Publications

Abstract

Als je wereldwijd gesprekken beluistert, merk je dat de menselijke dialoog universele regels volgt. Die sturen en verrijken onze sociale interactie.

Abstract

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognised by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds towards cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction centre stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbour insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a multidisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.

Abstract

We provide an annotated coding scheme for other-initiated repair, along with guidelines for building collections and aggregating cases based on interactionally relevant similarities and differences. The questions and categories of the scheme are grounded in inductive observations of conversational data and connected to a rich body of work on other-initiated repair in conversation analysis. The scheme is developed and tested in a 12-language comparative project and can serve as a stepping stone for future work on other-initiated repair and the systematic comparative study of conversational structures.

Abstract

In conversation, people have to deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. We report on a cross-linguistic investigation of the conversational structure of other-initiated repair (also known as collaborative repair, feedback, requests for clarification, or grounding sequences). We take stock of formats for initiating repair across languages (comparable to English huh?, who?, y’mean X?, etc.) and find that different languages make available a wide but remarkably similar range of linguistic resources for this function. We exploit the patterned variation as evidence for several underlying concerns addressed by repair initiation: characterising trouble, managing responsibility, and handling knowledge. The concerns do not always point in the same direction and thus provide participants in interaction with alternative principles for selecting one format over possible others. By comparing conversational structures across languages, this paper contributes to pragmatic typology: the typology of systems of language use and the principles that shape them

Abstract

Ideophones are found in many of the world’s languages. Though they are a major word class on a par with nouns and verbs, their origins are ill-understood, and the question of ideophone creation has been a source of controversy. This paper studies ideophone creation in naturally occurring speech. New, unconventionalised ideophones are identified using native speaker judgements, and are studied in context to understand the rules and regularities underlying their production and interpretation. People produce and interpret new ideophones with the help of the semiotic infrastructure that underlies the use of existing ideophones: foregrounding frames certain stretches of speech as depictive enactments of sensory imagery, and various types of iconicity link forms and meanings. As with any creative use of linguistic resources, context and common ground also play an important role in supporting rapid ‘good enough’ interpretations of new material. The making of new ideophones is a special case of a more general phenomenon of creative depiction: the art of presenting verbal material in such a way that the interlocutor recognises and interprets it as a depiction.

Abstract

Recent developments in the science of language signal the emergence of a new paradigm for language study: a social approach to the fundamental questions of what language is like, how much languages really have in common, and why only our species has it. The key to these developments is a new appreciation of the need to study everyday spoken language, with all its complications and ‘imperfections’, in a systematic way. The work reviewed in this article —on turn-taking, timing, and other-initiated repair in languages around the world— has important implications for our understanding of human sociality and sheds new light on the social shape of language. For the first time in the history of linguistics, we are no longer tied to what can be written down or thought up. Rather, we look at language as a biologist would: as it occurs in nature.

Abstract

Sound symbolism is a phenomenon with broad relevance to the study of language and mind, but there has been a disconnect between its investigations in linguistics and psychology. This study tests the sound-symbolic potential of ideophones—words described as iconic—in an experimental task that improves over prior work in terms of ecological validity and experimental control. We presented 203 ideophones from five languages to eighty-two Dutch listeners in a binary-choice task, in four versions: original recording, full diphone resynthesis, segments-only resynthesis, and prosody-only resynthesis. Listeners guessed the meaning of all four versions above chance, confirming the iconicity of ideophones and showing the viability of speech synthesis as a way of controlling for segmental and suprasegmental properties in experimental studies of sound symbolism. The success rate was more modest than prior studies using pseudowords like bouba/kiki, implying that assumptions based on such words cannot simply be transferred to natural languages. Prosody and segments together drive the effect: neither alone is sufficient, showing that segments and prosody work together as cues supporting iconic interpretations. The findings cast doubt on attempts to ascribe iconic meanings to segments alone and support a view of ideophones as words that combine arbitrariness and iconicity.We discuss the implications for theory and methods in the empirical study of sound symbolism and iconicity.

Abstract

Background Sanger sequencing, still the standard technique for genetic testing in most diagnostic laboratories and until recently widely used in research, is gradually being complemented by next-generation sequencing (NGS). No single mutation detection technique is however perfect in identifying all mutations. Therefore, we wondered to what extent inconsistencies between Sanger sequencing and NGS affect the molecular diagnosis of patients. Since mutations in SCN1A, the major gene implicated in epilepsy, are found in the majority of Dravet syndrome (DS) patients, we focused on missed SCN1A mutations. Methods We sent out a survey to 16 genetic centers performing SCN1A testing. Results We collected data on 28 mutations initially missed using Sanger sequencing. All patients were falsely reported as SCN1A mutation-negative, both due to technical limitations and human errors. Conclusion We illustrate the pitfalls of Sanger sequencing and most importantly provide evidence that SCN1A mutations are an even more frequent cause of DS than already anticipated.

Abstract

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) inspired by biology are beginning to be widely used to model behavioural and neural data, an approach we call ‘neuroconnectionism’. ANNs have been not only lauded as the current best models of information processing in the brain but also criticized for failing to account for basic cognitive functions. In this Perspective article, we propose that arguing about the successes and failures of a restricted set of current ANNs is the wrong approach to assess the promise of neuroconnectionism for brain science. Instead, we take inspiration from the philosophy of science, and in particular from Lakatos, who showed that the core of a scientific research programme is often not directly falsifiable but should be assessed by its capacity to generate novel insights. Following this view, we present neuroconnectionism as a general research programme centred around ANNs as a computational language for expressing falsifiable theories about brain computation. We describe the core of the programme, the underlying computational framework and its tools for testing specific neuroscientific hypotheses and deriving novel understanding. Taking a longitudinal view, we review past and present neuroconnectionist projects and their responses to challenges and argue that the research programme is highly progressive, generating new and otherwise unreachable insights into the workings of the brain.

Abstract

People often talk about musical pitch using spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be “high” or “low” (i.e., height-pitch association), whereas in other languages, pitches are described as “thin” or “thick” (i.e., thickness-pitch association). According to results from psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can shape people’s nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place, or does it only modify preexisting associations? To find out, we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants’ sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings using a preferential-looking paradigm. The infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli for both space-pitch mappings, which indicates that infants are sensitive to these associations before language acquisition. The early presence of space-pitch mappings means that these associations do not originate from language. Instead, language builds on preexisting mappings, changing them gradually via competitive associative learning. Space-pitch mappings that are language-specific in adults develop from mappings that may be universal in infants.

