the biological basis for the associations is unknown. Here, we tested the effects of these genes on brain structure in 1300 healthy adults. Using volumetry and voxel-based morphometry, neither gene-wide effects—including the combined effect of the genes—nor single SNP effects—including specific psychosis risk SNPs—were found on total brain volume, grey matter, white matter, or hippocampal volume. These results suggest that the associations between these risk genes and schizophrenia are unlikely to be mediated via effects on macroscopic brain structure.

Abstract

The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives—the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages. In n = 874 speakers across 29 languages, we show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. In some languages, the position of the addressee is also relevant in selecting between demonstrative forms. Commonalities and differences across languages in spatial communication can be understood in terms of universal constraints on action shaping spatial language and cognition.

Abstract

When speaking to infants, adults often produce speech that differs systematically from that directed to other adults. In order to quantify the acoustic properties of this speech style across a wide variety of languages and cultures, we extracted results from empirical studies on the acoustic features of infant-directed speech (IDS). We analyzed data from 88 unique studies (734 effect sizes) on the following five acoustic parameters that have been systematically examined in the literature: i) fundamental frequency (fo), ii) fo variability, iii) vowel space area, iv) articulation rate, and v) vowel duration. Moderator analyses were conducted in hierarchical Bayesian robust regression models in order to examine how these features change with infant age and differ across languages, experimental tasks and recording environments. The moderator analyses indicated that fo, articulation rate, and vowel duration became more similar to adult-directed speech (ADS) over time, whereas fo variability and vowel space area exhibited stability throughout development. These results point the way for future research to disentangle different accounts of the functions and learnability of IDS by conducting theory-driven comparisons among different languages and using computational models to formulate testable predictions.

Abstract

Phonological patterns in languages often involve groups of sounds rather than individual sounds, which may be explained if phonology operates on the abstract features shared by those groups (Troubetzkoy, 193957. Troubetzkoy , N. 1939/1969 . Principles of phonology , Berkeley : University of California Press . View all references/1969; Chomsky & Halle, 19688. Chomsky , N. and Halle , M. 1968 . The sound pattern of English , New York : Harper and Row . View all references). Such abstract features may be present in the developing grammar either because they are part of a Universal Grammar included in the genetic endowment of humans (e.g., Hale, Kissock and Reiss, 200618. Hale , M. , Kissock , M. and Reiss , C. 2006 . Microvariation, variation, and the features of universal grammar . Lingua , 32 : 402 – 420 . View all references), or plausibly because infants induce features from their linguistic experience (e.g., Mielke, 200438. Mielke , J. 2004 . The emergence of distinctive features , Ohio State University : Unpublished doctoral dissertation . View all references). A first experiment tested 7-month-old infants' learning of an artificial grammar pattern involving either a set of sounds defined by a phonological feature, or a set of sounds that cannot be described with a single feature—an “arbitrary” set. Infants were able to induce the constraint and generalize it to a novel sound only for the set that shared the phonological feature. A second study showed that infants' inability to learn the arbitrary grouping was not due to their inability to encode a constraint on some of the sounds involved.

Abstract

The present study investigated the neural correlates of infant discrimination of very similar linguistic varieties (Quebecois and Parisian French) using functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy. In line with previous behavioral and electrophysiological data, there was no evidence that 3-month-olds discriminated the two regional accents, whereas 5-month-olds did, with the locus of discrimination in left anterior perisylvian regions. These neuroimaging results suggest that a developing language network relying crucially on left perisylvian cortices sustains infants' discrimination of similar linguistic varieties within this early period of infancy.

Abstract

There are increasing reports that individual variation in behavioral and neurophysiological measures of infant speech processing predicts later language outcomes, and specifically concurrent or subsequent vocabulary size. If such findings are held up under scrutiny, they could both illuminate theoretical models of language development and contribute to the prediction of communicative disorders. A qualitative, systematic review of this emergent literature illustrated the variety of approaches that have been used and highlighted some conceptual problems regarding the measurements. A quantitative analysis of the same data established that the bivariate relation was significant, with correlations of similar strength to those found for well-established nonlinguistic predictors of language. Further exploration of infant speech perception predictors, particularly from a methodological perspective, is recommended.

