Publications

Abstract

When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and again after a delay of one week. Words learned with meanings were remembered better than those learned without meanings. Both episodic (hippocampus-dependent) and semantic (dependent on distributed neocortical areas) memory systems were utilised during recognition of the novel words. The extent to which the two systems were involved changed as a function of time and the amount of associated information, with more involvement of both systems for the meaningful words than for the form-only words after the one-week delay. These results suggest that the reason the meaningful words were remembered better is that their retrieval can benefit more from these two complementary memory systems

Abstract

Most experimental research making use of the Japanese language has involved the 1945 officially standardized kanji (Japanese logographic characters) in the Joyo kanji list (originally announced by the Japanese government in 1981). However, this list was extensively modified in 2010: five kanji were removed and 196 kanji were added; the latest revision of the list now has a total of 2136 kanji. Using an up-to-date corpus consisting of 11 years' worth of articles printed in the Mainichi Newspaper (2000-2010), we have constructed two novel databases that can be used in psychological research using the Japanese language: (1) a database containing a wide variety of properties on the latest 2136 Joyo kanji, and (2) a novel database containing 27,950 two-kanji compound words (or jukugo). Based on these two databases, we have created an interactive website (www.kanjidatabase.com) to retrieve and store linguistic information to be used in psychological and linguistic experiments. The present paper reports the most important characteristics for the new databases, as well as their value for experimental psychological and linguistic research.

Abstract

The current study explored the role of sentential inference in connecting lexical/grammatical knowledge and overall text comprehension in foreign language learning. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), causal relationships were examined between four latent variables: lexical knowledge, grammatical knowledge, sentential inference, and text comprehension. The study analyzed 281 Chinese university students learning Japanese as a second language and compared two causal models: (1) the partially-mediated model, which suggests that lexical knowledge, grammatical knowledge, and sentential inference concurrently influence text comprehension, and (2) the wholly-mediated model, which posits that both lexical and grammatical knowledge impact sentential inference, which then further affects text comprehension. The SEM comparison analysis supported the wholly-mediated model, showing sequential causal relationships from lexical knowledge to sentential inference and then to text comprehension, without significant contribution from grammatical knowledge. The results indicate that sentential inference serves as a crucial bridge between lexical knowledge and text comprehension.

Abstract

This study is the first to report chronometric evidence on Tongan language production. It has been speculated that the mora plays an important role during Tongan phonological encoding. A mora follows the (C)V form, so /a/ and /ka/ (but not /k/) denote a mora in Tongan. Using a picture-word naming paradigm, Tongan native speakers named pictures containing superimposed non-word distractors. This task has been used before in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese to investigate the initially selected unit during phonological encoding (IPU). Compared to control distractors, both onset and mora overlapping distractors resulted in faster naming latencies. Several alternative explanations for the pattern of results - proficiency in English, knowledge of Latin script, and downstream effects - are discussed. However, we conclude that Tongan phonological encoding likely natively uses the phoneme, and not the mora, as the IPU..

Abstract

We investigate the emergence of iconicity, specifically a bouba-kiki effect in miniature artificial languages under different functional constraints: when the languages are reproduced and when they are used communicatively. We ran transmission chains of (a) participant dyads who played an interactive communicative game and (b) individual participants who played a matched learning game. An analysis of the languages over six generations in an iterated learning experiment revealed that in the Communication condition, but not in the Reproduction condition, words for spiky shapes tend to be rated by naive judges as more spiky than the words for round shapes. This suggests that iconicity may not only be the outcome of innovations introduced by individuals, but, crucially, the result of interlocutor negotiation of new communicative conventions. We interpret our results as an illustration of cultural evolution by random mutation and selection (as opposed to by guided variation).

Abstract

This study investigated the nature of the underlying working memory system supporting sentence processing through examining individual differences in sensitivity to retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Interference effects occur when readers incorrectly retrieve sentence constituents which are similar to those required during integrative processes. We examined interference arising from a partial match between distracting constituents and syntactic and semantic cues, and related these interference effects to performance on working memory, short-term memory (STM), vocabulary, and executive function tasks. For online sentence comprehension, as measured by self-paced reading, the magnitude of individuals' syntactic interference effects was predicted by general WM capacity and the relation remained significant when partialling out vocabulary, indicating that the effects were not due to verbal knowledge. For offline sentence comprehension, as measured by responses to comprehension questions, both general WM capacity and vocabulary knowledge interacted with semantic interference for comprehension accuracy, suggesting that both general WM capacity and the quality of semantic representations played a role in determining how well interference was resolved offline. For comprehension question reaction times, a measure of semantic STM capacity interacted with semantic but not syntactic interference. However, a measure of phonological capacity (digit span) and a general measure of resistance to response interference (Stroop effect) did not predict individuals' interference resolution abilities in either online or offline sentence comprehension. The results are discussed in relation to the multiple capacities account of working memory (e.g., Martin and Romani, 1994; Martin and He, 2004), and the cue-based retrieval parsing approach (e.g., Lewis et al., 2006; Van Dyke et al., 2014). While neither approach was fully supported, a possible means of reconciling the two approaches and directions for future research are proposed.

Abstract

This study examined the role of verbal short-term memory (STM) and executive function (EF) underlying semantic and syntactic interference resolution during sentence comprehension for persons with aphasia (PWA) with varying degrees of STM and EF deficits. Semantic interference was manipulated by varying the semantic plausibility of the intervening NP as subject of the verb and syntactic interference was manipulated by varying whether the NP was another subject or an object. Nine PWA were assessed on sentence reading times and on comprehension question performance. PWA showed exaggerated semantic and syntactic interference effects relative to healthy age-matched control subjects. Importantly, correlational analyses showed that while answering comprehension questions, PWA’ semantic STM capacity related to their ability to resolve semantic but not syntactic interference. In contrast, PWA’ EF abilities related to their ability to resolve syntactic but not semantic interference. Phonological STM deficits were not related to the ability to resolve either type of interference. The results for semantic STM are consistent with prior findings indicating a role for semantic but not phonological STM in sentence comprehension, specifically with regard to maintaining semantic information prior to integration. The results for syntactic interference are consistent with the recent findings suggesting that EF is critical for syntactic processing.

Abstract

The great apes produce gestures intentionally and flexibly, and sometimes they combine their gestures into sequences, producing two or more gestures in close succession. We reevaluate previous findings related to ape gesture sequences and present qualitative analysis of videotaped gorilla interaction. We present evidence that gorillas produce at least two different kinds of gesture sequences: some sequences are largely composed of gestures that depict motion in an iconic manner, typically requesting particular action by the partner; others are multimodal and contain gestures – often percussive in nature – that are performed in situations of play or display. Display sequences seem to primarily exhibit the performer’s emotional state and physical fitness but have no immediate functional goal. Analysis reveals that some gorilla play and display sequences can be 1) organized hierarchically into longer bouts and repetitions; 2) innovative and individualized, incorporating objects and environmental features; and 3) highly interactive between partners. It is illuminating to look beyond ‘meaning’ in the conventional linguistic sense and look at the possibility that characteristics of music and dance, as well as those of language, are included in the gesturing of apes.

Abstract

This study investigates how Japanese-speaking children learn interactional dependencies in conversations that determine the use of un, a token typically used as a positive response for yes-no questions, backchannel, and acknowledgement. We hypothesise that children learn to produce un appropriately by recognising different types of cues occurring in the immediately preceding turns. We built a set of generalised linear models on the longitudinal conversation data from seven children aged 1 to 5 years and their caregivers. Our models revealed that children not only increased their un production, but also learned to attend relevant cues in the preceding turns to understand when to respond by producing un. Children increasingly produced un when their interlocutors asked a yes-no question or signalled the continuation of their own speech. These results illustrate how children learn the probabilistic dependency between adjacent turns, and become able to participate in conversational interactions.

Abstract

Bats are unique among mammals, possessing some of the rarest mammalian adaptations, including true self-powered flight, laryngeal echolocation, exceptional longevity, unique immunity, contracted genomes, and vocal learning. They provide key ecosystem services, pollinating tropical plants, dispersing seeds, and controlling insect pest populations, thus driving healthy ecosystems. They account for more than 20% of all living mammalian diversity, and their crown-group evolutionary history dates back to the Eocene. Despite their great numbers and diversity, many species are threatened and endangered. Here we announce Bat1K, an initiative to sequence the genomes of all living bat species (n∼1,300) to chromosome-level assembly. The Bat1K genome consortium unites bat biologists (>132 members as of writing), computational scientists, conservation organizations, genome technologists, and any interested individuals committed to a better understanding of the genetic and evolutionary mechanisms that underlie the unique adaptations of bats. Our aim is to catalog the unique genetic diversity present in all living bats to better understand the molecular basis of their unique adaptations; uncover their evolutionary history; link genotype with phenotype; and ultimately better understand, promote, and conserve bats. Here we review the unique adaptations of bats and highlight how chromosome-level genome assemblies can uncover the molecular basis of these traits. We present a novel sequencing and assembly strategy and review the striking societal and scientific benefits that will result from the Bat1K initiative.

Abstract

Sequences of reaction times (RT) produced by participants in an experiment are not only influenced by the stimuli, but by many other factors as well, including fatigue, attention, experience, IQ, handedness, etc. These confounding factors result in longterm effects (such as a participant’s overall reaction capability) and in short- and medium-time fluctuations in RTs (often referred to as ‘local speed effects’). Because stimuli are usually presented in a random sequence different for each participant, local speed effects affect the underlying ‘true’ RTs of specific trials in different ways across participants. To be able to focus statistical analysis on the effects of the cognitive process under study, it is necessary to reduce the effect of confounding factors as much as possible. In this paper we propose and compare techniques and criteria for doing so, with focus on reducing (‘filtering’) the local speed effects. We show that filtering matters substantially for the significance analyses of predictors in linear mixed effect regression models. The performance of filtering is assessed by the average between-participant correlation between filtered RT sequences and by Akaike’s Information Criterion, an important measure of the goodness-of-fit of linear mixed effect regression models.

