Publications

Abstract

Ultimate attainment in adult second language learners often differs tremendously from the end state typically achieved by young children learning their first language (L1) or a second language (L2). The research summarized in this article concentrates on developmental steps and orders of acquisition attested in learners of different ages. Findings from a longitudinal study concerned with the acquisition of verbal morpho-syntax in German as an L2 by two young Russian learners (8 and 14 years old) are compared to findings from the acquisition of the same target language by younger children and by untutored adult learners. The study focuses on the acquisition of verbal morphology, the role of auxiliary verbs and the position of finite and non finite verbs in relation to negation and additive scope particles.

Abstract

We present a new transcription mode for the annotation tool ELAN. This mode is designed to speed up the process of creating transcriptions of primary linguistic data (video and/or audio recordings of linguistic behaviour). We survey the basic transcription workflow of some commonly used tools (Transcriber, BlitzScribe, and ELAN) and describe how the new transcription interface improves on these existing implementations. We describe the design of the transcription interface and explore some further possibilities for improvement in the areas of segmentation and computational enrichment of annotations.

Abstract

Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery found in many of the world’s languages. They are noted for their special forms, distinct grammatical behaviour, rich sensory meanings, and interactional uses related to experience and evidentiality. This review surveys recent developments in ideophone research. Work on the semiotics of ideophones helps explain why they are marked and how they realise the depictive potential of speech. A true semantic typology of ideophone systems is coming within reach through a combination of language-internal analyses and language-independent elicitation tools. Documentation of ideophones in a wide variety of genres as well as sequential analysis of ideophone use in natural discourse leads to new insights about their interactional uses and about their relation to other linguistic devices like reported speech and grammatical evidentials. As the study of ideophones is coming of age, it sheds new light on what is possible and probable in human language.

Abstract

Kyeei Yao, an age group leader, oversees a festival in Akpafu-Mempeasem, Volta Region, Ghana. The expensive draped cloth, Ashanti-inspired wreath, strings of beads that are handed down through the generations, and digital wristwatch work together to remind us that culture is a moving target, always renewing and reshaping itself. Kããã is a Siwu ideophone for "looking attentively".

Abstract

This paper addresses the question why body-part terms are so often used to talk about other things than body parts. It is argued that the strategy of falling back on stable common ground to maximize the chances of successful communication is the driving force behind the selective advantage of body-part terms. The many different ways in which languages may implement this universal strategy suggest that, in order to properly understand the privileged role of the body in the evolution of linguistic signs, we have to look beyond the body to language in its socio-cultural context. A theory which acknowledges the interacting influences of stable common ground and diversified cultural practices on the evolution of linguistic signs will offer the most explanatory power for both universal patterns and language-specific variation.

Abstract

The widespread occurrence of ideophones, large classes of words specialized in evoking sensory imagery, is little known outside linguistics and anthropology. Ideophones are a common feature in many of the world’s languages but are underdeveloped in English and other Indo-European languages. Here we study the meanings of ideophones in Siwu (a Kwa language from Ghana) using a pile-sorting task. The goal was to uncover the underlying structure of the lexical space and to examine the claimed link between ideophones and perception. We found that Siwu ideophones are principally organized around fine-grained aspects of sensory perception, and map onto salient psychophysical dimensions identified in sensory science. The results ratify ideophones as dedicated sensory vocabulary and underline the relevance of ideophones for research on language and perception.

Abstract

People often talk about musical pitch in terms of spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be high or low, whereas in other languages pitches are described as thick or thin. According to psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can also shape people’s nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place or does it modify preexisting associations? Here we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants’ sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings in two preferential looking tasks. Dutch infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli in both experiments, indicating that infants are sensitive to space-pitch associations prior to language. This early presence of space-pitch mappings suggests that these associations do not originate from language. Rather, language may build upon pre-existing mappings and change them gradually via some form of competitive associative learning.

Abstract

The cortical regions of the brain traditionally associated with the comprehension of language are Wernicke's area and Broca's area. However, recent evidence suggests that other brain regions might also be involved in this complex process. This paper describes the opportunity to evaluate a large number of brain-injured patients to determine which lesioned brain areas might affect language comprehension. Sixty-four chronic left hemisphere stroke patients were evaluated on 11 subtests of the Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation – Receptive (CYCLE-R; Curtiss, S., & Yamada, J. (1988). Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation. Unpublished test, UCLA). Eight right hemisphere stroke patients and 15 neurologically normal older controls also participated. Patients were required to select a single line drawing from an array of three or four choices that best depicted the content of an auditorily-presented sentence. Patients' lesions obtained from structural neuroimaging were reconstructed onto templates and entered into a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM; Bates, E., Wilson, S., Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R. T., & Dronkers, N. F. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6(5), 448–450.) analysis along with the behavioral data. VLSM is a brain–behavior mapping technique that evaluates the relationships between areas of injury and behavioral performance in all patients on a voxel-by-voxel basis, similar to the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. Results indicated that lesions to five left hemisphere brain regions affected performance on the CYCLE-R, including the posterior middle temporal gyrus and underlying white matter, the anterior superior temporal gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus and angular gyrus, mid-frontal cortex in Brodmann's area 46, and Brodmann's area 47 of the inferior frontal gyrus. Lesions to Broca's and Wernicke's areas were not found to significantly alter language comprehension on this particular measure. Further analysis suggested that the middle temporal gyrus may be more important for comprehension at the word level, while the other regions may play a greater role at the level of the sentence. These results are consistent with those seen in recent functional neuroimaging studies and offer complementary data in the effort to understand the brain areas underlying language comprehension.

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive syntactic category analysis of child English no which reveals that young children use and represent no as a determiner and negatives like no pen as NPs, contra standard analyses.

