Publications

Abstract

Experimental research on behavior and cognition frequently rests on stimulus or subject selection where not all characteristics can be fully controlled, even when attempting strict matching. For example, when contrasting patients to controls, variables such as intelligence or socioeconomic status are often correlated with patient status. Similarly, when presenting word stimuli, variables such as word frequency are often correlated with primary variables of interest. One procedure very commonly employed to control for such nuisance effects is conducting inferential tests on confounding stimulus or subject characteristics. For example, if word length is not significantly different for two stimulus sets, they are considered as matched for word length. Such a test has high error rates and is conceptually misguided. It reflects a common misunderstanding of statistical tests: interpreting significance not to refer to inference about a particular population parameter, but about 1. the sample in question, 2. the practical relevance of a sample difference (so that a nonsignificant test is taken to indicate evidence for the absence of relevant differences). We show inferential testing for assessing nuisance effects to be inappropriate both pragmatically and philosophically, present a survey showing its high prevalence, and briefly discuss an alternative in the form of regression including nuisance variables.

Abstract

Studies on anticipatory processes during sentence comprehension often focus on the prediction of postverbal direct objects. In subject-initial languages (the target of most studies so far), however, the position in the sentence, the syntactic function, and the semantic role of arguments are often conflated. For example, in the sentence “The frog will eat the fly” the syntactic object (“fly”) is at the same time also the last word and the patient argument of the verb. It is therefore not apparent which kind of information listeners orient to for predictive processing during sentence comprehension. A visual world eye tracking study on the verb-initial language Tagalog (Austronesian) tested what kind of information listeners use to anticipate upcoming postverbal linguistic input. The grammatical structure of Tagalog allows to test whether listeners' anticipatory gaze behavior is guided by predictions of the linear order of words, by syntactic functions (e.g., subject/object), or by semantic roles (agent/patient). Participants heard sentences of the type “Eat frog fly” or “Eat fly frog” (both meaning “The frog will eat the fly”) while looking at displays containing an agent referent (“frog”), a patient referent (“fly”) and a distractor. The verb carried morphological marking that allowed the order and syntactic function of agent and patient to be inferred. After having heard the verb, listeners fixated on the agent irrespective of its syntactic function or position in the sentence. While hearing the first-mentioned argument, listeners fixated on the corresponding referent in the display accordingly and then initiated saccades to the last-mentioned referent before it was encountered. The results indicate that listeners used verbal semantics to identify referents and their semantic roles early; information about word order or syntactic functions did not influence anticipatory gaze behavior directly after the verb was heard. In this verb-initial language, event semantics takes early precedence during the comprehension of sentences, while arguments are anticipated temporally more local to when they are encountered. The current experiment thus helps to better understand anticipation during language processing by employing linguistic structures not available in previously studied subject-initial languages.

Abstract

Most of the study of basic emotion expressions has focused on facial expressions and little work has been done to specifically investigate happiness, the only positive of the basic emotions (Ekman & Friesen, 1971). However, a theoretical suggestion has been made that happiness could be broken down into discrete positive emotions, which each fulfil the criteria of basic emotions, and that these would be expressed vocally (Ekman, 1992). To empirically test this hypothesis, 20 participants categorised 80 paralinguistic sounds using the labels achievement, amusement, contentment, pleasure and relief. The results suggest that achievement, amusement and relief are perceived as distinct categories, which subjects accurately identify. In contrast, the categories of contentment and pleasure were systematically confused with other responses, although performance was still well above chance levels. These findings are initial evidence that the positive emotions engage distinct vocal expressions and may be considered to be distinct emotion categories.

Abstract

The goal of this task is to investigate emotional categories across linguistic and cultural boundaries. There are three core tasks. In order to conduct this task you will need emotional vocalisation stimuli on your computer and you must translate the scenarios at the end of this entry into your local language.

