Publications

Abstract

People readily generalize knowledge to novel domains and stimuli. We present a theory, instantiated in a computational model, based on the idea that cross-domain generalization in humans is a case of analogical inference over structured (i.e., symbolic) relational representations. The model is an extension of the Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogy (LISA; Hummel & Holyoak, 1997, 2003) and Discovery of Relations by Analogy (DORA; Doumas et al., 2008) models of relational inference and learning. The resulting model learns both the content and format (i.e., structure) of relational representations from nonrelational inputs without supervision, when augmented with the capacity for reinforcement learning it leverages these representations to learn about individual domains, and then generalizes to new domains on the first exposure (i.e., zero-shot learning) via analogical inference. We demonstrate the capacity of the model to learn structured relational representations from a variety of simple visual stimuli, and to perform cross-domain generalization between video games (Breakout and Pong) and between several psychological tasks. We demonstrate that the model’s trajectory closely mirrors the trajectory of children as they learn about relations, accounting for phenomena from the literature on the development of children’s reasoning and analogy making. The model’s ability to generalize between domains demonstrates the flexibility afforded by representing domains in terms of their underlying relational structure, rather than simply in terms of the statistical relations between their inputs and outputs.

Abstract

Reading and writing are crucial life skills but roughly one in ten children are affected by dyslexia, which can persist into adulthood. Family studies of dyslexia suggest heritability up to 70%, yet few convincing genetic markers have been found. Here we performed a genome-wide association study of 51,800 adults self-reporting a dyslexia diagnosis and 1,087,070 controls and identified 42 independent genome-wide significant loci: 15 in genes linked to cognitive ability/educational attainment, and 27 new and potentially more specific to dyslexia. We validated 23 loci (13 new) in independent cohorts of Chinese and European ancestry. Genetic etiology of dyslexia was similar between sexes, and genetic covariance with many traits was found, including ambidexterity, but not neuroanatomical measures of language-related circuitry. Dyslexia polygenic scores explained up to 6% of variance in reading traits, and might in future contribute to earlier identification and remediation of dyslexia.

Abstract

The Levelt, Noort and Drenth Committees make their sole and final rejoinder to criticisms of their report on the Stapel fraud

Abstract

We here demonstrate that face-to-face spatial orientation induces a special ‘social mode’ for neurocognitive processing during conversation, even in the absence of visibility. Participants conversed face-to-face, face-to-face but visually occluded, and back-to-back to tease apart effects caused by seeing visual communicative signals and by spatial orientation. Using dual-EEG, we found that 1) listeners’ brains engaged more strongly while conversing in face-to-face than back-to-back, irrespective of the visibility of communicative signals, 2) listeners attended to speech more strongly in a back-to-back compared to a face-to-face spatial orientation without visibility; visual signals further reduced the attention needed; 3) the brains of interlocutors were more in sync in a face-to-face compared to a back-to-back spatial orientation, even when they could not see each other; visual signals further enhanced this pattern. Communicating in face-to-face spatial orientation is thus sufficient to induce a special ‘social mode’ which fine-tunes the brain for neurocognitive processing in conversation.

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 presents a study of the spontaneous pre-sentential negations
of ten English-speaking children between the ages of 1; 6 and 3; 4 which
supports the hypothesis that child English nonanaphoric pre-sentential
negation is a form of metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. A
detailed discourse analysis reveals that children's pre-sentential negatives
like No Nathaniel a king (i) are characteristically echoic, and (it)
typically express objection and rectification, two characteristic functions
of exclamatory negation in adult discourse, e.g. Don't say 'Nathaniel's a
king'! A comparison of children's pre-sentential negations with their
internal predicate negations using not and don't reveals that the two
negative constructions are formally and functionally distinct. I argue
that children's nonanaphoric pre-sentential negatives constitute an
independent, well-formed class of discourse negation. They are not
'primitive' constructions derived from the miscategorization of emphatic
no in adult speech or children's 'inventions'. Nor are they an
early derivational variant of internal sentence negation. Rather, these
negatives reflect young children's competence in using grammatical
negative constructions appropriately in discourse.

Abstract

This study provides an answer to the question of how dictionaries should be read. For this purpose, articles taken from an outline for a Guaraní-German dictionary geared to established lexicographic practice are provided with standardized interpretations. Each article is systematically assigned a formal sentence making its meaning explicit both for content words (including polysemes) and functional words or affixes. Integrative Linguistics proves its theoretical and practical value both for the description of Guaraní (indigenous Indian language spoken in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) and in metalexicographic terms.

Abstract

The number of individuals affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI) is growing globally. TBIs may cause a range of physical, cognitive, and psychiatric deficits that can negatively impact employment, academic attainment, community independence, and interpersonal relationships. Although there has been a significant decrease in the number of injury related deaths over the past several decades, there has been no corresponding reduction in injury related disability over the same time period. We propose that patient registries with large, representative samples and rich multidimensional and longitudinal data have tremendous value in advancing basic and translational research and in capturing, characterizing, and predicting individual differences in deficit profile and outcomes. Patient registries, together with recent theoretical and methodological advances in analytic approaches and neuroscience, provide powerful tools for brain injury research and for leveraging the heterogeneity that has traditionally been cited as a barrier inhibiting progress in treatment research and clinical practice. We report on our experiences, and challenges, in developing and maintaining our own patient registry. We conclude by pointing to some future opportunities for discovery that are afforded by a registry model.

Abstract

Motricity is the most commonly affected ability after a stroke. While many clinical studies attempt to predict motor symptoms at different chronic time points after a stroke, longitudinal acute-to-chronic studies remain scarce. Taking advantage of recent advances in mapping brain disconnections, we predict motor outcomes in 62 patients assessed longitudinally two weeks, three months, and one year after their stroke. Results indicate that brain disconnection patterns accurately predict motor impairments. However, disconnection patterns leading to impairment differ between the three-time points and between left and right motor impairments. These results were cross-validated using resampling techniques. In sum, we demonstrated that while some neuroplasticity mechanisms exist changing the structure–function relationship, disconnection patterns prevail when predicting motor impairment at different time points after stroke.

Abstract

Understanding cetacean distribution is essential for conservation planning and decision-making, particularly in regions subject to rapid environmental changes. Nevertheless, information on their spatiotemporal distribution is commonly limited, especially from remote areas. Species distribution models (SDMs) are powerful tools, relating species occurrences to environmental variables to predict the species' potential distribution. This study aims at using presence-only SDMs (MaxEnt) to identify suitable habitats for fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) on their Nordic and Barents Seas feeding grounds. We used spatial-block cross-validation to tune MaxEnt parameters and evaluate model performance using spatially independent testing data. We considered spatial sampling bias correction using four methods. Important environmental variables were distance to shore and sea ice edge, variability of sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity, and depth. Suitable fin whale habitats were predicted along the west coast of Svalbard, between Svalbard and the eastern Norwegian Sea, coastal areas off Iceland and southern East Greenland, and along the Knipovich Ridge to Jan Mayen. Results support that presence-only SDMs are effective tools to predict cetacean habitat suitability, particularly in remote areas like the Arctic Ocean. SDMs constitute a cost-effective method for targeting future surveys and identifying top priority sites for conservation measures.

Abstract

The Aslian branch of Austroasiatic is recognised as the oldest recoverable language family in the Malay Peninsula, predating the now dominant Austronesian languages present today. In this paper we address the dynamics of the prehistoric spread of Aslian languages across the peninsula, including the languages spoken by Semang foragers, traditionally associated with the 'Negrito' phenotype. The received view of an early and uniform tripartite break-up of proto-Aslian in the Early Neolithic period, and subsequent differentiation driven by societal modes is challenged. We present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of our dataset of vocabulary from 28 Aslian varieties. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to extrapolate a detailed picture of Aslian language history. We conclude that a binary split between Southern Aslian and the rest of Aslian took place in the Early Neolithic (4000 BP). This was followed much later in the Late Neolithic (2000-3000 BP) by a tripartite branching into Central Aslian, Jah Hut and Northern Aslian. Subsequent internal divisions within these sub-clades took place in the Early Metal Phase (post-2000 BP). Significantly, a split in Northern Aslian between Ceq Wong and the languages of the Semang was a late development and is proposed here to coincide with the adoption of Aslian by the Semang foragers. Given the difficulties involved in associating archaeologically recorded activities with linguistic events, as well as the lack of historical sources, our results remain preliminary. However, they provide sufficient evidence to prompt a rethinking of previous models of both clado- and ethno-genesis within the Malay Peninsula.