Abstract

Overview Since the early nineties, the on-going dramatic loss of the world’s linguistic diversity has gained attention, first by the linguists and increasingly also by the general public. As a response, the new field of language documentation emerged from around 2000 on, starting with the funding initiative ‘Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen’ (DoBeS, funded by the Volkswagen foundation, Germany), soon to be followed by others such as the ‘Endangered Languages Documentation Programme’ (ELDP, at SOAS, London), or, in the USA, ‘Electronic Meta-structure for Endangered Languages Documentation’ (EMELD, led by the LinguistList) and ‘Documenting Endangered Languages’ (DEL, by the NSF). From its very beginning, the new field focused on digital technologies not only for recording in audio and video, but also for annotation, lexical databases, corpus building and archiving, among others. This development not just coincides but is intrinsically interconnected with the increasing focus on digital data, technology and methods in all sciences, in particular in the humanities.

Abstract

This article describes and analyses nasal harmony (or spreading of nasality) in Awetí. It first shows generally how sounds in prefixes adapt to nasality or orality of stems, and how nasality in stems also ‘extends’ to the left. With abstract templates we show which phonetically nasal or oral sequences are possible in Awetí (focusing on stops, pre-nasalized stops and nasals) and which phonological analysis is appropriate for account for this regularities. In Awetí, there are intrinsically nasal and oral vowels and ‘neutral’ vowels which adapt phonetically to a following vowel or consonant, as is the case of sonorant consonants. Pre-nasalized stops such as “nt” are nasalized variants of stops, not post-oralized variants of nasals as in Tupí-Guaranian languages. For nasals and stops in syllable coda (end of morphemes), we postulate arqui-phonemes which adapt to the preceding vowel or a following consonant. Finally, using a declarative approach, the analysis formulates ‘rules’ (statements) which account for the ‘behavior’ of nasality in Awetí words, making use of “structured sequences” on both the phonetic and phonological levels. So, each unit (syllable, morpheme, word etc.) on any level has three components, a sequence of segments, a constituent structure (where pre-nasalized stops, like diphthongs, correspond to two segments), and an intonation structure. The statements describe which phonetic variants can be combined (concatenated) with which other variants, depending on their nasality or orality.

Abstract

This contribution presents “The Language Archive” (TLA), a new unit at the MPI for Psycholinguistics, discussing the current developments in management of scientific data, considering the need for new data research infrastructures. Although several initiatives worldwide in the realm of language resources aim at the integration, preservation and mobilization of research data, the state of such scientific data is still often problematic. Data are often not well organized and archived and not described by metadata ― even unique data such as field-work observational data on endangered languages is still mostly on perishable carriers. New data centres are needed that provide trusted, quality-reviewed, persistent services and suitable tools and that take legal and ethical issues seriously. The CLARIN initiative has established criteria for suitable centres. TLA is in a good position to be one of such centres. It is based on three essential pillars: (1) A data archive; (2) management, access and annotation tools; (3) archiving and software expertise for collaborative projects. The archive hosts mostly observational data on small languages worldwide and language acquisition data, but also data resulting from experiments

Abstract

Previous studies, including Duffield and Matsuo (2001; 2002; 2009), have demonstrated second language learners’ overall sensitivity to a parallelism constraint governing English VP-ellipsis constructions: like native speakers (NS), advanced Dutch, Spanish and Japanese learners of English reliably prefer ellipsis clauses with structurally parallel antecedents over those with non-parallel antecedents. However, these studies also suggest that, in contrast to English native speakers, L2 learners’ sensitivity to parallelism is strongly influenced by other non-syntactic formal factors, such that the constraint applies in a comparatively restricted range of construction-specific contexts. This article reports a set of follow-up experiments — from both computer-based as well as more traditional acceptability judgement tasks — that systematically manipulates these other factors. Convergent results from these tasks confirm a qualitative difference in the judgement patterns of the two groups, as well as important differences between theoreticians’ judgements and those of typical native speakers. We consider the implications of these findings for theories of ultimate attainment in second language acquisition (SLA), as well as for current theoretical accounts of ellipsis.

Abstract

Although laughter forms an important part of human non-verbal communication, it has received rather less attention than it deserves in both the experimental and the observational literatures. Relaxed social (Duchenne) laughter is associated with feelings of wellbeing and heightened affect, a proximate expla- nation for which might be the release of endorphins. We tested this hypothesis in a series of six experimental studies in both the laboratory (watching videos) and naturalistic contexts (watching stage performances), using change in pain threshold as an assay for endorphin release. The results show that pain thresholds are significantly higher after laughter than in the control condition. This pain-tolerance effect is due to laughter itself and not simply due to a change in positive affect. We suggest that laughter, through an endorphin-mediated opiate effect, may play a crucial role in social bonding.

Abstract

In the absence of comparative method reconstruction, high rate of lexical cognate candidates is often used as evidence for relationships between languages. This paper uses the Oswalt Monte Carlo Shift test (a variant of Oswalt 1970) to explore the statistical basis of the claim that the four Papuan languages of the Solomon Islands have greater than chance levels of lexical similarity. The results of this test initially appear to show that the lexical similarities between the Central Solomons Papuan languages are statistically significant, but the effect disappears when known Oceanic loanwords are removed. The Oswalt Monte Carlo test is a useful technique to test a claim of greater than chance similarity between any two word lists — with the proviso that undetected loanwords strongly increase the chance of spurious identification.

Abstract

This paper shows that despite evidence of structural convergence between some of the Austronesian and non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages of Island Melanesia, statistical methods can detect two independent genealogical signals derived from linguistic structural features. Earlier work by the author and others has presented a maximum parsimony analysis which gave evidence for a genealogical connection between the non-Austronesian languages of island Melanesia. Using the same data set, this paper demonstrates for the non-statistician the application of more sophisticated statistical techniques—including Bayesian methods of phylogenetic inference, and shows that the evidence for common ancestry is if anything stronger than originally supposed.

Abstract

A review of "Anthropological papers of the University of Alaska: The Dene-Yeniseian connection." Ed. by JAMES KARI and BEN A. POTTER Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 2010. Pp. vi, 363.