Abstract

The recent advent of deep learning techniques in speech tech-nology and in particular in automatic speech recognition hasyielded substantial performance improvements. This suggeststhat deep neural networks (DNNs) are able to capture structurein speech data that older methods for acoustic modeling, suchas Gaussian Mixture Models and shallow neural networks failto uncover. In image recognition it is possible to link repre-sentations on the first couple of layers in DNNs to structuralproperties of images, and to representations on early layers inthe visual cortex. This raises the question whether it is possi-ble to accomplish a similar feat with representations on DNNlayers when processing speech input. In this paper we presentthree different experiments in which we attempt to untanglehow DNNs encode speech signals, and to relate these repre-sentations to phonetic knowledge, with the aim to advance con-ventional phonetic concepts and to choose the topology of aDNNs more efficiently. Two experiments investigate represen-tations formed by auto-encoders. A third experiment investi-gates representations on convolutional layers that treat speechspectrograms as if they were images. The results lay the basisfor future experiments with recursive networks.

Abstract

Many environmental stimuli contain temporal regularities, a feature that can help predict forthcoming input. Phase locking (entrainment) of ongoing low-frequency neuronal oscillations to rhythmic stimuli is proposed as a potential mechanism for enhancing neuronal responses and perceptual sensitivity, by aligning high-excitability phases to events within a stimulus stream. Previous experiments show that rhythmic structure has a behavioral benefit even when the rhythm itself is below perceptual detection thresholds (ten Oever et al., 2014). It is not known whether this "inaudible" rhythmic sound stream also induces entrainment. Here we tested this hypothesis using magnetoencephalography and electrocorticography in humans to record changes in neuronal activity as subthreshold rhythmic stimuli gradually became audible. We found that significant phase locking to the rhythmic sounds preceded participants' detection of them. Moreover, no significant auditory-evoked responses accompanied this prethreshold entrainment. These auditory-evoked responses, distinguished by robust, broad-band increases in intertrial coherence, only appeared after sounds were reported as audible. Taken together with the reduced perceptual thresholds observed for rhythmic sequences, these findings support the proposition that entrainment of low-frequency oscillations serves a mechanistic role in enhancing perceptual sensitivity for temporally predictive sounds. This framework has broad implications for understanding the neural mechanisms involved in generating temporal predictions and their relevance for perception, attention, and awareness.

Abstract

This paper investigates the processes in comprehending spoken noun-noun compounds, using data from the BALDEY database. BALDEY contains lexicality judgments and reaction times (RTs) for Dutch stimuli for which also linguistic information is included. Two different approaches are combined. The first is based on regression by Dynamic Survival Analysis, which models decisions and RTs as a consequence of the fact that a cumulative density function exceeds some threshold. The parameters of that function are estimated from the observed RT data. The second approach is based on DIANA, a process-oriented computational model of human word comprehension, which simulates the comprehension process with the acoustic stimulus as input. DIANA gives the identity and the number of the word candidates that are activated at each 10 ms time step.

Both approaches show how the processes involved in comprehending compounds change during a stimulus. Survival Analysis shows that the impact of word duration varies during the course of a stimulus. The density of word and non-word hypotheses in DIANA shows a corresponding pattern with different regimes. We show how the approaches complement each other, and discuss additional ways in which data and process models can be combined.

Abstract

When we comprehend language from speech, the phase of the neural response aligns with particular features of the speech input, resulting in a phenomenon referred to as neural tracking. In recent years, a large body of work has demonstrated the tracking of the acoustic envelope and abstract linguistic units at the phoneme and word levels, and beyond. However, the degree to which speech tracking is driven by acoustic edges of the signal, or by internally-generated linguistic units, or by the interplay of both, remains contentious. In this study, we used naturalistic story-listening to investigate (1) whether phoneme-level features are tracked over and above acoustic edges, (2) whether word entropy, which can reflect sentence- and discourse-level constraints, impacted the encoding of acoustic and phoneme-level features, and (3) whether the tracking of acoustic edges was enhanced or suppressed during comprehension of a first language (Dutch) compared to a statistically familiar but uncomprehended language (French). We first show that encoding models with phoneme-level linguistic features, in addition to acoustic features, uncovered an increased neural tracking response; this signal was further amplified in a comprehended language, putatively reflecting the transformation of acoustic features into internally generated phoneme-level representations. Phonemes were tracked more strongly in a comprehended language, suggesting that language comprehension functions as a neural filter over acoustic edges of the speech signal as it transforms sensory signals into abstract linguistic units. We then show that word entropy enhances neural tracking of both acoustic and phonemic features when sentence- and discourse-context are less constraining. When language was not comprehended, acoustic features, but not phonemic ones, were more strongly modulated, but in contrast, when a native language is comprehended, phoneme features are more strongly modulated. Taken together, our findings highlight the flexible modulation of acoustic, and phonemic features by sentence and discourse-level constraint in language comprehension, and document the neural transformation from speech perception to language comprehension, consistent with an account of language processing as a neural filter from sensory to abstract representations.

Abstract

We estimate lexical Concreteness for millions of words across 77 languages. Using a simple regression framework, we combine vector-based models of lexical semantics with experimental norms of Concreteness in English and Dutch. By applying techniques to align vector-based semantics across distinct languages, we compute and release Concreteness estimates at scale in numerous languages for which experimental norms are not currently available. This paper lays out the technique and its efficacy. Although this is a difficult dataset to evaluate immediately, Concreteness estimates computed from English correlate with Dutch experimental norms at $\rho$ = .75 in the vocabulary at large, increasing to $\rho$ = .8 among Nouns. Our predictions also recapitulate attested relationships with word frequency. The approach we describe can be readily applied to numerous lexical measures beyond Concreteness

Abstract

Mendelian randomization (MR) requires strong assumptions about the genetic instruments, of which the most difficult to justify relate to pleiotropy. In a two-sample MR, different methods of analysis are available if we are able to assume, M1: no pleiotropy (fixed effects meta-analysis), M2: that there may be pleiotropy but that the average pleiotropic effect is zero (random effects meta-analysis), and M3: that the average pleiotropic effect is nonzero (MR-Egger). In the latter 2 cases, we also require that the size of the pleiotropy is independent of the size of the effect on the exposure. Selecting one of these models without good reason would run the risk of misrepresenting the evidence for causality. The most conservative strategy would be to use M3 in all analyses as this makes the weakest assumptions, but such an analysis gives much less precise estimates and so should be avoided whenever stronger assumptions are credible. We consider the situation of a two-sample design when we are unsure which of these 3 pleiotropy models is appropriate. The analysis is placed within a Bayesian framework and Bayesian model averaging is used. We demonstrate that even large samples of the scale used in genome-wide meta-analysis may be insufficient to distinguish the pleiotropy models based on the data alone. Our simulations show that Bayesian model averaging provides a reasonable trade-off between bias and precision. Bayesian model averaging is recommended whenever there is uncertainty about the nature of the pleiotropy

Abstract

Do all languages convey semantic knowledge in the same way? If language simply mirrors the structure of the world, the answer should be a qualified “yes”. If, however, languages impose structure as much as reflecting it, then even ostensibly the “same” word in different languages may mean quite different things. We provide a first pass at a large-scale quantification of cross-linguistic semantic alignment of approximately 1000 meanings in 55 languages. We find that the translation equivalents in some domains (e.g., Time, Quantity, and Kinship) exhibit high alignment across languages while the structure of other domains (e.g., Politics, Food, Emotions, and Animals) exhibits substantial cross-linguistic variability. Our measure of semantic alignment correlates with known phylogenetic distances between languages: more phylogenetically distant languages have less semantic alignment. We also find semantic alignment to correlate with cultural distances between societies speaking the languages, suggesting a rich co-adaptation of language and culture even in domains of experience that appear most constrained by the natural world

Abstract

Establishing non-native phoneme categories can be a notoriously difficult endeavour—in both speech perception and speech production. This study asks how these two domains interact in the course of this learning process. It investigates the effect of perceptual learning and related production practice of a challenging non-native category on the perception and/or production of that category. A four-day perceptual training protocol on the British English /æ/-/ɛ/ vowel contrast was combined with either related or unrelated production practice. After feedback on perceptual categorisation of the contrast, native Dutch participants in the related production group (N = 19) pronounced the trial's correct answer, while participants in the unrelated production group (N = 19) pronounced similar but phonologically unrelated words. Comparison of pre- and post-tests showed significant improvement over the course of training in both perception and production, but no differences between the groups were found. The lack of an effect of production practice is discussed in the light of previous, competing results and models of second-language speech perception and production. This study confirms that, even in the context of related production practice, perceptual training boosts production learning.

Abstract

The way top-down and bottom-up processes interact to shape our perception and behaviour is a fundamental question and remains highly controversial. How early in a processing stream do such interactions occur, and what factors govern such interactions? The degree of abstractness of a perceptual attribute (for example, orientation versus shape in vision, or loudness versus sound identity in hearing) may determine the locus of neural processing and interaction between bottom-up and internal information. Using an imagery-perception repetition paradigm, we find that imagined speech affects subsequent auditory perception, even for a low-level attribute such as loudness. This effect is observed in early auditory responses in magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography that correlate with behavioural loudness ratings. The results suggest that the internal reconstruction of neural representations without external stimulation is flexibly regulated by task demands, and that such top-down processes can interact with bottom-up information at an early perceptual stage to modulate perception.

Abstract

Synesthesia is a rare nonpathological phenomenon where stimulation of one sense automatically provokes a secondary perception in another. Hypothesized to result from differences in cortical wiring during development, synesthetes show atypical structural and functional neural connectivity, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are unknown. The trait also appears to be more common among people with autism spectrum disorder and savant abilities. Previous linkage studies searching for shared loci of large effect size across multiple families have had limited success. To address the critical lack of candidate genes, we applied whole-exome sequencing to three families with sound–color (auditory–visual) synesthesia affecting multiple relatives across three or more generations. We identified rare genetic variants that fully cosegregate with synesthesia in each family, uncovering 37 genes of interest. Consistent with reports indicating genetic heterogeneity, no variants were shared across families. Gene ontology analyses highlighted six genes—COL4A1, ITGA2, MYO10, ROBO3, SLC9A6, and SLIT2—associated with axonogenesis and expressed during early childhood when synesthetic associations are formed. These results are consistent with neuroimaging-based hypotheses about the role of hyperconnectivity in the etiology of synesthesia and offer a potential entry point into the neurobiology that organizes our sensory experiences.