Abstract

In recent years, large scale initiatives like CLARIN set out to overcome the notorious heterogeneity of metadata formats in the domain of language resource. The CLARIN Component Metadata Infrastructure established means for flexible resouce descriptions for the domain of language resources. The Data Category Registry ISOcat and the accompanying Relation Registry foster semantic interoperability within the growing heterogeneous collection of metadata records. This paper describes the CMD Infrastructure focusing on the facilities for semantic mapping, and gives also an overview of the current status in the joint component metadata domain.

Abstract

It is often argued that narratives improve social cognition, either by appealing to social-cognitive abilities as we engage with the story world and its characters, or by conveying social knowledge. Empirical studies have found support for both a correlational and a causal link between exposure to (literary, fictional) narratives and social cognition. However, a series of failed replications has cast doubt on the robustness of these claims. Here, we review the existing empirical literature and identify open questions and challenges. An important conclusion of the review is that previous research has given too little consideration to the diversity of narratives, readers, and social-cognitive processes involved in the social-cognitive potential of narratives. We therefore establish a research agenda, proposing that future research should focus on (1) the specific text characteristics that drive the social-cognitive potential of narratives, (2) the individual differences between readers with respect to their sensitivity to this potential, and (3) the various aspects of social cognition that are potentially affected by reading narratives. Our recommendations can guide the design of future studies that will help us understand how, for whom, and in what respect exposure to narratives can advantage social cognition.

Abstract

Written and verbal languages are neurobehavioral traits vital to the development of communication skills. Unfortunately, disorders involving these traits-specifically reading disability (RD) and language impairment (LI)-are common and prevent affected individuals from developing adequate communication skills, leaving them at risk for adverse academic, socioeconomic and psychiatric outcomes. Both RD and LI are complex traits that frequently co-occur, leading us to hypothesize that these disorders share genetic etiologies. To test this, we performed a genome-wide association study on individuals affected with both RD and LI in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The strongest associations were seen with markers in ZNF385D (OR = 1.81, P = 5.45 × 10(-7) ) and COL4A2 (OR = 1.71, P = 7.59 × 10(-7) ). Markers within NDST4 showed the strongest associations with LI individually (OR = 1.827, P = 1.40 × 10(-7) ). We replicated association of ZNF385D using receptive vocabulary measures in the Pediatric Imaging Neurocognitive Genetics study (P = 0.00245). We then used diffusion tensor imaging fiber tract volume data on 16 fiber tracts to examine the implications of replicated markers. ZNF385D was a predictor of overall fiber tract volumes in both hemispheres, as well as global brain volume. Here, we present evidence for ZNF385D as a candidate gene for RD and LI. The implication of transcription factor ZNF385D in RD and LI underscores the importance of transcriptional regulation in the development of higher order neurocognitive traits. Further study is necessary to discern target genes of ZNF385D and how it functions within neural development of fluent language.

Abstract

We present a dataset of behavioural and fMRI observations acquired in the context of humans involved in multimodal referential communication. The dataset contains audio/video and motion-tracking recordings of face-to-face, task-based communicative interactions in Dutch, as well as behavioural and neural correlates of participants’ representations of dialogue referents. Seventy-one pairs of unacquainted participants performed two interleaved interactional tasks in which they described and located 16 novel geometrical objects (i.e., Fribbles) yielding spontaneous interactions of about one hour. We share high-quality video (from three cameras), audio (from head-mounted microphones), and motion-tracking (Kinect) data, as well as speech transcripts of the interactions. Before and after engaging in the face-to-face communicative interactions, participants’ individual representations of the 16 Fribbles were estimated. Behaviourally, participants provided a written description (one to three words) for each Fribble and positioned them along 29 independent conceptual dimensions (e.g., rounded, human, audible). Neurally, fMRI signal evoked by each Fribble was measured during a one-back working-memory task. To enable functional hyperalignment across participants, the dataset also includes fMRI measurements obtained during visual presentation of eight animated movies (35 minutes total). We present analyses for the various types of data demonstrating their quality and consistency with earlier research. Besides high-resolution multimodal interactional data, this dataset includes different correlates of communicative referents, obtained before and after face-to-face dialogue, allowing for novel investigations into the relation between communicative behaviours and the representational space shared by communicators. This unique combination of data can be used for research in neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and beyond.

Abstract

The use of spoken and written language is a fundamental human capacity. Individual differences in reading- and language-related skills are influenced by genetic variation, with twin-based heritability estimates of 30 to 80% depending on the trait. The genetic architecture is complex, heterogeneous, and multifactorial, but investigations of contributions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were thus far underpowered. We present a multicohort genome-wide association study (GWAS) of five traits assessed individually using psychometric measures (word reading, nonword reading, spelling, phoneme awareness, and nonword repetition) in samples of 13,633 to 33,959 participants aged 5 to 26 y. We identified genome-wide significant association with word reading (rs11208009, P = 1.098 × 10−8) at a locus that has not been associated with intelligence or educational attainment. All five reading-/language-related traits showed robust SNP heritability, accounting for 13 to 26% of trait variability. Genomic structural equation modeling revealed a shared genetic factor explaining most of the variation in word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness, which only partially overlapped with genetic variation contributing to nonword repetition, intelligence, and educational attainment. A multivariate GWAS of word/nonword reading, spelling, and phoneme awareness maximized power for follow-up investigation. Genetic correlation analysis with neuroimaging traits identified an association with the surface area of the banks of the left superior temporal sulcus, a brain region linked to the processing of spoken and written language. Heritability was enriched for genomic elements regulating gene expression in the fetal brain and in chromosomal regions that are depleted of Neanderthal variants. Together, these results provide avenues for deciphering the biological underpinnings of uniquely human traits.

Abstract

Migraine is a disabling common brain disorder typically characterized by attacks of severe headache and associated with autonomic and neurological symptoms. Its etiology is far from resolved. This review will focus on evidence that epigenetic mechanisms play an important role in disease etiology. Epigenetics comprise both DNA methylation and post-translational modifications of the tails of histone proteins, affecting chromatin structure and gene expression. Besides playing a role in establishing cellular and developmental stage-specific regulation of gene expression, epigenetic processes are also important for programming lasting cellular responses to environmental signals. Epigenetic mechanisms may explain how non-genetic endogenous and exogenous factors such as female sex hormones, stress hormones and inflammation trigger may modulate attack frequency. Developing drugs that specifically target epigenetic mechanisms may open up exciting new avenues for the prophylactic treatment of migraine.

Abstract

Purpose of review: Migraine is a prevalent neurovascular brain disorder with a strong genetic component, and different methodological approaches have been implemented to identify the genes involved. This review focuses on pearls and pitfalls of these approaches and genetic findings in migraine. Summary: Common forms of migraine (i.e. migraine with and without aura) are thought to have a polygenic make-up, whereas rare familial hemiplegic migraine (FHM) presents with a monogenic pattern of inheritance. Until a few years ago only studies in FHM yielded causal genes, which were identified by a classical linkage analysis approach. Functional analyses of FHM gene mutations in cellular and transgenic animal models suggest abnormal glutamatergic neurotransmission as a possible key disease mechanism. Recently, a number of genes were discovered for the common forms of migraine using a genome-wide association (GWA) approach, which sheds first light on the pathophysiological mechanisms involved. Conclusions: Novel technological strategies such as next-generation sequencing, which can be implemented in future genetic migraine research, may aid the identification of novel FHM genes and promote the search for the missing heritability of common migraine.

Abstract

The perception of speech sounds can be re-tuned rapidly through a mechanism of lexically-driven learning (Norris et al 2003, Cogn.Psych. 47). Here we investigated this type of learning for English voiced stop consonants which are commonly de-voiced in word final position by Dutch learners of English . Specifically, this study asked under which conditions the change in pre-lexical representation encodes phonological information about the position of the critical sound within a word. After exposure to a Dutch learner’s productions of de-voiced stops in word-final position (but not in any other positions), British English listeners showed evidence of perceptual learning in a subsequent cross-modal priming task, where auditory primes with voiceless final stops (e.g., ‘seat’), facilitated recognition of visual targets with voiced final stops (e.g., SEED). This learning generalized to test pairs where the critical contrast was in word-initial position, e.g. auditory primes such as ‘town’ facilitated recognition of visual targets like DOWN (Experiment 1). Control listeners, who had not heard any stops by the speaker during exposure, showed no learning effects. The generalization to word-initial position did not occur when participants had also heard correctly voiced, word-initial stops during exposure (Experiment 2), and when the speaker was a native BE speaker who mimicked the word-final devoicing (Experiment 3). These results suggest that word position can be encoded in the pre-lexical adjustment to the accented phoneme contrast. Lexcially-guided feedback, distributional properties of the input, and long-term representations of accents all appear to modulate the pre-lexical re-tuning of phoneme categories.