Abstract

Emotional signals allow for the sharing of important information with conspecifics, for example to warn them of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. Although much is known about facial expressions of emotion, less research has focused on affect in the voice. We compare British listeners to individuals from remote Namibian villages who have had no exposure to Western culture, and examine recognition of non-verbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs. We show that a number of emotions can be universally recognized from non-verbal vocal signals. In addition we demonstrate the specificity of this pattern, with a set of additional emotions only recognized within, but not across these cultural groups. Our findings indicate that a small set of primarily negative emotions have evolved signals across several modalities, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the ability of SpeM, our recognition system based on the combination of an automatic phone recogniser and a wordsearch module, to determine as early as possible during the word recognition process whether a word is likely to be recognised correctly (this we refer to as ‘on-line’ early word recognition). We present two measures that can be used to predict whether a word is correctly recognised: the Bayesian word activation and the amount of available (acoustic) information for a word. SpeM was tested on 1,463 polysyllabic words in 885 continuous speech utterances. The investigated predictors indicated that a word activation that is 1) high (but not too high) and 2) based on more phones is more reliable to predict the correctness of a word than a similarly high value based on a small number of phones or a lower value of the word activation.

Abstract

A stretch of speech is often consistent with multiple words, e.g., the sequence /hæm/ is consistent with ‘ham’ but also with the first syllable of ‘hamster’, resulting in temporary ambiguity. However, to what degree does this lexical embedding occur? Analyses on two corpora of spoken Dutch showed that 11.9%-19.5% of polysyllabic word tokens have word-initial embedding, while 4.1%-7.5% of monosyllabic word tokens can appear word-initially embedded. This is much lower than suggested by an analysis of a large dictionary of Dutch. Speech processing thus appears to be simpler than one might expect on the basis of statistics on a dictionary.

Abstract

Evidence that listeners use durational cues to help resolve temporarily ambiguous speech input has accumulated over the past few years. In this paper, we investigate whether durational cues are also beneficial for word recognition in a computational model of spoken-word recognition. Two sets of simulations were carried out using the acoustic signal as input. The simulations showed that the computational model, like humans, takes benefit from durational cues during word recognition, and uses these to disambiguate the speech signal. These results thus provide support for the theory that durational cues play a role in spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

PET and fMRI experiments have previously shown that several brain regions in the frontal and parietal lobe are involved in working memory maintenance. MEG and EEG experiments have shown parametric increases with load for oscillatory activity in posterior alpha and frontal theta power. In the current study we investigated whether the areas found with fMRI can be associated with these alpha and theta effects by measuring simultaneous EEG and fMRI during a modified Sternberg task This allowed us to correlate EEG at the single trial level with the fMRI BOLD signal by forming a regressor based on single trial alpha and theta
power estimates. We observed a right posterior, parametric alpha power increase, which was functionally related to decreases in BOLD in the primary visual cortex and in the posterior part of the right middle temporal gyrus. We relate this finding to the inhibition of neuronal activity that may interfere with WM maintenance. An observed parametric increase in frontal theta power was correlated to a decrease in BOLD in
regions that together form the default mode network. We did not observe correlations between oscillatory EEG phenomena and BOLD in the traditional WM areas. In conclusion, the study shows that simultaneous EEG fMRI recordings can be successfully used to identify the emergence of functional networks in the brain during the execution of a cognitive task.

Abstract

Many people speak more than two languages. How do languages acquired earlier affect the learnability of additional languages? We show that linguistic distances between speakers' first (L1) and second (L2) languages and their third (L3) language play a role. Larger distances from the L1 to the L3 and from the L2 to the L3 correlate with lower degrees of L3 learnability. The evidence comes from L3 Dutch speaking proficiency test scores obtained by candidates who speak a diverse set of L1s and L2s. Lexical and morphological distances between the L1s of the learners and Dutch explained 47.7% of the variation in proficiency scores. Lexical and morphological distances between the L2s of the learners and Dutch explained 32.4% of the variation in proficiency scores in multilingual learners. Cross-linguistic differences require language learners to bridge varying linguistic gaps between their L1 and L2 competences and the target language.