Abstract

Typically, the point vowels [i,ɑ,u] are acoustically more peripheral in infant-directed speech (IDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). If caregivers seek to highlight lexically relevant contrasts in IDS, then two sounds that are contrastive should become more distinct, whereas two sounds that are surface realizations of the same underlying sound category should not. To test this prediction, vowels that are phonemically contrastive ([i-ɪ] and [eɪ-ε]), vowels that map onto the same underlying category ([æ- ] and [ε- ]), and the point vowels [i,ɑ,u] were elicited in IDS and ADS by American English mothers of two age groups of infants (four- and eleven-month-olds). As in other work, point vowels were produced in more peripheral positions in IDS compared to ADS. However, there was little evidence of hyperarticulation per se (e.g. [i-ɪ] was hypoarticulated). We suggest that across-the-board lexically based hyperarticulation is not a necessary feature of IDS.

Abstract

In the wild, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are often faced with clumped food resources that they may know how to access but abstain from doing so due to social pressures. To better understand how social settings influence resource acquisition, we tested fifteen semi-wild chimpanzees from two social groups alone and in the presence of others. We investigated how resource acquisition was affected by relative social dominance, whether collaborative problem solving or (active or passive) sharing occurred amongst any of the dyads, and whether these outcomes were related to relationship quality as determined from six months of observational data. Results indicated that chimpanzees, regardless of rank, obtained fewer rewards when tested in the presence of others compared to when they were tested alone. Chimpanzees demonstrated behavioral inhibition; chimpanzees who showed proficient skill when alone often abstained from solving the task when in the presence of others. Finally, individuals with close social relationships spent more time together in the problem solving space, but collaboration and sharing were infrequent and sessions in which collaboration or sharing did occur contained more instances of aggression. Group living provides benefits and imposes costs, and these findings highlight that one cost of group living may be diminishing productive individual behaviors.

Abstract

Cooperation among nonhuman animals has been the topic of much theoretical and empirical research, but few studies have examined systematically the effects of various reward payoffs on cooperative behaviour. Here, we presented heterosexual pairs of cooperatively breeding cottontop tamarins with a cooperative problem-solving task. In a series of four experiments, we examined how the tamarins’ cooperative performance changed under conditions in which (1) both actors were mutually rewarded, (2) both actors were rewarded reciprocally across days, (3) both actors competed for a monopolizable reward and (4) one actor repeatedly delivered a single reward to the other actor. The tamarins showed sensitivity to the reward structure, showing the greatest percentage of trials solved and shortest latency to solve the task in the mutual reward experiment and the lowest percentage of trials solved and longest latency to solve the task in the experiment in which one actor was repeatedly rewarded. However, even in the experiment in which the fewest trials were solved, the tamarins still solved 46 _ 12% of trials and little to no aggression was observed among partners following inequitable reward distributions. The tamarins did, however, show selfish motivation in each of the experiments. Nevertheless, in all experiments, unrewarded individuals continued to cooperate and procure rewards for their social partners.

Abstract

Recent debates have questioned the extent to which culturally-transmitted norms drive behavioral variation in resource sharing across human populations. We shed new light on this discussion by examining the group-level variation in the social dynamics and resource sharing of chimpanzees, a species that is highly social and forms long-term community associations but differs from humans in the extent to which cultural norms are adopted and enforced. We rely on theory developed in primate socioecology to guide our investigation in four neighboring chimpanzee groups at a sanctuary in Zambia. We used a combination of experimental and observational approaches to assess the distribution of resource holding potential in each group. In the first assessment, we measured the proportion of the population that gathered in a resource-rich zone, in the second we assessed naturally occurring social spacing via social network analysis, and in the third we assessed the degree to which benefits were equally distributed within the group. We report significant, stable group-level variation across these multiple measures, indicating that group-level variation in resource sharing and social tolerance is not necessarily reliant upon human-like cultural norms.

