Publications

Abstract

Neurodevelopmental disorders that disturb speech and language are highly heritable. Isolation of the underlying genetic risk factors has been hampered by complexity of the phenotype and potentially large number of contributing genes. One exception is the identification of rare heterozygous mutations of the FOXP2 gene in a monogenic syndrome characterised by impaired sequencing of articulatory gestures, disrupting speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia, DVD), as well as multiple deficits in expressive and receptive language. The protein encoded by FOXP2 belongs to a divergent subgroup of forkhead-box transcription factors, with a distinctive DNA-binding domain and motifs that mediate hetero- and homodimerisation. FOXP1, the most closely related member of this subgroup, can directly interact with FOXP2 and is co-expressed in neural structures relevant to speech and language disorders. Moreover, investigations of songbird orthologues indicate that combinatorial actions of the two proteins may play important roles in vocal learning, leading to the suggestion that human FOXP1 should be considered a strong candidate for involvement in DVD. Thus, in this study, we screened the entire coding region of FOXP1 (exons and flanking intronic sequence) for nucleotide changes in a panel of probands used earlier to detect novel mutations in FOXP2. A non-synonymous coding change was identified in a single proband, yielding a proline-to-alanine change (P215A). However, this was also found in a random control sample. Analyses of non-coding SNP changes did not find any correlation with affection status. We conclude that FOXP1 mutations are unlikely to represent a major cause of DVD.

Abstract

Mutations in the FOXP2 gene cause a severe communication disorder involving speech deficits (developmental verbal dyspraxia), accompanied by wide-ranging impairments in expressive and receptive language. The protein encoded by FOXP2 belongs to a divergent subgroup of forkhead-box transcription factors, with a distinctive DNA-binding domain and motifs that mediate hetero- and homodimerization. Here we report the first direct functional genetic investigation of missense and nonsense mutations in FOXP2 using human cell-lines, including a well-established neuronal model system. We focused on three unusual FOXP2 coding variants, uniquely identified in cases of verbal dyspraxia, assessing expression, subcellular localization, DNA-binding and transactivation properties. Analysis of the R553H forkhead-box substitution, found in all affected members of a large three-generation family, indicated that it severely affects FOXP2 function, chiefly by disrupting nuclear localization and DNA-binding properties. The R328X truncation mutation, segregating with speech/language disorder in a second family, yields an unstable, predominantly cytoplasmic product that lacks transactivation capacity. A third coding variant (Q17L) observed in a single affected child did not have any detectable functional effect in the present study. In addition, we used the same systems to explore the properties of different isoforms of FOXP2, resulting from alternative splicing in human brain. Notably, one such isoform, FOXP2.10+, contains dimerization domains, but no DNA-binding domain, and displayed increased cytoplasmic localization, coupled with aggresome formation. We hypothesize that expression of alternative isoforms of FOXP2 may provide mechanisms for post-translational regulation of transcription factor function.

Abstract

Disorders of speech and language are highly heritable, providing strong
support for a genetic basis. However, the underlying genetic architecture is complex,
involving multiple risk factors. This chapter begins by discussing genetic loci associated
with common multifactorial language-related impairments and goes on to
detail the only gene (known as FOXP2) to be directly implicated in a rare monogenic
speech and language disorder. Although FOXP2 was initially uncovered in
humans, model systems have been invaluable in progressing our understanding of
the function of this gene and its associated pathways in language-related areas of the
brain. Research in species from mouse to songbird has revealed effects of this gene
on relevant behaviours including acquisition of motor skills and learned vocalisations
and demonstrated a role for Foxp2 in neuronal connectivity and signalling,
particularly in the striatum. Animal models have also facilitated the identification of
wider neurogenetic networks thought to be involved in language development and
disorder and allowed the investigation of new candidate genes for disorders involving
language, such as CNTNAP2 and FOXP1. Ongoing work in animal models promises
to yield new insights into the genetic and neural mechanisms underlying human
speech and language

Abstract

Childhood syndromes disturbing language development are common and display high degrees of heritability. In most cases, the underlying genetic architecture is likely to be complex, involving multiple chromosomal loci and substantial heterogeneity, which makes it difficult to track down the crucial genomic risk factors. Investigation of rare Mendelian phenotypes offers a complementary route for unravelling key neurogenetic pathways. The value of this approach is illustrated by the discovery that heterozygous FOXP2 (where FOX is forkhead box) mutations cause an unusual monogenic disorder, characterized by problems with articulating speech along with deficits in expressive and receptive language. FOXP2 encodes a regulatory protein, belonging to the forkhead box family of transcription factors, known to play important roles in modulating gene expression in development and disease. Functional genetics using human neuronal models suggest that the different FOXP2 isoforms generated by alternative splicing have distinct properties and may act to regulate each other's activity. Such investigations have also analysed the missense and nonsense mutations found in cases of speech and language disorder, showing that they alter intracellular localization, DNA binding and transactivation capacity of the mutated proteins. Moreover, in the brains of mutant mice, aetiological mutations have been found to disrupt the synaptic plasticity of Foxp2-expressing circuitry. Finally, although mutations of FOXP2 itself are rare, the downstream networks which it regulates in the brain appear to be broadly implicated in typical forms of language impairment. Thus, through ongoing identification of regulated targets and interacting co-factors, this gene is providing the first molecular entry points into neural mechanisms that go awry in language-related disorders

Abstract

How do we individuate body parts? Here, we investigated the effect of body segmentation between hand and arm in tactile and visual perception. In a first experiment, we showed that two tactile stimuli felt farther away when they were applied across the wrist than when they were applied within a single body part (palm or forearm), indicating a “category boundary effect”. In the following experiments, we excluded two hypotheses, which attributed tactile segmentation to other, nontactile factors. In Experiment 2, we showed that the boundary effect does not arise from motor cues. The effect was reduced during a motor task involving flexion and extension movements of the wrist joint. Action brings body parts together into functional units, instead of pulling them apart. In Experiments 3 and 4, we showed that the effect does not arise from perceptual cues of visual discontinuities. We did not find any segmentation effect for the visual percept of the body in Experiment 3, nor for a neutral shape in Experiment 4. We suggest that the mental representation of the body is structured in categorical body parts delineated by joints, and that this categorical representation modulates tactile spatial perception.

Abstract

Processing of cataphoric coreferential relationships.

Abstract

Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) is a visual-gestural language in which linguistic information is conveyed through manual as well as non-manual channels; not only the hands, but also body position, head position and facial expression are important for the language structure. Facial expressions serve grammatical functions in the marking of topics, yes/no questions, and wh-questions (Coerts, 1992). Furthermore, facial expression is used nonlinguistically in the expression of affect (Ekman, 1979). Consequently, at the phonetic level obligatory marking of grammar using facial expression may conflict with the expression of affect. In this study, I investigated the interplay of linguistic and affective functions of brow movements in NGT. Three hypotheses were tested in this thesis. The first is that the affective markers of eyebrows would dominate over the linguistic markers. The second hypothesis predicts that the grammatical markers dominate over the affective brow movements. A third possibility is that a Phonetic Sum would occur in which both functions are combined simultaneously. I elicited sentences combining grammatical and affective functions of eyebrows using a randomised design. Five sentence types were included: declarative sentences, topic sentences, yes-no questions, wh-questions with the wh-sign sentence-final and wh-questions with the wh-sign sentence-initial. These sentences were combined with neutral, surprised, angry, and distressed affect. The brow movements were analysed using the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002a). In these sentences, the eyebrows serve a linguistic function, an affective function, or both. One of the possibilities in the latter cases was that a Phonetic Sum would occur that combines both functions simultaneously. Surprisingly, it was found that a Phonetic Sum occurs in which the phonetic weight of Action Unit 4 appears to play an important role. The results show that affect displays may alter question signals in NGT.