Abstract

Distinct empathy deficits are often described in patients with conduct disorder (CD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) yet their neural underpinnings and the influence of comorbid Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits are unclear. This study compares the cognitive (CE) and affective empathy (AE) abilities of youth with CD and ASD, their potential neuroanatomical correlates, and the influence of CU traits on empathy. Adolescents and parents/caregivers completed empathy questionnaires (N = 148 adolescents, mean age = 15.16 years) and T1 weighted images were obtained from a subsample (N = 130). Group differences in empathy and the influence of CU traits were investigated using Bayesian analyses and Voxel-Based Morphometry with Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement focusing on regions involved in AE (insula, amygdala, inferior frontal gyrus and cingulate cortex) and CE processes (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, superior temporal gyrus, and precuneus). The ASD group showed lower parent-reported AE and CE scores and lower self-reported CE scores while the CD group showed lower parent-reported CE scores than controls. When accounting for the influence of CU traits no AE deficits in ASD and CE deficits in CD were found, but CE deficits in ASD remained. Across all participants, CU traits were negatively associated with gray matter volumes in anterior cingulate which extends into the mid cingulate, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and precuneus. Thus, although co-occurring CU traits have been linked to global empathy deficits in reports and underlying brain structures, its influence on empathy aspects might be disorder-specific. Investigating the subdimensions of empathy may therefore help to identify disorder-specific empathy deficits.

Abstract

The ability to control one's vocal production is a major advantage in acoustic communication. Yet, not all species have the same level of control over their vocal output. Several bird species can interrupt their song upon hearing an external stimulus, but there is no evidence how flexible this behavior is. Most research on corvids focuses on their cognitive abilities, but few studies explore their vocal aptitudes. Recent research shows that crows can be experimentally trained to vocalize in response to a brief visual stimulus. Our study investigated vocal control abilities with a more ecologically embedded approach in rooks. We show that two rooks could spontaneously coordinate their vocalizations to a long-lasting stimulus (the sound of their small bathing pool being filled with a water hose), one of them adjusting roughly (in the second range) its vocalizations as the stimuli began and stopped. This exploratory study adds to the literature showing that corvids, a group of species capable of cognitive prowess, are indeed able to display good vocal control abilities.

Abstract

This paper explores phrase-length-related alternations in the association of tones to positions in metrical structure in two melodic constructions of Spanish. An imitation-and-completion task eliciting (a) the low–falling–rising contour and (b) the circumflex contour on intonation phrases (IPs) of one, two, and three prosodic words revealed that, although the focus structure and pragmatic context is constant across conditions, phrases containing one prosodic word differ in their nuclear (i.e. final) pitch accents and edge tones from phrases containing more than one prosodic word. For contour (a), short intonation phrases (e.g. [ Ma no lo ] IP ) were produced with a low accent followed by a high edge tone (L ∗ H% in ToBI notation), whereas longer phrases (e.g. [ El her ma no de la a m igadeMa no lo ] IP ‘Manolo’s friend’s brother’) had a low accent on the first stressed syllable, a rising accent on the last stressed syllable, and a low edge tone (L ∗ L+H ∗ L%). For contour (b), short phrases were produced with a high–rise (L+H ∗ ¡H%), whereas longer phrases were produced with an initial accentual rise followed by an upstepped rise–fall (L+H ∗ ¡H ∗ L%). These findings imply that the common practice of describing the structure of intonation contours as consisting of a constant nuclear pitch accent and following edge tone is not adequate for modeling Spanish intonation. To capture the observed melodic alternations, we argue for clearer separation between tones and metrical structure, whereby intonational tones do not necessarily have an intrinsic culminative or delimitative function (i.e. as pitch accents or as edge tones). Instead, this function results from melody-specific principles of tonal–metrical association.

Abstract

In situated communication, reference to an entity in the shared visual context can be established using eitheranexpression that conveys precise (minimally specified) or redundant (over-specified) information. There is, however, along-lasting debate in psycholinguistics concerningwhether the latter hinders referential processing. We present evidence from an eyetrackingexperiment recordingfixations as well asthe Index of Cognitive Activity –a novel measure of cognitive workload –supporting the view that over-specifications facilitate processing. We further present originalevidence that, above and beyond the effect of specificity,referring expressions thatuniformly reduce referential entropyalso benefitprocessing

Abstract

In the current paper we report on a study of priming of variable Spanish 1sg subject expression in spontaneous Spanish–English bilingual speech (based on the New Mexico Spanish–English Bilingual corpus, Torres Cacoullos & Travis, in preparation). We show both within- and cross-language Coreferential Subject Priming; however, cross-language priming from English to Spanish is weaker and shorter lived than within-language Spanish-to-Spanish priming, a finding that appears not to be attributable to lexical boost. Instead, interactions with subject continuity and verb type show that the strength of priming depends on co-occurring contextual features and particular [pronoun + verb] constructions, from the more lexically specific to the more schematically general. Quantitative patterns in speech thus offer insights unavailable from experimental work into the scope and locus of priming effects, suggesting that priming in bilingual discourse can serve to gauge degrees of strength of within- and cross-language associations between usage-based constructions.

Abstract

Bilingual children with reduced exposure to one or both languages may have language profiles that are
apparently similar to those of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Children with
DLD receive enough input, but have difficulty using this input for acquisition due to processing deficits.
The present investigation aims to determine aspects of adjective production that are differentially
affected by reduced input (in bilingualism) and reduced intake (in DLD). Adjectives were elicited
from Dutch–Russian simultaneous bilinguals with limited exposure to Russian and Russian-speaking
monolinguals with andwithout DLD.Anantonymelicitation taskwas used to assess the size of adjective
vocabularies, and a degree task was employed to compare the preferences of the three groups in the
use of morphological, lexical, and syntactic degree markers. The results revealed that adjective–noun
agreement is affected to the same extent by both reduced input and reduced intake. The size of adjective
lexicons is also negatively affected by both, but more so by reduced exposure. However, production
of morphological degree markers and learning of semantic paradigms are areas of relative strength in
which bilinguals outperform monolingual children with DLD.We suggest that reduced input might be
counterbalanced by linguistic and cognitive advantages of bilingualism

Abstract

When we comprehend language, we often do this in rich settings in which we can use many cues to understand what someone is saying. However, it has traditionally been difficult to design experiments with rich three-dimensional contexts that resemble our everyday environments, while maintaining control over the linguistic and non-linguistic information that is available. Here we test the validity of combining electroencephalography (EEG) and Virtual Reality (VR) to overcome this problem. We recorded electrophysiological brain activity during language processing in a well-controlled three-dimensional virtual audiovisual environment. Participants were immersed in a virtual restaurant, while wearing EEG equipment. In the restaurant participants encountered virtual restaurant guests. Each guest was seated at a separate table with an object on it (e.g. a plate with salmon). The restaurant guest would then produce a sentence (e.g. “I just ordered this salmon.”). The noun in the spoken sentence could either match (“salmon”) or mismatch (“pasta”) with the object on the table, creating a situation in which the auditory information was either appropriate or inappropriate in the visual context. We observed a reliable N400 effect as a consequence of the mismatch. This finding validates the combined use of VR and EEG as a tool to study the neurophysiological mechanisms of everyday language comprehension in rich, ecologically valid settings.

Abstract

Narrative fiction may invite us to share the perspective of characters which are very much unlike ourselves. Inanimate objects featuring as protagonists or narrators are an extreme example of this. The way readers experience these characters was examined by means of a narrative immersion study. Participants (N = 200) judged narratives containing animate or inanimate characters in predominantly Agent or Experiencer roles. Narratives with inanimate characters were judged to be less emotionally engaging. This effect was influenced by the dominant thematic role associated with the character: inanimate Agents led to more defamiliarization compared to their animate counterparts than inanimate Experiencers. I argue for an integrated account of thematic roles and animacy in literary experience and linguistics in general.

Abstract

We show by means of a corpus study that the language used by the inanimate first person narrator in the novel Specht en zoon deviates from what we would expect on the basis of the fact that the narrator is inanimate, but at the same time also differsfrom the language of a human narrator in the novel De wijde blik on several linguistic dimensions. Whereas the human narrator is associated strongly with action verbs, preferring the Agent role, the inanimate narrator is much more limited to the Experiencer role, predominantly associated with cognition and sensory verbs. Our results show that animacy as a linguistic concept may be refined by taking into account the myriad ways in which an entity’s conceptual animacy may be expressed: we accept the conceptual animacy of the inanimate narrator despite its inability to act on its environment, showing this need not be a requirement for animacy

Abstract

This study investigates the convergent accommodating behaviour of Andalusian speakers (Southern Spain) relocated in Asturias (Northern Spain), a context of dialect contact, in terms of intonation. We aim to address three research questions: (1) is there evidence for accommodation? (2) Do social factors determine accommodation? And (3) does salience predict which prosodic features are more likely to be adopted by relocated speakers? We elaborated a corpus of spontaneous speech including an experimental group of Andalusian speakers in Asturias and two control groups of Asturian and Andalusian people. The relocated Andalusians were interviewed by a speaker of Andalusian Spanish and a speaker of Amestáu (hybrid variety between Asturian and Spanish), and their intonation patterns were compared to the ones found in the control populations. During the interviews, we also gathered data about how integrated these relocated speakers were in Asturias. We found that all participants show a tendency towards convergent accommodation to the Amestáu interlocutor, producing late falling pitch contours in nuclear position in declaratives and final falling contours in absolute interrogatives. The most integrated speakers in the Asturian community are the ones showing more features of the varieties spoken in the area. Finally, the most salient features to an Andalusian ear—the presence of final falls in Asturian, Asturian Spanish and Amestáu absolute interrogatives as opposed to final rises in Andalusian and Standard Peninsular Spanish—were the ones showing the highest percentages of adoption in relocated speakers. We could conclude, then, that the most salient prosodic features are acquired more easily by the most integrated relocated speakers.

Abstract

Actions may be used to directly act on the world around us, or as a means of communication. Effective communication requires the addressee to recognize the act as being communicative. Humans are sensitive to ostensive communicative cues, such as direct eye gaze (Csibra & Gergely, 2009). However, there may be additional cues present in the action or gesture itself. Here we investigate features that characterize the initiation of a communicative interaction in both production and comprehension.