Abstract

Approach and avoidance are two behavioral responses that make people tend to approach positive and avoid negative situations. This study examines whether postural behavior is influenced by the affective state of pictures. While standing on the Wii™ Balance Board, participants viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures (passively viewing phase). Then they had to move their body to the left or the right (lateral movement phase) to make the next picture appear. We recorded movements in the anterior-posterior direction to examine approach and avoidant behavior. During passively viewing, people approached pleasant pictures. They avoided unpleasant ones while they made a lateral movement. These findings provide support for the idea that we tend to approach positive and avoid negative situations.

Abstract

We investigated the roles of top-down task set and bottom-up stimulus salience for feature-specific attentional capture. ERPs and behavioural performance were measured in two experiments where spatially nonpredictive cues preceded visual search arrays that included a colour-defined target. When cue arrays contained a target-colour singleton, behavioural spatial cueing effects were accompanied by a cue-induced N2pc component, indicative of attentional capture. Behavioural cueing effects and N2pc components were only minimally attenuated for non-singleton relative to singleton target-colour cues, demonstrating that top-down task set has a much greater impact on attentional capture than bottom-up salience. For nontarget-colour singleton cues, no N2pc was triggered, but an anterior N2 component indicative of top-down inhibition was observed. In Experiment 2, these cues produced an inverted behavioural cueing effect, which was accompanied by a delayed N2pc to targets presented at cued locations. These results suggest that perceptually salient visual stimuli without task-relevant features trigger a transient location-specific inhibition process that prevents attentional capture, but delays the selection of subsequent target events.

Abstract

1. Introduction Speech conveys not only linguistic meaning but also paralinguistic information, such as features of the speaker’s social background, physiology, and emotional state. Linguistic and paralinguistic information is encoded in speech by using largely the same vocal apparatus and both are transmitted simultaneously in the acoustic signal, drawing on a limited set of acoustic cues. How this simultaneous encoding is achieved, how the different types of information are disentangled by the listener, and how much they interfere with one another is presently not well understood. Previous research has highlighted the importance of acoustic source and filter cues for emotion and linguistic encoding respectively, which may suggest that the two types of information are encoded independently of each other. However, those lines of investigation have been almost completely disconnected (Murray & Arnott, 1993).

Abstract

Language resource centers allow researchers to reliably deposit their structured data together with associated meta data and run services operating on this deposited data. We are looking into possibilities to create long-term persistency of both the deposited data and the services operating on this data. Challenges, both technical and non-technical, that need to be solved are the need to replicate more than just the data, proper identification of the digital objects in a distributed environment by making use of persistent identifiers and the set-up of a proper authentication and authorization domain including the management of the authorization information on the digital objects. We acknowledge the investment that most language resource centers have made in their current infrastructure. Therefore one of the most important requirements is the loose coupling with existing infrastructures without the need to make many changes. This shift from a single language resource center into a federated environment of many language resource centers is discussed in the context of a real world center: The Language Archive supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Abstract

In the present article, we introduce the continuous unified electronic (CUE) diary method, a longitudinal, event-based, electronic parent report method that allows real-time recording of infant and child behavior in natural contexts. Thirty-nine expectant mothers were trained to identify and record target behaviors into programmed handheld computers. From birth to 18 months, maternal reporters recorded the initial, second, and third occurrences of seven target motor behaviors: palmar grasp, rolls from side to back, reaching when sitting, pincer grip, crawling, walking, and climbing stairs. Compliance was assessed as two valid entries per behavior: 97 % of maternal reporters met compliance criteria. Reliability was assessed by comparing diary entries with researcher assessments for three of the motor behaviors: palmar grasp, pincer grip and walking. A total of 81 % of maternal reporters met reliability criteria. For those three target behaviors, age of emergence was compared across data from the CUE diary method and researcher assessments. The CUE diary method was found to detect behaviors earlier and with greater sensitivity to individual differences. The CUE diary method is shown to be a reliable methodological tool for studying processes of change in human development.

Abstract

It has been proposed that two amino acid substitutions in the transcription factor FOXP2 have been positively selected during human evolution due to effects on aspects of speech and language. Here, we introduce these substitutions into the endogenous Foxp2 gene of mice. Although these mice are generally healthy, they have qualitatively different ultrasonic vocalizations, decreased exploratory behavior and decreased dopamine concentrations in the brain suggesting that the humanized Foxp2 allele affects basal ganglia. In the striatum, a part of the basal ganglia affected in humans with a speech deficit due to a nonfunctional FOXP2 allele, we find that medium spiny neurons have increased dendrite lengths and increased synaptic plasticity. Since mice carrying one nonfunctional Foxp2 allele show opposite effects, this suggests that alterations in cortico-basal ganglia circuits might have been important for the evolution of speech and language in humans.

Abstract

The approach to pragmatics explored in this article focuses on elements of social interaction which are of universal relevance, and which may provide bases for a comparative approach. The discussion is anchored by reference to a fragment of conversation from a video-recording of Lao speakers during a home visit in rural Laos. The following points are discussed. First, an understanding of the full richness of context is indispensable for a proper understanding of any interaction. Second, human relationships are a primary locus of social organization, and as such constitute a key focus for pragmatics. Third, human social intelligence forms a universal cognitive under-carriage for interaction, and requires careful cross-cultural study. Fourth, a neo-Peircean framework for a general understanding of semiotic processes gives us a way of stepping away from language as our basic analytical frame. It is argued that in order to get a grip on pragmatics across human groups, we need to take a comparative approach in the biological sense—i.e. with reference to other species as well. From this perspective, human pragmatics is about using semiotic resources to try to meet goals in the realm of social relationships.