Abstract

Contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP2) gene encodes for CASPR2, a presynaptic type 1 transmembrane protein, involved in cell–cell adhesion and synaptic interactions. Biallelic CNTNAP2 loss has been associated with “Pitt-Hopkins-like syndrome-1” (MIM#610042), while the pathogenic role of heterozygous variants remains controversial. We report 22 novel patients harboring mono- (n = 2) and bi-allelic (n = 20) CNTNAP2 variants and carried out a literature review to characterize the genotype–phenotype correlation. Patients (M:F 14:8) were aged between 3 and 19 years and affected by global developmental delay (GDD) (n = 21), moderate to profound intellectual disability (n = 17) and epilepsy (n = 21). Seizures mainly started in the first two years of life (median 22.5 months). Antiseizure medications were successful in controlling the seizures in about two-thirds of the patients. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or other neuropsychiatric comorbidities were present in nine patients (40.9%). Nonspecific midline brain anomalies were noted in most patients while focal signal abnormalities in the temporal lobes were noted in three subjects. Genotype–phenotype correlation was performed by also including 50 previously published patients (15 mono- and 35 bi-allelic variants). Overall, GDD (p < 0.0001), epilepsy (p < 0.0001), hyporeflexia (p = 0.012), ASD (p = 0.009), language impairment (p = 0.020) and severe cognitive impairment (p = 0.031) were significantly associated with the presence of biallelic versus monoallelic variants. We have defined the main features associated with biallelic CNTNAP2 variants, as severe cognitive impairment, epilepsy and behavioral abnormalities. We propose CASPR2-deficiency neurodevelopmental disorder as an exclusively recessive disease while the contribution of heterozygous variants is less likely to follow an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern.

Abstract

Reduced forms like yeshay for yesterday often occur in conversations. Previous behavioral research reported a processing advantage for full over reduced forms. The present study investigated whether this processing advantage is reflected in a modulation of alpha (8–12 Hz) and gamma (30+ Hz) band activity. In three electrophysiological experiments, participants listened to full and reduced forms in isolation (Experiment 1), sentence-final position (Experiment 2), or mid-sentence position (Experiment 3). Alpha power was larger in response to reduced forms than to full forms, but only in Experiments 1 and 2. We interpret these increases in alpha power as reflections of higher auditory cognitive load. In all experiments, gamma power only increased in response to full forms, which we interpret as showing that lexical activation spreads more quickly through the semantic network for full than for reduced forms. These results confirm a processing advantage for full forms, especially in non-medial sentence position.

Abstract

During face-to-face communication, recipients need to rapidly integrate a plethora of auditory and visual signals. This integration of signals from many different bodily articulators, all offset in time, with the information in the speech stream may either tax the cognitive system, thus slowing down language processing, or may result in multimodal facilitation. Using the classical shadowing paradigm, participants shadowed speech from face-to-face, naturalistic dyadic conversations in an audiovisual context, an audiovisual context without visual speech (e.g., lips), and an audio-only context. Our results provide evidence of a multimodal facilitation effect in human communication: participants were faster in shadowing words when seeing multimodal messages compared with when hearing only audio. Also, the more visual context was present, the fewer shadowing errors were made, and the earlier in time participants shadowed predicted lexical items. We propose that the multimodal facilitation effect may contribute to the ease of fast face-to-face conversational interaction.

Abstract

There is ample evidence that native and non-native listeners use lexical knowledge to retune their native phonetic categories following ambiguous pronunciations. The present study investigates whether a non-native ambiguous sound can retune non-native phonetic categories. After a brief exposure to an ambiguous British English [l/ɹ] sound, Dutch listeners demonstrated retuning. This retuning was, however, asymmetrical: the non-native listeners seemed to show (more) retuning of the /ɹ/ category than of the /l/ category, suggesting that non-native listeners can retune non-native phonetic categories. This asymmetry is argued to be related to the large phonetic variability of /r/ in both Dutch and English.

Abstract

This paper presents the methods of language documentation as applied in the Awetí Language Documentation Project, one of the projects in the Documentation of Endangered Languages Programme (DOBES). It describes the steps of how a large digital corpus of annotated multi-media data is built. Special attention is devoted to the format of annotation of linguistic data. The Advanced Glossing format is presented and justified

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, the technical group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics has worked on solutions for important challenges in building sustainable data archives, in particular, how to guarantee long-time-availability of digital research data for future research. The support for the well-known DOBES (Documentation of Endangered Languages) programme has greatly inspired and advanced this work, and lead to the ongoing development of a whole suite of tools for annotating, cataloguing and archiving multi-media data. At the core of the LAT (Language Archiving Technology) tools is the IMDI metadata schema, now being integrated into a larger network of digital resources in the European CLARIN project. The multi-media annotator ELAN (with its web-based cousin ANNEX) is now well known not only among documentary linguists. We aim at presenting an overview of the solutions, both achieved and in development, for creating and exploiting sustainable digital data, in particular in the area of documenting languages and cultures, and their interfaces with related other developments

Abstract

Learning can occur via trial and error; however, learning from conspecifics is faster and more efficient. Social animals can easily learn from conspecifics, but how do less social species learn? In particular, birds provide astonishing examples of social learning of vocalizations, while vocal learning from conspecifics is much less understood in mammals. We present a hypothesis aimed at solving an apparent paradox: how can harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) learn their song when their whole lives are marked by loose conspecific social contact? Harbor seal pups are raised individually by their mostly silent mothers. Pups' first few weeks of life show developed vocal plasticity; these weeks are followed by relatively silent years until sexually mature individuals start singing. How can this rather solitary life lead to a learned song? Why do pups display vocal plasticity at a few weeks of age, when this is apparently not needed? Our hypothesis addresses these questions and tries to explain how vocal learning fits into the natural history of harbor seals, and potentially other less social mammals. We suggest that harbor seals learn during a sensitive period within puppyhood, where they are exposed to adult males singing. In particular, we hypothesize that, to make this learning possible, the following happens concurrently: (1) mothers give birth right before male singing starts, (2) pups enter a sensitive learning phase around weaning time, which (3) coincides with their foraging expeditions at sea which, (4) in turn, coincide with the peak singing activity of adult males. In other words, harbor seals show vocal learning as pups so they can acquire elements of their future song from adults, and solitary adults can sing because they have acquired these elements as pups. We review the available evidence and suggest that pups learn adult vocalizations because they are born exactly at the right time to eavesdrop on singing adults. We conclude by advancing empirical predictions and testable hypotheses for future work.