We asked 40 participants to perform 31 pairs of object-directed actions and representational gestures in more- or less- communicative contexts. Data were collected using motion capture technology for kinematics and video recording for eye-gaze. With these data, we focused on two issues. First, if and how actions and gestures are systematically modulated when performed in a communicative context. Second, if observers exploit such kinematic information to classify an act as communicative.

Our study showed that during production the communicative context modulates space–time dimensions of kinematics and elicits an increase in addressee-directed eye-gaze. Naïve participants detected communicative intent in actions and gestures preferentially using eye-gaze information, only utilizing kinematic information when eye-gaze was unavailable.

Our study highlights the general communicative modulation of action and gesture kinematics during production but also shows that addressees only exploit this modulation to recognize communicative intention in the absence of eye-gaze. We discuss these findings in terms of distinctive but potentially overlapping functions of addressee directed eye-gaze and kinematic modulations within the wider context of human communication and learning.

Abstract

Natural human interaction requires us to produce and process many different signals, including speech, hand and head gestures, and facial expressions. These communicative signals, which occur in a variety of temporal relations with each other (e.g., parallel or temporally misaligned), must be rapidly processed as a coherent message by the receiver. In this contribution, we introduce the notion of interactionally embedded, affordance-driven gestalt perception as a framework that can explain how this rapid processing of multimodal signals is achieved as efficiently as it is. We discuss empirical evidence showing how basic principles of gestalt perception can explain some aspects of unimodal phenomena such as verbal language processing and visual scene perception but require additional features to explain multimodal human communication. We propose a framework in which high-level gestalt predictions are continuously updated by incoming sensory input, such as unfolding speech and visual signals. We outline the constituent processes that shape high-level gestalt perception and their role in perceiving relevance and prägnanz. Finally, we provide testable predictions that arise from this multimodal interactionally embedded gestalt-perception framework. This review and framework therefore provide a theoretically motivated account of how we may understand the highly complex, multimodal behaviors inherent in natural social interaction.

Abstract

In conversation, individuals work together to achieve communicative goals, complementing and aligning language and body with each other. An important emerging question is whether interlocutors entrain with one another equally across linguistic levels (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) and modalities (i.e., speech and gesture), or whether there are complementary patterns of behaviors, with some levels or modalities diverging and others converging in coordinated fashions. This study assesses how kinematic and linguistic entrainment interact with one another across levels of measurement, and according to communicative context. We analyzed data from two matched corpora of dyadic interaction between—respectively—Danish and Norwegian native speakers engaged in affiliative conversations and task-oriented conversations. We assessed linguistic entrainment at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic level, and kinetic alignment of the head and hands using video-based motion tracking and dynamic time warping. We tested whether—across the two languages—linguistic alignment correlates with kinetic alignment, and whether these kinetic-linguistic associations are modulated either by the type of conversation or by the language spoken. We found that kinetic entrainment was positively associated with low-level linguistic (i.e., lexical) entrainment, while negatively associated with high-level linguistic (i.e., semantic) entrainment, in a cross-linguistically robust way. Our findings suggest that conversation makes use of a dynamic coordination of similarity and complementarity both between individuals as well as between different communicative modalities, and provides evidence for a multimodal, interpersonal synergy account of interaction.

Abstract

When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated with positive outcomes in well-being and mental health. However, especially in the last decade, art viewing, cultural engagement, and even ‘trips’ to museums have begun to take place online, via computers, smartphones, tablets, or in virtual reality. Similarly, to what has been reported for in-person visits, online art engagements—easily accessible from personal devices—have also been associated to well-being impacts. However, a broader understanding of for whom and how online-delivered art might have well-being impacts is still lacking. In the present study, we used a Monet interactive art exhibition from Google Arts and Culture to deepen our understanding of the role of pleasure, meaning, and individual differences in the responsiveness to art. Beyond replicating the previous group-level effects, we confirmed our pre-registered hypothesis that trait-level inter-individual differences in aesthetic responsiveness predict some of the benefits that online art viewing has on well-being and further that such inter-individual differences at the trait level were mediated by subjective experiences of pleasure and especially meaningfulness felt during the online-art intervention. The role that participants' experiences play as a possible mechanism during art interventions is discussed in light of recent theoretical models.

Abstract

Even advanced Spanish speakers of second language English tend to confuse the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’, often without even noticing their mistake (Lahoz, 1991). A study by AntónMéndez (2010) has indicated that a possible reason for this error is the fact that Spanish is a pro-drop language. In order to test this hypothesis, we used an extension of Dual-path (Chang, 2002), a computational cognitive model of sentence production, to simulate two models of bilingual speech production of second language English. One model had Spanish (ES) as a native language, whereas the other learned a Spanish-like language that used the pronoun at all times (non-pro-drop Spanish, NPD_ES). When tested on L2 English sentences, the bilingual pro-drop Spanish model produced significantly more gender pronoun errors, confirming that pronoun dropping could indeed be responsible for the gender confusion in natural language use as well.

Abstract

A central assumption in the perceptual attunement literature holds that exposure to a speech sound contrast leads to improvement in native speech sound processing. However, whether the amount of exposure matters for this process has not been put to a direct test. We elucidated indicators of frequency-dependent perceptual attunement by comparing 5–8-month-old Dutch infants’ discrimination of tokens containing a highly frequent [hɪt-he:t] and a highly infrequent [hʏt-hø:t] native vowel contrast as well as a non-native [hɛt-hæt] vowel contrast in a behavioral visual habituation paradigm (Experiment 1). Infants discriminated both native contrasts similarly well, but did not discriminate the non-native contrast. We sought further evidence for subtle differences in the processing of the two native contrasts using near-infrared spectroscopy and a within-participant design (Experiment 2). The neuroimaging data did not provide additional evidence that responses to native contrasts are modulated by frequency of exposure. These results suggest that even large differences in exposure to a native contrast may not directly translate to behavioral and neural indicators of perceptual attunement, raising the possibility that frequency of exposure does not influence improvements in discriminating native contrasts.

Abstract

Non-adjacent dependencies are challenging for the language learning machinery and are acquired later than adjacent dependencies. In this transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study, we show that participants successfully discriminated between grammatical and non-grammatical sequences after having implicitly acquired an artificial language with crossed non-adjacent dependencies. Subsequent to transcranial magnetic stimulation of Broca’s region, discrimination was impaired compared to when a language-irrelevant control region (vertex) was stimulated. These results support the view that Broca’s region is engaged in structured sequence processing and extend previous functional neuroimaging results on artificial grammar learning (AGL) in two directions: first, the results establish that Broca’s region is a causal component in the processing of non-adjacent dependencies, and second, they show that implicit processing of non-adjacent dependencies engages Broca’s region. Since patients with lesions in Broca’s region do not always show grammatical processing difficulties, the result that Broca’s region is causally linked to processing of non-adjacent dependencies is a step towards clarification of the exact nature of syntactic deficits caused by lesions or perturbation to Broca’s region. Our findings are consistent with previous results and support a role for Broca’s region in general structured sequence processing, rather than a specific role for the processing of hierarchically organized sentence structure.

Abstract

The CNTNAP2 gene encodes a cell-adhesion molecule that influences the properties of neural networks and the morphology and density of neurons and glial cells. Previous studies have shown association of CNTNAP2 variants with language-related phenotypes in health and disease. Here, we report associations of a common CNTNAP2 polymorphism (rs7794745) with variation in grey matter in a region in the dorsal visual stream. We tried to replicate an earlier study on 314 subjects by Tan and colleagues (2010), but now in a substantially larger group of more than 1700 subjects. Carriers of the T allele showed reduced grey matter volume in left superior occipital gyrus, while we did not replicate associations with grey matter volume in other regions identified by Tan et al (2010). Our work illustrates the importance of independent replication in neuroimaging genetic studies of language-related candidate genes.

Abstract

The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm enables systematic investigation of the acquisition of linguistically relevant structures. It is a paradigm of interest for language processing research, interfacing with theoretical linguistics, and for comparative research on language acquisition and evolution. This chapter presents a key for understanding major variants of the paradigm. An unbiased summary of neuroimaging findings of AGL is presented, using meta-analytic methods, pointing to the crucial involvement of the bilateral frontal operculum and regions in the right lateral hemisphere. Against a background of robust posterior temporal cortex involvement in processing complex syntax, the evidence for involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in AGL is reviewed. Infant AGL studies testing for neural substrates are reviewed, covering the acquisition of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies as well as algebraic rules. The language acquisition data suggest that comparisons of learnability of complex grammars performed with adults may now also be possible with children.

Abstract

This paper presents a new interdisciplinary methodology for the
analysis of future conceptualisations in big messy media data.
More specifically, it focuses on the depictions of post-Covid
futures by RT during the pandemic, i.e. on data which are of
interest not just from the perspective of academic research but
also of policy engagement. The methodology has been
developed to support the scaling up of fine-grained data-driven
analysis of discourse utterances larger than individual lexical
units which are centred around ‘will’ + the infinitive. It relies
on the true integration of manual analytical and computational
methods and tools in researching three modalities – textual,
prosodic1, and gestural. The paper describes the process of
building a computational infrastructure for the collection and
processing of video data, which aims to empower the manual
analysis. It also shows how manual analysis can motivate the
development of computational tools. The paper presents
individual computational tools to demonstrate how the
combination of human and machine approaches to analysis can
reveal new manifestations of cohesion between gesture and
prosody. To illustrate the latter, the paper shows how the
boundaries of prosodic units can work to help determine the
boundaries of gestural units for future conceptualisations.

Abstract

Over the course of a conversation, interlocutors sound more and more like each other in a process called convergence. However, the automaticity and grain size of convergence are not well established. This study therefore examined whether female native Dutch speakers converge to large yet sub-phonemic shifts in the F2 of the vowel /e/. Participants first performed a short reading task to establish baseline F2s for the vowel /e/, then shadowed 120 target words (alongside 360 fillers) which contained one instance of a manipulated vowel /e/ where the F2 had been shifted down to that of the vowel /ø/. Consistent exposure to large (sub-phonemic) downward shifts in F2 did not result in convergence. The results raise issues for theories which view convergence as a product of automatic integration between perception and production.