Abstract

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel–MOtor vs. koSTUUM–MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime–target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.

Abstract

Any complete theory of speaking must take the dialogical function of language use into account. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) make some progress on this point. However, we question whether their interactive alignment model is the optimal approach. In this commentary, we specifically criticize (1) their notion of alignment being implemented through priming, and (2) their claim that self-monitoring can occur at all levels of linguistic representation.

Abstract

This study investigates whether or not masked form priming effects in the naming task depend on the number of shared segments between prime and target. Dutch participants named bisyllabic words, which were preceded by visual masked primes. When primes shared the initial segment(s) with the target, naming latencies were shorter than in a control condition (string of percent signs). Onset complexity (singleton vs. complex word onset) did not modulate this priming effect in Dutch. Furthermore, significant priming due to shared final segments was only found when the prime did not contain a mismatching onset, suggesting an interfering role of initial non-target segments. It is concluded that (a) degree of overlap (segmental match vs. mismatch), and (b) position of overlap (initial vs. final) influence the magnitude of the form priming effect in the naming task. A modification of the segmental overlap hypothesis (Schiller, 1998) is proposed to account for the data.

Abstract

When we perceive speech, our goal is to extract the meaning of the verbal message which includes semantic processing. However, how deeply do we process speech in different situations? In two experiments, native Dutch participants heard spoken sentences describing simultaneously presented pictures. Sentences either correctly described the pictures or contained an anomalous final word (i.e. a semantically or phonologically incongruent word). In the first experiment, spoken sentences were task-irrelevant and both anomalous conditions elicited similar centro-parietal N400s that were larger in amplitude than the N400 for the correct condition. In the second experiment, we ensured that participants processed the same stimuli semantically. In an early time window, we found similar phonological mismatch negativities for both anomalous conditions compared to the correct condition. These negativities were followed by an N400 that was larger for semantic than phonological errors. Together, these data suggest that we process speech semantically, even if the speech is task-irrelevant. Once listeners allocate more cognitive resources to the processing of speech, we suggest that they make predictions for upcoming words, presumably by means of the production system and an internal monitoring loop, to facilitate lexical processing of the perceived speech

Abstract

To investigate the role of the syllable in Dutch speech production, five experiments were carried out to examine the effect of visually masked syllable primes on the naming latencies for written words and pictures. Targets had clear syllable boundaries and began with a CV syllable (e.g., ka.no) or a CVC syllable (e.g., kak.tus), or had ambiguous syllable boundaries and began with a CV[C] syllable (e.g., ka[pp]er). In the syllable match condition, bisyllabic Dutch nouns or verbs were preceded by primes that were identical to the target’s first syllable. In the syllable mismatch condition, the prime was either shorter or longer than the target’s first syllable. A neutral condition was also included. None of the experiments showed a syllable priming effect. Instead, all related primes facilitated the naming of the targets. It is concluded that the syllable does not play a role in the process of phonological encoding in Dutch. Because the amount of facilitation increased with increasing overlap between prime and target, the priming effect is accounted for by a segmental overlap hypothesis.

Abstract

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants following short vowels, long vowels, and schwa in Dutch. Special interest was paid to words such as letter ['leter] ''id.,'' where a short vowel is followed by a single consonant. On phonological grounds one may predict that the first syllable should always be closed, but earlier psycholinguistic research had shown that speakers tend to leave these syllables open. In our experiments, bisyllabic word forms were presented aurally, and participants produced their syllables in reversed order (Experiments 1 through 5), or repeated the words inserting a pause between the syllables (Experiment 6). The results showed that participants generally closed syllables with a short vowel. However, in a significant number of the cases they produced open short vowel syllables. Syllables containing schwa, like syllables with a long vowel, were hardly ever closed. Word stress, the phonetic quality of the vowel in the first syllable, and the experimental context influenced syllabification. Taken together, the experiments show that native speakers syllabify bisyllabic Dutch nouns in accordance with a small set of prosodic output constraints. To account for the variability of the results, we propose that these constraints differ in their probabilities of being applied.