Abstract

The eyebrows are used as conversational signals in face-to-face spoken interaction (Ekman, 1979). In Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), the eyebrows are typically furrowed in content questions, and raised in polar questions (Coerts, 1992). On the other hand, these eyebrow positions are also associated with anger and surprise, respectively, in general human communication (Ekman, 1993). This overlap in the functional load of the eyebrow positions results in a potential conflict for NGT signers when combining these functions simultaneously. In order to investigate the effect of the simultaneous realization of both functions on the eyebrow position we elicited instances of both question types with neutral affect and with various affective states. The data were coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS: Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002) for type of brow movement as well as for intensity. FACS allows for the coding of muscle groups, which are termed Action Units (AUs) and which produce facial appearance changes. The results show that linguistic and affective functions of eyebrows may influence each other in NGT. That is, in surprised polar questions and angry content question a phonetic enhancement takes place of raising and furrowing, respectively. In the items with contrasting eyebrow movements, the grammatical and affective AUs are either blended (occur simultaneously) or they are realized sequentially. Interestingly, the absence of eyebrow raising (marked by AU 1+2) in angry polar questions, and the presence of eyebrow furrowing (realized by AU 4) in surprised content questions suggests that in general AU 4 may be phonetically stronger than AU 1 and AU 2, independent of its linguistic or affective function.

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the field of sign language typology has shown that sign languages exhibit typological variation at all relevant levels of linguistic description. These initial typological comparisons were heavily skewed toward the urban sign languages of developed countries, mostly in the Western world. This review reports on the recent contributions made by rural signing varieties, that is, sign languages that have evolved in village communities, often in developing countries, due to a high incidence of deafness. With respect to a number of structural properties, rural sign languages fit into previously established typological classifications. However, they also exhibit unique and typologically marked features that challenge received views on possible sign languages. At the same time, the shared features of geographically dispersed rural signing varieties provide a unique window into the social dynamics that may shape the structures of modern human languages.

Abstract

Signed utterances are densely packed with pointing signs, reaching a frequency of one in six signs in spontaneous conversations (de Vos, 2012; Johnston, 2013a; Morford & MacFarlane, 2003). These pointing signs attain a wide range of functions and are formally highly diversified. Based on corpus analysis of spontaneous pointing signs in Kata Kolok, a rural signing variety of Bali, this paper argues that the full meaning potentials of pointing signs come about through the integration of a varied set of linguistic and extralinguistic cues. Taking this hybrid nature of point- ing phenomena into account, it is argued that pointing signs may become an intrinsic aspect of sign language grammars through two mechanisms: morphemization and syntactic integration. Although not entailed in this research, this approach could implicate that some highly systema- tized pointing systems of speaking communities may to a degree be grammatical as well.

Abstract

In spoken interactions, interlocutors carefully plan and time their utterances, minimising gaps and overlaps between consecutive turns. Cross-linguistic comparison has indicated that spoken languages vary only minimally in terms of turn-timing, and language acquisition research has shown pre-linguistic vocal turn-taking in the first half year of life. These observations suggest that the turn-taking system may provide a fundamental basis for our linguistic capacities. The question remains however to what extent our capacity for rapid turn-taking is determined by modality constraints. The avoidance of overlapping turns could be motivated by the difficulty of hearing and speaking at the same time. If so, turn-taking in sign might show greater toleration for overlap. Alternatively, signed conversations may show a similar distribution of turn-timing as spoken languages, thus avoiding both gaps and overlaps. To address this question we look at turn-timing in question-answer sequences in spontaneous conversations of Sign Language of the Netherlands. The findings indicate that although there is considerable overlap in two or more signers' articulators in conversation, when proper allowance is made for onset preparation, post-utterance retraction and the intentional holding of signs for response, turn-taking latencies in sign look remarkably like those reported for spoken language. This is consistent with the possibility that, at least with regard to responses to questions, speakers and signers follow similar time courses in planning and producing their utterances in on-going conversation. This suggests that turn-taking systems may well be a shared cognitive infrastructure underlying all modern human languages, both spoken and signed.

Abstract

In a recent series of publications (Traxler et al. J Mem Lang 39:558–592, 1998; Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 52:284–307, 2005; see also Van Gompel et al. (In: Kennedy, et al.(eds) Reading as a perceptual process, Oxford, Elsevier pp 621–648, 2000); Van Gompel et al. J Mem Lang 45:225–258, 2001) eye tracking data are reported showing that globally ambiguous (GA) sentences are read faster than locally ambiguous (LA) counterparts. They argue that these data rule out “constraint-based” models where syntactic and conceptual processors operate concurrently and syntactic ambiguity resolution is accomplished by competition. Such models predict the opposite pattern of reading times. However, this argument against competition is valid only in conjunction with two standard assumptions in current constraint-based models of sentence comprehension: (1) that syntactic competitions (e.g., Which is the best attachment site of the incoming constituent?) are pooled together with conceptual competitions (e.g., Which attachment site entails the most plausible meaning?), and (2) that the duration of a competition is a function of the overall (pooled) quality score obtained by each competitor. We argue that it is not necessary to abandon competition as a successful basis for explaining parsing phenomena and that the above-mentioned reading time data can be accounted for by a parallel-interactive model with conceptual and syntactic processors that do not pool their quality scores together. Within the individual linguistic modules, decision-making can very well be competition-based.

Abstract

We introduce a novel computer implementation of the Unification-Space parser (Vosse & Kempen 2000) in the form of a localist neural network whose dynamics is based on interactive activation and inhibition. The wiring of the network is determined by Performance Grammar (Kempen & Harbusch 2003), a lexicalist formalism with feature unification as binding operation. While the network is processing input word strings incrementally, the evolving shape of parse trees is represented in the form of changing patterns of activation in nodes that code for syntactic properties of words and phrases, and for the grammatical functions they fulfill. The system is capable, at least in a qualitative and rudimentary sense, of simulating several important dynamic aspects of human syntactic parsing, including garden-path phenomena and reanalysis, effects of complexity (various types of clause embeddings), fault-tolerance in case of unification failures and unknown words, and predictive parsing (expectation-based analysis, surprisal effects). English is the target language of the parser described.

Abstract

The CLARIN Metadata Infrastructure (CMDI) that is being developed in Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) is a computer-supported framework that combines a flexible component approach with the explicit declaration of semantics. The goal of the Dutch CLARIN project “Creating & Testing CLARIN Metadata Components” was to create metadata components and profiles for a wide variety of existing resources housed at two data centres according to the CMDI specifications. In doing so the principles of the framework were tested. The results of the project are of benefit to other CLARIN-projects that are expected to adhere to the CMDI framework and its accompanying tools.

Abstract

Studies have shown that prereaders find globally similar non-rhyming pairs (i.e., bell–ball) difficult to judge. Although this effect has been explained as a result of ill-defined lexical representations, others have suggested that it is part of an innate tendency to respond to phonological overlap. In the present study we examined this effect over time. Beginning, intermediate and advanced readers were presented with a rhyme judgment task containing rhyming, phonologically similar, and unrelated non-rhyming pairs. To examine the role of lexical representations, participants were presented with both words and pseudowords. Outcomes showed that pseudoword processing was difficult for children but not for adults. The global similarity effect was present in both children and adults. The findings imply that holistic representations cannot explain the incapacity to ignore similarity relations during rhyming. Instead, the data provide more evidence for the idea that global similarity processing is part of a more fundamental innate phonological processing capacity.

Abstract

Objective Most rhyme awareness assessments do not encompass measures of the global similarity effect (i.e., children who are able to perform simple rhyme judgments get confused when presented with globally similar non-rhyming pairs). The present study examines the neural nature of this effect by studying the N450 rhyme effect. Methods Behavioral and electrophysiological responses of Dutch pre-literate kindergartners and literate second graders were recorded while they made rhyme judgments of word pairs in three conditions; phonologically rhyming (e.g., wijn-pijn), overlapping non-rhyming (e.g., pen-pijn) and unrelated non-rhyming pairs (e.g., boom-pijn). Results Behaviorally, both groups had difficulty judging overlapping but not rhyming and unrelated pairs. The neural data of second graders showed overlapping pairs were processed in a similar fashion as unrelated pairs; both showed a more negative deflection of the N450 component than rhyming items. Kindergartners did not show a typical N450 rhyme effect. However, some other interesting ERP differences were observed, indicating preliterates are sensitive to rhyme at a certain level. Significance Rhyme judgments of globally similar items rely on the same process as rhyme judgments of rhyming and unrelated items. Therefore, incorporating a globally similar condition in rhyme assessments may lead to a more in-depth measure of early phonological awareness skills. Highlights Behavioral and electrophysiological responses were recorded while (pre)literate children made rhyme judgments of rhyming, overlapping and unrelated words. Behaviorally both groups had difficulty judging overlapping pairs as non-rhyming while overlapping and unrelated neural patterns were similar in literates. Preliterates show a different pattern indicating a developing phonological system.

