Publications

Abstract

Farine and Aplin (1) question the validity of our study reporting group-specific social dynamics in chimpanzees (2). As alternative to our approach, Farine and Aplin advance a “prenetwork permutation” methodology that tests against random assortment (3). We appreciate Farine and Aplin’s interest and applied their suggested approaches to our data. The new analyses revealed highly similar results to those of our initial approach. We further dispel Farine and Aplin’s critique by outlining its incompatibility to our study system, methodology, and analysis.First, when we apply the suggested prenetwork permutation to our proximity dataset, we again find significant population-level differences in association rates, while controlling for population size [as derived from Farine and Aplin’s script (4); original result, P < 0.0001; results including prenetwork permutation, P < 0.0001]. Furthermore, when we … ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: ejcvanleeuwen{at}gmail.com.

Abstract

Atypical visual segmentation, affecting object perception, might contribute to face processing problems in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The current study investigated impairments in visual segmentation of faces in ASD. Thirty participants (ASD: 16; Control: 14) viewed texture-defined faces, houses, and homogeneous images, while electroencephalographic and behavioral responses were recorded. The ASD group showed slower face-segmentation related brain activity and longer segmentation reaction times than the control group, but no difference in house-segmentation related activity or behavioral performance. Furthermore, individual differences in face-segmentation but not house-segmentation correlated with score on the Autism Quotient. Segmentation is thus selectively impaired for faces in ASD, and relates to the degree of ASD traits. Face segmentation relates to recurrent connectivity from the fusiform face area (FFA) to the visual cortex. These findings thus suggest that atypical connectivity from the FFA might contribute to delayed face processing in ASD.

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of the different status that typology has in American linguistics as opposed to European linguistics. The historical roots of the difference lie in both structural and generative linguistics, in the contrasts between post-Bloomfieldian structuralism in the US vs. Praguean structuralism in Europe, and in the extent of the influence of generative grammar on the two continents.

Abstract

The efficiency of neuronal information transfer in activated brain networks may affect behavioral performance.
Gamma-band synchronization has been proposed to be a mechanism that facilitates neuronal processing of
behaviorally relevant stimuli. In line with this, it has been shown that strong gamma-band activity in visual
cortical areas leads to faster responses to a visual go cue. We investigated whether there are directly observable
consequences of trial-by-trial fluctuations in non-invasively observed gamma-band activity on the neuronal
response. Specifically, we hypothesized that the amplitude of the visual evoked response to a go cue can be
predicted by gamma power in the visual system, in the window preceding the evoked response. Thirty-three
human subjects (22 female) performed a visual speeded response task while their magnetoencephalogram
(MEG) was recorded. The participants had to respond to a pattern reversal of a concentric moving grating. We
estimated single trial stimulus-induced visual cortical gamma power, and correlated this with the estimated single
trial amplitude of the most prominent event-related field (ERF) peak within the first 100 ms after the pattern
reversal. In parieto-occipital cortical areas, the amplitude of the ERF correlated positively with gamma power, and
correlated negatively with reaction times. No effects were observed for the alpha and beta frequency bands,
despite clear stimulus onset induced modulation at those frequencies. These results support a mechanistic model,
in which gamma-band synchronization enhances the neuronal gain to relevant visual input, thus leading to more
efficient downstream processing and to faster responses.

Abstract

In lexical development, the specificity of phonological representations is important. The ability to build phonologically specific lexical representations predicts the number of words a child knows (vocabulary breadth), but it is not clear if it also fosters how well words are known (vocabulary depth). Sixty-six children were studied in kindergarten (age 5;7) and first grade (age 6;8). The predictive value of the ability to learn phonologically similar new words, phoneme discrimination ability, and phonological awareness on vocabulary breadth and depth were assessed using hierarchical regression. Word learning explained unique variance in kindergarten and first-grade vocabulary depth, over the other phonological factors. It did not explain unique variance in vocabulary breadth. Furthermore, even after controlling for kindergarten vocabulary breadth, kindergarten word learning still explained unique variance in first-grade vocabulary depth. Skill in learning phonologically similar words appears to predict knowledge children have about what words mean.

Abstract

In sentence production, grammatical advance planning scope depends on contextual factors (e.g., time pressure), linguistic factors (e.g., ease of structural processing), and cognitive factors (e.g., production speed). The present study tests the influence of the availability of multiple syntactic alternatives (i.e., syntactic flexibility) on the scope of advance planning during the recall of Dutch dative phrases. We manipulated syntactic flexibility by using verbs with a strong bias or a weak bias toward one structural alternative in sentence frames accepting both verbs (e.g., strong/weak bias: De ober schotelt/serveert de klant de maaltijd [voor] “The waiter dishes out/serves the customer the meal”). To assess lexical planning scope, we varied the frequency of the first post-verbal noun (N1, Experiment 1) or the second post-verbal noun (N2, Experiment 2). In each experiment, 36 speakers produced the verb phrases in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. On each trial, they read a sentence presented one word at a time, performed a short distractor task, and then saw a sentence preamble (e.g., De ober…) which they had to complete to form the presented sentence. Onset latencies were compared using linear mixed effects models. N1 frequency did not produce any effects. N2 frequency only affected sentence onsets in the weak verb bias condition and especially in slow speakers. These findings highlight the dependency of planning scope during sentence recall on the grammatical properties of the verb and the frequency of post-verbal nouns. Implications for utterance planning in everyday speech are discussed.

Abstract

This study examines the prosody of focus in the Spanish of 16 Quechua-Spanish bilinguals near Cusco, Peru. Data come from a dialogue game that involved noun phrases consisting of a noun and an adjective. The questions in the game elicited broad focus, contrastive focus on the noun (non-final position) and contrastive focus on the adjective (final position). The phonetic analysis in Praat included peak alignment, peak height, local range and duration of the stressed syllable and word. The study revealed that Cusco Spanish differs from other Spanish varieties. In other Spanish varieties, contrastive focus is marked by early peak alignment, whereas broad focus involves a late peak on the non-final word. Furthermore, in other Spanish varieties contrastive focus is indicated by a higher F0 maximum, a wider local range, post-focal pitch reduction and a longer duration of the stressed syllable/word. For Cusco Spanish no phonological contrast between early and late peak alignment was found. However, peak alignment on the adjective in contrastive focus was significantly earlier than in the two other contexts. For women, similar results were found for the noun in contrastive focus. An additional prominence-lending feature marking contrastive focus concerned duration of the final word. Furthermore, the results revealed a higher F0 maximum for broad focus than for contrastive focus. The findings suggest a prosodic change, which is possibly due to contact with Quechua. The study contributes to research on information structure, prosody and contact-induced language change.

Abstract

Over the past ten years Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have evolved from a highly specialised niche technology to one that is used daily by a wide range of people. This article describes geographic browsing of language archives, which provides intuitive exploration of resources and permits integration and correlation of information from different archives, even across different research disciplines. In order to facilitate both exploration and management of resources, digital language archives are organised according to criteria such as language name, research topic, project information, researchers, countries, or genres. A set of such criteria can form a tree-like classification scheme, such as in the MPI-IMDI archive, which in turn forms the main method of searching and querying the archive resources. Searching for information can be difficult for occasional users because effective use of these search-fields typically requires specialised knowledge. We assume that many non-specialist users of language resources will search by language name, language family, or geographic area, so that geographic navigation would offer a very powerful search method. We also assume that such users are familiar with maps, and that geographic browsing is more intuitive than browsing classification trees, so these users would prefer to start with a large scale map and then zoom in to find the data that interests them. Therefore, classification trees and geographic maps provide complementary methods for accessing language resources to meet the needs of different user groups. We selected Google Earth (GE) as a geographic browsing system and overlaid it with linguistic information. GE was chosen because it is available via the web, it has good navigation controls, it is familiar to many web users, and because the overlaid linguistic information can be formulated in XML, making it comparatively easy to interchange with other geographic systems.

Abstract

To test the BIA+ and Multilink models’ accounts of how bilinguals process words with different degrees of cross-linguistic orthographic and semantic overlap, we conducted two experiments manipulating stimulus list composition. Dutch-English late bilinguals performed two English lexical decision tasks including the same set of cognates, interlingual homographs, English control words, and pseudowords. In one task, half of the pseudowords were replaced with Dutch words, requiring a ‘no’ response. This change from pure to mixed language list context was found to turn cognate facilitation effects into inhibition. Relative to control words, larger effects were found for cognate pairs with an increasing cross-linguistic form overlap. Identical cognates produced considerably larger effects than non-identical cognates, supporting their special status in the bilingual lexicon. Response patterns for different item types are accounted for in terms of the items’ lexical representation and their binding to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses in pure vs mixed lexical decision.