Abstract

The study of language in relation to anthropological questions has deep and varied roots, from Humboldt and Boas, Malinowski and Vygotsky, Sapir and Whorf, Wittgenstein and Austin, through to the linguistic anthropologists of now. A recent book by the linguist Daniel Everett, language: the cultural tool (2012), aims to bring some of the issues to a popular audience, with a focus on the idea that language is a tool for social action. I argue in this essay that the book does not represent the state of the art in this field, falling short on three central desiderata of a good account for the social functions of language and its relation to culture. I frame these desiderata in terms of three questions, here termed the cognition question, the causality question, and the culture question. I look at the relevance of this work for socio-cultural anthropology, in the context of a major interdisciplinary pendulum swing that is incipient in the study of language today, a swing away from formalist, innatist perspectives, and towards functionalist, empiricist perspectives. The role of human diversity and culture is foregrounded in all of this work. To that extent, Everett’s book is representative, but the quality of his argument is neither strong in itself nor representative of a movement that ought to be of special interest to socio-cultural anthropologists.

Abstract

Review of the books "Virtually you. The dangerous powers of the e-personality", by Elias Aboujaoude; "The big disconnect. The story of technology and loneliness", by Giles Slade; and "Net smart. How to thrive online", by Howard Rheingold.

Abstract

Listeners show a remarkable ability to quickly adjust to degraded speech input. Here, we aimed to identify the neural mechanisms of such short-term perceptual adaptation. In a sparse-sampling, cardiac-gated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) acquisition, human listeners heard and repeated back 4-band-vocoded sentences (in which the temporal envelope of the acoustic signal is preserved, while spectral information is highly degraded). Clear-speech trials were included as baseline. An additional fMRI experiment on amplitude modulation rate discrimination quantified the convergence of neural mechanisms that subserve coping with challenging listening conditions for speech and non-speech. First, the degraded speech task revealed an “executive” network (comprising the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex), parts of which were also activated in the non-speech discrimination task. Second, trial-by-trial fluctuations in successful comprehension of degraded speech drove hemodynamic signal change in classic “language” areas (bilateral temporal cortices). Third, as listeners perceptually adapted to degraded speech, downregulation in a cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit was observable. The present data highlight differential upregulation and downregulation in auditory–language and executive networks, respectively, with important subcortical contributions when successfully adapting to a challenging listening situation.

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

Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van hoogleraar Psycholinguïstiek aan de Faculteit der Letteren van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op vrijdag 18 januari 2013

Abstract

This study examines the effect of L2 and L3 proficiency on L3 word learning. Native speakers of Spanish with different proficiencies in L2 English and L3 Dutch and a control group of Dutch native speakers participated in a Dutch word learning task involving minimal and non-minimal word pairs. The minimal word pairs were divided into ‘minimal-easy’ and ‘minimal-difficult’ pairs on the basis of whether or not they are known to pose perceptual problems for L1 Spanish learners. Spanish speakers’ proficiency in Dutch and English was independently established by their scores on general language comprehension tests. All participants were trained and subsequently tested on the mapping between pseudo-words and non-objects. The results revealed that, first, both native and non-native speakers produced more errors and longer reaction times for minimal than for non-minimal word pairs, and secondly, Spanish learners had more errors and longer reaction times for minimal-difficult than for minimal-easy pairs. The latter finding suggests that there is a strong continuity between sound perception and L3 word recognition. With respect to proficiency, only the learner’s proficiency in their L2, namely English, predicted their accuracy on L3 minimal pairs. This shows that learning an L2 with a larger vowel inventory than the L1 is also beneficial for word learning in an L3 with a similarly large vowel inventory.

Abstract

Genetic variation affecting absorption, distribution or excretion of essential trace elements may lead to health effects related to sub-clinical deficiency. We have tested for allelic effects of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on blood copper, selenium and zinc in a genome-wide association study using two adult cohorts from Australia and the UK. Participants were recruited in Australia from twins and their families and in the UK from pregnant women. We measured erythrocyte Cu, Se and Zn (Australian samples) or whole blood Se (UK samples) using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Genotyping was performed with Illumina chips and > 2.5 m SNPs were imputed from HapMap data. Genome-wide significant associations were found for each element. For Cu, there were two loci on chromosome 1 (most significant SNPs rs1175550, P = 5.03 × 10(-10), and rs2769264, P = 2.63 × 10(-20)); for Se, a locus on chromosome 5 was significant in both cohorts (combined P = 9.40 × 10(-28) at rs921943); and for Zn three loci on chromosomes 8, 15 and X showed significant results (rs1532423, P = 6.40 × 10(-12); rs2120019, P = 1.55 × 10(-18); and rs4826508, P = 1.40 × 10(-12), respectively). The Se locus covers three genes involved in metabolism of sulphur-containing amino acids and potentially of the analogous Se compounds; the chromosome 8 locus for Zn contains multiple genes for the Zn-containing enzyme carbonic anhydrase. Where potentially relevant genes were identified, they relate to metabolism of the element (Se) or to the presence at high concentration of a metal-containing protein (Cu).

Abstract

Author SummaryThe standard approach in genome-wide association studies is to analyse the relationship between genetic variants and disease one marker at a time. Significant associations between markers and disease are then used as evidence to implicate biological intermediates and pathways likely to be involved in disease aetiology. However, single genetic variants typically only explain small amounts of disease risk. Our idea is to construct allelic scores that explain greater proportions of the variance in biological intermediates than single markers, and then use these scores to data mine genome-wide association studies. We show how allelic scores derived from known variants as well as allelic scores derived from hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome explain significant portions of the variance in body mass index, levels of C-reactive protein, and LDLc cholesterol, and many of these scores show expected correlations with disease. Power calculations confirm the feasibility of scaling our strategy to the analysis of tens of thousands of molecular phenotypes in large genome-wide meta-analyses. Our method represents a simple way in which tens of thousands of molecular phenotypes could be screened for potential causal relationships with disease.

Abstract

Twin and family studies indicate that the timing of primary tooth eruption is highly heritable, with estimates typically exceeding 80%. To identify variants involved in primary tooth eruption, we performed a population-based genome-wide association study of 'age at first tooth' and 'number of teeth' using 5998 and 6609 individuals, respectively, from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and 5403 individuals from the 1966 Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC1966). We tested 2 446 724 SNPs imputed in both studies. Analyses were controlled for the effect of gestational age, sex and age of measurement. Results from the two studies were combined using fixed effects inverse variance meta-analysis. We identified a total of 15 independent loci, with 10 loci reaching genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10(-8)) for 'age at first tooth' and 11 loci for 'number of teeth'. Together, these associations explain 6.06% of the variation in 'age of first tooth' and 4.76% of the variation in 'number of teeth'. The identified loci included eight previously unidentified loci, some containing genes known to play a role in tooth and other developmental pathways, including an SNP in the protein-coding region of BMP4 (rs17563, P = 9.080 × 10(-17)). Three of these loci, containing the genes HMGA2, AJUBA and ADK, also showed evidence of association with craniofacial distances, particularly those indexing facial width. Our results suggest that the genome-wide association approach is a powerful strategy for detecting variants involved in tooth eruption, and potentially craniofacial growth and more generally organ development.

Abstract

Strong and weak syllables in English can be distinguished on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. Critical for deciding between these factors are syllables containing unstressed unreduced vowels, such as the first syllable of automata. In this study 12 speakers produced sentences containing matched sets of words with initial vowels ranging from stressed to reduced, at normal and at fast speech rates. Measurements of the duration, intensity, F0, and spectral characteristics of the word-initial vowels showed that unstressed unreduced vowels differed significantly from both stressed and reduced vowels. This result held true across speaker sex and dialect. The vowels produced by one speaker were then cross-spliced across the words within each set, and the resulting words' acceptability was rated by listeners. In general, cross-spliced words were only rated significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when reduced vowels interchanged with any other vowel. Correlations between rated acceptability and acoustic characteristics of the cross-spliced words demonstrated that listeners were attending to duration, intensity, and spectral characteristics. Together these results suggest that unstressed unreduced vowels in English pattern differently from both stressed and reduced vowels, so that no acoustic support for a binary categorical distinction exists; nevertheless, listeners make such a distinction, grouping unstressed unreduced vowels by preference with stressed vowels

Abstract

The brain has the extraordinary capacity to construct predictive models of the environment by internalizing statistical regularities in the sensory inputs. The resulting sensory expectations shape how we perceive and react to the world; at the neural level, this relates to decreased neural responses to expected than unexpected stimuli (‘expectation suppression’). Crucially, expectations may need revision as context changes. However, existing research has often neglected this issue. Further, it is unclear whether contextual revisions apply selectively to expectations relevant to the task at hand, hence serving adaptive behaviour. The present fMRI study examined how contextual visual expectations spread throughout the cortical hierarchy as participants update their beliefs. We created a volatile environment with two state spaces presented over separate contexts and controlled by an independent contextualizing signal. Participants attended a training session before scanning to learn contextual temporal associations among pairs of object images. The fMRI experiment then tested for the emergence of contextual expectation suppression in two separate tasks, respectively with task-relevant and task-irrelevant expectations. Behavioural and neural effects of contextual expectation emerged progressively across the cortical hierarchy as participants attuned themselves to the context: expectation suppression appeared first in the insula, inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal cortex, followed by the ventral visual stream, up to early visual cortex. This applied selectively to task-relevant expectations. Taken together, the present results suggest that an insular and frontoparietal executive control network may guide the flexible deployment of contextual sensory expectations for adaptive behaviour in our complex and dynamic world.