Abstract

Sarah Schimke onderzocht hoe mensen die op volwassen leeftijd naar een ander land verhuizen de taal van dit land leren, ook zonder veel taalinstructie te krijgen. Twee groepen werden onderzocht: Turkse immigranten in Frankrijk en Turkse immigranten in Duitsland. De resultaten laten zien dat volwassen leerlingen in het begin van het verwervingsproces een gemakkelijkere variatie van de doeltaal creëren. Er worden wel woorden van de doeltaal verworven en gebruikt, maar er wordt een gesimplificeerde grammatica toegepast. In het bijzonder gebruiken leerlingen in deze fase geen finietheid, dus geen morfologische variaties van werkwoorden. Schimke toont aan dat als finietheid wordt verworven, dit de grammatica van de leerlingen sterk verandert en dat deze veel sterker op de doeltaalgrammatica begint te lijken. Ook toont ze aan dat dit proces door karakteristieken van de doeltaal, zoals de woordvolgorde en de complexiteit van de morfologie, wordt beïnvloed

Abstract

Normal-hearing listeners use acoustic cues in speech to interpret a speaker's emotional state. This study investigates the effect of hearing aids on the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (aroused/calm) and valence (positive/negative attitude) in older adults with hearing loss. More specifically, we investigate whether wearing a hearing aid improves the correlation between affect ratings and affect-related acoustic parameters. To that end, affect ratings by 23 hearing-aid users were compared for aided and unaided listening. Moreover, these ratings were compared to the ratings by an age-matched group of 22 participants with age-normal hearing.For arousal, hearing-aid users rated utterances as generally more aroused in the aided than in the unaided condition. Intensity differences were the strongest indictor of degree of arousal. Among the hearing-aid users, those with poorer hearing used additional prosodic cues (i.e., tempo and pitch) for their arousal ratings, compared to those with relatively good hearing. For valence, pitch was the only acoustic cue that was associated with valence. Neither listening condition nor hearing loss severity (differences among the hearing-aid users) influenced affect ratings or the use of affect-related acoustic parameters. Compared to the normal-hearing reference group, ratings of hearing-aid users in the aided condition did not generally differ in both emotion dimensions. However, hearing-aid users were more sensitive to intensity differences in their arousal ratings than the normal-hearing participants.We conclude that the use of hearing aids is important for the rehabilitation of affect perception and particularly influences the interpretation of arousal

Abstract

This study investigated whether age and/or differences in hearing sensitivity influence the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (calm vs. aroused) and valence (positive vs. negative attitude) in conversational speech. To that end, this study specifically focused on the relationship between participants' ratings of short affective utterances and the utterances' acoustic parameters (pitch, intensity, and articulation rate) known to be associated with the emotion dimensions arousal and valence. Stimuli consisted of short utterances taken from a corpus of conversational speech. In two rating tasks, younger and older adults either rated arousal or valence using a 5-point scale. Mean intensity was found to be the main cue participants used in the arousal task (i.e., higher mean intensity cueing higher levels of arousal) while mean F-0 was the main cue in the valence task (i.e., higher mean F-0 being interpreted as more negative). Even though there were no overall age group differences in arousal or valence ratings, compared to younger adults, older adults responded less strongly to mean intensity differences cueing arousal and responded more strongly to differences in mean F-0 cueing valence. Individual hearing sensitivity among the older adults did not modify the use of mean intensity as an arousal cue. However, individual hearing sensitivity generally affected valence ratings and modified the use of mean F-0. We conclude that age differences in the interpretation of mean F-0 as a cue for valence are likely due to age-related hearing loss, whereas age differences in rating arousal do not seem to be driven by hearing sensitivity differences between age groups (as measured by pure-tone audiometry).