Abstract

Research into strategies that can combat episodic memory decline in healthy older adults has gained widespread attention over the years. Evidence suggests that a short period of rest immediately after learning can enhance memory consolidation, as compared to engaging in cognitive tasks. However, a recent study in younger adults has shown that post-encoding engagement in a working memory task leads to the same degree of memory consolidation as from post-encoding rest. Here, we tested whether this finding can be extended to older adults. Using a delayed recognition test, we compared the memory consolidation of word–picture pairs learned prior to 9 min of rest or a 2-Back working memory task, and examined its relationship with executive functioning and mindwandering propensity. Our results show that (1) similar to younger adults, memory for the word–picture associations did not differ when encoding was followed by post-encoding rest or 2-Back task and (2) older adults with higher mindwandering propensity retained more word–picture associations encoded prior to rest relative to those encoded prior to the 2-Back task, whereas participants with lower mindwandering propensity had better memory performance for the pairs encoded prior to the 2-Back task. Overall, our results indicate that the degree of episodic memory consolidation during both active and passive post-encoding periods depends on individual mindwandering tendency.

Abstract

The generation of subject–verb agreement is a central component of grammatical encoding. It is sensitive to conceptual and grammatical influences, but the interplay between these factors is still not fully understood. We investigate how semantic integration of the subject noun phrase (‘the secretary of/with the governor’) and the Local Noun Number (‘the secretary with the governor/governors’) affect the ease of selecting the verb form. Two hypotheses are assessed: according to the notional hypothesis, integration encourages the assignment of the singular notional number to the noun phrase and facilitates the choice of the singular verb form. According to the lexical interference hypothesis, integration strengthens the competition between nouns within the subject phrase, making it harder to select the verb form when the nouns mismatch in number. In two experiments, adult speakers of Dutch completed spoken preambles (Experiment 1) or selected appropriate verb forms (Experiment 2). Results showed facilitatory effects of semantic integration (fewer errors and faster responses with increasing integration). These effects did not interact with the effects of the Local Noun Number (slower response times and higher error rates for mismatching than for matching noun numbers). The findings thus support the notional hypothesis and a model of agreement where conceptual and lexical factors independently contribute to the determination of the number of the subject noun phrase and, ultimately, the verb.

Abstract

Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1) Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s)); and (2) this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material. We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars) and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue) with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple materials.

Abstract

An ongoing debate in the speech production literature suggests that the initial building block to build up speech sounds differs between languages. That is, Germanic languages are suggested to use the phoneme, but Japanese and Chinese are proposed to use the mora or syllable, respectively. Several studies investigated this matter from a chronometric perspective (i.e., RTs and accuracy). However, a less attention has been paid to the actual acoustic utterances. The current study investigated the verbal responses of two Japanese-English bilingual groups of different proficiency levels (i.e., high and low) when naming English words and found that the presence or absence of vowel epenthesis depended on proficiency. The results indicate that: (1) English word pronunciation by low-proficient Japanese English bilinguals is likely based on their L1 (Japanese) building block and (2) that future studies would benefit from analyzing the acoustic data as well when making inferences from chronometric data.

Abstract

It has been shown that in Germanic languages (e.g. English, Dutch) phonemes are the primary (or proximate) planning units during the early stages of phonological encoding. Contrastingly, in Chinese and Japanese the phoneme does not seem to play an important role but rather the syllable (Chinese) and mora (Japanese) are essential. However, despite the lack of behavioral evidence, neurocorrelational studies in Chinese suggested that electrophysiological brain responses (i.e. preceding overt responses) may indicate some significance for the phoneme. We investigated this matter in Japanese and our data shows that unlike in Chinese (for which the literature shows mixed effects), in Japanese both the behavioral and neurocorrelational data indicate an important role only for the mora (and not the phoneme) during the early stages of phonological encoding.

Abstract

Language is a multi-faceted form of communication. It is not until recently though that language research moved on from simple stimuli and protocols toward a more ecologically valid approach, namely “shifting” from words and simple sentences to stories with varying degrees of contextual complexity. While much needed, the use of ecologically valid stimuli such as stories should also be explored in interactive rather than individualistic experimental settings leading the way to an interactive neuroscience of language. Indeed, mounting evidence suggests that cognitive processes and their underlying neural activity significantly differ between social and individual experiences. We aim at reviewing evidence, which indicates that the characteristics of linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts may significantly influence communication–including spoken language comprehension. In doing so, we provide evidence on the use of new paradigms and methodological advancements that may enable the study of complex language features in a truly interactive, ecological way.

Abstract

In a multi- and inter-cultural world, we daily encounter new words. Adult learners often rely on a situational context to learn and understand a new word's meaning. Here, we explored whether interactive learning facilitates word learning by directing the learner's attention to a correct new word referent when a situational context is non-informative. We predicted larger involvement of inferior parietal, frontal, and visual cortices involved in visuo-spatial attention during interactive learning. We scanned participants while they played a visual word learning game with and without a social partner. As hypothesized, interactive learning enhanced activity in the right Supramarginal Gyrus when the situational context provided little information. Activity in the right Inferior Frontal Gyrus during interactive learning correlated with post-scanning behavioral test scores, while these scores correlated with activity in the Fusiform Gyrus in the non-interactive group. These results indicate that attention is involved in interactive learning when the situational context is minimal and suggest that individual learning processes may be largely different from interactive ones. As such, they challenge the ecological validity of what we know about individual learning and advocate the exploration of interactive learning in naturalistic settings.

Abstract

Introduction

The atlas by Heinrich Sachs (1892) provided an accurate description of the intralobar fibres of the occipital lobe, with a detailed representation of the short associative tracts connecting different parts of the lobe. Little attention has been paid to the work of Sachs since its publication. In this study, we present the results of the dissection of three hemispheres, performed according to the Klingler technique (1935). Our anatomical findings are then compared to the original description of the occipital fibres anatomy as detailed by Sachs.
Methods

Three hemispheres were dissected according to Klingler's technique (1935). Specimens were fixed in 10% formalin and frozen at −15 °C for two weeks. After defreezing, dissection of the white matter fibres was performed with blunt dissectors. Coronal sections were obtained according to the cuts originally described by Sachs. In addition, medial to lateral and lateral to medial dissection of the white matter of the occipital lobe was also performed.

Results

A network of short association fibres was demonstrated in the occipital lobe, comprising intralobar association fibres and U-shaped fibres, which are connecting neighbouring gyri. Lateral to the ventricles, longitudinal fibres of the stratum sagittale were also identified that are arranged as external and internal layers. Fibres of the forceps major were also found to be in direct contact with the ventricular walls. We were able to replicate all tracts originally described by Sachs. In addition, a previously unrecognised tract, connecting the cuneus to the lingual gyrus, was identified. This tract corresponds to the “sledge runner”, described in tractography studies.

Conclusions

The occipital lobe shows a rich network of intralobar fibres, arranged around the ventricular wall. Good concordance was observed between the Klingler dissection technique and the histological preparations of Sachs.

Abstract

Congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG) are a group of clinically and genetically heterogeneous metabolic disorders. Over 150 CDG types have been described. Most CDG types are ultrarare disorders. CDG types affecting N-glycosylation are the most common type of CDG with emerging therapeutic possibilities. This review is an update on the available therapies for disorders affecting the N-linked glycosylation pathway. In the first part of the review, we highlight the clinical presentation, general principles of management, and disease-specific therapies for N-linked glycosylation CDG types, organized by organ system. The second part of the review focuses on the therapeutic strategies currently available and under development. We summarize the successful (pre-) clinical application of nutritional therapies, transplantation, activated sugars, gene therapy, and pharmacological chaperones and outline the anticipated expansion of the therapeutic possibilities in CDG. We aim to provide a comprehensive update on the treatable aspects of CDG types involving N-linked glycosylation, with particular emphasis on disease-specific treatment options for the involved organ systems; call for natural history studies; and present current and future therapeutic strategies for CDG.