Abstract

Speech processing by human listeners derives meaning from acoustic input via intermediate steps involving abstract representations of what has been heard. Recent results from several lines of research are here brought together to shed light on the nature and role of these representations. In spoken-word recognition, representations of phonological form and of conceptual content are dissociable. This follows from the independence of patterns of priming for a word's form and its meaning. The nature of the phonological-form representations is determined not only by acoustic-phonetic input but also by other sources of information, including metalinguistic knowledge. This follows from evidence that listeners can store two forms as different without showing any evidence of being able to detect the difference in question when they listen to speech. The lexical representations are in turn separate from prelexical representations, which are also abstract in nature. This follows from evidence that perceptual learning about speaker-specific phoneme realization, induced on the basis of a few words, generalizes across the whole lexicon to inform the recognition of all words containing the same phoneme. The efficiency of human speech processing has its basis in the rapid execution of operations over abstract representations.

Abstract

Native American English and non-native(Dutch)listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible American English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios(0, 8, and 16 dB). The phoneme identification
performance of the non-native listeners was less accurate than that of the native listeners. All listeners were adversely affected by noise. With these isolated syllables, initial segments were harder to identify than final segments. Crucially, the effects of language background and noise did not interact; the performance asymmetry between the native and non-native groups was not significantly different across signal-to-noise ratios. It is concluded that the frequently reported disproportionate difficulty of non-native listening under disadvantageous conditions is not due to a disproportionate increase in phoneme misidentifications.

Abstract

Languages differ in the constitution of their phonemic repertoire and in the relative distinctiveness of phonemes within the repertoire. In the present study, we asked whether such differences constrain spoken-word recognition, via two word reconstruction experiments, in which listeners turned non-words into real words by changing single sounds. The experiments were carried out in Dutch (which has a relatively balanced vowel-consonant ratio and many similar vowels) and in Spanish (which has many more consonants than vowels and high distinctiveness among the vowels). Both Dutch and Spanish listeners responded significantly faster and more accurately when required to change vowels as opposed to consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they more often altered vowels than consonants. Vowel information thus appears to constrain lexical selection less tightly (allow more potential candidates) than does consonant information, independent of language-specific phoneme repertoire and of relative distinctiveness of vowels.

Abstract

Spraak is continu, er zijn geen betrouwbare signalen waardoor de luisteraar weet waar het ene woord eindigt en het volgende begint. Voor volwassen luisteraars is het segmenteren van gesproken taal in afzonderlijke woorden dus niet onproblematisch, maar voor een kind dat nog geen woordenschat bezit, vormt de continuïteit van spraak een nog grotere uitdaging. Desalniettemin produceren de meeste kinderen hun eerste herkenbare woorden rond het begin van het tweede levensjaar. Aan deze vroege spraakproducties gaat een formidabele perceptuele prestatie vooraf. Tijdens het eerste levensjaar - met name gedurende de tweede helft - ontwikkelt de spraakperceptie zich van een algemeen fonetisch discriminatievermogen tot een selectieve gevoeligheid voor de fonologische contrasten die in de moedertaal voorkomen. Recent onderzoek heeft verder aangetoond dat kinderen, lang voordat ze ook maar een enkel woord kunnen zeggen, in staat zijn woorden die kenmerkend zijn voor hun moedertaal te onderscheiden van woorden die dat niet zijn. Bovendien kunnen ze woorden die eerst in isolatie werden aangeboden herkennen in een continue spraakcontext. Het dagelijkse taalaanbod aan een kind van deze leeftijd maakt het in zekere zin niet gemakkelijk, bijvoorbeeld doordat de meeste woorden niet in isolatie voorkomen. Toch wordt het kind ook wel houvast geboden, onder andere doordat het woordgebruik beperkt is.