Abstract

How people communicate about motion events and how this is shaped by language typology are mostly studied with a focus on linguistic encoding in speech. Yet, human communication typically involves an interactional exchange of multimodal signals, such as hand gestures that have different affordances for representing event components. Here, we review recent empirical evidence on multimodal encoding of motion in speech and gesture to gain a deeper understanding of whether and how language typology shapes linguistic expressions in different modalities, and how this changes across different sensory modalities of input and interacts with other aspects of cognition. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that Talmy’s typology of event integration predicts multimodal event descriptions in speech and gesture and visual attention to event components prior to producing these descriptions. Furthermore, variability within the event itself, such as type and modality of stimuli, may override the influence of language typology, especially for expression of manner.

Abstract

Synapse development and neuronal activity represent fundamental processes for the establishment of cognitive function. Structural organization as well as signalling pathways from receptor stimulation to gene expression regulation are mediated by synaptic activity and misregulated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID). Deleterious mutations in the PTCHD1 (Patched domain containing 1) gene have been described in male patients with X-linked ID and/or ASD. The structure of PTCHD1 protein is similar to the Patched (PTCH1) receptor; however, the cellular mechanisms and pathways associated with PTCHD1 in the developing brain are poorly determined. Here we show that PTCHD1 displays a C-terminal PDZ-binding motif that binds to the postsynaptic proteins PSD95 and SAP102. We also report that PTCHD1 is unable to rescue the canonical sonic hedgehog (SHH) pathway in cells depleted of PTCH1, suggesting that both proteins are involved in distinct cellular signalling pathways. We find that Ptchd1 deficiency in male mice (Ptchd1−/y) induces global changes in synaptic gene expression, affects the expression of the immediate-early expression genes Egr1 and Npas4 and finally impairs excitatory synaptic structure and neuronal excitatory activity in the hippocampus, leading to cognitive dysfunction, motor disabilities and hyperactivity. Thus our results support that PTCHD1 deficiency induces a neurodevelopmental disorder causing excitatory synaptic dysfunction.

Abstract

The centrosome governs many pan-cellular processes including cell division, migration, and cilium formation.
However, very little is known about its cell type-specific protein composition and the sub-organellar domains where
these protein interactions take place. Here, we outline a protocol for the spatial interrogation of the centrosome
proteome in human cells, such as those differentiated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), through co-
immunoprecipitation of protein complexes around selected baits that are known to reside at different structural parts
of the centrosome, followed by mass spectrometry. The protocol describes expansion and differentiation of human
iPSCs to dorsal forebrain neural progenitors and cortical projection neurons, harvesting and lysis of cells for protein
isolation, co-immunoprecipitation with antibodies against selected bait proteins, preparation for mass spectrometry,
processing the mass spectrometry output files using MaxQuant software, and statistical analysis using Perseus
software to identify the enriched proteins by each bait. Given the large number of cells needed for the isolation of
centrosome proteins, this protocol can be scaled up or down by modifying the number of bait proteins and can also
be carried out in batches. It can potentially be adapted for other cell types, organelles, and species as well.

Abstract

Previous work has shown that novel morphologically complex words (henceforth neologisms) leave traces in memory after just one encounter. This study addressed the question whether these traces are abstract in nature or exemplars. In three experiments, neologisms were either primed by themselves or by their stems. The primes occurred in the visual modality whereas the targets were presented in the auditory modality (Experiment 1) or vice versa (Experiments 2 and 3). The primes were presented in sentences in a selfpaced reading task (Experiment 1) or in stories in a listening comprehension task (Experiments 2 and 3). The targets were incorporated in lexical decision tasks, auditory or visual (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, respectively), or in stories in a self-paced reading task (Experiment 3). The experimental part containing the targets immediately followed the familiarization phase with the primes (Experiment 1), or after a one week delay (Experiments 2 and 3). In all experiments, participants recognized neologisms faster if they had encountered them before (identity priming) than if the familiarization phase only contained the neologisms’ stems (stem priming). These results show that the priming effects are robust despite substantial differences between the primes and the targets. This suggests that the traces novel morphologically complex words leave in memory after just one encounter are abstract in nature.

Abstract

The task of automatic playlist continuation is generating a list of recommended tracks that can be added to an existing playlist. By suggesting appropriate tracks, i. e., songs to add to a playlist, a recommender system can increase the user engagement by making playlist creation easier, as well as extending listening beyond the end of current playlist. The ACM Recommender Systems Challenge 2018 focuses on such task. Spotify released a dataset of playlists, which includes a large number of playlists and associated track listings. Given a set of playlists from which a number of tracks have been withheld, the goal is predicting the missing tracks in those playlists. We participated in the challenge as the team Unconscious Bias and, in this paper, we present our approach. We extend adversarial autoencoders to the problem of automatic playlist continuation. We show how multiple input modalities, such as the playlist titles as well as track titles, artists and albums, can be incorporated in the playlist continuation task.

Abstract

Perceptual and sensorimotor timing skills can be thoroughly assessed with the Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA). The battery has been used for testing rhythmic skills in healthy adults and patient populations (e.g., with Parkinson disease), showing sensitivity to timing and rhythm deficits. Here we assessed the test-retest reliability of the BAASTA in 20 healthy adults. Participants were tested twice with the BAASTA, implemented on a tablet interface, with a 2-week interval. They completed 4 perceptual tasks, namely, duration discrimination, anisochrony detection with tones and music, and the Beat Alignment Test (BAT). Moreover, they completed motor tasks via finger tapping, including unpaced and paced tapping with tones and music, synchronization-continuation, and adaptive tapping to a sequence with a tempo change. Despite high variability among individuals, the results showed good test-retest reliability in most tasks. A slight but significant improvement from test to retest was found in tapping with music, which may reflect a learning effect. In general, the BAASTA was found a reliable tool for evaluating timing and rhythm skills.

Abstract

People appear to have systematic associations between odors and colors. Previous research has emphasized the perceptual nature of these associations, but little attention has been paid to what role language might play. It is possible odor–color associations arise through a process of labeling; that is, participants select a descriptor for an odor and then choose a color accordingly (e.g., banana odor → “banana” label → yellow). If correct, this would predict odor–color associations would differ as odor descriptions differ. We compared speakers of Dutch (who overwhelmingly describe odors by referring to the source; e.g., smells like banana) with speakers of Maniq and Thai (who also describe odors with dedicated, abstract smell vocabulary; e.g., musty), and tested whether the type of descriptor mattered for odor–color associations. Participants were asked to select a color that they associated with an odor on two separate occasions (to test for consistency), and finally to label the odors. We found the hunter-gatherer Maniq showed few, if any, consistent or accurate odor–color associations. More importantly, we found the types of descriptors used to name the smells were related to the odor–color associations. When people used abstract smell terms to describe odors, they were less likely to choose a color match, but when they described an odor with a source-based term, their color choices more accurately reflected the odor source, particularly when the odor source was named correctly (e.g., banana odor → yellow). This suggests language is an important factor in odor–color cross-modal associations

Abstract

This corpus study investigates how children figure out that functional modals
like must can express various flavors of modality. We examine how modality is
expressed in speech to and by children, and find that the way speakers use
modals may obscure their polysemy. Yet, children eventually figure it out. Our
results suggest that some do before age 3. We show that while root and
epistemic flavors are not equally well-represented in the input, there are robust
correlations between flavor and aspect, which learners could exploit to discover
modal polysemy.

Abstract

Auditory sentence comprehension involves processing content (semantics), grammar (syntax), and intonation (prosody). The left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is involved in sentence comprehension guided by these different cues, with neuroimaging studies preferentially locating syntactic and semantic processing in separate IFG subregions. However, this regional specialisation and its functional relevance has yet to be confirmed. This study probed the role of the posterior IFG (pIFG) for syntactic processing and the anterior IFG (aIFG) for semantic processing with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in a task that required the interpretation of the sentence’s prosodic realisation. Healthy participants performed a sentence completion task with syntactic and semantic decisions, while receiving 10 Hz rTMS over either left aIFG, pIFG, or vertex (control). Initial behavioural analyses showed an inhibitory effect on accuracy without task-specificity. However, electrical field simulations revealed differential effects for both subregions. In the aIFG, stronger stimulation led to slower semantic processing, with no effect of pIFG stimulation. In contrast, we found a facilitatory effect on syntactic processing in both aIFG and pIFG, where higher stimulation strength was related to faster responses. Our results provide first evidence for the functional relevance of left aIFG in semantic processing guided by intonation. The stimulation effect on syntactic responses emphasises the importance of the IFG for syntax processing, without supporting the hypothesis of a pIFG-specific involvement. Together, the results support the notion of functionally specialised IFG subregions for diverse but fundamental cues for language processing.

Abstract

Iconicity, or the resemblance between form and meaning, is often ascribed to a special status and contrasted with default assumptions of arbitrariness in spoken language. But does iconicity in spoken language have a special status when it comes to learnability? A simple way to gauge learnability is to see how well something is retrieved from memory. We can further contrast this with guessability, to see (1) whether the ease of guessing the meanings of ideophones outperforms the rate at which they are remembered; and (2) how willing participants’ are to reassess what they were taught in a prior task—a novel contribution of this study. We replicate prior guessing and memory tasks using ideophones and adjectives from Japanese, Korean, and Igbo. Our results show that although native Cantonese speakers guessed ideophone meanings above chance level, they memorized both ideophones and adjectives with comparable accuracy. However, response time data show that participants took significantly longer to respond correctly to adjective–meaning pairs—indicating a discrepancy in a cognitive effort that favored the recognition of ideophones. In a follow-up reassessment task, participants who were taught foil translations were more likely to choose the true translations for ideophones rather than adjectives. By comparing the findings from our guessing and memory tasks, we conclude that iconicity is more accessible if a task requires participants to actively seek out sound-meaning associations.