Abstract

Interpreting polygenic overlap between ADHD and both literacy-related and language-related impairments is challenging as genetic associations might be influenced by indirectly shared genetic factors. Here, we investigate genetic overlap between polygenic ADHD risk and multiple literacy-related and/or language-related abilities (LRAs), as assessed in UK children (N ≤ 5919), accounting for genetically predictable educational attainment (EA). Genome-wide summary statistics on clinical ADHD and years of schooling were obtained from large consortia (N ≤ 326,041). Our findings show that ADHD-polygenic scores (ADHD-PGS) were inversely associated with LRAs in ALSPAC, most consistently with reading-related abilities, and explained ≤1.6% phenotypic variation. These polygenic links were then dissected into both ADHD effects shared with and independent of EA, using multivariable regressions (MVR). Conditional on EA, polygenic ADHD risk remained associated with multiple reading and/or spelling abilities, phonemic awareness and verbal intelligence, but not listening comprehension and non-word repetition. Using conservative ADHD-instruments (P-threshold < 5 × 10−8), this corresponded, for example, to a 0.35 SD decrease in pooled reading performance per log-odds in ADHD-liability (P = 9.2 × 10−5). Using subthreshold ADHD-instruments (P-threshold < 0.0015), these effects became smaller, with a 0.03 SD decrease per log-odds in ADHD risk (P = 1.4 × 10−6), although the predictive accuracy increased. However, polygenic ADHD-effects shared with EA were of equal strength and at least equal magnitude compared to those independent of EA, for all LRAs studied, and detectable using subthreshold instruments. Thus, ADHD-related polygenic links with LRAs are to a large extent due to shared genetic effects with EA, although there is evidence for an ADHD-specific association profile, independent of EA, that primarily involves literacy-related impairments.

Abstract

There are many different syntactic constructions that languages can use to encode motion events. In recent decades, great advances have been made in the description and study of these syntactic constructions from languages spoken around the world (Talmy 1985, 1991, Slobin 1996, 2004). However, relatively little attention has been paid to historical change in these systems (exceptions are Vincent 1999, Dufresne, Dupuis & Tremblay 2003, Kopecka 2006 and Peyraube 2006). In this article, diachronic change of motion event encoding systems in Indo-European is investigated using the available historical–comparative data and phylogenetic comparative methods adopted from evolutionary biology. It is argued that Proto-Indo-European was not satellite-framed, as suggested by Talmy (2007) and Acedo Matellán and Mateu (2008), but had a mixed motion event encoding system, as is suggested by the available historical–comparative data

Abstract

There have been opposing views on the possibility of a relationship between motion event encoding and the size of the path verb lexicon. Özçalışkan (2004) has proposed that verb-framed and satellite-framed languages should approximately have the same number of path verbs, whereas a review of some of the literature suggests that verb-framed languages typically have a bigger path verb lexicon than satelliteframed languages. In this article I demonstrate that evidence for this correlation can be found through phylogenetic comparative analysis of parallel corpus data from twenty Indo-European languages.

Abstract

The comparative approach can provide insight into the evolution of human speech, language and social communication by studying relevant traits in animal systems. Bats are emerging as a model system with great potential to shed light on these processes given their learned vocalizations, close social interactions, and mammalian brains and physiology. A recent framework outlined the multiple levels of investigation needed to understand vocal learning across a broad range of non-human species, including cetaceans, pinnipeds, elephants, birds and bats. Here, we apply this framework to the current state-of-the-art in bat research. This encompasses our understanding of the abilities bats have displayed for vocal learning, what is known about the timing and social structure needed for such learning, and current knowledge about the prevalence of the trait across the order. It also addresses the biology (vocal tract morphology, neurobiology and genetics) and evolution of this trait. We conclude by highlighting some key questions that should be answered to advance our understanding of the biological encoding and evolution of speech and spoken communication. This article is part of the theme issue 'What can animal communication teach us about human language?'

Abstract

The fruitless gene (fru) encodes a set of transcription factors (Fru) that display sexually dimorphic gene expression in the brain of the fruit-fly;Drosophila melanogaster . Behavioural studies have demonstrated that fru isessentialforcourtshipbehaviour inthemale flyandisthoughttoact bydirectingthe development of sex-specific neural circuitry that encodes this innate behavioural response. This study reports the identification of direct regulatory targets of the sexually dimorphic isoforms of the Fru protein using an in vitro model system. Genome wide binding sites were identified for each of the isoforms using Chromatin Immunoprecipitation coupled to deep sequencing (ChIP-Seq). Putative target genes were found to be involved in processes such as neurotransmission, ion-channel signalling and neuron development. All isoforms showed asignificant bias towards genes located on the X-chromosome,which may reflect a specific role for Fru in regulating x-linked genes. Taken together with expression analysis carried out in Fru positive neurons specifically isolated from the male fly brain, it appears that the Fru protein acts as a transcriptional activator. Understanding the regulatory cascades induced by Fru will help to shed light on the molecular mechanisms that are important for specification of neural circuitry underlying complex behaviour

Abstract

We previously discovered that mutations of the human FOXP2 gene cause a monogenic communication disorder, primarily characterized by difficulties in learning to make coordinated sequences of articulatory gestures that underlie speech. Affected people have deficits in expressive and receptive linguistic processing and display structural and/or functional abnormalities in cortical and subcortical brain regions. FOXP2 provides a unique window into neural processes involved in speech and language. In particular, its role as a transcription factor gene offers powerful functional genomic routes for dissecting critical neurogenetic mechanisms. Here, we employ chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with promoter microarrays (ChIP-chip) to successfully identify genomic sites that are directly bound by FOXP2 protein in native chromatin of human neuron-like cells. We focus on a subset of downstream targets identified by this approach, showing that altered FOXP2 levels yield significant changes in expression in our cell-based models and that FOXP2 binds in a specific manner to consensus sites within the relevant promoters. Moreover, we demonstrate significant quantitative differences in target expression in embryonic brains of mutant mice, mediated by specific in vivo Foxp2-chromatin interactions. This work represents the first identification and in vivo verification of neural targets regulated by FOXP2. Our data indicate that FOXP2 has dual functionality, acting to either repress or activate gene expression at occupied promoters. The identified targets suggest roles in modulating synaptic plasticity, neurodevelopment, neurotransmission, and axon guidance and represent novel entry points into in vivo pathways that may be disturbed in speech and language disorders.

Abstract

Strategies used in artificial grammar learning can shed light into the abilities of different species to extract regularities from the environment. In the A(X)nB rule, A and B items are linked, but assigned to different positional categories and separated by distractor items. Open questions are how widespread is the ability to extract positional regularities from A(X)nB patterns, which strategies are used to encode positional regularities and whether individuals exhibit preferences for absolute or relative position encoding. We used visual arrays to investigate whether cotton-top tamarins (Saguinusoedipus) can learn this rule and which strategies they use. After training on a subset of exemplars, two of the tested monkeys successfully generalized to novel combinations. These tamarins discriminated between categories of tokens with different properties (A, B, X) and detected a positional relationship between non-adjacent items even in the presence of novel distractors. The pattern of errors revealed that successful subjects used visual similarity with training stimuli to solve the task and that successful tamarins extracted the relative position of As and Bs rather than their absolute position, similarly to what has been observed in other species. Relative position encoding appears to be favoured in different tasks and taxa. Generalization, though, was incomplete, since we observed a failure with items that during training had always been presented in reinforced arrays, showing the limitations in grasping the underlying positional rule. These results suggest the use of local strategies in the extraction of positional rules in cotton-top tamarins.

Abstract

In bonobos, strong bonds have been documented between unrelated females and between mothers
and their adult sons, which can have important fitness benefits. Often age, sex or kinship similarity
have been used to explain social bond strength variation. Recent studies in other species also stress
the importance of personality, but this relationship remains to be investigated in bonobos. We used
behavioral observations on 39 adult and adolescent bonobos housed in 5 European zoos to study the
role of personality similarity in dyadic relationship quality. Dimension reduction analyses on individual
and dyadic behavioral scores revealed multidimensional personality (Sociability, Openness, Boldness,
Activity) and relationship quality components (value, compatibility). We show that, aside from
relatedness and sex combination of the dyad, relationship quality is also associated with personality
similarity of both partners. While similarity in Sociability resulted in higher relationship values, lower
relationship compatibility was found between bonobos with similar Activity scores. The results of this
study expand our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social bond formation in anthropoid
apes. In addition, we suggest that future studies in closely related species like chimpanzees should
implement identical methods for assessing bond strength to shed further light on the evolution of this
phenomenon.