Abstract

Cross-language differences in the use of coarticulatory cues for the identification of fricatives have been demonstrated in a phoneme detection task: Listeners with perceptually similar fricative pairs in their native phoneme inventories (English, Polish, Spanish) relied more on cues from vowels than listeners with perceptually more distinct fricative contrasts (Dutch and German). The present gating study further investigated these cross-language differences and addressed three questions. (1) Are there cross-language differences in informativeness of parts of the speech signal regarding place of articulation for fricative identification? (2) Are such cross-language differences fricative-specific, or do they extend to the perception of place of articulation for plosives? (3) Is such language-specific uptake of information based on cues preceding or following the consonantal constriction? Dutch, Italian, Polish, and Spanish listeners identified fricatives and plosives in gated CV and VC syllables. The results showed cross-language differences in the informativeness of coarticulatory cues for fricative identification: Spanish and Polish listeners extracted place of articulation information from shorter portions of VC syllables. No language-specific differences were found for plosives, suggesting that greater reliance on coarticulatory cues did not generalize to other phoneme types. The language-specific differences for fricatives were based on coarticulatory cues into the consonant.

Abstract

The distribution of energy across the noise spectrum provides the primary cues for the identification of a fricative. Formant transitions have been reported to play a role in identification of some fricatives, but the combined results so far are conflicting. We report five experiments testing the hypothesis that listeners differ in their use of formant transitions as a function of the presence of spectrally similar fricatives in their native language. Dutch, English, German, Polish, and Spanish native listeners performed phoneme monitoring experiments with pseudowords containing either coherent or misleading formant transitions for the fricatives / s / and / f /. Listeners of German and Dutch, both languages without spectrally similar fricatives, were not affected by the misleading formant transitions. Listeners of the remaining languages were misled by incorrect formant transitions. In an untimed labeling experiment both Dutch and Spanish listeners provided goodness ratings that revealed sensitivity to the acoustic manipulation. We conclude that all listeners may be sensitive to mismatching information at a low auditory level, but that they do not necessarily take full advantage of all available systematic acoustic variation when identifying phonemes. Formant transitions may be most useful for listeners of languages with spectrally similar fricatives.

Abstract

Understanding the genetic basis of airflow obstruction and smoking behaviour is key to determining the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We used UK Biobank data to study the genetic causes of smoking behaviour and lung health.

Abstract

Objective The authors investigated the effects of recently identified genome-wide significant schizophrenia genetic risk variants on cognition and brain structure. Method A panel of six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was selected to represent genome-wide significant loci from three recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for schizophrenia and was tested for association with cognitive measures in 346 patients with schizophrenia and 2,342 healthy comparison subjects. Nominally significant results were evaluated for replication in an independent case-control sample. For SNPs showing evidence of association with cognition, associations with brain structural volumes were investigated in a large independent healthy comparison sample. Results Five of the six SNPs showed no significant association with any cognitive measure. One marker in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region, rs6904071, showed independent, replicated evidence of association with delayed episodic memory and was significant when both samples were combined. In the combined sample of up to 3,100 individuals, this SNP was associated with widespread effects across cognitive domains, although these additional associations were no longer significant after adjusting for delayed episodic memory. In the large independent structural imaging sample, the same SNP was also associated with decreased hippocampal volume. Conclusions The authors identified a SNP in the MHC region that was associated with cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects. This SNP, rs6904071, showed a replicated association with episodic memory and hippocampal volume. These findings implicate the MHC region in hippocampal structure and functioning, consistent with the role of MHC proteins in synaptic development and function. Follow-up of these results has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and cognition.

Abstract

Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question–answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90–200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention–emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.

Abstract

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this study examines how trait information inferred from behaviors is associated with person names. In linguistic discourses, person names were associated with descriptions of either positive or negative behaviors. In a subsequent explicit evaluation task, the previously described person names were presented in isolation, and the participants were asked to judge the emotional valence of these names. We found that the names associated with positive descriptions elicited a larger positivity in the ERP than the names associated with negative descriptions. The results indicate that the emotional valence of person names attached to person perception can be dynamically influenced by short descriptions of the target person, probably due to trait inference based on the provided behavioral descriptions

Abstract

Unlike common nouns, person names refer to unique entities and generally have a referring function. We used event-related potentials to investigate the time course of identifying the emotional meaning of nouns and names. The emotional valence of names and nouns were manipulated separately. The results show early N1 effects in response to emotional valence only for nouns. This might reflect automatic attention directed towards emotional stimuli. The absence of such an effect for names supports the notion that the emotional meaning carried by names is accessed after word recognition and person identification. In addition, both names with negative valence and emotional nouns elicited late positive effects, which have been associated with evaluation of emotional significance. This positive effect started earlier for nouns than for names, but with similar durations. Our results suggest that distinct neural systems are involved in the retrieval of names’ and nouns’ emotional meaning.

Abstract

Next to propositional content, speakers distribute information in their utterances in such a way that listeners can make a distinction between new (focused) and given (non-focused) information. This is referred to as information structure. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the role of information structure in semantic processing. Following different questions in wh-question-answer pairs (e.g. What kind of vegetable did Ming buy for cooking today? /Who bought the vegetables for cooking today?), the answer sentences (e.g., Ming bought eggplant/beef to cook today.) contained a critical word, which was either semantically appropriate (eggplant) or inappropriate (beef), and either focus or non-focus. The results showed a full N400 effect only when the critical words were in focus position. In non-focus position a strongly reduced N400 effect was observed, in line with the well-known semantic illusion effect. The results suggest that information structure facilitates semantic processing by devoting more resources to focused information.

Abstract

The present study investigated whether and how beat gesture (small baton-like hand movements used to emphasize information in speech) influences semantic processing as well as its interaction with pitch accent during speech comprehension. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants watched videos of a person gesturing and speaking simultaneously. The critical words in the spoken sentences were accompanied by a beat gesture, a control hand movement, or no hand movement, and were expressed either with or without pitch accent. We found that both beat gesture and control hand movement induced smaller negativities in the N400 time window than when no hand movement was presented. The reduced N400s indicate that both beat gesture and control movement facilitated the semantic integration of the critical word into the sentence context. In addition, the words accompanied by beat gesture elicited smaller negativities in the N400 time window than those accompanied by control hand movement over right posterior electrodes, suggesting that beat gesture has a unique role for enhancing semantic processing during speech comprehension. Finally, no interaction was observed between beat gesture and pitch accent, indicating that they affect semantic processing independently.

Abstract

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is the primary method that can measure the levels of metabolites in the brain in vivo. To achieve its potential in clinical usage, the reliability of the measurement requires further articulation. Although there are many studies that investigate the reliability of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), comparatively few studies have investigated the reliability of other brain metabolites, such as glutamate (Glu), N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA), creatine (Cr), phosphocreatine (PCr), or myo-inositol (mI), which all play a significant role in brain development and functions. In addition, previous studies which predominately used only two measurements (two data points) failed to provide the details of the time effect (e.g., time-of-day) on MRS measurement within subjects. Therefore, in this study, MRS data located in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were repeatedly recorded across 1 year leading to at least 25 sessions for each subject with the aim of exploring the variability of other metabolites by using the index coefficient of variability (CV); the smaller the CV, the more reliable the measurements. We found that the metabolites of NAA, tNAA, and tCr showed the smallest CVs (between 1.43% and 4.90%), and the metabolites of Glu, Glx, mI, and tCho showed modest CVs (between 4.26% and 7.89%). Furthermore, we found that the concentration reference of the ratio to water results in smaller CVs compared to the ratio to tCr. In addition, we did not find any time-of-day effect on the MRS measurements. Collectively, the results of this study indicate that the MRS measurement is reasonably reliable in quantifying the levels of metabolites.