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of language standardization and orthography design on the Chukchi linguistic ecology. The process of standardisation has not taken into consideration the gender-based sociolects of colloquial Chukchi and is based on a grammaticaldescriptionwhich does not reflectactual Chukchi use; as a result standard Chukchi has not gained a place in the Chukchi language ecology. The Cyrillic orthography developed for Chukchi is also problematic as it is based on features of Russian phonology, rather than on Chukchi itself: this has meant that a knowledge of written Chukchi is dependent on a knowledge of the principles of Russian orthography. The aspects of language planning have had a large impact on the pre-existing Chukchi language ecology which has contributed to the obsolescence of the colloquial language.

Abstract

Genome wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) is extended to include environmental effects of the maternal genotype on offspring phenotype (“maternal effects”, M-GCTA). The model includes parameters for the direct effects of the offspring genotype, maternal effects and the covariance between direct and maternal effects. Analysis of simulated data, conducted in OpenMx, confirmed that model parameters could be recovered by full information maximum likelihood (FIML) and evaluated the biases that arise in conventional GCTA when indirect genetic effects are ignored. Estimates derived from FIML in OpenMx showed very close agreement to those obtained by restricted maximum likelihood using the published algorithm for GCTA. The method was also applied to illustrative perinatal phenotypes from ~4,000 mother-offspring pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The relative merits of extended GCTA in contrast to quantitative genetic approaches based on analyzing the phenotypic covariance structure of kinships are considered.

Abstract

The Core Trustworthy Data Repository Requirements were developed by the DSA–WDS Partnership Working Group on Repository Audit and Certification, a Working Group (WG) of the Research Data Alliance . The goal of the effort was to create a set of harmonized common requirements for certification of repositories at the core level, drawing from criteria already put in place by the Data Seal of Approval (DSA: www.datasealofapproval.org) and the ICSU World Data System (ICSU-WDS: https://www.icsu-wds.org/services/certification). An additional goal of the project was to develop common procedures to be implemented by both DSA and ICSU-WDS. Ultimately, the DSA and ICSU-WDS plan to collaborate on a global framework for repository certification that moves from the core to the extended (nestor-Seal DIN 31644), to the formal (ISO 16363) level.

Abstract

This article explores the role of text and reader characteristics in character engagement experiences. In an online study, participants completed several self-report and behavioral measures of social-cognitive abilities and read two literary narratives in which the presence of linguistic viewpoint markers was varied using a highly controlled manipulation strategy. Afterward, participants reported on their character engagement experiences. A principal component analysis on participants’ responses revealed the multidimensional nature of character engagement, which included both self- and other-oriented emotional responses (e.g., empathy, personal distress) as well as more cognitive responses (e.g., identification, perspective taking). Furthermore, character engagement was found to rely on a wide range of social-cognitive abilities but not on the presence of viewpoint markers. Finally, and most importantly, we did not find convincing evidence for an interplay between social-cognitive abilities and the presence of viewpoint markers. These findings suggest that readers rely on their social-cognitive abilities to engage with the inner worlds of fictional others, more so than on the lexical cues of those inner worlds provided by the text.

Abstract

Migraine is a common disabling neurovascular brain disorder typically characterised by attacks of severe headache and associated with autonomic and neurological symptoms. Migraine is caused by an interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over a dozen genetic loci associated with migraine. Here, we integrated migraine GWAS data with high-resolution spatial gene expression data of normal adult brains from the Allen Human Brain Atlas to identify specific brain regions and molecular pathways that are possibly involved in migraine pathophysiology. To this end, we used two complementary methods. In GWAS data from 23,285 migraine cases and 95,425 controls, we first studied modules of co-expressed genes that were calculated based on human brain expression data for enrichment of genes that showed association with migraine. Enrichment of a migraine GWAS signal was found for five modules that suggest involvement in migraine pathophysiology of: (i) neurotransmission, protein catabolism and mitochondria in the cortex; (ii) transcription regulation in the cortex and cerebellum; and (iii) oligodendrocytes and mitochondria in subcortical areas. Second, we used the high-confidence genes from the migraine GWAS as a basis to construct local migraine-related co-expression gene networks. Signatures of all brain regions and pathways that were prominent in the first method also surfaced in the second method, thus providing support that these brain regions and pathways are indeed involved in migraine pathophysiology.

Abstract

Migraine is a common episodic brain disorder characterized by recurrent attacks of severe unilateral headache and additional neurological symptoms. Two main migraine types can be distinguished based on the presence of aura symptoms that can accompany the headache: migraine with aura and migraine without aura. Multiple genetic and environmental factors confer disease susceptibility. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) indicate that migraine susceptibility genes are involved in various pathways, including neurotransmission, which have already been implicated in genetic studies of monogenic familial hemiplegic migraine, a subtype of migraine with aura. Methods To further explore the genetic background of migraine, we performed a gene set analysis of migraine GWAS data of 4954 clinic-based patients with migraine, as well as 13,390 controls. Curated sets of synaptic genes and sets of genes predominantly expressed in three glial cell types (astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocytes) were investigated. Discussion Our results show that gene sets containing astrocyte- and oligodendrocyte-related genes are associated with migraine, which is especially true for gene sets involved in protein modification and signal transduction. Observed differences between migraine with aura and migraine without aura indicate that both migraine types, at least in part, seem to have a different genetic background.

Abstract

Perceptual representations of phonemes are flexible and adapt rapidly to accommodate idiosyncratic articulation in the speech of a particular talker. This letter addresses whether such adjustments remain stable over time and under exposure to other talkers. During exposure to a story, listeners learned to interpret an ambiguous sound as [f] or [s]. Perceptual adjustments measured after 12 h were as robust as those measured immediately after learning. Equivalent effects were found when listeners heard speech from other talkers in the 12 h interval, and when they had the opportunity to consolidate learning during sleep.

Abstract

During listening to spoken language, the perceptual system needs to adapt frequently to changes in talkers, and thus to considerable interindividual variability in the articulation of a given speech sound. This thesis investigated a learning process which allows listeners to use stored lexical representations to modify the interpretation of a speech sound when a talker's articulation of that sound is consistently unclear or ambiguous. The questions that were addressed in this research concerned the robustness of such perceptual learning, a potential role for sleep, and whether learning is specific to the speech of one talker or, alternatively, generalises to other talkers. A further study aimed to identify the underlying functional neuroanatomy by using magnetic resonance imaging methods. The picture that emerged for lexically-guided perceptual learning is that learning occurs very rapidly, is highly specific, and remains remarkably robust both over time and under exposure to speech from other talkers.