Abstract

This article focuses on “perceptual syntax”, the faculty to process patterns in sensory stimuli. Specifically, this study addresses the ability to perceptually connect elements that are: (1) of the same sensory modality; (2) spatially and temporally non-adjacent; or (3) within multiple sensorial domains. The underlying hypothesis is that in each animal species, this core cognitive faculty enables the perception of the environment-world (Umwelt) and consequently the possibility to survive within it. Importantly, it is suggested that in doing so, perceptual syntax determines (and guides) each species’ ontological access to the world. In support of this hypothesis, research on perceptual syntax in nonverbal individuals (preverbal infants and nonhuman animals) and humans is reviewed. This comparative approach results in theoretical remarks on human cognition and ontology, pointing to the conclusion that the ability to map cross-modal connections through verbal language is what makes humans’ form of life species-typical.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to help refine the definition of humans as “linguistic animals” in light of a comparative approach on nonhuman animals’ cognitive systems. As Uexküll & Kriszat (1934/1992) have theorized, the epistemic access to each species-specific environment (Umwelt) is driven by different biocognitive processes. Within this conceptual framework, I identify the salient cognitive process that distinguishes each species typical perception of the world as the faculty of language meant in the following operational definition: the ability to connect different elements according to structural rules. In order to draw some conclusions about humans’ specific faculty of language, I review different empirical studies on nonhuman animals’ ability to recognize formal patterns of tokens. I suggest that what differentiates human language from other animals’ cognitive systems is the ability to categorize the units of a pattern, going beyond its perceptual aspects. In fact, humans are the only species known to be able to combine semantic units within a network of combinatorial logical relationships (Deacon 1997) that can be linked to the state of affairs in the external world (Wittgenstein 1922). I assume that this ability is the core cognitive process underlying a) the capacity to speak (or to reason) in verbal propositions and b) the general human faculty of language expressed, for instance, in the ability to draw visual conceptual maps or to compute mathematical expressions. In light of these considerations, I conclude providing some research questions that could lead to a more detailed comparative exploration of the faculty of language.

Abstract

We have constructed two YAC contigs in the Xp11.23-p11.22 interval of the human X chromosome, a region that was previously poorly characterized. One contig, of at least 1.4 Mb, links the pseudogene OATL1 to the genes GATA1, TFE3, and SYP and also contains loci implicated in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and synovial sarcoma. A second contig, mapping proximal to the first, is estimated to be over 2.1 Mb and links the hypervariable locus DXS255 to DXS146, and also contains a chloride channel gene that is responsible for hereditary nephrolithiasis. We have used plasmid rescue, inverse PCR, and Alu-PCR to generate 20 novel markers from this region, 1 of which is polymorphic, and have positioned these relative to one another on the basis of YAC analysis. The order of previously known markers within our contigs, Xpter-OATL1-GATA-TFE3-SYP-DXS255146- Xcen, agrees with genomic pulsed-field maps of the region. In addition, we have constructed a rare-cutter restriction map for a 710-kb region of the DXS255-DXS146 contig and have identified three CPG islands. These contigs and new markers will provide a useful resource for more detailed analysis of Xp11.23-p11.22, a region implicated in several genetic diseases.

Abstract

State-of-the-art DNA sequencing is providing ever more detailed insights into the genomes of humans, extant apes, and even extinct hominins (1–3), offering unprecedented opportunities to uncover the molecular variants that make us human. A common assumption is that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans after 200,000 years ago required—and followed—a specific biological change triggered by one or more genetic mutations. For example, Klein has argued that the dawn of human culture stemmed from a single genetic change that “fostered the uniquely modern ability to adapt to a remarkable range of natural and social circumstance” (4). But are evolutionary changes in our genome a cause or a consequence of cultural innovation (see the figure)?

Abstract

Dent disease, an X-linked familial renal tubular disorder, is a form of Fanconi syndrome associated with proteinuria, hypercalciuria, nephrocalcinosis, kidney stones, and eventual renal failure. We have previously used positional cloning to identify the 3' part of a novel kidney-specific gene (initially termed hClC-K2, but now referred to as CLCN5), which is deleted in patients from one pedigree segregating Dent disease. Mutations that disrupt this gene have been identified in other patients with this disorder. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of the complete open reading frame of the human CLCN5 gene, which is predicted to encode a protein of 746 amino acids, with significant homology to all known members of the ClC family of voltage-gated chloride channels. CLCN5 belongs to a distinct branch of this family, which also includes the recently identified genes CLCN3 and CLCN4. We have shown that the coding region of CLCN5 is organized into 12 exons, spanning 25-30 kb of genomic DNA, and have determined the sequence of each exon-intron boundary. The elucidation of the coding sequence and exon-intron organization of CLCN5 will both expedite the evaluation of structure/function relationships of these ion channels and facilitate the screening of other patients with renal tubular dysfunction for mutations at this locus.

Abstract

The testimony of others and direct experience play a major role in the development of children's knowledge. Children actively use questions to seek others' testimony and explore the environment. It is unclear though whether children distinguish when it is better to ask from when it is better to try to find an answer by oneself. In 2 experiments, we examined the ability of 4- and 6-year-olds to select between looking and asking to determine visible and invisible properties of entities (e.g., hair color vs. knowledge of French). All children chose to look more often for visible than invisible properties. However, only 6-year-olds chose above chance to look for visible properties and to ask for invisible properties. Four-year-olds showed a preference for looking in one experiment and asking in the other. The results suggest substantial development in the efficacy of children's learning in early childhood.

Abstract

Like many Indigenous Australian languages, Murrinhpatha has flexible word order with no apparent configurational syntax. We analyzed an experimental corpus of Murrinhpatha utterances for associations between different thematic role orders, intonational phrasing patterns and pitch downtrends. We found that initial constituents (Agents or Patients) tend to carry the highest pitch targets (HiF0), followed by patterns of downstep and declination. Sentence-final verbs always have lower Hif0 values than either initial or medial Agents or Patients. Thematic role order does not influence intonational
patterns, with the results suggesting that Murrinhpatha has positional prosody, although final nominals can disrupt global
pitch downtrends regardless of thematic role.

Abstract

Cognitive functional neuroimaging has been around for over 30 years and has shed light on the brain areas relevant for reading. However, new methodological developments enable mapping the interaction between functional imaging and the underlying white matter networks. In this study, we used such a novel method, called the disconnectome, to decode the reading circuitry in the brain. We used the resulting disconnection patterns to predict a typical lesion that would lead to reading deficits after brain damage. Our results suggest that white matter connections critical for reading include fronto-parietal U-shaped fibres and the vertical occipital fasciculus (VOF). The lesion most predictive of a reading deficit would impinge on the left temporal, occipital, and inferior parietal gyri. This novel framework can systematically be applied to bridge the gap between the neuropathology of language and cognitive neuroscience.

Abstract

Inter-individual differences can inform treatment procedures and—if accounted for—have the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes. However, when studying brain anatomy, these inter-individual variations are commonly unaccounted for, despite reports of differences in gross anatomical features, cross-sectional, and connectional anatomy. Brain connections are essential to facilitate functional organization and, when severed, cause impairments or complete loss of function. Hence, the study of cerebral white matter may be an ideal compromise to capture inter-individual variability in structure and function. We reviewed the wealth of studies that associate cognitive functions and clinical symptoms with individual tracts using diffusion tractography. Our systematic review indicates that tractography has proven to be a sensitive method in neurology, psychiatry, and healthy populations to identify variability and its functional correlates. However, the literature may be biased, as the most commonly studied tracts are not necessarily those with the highest sensitivity to cognitive functions and pathologies. Additionally, the hemisphere of the studied tract is often unreported, thus neglecting functional laterality and asymmetries. Finally, we demonstrate that tracts, as we define them, are not correlated with one, but multiple cognitive domains or pathologies. While our systematic review identified some methodological caveats, it also suggests that tract–function correlations might still be a promising tool in identifying biomarkers for precision medicine. They can characterize variations in brain anatomy, differences in functional organization, and predicts resilience and recovery in patients.