Abstract

During early lactation, dairy cows have a negative energy balance since their energy demands exceed their energy intake: in this study, we aimed to investigate the association between diet and plasma metabolomics profiles and how these relate to energy unbalance of course in the early-lactation stage. Holstein-Friesian cows were randomly assigned to a glucogenic (n = 15) or lipogenic (n = 15) diet in early lactation. Blood was collected in week 2 and week 4 after calving. Plasma metabolite profiles were detected using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS), and a total of 39 metabolites were identified. Two plasma metabolomic profiles were available every week for each cow. Metabolite abundance and metabolite ratios were used for the analysis using the XGboost algorithm to discriminate between diet treatment and lactation week. Using metabolite ratios resulted in better discrimination performance compared with the metabolite abundances in assigning cows to a lipogenic diet or a glucogenic diet. The quality of the discrimination of performance of lipogenic diet and glucogenic diet effects improved from 0.606 to 0.753 and from 0.696 to 0.842 in week 2 and week 4 (as measured by area under the curve, AUC), when the metabolite abundance ratios were used instead of abundances. The top discriminating ratios for diet were the ratio of arginine to tyrosine and the ratio of aspartic acid to valine in week 2 and week 4, respectively. For cows fed the lipogenic diet, choline and the ratio of creatinine to tryptophan were top features to discriminate cows in week 2 vs. week 4. For cows fed the glucogenic diet, methionine and the ratio of 4-hydroxyproline to choline were top features to discriminate dietary effects in week 2 or week 4. This study shows the added value of using metabolite abundance ratios to discriminate between lipogenic and glucogenic diet and lactation weeks in early-lactation cows when using metabolomics data. The application of this research will help to accurately regulate the nutrition of lactating dairy cows and promote sustainable agricultural development.

Abstract

Distributional vowel training for adults has been reported as “effective” for Spanish and Bulgarian learners of Dutch vowels, in studies using a behavioural task. A recent study did not yield a similar clear learning effect for Dutch learners of the English vowel contrast /æ/~/ε/, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). The present study aimed to examine the possibility that the latter result was related to the method. As in the ERP study, we tested whether distributional training improved Dutch adult learners’ perception of English /æ/~/ε/. However, we measured behaviour instead of ERPs, in a design identical to that used in the previous studies with Spanish learners. The results do not support an effect of distributional training and thus “replicate” the ERP study. We conclude that it remains unclear whether distributional vowel training is effective for Dutch adults.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that lie detection can be improved by asking the interviewee unexpected questions. The present experiment investigates the effect of two types of unexpected questions: background questions and detail questions, on detecting lies about topics with which the interviewee is (a) familiar or (b) unfamiliar. In this experiment, 66 participants read interviews in which interviewees answered background or detail questions, either truthfully or deceptively. Those who answered deceptively could be lying about a topic they were familiar with or about a topic they were unfamiliar with. The participants were asked to judge whether the interviewees were lying. The results revealed that background questions distinguished truths from both types of lies, while the detail questions distinguished truths from unfamiliar lies, but not from familiar lies. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Abstract

We report detailed analyses of a very large database on timing of speech perception collected by Smits et al. (Smits, R., Warner, N., McQueen, J.M., Cutler, A., 2003. Unfolding of phonetic information over time: A database of Dutch diphone perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 563–574). Eighteen listeners heard all possible diphones of Dutch, gated in portions of varying size and presented without background noise. The present report analyzes listeners’ responses across gates in terms of phonological features (voicing, place, and manner for consonants; height, backness, and length for vowels). The resulting patterns for feature perception differ from patterns reported when speech is presented in noise. The data are also analyzed for effects of stress and of phonological context (neighboring vowel vs. consonant); effects of these factors are observed to be surprisingly limited. Finally, statistical effects, such as overall phoneme frequency and transitional probabilities, along with response biases, are examined; these too exercise only limited effects on response patterns. The results suggest highly accurate speech perception on the basis of acoustic information alone.

Abstract

This study, following up on work on Dutch by Warner, Jongman, Sereno, and Kemps (2004. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 251–276), investigates the influence of orthographic distinctions and underlying morphological distinctions on the small sub-phonemic durational differences that have been called incomplete neutralization. One part of the previous work indicated that an orthographic geminate/singleton distinction could cause speakers to produce an incomplete neutralization effect. However, one interpretation of the materials in that experiment is that they contain an underlying difference in the phoneme string at the level of concatenation of morphemes, rather than just an orthographic difference. Thus, the previous effect might simply be another example of incomplete neutralization of a phonemic distinction. The current experiment, also on Dutch, uses word pairs which have the same underlying morphological contrast, but do not differ in orthography. These new materials show no incomplete neutralization, and thus support the hypothesis that orthography, but not underlying morphological differences, can cause incomplete neutralization effects.

Abstract

Korean has a very complex phonology, with many interacting alternations. In a coronal-/i/ sequence, depending on the type of phonological boundary present, alternations such as palatalization, nasal insertion, nasal assimilation, coda neutralization, and intervocalic voicing can apply. This paper investigates how the phonological patterns of Korean affect processing of morphemes and words. Past research on languages such as English, German, Dutch, and Finnish has shown that listeners exploit syllable structure constraints in processing speech and segmenting it into words. The current study shows that in parsing speech, listeners also use much more complex patterns that relate the surface phonological string to various boundaries.

Abstract

Natural, spontaneous speech (and even quite careful speech) often shows extreme reduction in many speech segments, even resulting in apparent deletion of consonants. Where the flap ([(sic)]) allophone of /t/ and /d/ is expected in American English, one frequently sees an approximant-like or even vocalic pattern, rather than a clear flap. Still, the /t/ or /d/ is usually perceived, suggesting the acoustic characteristics of a reduced flap are sufficient for perception of a consonant. This paper identifies several acoustic characteristics of reduced flaps based on previous acoustic research (size of intensity dip, consonant duration, and F4 valley) and presents phonetic identification data for continua that manipulate these acoustic characteristics of reduction. The results indicate that the most obvious types of acoustic variability seen in natural flaps do affect listeners' percept of a consonant, but not sufficiently to completely account for the percept. Listeners are affected by the acoustic characteristics of consonant reduction, but they are also very skilled at evaluating variability along the acoustic dimensions that realize reduction.

Abstract

This article addresses revitalization of a dormant language whose prospective speakers live in scattered geographical areas. In comparison to increasing the usage of an endangered language, revitalizing a dormant language (one with no living speakers) requires different methods to gain knowledge of the language. Language teaching for a dormant language with a scattered community presents different problems from other teaching situations. In this article, we discuss the types of tasks that must be accomplished for dormant-language revitalization, with particular focus on development of teaching materials. We also address the role of computer technologies, arguing that each use of technology should be evaluated for how effectively it increases fluency. We discuss methods for achieving semi-fluency for the first new speakers of a dormant language, and for spreading the language through the community.

Abstract

Social interaction relies on the ability to react to communication signals. Although cortical sensory–motor “mirror” networks are thought to play a key role in visual aspects of primate communication, evidence for a similar generic role for auditory–motor interaction in primate nonverbal communication is lacking. We demonstrate that a network of human premotor cortical regions activated during facial movement is also involved in auditory processing of affective nonverbal vocalizations. Within this auditory–motor mirror network, distinct functional subsystems respond preferentially to emotional valence and arousal properties of heard vocalizations. Positive emotional valence enhanced activation in a left posterior inferior frontal region involved in representation of prototypic actions, whereas increasing arousal enhanced activation in presupplementary motor area cortex involved in higher-order motor control. Our findings demonstrate that listening to nonverbal vocalizations can automatically engage preparation of responsive orofacial gestures, an effect that is greatest for positive-valence and high-arousal emotions. The automatic engagement of responsive orofacial gestures by emotional vocalizations suggests that auditory–motor interactions provide a fundamental mechanism for mirroring the emotional states of others during primate social behavior. Motor facilitation by positive vocal emotions suggests a basic neural mechanism for establishing cohesive bonds within primate social groups.

Abstract

Asperger Syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, alongside the presence of unusually repetitive, restricted interests and stereotyped behaviour. Individuals with AS have no delay in cognitive and language development. It is a subset of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), which are highly heritable and has a population prevalence of approximately 1%. Few studies have investigated the genetic basis of AS. To address this gap in the literature, we performed a genome-wide pooled DNA association study to identify candidate loci in 612 individuals (294 cases and 318 controls) of Caucasian ancestry, using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping version 6.0 array. We identified 11 SNPs that had a p-value below 1x10-5. These SNPs were independently genotyped in the same sample. Three of the SNPs (rs1268055, rs7785891 and rs2782448) were nominally significant, though none remained significant after Bonferroni correction. Two of our top three SNPs (rs7785891 and rs2782448) lie in loci previously implicated in ASC. However, investigation of the three SNPs in the ASC genome-wide association dataset from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium indicated that these three SNPs were not significantly associated with ASC. The effect sizes of the variants were modest, indicating that our study was not sufficiently powered to identify causal variants with precision.