Abstract

Several theories of predictive processing propose reduced sensory and neural responses to anticipated events. Support comes from magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies, showing reduced auditory N1 and P2 responses to self-generated compared to externally generated events, or when the timing and form of stimuli are more predictable. The current study examined the sensitivity of N1 and P2 responses to statistical speech regularities. We employed a motor-to-auditory paradigm comparing event-related potential (ERP) responses to externally and self-triggered pseudowords. Participants were presented with a cue indicating which button to press (motor-auditory condition) or which pseudoword would be presented (auditory-only condition). Stimuli consisted of the participant's own voice uttering pseudowords that varied in phonotactic probability and syllable stress. We expected to see N1 and P2 suppression for self-triggered stimuli, with greater suppression effects for more predictable features such as high phonotactic probability and first-syllable stress in pseudowords. In a temporal principal component analysis (PCA), we observed an interaction between syllable stress and condition for the N1, where second-syllable stress items elicited a larger N1 than first-syllable stress items, but only for externally generated stimuli. We further observed an effect of syllable stress on the P2, where first-syllable stress items elicited a larger P2. Strikingly, we did not observe motor-induced suppression for self-triggered stimuli for either the N1 or P2 component, likely due to the temporal predictability of the stimulus onset in both conditions. Taking into account previous findings, the current results suggest that sensitivity to syllable stress regularities depends on task demands.

Abstract

The domain of the human body is an ideal focus for semantic typology, since the body is a physical universal and all languages have terms referring to its parts. Previous research on body part terms has depended on secondary sources (e.g. dictionaries), and has lacked sufficient detail or clarity for a thorough understanding of these terms’ semantics. The present special issue is the outcome of a collaborative project aimed at improving approaches to investigating the semantics of body part terms, by developing materials to elicit information that provides for cross-linguistic comparison. The articles in this volume are original fieldwork-based descriptions of terminology for parts of the body in ten languages. Also included are an elicitation guide and experimental protocol used in gathering data. The contributions provide inventories of body part terms in each language, with analysis of both intensional and extensional aspects of meaning, differences in morphological complexity, semantic relations among terms, and discussion of partonomic structure within the domain.

Abstract

This document is intended for use as an elicitation guide for the field linguist consulting with native speakers in collecting terms for parts of the body, and in the exploration of their semantics.

Abstract

Abstract: This paper reviews current discussion of the issue of just what is lost when a language dies. Special reference is made to the current situation in Laos, a country renowned for its considerable cultural and linguistic diversity. It focuses on the historical, anthropological and ecological knowledge that a language can encode, and the social and cultural consequences of the loss of such traditional knowledge when a language is no longer passed on. Finally, the article points out the paucity of studies and obstacles to field research on minority languages in Laos, which seriously hamper their documentation.

Abstract

This article presents a description of nominal expressions for parts of the human body conventionalised in Lao, a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Northeast Thailand, and Northeast Cambodia. An inventory of around 170 Lao expressions is listed, with commentary where some notability is determined, usually based on explicit comparison to the metalanguage, English. Notes on aspects of the grammatical and semantic structure of the set of body part terms are provided, including a discussion of semantic relations pertaining among members of the set of body part terms. I conclude that the semantic relations which pertain between terms for different parts of the body not only include part/whole relations, but also relations of location, connectedness, and general association. Calling the whole system a ‘partonomy’ attributes greater centrality to the part/whole relation than is warranted.

Abstract

The social world is an ecological complex in which cultural meanings and knowledges (linguistic and non-linguistic) personally embodied by individuals are intercalibrated via common attention to commonly accessible semiotic structures. This interpersonal ecology bridges realms which are the subject matter of both anthropology and linguistics, allowing the public maintenance of a system of assumptions and counter-assumptions among individuals as to what is mutually known (about), in general and/or in any particular context. The mutual assumption of particular cultural ideas provides human groups with common premises for predictably convergent inferential processes. This process of people collectively using effectively identical assumptions in interpreting each other's actions—i.e. hypothesizing as to each other's motivations and intentions—may be termed cultural logic. This logic relies on the establishment of stereotypes and other kinds of precedents, catalogued in individuals’ personal libraries, as models and scenarios which may serve as reference in inferring and attributing motivations behind people's actions, and behind other mysterious phenomena. This process of establishing conceptual convention depends directly on semiotics, since groups of individuals rely on external signs as material for common focus and, thereby, agreement. Social intelligence binds signs in the world (e.g. speech sounds impressing upon eardrums), with individually embodied representations (e.g. word meanings and contextual schemas). The innate tendency for people to model the intentions of others provides an ultimately biological account for the logic behind culture. Ethnographic examples are drawn from Laos and Australia.

Abstract

In mainstream phonology, contrastive properties, like stem-final voicing, are simply listed in the lexicon. This article reviews experimental evidence that such contrastive properties may be predictable to some degree and that the relevant statistically gradient generalizations form an inherent part of the grammar. The evidence comes from the underlying voice specification of stem-final obstruents in Dutch. Contrary to received wisdom, this voice specification is partly predictable from the obstruent’s manner and place of articulation and from the phonological properties of the preceding segments. The degree of predictability, which depends on the exact contents of the lexicon, directs speakers’ guesses of underlying voice specifications. Moreover, existing words that disobey the generalizations are disadvantaged by being recognized and produced more slowly and less accurately, also under natural conditions.We discuss how these observations can be accounted for in two types of different approaches to grammar, Stochastic Optimality Theory and exemplar-based modeling.

Abstract

Acoustic reduction refers to the frequent phenomenon in conversational speech that words are produced with fewer or lenited segments compared to their citation forms. The few published studies on the production and comprehension of acoustic reduction have important implications for the debate on the relevance of abstractions and exemplars in speech processing. This article discusses these implications. It first briefly introduces the key assumptions of simple abstractionist and simple exemplar-based models. It then discusses the literature on acoustic reduction and draws the conclusion that both types of models need to be extended to explain all findings. The ultimate model should allow for the storage of different pronunciation variants, but also reserve an important role for phonetic implementation. Furthermore, the recognition of a highly reduced pronunciation variant requires top down information and leads to activation of the corresponding unreduced variant, the variant that reaches listeners’ consciousness. These findings are best accounted for in hybrids models, assuming both abstract representations and exemplars. None of the hybrid models formulated so far can account for all data on reduced speech and we need further research for obtaining detailed insight into how speakers produce and listeners comprehend reduced speech.

Abstract

Acoustic duration and degree of vowel reduction are known to correlate with a word’s frequency of occurrence. The present study broadens the research on the role of frequency in speech production to voice assimilation. The test case was regressive voice assimilation in Dutch. Clusters from a corpus of read speech were more often perceived as unassimilated in lower-frequency words and as either completely voiced regressive assimilation or, unexpectedly, as completely voiceless progressive assimilation in higher-frequency words. Frequency did not predict the voice classifications over and above important acoustic cues to voicing, suggesting that the frequency effects on the classifications were carried exclusively by the acoustic signal. The duration of the cluster and the period of glottal vibration during the cluster decreased while the duration of the release noises increased with frequency. This indicates that speakers reduce articulatory effort for higher-frequency words, with some acoustic cues signaling more voicing and others less voicing. A higher frequency leads not only to acoustic reduction but also to more assimilation.