Abstract

The study endeavors a detailed and systematic classification of linguistic simultaneity expressions. Further, it aims at a well described survey of how simultaneity is expressed by native speakers in their own language. On the basis of real production data the book answers the questions of how native speakers express temporal simultaneity in general, and how learners at different levels of proficiency deal with this situation under experimental test conditions. Furthermore, the results of this study shed new light on our understanding of aspect in general, and on its acquisition by adult learners.

Abstract

Interactions between functionally specialized brain regions are crucial for normal brain function. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) are techniques suited to capture these interactions, because they provide whole head measurements of brain activity in the millisecond range. More than one sensor picks up the activity of an underlying source. This field spread severely limits the utility of connectivity measures computed directly between sensor recordings. Consequentially, neuronal interactions should be studied on the level of the reconstructed sources. This article reviews several methods that have been applied to investigate interactions between brain regions in source space. We will mainly focus on the different measures used to quantify connectivity, and on the different strategies adopted to identify regions of interest. Despite various successful accounts of MEG and EEG source connectivity, caution with respect to the interpretation of the results is still warranted. This is due to the fact that effects of field spread can never be completely abolished in source space. However, in this very exciting and developing field of research this cautionary note should not discourage researchers from further investigation into the connectivity between neuronal sources.

Abstract

The way we talk can influence how we are perceived by others. Whereas previous studies have started to explore the influence of social goals on syntactic alignment, in the current study, we additionally investigated whether syntactic alignment effectively influences conversation partners’ perception of the speaker. To this end, we developed a novel paradigm in which we can measure the effect of social goals on the strength of syntactic alignment for one participant (primed participant), while simultaneously obtaining usable social opinions about them from their conversation partner (the evaluator). In Study 1, participants’ desire to be rated favorably by their partner was manipulated by assigning pairs to a Control (i.e., primed participants did not know they were being evaluated) or Evaluation context (i.e., primed participants knew they were being evaluated). Surprisingly, results showed no significant difference in the strength with which primed participants aligned their syntactic choices with their partners’ choices. In a follow-up study, we used a Directed Evaluation context (i.e., primed participants knew they were being evaluated and were explicitly instructed to make a positive impression). However, again, there was no evidence supporting the hypothesis that participants’ desire to impress their partner influences syntactic alignment. With respect to the influence of syntactic alignment on perceived likeability by the evaluator, a negative relationship was reported in Study 1: the more primed participants aligned their syntactic choices with their partner, the more that partner decreased their likeability rating after the experiment. However, this effect was not replicated in the Directed Evaluation context of Study 2. In other words, our results do not support the conclusion that speakers’ desire to be liked affects how much they align their syntactic choices with their partner, nor is there convincing evidence that there is a reliable relationship between syntactic alignment and perceived likeability.

Abstract

Verbal interaction is one of the most frequent social interactions humans encounter on a daily basis. In the current paper, we zoom in on what the multi-brain approach has contributed, and can contribute in the future, to our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting verbal interaction. Indeed, since verbal interaction can only exist between individuals, it seems intuitive to focus analyses on inter-individual neural markers, i.e. between-brain neural coupling. To date, however, there is a severe lack of theoretically-driven, testable hypotheses about what between-brain neural coupling actually reflects. In this paper, we develop a testable hypothesis in which between-pair variation in between-brain neural coupling is of key importance. Based on theoretical frameworks and empirical data, we argue that the level of between-brain neural coupling reflects speaker-listener alignment at different levels of linguistic and extra-linguistic representation. We discuss the possibility that between-brain neural coupling could inform us about the highest level of inter-speaker alignment: mutual understanding

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the reduction of word-final [t]s in conversational standard Dutch. Based on a large amount of tokens annotated on the segmental level, we show that the bigram frequency and the segmental context are the main predictors for the absence of [t]s. In a second study, we present an analysis of the detailed acoustic properties of word-final [t]s and we show that bigram frequency and context also play a role on the subsegmental level. This paper extends research on the realization of /t/ in spontaneous speech and shows the importance of incorporating sub-segmental properties in models of speech.