Abstract

Background: Several studies have investigated the effect of known adult body mass index (BMI) associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on BMI in childhood. There has been no genome-wide association study (GWAS) of BMI trajectories over childhood.
Methods: We conducted a GWAS meta-analysis of BMI trajectories from 1 to 17 years of age in 9377 children (77 967 measurements) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Genome-wide significant loci were examined in a further 3918 individuals (48 530 measurements) from Northern Finland. Linear mixed effects models with smoothing splines were used in each cohort for longitudinal modelling of BMI.
Results: A novel SNP, downstream from the FAM120AOS gene on chromosome 9, was detected in the meta-analysis of ALSPAC and Raine. This association was driven by a difference in BMI at 8 years (T allele of rs944990 increased BMI; PSNP = 1.52 × 10−8), with a modest association with change in BMI over time (PWald(Change) = 0.006). Three known adult BMI-associated loci (FTO, MC4R and ADCY3) and one childhood obesity locus (OLFM4) reached genome-wide significance (PWald < 1.13 × 10−8) with BMI at 8 years and/or change over time.
Conclusions: This GWAS of BMI trajectories over childhood identified a novel locus that warrants further investigation. We also observed genome-wide significance with previously established obesity loci, making the novel observation that these loci affected both the level and the rate of change in BMI. We have demonstrated that the use of repeated measures data can increase power to allow detection of genetic loci with smaller sample sizes.

Abstract

Exposure to high levels of environmental lead, or biomarker evidence of high body lead content, is associated with anaemia, developmental and neurological deficits in children, and increased mortality in adults. Adverse effects of lead still occur despite substantial reduction in environmental exposure. There is genetic variation between individuals in blood lead concentration but the polymorphisms contributing to this have not been defined. We measured blood or erythrocyte lead content, and carried out genome-wide association analysis, on population-based cohorts of adult volunteers from Australia and UK (N = 5433). Samples from Australia were collected in two studies, in 1993–1996 and 2002–2005 and from UK in 1991–1992. One locus, at ALAD on chromosome 9, showed consistent association with blood lead across countries and evidence for multiple independent allelic effects. The most significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs1805313 (P = 3.91 × 10−14 for lead concentration in a meta-analysis of all data), is known to have effects on ALAD expression in blood cells but other SNPs affecting ALAD expression did not affect blood lead. Variants at 12 other loci, including ABO, showed suggestive associations (5 × 10−6 >} P {> 5 × 10−8). Identification of genetic polymorphisms affecting blood lead reinforces the view that genetic factors, as well as environmental ones, are important in determining blood lead levels. The ways in which ALAD variation affects lead uptake or distribution are still to be determined.

Abstract

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line syntactic processing in patients with Broca’s aphasia. Subjects were visually presented with sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of word-category. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N=11), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N=9), and healthy aged-matched controls (N=15). Both control groups appeared sensitive to the violations of word-category as shown by clear P600/SPS effects. The Broca patients displayed only a very reduced and delayed P600/SPS effect. The results are discussed in the context of a lexicalist parsing model. It is concluded that Broca patients are hindered to detect on-line violations of word-category, if word class information is incomplete or delayed available.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on syntactic comprehension problems in patients with Broca's aphasia from an electrophysiological perspective. The central objective of this dissertation was to further explore what syntax-related event-related brain potential (ERP) effects can reveal about the nature of the deficit that underlies syntactic comprehension problems in patients with Broca's aphasia. Chapter two to four describe experiments in which event-related brain potentials were recorded while subjects (Broca patients, non-aphasic patients with a right-hemisphere lesion, and healthy elderly controls) were presented with sentences that contained either violations of syntactic constraints or were syntactically correct. Chapter two investigates ERP effects of subject-verb agreement violations in the different subject groups, and seeks to answer the following questions: Do agrammatic comprehenders show sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations as indicated by a syntax-related ERP effect? In addition, does the severity of the syntactic comprehension impairment in the Broca patients affect the ERP responses? Chapter three describes an investigation of whether Broca patients show sensitivity to violations of word order as indicated by a syntax-related ERP effect, and whether the ERP responses in the Broca patients are affected by the severity of their syntactic comprehension impairment. Chapter four reports on ERP effects of violations of word-category. In addition, also a semantic violation condition was added to track possible dissociations in the sensitivity to semantic and syntactic information in the Broca patients. Chapter five describes the development of a paradigm in which the electrophysiological approach and the classical sentence-picture matching approach are combined. In this chapter, the ERP method is applied to study on-line thematic role assignment in Broca patients during sentence-picture matching. Also the relation between ERP effects and behavioral responses is pursued. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a summary of the main findings of the experiments and a general discussion.

Abstract

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has emerged as an important tool in understanding, and potentially reversing, disease pathology. This is particularly true in the case of neurodegenerative diseases, in which the affected cell types are not readily accessible for study. Since the first descriptions of iPSC-based disease modelling, considerable advances have been made in understanding the aetiology and progression of a diverse array of neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. To date, however, relatively few studies have succeeded in using iPSCs to model the neurodegeneration observed in cerebellar ataxia. Given the distinct neurodevelopmental phenotypes associated with certain types of ataxia, iPSC-based models are likely to provide significant insights, not only into disease progression, but also to the development of early-intervention therapies. In this review, we describe the existing iPSC-based disease models of this heterogeneous group of conditions and explore the challenges associated with generating cerebellar neurons from iPSCs, which have thus far hindered the expansion of this research.

Abstract

In two eye-tracking experiments the role of contrastive pitch accents during the on-line determination of referents was examined. In both experiments, German listeners looked earlier at the picture of a referent belonging to a contrast pair (red scissors, given purple scissors) when instructions to click on it carried a contrastive accent on the color adjective (L + H*) than when the adjective was not accented. In addition to this prosodic facilitation, a general preference to interpret adjectives contrastively was found in Experiment 1: Along with the contrast pair, a noncontrastive referent was displayed (red vase) and listeners looked more often at the contrastive referent than at the noncontrastive referent even when the adjective was not focused. Experiment 2 differed from Experiment 1 in that the first member of the contrast pair (purple scissors) was introduced with a contrastive accent, thereby strengthening the salience of the contrast. In Experiment 2, listeners no longer preferred a contrastive interpretation of adjectives when the accent in a subsequent instruction was not contrastive. In sum, the results support both an early role for prosody in reference determination and an interpretation of contrastive focus that is dependent on preceding prosodic context.

Abstract

Highly proficient German users of English as a second language, and native speakers of American English, listened to nonsense sequences and responded whenever they detected an embedded English word. The responses of both groups were equivalently facilitated by preceding context that both by English and by German phonotactic constraints forced a boundary at word onset (e.g., lecture was easier to detect in moinlecture than in gorklecture, and wish in yarlwish than in plookwish. The American L1 speakers’ responses were strongly facilitated, and the German listeners’ responses almost as strongly facilitated, by contexts that forced a boundary in English but not in German thrarshlecture, glarshwish. The German listeners’ responses were significantly facilitated also by contexts that forced a boundary in German but not in English )moycelecture, loitwish, while L1 listeners were sensitive to acoustic boundary cues in these materials but not to the phonotactic sequences. The pattern of results suggests that proficient L2 listeners can acquire the phonotactic probabilities of an L2 and use them to good effect in segmenting continuous speech, but at the same time they may not be able to prevent interference from L1 constraints in their L2 listening.

Abstract

A longstanding question in bilingualism is whether syntactic information is shared between the two language processing systems. We used an fMRI repetition suppression paradigm to investigate syntactic priming in reading comprehension in German–English late-acquisition bilinguals. In comparison to conventional subtraction analyses in bilingual experiments, repetition suppression has the advantage of being able to detect neuronal populations that are sensitive to properties that are shared by consecutive stimuli. In this study, we manipulated the syntactic structure between prime and target sentences. A sentence with a passive sentence structure in English was preceded either by a passive or by an active sentence in English or German. We looked for repetition suppression effects in left inferior frontal, left precentral and left middle temporal regions of interest. These regions were defined by a contrast of all non-target sentences in German and English versus the baseline of sentence-format consonant strings. We found decreases in activity (repetition suppression effects) in these regions of interest following the repetition of syntactic structure from the first to the second language and within the second language.
Moreover, a separate behavioural experiment using a word-by-word reading paradigm similar to the fMRI experiment showed faster reading times for primed compared to unprimed English target sentences regardless of whether they were preceded by an English or a German sentence of the same structure.
We conclude that there is interaction between the language processing systems and that at least some syntactic information is shared between a bilingual's languages with similar syntactic structures.