Abstract

Progress in genome sequencing now enables the large-scale generation of reference genomes. Various international initiatives aim to generate reference genomes representing global biodiversity. These genomes provide unique insights into genomic diversity and architecture, thereby enabling comprehensive analyses of population and functional genomics, and are expected to revolutionize conservation genomics.

Abstract

The cognate effect refers to translation equivalents with similar form between languages—i.e., cognates, such as “band” (English) and “banda” (Spanish)—being processed faster than words with dissimilar forms—such as, “cloud” and “nube.” Substantive literature supports this claim, but is mostly based on orthographic similarity and tested in the visual modality. In a previous study, we found an inhibitory orthographic similarity effect in the auditory modality—i.e., greater orthographic similarity led to slower response times and reduced accuracy. The aim of the present study is to explain this effect. In doing so, we explore the role of the speaker's accent in auditory word recognition and whether native accents lead to a mismatch between the participants' phonological representation and the stimulus. Participants carried out a lexical decision task and a typing task in which they spelled out the word they heard. Words were produced by two speakers: one with a native English accent (Standard American) and the other with a non-native accent matching that of the participants (native Spanish speaker from Spain). We manipulated orthographic and phonological similarity orthogonally and found that accent did have some effect on both response time and accuracy as well as modulating the effects of similarity. Overall, the non-native accent improved performance, but it did not fully explain why high orthographic similarity items show an inhibitory effect in the auditory modality. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.

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

Delineating the association of age and cortical thickness in healthy individuals is critical given the association of cortical thickness with cognition and behavior. Previous research has shown that robust estimates of the association between age and brain morphometry require large‐scale studies. In response, we used cross‐sectional data from 17,075 individuals aged 3–90 years from the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta‐Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to infer age‐related changes in cortical thickness. We used fractional polynomial (FP) regression to quantify the association between age and cortical thickness, and we computed normalized growth centiles using the parametric Lambda, Mu, and Sigma method. Interindividual variability was estimated using meta‐analysis and one‐way analysis of variance. For most regions, their highest cortical thickness value was observed in childhood. Age and cortical thickness showed a negative association; the slope was steeper up to the third decade of life and more gradual thereafter; notable exceptions to this general pattern were entorhinal, temporopolar, and anterior cingulate cortices. Interindividual variability was largest in temporal and frontal regions across the lifespan. Age and its FP combinations explained up to 59% variance in cortical thickness. These results may form the basis of further investigation on normative deviation in cortical thickness and its significance for behavioral and cognitive outcomes.

Abstract

The current study investigates whether self-talk phrases can influence behavior in Ultimatum Games. In our three self-talk treatments, participants were instructed to tell themselves (i) to keep their own interests in mind, (ii) to also think of the other person, or (iii) to take some time to contemplate their decision. We investigate how such so-called experimenter-determined strategic self-talk phrases affect behavior and emotions in comparison to a control treatment without instructed self-talk. The results demonstrate that other-focused self-talk can nudge proposers towards fair behavior, as offers were higher in this group than in the other conditions. For responders, self-talk tended to increase acceptance rates of unfair offers as compared to the condition without self-talk. This effect is significant for both other-focused and contemplation-inducing self-talk but not for self-focused self-talk. In the self-focused condition, responders were most dissatisfied with unfair offers. These findings suggest that use of self-talk can increase acceptance rates in responders, and that focusing on personal interests can undermine this effect as it negatively impacts the responders’ emotional experience. In sum, our study shows that strategic self-talk interventions can be used to affect behavior in bargaining situations.

Abstract

In list learning paradigms with free recall, written recall has been found to be less susceptible to intrusions of related concepts than spoken recall when the list items had been visually presented. This effect has been ascribed to the use of stored orthographic representations from the study phase during written recall (Kellogg, 2001). In other memory retrieval paradigms, by contrast, either better recall for modality-congruent items or an input-independent writing superiority effect have been found (Grabowski, 2005). In a series of four experiments using a paired associate learning paradigm we tested (a) whether output modality effects on verbal recall can be replicated in a paradigm that does not involve the rejection of semantically related intrusion words, (b) whether a possible superior performance for written recall was due to a slower response onset for writing as compared to speaking in immediate recall, and (c) whether the performance in paired associate word recall was correlated with performance in an additional episodic memory recall task. We observed better written recall in the first half of the recall phase, irrespective of the modality in which the material was presented upon encoding. An explanation for this effect based on longer response latencies for writing and hence more time for memory retrieval could be ruled out by showing that the effect persisted in delayed response versions of the task. Although there was some evidence that stored additional episodic information may contribute to the successful retrieval of associate words, this evidence was only found in the immediate response experiments and hence is most likely independent from the observed output modality effect. In sum, our results from a paired associate learning paradigm suggest that superior performance for written vs. spoken recall cannot be (solely) explained in terms of additional access to stored orthographic representations from the encoding phase. Our findings rather suggest a general writing-superiority effect at the time of memory retrieval.

Abstract

Large pretrained language models (PreLMs) are rev-olutionizing natural language processing across all benchmarks. However, their sheer size is prohibitive for small laboratories or for deployment on mobile devices. Approaches like pruning and distillation reduce the model size but typically retain the same model architecture. In contrast, we explore distilling PreLMs into a different, more efficient architecture, Continual Multiplication of Words (CMOW), which embeds each word as a matrix and uses matrix multiplication to encode sequences. We extend the CMOW architecture and its CMOW/CBOW-Hybrid variant with a bidirectional component for more expressive power, per-token representations for a general (task-agnostic) distillation during pretraining, and a two-sequence encoding scheme that facilitates downstream tasks on sentence pairs, such as sentence similarity and natural language inference. Our matrix-based bidirectional CMOW/CBOW-Hybrid model is competitive to DistilBERT on question similarity and recognizing textual entailment, but uses only half of the number of parameters and is three times faster in terms of inference speed. We match or exceed the scores of ELMo for all tasks of the GLUE benchmark except for the sentiment analysis task SST-2 and the linguistic acceptability task CoLA. However, compared to previous cross-architecture distillation approaches, we demonstrate a doubling of the scores on detecting linguistic acceptability. This shows that matrix-based embeddings can be used to distill large PreLM into competitive models and motivates further research in this direction.

Abstract

Rhythm is a fundamental feature characterizing communicative displays, and recent studies showed that primate songs encompass categorical rhythms falling on small integer ratios observed in humans. We individually assessed the presence and sexual dimorphism of rhythmic categories, analyzing songs emitted by 39 wild indris. Considering the intervals between the units given during each song, we extracted 13556 interval ratios and found three peaks (at around 0.33, 0.47, and 0.70). Two peaks indicated rhythmic categories corresponding to small integer ratios (1:1, 2:1). All individuals showed a peak at 0.70, and
most showed those at 0.47 and 0.33. In addition, we found sex differences in the peak at 0.47 only, with males showing lower values than females. This work investigates the presence of individual rhythmic categories in a non-human species; further research may highlight the significance of rhythmicity and untie selective pressures that guided its evolution across species, including humans.

Abstract

Since the discovery that rhythmic abilities are universal in humans, temporal features of vocal communication have greatly interested researchers studying animal communication. Rhythmic patterns are a valuable tool for species discrimination, mate choice, and individual recognition. A recent study showed that bird songs and human music share rhythmic categories when a signal's temporal intervals are distributed categorically rather than uniformly. Following that study, we aimed to investigate whether songs of indris (Indri indri), the only singing lemur, may show similar features. We measured the inter-onset intervals (tk), delimited by the onsets of two consecutive units, and the rhythmic ratios between these intervals (rk), calculated by dividing an interval by itself plus its adjacent, and finded a three-cluster distribution. Two clusters corresponded to rhythmic categories at 1:1 and 1:2, and the third approached a 2:1 ratio. Our results demonstrated for the first time that another primate besides humans produces categorical rhythms, an ability likely evolved convergently among singing species such as songbirds, indris, and humans. Understanding which communicative features are shared with other species is fundamental to understanding how they have evolved. In this regard, thanks to the simplicity of data processing and interpretation, our study relied on an accessible analytical approach that could open up new branches of the investigation into primate communication, leading the way to reconstruct a phylogeny of rhythm abilities across the entire order.

Abstract

The present study investigated whether Short Message Service shortcuts are more difficult to process in sentence context than the spelled-out word equivalent and, if so, how any additional processing difficulty arises. Twenty-four student participants read 37 Short Message Service shortcuts and word equivalents embedded in semantically plausible and implausible contexts (e.g., He left/drank u/you a note) while their eye movements were recorded. There were effects of plausibility and spelling on early measures of processing difficulty (first fixation durations, gaze durations, skipping, and first-pass regression rates for the targets), but there were no interactions of plausibility and spelling. Late measures of processing difficulty (second run gaze duration and total fixation duration) were only affected by plausibility but not by spelling. These results suggest that shortcuts are harder to recognize, but that, once recognized, they are integrated into the sentence context as easily as ordinary words.