Abstract

People sometimes predict upcoming words during language comprehension, but debate remains on when and to what extent such predictions indeed occur. The rational adaptation hypothesis holds that predictions develop with expected utility: people predict more strongly when predictions are frequently confirmed (low prediction error) rather than disconfirmed. However, supporting evidence is mixed thus far and has only involved measuring responses to supposedly predicted nouns, not to preceding articles that may also be predicted. The current, large-sample (N = 200) ERP study on written discourse comprehension in Dutch therefore employs the well-known ‘pre-nominal prediction effect’: enhanced N400-like ERPs for articles that are unexpected given a likely upcoming noun’s gender (i.e., the neuter gender article ‘het’ when people expect the common gender noun phrase ‘de krant’, the newspaper) compared to expected articles. We investigated whether the pre-nominal prediction effect is larger when most of the presented stories contain predictable article-noun combinations (75% predictable, 25% unpredictable) compared to when most stories contain unpredictable combinations (25% predictable, 75% unpredictable). Our results show the pre-nominal prediction effect in both contexts, with little evidence to suggest that this effect depended on the percentage of predictable combinations. Moreover, the little evidence suggesting such a dependence was primarily observed for unexpected, neuter-gender articles (‘het’), which is inconsistent with the rational adaptation hypothesis. In line with recent demonstrations (Nieuwland, 2021a,b), our results suggest that linguistic prediction is less ‘rational’ or Bayes optimal than is often suggested.

Abstract

Social learning is predicted to evolve in socially living animals provided the learning process is not random but biased by certain socio-ecological factors. One bias of particular interest for the emergence of (cumulative) culture is the tendency to forgo personal behaviour in favour of relatively better variants observed in others, also known as the “copy-if-better” strategy. We investigated whether chimpanzees employ copy-if-better in a simple token-exchange paradigm controlling for individual and random social learning. After being trained on one token-type, subjects were confronted with a conspecific demonstrator who either received the same food reward as the subject (control condition) or a higher value food reward than the subject (test condition) for exchanging another token-type. In general, the chimpanzees persisted in exchanging the token-type they were trained on individually, indicating a form of conservatism consistent with previous studies. However, the chimpanzees were more inclined to copy the demonstrator in the test compared to the control condition, indicating a tendency to employ a copy-if-better strategy. We discuss the validity of our results by considering alternative explanations and relate our findings to the emergence of cumulative culture.

Abstract

Learning new vocabulary from context typically requires multiple encounters during which word meaning can be retrieved from memory or inferred from context. We compared the effect of memory retrieval and context inferences on short‐ and long‐term retention in three experiments. Participants studied novel words and then practiced the words either in an uninformative context that required the retrieval of word meaning from memory (“I need the funguo”) or in an informative context from which word meaning could be inferred (“I want to unlock the door: I need the funguo”). The informative context facilitated word comprehension during practice. However, later recall of word form and meaning and word recognition in a new context were better after successful retrieval practice and retrieval practice with feedback than after context‐inference practice. These findings suggest benefits of retrieval during contextualized vocabulary learning whereby the uninformative context enhanced word retention by triggering memory retrieval.

Abstract

An essential phenomenon in the development towards syntactic maturity after early childhood is the increasing use of so-called sentence-combining transformations. Especially by using subordination, complex sentences are produced. The research reported here is an attempt to arrive at a more adequate characterization and explanation. Our starting point was an analysis of 280 texts written by Dutch-speaking pupils of the two highest grades of the primary school and the four lowest grades of three different types of secondary education. It was examined whether systematic shifts in the use of certain groups of so-called function words could be traced. We concluded that the development of the syntactic formulating ability can be characterized as an increase in connectivity: the use of all kinds of function words which explicitly mark logico-semantic relations between propositions. This development starts by inserting special adverbs and coordinating conjunctions resulting in various types of coordination. In a later stage, the syntactic patterning of the sentence is affected as well (various types of subordination). The increase in sentence complexity is only one aspect of the entire development. An explanation for the increase in connectivity is offered based upon a distinction between narrative and expository language use. The latter, but not the former, is characterized by frequent occurrence of connectives. The development in syntactic formulating ability includes a high level of skill in expository language use. Speed of development is determined by intensity of training, e.g. in scholastic and occupational settings.

Abstract

The temporal properties of semantic and phonological processes in speech production were investigated in a new experimental paradigm using movement-related brain potentials. The main experimental task was picture naming. In addition, a 2-choice reaction go/no-go procedure was included, involving a semantic and a phonological categorization of the picture name. Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether semantic and phonological information activated motor processes at separate moments in time. An LRP was only observed on no-go trials when the semantic (not the phonological) decision determined the response hand. Varying the position of the critical phoneme in the picture name did not affect the onset of the LRP but rather influenced when the LRP began to differ on go and no-go trials and allowed the duration of phonological encoding of a word to be estimated. These results provide electrophysiological evidence for early semantic activation and later phonological encoding.

Abstract

The ‘grooming handclasp’ is one of the most well-established cultural traditions in chimpanzees. A recent study by Wrangham et al. [1] reduced the cultural scope of grooming-handclasp behavior by showing that grooming-handclasp style convergence is “explained by matrilineal relationship rather than conformity” [1]. Given that we previously reported cultural differences in grooming-handclasp style preferences in captive chimpanzees [2], we tested the alternative view posed by Wrangham et al. [1] in the chimpanzee populations that our original results were based on. Using the same outcome variable as Wrangham et al. [1] — the proportion of high-arm grooming featuring palm-to-palm clasping — we found that matrilineal relationships explained neither within-group homogeneity nor between-group heterogeneity, thereby corroborating our original conclusion that grooming-handclasp behavior can represent a group-level cultural tradition in chimpanzees.

Abstract

This study examines whether heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands interpret focus in written Dutch sentences differently from L1 speakers of Dutch (controls). Where most previous studies examined effects from the dominant L2 on the heritage language, we investigated whether there are effects from the weaker heritage language on the dominant L2. Dutch and Turkish differ in focus marking. Dutch primarily uses prosody to encode focus, whereas Turkish uses prosody and syntax, with a preverbal area for focused information and a postverbal area for background information. In written sentences no explicit prosody is available, which possibly enhances the role of syntactic cues in interpreting focus. An eye-tracking experiment suggests that, unlike the controls, the bilinguals associate the preverbal area with focus and the postverbal area with background information. These findings are in line with transfer from the weaker L1 to the dominant L2 at the syntax–discourse interface.

Abstract

Studies on heritage speakers generally reveal effects from the dominant L2 on the weaker L1, but it is less clear whether cross-linguistic transfer also occurs in the other direction: from the L1 to the dominant L2. This study explores whether the Dutch prosody of heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands differs from that of L1 speakers of Dutch who do not speak Turkish, and whether observed differences could be attributed to an effect of Turkish. The experiment elicited semi-spontaneous sentences in broad and contrastive focus. The analysis included f0 movements, peak alignment, and duration. Although both participant groups used prosody to mark focus (e.g., time-compressed f0 movements for contrastive focus), there were also differences between the groups. For instance, while the L1 speakers of Dutch showed declination, the bilinguals remained at the same pitch level throughout the sentence. Ipek (2015) and Kamalı (2011) also noted a limited pitch range in the prenuclear area in Turkish. We argue that the prosodic differences could be due to an effect of Turkish on Dutch prosody, suggesting that the weaker L1 in Turkish heritage speakers may affect the dominant L2 in the prosodic domain.

Abstract

Heterozygous mutations of the Forkhead-box protein 2 (FOXP2) gene in humans cause childhood apraxia of speech. Loss of Foxp2 in mice is known to affect striatal development and impair motor skills. However, it is unknown if striatal excitatory/inhibitory balance is affected during development and if the imbalance persists into adulthood. We investigated the effect of reduced Foxp2 expression, via a loss-of-function mutation, on striatal medium spiny neurons (MSNs). Our data show that heterozygous loss of Foxp2 decreases excitatory (AMPA receptor-mediated) and increases inhibitory (GABA receptor-mediated) currents in D1 dopamine receptor positive MSNs of juvenile and adult mice. Furthermore, reduced Foxp2 expression increases GAD67 expression, leading to both increased presynaptic content and release of GABA. Finally, pharmacological blockade of inhibitory activity in vivo partially rescues motor skill learning deficits in heterozygous Foxp2 mice. Our results suggest a novel role for Foxp2 in the regulation of striatal direct pathway activity through managing inhibitory drive.

Abstract

In the typology of motion lexicalization, two types of languages have traditionally been distinguished: satellite-framed and verb-framed. Serializing languages are difficult to fit into this typology and have been claimed to belong to a third type: equipollently framed. In this paper I use grammatical criteria to show that Avatime, a serializing language, should indeed be classified as equipollently framed. I also study motion descriptions in narratives. Avatime is similar to other serializing languages with respect to path elaboration, but unlike other serializing languages, it has low manner saliency. Equipollently framed languages thus do not behave as a single type.

Abstract

Pitch, intonation, and speech rate were analyzed in a collection of everyday speech heard by one Dutch infant between the ages of six and nine months. Components of each of these variables were measured in the speech of three adult speakers (mother, father, baby-sitter) when they addressed the infant, and when they addressed another adult. The results are in line with previously reported findings which are usually based on laboratory or prearranged settings: infant-directed speech in a natural setting exhibits more pitch variation, a larger number of simple intonation contours, and slower speech rate than does adult-directed speech.

Abstract

Interpersonal discourse particles (DPs), such as Dutch inderdaad (≈‘indeed’) and eigenlijk (≈‘actually’) are highly frequent in everyday conversational interaction. Despite extensive theoretical descriptions of their polyfunctionality, little is known about how they are used by language comprehenders. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments involving an online dialogue completion task, we asked to what extent inderdaad, confirming an inferred expectation, and eigenlijk, contrasting with an inferred expectation, influence real-time understanding of dialogues. Answers in the dialogues contained a DP or a control adverb, and a critical discourse referent was replaced by a beep; participants chose the most likely dialogue completion by clicking on one of four referents in a display. Results show that listeners make rapid and fine-grained situation-specific inferences about the use of DPs, modulating their expectations about how the dialogue will unfold. Findings further specify and constrain theories about the conversation-managing function and polyfunctionality of DPs.