Abstract

Amsterdam klinkt in informele gesprekken vaak als Amsdam en Rotterdam als Rodam, zonder dat de meeste moedertaalsprekers zich daar bewust van zijn. In alledaagse situaties valt een aanzienlijk deel van de klanken weg. Daarnaast worden veel klanken zwakker gearticuleerd (bijvoorbeeld een d als een j, als de mond niet helemaal afgesloten wordt). Het lijkt waarschijnlijk dat deze half uitgesproken woorden een probleem vormen voor tweedetaalleerders. Gereduceerde vormen kunnen immers sterk afwijken van de vormen die deze leerders geleerd hebben. Of dit werkelijk zo is, hebben de auteurs onderzocht in twee studies. Voordat ze deze twee studies bespreken, vertellen ze eerst kort iets over de verschillende typen reducties die voorkomen.

Abstract

Mutations affecting the transcription factor FOXP2 cause a rare form of severe speech and language disorder. Although it is clear that sufficient FOXP2 expression is crucial for normal brain development, little is known about how this transcription factor is regulated. To investigate post-translational mechanisms for FOXP2 regulation, we searched for protein interaction partners of FOXP2, and identified members of the PIAS family as novel FOXP2 interactors. PIAS proteins mediate post-translational modification of a range of target proteins with small ubiquitin-like modifiers (SUMOs). We found that FOXP2 can be modified with all three human SUMO proteins and that PIAS1 promotes this process. An aetiological FOXP2 mutation found in a family with speech and language disorder markedly reduced FOXP2 SUMOylation. We demonstrate that FOXP2 is SUMOylated at a single major site, which is conserved in all FOXP2 vertebrate orthologues and in the paralogues FOXP1 and FOXP4. Abolishing this site did not lead to detectable changes in FOXP2 subcellular localization, stability, dimerization or transcriptional repression in cellular assays, but the conservation of this site suggests a potential role for SUMOylation in regulating FOXP2 activity in vivo.

Abstract

When we have spoken conversations, it is usually in the context of competing sounds within our environment. Speech can be masked by many different kinds of sounds, for example, machinery noise and the speech of others, and these different sounds place differing demands on cognitive resources. In this talk, I will present data from a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in which the informational properties of background sounds have been manipulated to make them more or less similar to speech. I will demonstrate the neural effects associated with speaking over and listening to these sounds, and demonstrate how in perception these effects are modulated by the age of the listener. The results will be interpreted within a framework of auditory processing developed from primate neurophysiology and human functional imaging work (Rauschecker and Scott 2009).

Abstract

Childhood adversity (CA) has been associated with long-term structural brain alterations and an increased risk for psychiatric disorders. Evidence is emerging that subtypes of CA, varying in the dimensions of threat and deprivation, lead to distinct neural and behavioral outcomes. However, these specific associations have yet to be established without potential confounders such as psychopathology. Moreover, differences in neural development and psychopathology necessitate the exploration of sexual dimorphism. Young healthy adult subjects were selected based on history of CA from a large database to assess gray matter (GM) differences associated with specific subtypes of adversity. We compared voxel-based morphometry data of subjects reporting specific childhood exposure to abuse (n = 127) or deprivation (n = 126) and a similar sized group of controls (n = 129) without reported CA. Subjects were matched on age, gender, and educational level. Differences between CA subtypes were found in the fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyms, where subjects with a history of deprivation showed reduced GM compared with subjects with a history of abuse. An interaction between sex and CA subtype was found. Women showed less GM in the visual posterior precuneal region after both subtypes of CA than controls. Men had less GM in the postcentral gyms after childhood deprivation compared with abuse. Our results suggest that even in a healthy population, CA subtypes are related to specific alterations in brain structure, which are modulated by sex. These findings may help understand neurodevelopmental consequences related to CA

Abstract

We make the case that, contra standard assumption in linguistic theory, the sound systems of human languages are adapted to their environment. While not conclusive, this plausible case rests on several points discussed in this work: First, human behavior is generally adaptive and the assumption that this characteristic does not extend to linguistic structure is empirically unsubstantiated. Second, animal communication systems are well known to be adaptive within species across a variety of phyla and taxa. Third, research in laryngology demonstrates clearly that ambient desiccation impacts the performance of the human vocal cords. The latter point motivates a clear, testable hypothesis with respect to the synchronic global distribution of language types. Fourth, this hypothesis is supported in our own previous work, and here we discuss new approaches being developed to further explore the hypothesis. We conclude by suggesting that the time has come to more substantively examine the possibility that linguistic sound systems are adapted to their physical ecology

Abstract

We begin by thanking the respondents for their thoughtful comments and insightful leads. The overall impression we are left with by this exchange is one of progress, even if no consensus remains about the particular hypothesis we raise. To date, there has been a failure to seriously engage with the possibility that humans might adapt their communication to ecological factors. In these exchanges, we see signs of serious engagement with that possibility. Most respondents expressed agreement with the notion that our central premise—that language is ecologically adaptive—requires further exploration and may in fact be operative. We are pleased to see this shift in discourse, and to witness a heightening appreciation of possible ecological constraints on language evolution. It is that shift in discourse that represents progress in our view. Our hope is that future work will continue to explore these issues, paying careful attention to the fact that the human larynx is clearly sensitive to characteristics of ambient air. More generally, we think this exchange is indicative of the growing realization that inquiries into language development must consider potential external factors (see Dediu 2015)...

Abstract

Myopia, currently at epidemic levels in East Asia, is a leading cause of untreatable visual impairment. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in adults have identified 39 loci associated with refractive error and myopia. Here, the age-of-onset of association between genetic variants at these 39 loci and refractive error was investigated in 5200 children assessed longitudinally across ages 7-15 years, along with gene-environment interactions involving the major environmental risk-factors, nearwork and time outdoors. Specific variants could be categorized as showing evidence of: (a) early-onset effects remaining stable through childhood, (b) early-onset effects that progressed further with increasing age, or (c) onset later in childhood (N = 10, 5 and 11 variants, respectively). A genetic risk score (GRS) for all 39 variants explained 0.6% (P = 6.6E-08) and 2.3% (P = 6.9E-21) of the variance in refractive error at ages 7 and 15, respectively, supporting increased effects from these genetic variants at older ages. Replication in multi-ancestry samples (combined N = 5599) yielded evidence of childhood onset for 6 of 12 variants present in both Asians and Europeans. There was no indication that variant or GRS effects altered depending on time outdoors, however 5 variants showed nominal evidence of interactions with nearwork (top variant, rs7829127 in ZMAT4; P = 6.3E-04).