Abstract

Book review of James R. Hurford THE ORIGINS OF GRAMMAR 791pp. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978 0 19 920787 9

Abstract

Noise-vocoded speech is a spectrally highly degraded signal, but it preserves the temporal envelope of speech. Listeners vary considerably in their ability to adapt to this degraded speech signal. Here, we hypothesized that individual differences in adaptation to vocoded speech should be predictable by non-speech auditory, cognitive, and neuroanatomical factors. We tested eighteen normal-hearing participants in a short-term vocoded speech-learning paradigm (listening to 100 4-band-vocoded sentences). Non-speech auditory skills were assessed using amplitude modulation (AM) rate discrimination, where modulation rates were centered on the speech-relevant rate of 4 Hz. Working memory capacities were evaluated (digit span and nonword repetition), and structural MRI scans were examined for anatomical predictors of vocoded speech learning using voxel-based morphometry. Listeners who learned faster to understand degraded speech also showed smaller thresholds in the AM discrimination task. This ability to adjust to degraded speech is furthermore reflected anatomically in increased volume in an area of the left thalamus (pulvinar) that is strongly connected to the auditory and prefrontal cortices. Thus, individual non-speech auditory skills and left thalamus grey matter volume can predict how quickly a listener adapts to degraded speech.

Abstract

This paper discusses four experiments on Dutch which show that distinctive phonological features differ in their relevance for word recognition. The relevance of a feature for word recognition depends on its phonological stability, that is, the extent to which that feature is generally realized in accordance with its lexical specification in the relevant word position. If one feature value is uninformative, all values of that feature are less relevant for word recognition, with the least informative feature being the least relevant. Features differ in their relevance both in spoken and written word recognition, though the differences are more pronounced in auditory lexical decision than in self-paced reading.

Abstract

This study addresses the question to what extent the production of regular past tense forms in Dutch is a¤ected by analogical processes. We report an experiment in which native speakers of Dutch listened to existing regular verbs over headphones, and had to indicate which of the past tense allomorphs, te or de, was appropriate for these verbs. According to generative analyses, the choice between the two su‰xes is completely regular and governed by the underlying [voice]-specification of the stem-final segment. In this approach, no analogical e¤ects are expected. In connectionist and analogical approaches, by contrast, the phonological similarity structure in the lexicon is expected to a¤ect lexical processing. Our experimental results support the latter approach: all participants created more nonstandard past tense forms, produced more inconsistency errors, and responded more slowly for verbs with stronger analogical support for the nonstandard form.

Abstract

This paper investigates how listeners process regular pronunciation variants, resulting from simple general reduction processes. Study 1 shows that when listeners are presented with new words, they store the pronunciation variants presented to them, whether these are unreduced or reduced. Listeners thus store information on word-specific pronunciation variation. Study 2 suggests that if participants are presented with regularly reduced pronunciations, they also reconstruct and store the corresponding unreduced pronunciations. These unreduced pronunciations apparently have special status. Together the results support hybrid models of speech processing, assuming roles for both exemplars and abstract representations.

Abstract

We investigated whether regional differences in the native language (L1) influence the perception of second language (L2) sounds. Many cross-language and L2 perception studies have assumed that the degree of acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds predicts cross-linguistic and L2 performance. The present study tests this assumption by examining the perception of the English contrast between /e{open}/ and /æ/ in native speakers of Dutch spoken in North Holland (the Netherlands) and in East- and West-Flanders (Belgium). A Linear Discriminant Analysis on acoustic data from both dialects showed that their differences in vowel production, as reported in and Adank, van Hout, and Van de Velde (2007), should influence the perception of the L2 vowels if listeners focus on the vowels' acoustic/auditory properties. Indeed, the results of categorization tasks with Dutch or English vowels as response options showed that the two listener groups differed as predicted by the discriminant analysis. Moreover, the results of the English categorization task revealed that both groups of Dutch listeners displayed the asymmetric pattern found in previous word recognition studies, i.e. English /æ/ was more frequently confused with English /e{open}/ than the reverse. This suggests a strong link between previous L2 word learning results and the present L2 perceptual assimilation patterns.

Abstract

Nuclear orphan receptor TLX (NR2E1) functions primarily as a transcriptional repressor and its pivotal role in brain development, glioblastoma, mental retardation and retinopathologies make it an attractive drug target. TLX is expressed in the neural stem cells (NSCs) of the subventricular zone and the hippocampus subgranular zone, regions with persistent neurogenesis in the adult brain, and functions as an essential regulator of NSCs maintenance and self-renewal. Little is known about the TLX social network of interactors and only few TLX coregulators are described. To identify and characterize novel TLX-binders and possible coregulators, we performed yeast-two-hybrid (Y2H) screens of a human adult brain cDNA library using different TLX constructs as baits. Our screens identified multiple clones of Atrophin-1 (ATN1), a previously described TLX interactor. In addition, we identified an interaction with the oncoprotein and zinc finger transcription factor BCL11A (CTIP1/Evi9), a key player in the hematopoietic system and in major blood-related malignancies. This interaction was validated by expression and coimmunoprecipitation in human cells. BCL11A potentiated the transrepressive function of TLX in an in vitro reporter gene assay. Our work suggests that BCL11A is a novel TLX coregulator that might be involved in TLX-dependent gene regulation in the brain.

Abstract

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of “universal,” we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.

Abstract

Our response takes advantage of the wide-ranging commentary to clarify some aspects of our original proposal and augment others. We argue against the generative critics of our coevolutionary program for the language sciences, defend the use of close-to-surface models as minimizing crosslinguistic data distortion, and stress the growing role of stochastic simulations in making generalized historical accounts testable. These methods lead the search for general principles away from idealized representations and towards selective processes. Putting cultural evolution central in understanding language diversity makes learning fundamental in the cognition of language: increasingly powerful models of general learning, paired with channelled caregiver input, seem set to manage language acquisition without recourse to any innate “universal grammar.” Understanding why human language has no clear parallels in the animal world requires a cross-species perspective: crucial ingredients are vocal learning (for which there are clear non-primate parallels) and an intentionattributing cognitive infrastructure that provides a universal base for language evolution. We conclude by situating linguistic diversity within a broader trend towards understanding human cognition through the study of variation in, for example, human genetics, neurocognition, and psycholinguistic processing.