Abstract

This paper combines acoustic features with a high temporal and a high frequency resolution to reliably classify articulatory events of short duration, such as bursts in plosives. SVM classification experiments on TIMIT and SVArticulatory showed that articulatory-acoustic features (AFs) based on a combination of MFCCs derived from a long window of 25ms and a short window of 5ms that are both shifted with 2.5ms steps (Both) outperform standard MFCCs derived with a window of 25 ms and a shift of 10 ms (Baseline). Finally, comparison of the TIMIT and SVArticulatory results showed that for classifiers trained on data that allows for asynchronously changing AFs (SVArticulatory) the improvement from Baseline to Both is larger than for classifiers trained on data where AFs change simultaneously with the phone boundaries (TIMIT).

Abstract

Gender assignment relates to a native speaker's knowledge of the structure of the gender system of his/her language, allowing the speaker to select the appropriate gender for each noun. Whereas categorical assignment rules and exceptional gender assignment are well investigated, assignment regularities, i.e., tendencies in the gender distribution identified within the vocabulary of a language, are still controversial. The present study is an empirical contribution trying to shed light on the gender assignment system native German speakers have at their disposal. Participants presented with a category (e.g., predator) and a pair of gender-marked pseudowords (e.g., der Trelle vs. die Stisse) preferentially selected the pseudo-word preceded by the gender-marked determiner ‘‘associated’’ with the category (e.g., masculine). This finding suggests that semantic regularities might be part of the gender assignment system of native speakers.

Abstract

Humans express emotional information in their facial expressions and body movements, as well as in their voice. In this chapter we consider the neural processing of a specific kind of vocal expressions, non-verbal emotional vocalizations e.g. laughs and sobs. We outline evidence, from patient studies and functional imaging studies, for both emotion specific and more general processing of emotional information in the voice. We relate these findings to evidence for both basic and dimensional accounts of the representations of emotion. We describe in detail an fMRI study of positive and negative non-verbal expressions of emotion, which revealed that prefrontal areas involved in the control of oro-facial movements were also sensitive to different kinds of vocal emotional information.

Abstract

The motor theory of speech perception assumes that activation of the motor system is essential in the perception of speech. However, deficits in speech perception and comprehension do not arise from damage that is restricted to the motor cortex, few functional imaging studies reveal activity in motor cortex during speech perception, and the motor cortex is strongly activated by many different sound categories. Here, we evaluate alternative roles for the motor cortex in spoken communication and suggest a specific role in sensorimotor processing in conversation. We argue that motor-cortex activation it is essential in joint speech, particularly for the timing of turn-taking.

Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BP) is a disabling and often life-threatening disorder that affects approximately 1% of the population worldwide. To identify genetic variants that increase the risk of BP, we genotyped on the Illumina HumanHap550 Beadchip 2,076 bipolar cases and 1,676 controls of European ancestry from the National Institute of Mental Health Human Genetics Initiative Repository, and the Prechter Repository and samples collected in London, Toronto, and Dundee. We imputed SNP genotypes and tested for SNP-BP association in each sample and then performed meta-analysis across samples. The strongest association P value for this 2-study meta-analysis was 2.4 x 10(-6). We next imputed SNP genotypes and tested for SNP-BP association based on the publicly available Affymetrix 500K genotype data from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium for 1,868 BP cases and a reference set of 12,831 individuals. A 3-study meta-analysis of 3,683 nonoverlapping cases and 14,507 extended controls on >2.3 M genotyped and imputed SNPs resulted in 3 chromosomal regions with association P approximately 10(-7): 1p31.1 (no known genes), 3p21 (>25 known genes), and 5q15 (MCTP1). The most strongly associated nonsynonymous SNP rs1042779 (OR = 1.19, P = 1.8 x 10(-7)) is in the ITIH1 gene on chromosome 3, with other strongly associated nonsynonymous SNPs in GNL3, NEK4, and ITIH3. Thus, these chromosomal regions harbor genes implicated in cell cycle, neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, and neurosignaling. In addition, we replicated the reported ANK3 association results for SNP rs10994336 in the nonoverlapping GSK sample (OR = 1.37, P = 0.042). Although these results are promising, analysis of additional samples will be required to confirm that variant(s) in these regions influence BP risk.