Abstract

Lexical recognition is typically slower in L2 than in L1. Part of the difficulty comes from a not precise enough processing of L2 phonemes. Consequently, L2 listeners fail to eliminate candidate words that L1 listeners can exclude from competing for recognition. For instance, the inability to distinguish /r/ from /l/ in rocket and locker makes for Japanese listeners both words possible candidates when hearing their onset (e.g., Cutler, Weber, and Otake, 2006). The L2 disadvantage can, however, be dispelled: For L2 listeners, but not L1 listeners, L2 speech from a non-native talker with the same language background is known to be as intelligible as L2 speech from a native talker (e.g., Bent and Bradlow, 2003). A reason for this may be that L2 listeners have ample experience with segmental deviations that are characteristic for their own accent. On this account, only phonemic deviations that are typical for the listeners’ own accent will cause spurious lexical activation in L2 listening (e.g., English magic pronounced as megic for Dutch listeners). In this talk, I will present evidence from cross-modal priming studies with a variety of L2 listener groups, showing how the processing of phonemic deviations is accent-specific but withstands fine phonetic differences.

Abstract

An eye-tracking experiment examined whether prosodic cues can affect the interpretation of grammatical functions in the absence of clear morphological information. German listeners were presented with scenes depicting three potential referents while hearing temporarily ambiguous SVO and OVS sentences. While case marking on the first noun phrase (NP) was ambiguous, clear case marking on the second NP disambiguated sentences towards SVO or OVS. Listeners interpreted caseambiguous NP1s more often as Subject, and thus expected an Object as upcoming argument, only when sentence beginnings carried an SVO-type intonation. This was revealed by more anticipatory eye movements to suitable Patients (Objects) than Agents (Subjects) in the visual scenes. No such preference was found when sentence beginnings had a clearly OVS-type intonation. Prosodic cues were integrated rapidly enough to affect listeners’ interpretation of grammatical function before disambiguating case information was available. We conclude that in addition to manipulating attachment ambiguities, prosody can influence the interpretation of constituent order ambiguities.

Abstract

This paper provides a description of body part terminology used in Savosavo, a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands. The first part of the paper lists the known terms and discusses their meanings. This is followed by an analysis of their structural properties. Finally, the paper discusses partonomic relations in Savosavo and argues that it is difficult to structure the body part terminology hierarchically, because there is no linguistic evidence for part–whole relations between body parts.

Abstract

This follow-up study of the European Dexamethasone Study was designed to examine the potential harmful effect of adjunctive dexamethasone treatment on long-term neuropsychological outcome in adults with bacterial meningitis. METHODS: Neurological, audiological, and neuropsychological examinations were performed in adults who survived pneumococcal or meningococcal meningitis. RESULTS: Eighty-seven of 99 (88%) eligible patients were included in the follow-up study; 46 (53%) were treated with dexamethasone and 41 (47%) with placebo. Median time between meningitis and testing was 99 months. Neuropsychological evaluation showed no significant differences between patients treated with dexamethasone and placebo. The proportions of patients with persisting neurological sequelae or hearing loss were similar in the dexamethasone and placebo groups. The overall rate of cognitive dysfunction did not differ significantly between patients and control subjects; however, patients after pneumococcal meningitis had a higher rate of cognitive dysfunction (21 vs 6%; p = 0.05) and experienced more impairment of everyday functioning due to physical problems (p = 0.05) than those after meningococcal meningitis. INTERPRETATION: Treatment with adjunctive dexamethasone is not associated with an increased risk for long-term cognitive impairment. Adults who survive pneumococcal meningitis are at significant risk for long-term neuropsychological abnormalities.

Abstract

Objectives To assess cognitive outcome and quality of life in patients with moderate disability after bacterial meningitis as compared to patients with good recovery. Methods Neuropsychological evaluation was performed in 40 adults after pneumococcal meningitis; 20 patients with moderate disability at discharge on the glasgow outcome scale (GOS score 4) and 20 with good recovery (GOS score 5). Results Patients with GOS score 4 had similar test results as compared to patients with GOS score 5 for the neuropsychological domains ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’ and ‘attention and executive functioning’. Patients with GOS score 4 showed less cognitive slowness than patients with GOS score 5. In a linear regression analysis cognitive speed was related to current intelligence, years of education and time since meningitis. Overall performance on the speed composite score correlated significantly with time since meningitis (−0.62; P<0.001). Therefore, difference between both groups may have been related to a longer time between meningitis and testing for GOS four patients (29 vs. 12 months; P<0.001). Conclusions Patients with moderate disability after bacterial meningitis are not at higher risk for neuropsychological abnormalities than patients with good recovery. In addition, cognitive slowness after bacterial meningitis may be reversible in time.

Abstract

Many explanations of the difficulties associated with interpreting object relative clauses appeal to the demands that object relatives make on working memory. MacDonald and Christiansen [MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review, 109, 35-54] pointed to variations in reading experience as a source of differences, arguing that the unique word order of object relatives makes their processing more difficult and more sensitive to the effects of previous experience than the processing of subject relatives. This hypothesis was tested in a large-scale study manipulating reading experiences of adults over several weeks. The group receiving relative clause experience increased reading speeds for object relatives more than for subject relatives, whereas a control experience group did not. The reading time data were compared to performance of a computational model given different amounts of experience. The results support claims for experience-based individual differences and an important role for statistical learning in sentence comprehension processes.

Abstract

Rapid advances over the last decade in DNA sequencing and statistical genetics enable us to investigate the genomic makeup of individuals throughout history. In a recent notable study, Begg et al.1 used Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair strands for genome sequencing and explored genetic predispositions for some of his documented medical issues. Given that it was arguably Beethoven’s skills as a musician and composer that made him an iconic figure in Western culture, we here extend the approach and apply it to musicality. We use this as an example to illustrate the broader challenges of individual-level genetic predictions.

Abstract

In this paper, we report an experiment on the naming of household containers in Dutch and Icelandic carried out as part of the Evolution of Semantic Systems project (EoSS; Majid et al., 2011). This naming experiment allows us to support and elaborate on a hypothesis by Malt et al. (2003) that productive morphology in the naming domain can have an influence on boundary placement within the extensional space. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Dutch diminutive -(t)je favours a cut between small items versus others, whereas Icelandic, which does not use the diminutive in this domain, favours a cut between large items and others. This is not a typological effect, as Dutch and Icelandic are both Germanic languages and both have diminutive morphology available in principle. We find no evidence that the diminutive produces a proliferation of terms and/or fine-grained nesting within the extensional domain. Rather, the Dutch diminutive favours a more even distribution of terms across the space whereas Icelandic favours broad inclusive terms with a number of narrower specialist terms. Further, the extensional space defined by the diminutive is not associated with its own clear prototypical exemplar. Using evidence from compounding and modification, we also consider which semantic features are prominent in differentiating categories within the domain. By far the most prominent in both languages is the inferred contents of the container. Other than contents, however, the languages differ in the range and prominence of features such as intended usage or material of composition. Our results demonstrate that in order to understand the processes that produce semantic divisions of basic object classes, we should consider fine-grained analyses of closely related languages alongside analyses of typologically different languages.

Abstract

In 2001, a point mutation in the forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) coding sequence was identified as the basis of an inherited speech and language disorder suffered by members of the family known as "KE." This mini-symposium review focuses on recent findings and research-in-progress, primarily from five laboratories. Each aims at capitalizing on the FOXP2 discovery to build a neurobiological bridge between molecule and phenotype. Below, we describe genetic through behavioral techniques used currently to investigate FoxP2 in birds, rodents, and humans for discovery of the neural bases of vocal learning and language.