Abstract

A controversial issue in psycholinguistics is the degree to which speakers employ audience design during language production. Hypothesising that a consideration of the listener’s needs is particularly relevant when the listener is under cognitive load, we had speakers describe objects for a listener performing an easy or a difficult simulated driving task. We predicted that speakers would introduce more redundancy in their descriptions in the difficult driving task, thereby accommodating the listener’s reduced cognitive capacity. The results showed that speakers did not adapt their descriptions to a change in the listener’s cognitive load. However, speakers who had experienced the driving task themselves before and who were presented with the difficult driving task first were more redundant than other speakers. These findings may suggest that speakers only consider the listener’s needs in the presence of strong enough cues, and do not update their beliefs about these needs during the task.

Abstract

We investigated whether the language of instruction (Dutch or English) influenced the study success of 614 Dutch and German first-year psychology students in the Netherlands. The Dutch students who were instructed in Dutch studied in their native language (L1), the other students in a second language (L2). In addition, only the Dutch students studied in their home country. Both these variables could potentially influence study success, operationalised as the number of European Credits (ECs) the students obtained, their grades, and drop-out rates. The L1 group outperformed the three L2 groups with respect to grades, but there were no significant differences in ECs and drop-out rates (although descriptively, the L1 group still performed best). In conclusion, this study shows an advantage of studying in the L1 when it comes to grades, and thereby contributes to the current debate in the Dutch media regarding the desirability of offering degrees taught in English.

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of spatial deictic structures in Kata Kolok, a sign language which is indigenous to a Balinese village community. Sociolinguistic surveys and lexicographic comparisons have indicated that Kata Kolok is unrelated to the signing varieties in other parts of Bali and should be considered a sign language isolate as such. Kata Kolok emerged five generations ago and has been in intimate contact with spoken Balinese from its incipience. The findings from this paper suggest that this cross-modal contact has led to an absolute construction of the signing space, which is radically different in comparison to spatial deixis in other sign languages. Furthermore, Kata Kolok does not seem to have a class of true toponyms, but rather deploys deictic proto-toponyms. The Kata Kolok system on the whole does not exhibit any related linguistic forms or direct calques from spoken Balinese, and this suggests that the conceptual overlap between these two languages may have been facilitated by shared cultural practices as well as gestural communication rather than direct borrowings. Ultimately, this analysis challenges the very notion of a sign language isolate and suggests that Kata Kolok and other emergent signing varieties should be considered in light of the broader semiotic context in which they have evolved.

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe investigated to what extent L2 word learning in spoken interaction takes place when learners are unaware of taking part in a language learning study. Using a novel paradigm for approximating naturalistic (but not necessarily non-intentional) L2 learning in the lab, German learners of Dutch were led to believe that the study concerned judging the price of objects. Dutch target words (object names) were selected individually such that these words were unknown to the respective participant. Then, in a dialogue-like task with the experimenter, the participants were first exposed to and then tested on the target words. In comparison to a no-input control group, we observed a clear learning effect especially from the first two exposures, and better learning for cognates than for non-cognates, but no modulating effect of the exposure-production lag. Moreover, some of the acquired knowledge persisted over a six-month period.

Abstract

Background Various CACNA1A missense mutations cause familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 (FHM1), a rare monogenic subtype of migraine with aura. FHM1 mutation R192Q is associated with pure hemiplegic migraine, whereas the S218L mutation causes hemiplegic migraine, cerebellar ataxia, seizures, and mild head trauma-induced brain edema. Transgenic knock-in (KI) migraine mouse models were generated that carried either the FHM1 R192Q or the S218L mutation and were shown to exhibit increased CaV2.1 channel activity. Here we investigated their cerebellar and caudal cortical transcriptome. Methods Caudal cortical and cerebellar RNA expression profiles from mutant and wild-type mice were studied using microarrays. Respective brain regions were selected based on their relevance to migraine aura and ataxia. Relevant expression changes were further investigated at RNA and protein level by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and/or immunohistochemistry, respectively. Results Expression differences in the cerebellum were most pronounced in S218L mice. Particularly, tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker of delayed cerebellar maturation, appeared strongly upregulated in S218L cerebella. In contrast, only minimal expression differences were observed in the caudal cortex of either mutant mice strain. Conclusion Despite pronounced consequences of migraine gene mutations at the neurobiological level, changes in cortical RNA expression in FHM1 migraine mice compared to wild-type are modest. In contrast, pronounced RNA expression changes are seen in the cerebellum of S218L mice and may explain their cerebellar ataxia phenotype

Abstract

Genome-wide association study results have yielded evidence for the association of common genetic variants with crude measures of completed educational attainment in adults. Whilst informative, these results do not inform as to the mechanism of these effects or their presence at earlier ages and where educational performance is more routinely and more precisely assessed. Single nucleotide polymorphisms exhibiting genome-wide significant associations with adult educational attainment were combined to derive an unweighted allele score in 5,979 and 6,145 young participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children with key stage 3 national curriculum test results (SATS results) available at age 13 to 14 years in English and mathematics respectively. Standardised (z-scored) results for English and mathematics showed an expected relationship with sex, with girls exhibiting an advantage over boys in English (0.433 SD (95%CI 0.395, 0.470), p<10-10) with more similar results (though in the opposite direction) in mathematics (0.042 SD (95%CI 0.004, 0.080), p = 0.030). Each additional adult educational attainment increasing allele was associated with 0.041 SD (95%CI 0.020, 0.063), p = 1.79×10-04 and 0.028 SD (95%CI 0.007, 0.050), p = 0.01 increases in standardised SATS score for English and mathematics respectively. Educational attainment is a complex multifactorial behavioural trait which has not had heritable contributions to it fully characterised. We were able to apply the results from a large study of adult educational attainment to a study of child exam performance marking events in the process of learning rather than realised adult end product. Our results support evidence for common, small genetic contributions to educational attainment, but also emphasise the likely lifecourse nature of this genetic effect. Results here also, by an alternative route, suggest that existing methods for child examination are able to recognise early life variation likely to be related to ultimate educational attainment.

Abstract

Twenty American English listeners identified gated fragments of all 2288 possible English within-word and cross-word diphones, providing a total of 538 560 phoneme categorizations. The results show orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal and provide a view of where information about segments occurs in time. Information locus depends on each speech sound’s identity and phonological features. Affricates and diphthongs have highly localized information so that listeners’ perceptual accuracy rises during a confined time range. Stops and sonorants have more distributed and gradually appearing information. The identity and phonological features (e.g., vowel vs consonant) of the neighboring segment also influences when acoustic information about a segment is available. Stressed vowels are perceived significantly more accurately than unstressed vowels, but this effect is greater for lax vowels than for tense vowels or diphthongs. The dataset charts the availability of perceptual cues to segment identity across time for the full phoneme repertoire of English in all attested phonetic contexts.

Abstract

Background

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a new, non-invasive technique being investigated as an intervention for a variety of clinical disorders, including epilepsy and depression. It is thought to exert its therapeutic effect by increasing central norepinephrine (NE) activity, but the evidence supporting this notion is limited.
Objective

In order to test for an impact of tVNS on psychophysiological and hormonal indices of noradrenergic function, we applied tVNS in concert with assessment of salivary alpha amylase (SAA) and cortisol, pupil size, and electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings.
Methods

Across three experiments, we applied real and sham tVNS to 61 healthy participants while they performed a set of simple stimulus-discrimination tasks. Before and after the task, as well as during one break, participants provided saliva samples and had their pupil size recorded. EEG was recorded throughout the task. The target for tVNS was the cymba conchae, which is heavily innervated by the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. Sham stimulation was applied to the ear lobe.
Results

P3 amplitude was not affected by tVNS (Experiment 1A: N=24; Experiment 1B: N=20; Bayes factor supporting null model=4.53), nor was pupil size (Experiment 2: N=16; interaction of treatment and time: p=0.79). However, tVNS increased SAA (Experiments 1A and 2: N=25) and attenuated the decline of salivary cortisol compared to sham (Experiment 2: N=17), as indicated by significant interactions involving treatment and time (p=.023 and p=.040, respectively).
Conclusion

These findings suggest that tVNS modulates hormonal indices but not psychophysiological indices of noradrenergic function.

Abstract

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line thematic role assignment during sentence–picture matching in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were presented with a picture that was followed by an auditory sentence. The sentence either matched the picture or mismatched the visual information depicted. Sentences differed in complexity, and ranged from simple active semantically irreversible sentences to passive semantically reversible sentences. ERPs were recorded while subjects were engaged in sentence–picture matching. In addition, reaction time and accuracy were measured. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N = 10), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N = 8), and healthy aged-matched controls (N = 15). The results of this study showed that, in neurologically unimpaired individuals, thematic role assignment in the context of visual information was an immediate process. This in contrast to patients with Broca's aphasia who demonstrated no signs of on-line sensitivity to the picture–sentence mismatches. The syntactic contribution to the thematic role assignment process seemed to be diminished given the reduction and even absence of P600 effects. Nevertheless, Broca patients showed some off-line behavioral sensitivity to the sentence–picture mismatches. The long response latencies of Broca's aphasics make it likely that off-line response strategies were used.