Abstract

Daniel Everett has spent his career in the Amazon, challenging some fundamental ideas about language and thought. Asifa Majid and Jon Sutton pose the questions

Abstract

In the current eye-tracking study, we explored whether 12-month-old infants can predict others' social preferences. We showed infants scenes in which two characters alternately helped or hindered an agent in his goal of climbing a hill. In a control condition, the two characters moved up and down the hill in identical ways to the helper and hinderer but did not make contact with the agent; thus, they did not cause him to reach or not reach her or his goal. Following six alternating familiarization trials of helping and hindering interactions (help-hinder condition) or up and down interactions (up-down condition), infants were shown one test trial in which they could visually anticipate the agent approaching one of the two characters. As predicted, infants in the help-hinder condition made significantly more visual anticipations toward the helping than hindering character, suggesting that they predicted the agent to approach the helping character. In contrast, infants revealed no difference in visual anticipations between the up and down characters. The up-down condition served to control for low-level perceptual explanations of the results for the help-hinder condition. Thus, together the results reveal that 12-month-old infants make predictions about others' behaviour and social preferences from a third-party perspective.

Abstract

Across two experiments, we examined the relationship between 18-month-old infants’ mimicry and social behavior – particularly invitations to play with an adult play partner. In Experiment 1, we manipulated whether an adult mimicked the infant's play or not during an initial play phase. We found that infants who had been mimicked were subsequently more likely to invite the adult to join their play with a new toy. In addition, they reenacted marginally more steps from a social learning demonstration she gave. In Experiment 2, infants had the chance to spontaneously mimic the adult during the play phase. Complementing Experiment 1, those infants who spent more time mimicking the adult were more likely to invite her to play with a new toy. This effect was specific to play and not apparent in other communicative acts, such as directing the adult's attention to an event or requesting toys. Together, the results suggest that infants use mimicry as a tool to establish social connections with others and that mimicry has specific influences on social behaviors related to initiating subsequent joint interactions.

Abstract

Infants imitate others’ individual actions, but do they also replicate others’ joint activities? To examine whether observing joint action influences infants’ initiation of joint action, forty-eight 18-month-old infants observed object demonstrations by 2 models acting together (joint action), 2 models acting individually (individual action), or 1 model acting alone (solitary action). Infants’ behavior was examined after they were given each object. Infants in the joint action condition attempted to initiate joint action more often than infants in the other conditions, yet they were equally likely to communicate for other reasons and to imitate the demonstrated object-directed actions. The findings suggest that infants learn to replicate others’ joint activity through observation, an important skill for cultural transmission of shared practices.

Abstract

We examine representations of time among the Mianmin of Papua New Guinea. We begin by describing the patterns of spatial and temporal reference in Mian. Mian uses a system of spatial terms that derive from the orientation and direction of the Hak and Sek rivers and the surrounding landscape. We then report results from a temporal arrangement task administered to a group of Mian speakers. The results reveal evidence for a variety of temporal representations. Some participants arranged time with respect to their bodies (left to right or toward the body). Others arranged time as laid out on the landscape, roughly along the east/west axis (either east to west or west to east). This absolute pattern is consistent both with the axis of the motion of the sun and the orientation of the two rivers, which provides the basis for spatial reference in the Mian language. The results also suggest an increase in left-to-right temporal representations with increasing years of formal education (and the reverse pattern for absolute spatial representations for time). These results extend previous work on spatial representations for time to a new geographical region, physical environment, and linguistic and cultural system.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate whether language and music share cognitive resources for structural processing. We report an experiment that used sung materials and manipulated linguistic complexity (subject-extracted relative clauses, object-extracted relative clauses) and musical complexity (in-key critical note, out-of-key critical note, auditory anomaly on the critical note involving a loudness increase). The auditory-anomaly manipulation was included in order to test whether the difference between in-key and out-of-key conditions might be due to any salient, unexpected acoustic event. The critical dependent measure involved comprehension accuracies to questions about the propositional content of the sentences asked at the end of each trial. The results revealed an interaction between linguistic and musical complexity such that the difference between the subject- and object-extracted relative clause conditions was larger in the out-of-key condition than in the in-key and auditory-anomaly conditions. These results provide evidence for an overlap in structural processing between language and music.

Abstract

The constituents of attractiveness differ across the sexes. Many relevant traits are dimorphic, suggesting that they are the product of intersexual selection. However, direction of causality is generally difficult to determine, as aesthetic criteria can as readily result from, as cause, dimorphism. Women have proportionately smaller feet than men. Prior work on the role of foot size in attractiveness suggests an asymmetry across the sexes, as small feet enhance female appearance, yet average, rather than large, feet are preferred on men. Previous investigations employed crude stimuli and limited samples. Here, we report on multiple cross-cultural studies designed to overcome these limitations. With the exception of one rural society, we find that small foot size is preferred when judging women, yet no equivalent preference applies to men. Similarly, consonant with the thesis that a preference for youth underlies intersexual selection acting on women, we document an inverse relationship between foot size and perceived age. Examination of preferences regarding, and inferences from, feet viewed in isolation suggests different roles for proportionality and absolute size in judgments of female and male bodies. Although the majority of these results bolster the conclusion that pedal dimorphism is the product of intersexual selection, the picture is complicated by the reversal of the usual preference for small female feet found in one rural society. While possibly explicable in terms of greater emphasis on female economic productivity relative to beauty, the latter finding underscores the importance of employing diverse samples when exploring postulated evolved aesthetic preferences.

Abstract

The evolutionary origins of music are much debated. One theory holds that the ability to produce complex musical sounds might reflect qualities that are relevant in mate choice contexts and hence, that music is functionally analogous to the sexually-selected acoustic displays of some animals. If so, women may be expected to show heightened preferences for more complex music when they are most fertile. Here, we used computer-generated musical pieces and ovulation predictor kits to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that women prefer more complex music in general; however, we found no evidence that their preference for more complex music increased around ovulation. Consequently, our findings are not consistent with the hypothesis that a heightened preference/bias in women for more complex music around ovulation could have played a role in the evolution of music. We go on to suggest future studies that could further investigate whether sexual selection played a role in the evolution of this universal aspect of human culture.