Abstract

Participants were unknowingly exposed to complex regularities in a working memory task. The existence of implicit knowledge was subsequently inferred from a preference for stimuli with similar grammatical regularities. Several affective traits have been shown to influence
AGL performance positively, many of which are related to a tendency for automatic responding. We therefore tested whether the mindfulness trait predicted a reduction of grammatically congruent preferences, and used emotional primes to explore the influence of affect. Mindfulness was shown to correlate negatively with grammatically congruent responses. Negative primes were shown to result in faster and more negative evaluations.
We conclude that grammatically congruent preference ratings rely on habitual responses, and that our findings provide empirical evidence for the non-reactive disposition of the mindfulness trait.

Abstract

If motor imagery uses neural structures involved in action execution, then the neural correlates of imagining an action should differ between individuals who tend to execute the action differently. Here we report fMRI data showing that motor imagery is influenced by the way people habitually perform motor actions with their particular bodies; that is, motor imagery is ‘body-specific’ (Casasanto, 2009). During mental imagery for complex hand actions, activation of cortical areas involved in motor planning and execution was left-lateralized in right-handers but right-lateralized in left-handers. We conclude that motor imagery involves the generation of an action plan that is grounded in the participant’s motor habits, not just an abstract representation at the level of the action’s goal. People with different patterns of motor experience form correspondingly different neurocognitive representations of imagined actions.

Abstract

Several studies indicate that both posterior superior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus (pSTS/MTG) and left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) are involved in integrating information from different modalities. Here we investigated the respective roles of these two areas in integration of action and language information. We exploited the fact that the semantic relationship between language and different forms of action (i.e. co-speech gestures and pantomimes) is radically different. Speech and co-speech gestures are always produced together, and gestures are not unambiguously understood without speech. On the contrary, pantomimes are not necessarily produced together with speech and can be easily understood without speech. We presented speech together with these two types of communicative hand actions in matching or mismatching combinations to manipulate semantic integration load. Left and right pSTS/MTG were only involved in semantic integration of speech and pantomimes. Left IFG on the other hand was involved in integration of speech and co-speech gestures as well as of speech and pantomimes. Effective connectivity analyses showed that depending upon the semantic relationship between language and action, LIFG modulates activation levels in left pSTS.

This suggests that integration in pSTS/MTG involves the matching of two input streams for which there is a relatively stable common object representation, whereas integration in LIFG is better characterized as the on-line construction of a new and unified representation of the input streams. In conclusion, pSTS/MTG and LIFG are differentially involved in multimodal integration, crucially depending upon the semantic relationship between the input streams.

Abstract

It has been argued that we map observed actions onto our own motor system. Here we added to this issue by investigating whether hand preference influences the neural correlates of action observation of simple, essentially meaningless hand actions. Such an influence would argue for an intricate neural coupling between action production and action observation, which goes beyond effects of motor repertoire or explicit motor training, as has been suggested before. Indeed, parts of the human motor system exhibited a close coupling between action production and action observation. Ventral premotor and inferior and superior parietal cortices showed differential activation for left- and right-handers that was similar during action production as well as during action observation. This suggests that mapping observed actions onto the observer's own motor system is a core feature of action observation - at least for actions that do not have a clear goal or meaning. Basic differences in the way we act upon the world are not only reflected in neural correlates of action production, but can also influence the brain basis of action observation.

Abstract

Iconic words and signs are characterized by a perceived resemblance between aspects of their form and aspects of their meaning. For example, in English, iconic words include peep and crash, which mimic the sounds they denote, and wiggle and zigzag, which mimic motion. As a semiotic property of words and signs, iconicity has been demonstrated to play a role in word learning, language processing, and language evolution. This paper presents the results of a large-scale norming study for more than 14,000 English words conducted with over 1400 American English speakers. We demonstrate the utility of these ratings by replicating a number of existing findings showing that iconicity ratings are related to age of acquisition, sensory modality, semantic neighborhood density, structural markedness, and playfulness. We discuss possible use cases and limitations of the rating dataset, which is made publicly available.

Abstract

Impaired emotion regulation may underlie exaggerated emotional reactivity in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), yet instructed emotion regulation has never been studied in the disorder. METHOD: This study aimed to assess the neural correlates of emotion processing and regulation in 43 medication-free OCD patients and 38 matched healthy controls, and additionally test if these can be modulated by stimulatory (patients) and inhibitory (controls) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants performed an emotion regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after a single session of randomly assigned real or sham rTMS. Effect of group and rTMS were assessed on self-reported distress ratings and brain activity in frontal-limbic regions of interest. RESULTS: Patients had higher distress ratings than controls during emotion provocation, but similar rates of distress reduction after voluntary emotion regulation. OCD patients compared with controls showed altered amygdala responsiveness during symptom provocation and diminished left dlPFC activity and frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation. Real v. sham dlPFC stimulation differentially modulated frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation in OCD patients. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the increased emotional reactivity in OCD may be due to a deficit in emotion regulation caused by a failure of cognitive control exerted by the dorsal frontal cortex. Modulatory rTMS over the left dlPFC may influence automatic emotion regulation capabilities by influencing frontal-limbic connectivity.

Abstract

In three cross-modal priming experiments we asked whether adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker is automatic, and whether adaptation can be seen after a long delay between initial exposure and test. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Hebrew-accented Dutch speaker with two types of Dutch words: those that contained [ɪ] (globally accented words), and those in which the Dutch [i] was shortened to [ɪ] (specific accent marker words). Experiment 1, which served as a baseline, showed that native Dutch participants showed facilitatory priming for globally accented, but not specific accent, words. In experiment 2, participants performed a 3.5-minute phoneme monitoring task, and were tested on their comprehension of the accented speaker 24 hours later using the same cross-modal priming task as in experiment 1. During the phoneme monitoring task, listeners were asked to detect a consonant that was not strongly accented. In experiment 3, the delay between exposure and test was extended to 1 week. Listeners in experiments 2 and 3 showed facilitatory priming for both globally accented and specific accent marker words. Together, these results show that adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker can be rapid and automatic, and can be observed after a prolonged delay in testing.

Abstract

We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreign-accented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment’s second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different German-accented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment’s second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.

Abstract

Utilization of computer tools in linguistic research has gained importance with the maturation of media frameworks for the handling of digital audio and video. The increased use of these tools in gesture, sign language and multimodal interaction studies has led to stronger requirements on the flexibility, the efficiency and in particular the time accuracy of annotation tools. This paper describes the efforts made to make ELAN a tool that meets these requirements, with special attention to the developments in the area of time accuracy. In subsequent sections an overview will be given of other enhancements in the latest versions of ELAN, that make it a useful tool in multimodality research.

Abstract

A number of serious reasons will convince an increasing amount of researchers to store their relevant material in centers which we will call "language resource archives". They combine the duty of taking care of long-term preservation as well as the task to give access to their material to different user groups. Access here is meant in the sense that an active interaction with the data will be made possible to support the integration of new data, new versions or commentaries of all sort. Modern Language Resource Archives will have to adhere to a number of basic principles to fulfill all requirements and they will have to be involved in federations to create joint language resource domains making it even more simple for the researchers to access the data. This paper makes an attempt to formulate the essential pillars language resource archives have to adhere to.

Abstract

About 5,000 languages are spoken in the world today. More than half of them have less than 10,000 speakers, a quarter of them even fewer than 1,000. The majority of these “small” languages will not live to see the end of this century; some estimates predict that no more than a dozen languages will still be spoken by the turn of the next millennium. This collection of papers approaches the subject of language extinction through five major topics: general aspects of language death, case studies, endangered subsystems, language protection and revitalization, language ecology. In 24 articles, the authors address the causes, manifestations, and consequences of language endangerment and extinction as well as the linguistic and social changes associated with it, drawing examples from a large number of languages.