Abstract

Myopia is the most common human eye disorder and it results from complex genetic and environmental causes. The rapidly increasing prevalence of myopia poses a major public health challenge. Here, the CREAM consortium performs a joint meta-analysis to test single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) main effects and SNP × education interaction effects on refractive error in 40,036 adults from 25 studies of European ancestry and 10,315 adults from 9 studies of Asian ancestry. In European ancestry individuals, we identify six novel loci (FAM150B-ACP1, LINC00340, FBN1, DIS3L-MAP2K1, ARID2-SNAT1 and SLC14A2) associated with refractive error. In Asian populations, three genome-wide significant loci AREG, GABRR1 and PDE10A also exhibit strong interactions with education (P<8.5 × 10−5), whereas the interactions are less evident in Europeans. The discovery of these loci represents an important advance in understanding how gene and environment interactions contribute to the heterogeneity of myopia

Abstract

Individuals with heterozygous 16p11.2 deletions reportedly suffer from a variety of difficulties with speech and language. Indeed, recent copy-number variant screens of children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), a specific and rare motor speech disorder, have identified three unrelated individuals with 16p11.2 deletions. However, the nature and prevalence of speech and language disorders in general, and CAS in particular, is unknown for individuals with 16p11.2 deletions. Here we took a genotype-first approach, conducting detailed and systematic characterization of speech abilities in a group of 11 unrelated children ascertained on the basis of 16p11.2 deletions. To obtain the most precise and replicable phenotyping, we included tasks that are highly diagnostic for CAS, and we tested children under the age of 18 years, an age group where CAS has been best characterized. Two individuals were largely nonverbal, preventing detailed speech analysis, whereas the remaining nine met the standard accepted diagnostic criteria for CAS. These results link 16p11.2 deletions to a highly penetrant form of CAS. Our findings underline the need for further precise characterization of speech and language profiles in larger groups of affected individuals, which will also enhance our understanding of how genetic pathways contribute to human communication disorders.

Abstract

Aging, often considered a result of random cellular damage, can be accurately estimated using DNA methylation profiles, the foundation of pan-tissue epigenetic clocks. Here, we demonstrate the development of universal pan-mammalian clocks, using 11,754 methylation arrays from our Mammalian Methylation Consortium, which encompass 59 tissue types across 185 mammalian species. These predictive models estimate mammalian tissue age with high accuracy (r > 0.96). Age deviations correlate with human mortality risk, mouse somatotropic axis mutations and caloric restriction. We identified specific cytosines with methylation levels that change with age across numerous species. These sites, highly enriched in polycomb repressive complex 2-binding locations, are near genes implicated in mammalian development, cancer, obesity and longevity. Our findings offer new evidence suggesting that aging is evolutionarily conserved and intertwined with developmental processes across all mammals.

Abstract

Our understanding of dual-process models of cognition may benefit from a consideration of language processing, as language comprehension involves fast and slow processes analogous to those used for reasoning. More specifically, De Neys's criticisms of the exclusivity assumption and the fast-to-slow switch mechanism are consistent with findings from the literature on the construction and revision of linguistic interpretations.

Abstract

A long-standing debate in cognitive neurosciences concerns the effect of music on verbal learning and memory. Research in this field has largely provided conflicting results in both clinical as well as non-clinical populations. Although several studies have shown a positive effect of music on the encoding and retrieval of verbal stimuli, music has also been suggested to hinder mnemonic performance by dividing attention. In an attempt to explain this conflict, we review the most relevant literature on the effects of music on verbal learning and memory. Furthermore, we specify several mechanisms through which music may modulate these cognitive functions. We suggest that the extent to which music boosts these cognitive functions relies on experimental factors, such as the relative complexity of musical and verbal stimuli employed. These factors should be carefully considered in further studies, in order to reliably establish how and when music boosts verbal memory and learning. The answers to these questions are not only crucial for our knowledge of how music influences cognitive and brain functions, but may have important clinical implications. Considering the increasing number of approaches using music as a therapeutic tool, the importance of understanding exactly how music works can no longer be underestimated.

Abstract

Across a wide range of animal taxa, prosodic modulation of the voice can express emotional information and is used to coordinate vocal interactions between multiple individuals. Within a comparative approach to animal communication systems, I hypothesize that the ability for emotional and interactional prosody (EIP) paved the way for the evolution of linguistic prosody – and perhaps also of music, continuing to play a vital role in the acquisition of language. In support of this hypothesis, I review three research fields: (i) empirical studies on the adaptive value of EIP in non-human primates, mammals, songbirds, anurans, and insects; (ii) the beneficial effects of EIP in scaffolding language learning and social development in human infants; (iii) the cognitive relationship between linguistic prosody and the ability for music, which has often been identified as the evolutionary precursor of language.

Abstract

Temporal regularities in speech, such as interdependencies in the timing of speech events, are thought to scaffold early acquisition of the building blocks in speech. By providing on-line clues to the location and duration of upcoming syllables, temporal structure may aid segmentation and clustering of continuous speech into separable units. This hypothesis tacitly assumes that learners exploit predictability in the temporal structure of speech. Existing measures of speech timing tend to focus on first-order regularities among adjacent units, and are overly sensitive to idiosyncrasies in the data they describe. Here, we compare several statistical methods on a sample of 18 languages, testing whether syllable occurrence is predictable over time. Rather than looking for differences between languages, we aim to find across languages (using clearly defined acoustic, rather than orthographic, measures), temporal predictability in the speech signal which could be exploited by a language learner. First, we analyse distributional regularities using two novel techniques: a Bayesian ideal learner analysis, and a simple distributional measure. Second, we model higher-order temporal structure—regularities arising in an ordered series of syllable timings—testing the hypothesis that non-adjacent temporal structures may explain the gap between subjectively-perceived temporal regularities, and the absence of universally-accepted lower-order objective measures. Together, our analyses provide limited evidence for predictability at different time scales, though higher-order predictability is difficult to reliably infer. We conclude that temporal predictability in speech may well arise from a combination of individually weak perceptual cues at multiple structural levels, but is challenging to pinpoint.