Abstract

Margulies et al. (2016) demonstrated the existence of at least five independent functional connectivity gradients in the human brain. However, it is unclear how these functional gradients might link to anatomy. The dual origin theory proposes that differences in cortical cytoarchitecture originate from two trends of progressive differentiation between the different layers of the cortex, referred to as the hippocampocentric and olfactocentric systems. When conceptualising the functional connectivity gradients within the evolutionary framework of the Dual Origin theory, the first gradient likely represents the hippocampocentric system anatomically. Here we expand on this concept and demonstrate that the fifth gradient likely links to the olfactocentric system. We describe the anatomy of the latter as well as the evidence to support this hypothesis. Together, the first and fifth gradients might help to model the Dual Origin theory of the human brain and inform brain models and pathologies.

Abstract

New linguistic information must be integrated into our existing language system. Using a novel experimental task that incorporates a syntactic priming paradigm into artificial language learning, we investigated how new grammatical regularities and words are learned. This innovation allowed us to control the language input the learner received, while the syntactic priming paradigm provided insight into the nature of the underlying syntactic processing machinery. The results of the present study pointed to facilitatory syntactic processing effects within the first days of learning: Syntactic and lexical priming effects revealed participants’ sensitivity to both novel words and word orders. This suggested that novel syntactic structures and their meaning (form–function mapping) can be acquired rapidly through incidental learning. More generally, our study indicated similar mechanisms for learning and processing in both artificial and natural languages, with implications for the relationship between first and second language learning.

Abstract

Introduction
Words are not processed in isolation but in rich contexts that are used to modulate and facilitate language comprehension. Here, we investigate distinct neural networks underlying two types of contexts, the current linguistic environment and verb‐based syntactic preferences.

Methods
We had two main manipulations. The first was the current linguistic environment, where the relative frequencies of two syntactic structures (prepositional object [PO] and double‐object [DO]) would either follow everyday linguistic experience or not. The second concerned the preference toward one or the other structure depending on the verb; learned in everyday language use and stored in memory. German participants were reading PO and DO sentences in German while brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results
First, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) showed a pattern of activation that integrated the current linguistic environment with everyday linguistic experience. When the input did not match everyday experience, the unexpected frequent structure showed higher activation in the ACC than the other conditions and more connectivity from the ACC to posterior parts of the language network. Second, verb‐based surprisal of seeing a structure given a verb (PO verb preference but DO structure presentation) resulted, within the language network (left inferior frontal and left middle/superior temporal gyrus) and the precuneus, in increased activation compared to a predictable verb‐structure pairing.

Conclusion
In conclusion, (1) beyond the canonical language network, brain areas engaged in prediction and error signaling, such as the ACC, might use the statistics of syntactic structures to modulate language processing, (2) the language network is directly engaged in processing verb preferences. These two networks show distinct influences on sentence processing.

Abstract

Two cross-modal priming experiments examined two questions about word recognition in foreign-accented speech: Does accent adaptation occur only for genuine accents markers, and does adaptation depend on language experience? We compared recognition of words spoken with canonical, genuinely-accented and arbitrarily-accented vowels. In Experiment 1, an Italian speaker pronounced vowels in English prime words canonically, or by lengthening /ɪ/ as in a genuine Italian accent (*/tri:k/ for trick), or by arbitrarily shortening /i:/ (*/trɪt/ for treat). Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words showed different priming effects in three listener groups. Monolingual native English listeners recognized variants with lengthened but not shortened vowels. Bilingual nonnative Italian-English listeners, who could not reliably distinguish vowel length, recognized both variants. Bilingual nonnative Dutch-English listeners also recognized both variants. In Experiment 2, bilingual Dutch-English listeners recognized Dutch words with genuinely- and arbitrarily-accented vowels (spoken by a native Italian with lengthened and shortened vowels respectively), but recognized words with canonical vowels more easily than words with accented vowels. These results suggest that adaptation to genuine accent markers arises for monolingual and bilingual listeners alike and can occur in native and nonnative languages, but that bilinguals can adapt to arbitrary accent markers better than monolinguals.

Abstract

Dichoptic mixtures of equiluminous components of different wavelengths were matched with a binocularly presented "monocular" mixture of appropriate chosen amounts of the same colour components. Stimuli were chosen from the region of 490-630 nm. Although satisfactory colour matches could be obtained, dichoptic mixtures differed from normal mixtures to a considerable extent. Midspectral stimuli tended to be more dominant in the dichoptic mixtures than either short or long wavelength stimuli. An attempt was made to describe the relation between monocular and dichoptic mixtures with one function containing a wavelength variable and an eye dominance parameter.

Abstract

Humans differ widely in their navigational abilities. Studies have shown that self-reports on navigational abilities are good predictors of performance on navigation tasks in real and virtual environments. The caudate nucleus and medial temporal lobe regions have been suggested to subserve different navigational strategies. The ability to use different strategies might underlie navigational ability differences. This study examines the anatomical correlates of self-reported navigational ability in both gray and white matter. Local gray matter volume was compared between a group (N = 134) of good and bad navigators using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), as well as regional volumes. To compare between good and bad navigators, we also measured white matter anatomy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and looked at fractional anisotropy (FA) values. We observed a trend toward higher local GM volume in right anterior parahippocampal/rhinal cortex for good versus bad navigators. Good male navigators showed significantly higher local GM volume in right hippocampus than bad male navigators. Conversely, bad navigators showed increased FA values in the internal capsule, the white matter bundle closest to the caudate nucleus and a trend toward higher local GM volume in the caudate nucleus. Furthermore, caudate nucleus regional volume correlated negatively with navigational ability. These convergent findings across imaging modalities are in line with findings showing that the caudate nucleus and the medial temporal lobes are involved in different wayfinding strategies. Our study is the first to show a link between self-reported large-scale navigational abilities and different measures of brain anatomy.

Abstract

Speech comprehension requires rapid online processing of a continuous acoustic signal to extract structure and meaning. Previous studies on sentence comprehension have found neural correlates of the predictability of a word given its context, as well as of the precision of such a prediction. However, they have focused on single sentences and on particular words in those sentences. Moreover, they compared neural responses to words with low and high predictability, as well as with low and high precision. However, in speech comprehension, a listener hears many successive words whose predictability and precision vary over a large range. Here, we show that cortical activity in different frequency bands tracks word surprisal in continuous natural speech and that this tracking is modulated by precision. We obtain these results through quantifying surprisal and precision from naturalistic speech using a deep neural network and through relating these speech features to EEG responses of human volunteers acquired during auditory story comprehension. We find significant cortical tracking of surprisal at low frequencies, including the delta band as well as in the higher frequency beta and gamma bands, and observe that the tracking is modulated by the precision. Our results pave the way to further investigate the neurobiology of natural speech comprehension.

Abstract

Studies on metacognition have shown that participants can report on their performance on a wide range of perceptual, memory and behavioral tasks. We know little, however, about the ability to report on one's attentional focus. The degree and direction of somatosensory attention can, however, be readily discerned through suppression of alpha band frequencies in EEG/MEG produced by the somatosensory cortex. Such top-down attentional modulations of cortical excitability have been shown to result in better discrimination performance and decreased response times. In this study we asked whether the degree of attentional focus is also accessible for subjective report, and whether such evaluations correspond to the amount of somatosensory alpha activity. In response to auditory cues participants maintained somatosensory attention to either their left or right hand for intervals varying randomly between 5 and 32seconds, while their brain activity was recorded with MEG. Trials were terminated by a probe sound, to which they reported their level of attention on the cued hand right before probe-onset. Using a beamformer approach, we quantified the alpha activity in left and right somatosensory regions, one second before the probe. Alpha activity from contra- and ipsilateral somatosensory cortices for high versus low attention trials were compared. As predicted, the contralateral somatosensory alpha depression correlated with higher reported attentional focus. Finally, alpha activity two to three seconds before the probe-onset was correlated with attentional focus. We conclude that somatosensory attention is indeed accessible to metacognitive awareness.