Abstract

Previous studies have indicated that vocal and facial expressions of the ‘basic’ emotions share aspects of processing. Thus amygdala damage compromises the perception of fear and anger from the face and from the voice. In the current study we tested the hypothesis that there exist positive basic emotions, expressed mainly in the voice (Ekman, 1992). Vocal stimuli were produced to express the specific positive emotions of amusement, achievement, pleasure, contentment and relief.

Abstract

Using kinetic contours derived from everyday objects, we investigated how motion affects object identification. In order not to be distinguishable when static, kinetic contours were made from random dot displays consisting of two regions, inside and outside the object contour. In Experiment 1, the dots were moving in only one of two regions. The objects were identified nearly equally well as soon as the dots either in the figure or in the background started to move. RTs decreased with increasing motion coherence levels and were shorter for complex, less compact objects than for simple, more compact objects. In Experiment 2, objects could be identified when the dots were moving both in the figure and in the background with speed and direction differences between the two. A linear increase in either the speed difference or the direction difference caused a linear decrease in RT for correct identification. In addition, the combination of speed and motion differences appeared to be super-additive.

Abstract

We investigated whether structural priming of production latencies is sensitive to the same factors known to influence persistence of structural choices: structure preference, cumulativity and verb repetition. In two experiments, we found structural persistence only for passives (inverse preference effect) while priming effects on latencies were stronger for the actives (positive preference effect). We found structural persistence for passives to be influenced by immediate primes and long lasting cumulativity (all preceding primes) (Experiment 1), and to be boosted by verb repetition (Experiment 2). In latencies we found effects for actives were sensitive to long lasting cumulativity (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, in latencies we found priming for actives overall, while for passives the priming effects emerged as the cumulative exposure increased but only when also aided by verb repetition. These findings are consistent with the Two-stage Competition model, an integrated model of structural priming effects for sentence choice and latency

Abstract

French-learning 11-month-old and English-learning 11- and 4-month-old infants were familiarized with consonant–vowel–consonant syllables in which the final consonants were dependent on whether the preceding vowel was oral or nasal. Oral and nasal vowels are present in the ambient language of all participants, but vowel nasality is phonemic (contrastive) in French and allophonic (noncontrastive) in English. After familiarization, infants heard novel syllables that either followed or violated the familiarized patterns. French-learning 11-month-olds and English-learning 4-month-olds displayed a reliable pattern of preference demonstrating learning and generalization of the patterns, while English-learning 11-month-olds oriented equally to syllables following and violating the familiarized patterns. The results are consistent with an experience-driven reduction of attention to allophonic contrasts by as early as 11 months, which influences phonotactic learning.

Abstract

This study longitudinally investigated developmental changes in the frame of reference used by children in their gestures and speech. Fifteen children, between 4 and 6 years of age, were asked once a year to describe their route home from their nursery school. When the children were 4 years old, they tended to produce gestures that directly and continuously indicated their actual route in a large gesture space. In contrast, as 6-year-olds, their gestures were segmented and did not match the actual route. Instead, at age 6, the children seemed to create a virtual space in front of themselves to symbolically describe their route. These results indicate that the use of frames of reference develops across the preschool years, shifting from an actual environmental to an abstract environmental frame of reference. Factors underlying the development of frame of reference, including verbal encoding skills and experience, are discussed.