Abstract

Whether reading in different writing systems recruits language-unique or language-universal neural processes is a long-standing debate. Many studies have shown the left arcuate fasciculus (AF) to be involved in phonological and reading processes. In contrast, little is known about the role of the right AF in reading, but some have suggested that it may play a role in visual spatial aspects of reading or the prosodic components of language. The right AF may be more important for reading in Chinese due to its logographic and tonal properties, but this hypothesis has yet to be tested. We recruited a group of Chinese-English bilingual children (8.2 to 12.0 years old) to explore the common and unique relation of reading skill in English and Chinese to fractional anisotropy (FA) in the bilateral AF. We found that both English and Chinese reading skills were positively correlated with FA in the rostral part of the left AF-direct segment. Additionally, English reading skill was positively correlated with FA in the caudal part of the left AF-direct segment, which was also positively correlated with phonological awareness. In contrast, Chinese reading skill was positively correlated with FA in certain segments of the right AF, which was positively correlated with visual spatial ability, but not tone discrimination ability. Our results suggest that there are language universal substrates of reading across languages, but that certain left AF nodes support phonological mechanisms important for reading in English, whereas certain right AF nodes support visual spatial mechanisms important for reading in Chinese.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has massively limited how linguists can collect data, and out of necessity, researchers across several disciplines have moved data collection online. Here we argue that the rising popularity of remote web-based experiments also provides an opportunity for widening the context of linguistic research by facilitating data collection from understudied populations. We discuss collecting production data from adult native speakers of Tagalog using an unsupervised web-based experiment. Compared to equivalent lab experiments, data collection went quicker, and the sample was more diverse, without compromising data quality. However, there were also technical and human issues that come with this method. We discuss these challenges and provide suggestions on how to overcome them.

Abstract

Western Austronesian languages have typologically rare but theoretically important voice systems that raise many questions about their learnability. While these languages have been featured prominently in the descriptive and typological literature, data on acquisition is sparse. In the current paper, we report on a variationist analysis of Tagalog child-directed speech using a newly collected corpus of caregiver-child interaction. We determined the constraints that condition voice use, voice selection, argument position, and thematic role assignment, thus providing the first quantitative analysis of verb argument structure variation in the language. We also examined whether children are sensitive to the constraints on variability. Our analyses showed that, despite the diversity of structures that children have to learn under Tagalog’s voice system, there are unique factors that strongly predict the speakers’ choice between the voice and word order alternations, with children’s choices related to structure alternations being similar to what is available in their input. The results thus suggest that input distributions provide many cues to the acquisition of the Tagalog voice system, making it eminently learnable despite its apparent complexity.

Abstract

Meta-analyses provide researchers with an overview of the body of evidence in a topic, with quantified estimates of effect sizes and the role of moderators, and weighting studies according to their precision. We provide a guide for conducting a transparent and reproducible meta-analysis in the field of developmental psychology within the framework of the MetaLab platform, in 10 steps: (1) Choose a topic for your meta-analysis, (2) Formulate your research question and specify inclusion criteria, (3) Preregister and document all stages of your meta-analysis, (4) Conduct the literature search, (5) Collect and screen records, (6) Extract data from eligible studies, (7) Read the data into analysis software and compute effect sizes, (8) Visualize your data, (9) Create meta-analytic models to assess the strength of the effect and investigate possible moderators, (10) Write up and promote your meta-analysis. Meta-analyses can inform future studies, through power calculations, by identifying robust methods and exposing research gaps. By adding a new meta-analysis to MetaLab, datasets across multiple topics of developmental psychology can be synthesized, and the dataset can be maintained as a living, community-augmented meta-analysis to which researchers add new data, allowing for a cumulative approach to evidence synthesis.

Abstract

The Perceptual Loop Theory of speech monitoring assumes that speakers routinely inspect their inner speech. In contrast, Huettig and Hartsuiker (2010) observed that listening to one’s own speech during language production drives eye-movements to phonologically related printed words with a similar time-course as listening to someone else’s speech does in speech perception experiments. This suggests that speakers listen to their own overt speech, but not to their inner speech. However, a direct comparison between production and perception with the same stimuli and participants is lacking so far. The current printed word eye-tracking experiment therefore used a within-subjects design, combining production and perception. Displays showed four words, of which one, the target, either had to be named or was presented auditorily. Accompanying words were phonologically related, semantically related, or unrelated to the target. There were small increases in looks to phonological competitors with a similar time-course in both production and perception. Phonological effects in perception however lasted longer and had a much larger magnitude. We conjecture that this difference is related to a difference in predictability of one’s own and someone else’s speech, which in turn has consequences for lexical competition in other-perception and possibly suppression of activation in self-perception.

Abstract

Our species displays remarkable linguistic diversity. While the uneven distribution of this diversity demands explanation, the drivers of these patterns have not been conclusively determined. We address this issue in two steps. First, we review previous empirical studies that have suggested environmental, geographical, and socio-cultural drivers of linguistic diversification. However, contradictory results and methodological variation make it difficult to draw general conclusions. Second, we outline a program for future research. We suggest that future analyses should account for interactions among causal factors, lack of spatial and phylogenetic independence of data, and transitory patterns. Recent analytical advances in biogeography and evolutionary biology, such as simulation modeling of diversity patterns, hold promise for testing four key mechanisms of language diversification proposed here: neutral change, population movement, contact, and selection. Future modeling approaches should also evaluate how the outcomes of these processes are influenced by demography, environmental heterogeneity, and time.

Abstract

We propose a Random-Forest based sign language identification system. The system uses low-level visual features and is based on the hypothesis that sign languages have varying distributions of phonemes (hand-shapes, locations and movements). We evaluated the system on two sign languages -- British SL and Greek SL, both taken from a publicly available corpus, called Dicta Sign Corpus. Achieved average F1 scores are about 95% - indicating that sign languages can be identified with high accuracy using only low-level visual features.

Abstract

We present a vision-based method for signer diarization -- the task of automatically determining "who signed when?" in a video. This task has similar motivations and applications as speaker diarization but has received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we motivate the problem and propose a method for solving it. The method is based on the hypothesis that signers make more movements than their interlocutors. Experiments on four videos (a total of 1.4 hours and each consisting of two signers) show the applicability of the method. The best diarization error rate (DER) obtained is 0.16.

Abstract

This paper presents a Native Language Identification (NLI) system based on TF-IDF weighting schemes and using linear classifiers - support vector machines, logistic regressions and perceptrons. The system was one of the participants of the 2013 NLI Shared Task in the closed-training track, achieving 0.814 overall accuracy for a set of 11 native languages. This accuracy was only 2.2 percentage points lower than the winner's performance. Furthermore, with subsequent evaluations using 10-fold cross-validation (as given by the organizers) on the combined training and development data, the best average accuracy obtained is 0.8455 and the features that contributed to this accuracy are the TF-IDF of the combined unigrams and bigrams of words.

Abstract

We present and solve the speaker diarization problem in a novel way. We hypothesize that the gesturer is the speaker and that identifying the gesturer can be taken as identifying the active speaker. We provide evidence in support of the hypothesis from gesture literature and audio-visual synchrony studies. We also present a vision-only diarization algorithm that relies on gestures (i.e. upper body movements). Experiments carried out on 8.9 hours of a publicly available dataset (the AMI meeting data) show that diarization error rates as low as 15% can be achieved.

Abstract

Understanding human white matter development is vital to characterize typical brain organization and developmental neurocognitive disorders. In this issue of Neuron, Nazeri and colleagues1 identify different parts of white matter in the neonatal brain and show their maturational trajectories in line with microstructural feature development.

Abstract

Does spatial language influence how people think about space? To address this question, we observed children who did not know a conventional language, and tested their performance on nonlinguistic spatial tasks. We studied deaf children living in Istanbul whose hearing losses prevented them from acquiring speech and whose hearing parents had not exposed them to sign. Lacking a conventional language, the children used gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. In Study 1, we asked whether homesigners used gesture to convey spatial relations, and found that they did not. In Study 2, we tested a new group of homesigners on a Spatial Mapping Task, and found that they performed significantly worse than hearing Turkish children who were matched to the deaf children on another cognitive task. The absence of spatial language thus went hand-in-hand with poor performance on the nonlinguistic spatial task, pointing to the importance of spatial language in thinking about space.