Abstract

To identify genetic variants associated with refractive astigmatism in the general population, meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies were performed for: White Europeans aged at least 25 years (20 cohorts, N = 31,968); Asian subjects aged at least 25 years (7 cohorts, N = 9,295); White Europeans aged <25 years (4 cohorts, N = 5,640); and all independent individuals from the above three samples combined with a sample of Chinese subjects aged <25 years (N = 45,931). Participants were classified as cases with refractive astigmatism if the average cylinder power in their two eyes was at least 1.00 diopter and as controls otherwise. Genome-wide association analysis was carried out for each cohort separately using logistic regression. Meta-analysis was conducted using a fixed effects model. In the older European group the most strongly associated marker was downstream of the neurexin-1 (NRXN1) gene (rs1401327, P = 3.92E−8). No other region reached genome-wide significance, and association signals were lower for the younger European group and Asian group. In the meta-analysis of all cohorts, no marker reached genome-wide significance: The most strongly associated regions were, NRXN1 (rs1401327, P = 2.93E−07), TOX (rs7823467, P = 3.47E−07) and LINC00340 (rs12212674, P = 1.49E−06). For 34 markers identified in prior GWAS for spherical equivalent refractive error, the beta coefficients for genotype versus spherical equivalent, and genotype versus refractive astigmatism, were highly correlated (r = −0.59, P = 2.10E−04). This work revealed no consistent or strong genetic signals for refractive astigmatism; however, the TOX gene region previously identified in GWAS for spherical equivalent refractive error was the second most strongly associated region. Analysis of additional markers provided evidence supporting widespread genetic co-susceptibility for spherical and astigmatic refractive errors.

Abstract

In het onderwijs wordt aangenomen dat hardop en stillezen dezelfde processen zijn. In dit onderzoek wordt gekeken naar het verschil tussen hardop en stillezen wat betreft leessnelheid en tekstbegrip bij 90 kinderen uit groep 4. Ook wordt de invloed van de cognitieve vaardigheden fonologisch bewustzijn, benoemsnelheid en visuele aandachtsspanne op de verschillende leesmodi onderzocht. De participanten lazen stil sneller, maar begrepen de tekst beter hardop. De cognitieve vaardigheden correleerden met hardop en stillezen wat betreft leessnelheid, maar hingen in beide leesmodi niet samen met tekstbegrip. Hoewel hardop en stillezen samenhangen, onderstrepen deze bevindingen dat het verschillende leesmodi zijn.

Abstract

For bilinguals, speaking in a second language (L2) compared to the native language (L1) is usually more difficult. In this study we asked whether the difficulty in L2 production reflects increased demands imposed on domain-general or core language mechanisms. We compared the brain response to speech production in L1 and L2 within two functionally-defined networks in the brain: the Multiple Demand (MD) network and the language network. We found that speech production in L2 was linked to a widespread increase of brain activity in the domain-general MD network. The language network did not show a similarly robust differences in processing speech in the two languages, however, we found increased response to L2 production in the language-specific portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). To further explore our results, we have looked at domain-general and language-specific response within the brain structures postulated to form a Bilingual Language Control (BLC) network. Within this network, we found a robust increase in response to L2 in the domain-general, but also in some language-specific voxels including in the left IFG. Our findings show that L2 production strongly engages domain-general mechanisms, but only affects language sensitive portions of the left IFG. These results put constraints on the current model of bilingual language control by precisely disentangling the domain-general and language-specific contributions to the difficulty in speech production in L2.

Abstract

When bilingual speakers switch back to speaking in their native language (L1) after having used their second language (L2), they often experience difficulty in retrieving words in their L1. This phenomenon is referred to as the L2 after-effect. We used the L2 after-effect as a lens to explore the neural bases of bilingual language control mechanisms. Our goal was twofold: first, to explore whether bilingual language control draws on domain-general or language-specific mechanisms; second, to investigate the precise mechanism(s) that drive the L2 after-effect. We used a precision fMRI approach based on functional localizers to measure the extent to which the brain activity that reflects the L2 after-effect overlaps with the language network (Fedorenko et al., 2010) and the domain-general multiple demand network (Duncan, 2010), as well as three task-specific networks that tap into interference resolution, lexical retrieval, and articulation. Forty-two Polish–English bilinguals participated in the study. Our results show that the L2 after-effect reflects increased engagement of domain-general but not language-specific resources. Furthermore, contrary to previously proposed interpretations, we did not find evidence that the effect reflects increased difficulty related to lexical access, articulation, and the resolution of lexical interference. We propose that difficulty of speech production in the picture naming paradigm—manifested as the L2 after-effect—reflects interference at a nonlinguistic level of task schemas or a general increase of cognitive control engagement during speech production in L1 after L2.

Abstract

The ISOcat Data Category Registry provides a community computing environment for creating, storing, retrieving, harmonizing and standardizing data category specifications (DCs), used to register linguistic terms used in various fields. This chapter recounts the history of DC documentation in TC 37, beginning from paper-based lists created for lexicographers and terminologists and progressing to the development of a web-based resource for a much broader range of users. While describing the considerable strides that have been made to collect a very large comprehensive collection of DCs, it also outlines difficulties that have arisen in developing a fully operative web-based computing environment for achieving consensus on data category names, definitions, and selections and describes efforts to overcome some of the present shortcomings and to establish positive working procedures designed to engage a wide range of people involved in the creation of language resources.

Abstract

Im ISOcat-Datenkategorie-Register (Data Category Registry, www.isocat.org) des Technischen Komitees ISO/TC 37 (Terminology and other language and content resources) werden Feldnamen und Werte für Sprachressourcen beschrieben. Empfohlene Feldnamen und zuverlässige Definitionen sollen dazu beitragen, dass Sprachdaten unabhängig von Anwendungen, Plattformen und Communities of Practice (CoP) wiederverwendet werden können. Datenkategorie-Gruppen (Data Category Selections) können eingesehen, ausgedruckt, exportiert und nach kostenloser Registrierung auch neu erstellt werden.

Abstract

This auditory lexical decision study shows that cohort entropies, conditional root uniqueness points, and morphological family size all contribute to the dynamics of the auditory comprehension of prefixed words. Three entropy measures calculated for different positions in the stem of Dutch prefixed words revealed facilitation for higher entropies, except at the point of disambiguation, where we observed inhibition. Morphological family size was also facilitatory, but only for prefixed words in which the conditional root uniqueness point coincided with the conventional uniqueness point. For words with early conditional disambiguation, in contrast, only the morphologically related words that were onset-aligned with the target word facilitated lexical decision.

Abstract

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and a longitudinal language learning approach were applied to investigate the relationship between the achieved second language (L2) proficiency during L2 learning and the reorganization of structural connectivity between core language areas. Language proficiency tests and DTI scans were obtained from German students before and after they completed an intensive 6-week course of the Dutch language. In the initial learning stage, with increasing L2 proficiency, the hemispheric dominance of the BA6-temporal pathway (mainly along the arcuate fasciculus) shifted from the left to the right hemisphere. With further increased proficiency, however, lateralization dominance was again found in the left BA6-temporal pathway. This result is consistent with reports in the literature that imply a stronger involvement of the right hemisphere in L2-processing especially for less proficient L2-speakers. This is the first time that a L2-proficiency-dependent laterality shift in structural connectivity of language pathways during L2 acquisition has been observed to shift from left to right, and back to left hemisphere dominance with increasing L2-proficiency. We additionally find that changes in fractional anisotropy values after the course are related to the time elapsed between the two scans. The results suggest that structural connectivity in (at least part of) the perisylvian language network may be subject to fast dynamic changes following language learning

Abstract

Set is widely used as a kind of basic data structure. However, when it is used for large scale data set the cost of storage, search and transport is overhead. The bloom filter uses a fixed size bit string to represent elements in a static set, which can reduce storage space and search cost that is a fixed constant. The time-space efficiency is achieved at the cost of a small probability of false positive in membership query. However, for many applications the space savings and locating time constantly outweigh this drawback. Dynamic bloom filter (DBF) can support concisely representation and approximate membership queries of dynamic set instead of static set. It has been proved that DBF not only possess the advantage of standard bloom filter, but also has better features when dealing with dynamic set. This paper proposes a time-dependent multiple bit-strings bloom filter (TMBF) which roots in the DBF and targets on dynamic incremental set. TMBF uses multiple bit-strings in time order to present a dynamic increasing set and uses backward searching to test whether an element is in a set. Based on the system logs from a real P2P file sharing system, the evaluation shows a 20% reduction in searching cost compared to DBF.

Abstract

Although sign language-using communities exist in all areas of the world, few sign languages have been documented in detail. Sign languages occur in a variety of sociocultural contexts, ranging from sign languages used in closed village communities to officially recognized national sign languages. They may be grouped into language families on historical grounds or may participate in various language contact situations. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison reveals both significant structural similarities and important typological differences between sign languages. Focusing on information from non-Western countries, this article provides an overview of the sign languages of the world.