Abstract

This study investigates word-learning using a new experimental paradigm that integrates three processes: (a) extracting a word out of a continuous sound sequence, (b) inferring its referential meanings in context, (c) mapping the segmented word onto its broader intended referent, such as other objects of the same semantic category, and to novel utterances. Previous work has examined the role of statistical learning and/or of prosody in each of these processes separately. Here, we combine these strands of investigation into a single experimental approach, in which participants viewed a photograph belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing a complex, five-word utterance containing a target word. Six between-subjects conditions were tested with 20 adult participants each. In condition 1, the only cue to word-meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of word and referents. This statistical cue was present in all conditions. In condition 2, the target word was sounded at a higher pitch. In condition 3, random words were sounded at a higher pitch, creating an inconsistent cue. In condition 4, the duration of the target word was lengthened. In conditions 5 and 6, an extraneous acoustic cue and a visual cue were associated with the target word, respectively. Performance in this word-learning task was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence only when pitch prominence consistently marked the target word. We discuss implications for the pragmatic value of pitch marking as well as the relevance of our findings to language acquisition and language evolution.

Abstract

Studies of dyslexia provide vital insights into the cognitive architecture underpinning both disordered and normal reading. It is well established that inherited factors contribute to dyslexia susceptibility, but only very recently has evidence emerged to implicate specific candidate genes. In this article, we provide an accessible overview of four prominent examples--DYX1C1, KIAA0319, DCDC2 and ROBO1--and discuss their relevance for cognition. In each case correlations have been found between genetic variation and reading impairments, but precise risk variants remain elusive. Although none of these genes is specific to reading-related neuronal circuits, or even to the human brain, they have intriguing roles in neuronal migration or connectivity. Dissection of cognitive mechanisms that subserve reading will ultimately depend on an integrated approach, uniting data from genetic investigations, behavioural studies and neuroimaging.

Abstract

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

Abstract

The rise of molecular genetics is having a pervasive influence in a wide variety of fields, including research into neurodevelopmental disorders like dyslexia, speech and language impairments, and autism. There are many studies underway which are attempting to determine the roles of genetic factors in the aetiology of these disorders. Beyond the obvious implications for diagnosis, treatment and understanding, success in these efforts promises to shed light on the links between genes and aspects of cognition and behaviour. However, the deceptive simplicity of finding correlations between genetic and phenotypic variation has led to a common misconception that there exist straightforward linear relationships between specific genes and particular behavioural and/or cognitive outputs. The problem is exacerbated by the adoption of an abstract view of the nature of the gene, without consideration of molecular, developmental or ontogenetic frameworks. To illustrate the limitations of this perspective, I select two cases from recent research into the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders. First, I discuss the proposal that dyslexia can be dissected into distinct components specified by different genes. Second, I review the story of the FOXP2 gene and its role in human speech and language. In both cases, adoption of an abstract concept of the gene can lead to erroneous conclusions, which are incompatible with current knowledge of molecular and developmental systems. Genes do not specify behaviours or cognitive processes; they make regulatory factors, signalling molecules, receptors, enzymes, and so on, that interact in highly complex networks, modulated by environmental influences, in order to build and maintain the brain. I propose that it is necessary for us to fully embrace the complexity of biological systems, if we are ever to untangle the webs that link genes to cognition.

Abstract

The human capacity to acquire complex language seems to be without parallel in the natural world. The origins of this remarkable trait have long resisted adequate explanation, but advances in fields that range from molecular genetics to cognitive neuroscience offer new promise. Here we synthesize recent developments in linguistics, psychology and neuroimaging with progress in comparative genomics, gene-expression profiling and studies of developmental disorders. We argue that language should be viewed not as a wholesale innovation, but as a complex reconfiguration of ancestral systems that have been adapted in evolutionarily novel ways.

Abstract

Systematic investigations into the role of semantics in the speech production process have remained elusive. This special issue aims at moving forward toward a more detailed account of how precisely conceptual information is used to access the lexicon in speaking and what corresponding format of conceptual representations needs to be assumed. The studies presented in this volume investigated effects of conceptual processing on different processing stages of language production, including sentence formulation, lemma selection, and word form access.

Abstract

In this study we investigated the availability of non-target language semantic features in bilingual speech processing. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to spoken sentences in their L2 (English) or L1 (Dutch). In Experiments 1 and 3 the sentences contained an interlingual homophone. The sentence context was either biased towards the target language meaning of the homophone (target biased), the non-target language meaning (non-target biased), or neither meaning of the homophone (fully incongruent). These conditions were each compared to a semantically congruent control condition. In L2 sentences we observed an N400 in the non-target biased condition that had an earlier offset than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In the target biased condition, a negativity emerged that was later than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In L1 contexts, neither target biased nor non-target biased homophones yielded significant N400 effects (compared to the control condition). In Experiments 2 and 4 the sentences contained a language switch to a non-target language word that could be semantically congruent or incongruent. Semantically incongruent words (switched, and non-switched) elicited an N400 effect. The N400 to semantically congruent language-switched words had an earlier offset than the N400 to incongruent words. Both congruent and incongruent language switches elicited a Late Positive Component (LPC). These findings show that bilinguals activate both meanings of interlingual homophones irrespective of their contextual fit. In L2 contexts, the target-language meaning of the homophone has a head start over the non-target language meaning. The target-language head start is also evident for language switches from both L2-to-L1 and L1-to-L2

Abstract

Studies of rhythm processing and of reward have progressed separately, with little connection between the two. However, consistent links between rhythm and reward are beginning to surface, with research suggesting that synchronization to rhythm is rewarding, and that this rewarding element may in turn also boost this synchronization. The current mini review shows that the combined study of rhythm and reward can be beneficial to better understand their independent and combined roles across two central aspects of cognition: 1) learning and memory, and 2) social connection and interpersonal synchronization; which have so far been studied largely independently. From this basis, it is discussed how connections between rhythm and reward can be applied to learning and memory and social connection across different populations, taking into account individual differences, clinical populations, human development, and animal research. Future research will need to consider the rewarding nature of rhythm, and that rhythm can in turn boost reward, potentially enhancing other cognitive and social processes.

Abstract

Using eye-tracking as a window on cognitive processing, this study investigates language effects on attention to motion events in a non-verbal task. We compare gaze allocation patterns by native speakers of German and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), two languages that differ with regard to the grammaticalization of temporal concepts. Findings of the non-verbal task, in which speakers watch dynamic event scenes while performing an auditory distracter task, are compared to gaze allocation patterns which were obtained in an event description task, using the same stimuli. We investigate whether differences in the grammatical aspectual systems of German and MSA affect the extent to which endpoints of motion events are linguistically encoded and visually processed in the two tasks. In the linguistic task, we find clear language differences in endpoint encoding and in the eye-tracking data (attention to event endpoints) as well: German speakers attend to and linguistically encode endpoints more frequently than speakers of MSA. The fixation data in the non-verbal task show similar language effects, providing relevant insights with regard to the language-and-thought debate. The present study is one of the few studies that focus explicitly on language effects related to grammatical concepts, as opposed to lexical concepts.