Abstract

Speech recognition in noise is harder in second (L2) than first languages (L1). This could be because noise disrupts speech processing more in L2 than L1, or because L1 listeners recover better though disruption is equivalent. Two similar prior studies produced discrepant results: Equivalent noise effects for L1 and L2 (Dutch) listeners, versus larger effects for L2 (Spanish) than L1. To explain this, the latter experiment was presented to listeners from the former population. Larger noise effects on consonant identification emerged for L2 (Dutch) than L1 listeners, suggesting that task factors rather than L2 population differences underlie the results discrepancy.

Abstract

Vocabularies contain hundreds of thousands of words built from only a handful of phonemes; longer words inevitably tend to contain shorter ones. Recognising speech thus requires distinguishing intended words from accidentally present ones. Acoustic information in speech is used wherever it contributes significantly to this process; but as this review shows, its contribution differs across languages, with the consequences of this including: identical and equivalently present information distinguishing the same phonemes being used in Polish but not in German, or in English but not in Italian; identical stress cues being used in Dutch but not in English; expectations about likely embedding patterns differing across English, French, Japanese.

Abstract

In three experiments, the processing of lexical tone in Cantonese was examined. Cantonese listeners more often accepted a nonword as a word when the only difference between the nonword and the word was in tone, especially when the F0 onset difference between correct and erroneous tone was small. Same–different judgments by these listeners were also slower and less accurate when the only difference between two syllables was in tone, and this was true whether the F0 onset difference between the two tones was large or small. Listeners with no knowledge of Cantonese produced essentially the same same-different judgment pattern as that produced by the native listeners, suggesting that the results display the effects of simple perceptual processing rather than of linguistic knowledge. It is argued that the processing of lexical tone distinctions may be slowed, relative to the processing of segmental distinctions, and that, in speeded-response tasks, tone is thus more likely to be misprocessed than is segmental structure.

Abstract

An acoustically invariant one-word segment occurred in two versions of one syntactic context. In one version, the preceding intonation contour indicated that a stress would fall at the point where this word occurred. In the other version, the preceding contour predicted reduced stress at that point. Reaction time to the initial phoneme of the word was faster in the former case, despite the fact that no acoustic correlates of stress were present. It is concluded that a part of the sentence comprehension process is the prediction of upcoming sentence accents.

Abstract

Research on the exploitation of prosodic information in the recognition of spoken language is reviewed. The research falls into three main areas: the use of prosody in the recognition of spoken words, in which most attention has been paid to the question of whether the prosodic structure of a word plays a role in initial contact with stored lexical representations; the use of prosody in the computation of syntactic structure, in which the resolution of global and local ambiguities has formed the central focus; and the role of prosody in the processing of discourse structure, in which there has been a preponderance of work on the contribution of accentuation and deaccentuation to integration of concepts with an existing discourse model. The review reveals that in each area progress has been made towards new conceptions of prosody's role in processing, and in particular this has involved abandonment of previously held deterministic views of the relationship between prosodic structure and other aspects of linguistic structure

Abstract

Psycholinguists strive to construct a model of human language processing in general. But this does not imply that they should confine their research to universal aspects of linguistic structure, and avoid research on language-specific phenomena. First, even universal characteristics of language structure can only be accurately observed cross-linguistically. This point is illustrated here by research on the role of the syllable in spoken-word recognition, on the perceptual processing of vowels versus consonants, and on the contribution of phonetic assimilation phonemena to phoneme identification. In each case, it is only by looking at the pattern of effects across languages that it is possible to understand the general principle. Second, language-specific processing can certainly shed light on the universal model of language comprehension. This second point is illustrated by studies of the exploitation of vowel harmony in the lexical segmentation of Finnish, of the recognition of Dutch words with and without vowel epenthesis, and of the contribution of different kinds of lexical prosodic structure (tone, pitch accent, stress) to the initial activation of candidate words in lexical access. In each case, aspects of the universal processing model are revealed by analysis of these language-specific effects. In short, the study of spoken-language processing by human listeners requires cross-linguistic comparison.