Abstract

Rare mutations of the FOXP2 transcription factor gene cause a monogenic syndrome characterized by impaired speech development and linguistic deficits. Recent genomic investigations indicate that its downstream neural targets make broader impacts on common language impairments, bridging clinically distinct disorders. Moreover, the striking conservation of both FoxP2 sequence and neural expression in different vertebrates facilitates the use of animal models to study ancestral pathways that have been recruited towards human speech and language. Intriguingly, reduced FoxP2 dosage yields abnormal synaptic plasticity and impaired motor-skill learning in mice, and disrupts vocal learning in songbirds. Converging data indicate that Foxp2 is important for modulating the plasticity of relevant neural circuits. This body of research represents the first functional genetic forays into neural mechanisms contributing to human spoken language.

Abstract

Between 2 and 5% of children who are otherwise unimpaired have significant difficulties in acquiring expressive and/or receptive language, despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. While twin studies indicate a significant role for genetic factors in developmental disorders of speech and language, the majority of families segregating such disorders show complex patterns of inheritance, and are thus not amenable for conventional linkage analysis. A rare exception is the KE family, a large three-generation pedigree in which approximately half of the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder which appears to be transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. This family has been widely publicised as suffering primarily from a defect in the use of grammatical suffixation rules, thus supposedly supporting the existence of genes specific to grammar. The phenotype, however, is broader in nature, with virtually every aspect of grammar and of language affected. In addition, affected members have a severe orofacial dyspraxia, and their speech is largely incomprehensible to the naive listener. We initiated a genome-wide search for linkage in the KE family and have identified a region on chromosome 7 which co-segregates with the speech and language disorder (maximum lod score = 6.62 at theta = 0.0), confirming autosomal dominant inheritance with full penetrance. Further analysis of microsatellites from within the region enabled us to fine map the locus responsible (designated SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM interval in 7q31, thus providing an important step towards its identification. Isolation of SPCH1 may offer the first insight into the molecular genetics of the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Abstract

Research on pattern perception and rule learning, grounded in formal language theory (FLT) and using artificial grammar learning paradigms, has exploded in the last decade. This approach marries empirical research conducted by neuroscientists, psychologists and ethologists with the theory of computation and FLT, developed by mathematicians, linguists and computer scientists over the last century. Of particular current interest are comparative extensions of this work to non-human animals, and neuroscientific investigations using brain imaging techniques. We provide a short introduction to the history of these fields, and to some of the dominant hypotheses, to help contextualize these ongoing research programmes, and finally briefly introduce the papers in the current issue.

Abstract

We present a neural-symbolic learning model of sentence production which displays strong semantic systematicity and recursive productivity. Using this model, we provide evidence for the data-driven learnability of complex yes/no- questions.

Abstract

No abstract is available for this article

Abstract

Los idiomas sudamericanas tienen una diversidad de sistemas numéricos, desde sistemas con solamente dos o tres términos en algunos idiomas amazónicos hasta sistemas con numerales extendiendo a miles. Una mirada al sistema del idioma cha’palaa de Ecuador demuestra rasgos de base-2, base-5, base-10 y base-20, ligados a diferentes etapas de cambio, desarrollo y contacto lingüístico. Conocer estas etapas nos permite proponer algunas correlaciones con lo que conocemos de la historia de contactos culturales en la región. The South American languages have diverse types of numeral systems, from systems of just two or three terms in some Amazonian languages to systems extending into the thousands. A look a the system of the Cha'palaa language of Ecuador demonstrates base-2, base-5, base-10 and base-20 features, linked to different stages of change, development and language contact. Learning about these stages permits up to propose some correlations between them and what we know about the history of cultural contact in the region.

Abstract

In a 2x2 event-related FMRI study we find support for the idea that the inferior frontal cortex, centered on Broca’s region and its homologue, is involved in constructive unification operations during the structure-building process in parsing for comprehension. Tentatively, we provide evidence for a role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex centered on BA 9/46 in the control component of the language system. Finally, the left temporo-parietal cortex, in the vicinity of Wernicke’s region, supports the interaction between the syntax of gender agreement and sentence-level semantics.

Abstract

Understanding the progression of neurological diseases is vital for accurate and early diagnosis and treatment planning. We introduce a new characterization of disease progression, which describes the disease as a series of events, each comprising a significant change in patient state. We provide novel algorithms to learn the event ordering from heterogeneous measurements over a whole patient cohort and demonstrate using combined imaging and clinical data from familial-Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease cohorts. Results provide new detail in the progression pattern of these diseases, while confirming known features, and give unique insight into the variability of progression over the cohort. The key advantage of the new model and algorithms over previous progression models is that they do not require a priori division of the patients into clinical stages. The model and its formulation extend naturally to a wide range of other diseases and developmental processes and accommodate cross-sectional and longitudinal input data.

Abstract

Human implicit learning can be investigated with implicit artificial grammar learning, a simple model for aspects of natural language acquisition. In this paper we investigate the remaining effect of modality transfer in syntactic classification of an acquired grammatical sequence structure after implicit grammar acquisition. Participants practiced either on acoustically presented syllable sequences or visually presented consonant letter sequences. During classification we independently manipulated the statistical frequency-based and rule-based characteristics of the classification stimuli. Participants performed reliably above chance on the within modality classification task although more so for those working on syllable sequence acquisition. These subjects were also the only group that kept a significant performance level in transfer classification. We speculate that this finding is of particular relevance in consideration of an ecological validity in the input signal in the use of artificial grammar learning and in language learning paradigms at large.