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that affects cognitive function and has been linked, both in patients and animal models, to dysfunction of the GABAergic system. However, the pathophysiological consequences of this dysfunction are not well understood. Here, we examined the GABAergic system in an animal model displaying schizophrenia-relevant features, the apomorphine-susceptible (APO-SUS) rat and its phenotypic counterpart, the apomorphine-unsusceptible (APO-UNSUS) rat at postnatal day 20-22. We found changes in the expression of the GABA-synthesizing enzyme GAD67 specifically in the prelimbic-but not the infralimbic region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), indicative of reduced inhibitory function in this region in APO-SUS rats. While we did not observe changes in basal synaptic transmission onto LII/III pyramidal cells in the mPFC of APO-SUS compared to APO-UNSUS rats, we report reduced paired-pulse ratios at longer inter-stimulus intervals. The GABA(B) receptor antagonist CGP 55845 abolished this reduction, indicating that the decreased paired-pulse ratio was caused by increased GABA(B) signaling. Consistently, we find an increased expression of the GABA(B1) receptor subunit in APO-SUS rats. Our data provide physiological evidence for increased presynaptic GABAB signaling in the mPFC of APO-SUS rats, further supporting an important role for the GABAergic system in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Abstract

This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic datafit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them as a kind of ethnopsychological theory about the body and its role for emotions, knowledge, thought, memory, and so on? Can these idioms be understood as representation of Trobriand ethnopsychological theory?

Abstract

This paper describes how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea used to construct their big seagoing masawa canoes and how they used to make their sails, what forms of different knowledge and expertise they needed to do this during various stages of the construction processes, how this knowledge was socially distributed, and the social implications of all the joint communal activities that were necessary until a new canoe could be launched. Then it tries to answer the question why the complex distributed knowledge of how to make a masawa has been gradually getting lost in most of the village communities on the Trobriand Islands; and finally it outlines and discusses the implications of this loss for the Trobriand Islanders' culture, for their social construction of reality, and for their indigenous cognitive capacities.

Abstract

When we communicate, we communicate in a certain context, and this context shapes our utterances. Natural languages are context-bound and deixis 'concerns the ways in which languages encode or grammaticalise features of the context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance' (Stephen Levinson). The systems of deixis and demonstratives in the Oceanic languages represented in the contributions to this volume illustrate the fascinating complexity of spatial reference in these languages. Some of the studies presented here highlight social aspects of deictic reference illustrating de Leon's point that 'reference is a collaborative task' . It is hoped that this anthology will contribute to a better understanding of this area and provoke further studies in this extremely interesting, though still rather underdeveloped, research area.

Abstract

This article provides a brief introduction into field research, its aims, its methods and the various phases of fieldwork.

Abstract

Human ethologists have shown that humans are both attracted to others and at the same time fear them. They refer to this kind of fear with the technical term ‘social fear’ and claim that “it is alleviated with personal acquaintance but remains a principle characteristic of interpersonal behaviour. As a result, we maintain various degrees of greater distance between ourselves and others depending on the amount of confidence we have in the other” (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989: 335). The goal of this task is to conduct exploratory, heuristic research to establish a new subproject that – based on a corpus of video data – will investigate various forms of human spatial behaviour cross-culturally.

Abstract

This paper presents a project which tests the hypothesis of the universality of facial expressions of emotions crossculturally and crosslinguistically. First results are presented which contradict the hypothesis.

Abstract

This entry takes an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic pragmatics. It discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social, and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture-specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. The entry discusses core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual communication, phatic communion, linguistic relativity, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. It takes a transdisciplinary view of the field, showing that linguistic pragmatics has its predecessors in other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, ethology, ethnology, and sociology.

Abstract

A new sign language has been created by deaf Nicaraguans over the past 25 years, providing an opportunity to observe the inception of universal hallmarks of language. We found that in their initial creation of the language, children analyzed complex events into basic elements and sequenced these elements into hierarchically structured expressions according to principles not observed in gestures accompanying speech in the surrounding language. Successive cohorts of learners extended this procedure, transforming Nicaraguan signing from its early gestural form into a linguistic system. We propose that this early segmentation and recombination reflect mechanisms with which children learn, and thereby perpetuate, language. Thus, children naturally possess learning abilities capable of giving language its fundamental structure.