Abstract

Although generally studied in isolation, language and action often co-occur in everyday life. Here we investigated one particular form of simultaneous language and action, namely speech and gestures that speakers use in everyday communication. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we identified the neural networks involved in the integration of semantic information from speech and gestures. Verbal and/or gestural content could be integrated easily or less easily with the content of the preceding part of speech. Premotor areas involved in action observation (Brodmann area [BA] 6) were found to be specifically modulated by action information "mismatching" to a language context. Importantly, an increase in integration load of both verbal and gestural information into prior speech context activated Broca's area and adjacent cortex (BA 45/47). A classical language area, Broca's area, is not only recruited for language-internal processing but also when action observation is integrated with speech. These findings provide direct evidence that action and language processing share a high-level neural integration system.

Abstract

Co-speech gestures embody a form of manual action that is tightly coupled to the language system. As such, the co-occurrence of speech and co-speech gestures is an excellent example of the interplay between language and action. There are, however, other ways in which language and action can be thought of as closely related. In this paper we will give an overview of studies in cognitive neuroscience that examine the neural underpinnings of links between language and action. Topics include neurocognitive studies of motor representations of speech sounds, action-related language, sign language and co-speech gestures. It will be concluded that there is strong evidence on the interaction between speech and gestures in the brain. This interaction however shares general properties with other domains in which there is interplay between language and action.

Abstract

People organize and convey their thoughts according to narratives. However, neuroscientists are often reluctant to incorporate narrative stimuli into their experiments. We argue that narratives deserve wider adoption in human neuroscience because they tap into the brain’s native machinery for representing the world and provide rich variability for testing hypotheses.

Abstract

Left-handers are often excluded from study cohorts in neuroscience and neurogenetics in order to reduce variance in the data. However, recent investigations have shown that the inclusion or targeted recruitment of left-handers can be informative in studies on a range of topics, such as cerebral lateralization and the genetic underpinning of asymmetrical brain development. Left-handed individuals represent a substantial portion of the human population and therefore left-handedness falls within the normal range of human diversity; thus, it is important to account for this variation in our understanding of brain functioning. We call for neuroscientists and neurogeneticists to recognize the potential of studying this often-discarded group of research subjects.

Abstract

While most people prefer to use their right hand to brush their teeth, throw a ball, or hold a tennis racket, left-handers prefer to use their left hand. This is the case for around 10 per cent of all people. There was a time (not so long ago) when left-handers were stigmatized in Western (and other) communities: it was considered a bad sign if you were left-handed, and left-handed children were often forced to write with their right hand. This is nonsensical: there is nothing wrong with being left-handed, and trying to write with the non-preferred hand is frustrating for almost everybody. As a matter of fact, science can learn from left-handers, and in this paper, we discuss how this may be the case. We review why some people are left-handed and others are not, how left-handers' brains differ from right-handers’, and why scientists study left-handedness in the first place

Abstract

Learning and processing natural language requires the ability to track syntactic relationships between words and phrases in a sentence, which are often separated by intervening material. These nonadjacent dependencies can be studied using artificial grammar learning paradigms and structured sequence processing tasks. These approaches have been used to demonstrate that human adults, infants and some nonhuman animals are able to detect and learn dependencies between nonadjacent elements within a sequence. However, learning nonadjacent dependencies appears to be more cognitively demanding than detecting dependencies between adjacent elements, and only occurs in certain circumstances. In this review, we discuss different types of nonadjacent dependencies in language and in artificial grammar learning experiments, and how these differences might impact learning. We summarize different types of perceptual cues that facilitate learning, by highlighting the relationship between dependent elements bringing them closer together either physically, attentionally, or perceptually. Finally, we review artificial grammar learning experiments in human adults, infants, and nonhuman animals, and discuss how similarities and differences observed across these groups can provide insights into how language is learned across development and how these language‐related abilities might have evolved.

Abstract

Vocal learning is a behavioral trait in which the social and acoustic environment shapes the vocal repertoire of individuals. Over the past century, the study of vocal learning has progressed at the intersection of ecology, physiology, neuroscience, molecular biology, genomics, and evolution. Yet, despite the complexity of this trait, vocal learning is frequently described as a binary trait, with species being classified as either vocal learners or vocal non-learners. As a result, studies have largely focused on a handful of species for which strong evidence for vocal learning exists. Recent studies, however, suggest a continuum in vocal learning capacity across taxa. Here, we further suggest that vocal learning is a multi-component behavioral phenotype comprised of distinct yet interconnected modules. Discretizing the vocal learning phenotype into its constituent modules would facilitate integration of findings across a wider diversity of species, taking advantage of the ways in which each excels in a particular module, or in a specific combination of features. Such comparative studies can improve understanding of the mechanisms and evolutionary origins of vocal learning. We propose an initial set of vocal learning modules supported by behavioral and neurobiological data and highlight the need for diversifying the field in order to disentangle the complexity of the vocal learning phenotype.

Abstract

Are listeners able to adapt to a foreign-accented speaker who has, as is often the case, an inconsistent accent? Two groups of native Dutch listeners participated in a cross-modal priming experiment, either in a consistent-accent condition (German-accented items only) or in an inconsistent-accent condition (German-accented and nativelike pronunciations intermixed). The experimental words were identical for both groups (words with vowel substitutions characteristic of German-accented speech); additional contextual words differed in accentedness (German-accented or nativelike words). All items were spoken by the same speaker: a German native who could produce the accented forms but could also pass for a Dutch native speaker. Listeners in the consistent-accent group were able to adapt quickly to the speaker (i.e., showed facilitatory priming for words with vocalic substitutions). Listeners in the inconsistent-accent condition showed adaptation to words with vocalic substitutions only in the second half of the experiment. These results indicate that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid. Accent inconsistency slows listeners down initially, but a short period of additional exposure is enough for them to adapt to the speaker. Listeners can therefore tolerate inconsistency in foreign-accented speech.

Abstract

Institutions driving fundamental research at the cutting edge such as for example from the Max Planck Society (MPS) took steps to optimize data management and stewardship to be able to address new scientific questions. In this paper we selected three institutes from the MPS from the areas of humanities, environmental sciences and natural sciences as examples to indicate the efforts to integrate large amounts of data from collaborators worldwide to create a data space that is ready to be exploited to get new insights based on data intensive science methods. For this integration the typical challenges of fragmentation, bad quality and also social differences had to be overcome. In all three cases, well-managed repositories that are driven by the scientific needs and harmonization principles that have been agreed upon in the community were the core pillars. It is not surprising that these principles are very much aligned with what have now become the FAIR principles. The FAIR principles confirm the correctness of earlier decisions and their clear formulation identified the gaps which the projects need to address.

Abstract

It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English,
and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this
view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter–gatherers in
southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated
to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar
listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that
Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the
similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions.
The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line
rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping
into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot
encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding
new light on the limits of language.

Abstract

This study aimed to increase our understanding on the relationship between reading and listening comprehension. Both in comprehension theory and in educational practice, reading and listening comprehension are often seen as interchangeable, overlooking modality-specific aspects of them separately. Three questions were addressed. First, it was examined to what extent reading and listening comprehension comprise modality-specific, distinct skills or an overlapping, domain-general skill in terms of the amount of explained variance in one comprehension type by the opposite comprehension type. Second, general and modality-unique subskills of reading and listening comprehension were sought by assessing the contributions of the foundational skills word reading fluency, vocabulary, memory, attention, and inhibition to both comprehension types. Lastly, the practice of using either listening comprehension or vocabulary as a proxy of general comprehension was investigated. Reading and listening comprehension tasks with the same format were assessed in 85 second and third grade children. Analyses revealed that reading comprehension explained 34% of the variance in listening comprehension, and listening comprehension 40% of reading comprehension. Vocabulary and word reading fluency were found to be shared contributors to both reading and listening comprehension. None of the other cognitive skills contributed significantly to reading or listening comprehension. These results indicate that only part of the comprehension process is indeed domain-general and not influenced by the modality in which the information is provided. Especially vocabulary seems to play a large role in this domain-general part. The findings warrant a more prominent focus of modality-specific aspects of both reading and listening comprehension in research and education.

Abstract

Brain processing depends on the interactions between neuronal groups. Those interactions are governed by the pattern of anatomical connections and by yet unknown mechanisms that modulate the effective strength of a given connection. We found that the mutual influence among neuronal groups depends on the phase relation between rhythmic activities within the groups. Phase relations supporting interactions between the groups preceded those interactions by a few milliseconds, consistent with a mechanistic role. These effects were specific in time, frequency, and space, and we therefore propose that the pattern of synchronization flexibly determines the pattern of neuronal interactions.