Abstract

The authors used 2 “visual-world” eye-tracking experiments to examine lexical access using Dutch constructions in which the verb did or did not place semantic constraints on its subsequent subject noun phrase. In Experiment 1, fixations to the picture of a cohort competitor (overlapping with the onset of the referent’s name, the subject) did not differ from fixations to a distractor in the constraining-verb condition. In Experiment 2, cross-splicing introduced phonetic information that temporarily biased the input toward the cohort competitor. Fixations to the cohort competitor temporarily increased in both the neutral and constraining conditions. These results favor models in which mapping from the input onto meaning is continuous over models in which contextual effects follow access of an initial form-based competitor set.

Abstract

This work was supported by grants from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-2010-BLAN-1901) and from French Fondation de France to Anne Christophe, from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD054448) to Cynthia Fisher, Fondation Fyssen and Ecole de Neurosciences de Paris to Alex Cristia, and a PhD fellowship from the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA, France) supported by the PhD program FdV (Frontières du Vivant) to Isabelle Dautriche. We thank Isabelle Brunet for the recruitment, Michel Dutat for the technical support, and Hernan Anllo for his puppet mastery skill. We are grateful to the families that participated in this study. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Abstract

In the present study, we explore whether multiple data sources may be more effective than single sources at predicting the words that language learners are likely to know. Second language researchers have hypothesized that there is a relationship between word frequency and the likelihood that words will be encountered or used by second language learners, but it is not yet clear how this relationship should be effectively measured. An analysis of word frequency measures showed that spoken language frequency alone may predict the occurrence of words in learner textbooks, but that multiple corpora as well as textbook status can improve predictions of learner usage.

Abstract

It has recently been proposed (Dediu, D., Ladd, D.R., 2007. Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104, 10944-10949) that genetically coded linguistic biases can influence the trajectory of language change. However, the nature of such biases and the conditions under which they can become manifest have remained vague. The present paper explores computationally two plausible types of linguistic acquisition biases in a population of agents implementing realistic genetic, linguistic and demographic processes. One type of bias represents an innate asymmetric initial state (Initial Expectation bias) while the other an innate asymmetric facility of acquisition (Rate of Learning bias). It was found that only the second type of bias produces detectable effects on language through cultural transmission across generations and that such effects are produced even by weak biases present at low frequencies in the population. This suggests that learning preference asymmetries, very small at the individual level and not very frequent at the population level, can bias the trajectory of language change through the process of cultural transmission.

Abstract

This paper presents the first part of a guide for documenting and describing child language, child-directed language and socialization patterns in diverse languages and cultures. The guide is intended for anyone interested in working across child language and language documentation,
including, for example, field linguists and language documenters, community language workers, child language researchers or graduate students. We assume some basic familiarity with language documentation principles and methods, and, based on this, provide step-by-step suggestions for
collecting, analyzing and presenting child data. This first part of the guide focuses on constructing a sketch corpus that consists of minimally five hours of annotated and archived data and which documents communicative practices of children between the ages of 2 and 4.

Abstract

This paper presents the second part of a guide for documenting and describing child language, child-directed language and socialization patterns in diverse languages and cultures. The guide is intended for anyone interested in working across child language and language documentation,
including, for example, field linguists and language documenters, community language workers, child language researchers or graduate students. We assume some basic familiarity with language documentation principles and methods, and, based on this, provide step-by-step suggestions for
collecting, analyzing and presenting child data. This second part of the guide focuses on developing a child language acquisition sketch. It takes the sketch corpus as its basis (which was introduced in the first part of this guide), and presents a model for analyzing and describing the corpus data.

Abstract

Speech errors follow the phonotactics of the language being spoken. For example, in English, if [n] is mispronounced as [n] the [n] will always appear in a syllable coda. The authors created an analogue to this phenomenon by having participants recite lists of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in 4 sessions on different days. In the first 2 experiments, some consonants were always onsets, some were always codas, and some could be both. In a third experiment, the set of possible onsets and codas depended on vowel identity. In all 3 studies, the production errors that occurred respected the "phonotactics" of the experiment. The results illustrate the implicit learning of the sequential constraints present in the stimuli and show that the language production system adapts to recent experience.