Abstract

Dutch distinguishes at least four sentence types: statements and questions, the latter type being subdivided into wh-questions (beginning with a question word), yes/no-questions (with inversion of subject and finite), and declarative questions (lexico-syntactically identical to statement). Acoustically, each of these (sub)types was found to have clearly distinct global F0-patterns, as well as a characteristic distribution of final rises [1,2]. The present paper explores the separate contribution of parameters of global downtrend and size of accent-lending pitch movements versus aspects of the terminal rise to the human identification of the four sentence (sub)types, at various positions in the time-course of the utterance. The results show that interrogativity in Dutch can be identified at an early point in the utterance. However, wh-questions are not distinct from statements.

Abstract

A central question regarding predictive language processing concerns the extent to which linguistic experience modulates the process. We approached this question by investigating sentence processing in advanced second language (L2) users with different native language (L1) backgrounds. Using a visual world eye tracking paradigm, we investigated to what extent L1 and L2 participants showed anticipatory eye movements to objects while listening to Dutch placement event descriptions. L2 groups differed in the degree of similarity between Dutch and their L1 with respect to placement verb semantics: German, like Dutch, specifies object position in placement verbs (put.STAND vs. put.LIE), whereas English and French typically leave position underspecified (put). Results showed that German L2 listeners, like native Dutch listeners, anticipate objects that match the verbally encoded position immediately upon encountering the verb. French/English L2 participants, however, did not show any prediction effects, despite proper understanding of Dutch placement verbs. Our findings suggest that prior experience with a specific semantic contrast in one’s L1 facilitates prediction in L2, and hence adds to the evidence that linguistic experience modulates predictive sentence processing

Abstract

In the recent literature, the effects of noninvasive neurostimulation on cognitive functioning appear to lack consistency and replicability. We propose that such effects may be concealed unless dedicated, sensitive, and process-specific dependent measures are used. The expression and subsequent suppression of response capture are often studied using conflict tasks. Response-time distribution analyses have been argued to provide specific measures of the susceptibility to make fast impulsive response errors, as well as the proficiency of the selective suppression of these impulses. These measures of response capture and response inhibition are particularly sensitive to experimental manipulations and clinical deficiencies that are typically obfuscated in commonly used overall performance analyses. Recent work using structural and functional imaging techniques links these behavioral outcome measures to the integrity of frontostriatal networks. These studies suggest that the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) is linked to the susceptibility to response capture whereas the right inferior frontal cortex (rIFC) is associated with the selective suppression of action impulses. Here, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test the causal involvement of these two cortical areas in response capture and inhibition in the Simon task. Disruption of rIFC function specifically impaired selective suppression of conflicting action tendencies, whereas the anticipated increase of fast impulsive errors after perturbing pre-SMA function was not confirmed. These results provide a proof of principle of the notion that the selection of appropriate dependent measures is perhaps crucial to establish the effects of neurostimulation on specific cognitive functions.

Abstract

Social information use is a pivotal characteristic of the human species. Avoiding the cost of individual exploration, social learning confers substantial fitness benefits under a wide variety of environmental conditions, especially when the process is governed by biases toward relative superiority (e.g., experts, the majority). Here, we examine the development of social information use in children aged 4–14 years (n = 605) across seven societies in a standardised social learning task. We measured two key aspects of social information use: general reliance on social information and majority preference. We show that the extent to which children rely on social information depends on children’s cultural background. The extent of children’s majority preference also varies cross-culturally, but in contrast to social information use, the ontogeny of majority preference follows a U-shaped trajectory across all societies. Our results demonstrate both cultural continuity and diversity in the realm of human social learning.

Abstract

Navigating through space is fundamental to human nature and requires the ability to retrieve relevant information from the remote past. With the passage of time, some memories become generic, capturing only a sense of familiarity. Yet, others maintain precision, even when acquired decades ago. Understanding the dynamics of memory consolidation is a major challenge to neuroscientists. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we systematically examined the effects of time and spatial context on the neural representation of landmark recognition memory. An equal number of male and female subjects (males N = 10, total N = 20) watched a route through a large-scale virtual environment. Landmarks occurred at navigationally relevant and irrelevant locations along the route. Recognition memory for landmarks was tested directly following encoding, 24 h later and 30 days later. Surprisingly, changes over time in the neural representation of navigationally relevant landmarks differed between males and females. In males, relevant landmarks selectively engaged the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) regardless of the age of the memory. In females, the response to relevant landmarks gradually diminished with time in the PHG but strengthened progressively in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Based on what is known about the functioning of the PHG and IFG, the findings of this study suggest that males maintain access to the initially formed spatial representation of landmarks whereas females become strongly dependent on a verbal representation of landmarks with time. Our findings yield a clear objective for future studies

Abstract

Jescheniak and Levelt (Jescheniak, J.-D., Levelt, W.J.M. 1994. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 20 (4), 824–843) have suggested that the speed with which native speakers of a gender-marking language retrieve the grammatical gender of a noun from their mental lexicon may depend on the recency of earlier access to that same noun's gender, as the result of a mechanism that is dedicated to facilitate gender-marked anaphoric reference to recently introduced discourse entities. This hypothesis was tested in two picture naming experiments. Recent gender access did not facilitate the production of gender-marked adjective noun phrases (Experiment 1), nor that of gender-marked definite article noun phrases (Experiment 2), even though naming times for the latter utterances were sensitive to the gender of a written distractor word superimposed on the picture to be named. This last result replicates and extends earlier gender-specific picture-word interference results (Schriefers, H. 1993. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 19 (4), 841–850), showing that one can selectively tap into the production of grammatical gender agreement during speaking. The findings are relevant to theories of speech production and the representation of grammatical gender for that process.

Abstract

Meermalen is getracht om syntactische formuleenuuirdigheid direct en objectief te meten aan de hand van gesproken of geschreven teksten. Uitgangspunt hierbij vormde in de regel de syntactische complexiteit van de geproduceerde taaluitingen. Dit heeft echter niet geleid tot een plausibele, duidelijk omschreven en praktisch bruikbare index. N.a.v. een kritische bespreking van de notie complexiteit wordt in dit artikel als nieuw criterium voorgesteld de connectiviteit van de taaluitingen; de expliciete aanduiding van logiscli-scmantische relaties tussen proposities. Connectiviteit is gemakkelijk scoorbaar aan de hand van functiewoorden die verschillende vormen van nevenschikkend en onderschikkend zinsverband markeren. Deze nieuwe index ondetrangt de kritiek die op complexiteit gegeven kon worden, blijkt duidelijk te discrimineren tussen groepen leerlingen die van elkaar verschillen naar leeftijd en opleidingsniveau, en sluit aan bij recente taalpsychologische en sociolinguïstische theorie. Tot besluit worden enige onderwijskundige implicaties aangegeven.

Abstract

Reactive and proactive subtypes of aggression have been recognized to help parse etiological heterogeneity of this complex phenotype. With a heritability of about 50%, genetic factors play a role in the development of aggressive behavior. Imaging studies implicate brain structures related to social behavior in aggression etiology, most notably the amygdala and striatum. This study aimed to gain more insight into the pathways from genetic risk factors for aggression to aggression phenotypes. To this end, we conducted genome-wide gene-based cross-trait meta-analyses of aggression with the volumes of amygdala, nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus to identify genes influencing both aggression and aggression-related brain volumes. We used data of large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of: (a) aggressive behavior in children and adolescents (EAGLE, N = 18,988); and (b) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)-based volume measures of aggression-relevant subcortical brain regions (ENIGMA2, N = 13,171). Second, the identified genes were further investigated in a sample of healthy adults (mean age (SD) = 25.28 (4.62) years; 43% male) who had genome-wide genotyping data and questionnaire data on aggression subtypes available (Brain Imaging Genetics, BIG, N = 501) to study their effect on reactive and proactive subtypes of aggression. Our meta-analysis identified two genes, MECOM and AVPR1A, significantly associated with both aggression risk and nucleus accumbens (MECOM) and amygdala (AVPR1A) brain volume. Subsequent in-depth analysis of these genes in healthy adults (BIG), including sex as an interaction term in the model, revealed no significant subtype-specific gene-wide associations. Using cross-trait meta-analysis of brain measures and psychiatric phenotypes, this study generated new hypotheses about specific links between genes, the brain and behavior. Results indicate that MECOM and AVPR1A may exert an effect on aggression through mechanisms involving nucleus accumbens and amygdala volumes, respectively.

Abstract

Understanding intraspecific variation in sociality is essential for characterizing the flexibility and evolution of social systems, yet its study in nonhuman animals is rare. Here, we investigated whether chimpanzees exhibit population-level differences in sociality that cannot be easily explained by differences in genetics or ecology. We compared social proximity and grooming tendencies across four semiwild populations of chimpanzees living in the same ecological environment over three consecutive years, using both linear mixed models and social network analysis. Results indicated temporally stable, population-level differences in dyadic-level sociality. Moreover, group cohesion measures capturing network characteristics beyond dyadic interactions (clustering, modularity, and social differentiation) showed population-level differences consistent with the dyadic indices. Subsequently, we explored whether the observed intraspecific variation in sociality could be attributed to cultural processes by ruling out alternative sources of variation including the influences of ecology, genetics, and differences in population demographics. We conclude that substantial variation in social behavior exists across neighboring populations of chimpanzees and that this variation is in part shaped by cultural processes.

Abstract

In natural conversations, words are generally shorter and they often lack segments. It is unclear to what extent such durational and segmental reductions affect word recognition. The present study investigates to what extent reduction in the initial syllable hinders word comprehension, which types of segments listeners mostly rely on, and whether listeners use word duration as a cue in word recognition. We conducted three experiments in Dutch, in which we adapted the gating paradigm to study the comprehension of spontaneously uttered conversational speech by aligning the gates with the edges of consonant clusters or vowels. Participants heard the context and some segmental and/or durational information from reduced target words with unstressed initial syllables. The initial syllable varied in its degree of reduction, and in half of the stimuli the vowel was not clearly present. Participants gave too short answers if they were only provided with durational information from the target words, which shows that listeners are unaware of the reductions that can occur in spontaneous speech. More importantly, listeners required fewer segments to recognize target words if the vowel in the initial syllable was absent. This result strongly suggests that this vowel hardly plays a role in word comprehension, and that its presence may even delay this process. More important are the consonants and the stressed vowel.