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that bilinguals' lexical access is language non-selective, especially for orthographically identical translation equivalents across languages (i.e., identical cognates). The present study investigated how such words (e.g., meaning "school" in both Chinese and Japanese) are processed in the (late) Chinese - Japanese bilingual brain. Using an L2-Japanese lexical decision task, both behavioral and electrophysiological data were collected. Reaction times (RTs), as well as the N400 component, showed that cognates are more easily recognized than non-cognates. Additionally, an early component (i.e., the N250), potentially reflecting activation at the word-form level, was also found. Cognates elicited a more positive N250 than non-cognates in the frontal region, indicating that the cognate facilitation effect occurred at an early stage of word formation for languages with logographic scripts.

Abstract

A core question in language acquisition is whether children’s syntactic processing is experience-dependent and language-specific, or whether it is governed by abstract, universal syntactic machinery. We address this question by presenting corpus and on-line processing dat a from children learning Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been important in debates about the universality of parsing processes. The corpus data revealed that two different relative clause constructions in Mandarin are differentially used to modify syntactic subjects and objects. In the experiment, 4-year-old children’s eye-movements were recorded as they listened to the two RC construction types (e.g., Can you pick up the pig that pushed the sheep?). A permutation analysis showed that children’s ease of comprehension was closely aligned with the distributional frequencies, suggesting syntactic processing preferences are shaped by the input experience of these constructions.

Abstract

Chunking in language comprehension is a process that segments continuous linguistic input into smaller chunks that are in the reader’s mental lexicon. Effective chunking during reading facilitates disambiguation and enhances efficiency for comprehension. However, the chunking mechanisms remain elusive, especially in reading given that information arrives simultaneously yet the written systems may not have explicit cues for labeling boundaries such as Chinese. What are the mechanisms of chunking that mediates the reading of the text that contains hierarchical information? We investigated this question by manipulating the lexical status of the chunks at distinct levels in four-character Chinese strings, including the two-character local chunk and four-character global chunk. Male and female human participants were asked to make lexical decisions on these strings in a behavioral experiment, followed by a passive reading task when their electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The behavioral results showed that the lexical decision time of lexicalized two-character local chunks was influenced by the lexical status of the four-character global chunk, but not vice versa, which indicated the processing of global chunks possessed priority over the local chunks. The EEG results revealed that familiar lexical chunks were detected simultaneously at both levels and further processed in a different temporal order – the onset of lexical access for the global chunks was earlier than that of local chunks. These consistent results suggest a two-stage operation for chunking in reading–– the simultaneous detection of familiar lexical chunks at multiple levels around 100 ms followed by recognition of chunks with global precedence.

Abstract

Neural structures change with age but there is no consensus on the exact processes involved. This study tested the hypothesis that white and grey matter in the language network changes during aging according to a “last in, first out” process. The fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter and cortical thickness of grey matter were measured in 36 participants whose ages ranged from 55 to 79 years. Within the language network, the dorsal pathway connecting the mid-to-posterior superior temporal cortex (STC) and the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) was affected more by aging in both FA and thickness than the other dorsal pathway connecting the STC with the premotor cortex and the ventral pathway connecting the mid-to-anterior STC with the ventral IFC. These results were independently validated in a second group of 20 participants whose ages ranged from 50 to 73 years. The pathway that is most affected during aging matures later than the other two pathways (which are present at birth). The results are interpreted as showing that the neural structures which mature later are affected more than those that mature earlier, supporting the “last in, first out” theory.

Abstract

In a masked priming word-naming task, a facilitation due to the initial-segmental sound overlap for 2-character kanji prime-target pairs was affected by certain orthographic properties (Yoshihara, Nakayama, Verdonschot, & Hino, 2017). That is, the facilitation that was due to the initial mora overlap occurred only when the mora was the whole pronunciation of their initial kanji characters (i.e., match pairs; e.g., /ka-se.ki/-/ka-rjo.ku/). When the shared initial mora was only a part of the kanji characters' readings, however, there was no facilitation (i.e., mismatch pairs; e.g., /ha.tu-a.N/-/ha.ku-bu.tu/). In the present study, we used a masked priming picture-naming task to investigate whether the previous results were relevant only when the orthography of targets is visually presented. In Experiment 1. the main findings of our word-naming task were fully replicated in a picture-naming task. In Experiments 2 and 3. the absence of facilitation for the mismatch pairs were confirmed with a new set of stimuli. On the other hand, a significant facilitation was observed for the match pairs that shared the 2 initial morae (in Experiment 4), which was again consistent with the results of our word-naming study. These results suggest that the orthographic properties constrain the phonological expression of masked priming for kanji words across 2 tasks that are likely to differ in how phonology is retrieved. Specifically, we propose that orthography of a word is activated online and constrains the phonological encoding processes in these tasks.

Abstract

Bilinguals usually select the right language to speak for the particular context they are in, but sometimes the nontarget language intrudes. Despite a large body of research into language selection and language control, it remains unclear where intrusion errors originate from. These errors may be due to incorrect selection of the nontarget language at the conceptual level, or be a consequence of erroneous word selection (despite correct language selection) at the lexical level. We examined the former possibility in two language switching experiments using a manipulation that supposedly affects language selection on the conceptual level, namely whether the conversational language context was associated with the target language (congruent) or with the alternative language (incongruent) on a trial. Both experiments showed that language intrusion errors occurred more often in incongruent than in congruent contexts, providing converging evidence that language selection during concept preparation is one driving force behind language intrusion.

Abstract

Bilingual speakers have to control their languages to avoid interference, which may be achieved by enhancing the target language and/or inhibiting the nontarget language. Previous research suggests that bilinguals use inhibition (e.g., Jackson et al., 2001), which should be reflected in the N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP) in the EEG. In the current study, we investigated the dynamics of inhibitory control by measuring the N2 during language switching and repetition in bilingual picture naming. Participants had to name pictures in Dutch or English depending on the cue. A run of same-language trials could be short (two or three trials) or long (five or six trials). We assessed whether RTs and N2 changed over the course of same-language runs, and at a switch between languages. Results showed that speakers named pictures more quickly late as compared to early in a run of same-language trials. Moreover, they made a language switch more quickly after a long run than after a short run. This run-length effect was only present in the first language (L1), not in the second language (L2). In ERPs, we observed a widely distributed switch effect in the N2, which was larger after a short run than after a long run. This effect was only present in the L2, not in the L1, although the difference was not significant between languages. In contrast, the N2 was not modulated during a same-language run. Our results suggest that the nontarget language is inhibited at a switch, but not during the repeated use of the target language.

Abstract

In sentences like “the mouse that chased the cat was hungry”, the syntactically correct interpretation (the mouse chases the cat) is contradicted by semantic and pragmatic knowledge. Previous research has shown that L1 speakers sometimes base sentence interpretation on this type of knowledge (so-called “shallow” or “good-enough” processing). We made use of both behavioural and ERP measurements to investigate whether L2 learners differ from native speakers in the extent to which they engage in “shallow” syntactic processing. German learners of Dutch as well as Dutch native speakers read sentences containing relative clauses (as in the example above) for which the plausible thematic roles were or were not reversed, and made plausibility judgments. The results show that behaviourally, L2 learners had more difficulties than native speakers to discriminate plausible from implausible sentences. In the ERPs, we replicated the previously reported finding of a “semantic P600” for semantic reversal anomalies in native speakers, probably reflecting the effort to resolve the syntax-semantics conflict. In L2 learners, though, this P600 was largely attenuated and surfaced only in those trials that were judged correctly for plausibility. These results generally point at a more prevalent, but not exclusive occurrence of shallow syntactic processing in L2 learners.

Abstract

Semantic unification during sentence comprehension has been associated with amplitude change of the N400 in event-related potential (ERP) studies, and activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, the specificity of this activation to semantic unification remains unknown. To more closely examine the brain processes involved in semantic unification, we employed simultaneous EEG-fMRI to time-lock the semantic unification related N400 change, and integrated trial-by-trial variation in both N400 and BOLD change beyond the condition-level BOLD change difference measured in traditional fMRI analyses. Participants read sentences in which semantic unification load was parametrically manipulated by varying cloze probability. Separately, ERP and fMRI results replicated previous findings, in that semantic unification load parametrically modulated the amplitude of N400 and cortical activation. Integrated EEG-fMRI analyses revealed a different pattern in which functional activity in the left IFG and bilateral supramarginal gyrus (SMG) was associated with N400 amplitude, with the left IFG activation and bilateral SMG activation being selective to the condition-level and trial-level of semantic unification load, respectively. By employing the EEG-fMRI integrated analyses, this study among the first sheds light on how to integrate trial-level variation in language comprehension.