Abstract

Several quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that influence developmental dyslexia (reading disability [RD]) have been mapped to chromosome regions by linkage analysis. The most consistently replicated area of linkage is on chromosome 6p23-21.3. We used association analysis in 223 siblings from the United Kingdom to identify an underlying QTL on 6p22.2. Our association study implicates a 77-kb region spanning the gene TTRAP and the first four exons of the neighboring uncharacterized gene KIAA0319. The region of association is also directly upstream of a third gene, THEM2. We found evidence of these associations in a second sample of siblings from the United Kingdom, as well as in an independent sample of twin-based sibships from Colorado. One main RD risk haplotype that has a frequency of ∼12% was found in both the U.K. and U.S. samples. The haplotype is not distinguished by any protein-coding polymorphisms, and, therefore, the functional variation may relate to gene expression. The QTL influences a broad range of reading-related cognitive abilities but has no significant impact on general cognitive performance in these samples. In addition, the QTL effect may be largely limited to the severe range of reading disability.

Abstract

Francks et al. (2007) performed a recent study in which the first putative genetic effect on human handedness was identified (the imprinted locus LRRTM1 on human chromosome 2). In this issue of Laterality, Tim Crow and colleagues present a critique of that study. The present paper presents a personal response to that critique which argues that Francks et al. (2007) published a substantial body of evidence implicating LRRTM1 in handedness and schizophrenia. Progress will now be achieved by others trying to validate, refute, or extend those findings, rather than by further armchair discussion.

Abstract

A spelling disorder that received much attention recently is the so-called graphemic buffer impairment. Caramazza et al. (1987) presented the first systematic case study of a patient with this disorder. Miceli & Capasso (2006) provide an extensive overview of the relevant literature. This article adds to the literature by describing a Dutch case, i.e. patient BM. We demonstrate how specific features of Dutch and Dutch orthography interact with the graphemic buffer impairment. In addition, we paid special attention to the influence of grapheme position on the patient’s spelling accuracy. For this we used, in contrast with most of the previous literature, the proportional accountability method described in Machtynger & Shallice (2009). We show that by using this method the underlying error distribution can be more optimally captured than with classical methods. The result of this analysis replicates two distributions that have been previously reported in the literature. Finally, attention will be paid to the role of phonology in the described disorder.

Abstract

Mutations in the human FOXP2 gene cause impaired speech development and linguistic deficits, which have been best characterised in a large pedigree called the KE family. The encoded protein is highly conserved in many vertebrates and is expressed in homologous brain regions required for sensorimotor integration and motor-skill learning, in particular corticostriatal circuits. Independent studies in multiple species suggest that the striatum is a key site of FOXP2 action. Here, we used in vivo recordings in awake-behaving mice to investigate the effects of the KE-family mutation on the function of striatal circuits during motor-skill learning. We uncovered abnormally high ongoing striatal activity in mice carrying an identical mutation to that of the KE family. Furthermore, there were dramatic alterations in striatal plasticity during the acquisition of a motor skill, with most neurons in mutants showing negative modulation of firing rate, starkly contrasting with the predominantly positive modulation seen in control animals. We also observed striking changes in the temporal coordination of striatal firing during motor-skill learning in mutants. Our results indicate that FOXP2 is critical for the function of striatal circuits in vivo, which are important not only for speech but also for other striatal-dependent skills.

Abstract

Sleep plays an important role in neural reorganisation which underpins memory consolidation. The gradual replacement of
hippocampal binding of new memories with intracortical connections helps to link new memories to existing knowledge. This process appears to be faster for memories which fit more easily into existing schemas. Here we seek to investigate whether this more rapid consolidation of schema-conformant information is facilitated by
sleep, and the neural basis of this process.

Abstract

In many languages the future is in front and the past behind, but in some cultures (like Aymara) the past is in front. Is it possible to find this mapping as an alternative conceptualization of time in other cultures? If so, what are the factors that affect its choice out of the set of available alternatives? In a paper and pencil task, participants placed future or past events either in front or behind a character (a schematic head viewed from above). A sample of 24 Islamic participants (whose language also places the future in front and the past behind) tended to locate the past event in the front box more often than Spanish participants. This result might be due to the greater cultural value assigned to tradition in Islamic culture. The same pattern was found in a sample of Spanish elders (N = 58), what may support that conclusion. Alternatively, the crucial factor may be the amount of attention paid to the past. In a final study, young Spanish adults (N = 200) who had just answered a set of questions about their past showed the past-in-front pattern, whereas questions about their future exacerbated the future-in-front pattern. Thus, the attentional explanation was supported: attended events are mapped to front space in agreement with the experiential connection between attending and seeing. When attention is paid to the past, it tends to occupy the front location in spite of available alternative mappings in the language-culture.

Abstract

Many contemporary texts include shortcuts, such as cu or phones4u. The aim of this study was to investigate how the meanings of shortcuts are retrieved. A primed lexical decision paradigm was used with shortcuts and the corresponding words as primes. The target word was associatively related to the meaning of the whole prime (cu/see you – goodbye), to a component of the prime (cu/see you – look), or unrelated to the prime. In Experiment 1, primes were presented for 57 ms. For both word and shortcut primes, responses were faster to targets preceded by whole-related than by unrelated primes. No priming from component-related primes was found. In Experiment 2, the prime duration was 1000 ms. The priming effect seen in Experiment 1 was replicated. Additionally, there was priming from component-related word primes, but not from component-related shortcut primes. These results indicate that the meanings of shortcuts can be retrieved without translating them first into corresponding words.

Abstract

This study addresses how verbal self-monitoring and the Error-Related Negativity (ERN) are affected by time pressure
when a task is performed in a second language as opposed to performance in the native language. German–Dutch
bilinguals were required to perform a phoneme-monitoring task in Dutch with and without a time pressure manipulation.
We obtained an ERN following verbal errors that showed an atypical increase in amplitude under time
pressure. This finding is taken to suggest that under time pressure participants had more interference from their native
language, which in turn led to a greater response conflict and thus enhancement of the amplitude of the ERN. This
result demonstrates once more that the ERN is sensitive to psycholinguistic manipulations and suggests that the
functioning of the verbal self-monitoring systemduring speaking is comparable to other performance monitoring, such
as action monitoring.