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing recently revealed that recurrent disruptive mutations in a few genes may account for 1% of sporadic autism cases. Coupling these novel genetic data to empirical assays of protein function can illuminate crucial molecular networks. Here we demonstrate the power of the approach, performing the first functional analyses of TBR1 variants identified in sporadic autism. De novo truncating and missense mutations disrupt multiple aspects of TBR1 function, including subcellular localization, interactions with co-regulators and transcriptional repression. Missense mutations inherited from unaffected parents did not disturb function in our assays. We show that TBR1 homodimerizes, that it interacts with FOXP2, a transcription factor implicated in speech/language disorders, and that this interaction is disrupted by pathogenic mutations affecting either protein. These findings support the hypothesis that de novo mutations in sporadic autism have severe functional consequences. Moreover, they uncover neurogenetic mechanisms that bridge different neurodevelopmental disorders involving language deficits.

Abstract

Assays based on Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) provide a sensitive and reliable means to monitor protein-protein interactions in live cells. BRET is the non-radiative transfer of energy from a ‘donor’ luciferase enzyme to an ‘acceptor’ fluorescent protein. In the most common configuration of this assay, the donor is Renilla reniformis luciferase and the acceptor is Yellow Fluorescent Protein (YFP). Because the efficiency of energy transfer is strongly distance-dependent, observation of the BRET phenomenon requires that the donor and acceptor be in close proximity. To test for an interaction between two proteins of interest in cultured mammalian cells, one protein is expressed as a fusion with luciferase and the second as a fusion with YFP. An interaction between the two proteins of interest may bring the donor and acceptor sufficiently close for energy transfer to occur. Compared to other techniques for investigating protein-protein interactions, the BRET assay is sensitive, requires little hands-on time and few reagents, and is able to detect interactions which are weak, transient, or dependent on the biochemical environment found within a live cell. It is therefore an ideal approach for confirming putative interactions suggested by yeast two-hybrid or mass spectrometry proteomics studies, and in addition it is well-suited for mapping interacting regions, assessing the effect of post-translational modifications on protein-protein interactions, and evaluating the impact of mutations identified in patient DNA.

Abstract

Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders that include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in animals. They are unique in terms of their biology because they are caused by the conformational re-arrangement of a normal host-encoded prion protein, PrPC, to an abnormal infectious isoform, PrPSc. Currently the precise mechanism behind prion-mediated neurodegeneration remains unclear. It is hypothesised than an unknown toxic gain of function of PrPSc, or an intermediate oligomeric form, underlies neuronal death. Increasing evidence suggests a role for the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) in prion disease. Both wild-type PrPC and disease-associated PrP isoforms accumulate in cells after proteasome inhibition leading to increased cell death, and abnormal beta-sheet-rich PrP isoforms have been shown to inhibit the catalytic activity of the proteasome. Here we review potential interactions between prions and the proteasome outlining how the UPS may be implicated in prion-mediated neurodegeneration.

Abstract

Retinoic acid-related orphan receptor alpha gene (RORa) and the microRNA MIR137 have both recently been identified as novel candidate genes for neuropsychiatric disorders. RORa encodes a ligand-dependent orphan nuclear receptor that acts as a transcriptional regulator and miR-137 is a brain enriched small non-coding RNA that interacts with gene transcripts to control protein levels. Given the mounting evidence for RORa in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and MIR137 in schizophrenia and ASD, we investigated if there was a functional biological relationship between these two genes. Herein, we demonstrate that miR-137 targets the 3'UTR of RORa in a site specific manner. We also provide further support for MIR137 as an autism candidate by showing that a large number of previously implicated autism genes are also putatively targeted by miR-137. This work supports the role of MIR137 as an ASD candidate and demonstrates a direct biological link between these previously unrelated autism candidate genes