Abstract

Wilson disease (WD) is an autosomal recessive disorder resulting in pathological progressive copper accumulation in liver and other tissues. The worldwide prevalence (P) is about 30/million, while in Sardinia it is in the order of 1/10 000. However, all of these estimates are likely to suffer from an underdiagnosis bias. Indeed, a recent molecular neonatal screening in Sardinia reported a WD prevalence of 1:2707. In this study, we used a new approach that makes it possible to estimate the allelic frequency (q) of an autosomal recessive disorder if one knows the proportion between homozygous and compound heterozygous patients (the homozygosity index or HI) and the inbreeding coefficient (F) in a sample of affected individuals. We applied the method to a set of 178 Sardinian individuals (3 of whom born to consanguineous parents), each with a clinical and molecular diagnosis of WD. Taking into account the geographical provenance of the parents of every patient within Sardinia (to make F computation more precise), we obtained a q=0.0191 (F=7.8 × 10-4, HI=0.476) and a corresponding prevalence P=1:2732. This result confirms that the prevalence of WD is largely underestimated in Sardinia. On the other hand, the general reliability and applicability of the HI approach to other autosomal recessive disorders is confirmed, especially if one is interested in the genetic epidemiology of populations with high frequency of consanguineous marriages.

Abstract

First paragraph: The study of the transmission of sign languages can give novel insights into the transmission of spoken languages1 and, more generally, into gene–culture coevolution. Over the years, several papers related to the persistence of sign language have been
reported.2–6 All of these studies have emphasized the role of assortative (non-random) mating by deafness state (ie, a tendency for deaf individuals to partner together) for increasing the frequency of recessive deafness, and hence for the persistence of sign language in a population.

Abstract

The neurobiology of sentence production has been largely understudied compared to the neurobiology of sentence comprehension, due to difficulties with experimental control and motion-related artifacts in neuroimaging. We studied the neural response to constituents of increasing size and specifically focused on the similarities and differences in the production and comprehension of the same stimuli. Participants had to either produce or listen to stimuli in a gradient of constituent size based on a visual prompt. Larger constituent sizes engaged the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and middle temporal gyrus (LMTG) extending to inferior parietal areas in both production and comprehension, confirming that the neural resources for syntactic encoding and decoding are largely overlapping. An ROI analysis in LIFG and LMTG also showed that production elicited larger responses to constituent size than comprehension and that the LMTG was more engaged in comprehension than production, while the LIFG was more engaged in production than comprehension. Finally, increasing constituent size was characterized by later BOLD peaks in comprehension but earlier peaks in production. These results show that syntactic encoding and parsing engage overlapping areas, but there are asymmetries in the engagement of the language network due to the specific requirements of production and comprehension.

Abstract

How are space and time related in the brain? This study contrasts two proposals that make different predictions about the interaction between spatial and temporal magnitudes. Whereas ATOM implies that space and time are symmetrically related, Metaphor Theory claims they are asymmetrically related. Here we investigated whether space and time activate the same neural structures in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and whether the activation is symmetric or asymmetric across domains. We measured participants’ neural activity while they made temporal and spatial judgments on the same visual stimuli. The behavioral results replicated earlier observations of a space-time asymmetry: Temporal judgments were more strongly influenced by irrelevant spatial information than vice versa. The BOLD fMRI data indicated that space and time activated overlapping clusters in the IPC and that, consistent with Metaphor Theory, this activation was asymmetric: The shared region of IPC was activated more strongly during temporal judgments than during spatial judgments. We consider three possible interpretations of this neural asymmetry, based on 3 possible functions of IPC.

Abstract

Irrelevant speech impairs the immediate serial recall of visually presented material. Previously, we have shown that the irrelevant speech effect (ISE) was associated with a relative decrease of regional blood flow in cortical regions subserving the verbal working memory, in particular the superior temporal cortex. In this extension of the previous study, the working memory load was increased and an increased activity as a response to irrelevant speech was noted in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We suggest that the two studies together provide some basic insights as to the nature of the irrelevant speech effect. Firstly, no area in the brain can be ascribed as the single locus of the irrelevant speech effect. Instead, the functional neuroanatomical substrate to the effect can be characterized in terms of changes in networks of functionally interrelated areas. Secondly, the areas that are sensitive to the irrelevant speech effect are also generically activated by the verbal working memory task itself. Finally, the impact of irrelevant speech and related brain activity depends on working memory load as indicated by the differences between the present and the previous study. From a brain perspective, the irrelevant speech effect may represent a complex phenomenon that is a composite of several underlying mechanisms, which depending on the working memory load, include top-down inhibition as well as recruitment of compensatory support and control processes. We suggest that, in the low-load condition, a selection process by an inhibitory top-down modulation is sufficient, whereas in the high-load condition, at or above working memory span, auxiliary adaptive cognitive resources are recruited as compensation

Abstract

According to the cue-based parsing approach (Lewis, Vasishth, & Van Dyke, 2006), sentence comprehension difficulty derives from interference from material that partially matches syntactic and semantic retrieval cues. In a 2 (low vs. high semantic interference) × 2 (low vs. high syntactic interference) fMRI study, greater activation was observed in left BA44/45 for high versus low syntactic interference conditions following sentences and in left BA45/47 for high versus low semantic interference conditions following comprehension questions. A conjunction analysis showed BA45 associated with both types of interference, while BA47 was associated with only semantic interference. Greater activation was also observed in the left STG in the high interference conditions. Importantly, the results for the LIFG could not be attributed to greater working memory capacity demands for high interference conditions. The results favor a fractionation of the LIFG wherein BA45 is associated with post-retrieval selection and BA47 with controlled retrieval of semantic information.

Abstract

Native listeners make use of higher-level, context-driven semantic and linguistic information during the perception of speech-in-noise. In a recent behavioral study, using a new paradigm that isolated the semantic level of speech by using words, we showed that this native-language benefit is at least partly driven by semantic context (Golestani et al., 2009). Here, we used the same paradigm in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to study the neural bases of speech intelligibility, as well as to study the neural bases of this semantic context effect in the native language. A forced-choice recognition task on the first of two auditorily presented semantically related or unrelated words was employed, where the first, 'target' word was embedded in different noise levels. Results showed that activation in components of the brain language network, including Broca's area and the left posterior superior temporal sulcus, as well as brain regions known to be functionally related to attention and task difficulty, was modulated by stimulus intelligibility. In line with several previous studies examining the role of linguistic context in the intelligibility of degraded speech at the sentence level, we found that activation in the angular gyrus of the left inferior parietal cortex was modulated by the presence of semantic context, and further, that this modulation depended on the intelligibility of the speech stimuli. Our findings help to further elucidate neural mechanisms underlying the interaction of context-driven and signal-driven factors during the perception of degraded speech, and this specifically at the semantic level. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Abstract

Semantic verbal fluency tasks are commonly used in neuropsychological assessment. Investigations of the influence of level of literacy have not yielded consistent results in the literature. This prompted us to investigate the ecological relevance of task specifics, in particular, the choice of semantic criteria used. Two groups of literate and illiterate subjects were compared on two verbal fluency tasks using different semantic criteria. The performance on a food criterion (supermarket fluency task), considered more ecologically relevant for the two literacy groups, and an animal criterion (animal fluency task) were compared. The data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The quantitative analysis indicated that the two literacy groups performed equally well on the supermarket fluency task. In contrast, results differed significantly during the animal fluency task. The qualitative analyses indicated differences between groups related to the strategies used, especially with respect to the animal fluency task. The overall results suggest that there is not a substantial difference between literate and illiterate subjects related to the fundamental workings of semantic memory. However, there is indication that the content of semantic memory reflects differences in shared cultural background - in other words, formal education –, as indicated by the significant interaction between level of literacy and semantic criterion.

Abstract

Gender stereotypes have endured despite substantial change in gender roles. Previous work has assessed how gender stereotypes affect language production in particular interactional contexts. Here, we assessed communication biases where context was less specified: written texts to diffuse audiences. We used Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to computationally quantify the similarity in meaning between gendered names and stereotype-linked terms in these communications. This revealed that female names were more similar in meaning to the proscriptive (undesirable) masculine terms, such as emotional.