Abstract

The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers' online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.

Abstract

This paper presents a new architecture for optical burst switched networks where the control plane of the network functions in a cooperative manner. Each node interprets the data conveyed by the control packet and forwards it to the next nodes, making the control plane of the network distribute the relevant information to all the nodes in the network. A cooperation transmission tree is used, thus allowing all the nodes to store the information related to the traffic management in the network, and enabling better network resource planning at each node. A model of this network architecture is proposed, and its performance is evaluated.

Abstract

Phonagnosia, the inability to recognize familiar voices, has been studied in brain-damaged patients but no cases due to developmental problems have been reported. Here we describe the case of KH, a 60-year-old active professional woman who reports that she has always experienced severe voice recognition difficulties. Her hearing abilities are normal, and an MRI scan showed no evidence of brain damage in regions associated with voice or auditory perception. To better understand her condition and to assess models of voice and high-level auditory processing, we tested KH on behavioural tasks measuring voice recognition, recognition of vocal emotions, face recognition, speech perception, and processing of environmental sounds and music. KH was impaired on tasks requiring the recognition of famous voices and the learning and recognition of new voices. In contrast, she performed well on nearly all other tasks. Her case is the first report of developmental phonagnosia, and the results suggest that the recognition of a speaker’s vocal identity depends on separable mechanisms from those used to recognize other information from the voice or non-vocal auditory stimuli.

Abstract

In the context of large and ever growing archives, generating annotation suggestions automatically from textual resources related to the documents to be archived is an interesting option in theory. It could save a lot of work in the time consuming and expensive task of manual annotation and it could help cataloguers attain a higher inter-annotator agreement. However, some questions arise in practice: what is the quality of the automatically produced annotations? How do they compare with manual annotations and with the requirements for annotation that were defined in the archive? If different from the manual annotations, are the automatic annotations wrong? In the CHOICE project, partially hosted at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the Dutch public archive for audiovisual broadcasts, we automatically generate annotation suggestions for cataloguers. In this paper, we define three types of evaluation of these annotation suggestions: (1) a classic and strict evaluation measure expressing the overlap between automatically generated keywords and the manual annotations, (2) a loosened evaluation measure for which semantically very similar annotations are also considered as relevant matches, and (3) an in-use evaluation of the usefulness of manual versus automatic annotations in the context of serendipitous browsing. During serendipitous browsing, the annotations (manual or automatic) are used to retrieve and visualize semantically related documents.

Abstract

Print Friendly XML Gebre, Binyam Gebrekidan, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, binyamgebrekidan.gebre [at] mpi.nl Wittenburg, Peter, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, peter.wittenburg [at] mpi.nl Introduction Many gesture and sign language researchers manually annotate video recordings to systematically categorize, analyze and explain their observations. The number and kinds of annotations are so diverse and unpredictable that any attempt at developing non-adaptive automatic annotation systems is usually less effective. The trend in the literature has been to develop models that work for average users and for average scenarios. This approach has three main disadvantages. First, it is impossible to know beforehand all the patterns that could be of interest to all researchers. Second, it is practically impossible to find enough training examples for all patterns. Third, it is currently impossible to learn a model that is robustly applicable across all video quality-recording variations.

Abstract

Automatic annotation of gesture strokes is important for many gesture and sign language researchers. The unpredictable diversity of human gestures and video recording conditions require that we adopt a more adaptive case-by-case annotation model. In this paper, we present a work-in progress annotation model that allows a user to a) track hands/face b) extract features c) distinguish strokes from non-strokes. The hands/face tracking is done with color matching algorithms and is initialized by the user. The initialization process is supported with immediate visual feedback. Sliders are also provided to support a user-friendly adjustment of skin color ranges. After successful initialization, features related to positions, orientations and speeds of tracked hands/face are extracted using unique identifiable features (corners) from a window of frames and are used for training a learning algorithm. Our preliminary results for stroke detection under non-ideal video conditions are promising and show the potential applicability of our methodology.

Abstract

A key function of attention is to select an appropriate subset of available information by facilitation of attended processes and/or inhibition of irrelevant processing. Functional imaging studies, using positron emission tomography, have during different experimental tasks revealed decreased neuronal activity in areas that process input from unattended sensory modalities. It has been hypothesized that these decreases reflect a selective inhibitory modulation of nonrelevant cortical processing. In this study we addressed this question using a continuous arithmetical task with and without concomitant disturbing auditory input (task-irrelevant speech). During the arithmetical task, irrelevant speech did not affect task-performance but yielded decreased activity in the auditory and midcingulate cortices and increased activity in the left posterior parietal cortex. This pattern of modulation is consistent with a top down inhibitory modulation of a nonattended input to the auditory cortex and a coexisting, attention-based facilitation of taskrelevant processing in higher order cortices. These findings suggest that task-related decreases in cortical activity may be of functional importance in the understanding of both attentional mechanisms and taskrelated information processing.

Abstract

In principle mutational records make it possible to estimate frequencies of disease alleles (q) for autosomal recessive disorders using a novel approach based on the calculation of the Homozygosity Index (HI), i.e., the proportion of homozygous patients, which is complementary to the proportion of compound heterozygous patients P(CH). In other words, the rarer the disorder, the higher will be the HI and the lower will be the P(CH). To test this hypothesis we used mutational records of individuals affected with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) and Phenylketonuria (PKU), born to either consanguineous or apparently unrelated parents from six population samples of the Mediterranean region. Despite the unavailability of precise values of the inbreeding coefficient for the general population, which are needed in the case of apparently unrelated parents, our estimates of q are very similar to those of previous descriptive epidemiological studies. Finally, we inferred from simulation studies that the minimum sample size needed to use this approach is 25 patients either with unrelated or first cousin parents. These results show that the HI can be used to produce a ranking order of allele frequencies of autosomal recessive disorders, especially in populations with high rates of consanguineous marriages.