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies using thousands to hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and region-wide association studies using a dense panel of SNPs are already in use to identify disease susceptibility genes and to predict disease risk in individuals. Because these tasks become increasingly important, three different data sets were provided for the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15, thus allowing examination of various novel and existing data mining methods for both classification and identification of disease susceptibility genes, gene by gene or gene by environment interaction. The approach most often applied in this presentation group was random forests because of its simplicity, elegance, and robustness. It was used for prediction and for screening for interesting SNPs in a first step. The logistic tree with unbiased selection approach appeared to be an interesting alternative to efficiently select interesting SNPs. Machine learning, specifically ensemble methods, might be useful as pre-screening tools for large-scale association studies because they can be less prone to overfitting, can be less computer processor time intensive, can easily include pair-wise and higher-order interactions compared with standard statistical approaches and can also have a high capability for classification. However, improved implementations that are able to deal with hundreds of thousands of SNPs at a time are required.

Abstract

Change in linguistic prosody generates a mismatch negativity response (MMN), indicating neural representation of linguistic prosody, while change in affective prosody generates a positive response (P3a), reflecting its motivational salience. However, the neural response to concurrent affective and linguistic prosody is unknown. The present paper investigates the integration of these two prosodic features in the brain by examining the neural response to separate and concurrent processing by electroencephalography (EEG). A spoken pair of Swedish words—[ˈfɑ́ːsɛn] phase and [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—that differed in emotional semantics due to linguistic prosody was presented to 16 subjects in an angry and neutral affective prosody using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. Acoustically matched pseudowords—[ˈvɑ́ːsɛm] and [ˈvɑ̀ːsɛm]—were used as controls. Following the constructionist concept of emotions, accentuating the conceptualization of emotions based on language, it was hypothesized that concurrent affective and linguistic prosody with the same valence—angry [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—would elicit a unique late EEG signature, reflecting the temporal integration of affective voice with emotional semantics of prosodic origin. In accordance, linguistic prosody elicited an MMN at 300–350 ms, and affective prosody evoked a P3a at 350–400 ms, irrespective of semantics. Beyond these responses, concurrent affective and linguistic prosody evoked a late positive component (LPC) at 820–870 ms in frontal areas, indicating the conceptualization of affective prosody based on linguistic prosody. This study provides evidence that the brain does not only distinguish between these two functions of prosody but also integrates them based on language and experience.

Abstract

Swedish morphemes are classified as prosodically specified or prosodically unspecified, depending on lexical or phonological stress, respectively. Here, we investigate the allomorphy of the suffix -(i)sk, which indicates the distinction between lexical and phonological stress; if attached to a lexically stressed morpheme, it takes a non-syllabic form (-sk), whereas if attached to a phonologically stressed morpheme, an epenthetic vowel is inserted (-isk). Using mismatch negativity (MMN), we explored the neural processing of this allomorphy across lexically stressed and phonologically stressed morphemes. In an oddball paradigm, participants were occasionally presented with congruent and incongruent derivations, created by the suffix -(i)sk, within the repetitive presentation of their monomorphemic stems. The results indicated that the congruent derivation of the lexically stressed stem elicited a larger MMN than the incongruent sequences of the same stem and the derivational suffix, whereas after the phonologically stressed stem a non-significant tendency towards an opposite pattern was observed. We argue that the significant MMN response to the congruent derivation in the lexical stress condition is in line with lexical MMN, indicating a holistic processing of the sequence of lexically stressed stem and derivational suffix. The enhanced MMN response to the incongruent derivation in the phonological stress condition, on the other hand, is suggested to reflect combinatorial processing of the sequence of phonologically stressed stem and derivational suffix. These findings bring a new aspect to the dual-system approach to neural processing of morphologically complex words, namely the specification of word stress.

Abstract

Speakers remember their own utterances better than those of their interlocutors, suggesting that language production is beneficial to memory. This may be partly explained by a generation effect: The act of generating a word is known to lead to a memory advantage (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). In earlier work, we showed a generation effect for recognition of images (Zormpa, Brehm, Hoedemaker, & Meyer, 2019). Here, we tested whether the recognition of their names would also benefit from name generation. Testing whether picture naming improves memory for words was our primary aim, as it serves to clarify whether the representations affected by generation are visual or conceptual/lexical. A secondary aim was to assess the influence of processing time on memory. Fifty-one participants named pictures in three conditions: after hearing the picture name (identity condition), backward speech, or an unrelated word. A day later, recognition memory was tested in a yes/no task. Memory in the backward speech and unrelated conditions, which required generation, was superior to memory in the identity condition, which did not require generation. The time taken by participants for naming was a good predictor of memory, such that words that took longer to be retrieved were remembered better. Importantly, that was the case only when generation was required: In the no-generation (identity) condition, processing time was not related to recognition memory performance. This work has shown that generation affects conceptual/lexical representations, making an important contribution to the understanding of the relationship between memory and language.

Abstract

The production effect (better memory for words read aloud than words read silently) and the picture superiority effect (better memory for pictures than words) both improve item memory in a picture naming task (Fawcett, J. M., Quinlan, C. K., & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Interplay of the production and picture superiority effects: A signal detection analysis. Memory (Hove, England), 20(7), 655–666. doi:10.1080/09658211.2012.693510). Because picture naming requires coming up with an appropriate label, the generation effect (better memory for generated than read words) may contribute to the latter effect. In two forced-choice memory experiments, we tested the role of generation in a picture naming task on later recognition memory. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures silently or aloud with the correct name or an unreadable label superimposed. We observed a generation effect, a production effect, and an interaction between the two. In Experiment 2, unreliable labels were included to ensure full picture processing in all conditions. In this experiment, we observed a production and a generation effect but no interaction, implying the effects are dissociable. This research demonstrates the separable roles of generation and production in picture naming and their impact on memory. As such, it informs the link between memory and language production and has implications for memory asymmetries between language production and comprehension.

Abstract

For most people, speech production is relatively effortless and error-free. Yet it has long been recognized that we need some type of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. Precisely how we monitor our internal and external speech has been a topic of research interest for several decades. The predominant approach in psycholinguistics has assumed monitoring of both is accomplished via systems responsible for comprehending others' speech.

This special topic aimed to broaden the field, firstly by examining proposals that speech production might also engage more general systems, such as those involved in action monitoring. A second aim was to examine proposals for a production-specific, internal monitor. Both aims require that we also specify the nature of the representations subject to monitoring.

Abstract

There is a rich tradition of building computational models in cognitive science, but modeling, theoretical, and experimental research are not as tightly integrated as they could be. In this paper, we show that computational techniques—even simple ones that are straightforward to use—can greatly facilitate designing, implementing, and analyzing experiments, and generally help lift research to a new level. We focus on the domain of artificial grammar learning, and we give five concrete examples in this domain for (a) formalizing and clarifying theories, (b) generating stimuli, (c) visualization, (d) model selection, and (e) exploring the hypothesis space.

Abstract

Given the limited processing capabilities of the sensory system, it is essential that attended information is gated to downstream areas, whereas unattended information is blocked. While it has been proposed that alpha band (8–13 Hz) activity serves to route information to downstream regions by inhibiting neuronal processing in task-irrelevant regions, this hypothesis remains untested. Here we investigate how neuronal oscillations detected by electroencephalography in visual areas during working memory encoding serve to gate information reflected in the simultaneously recorded blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signals recorded by functional magnetic resonance imaging in downstream ventral regions. We used a paradigm in which 16 participants were presented with faces and landscapes in the right and left hemifields; one hemifield was attended and the other unattended. We observed that decreased alpha power contralateral to the attended object predicted the BOLD signal representing the attended object in ventral object-selective regions. Furthermore, increased alpha power ipsilateral to the attended object predicted a decrease in the BOLD signal representing the unattended object. We also found that the BOLD signal in the dorsal attention network inversely correlated with visual alpha power. This is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, that oscillations in the alpha band are implicated in the gating of information from the visual cortex to the ventral stream, as reflected in the representationally specific BOLD signal. This link of sensory alpha to downstream activity provides a neurophysiological substrate for the mechanism of selective attention during stimulus processing, which not only boosts the attended information but also suppresses distraction. Although previous studies have shown a relation between the BOLD signal from the dorsal attention network and the alpha band at rest, we demonstrate such a relation during a visuospatial task, indicating that the dorsal attention network exercises top-down control of visual alpha activity.