Abstract

FOXP2 was the first gene shown to cause a Mendelian form of speech and language disorder. Although developmentally expressed in many organs, loss of a single copy of FOXP2 leads to a phenotype that is largely restricted to orofacial impairment during articulation and linguistic processing deficits. Why perturbed FOXP2 function affects specific aspects of the developing brain remains elusive. We investigated the role of FOXP2 in neuronal differentiation and found that FOXP2 drives molecular changes consistent with neuronal differentiation in a human model system. We identified a network of FOXP2 regulated genes related to retinoic acid signaling and neuronal differentiation. FOXP2 also produced phenotypic changes associated with neuronal differentiation including increased neurite outgrowth and reduced migration. Crucially, cells expressing FOXP2 displayed increased sensitivity to retinoic acid exposure. This suggests a mechanism by which FOXP2 may be able to increase the cellular differentiation response to environmental retinoic acid cues for specific subsets of neurons in the brain. These data demonstrate that FOXP2 promotes neuronal differentiation by interacting with the retinoic acid signaling pathway and regulates key processes required for normal circuit formation such as neuronal migration and neurite outgrowth. In this way, FOXP2, which is found only in specific subpopulations of neurons in the brain, may drive precise neuronal differentiation patterns and/or control localization and connectivity of these FOXP2 positive cells

Abstract

Humans readily engage in idle chat and heated discussions and negotiate tough joint decisions without ever having to think twice about how to keep the conversation grounded in mutual understanding. However, current attempts at identifying and assessing the conversational devices that make this possible are fragmented across disciplines and investigate single devices within single contexts. We present a comprehensive conceptual framework to investigate conversational devices, their relations, and how they adjust to contextual demands. In two corpus studies, we systematically test the role of three conversational devices: backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Contrasting affiliative and task-oriented conversations within participants, we find that conversational devices adaptively adjust to the increased need for precision in the latter: We show that low-precision devices such as backchannels are more frequent in affiliative conversations, whereas more costly but higher-precision mechanisms, such as specific repairs, are more frequent in task-oriented conversations. Further, task-oriented conversations involve higher complementarity of contributions in terms of the content and perspective: lower semantic entrainment and less frequent (but richer) lexical and syntactic entrainment. Finally, we show that the observed variations in the use of conversational devices are potentially adaptive: pairs of interlocutors that show stronger linguistic complementarity perform better across the two tasks. By combining motivated comparisons of several conversational contexts and theoretically informed computational analyses of empirical data the present work lays the foundations for a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the use of conversational devices in dialogue.

Abstract

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so, people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Here, we explore whether the use of conversational devices might be influenced by cross-linguistic differences in the speakers’ native language, comparing two matched languages—Danish and Norwegian—differing primarily in their sound structure, with Danish being more opaque, that is, less acoustically distinguished. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding in conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts and, crucially, across languages. In accord with our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than in Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that native speakers of Danish may compensate for its opaque sound structure by adopting a top-down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also might reduce the need for repairs. These results suggest that linguistic differences might be met by systematic changes in language processing and use. This paves the way for further cross-linguistic investigations and critical assessment of the interplay between cultural and linguistic factors on the one hand and conversational dynamics on the other.

Abstract

This paper investigates the fractional order behavior of ZnO ceramics at different frequencies. ZnO ceramic was prepared by high energy ball milling technique (HEBM) sintered at 1300℃ to study the frequency response properties. The frequency response properties (impedance and phase
angles) were examined by analyzing through impedance analyzer (100 Hz - 1 MHz). Constant phase angles (84°-88°) were obtained at low temperature ranges (25 ℃-125 ℃). The structural and
morphological composition of the ZnO ceramic was investigated using X-ray diffraction techniques and FESEM. Raman spectrum was studied to understand the different modes of ZnO ceramics. Machine learning (polynomial regression) models were trained on a dataset of 1280
experimental values to accurately predict the relationship between frequency and temperature with respect to impedance and phase values of the ZnO ceramic FOC. The predicted impedance values were found to be in good agreement (R2 ~ 0.98, MSE ~ 0.0711) with the experimental results.
Impedance values were also predicted beyond the experimental frequency range (at 50 Hz and 2 MHz) for different temperatures (25℃ - 500℃) and for low temperatures (10°, 15° and 20℃)
within the frequency range (100Hz - 1MHz).