Abstract

Purpose: Aphasia fluency is multiply determined by underlying impairments in lexical retrieval, grammatical formulation, and speech production. This poses challenges for establishing a reliable and feasible tool to measure fluency in the clinic. We examine the reliability and validity of perceptual ratings and clinical perspectives on the utility and relevance of methods used to assess fluency.
Method: In an online survey, 112 speech-language pathologists rated spontaneous speech samples from 181 people with aphasia (PwA) on eight perceptual rating scales (overall fluency, speech rate, pausing, effort, melody, phrase length, grammaticality, and lexical retrieval) and answered questions about their current practices for assessing fluency in the clinic.
Results: Interrater reliability for the eight perceptual rating scales ranged from fair to good. The most reliable scales were speech rate, pausing, and phrase length. Similarly, clinicians' perceived fluency ratings were most strongly correlated to objective measures of speech rate and utterance length but were also related to grammatical complexity, lexical diversity, and phonological errors. Clinicians' ratings reflected expected aphasia subtype patterns: Individuals with Broca's and transcortical motor aphasia were rated below average on fluency, whereas those with anomic, conduction, and Wernicke's aphasia were rated above average. Most respondents reported using multiple methods in the clinic to measure fluency but relying most frequently on subjective judgments.
Conclusions: This study lends support for the use of perceptual rating scales as valid assessments of speech-language production but highlights the need for a more reliable method for clinical use. We describe next steps for developing such a tool that is clinically feasible and helps to identify the underlying deficits disrupting fluency to inform treatment targets.

Abstract

Researchers are beginning to uncover the neurogenetic pathways that underlie our unparalleled capacity for spoken language. Initial clues come from identification of genetic risk factors implicated in developmental language disorders. The underlying genetic architecture is complex, involving a range of molecular mechanisms. For example, rare protein-coding mutations of the FOXP2 transcription factor cause severe problems with sequencing of speech sounds, while common genetic risk variants of small effect size in genes like CNTNAP2, ATP2C2 and CMIP are associated with typical forms of language impairment. In this article, we describe how investigations of these and other candidate genes, in humans, animals and cellular models, are unravelling the connections between genes and cognition. This depends on interdisciplinary research at multiple levels, from determining molecular interactions and functional roles in neural cell-biology all the way through to effects on brain structure and activity.

Abstract

Absolute pitch and synesthesia are two uncommon cognitive traits that reflect increased neuronal connectivity and have been anecdotally reported to occur together in a same individual. Here we systematically evaluate the occurrence of syesthesia in a population of 768 subjects with documented absolute pitch. Out of these 768 subjects, 151(20.1%) reported synesthesia, most commonly with color. These self-reports of synesthesia were validated in a subset of 21 study subjects using an established methodology. We further carried out combined linkage analysis of 53 multiplex families with absolute pitch and 36 multiplex families with synesthesia. We observed a peak NPL LOD=4.68 on chromosome 6q, as well as evidence of linkage on chromosome 2 using a dominant model. These data establish the close phenotypic and genetic relationship between absolute pitch and synesthesia. The chromosome 6 linkage region contains 73 genes; several leading candidate genes involved in neurodevelopment were investigated by exon resequencing. However, further studies will be required to definitively establish the identity of the causative gene(s) in the region.

Abstract

The discussion on root infinitives has mainly centered around their supposed modal usage. This article aims at modelling the form-function relation of the root infinitive phenomenon by taking into account the full range of interpretational facets encountered cross-linguistically and interindividually. Following the idea of a subsequent ‘‘cell partitioning’’ in the emergence of form-function correlations, I claim that it is the major fission between [+-finite] which is central to express temporal reference different from the default here&now in tense-oriented languages. In aspectual-oriented languages, a similar opposition is mastered with the marking of early aspectual forms. It is observed that in tense-oriented languages like Dutch and German, the progression of functions associated with the infinitival form proceeds from nonmodal to modal, whereas the reverse progression holds for the Russian infinitive. Based on this crucial observation, a model of acquisition is proposed which allows for a flexible and systematic relationship between morphological forms and their respective interpretational biases dependent on their developmental context. As for early child language, I argue that children entertain only two temporal parameters: one parameter is fixed to the here&now point in time, and a second parameter relates to the time talked about, the topic time; this latter time overlaps the situation time as long as no empirical evidence exists to support the emergence of a proper distinction between tense and aspect.

Abstract

Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings are a rich source of information about the neural dynamics underlying cognitive processes in the brain, with excellent temporal and good spatial resolution. In recent years there have been considerable advances in MEG hardware developments as well as methodological developments. Sophisticated analysis techniques are now routinely applied and continuously improved, leading to fascinating insights into the intricate dynamics of neural processes. However, the rapidly increasing level of complexity of the different steps in a MEG study make it difficult for novices, and sometimes even for experts, to stay aware of possible limitations and caveats. Furthermore, the complexity of MEG data acquisition and data analysis requires special attention when describing MEG studies in publications, in order to facilitate interpretation and reproduction of the results. This manuscript aims at making recommendations for a number of important data acquisition and data analysis steps and suggests details that should be specified in manuscripts reporting MEG studies. These recommendations will hopefully serve as guidelines that help to strengthen the position of the MEG research community within the field of neuroscience, and may foster discussion within the community in order to further enhance the quality and impact of MEG research.

Abstract

Most people have a right-ear advantage for the perception of spoken syllables, consistent with left hemisphere dominance for speech processing. However, there is considerable variation, with some people showing left-ear advantage. The extent to which this variation is reflected in brain structure remains unclear. We tested for relations between hemispheric asymmetries of auditory processing and of grey matter in 281 adults, using dichotic listening and voxel-based morphometry. This was the largest study of this issue to date. Per-voxel asymmetry indexes were derived for each participant following registration of brain magnetic resonance images to a template that was symmetrized. The asymmetry index derived from dichotic listening was related to grey matter asymmetry in clusters of voxels corresponding to the amygdala and cerebellum lobule VI. There was also a smaller, non-significant cluster in the posterior superior temporal gyrus, a region of auditory cortex. These findings contribute to the mapping of asymmetrical structure–function links in the human brain and suggest that subcortical structures should be investigated in relation to hemispheric dominance for speech processing, in addition to auditory cortex.

Abstract

The central topic of this study is to investigate three- and four-place predicate in Yaqui, which are characterized by having multiple object arguments. As with other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages, it has been said that Yaqui follows the Primary/Secondary Object pattern (Dryer 1986). Actually, Yaqui presents three patterns: verbs like nenka ‘sell’ follow the direct–indirect object pattern, verbs like miika ‘give’ follow the primary object pattern, and verbs like chijakta ‘sprinkle’ follow the locative alternation pattern; the primary object pattern is the exclusive one found with derived verbs. This paper shows that the contrast between direct object and primary object languages is not absolute but rather one of degree, and hence two “object” selection principles are needed to explain this mixed system. The two principles are not limited to Yaqui but are found in other languages as well, including English.

Abstract

All accounts of communicative behaviour in general, and communicative strategies in particular, mention gesture1 in relation to language acquisition (cf. Faerch & Kasper 1983 for an overview). However, few attempts have been made to investigate how spoken language and spontaneous gesture combine to determine discourse referents. Referential gesture and referential discourse will be of particular interest, since communicative strategies in second language discourse often involve labelling problems.

This paper will focus on two issues:

1) Within a cognitive account of communicative strategies, gesture will be seen to be part of conceptual or analysis-based strategies, in that relational features in the referents are exploited;

2) It will be argued that communication strategies can be seen in terms of cue manipulation in the same sense as sentence processing has been analysed in terms of competing cues. Strategic behaviour, and indeed the process of referring in general, are seen in terms of cues, combining or competing to determine discourse referents. Gesture can then be regarded as being such a cue at the discourse level, and as a cue-based communicative strategy, in that gesture functions by exploiting physically based cues which can be recognised as being part of the referent. The question of iconicity and motivation vs. the arbitrary qualities of gesture as a strategic cue will be addressed in connection with this.

Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of late sign language exposure on narrative development in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) by focusing on the introductions of main characters and the linguistic strategies used in these introductions. We study these domains by comparing narrations produced by native and late signers in TİD. The results of our study reveal that late sign language exposure does not hinder the acquisition of linguistic devices to introduce main characters in narrations. Thus, their acquisition seems to be resilient to the effects of late language exposure. Our study further suggests that a two-year exposure to sign language facilitates the acquisition of these skills in signing children even in the case of late language exposure, thus providing further support for the importance of sign language exposure to develop linguistic skills for signing children.

Abstract

The shape of pitch contours has been shown to have an effect on the perceived duration of vowels. For instance, vowels with high level pitch and vowels with falling contours sound longer than vowels with low level pitch. Depending on whether the
comparison is between level pitches or between level and dynamic contours, these findings have been interpreted in two ways. For inter-level comparisons, where the duration results are the reverse of production results, a hypercorrection strategy in production has been proposed [1]. By contrast, for comparisons between level pitches and dynamic contours, the
longer production data for dynamic contours have been held responsible. We report an experiment with Dutch and Chinese listeners which aimed to show that production data and perception data are each other’s opposites for high, low, falling and rising contours. We explain the results, which are consistent with earlier findings, in terms of the compensatory listening strategy of [2], arguing that the perception effects are due to a perceptual compensation of articulatory strategies and
constraints, rather than that differences in production compensate for psycho-acoustic perception effects.