Abstract

ct For the first time, chimpanzees have been observed using tools to clean the corpse of a deceased group member. A female chimpanzee sat down at the dead body of a young male, selected a firm stem of grass, and started to intently remove debris from his teeth. This report contributes novel behaviour to the chimpanzee's ethogram, and highlights how crucial information for reconstructing the evolutionary origins of human mortuary practices may be missed by refraining from developing adequate observation techniques to capture non-human animals' death responses

Abstract

A major goal in the early years of elementary school is learning to read, a process in which children show substantial individual differences. To shed light on the underlying processes of early literacy, this study investigates the interrelations among four known precursors to literacy: phonological short-term memory, vocabulary size, rhyme awareness, and trainability in the phonological specificity of lexical representations, by means of structural equation modelling, in a group of 101 4-year-old children. Trainability in lexical specificity was assessed by teaching children pairs of new phonologically-similar words. Standardized tests of receptive vocabulary, short-term memory, and rhyme awareness were used. The best-fitting model showed that trainability in lexical specificity partially mediated between short-term memory and both vocabulary size and rhyme awareness. These results demonstrate that individual differences in the ability to learn phonologically-similar new words are related to individual differences in vocabulary size and rhyme awareness.

Abstract

Recently it has been discovered that visuospatial attention operates rhythmically, rather than being stably employed over time. A low-frequency 7–8 Hz rhythmic mechanism coordinates periodic windows to sample relevant locations and to shift towards other, less relevant locations in a visual scene. Rhythmic sampling theories would predict that when two locations are relevant 8 Hz sampling mechanisms split into two, effectively resulting in a 4 Hz sampling frequency at each location. Therefore, it is expected that rhythmic sampling is influenced by the relative importance of locations for the task at hand. To test this, we employed an orienting task with an arrow cue, where participants were asked to respond to a target presented in one visual field. The cue-to-target interval was systematically varied, allowing us to assess whether performance follows a rhythmic pattern across cue-to-target delays. We manipulated a location’s task relevance by altering the validity of the cue, thereby predicting the correct location in 60%, 80% or 100% of trials. Results revealed significant 4 Hz performance fluctuations at cued right visual field targets with low cue validity (60%), suggesting regular sampling of both locations. With high cue validity (80%), we observed a peak at 8 Hz towards non-cued targets, although not significant. These results were in line with our hypothesis suggesting a goal-directed balancing of attentional sampling (cued location) and shifting (non-cued location) depending on the relevance of locations in a visual scene. However, considering the hemifield specificity of the effect together with the absence of expected effects for cued trials in the high valid conditions we further discuss the interpretation of the data.

Abstract

The capacity for language is a defining property of our species, yet despite decades of research evidence on its neural basis is still mixed and a generalized consensus is difficult to achieve. We suggest that this is partly caused by researchers defining “language” in different ways, with focus on a wide range of phenomena, properties, and levels of investigation. Accordingly, there is very little agreement amongst cognitive neuroscientists of language on the operationalization of fundamental concepts to be investigated in neuroscientific experiments. Here, we review chains of derivation in the cognitive neuroscience of language, focusing on how the hypothesis under consideration is defined by a combination of theoretical and methodological assumptions. We first attempt to disentangle the complex relationship between linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience in the field. Next, we focus on how conclusions that can be drawn from any experiment are inherently constrained by auxiliary assumptions, both theoretical and methodological, on which the validity of conclusions drawn rests. These issues are discussed in the context of classical experimental manipulations as well as study designs that employ novel approaches such as naturalistic stimuli and computational modelling. We conclude by proposing that a highly interdisciplinary field such as the cognitive neuroscience of language requires researchers to form explicit statements concerning the theoretical definitions, methodological choices, and other constraining factors involved in their work.

Abstract

Insight in the developmental trajectory of the neuroanatomical reading correlates is important to understand related cognitive processes and disorders. In adults, a dual pathway model has been suggested encompassing a dorsal phonological and a ventral orthographic white matter system. This dichotomy seems not present in pre-readers, and the specific role of ventral white matter in reading remains unclear. Therefore, the present longitudinal study investigated the relation between ventral white matter and cognitive processes underlying reading in children with a broad range of reading skills (n = 61). Ventral pathways of the reading network were manually traced using diffusion tractography: the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and uncinate fasciculus (UF). Pathways were examined pre-reading (5–6 years) and after two years of reading acquisition (7–8 years). Dimension reduction for the cognitive measures resulted in one component for pre-reading cognitive measures and a separate phonological and orthographic component for the early reading measures. Regression analyses revealed a relation between the pre-reading cognitive component and bilateral IFOF and left ILF. Interestingly, exclusively the left IFOF was related to the orthographic component, whereas none of the pathways was related to the phonological component. Hence, the left IFOF seems to serve as the lexical reading route, already in the earliest reading stages.

Abstract

Learning often occurs in communicative and collaborative settings, yet almost all research into the neural basis of memory relies on participants encoding and retrieving information on their own. We investigated whether learning linguistic labels in a collaborative context at least partly relies on cognitively and neurally distinct representations, as compared to learning in an individual context. Healthy human participants learned labels for sets of abstract shapes in three different tasks. They came up with labels with another person in a collaborative communication task (collaborative condition), by themselves (individual condition), or were given pre-determined unrelated labels to learn by themselves (arbitrary condition). Immediately after learning, participants retrieved and produced the labels aloud during a communicative task in the MRI scanner. The fMRI results show that the retrieval of collaboratively generated labels as compared to individually learned labels engages brain regions involved in understanding others (mentalizing or theory of mind) and autobiographical memory, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the right temporoparietal junction and the precuneus. This study is the first to show that collaboration during encoding affects the neural networks involved in retrieval.

Abstract

So far, studies that investigated interference effects of post-learning processes on episodic memory consolidation in humans have used tasks involving only complex and meaningful information. Such tasks require reallocation of general or encoding-specific resources away from consolidation-relevant activities. The possibility that interference can be elicited using a task that heavily taxes our limited brain resources, but has low semantic and hippocampal related long-term memory processing demands, has never been tested. We address this question by investigating whether consolidation could persist in parallel with an active, encoding-irrelevant, minimally semantic task, regardless of its high resource demands for cognitive processing. We distinguish the impact of such a task on consolidation based on whether it engages resources that are: (1) general/executive, or (2) specific/overlapping with the encoding modality. Our experiments compared subsequent memory performance across two post-encoding consolidation periods: quiet wakeful rest and a cognitively demanding n-Back task. Across six different experiments (total N = 176), we carefully manipulated the design of the n-Back task to target general or specific resources engaged in the ongoing consolidation process. In contrast to previous studies that employed interference tasks involving conceptual stimuli and complex processing demands, we did not find any differences between n-Back and rest conditions on memory performance at delayed test, using both recall and recognition tests. Our results indicate that: (1) quiet, wakeful rest is not a necessary prerequisite for episodic memory consolidation; and (2) post-encoding cognitive engagement does not interfere with memory consolidation when task-performance has minimal semantic and hippocampally-based episodic memory processing demands. We discuss our findings with reference to resource and reactivation-led interference theories

Abstract

During a post-encoding delay period, the ongoing consolidation of recently acquired memories can suffer interference if the delay period involves encoding of new memories, or sensory stimulation tasks. Interestingly, two recent independent studies suggest that (i) autobiographical thinking also interferes markedly with ongoing consolidation of recently learned wordlist material, while (ii) a 2-Back task might not interfere with ongoing consolidation, possibly due to the suppression of autobiographical thinking. In this study, we directly compare these conditions against a quiet wakeful rest baseline to test whether the promotion (via familiar sound-cues) or suppression (via a 2-Back task) of autobiographical thinking during the post-encoding delay period can affect consolidation of studied wordlists in a negative or a positive way, respectively. Our results successfully replicate previous studies and show a significant interference effect (as compared to the rest condition) when learning is followed by familiar sound-cues that promote autobiographical thinking, whereas no interference effect is observed when learning is followed by the 2-Back task. Results from a post-experimental experience-sampling questionnaire further show significant differences in the degree of autobiographical thinking reported during the three post-encoding periods: highest in the presence of sound-cues and lowest during the 2-Back task. In conclusion, our results suggest that varying levels of autobiographical thought during the post-encoding period may modulate episodic memory consolidation.

Abstract

In English, Dutch, and other European languages, it is well established that the fundamental phonological unit in word production is the phoneme; in contrast, recent studies have shown that in Chinese it is the (atonal) syllable and in Japanese the mora. The present study investigated whether this cross-language variation in the size of the unit of word production is due to the type of script used in the language (i.e., alphabetic, morphosyllabic, or moraic). Capitalizing on the multiscriptal nature of Japanese, and using the Stroop color naming task, we show that the overlap in the initial mora between the color name and the written distractor facilitates color naming independent of script type. These results confirm the mora as the phonological unit of word production in Japanese, and establish the Stroop color naming task as a useful task for investigating the fundamental (or "proximate") phonological unit used in speech production.

Abstract

Some people report being able to spontaneously “time” the end of their sleep. This ability to self-awaken challenges the idea of sleep as a passive cognitive state. Yet, current evidence on this phenomenon is limited, partly because of the varied definitions of self-awakening and experimental approaches used to study it. Here, we provide a review of the literature on self-awakening. Our aim is to i) contextualise the phenomenon, ii) propose an operating definition, and iii) summarise the scientific approaches used so far. The literature review identified 17 studies on self-awakening. Most of them adopted an objective sleep evaluation (76%), targeted nocturnal sleep (76%), and used a single criterion to define the success of awakening (82%); for most studies, this corresponded to awakening occurring in a time window of 30 minutes around the expected awakening time. Out of 715 total participants, 125 (17%) reported to be self-awakeners, with an average age of 23.24 years and a slight predominance of males compared to females. These results reveal self-awakening as a relatively rare phenomenon. To facilitate the study of self-awakening, and based on the results of the literature review, we propose a quick paper-and-pencil screening questionnaire for self-awakeners and provide an initial validation for it. Taken together, the combined results of the literature review and the proposed questionnaire help in characterising a theoretical framework for self-awakenings, while providing a useful tool and empirical suggestions for future experimental studies, which should ideally employ objective measurements.