Abstract

It is widely assumed that ultimate attainment in adult second language (L2) learners often differs quite radically from ultimate attainment in child L2 learners. This article addresses the question of whether learners at different ages also show qualitative differences in the process of L2 acquisition. Longitudinal production data from two untutored Russian beginners (ages 8 and 14) acquiring German under roughly similar conditions are compared to published results on the acquisition of German by adult immigrants. The study focuses on the acquisition of negation and finiteness as core domains of German sentence grammar. Adult learners have been shown to produce an early nonfinite learner variety in which utterance organization relies on principles of information structure rather than on target language grammar. They then go through a couple of intermediate steps in which, first, semantically empty verbs (auxiliaries) serve as isolated carriers of finiteness before lexical verbs become finite. Whereas the 14-year-old learner of this case study basically shows a developmental pattern similar to that of adults, the 8-year-old child produces a different order of acquisition: Not only is the development of finite morphology faster, but finite lexical verbs are acquired before auxiliary constructions (Perfekt). Results suggest a stronger tendency for young learners to incrementally assimilate input patterns without relying on analytic steps guided by principles of information organization to the same extent as older learners.

Abstract

Based on their longitudinal analysis of the acquisition of Dutch, English, French, and German, Klein and Perdue (1997) described a “basic learner variety” as valid cross-linguistically and comprising a limited number of shared syntactic patterns interacting with two types of constraints: (a) semantic—the NP whose referent has highest control comes first, and (b) pragmatic—the focus expression is in final position. These authors hypothesized that “the topic-focus structure also plays an important role in some other respects. . . . Thus, negation and (other) scope particles occur at the topic-focus boundary” (p. 318). This poses the problem of the interaction between the core organizational principles of the basic variety and optional items such as negative particles and scope particles, which semantically affect the whole or part of the utterance in which they occur. In this article, we test the validity of these authors' hypothesis for the acquisition of the additive scope particle also (and its translation equivalents). Our analysis is based on the European Science Foundation (ESF) data originally used to define the basic variety, but we also included some more advanced learner data from the same database. In doing so, we refer to the analyses of Dimroth and Klein (1996), which concern the interaction between scope particles and the part of the utterance they affect, and we make a distinction between maximal scope—that which is potentially affected by the particle—and the actual scope of a particle in relation to an utterance in a given discourse context

Abstract

Several molecular and phenotypic algorithms exist that establish genotype–phenotype correlations, including facial recognition tools. However, no unified framework that investigates both facial data and other phenotypic data directly from individuals exists. We developed PhenoScore: an open-source, artificial intelligence-based phenomics framework, combining facial recognition technology with Human Phenotype Ontology data analysis to quantify phenotypic similarity. Here we show PhenoScore’s ability to recognize distinct phenotypic entities by establishing recognizable phenotypes for 37 of 40 investigated syndromes against clinical features observed in individuals with other neurodevelopmental disorders and show it is an improvement on existing approaches. PhenoScore provides predictions for individuals with variants of unknown significance and enables sophisticated genotype–phenotype studies by testing hypotheses on possible phenotypic (sub)groups. PhenoScore confirmed previously known phenotypic subgroups caused by variants in the same gene for SATB1, SETBP1 and DEAF1 and provides objective clinical evidence for two distinct ADNP-related phenotypes, already established functionally.

Abstract

Als je wereldwijd gesprekken beluistert, merk je dat de menselijke dialoog universele regels volgt. Die sturen en verrijken onze sociale interactie.

Abstract

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognised by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds towards cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction centre stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbour insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a multidisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.