Abstract

From the study of sign languages we know that the visual modality robustly supports the encoding of conventionalized linguistic elements, yet while the same possibility exists for the visual bodily behavior of speakers of spoken languages, such practices are often referred to as ‘gestural’ and are not usually described in linguistic terms. This article describes a practice of speakers of the Brazilian indigenous language Nheengatú of pointing to positions along the east-west axis of the sun’s arc for time-of-day reference, and illustrates how it satisfies any of the common criteria for linguistic elements, as a system of standardized and productive form-meaning pairings whose contributions to propositional meaning remain stable across contexts. First, examples from a video corpus of natural speech demonstrate these conventionalized properties of Nheengatú time reference across multiple speakers. Second, a series of video-based elicitation stimuli test several dimensions of its conventionalization for nine participants. The results illustrate why modality is not an a priori reason that linguistic properties cannot develop in the visual practices that accompany spoken language. The conclusion discusses different possible morphosyntactic and pragmatic analyses for such conventionalized visual elements and asks whether they might be more crosslinguistically common than we presently know.

Abstract

This article expands the study of other-initiated repair in conversation—when one party
signals a problemwith producing or perceiving another’s turn at talk—into the domain
of visual bodily behavior. It presents one primary cross-linguistic finding about the
timing of visual bodily behavior in repair sequences: if the party who initiates repair
accompanies their turn with a “hold”—when relatively dynamic movements are
temporarily andmeaningfully held static—this positionwill not be disengaged until the
problem is resolved and the sequence closed. We base this finding on qualitative and
quantitative analysis of corpora of conversational interaction from three unrelated languages representing two different modalities: Northern Italian, the Cha’palaa language of Ecuador, and Argentine Sign Language. The cross-linguistic similarities
uncovered by this comparison suggest that visual bodily practices have been
semiotized for similar interactive functions across different languages and modalities
due to common pressures in face-to-face interaction.

Abstract

In this event-related FMRI study we investigated the effect of five days of implicit acquisition on preference classification by means of an artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm based on the structural mere-exposure effect and preference classification using a simple right-linear unification grammar. This allowed us to investigate implicit AGL in a proper learning design by including baseline measurements prior to grammar exposure. After 5 days of implicit acquisition, the FMRI results showed activations in a network of brain regions including the inferior frontal (centered on BA 44/45) and the medial prefrontal regions (centered on BA 8/32). Importantly, and central to this study, the inclusion of a naive preference FMRI baseline measurement allowed us to conclude that these FMRI findings were the intrinsic outcomes of the learning process itself and not a reflection of a preexisting functionality recruited during classification, independent of acquisition. Support for the implicit nature of the knowledge utilized during preference classification on day 5 come from the fact that the basal ganglia, associated with implicit procedural learning, were activated during classification, while the medial temporal lobe system, associated with explicit declarative memory, was consistently deactivated. Thus, preference classification in combination with structural mere-exposure can be used to investigate structural sequence processing (syntax) in unsupervised AGL paradigms with proper learning designs.

Abstract

Stroke-induced aphasia is associated with adverse effects on quality of life and the ability to return to work. For patients and clinicians the possibility of relying on valid predictors of recovery is an important asset in the clinical management of stroke-related impairment. Age, level of education, type and severity of initial symptoms are established predictors of recovery. However, anatomical predictors are still poorly understood. In this prospective longitudinal study, we intended to assess anatomical predictors of recovery derived from diffusion tractography of the perisylvian language networks. Our study focused on the arcuate fasciculus, a language pathway composed of three segments connecting Wernicke’s to Broca’s region (i.e. long segment), Wernicke’s to Geschwind’s region (i.e. posterior segment) and Broca’s to Geschwind’s region (i.e. anterior segment). In our study we were particularly interested in understanding how lateralization of the arcuate fasciculus impacts on severity of symptoms and their recovery. Sixteen patients (10 males; mean age 60 ± 17 years, range 28–87 years) underwent post stroke language assessment with the Revised Western Aphasia Battery and neuroimaging scanning within a fortnight from symptoms onset. Language assessment was repeated at 6 months. Backward elimination analysis identified a subset of predictor variables (age, sex, lesion size) to be introduced to further regression analyses. A hierarchical regression was conducted with the longitudinal aphasia severity as the dependent variable. The first model included the subset of variables as previously defined. The second model additionally introduced the left and right arcuate fasciculus (separate analysis for each segment). Lesion size was identified as the only independent predictor of longitudinal aphasia severity in the left hemisphere [beta = −0.630, t(−3.129), P = 0.011]. For the right hemisphere, age [beta = −0.678, t(–3.087), P = 0.010] and volume of the long segment of the arcuate fasciculus [beta = 0.730, t(2.732), P = 0.020] were predictors of longitudinal aphasia severity. Adding the volume of the right long segment to the first-level model increased the overall predictive power of the model from 28% to 57% [F(1,11) = 7.46, P = 0.02]. These findings suggest that different predictors of recovery are at play in the left and right hemisphere. The right hemisphere language network seems to be important in aphasia recovery after left hemispheric stroke.

Abstract

Background Stroke-induced aphasia is associated with adverse effects on quality of life and the ability to return to work. However, the predictors of recovery are still poorly understood. Anatomical variability of the arcuate fasciculus, connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, has been reported in the healthy population using diffusion tensor imaging tractography. In about 40% of the population the arcuate fasciculus is bilateral and this pattern is advantageous for certain language related functions, such as auditory verbal learning (Catani et al. 2007). Methods In this prospective longitudinal study, anatomical predictors of post-stroke aphasia recovery were investigated using diffusion tractography and arterial spin labelling. Patients An 18-subject strong aphasia cohort with first-ever unilateral left hemispheric middle cerebral artery infarcts underwent post stroke language (mean 5±5 days) and neuroimaging (mean 10±6 days) assessments and neuropsychological follow-up at six months. Ten of these patients were available for reassessment one year after symptom onset. Aphasia was assessed with the Western Aphasia Battery, which provides a global measure of severity (Aphasia Quotient, AQ). Results Better recover from aphasia was observed in patients with a right arcuate fasciculus [beta=.730, t(2.732), p=.020] (tractography) and increased fractional anisotropy in the right hemisphere (p<0.05) (Tract-based spatial statistics). Further, an increase in left hemisphere perfusion was observed after one year (p<0.01) (perfusion). Lesion analysis identified maximal overlay in the periinsular white matter (WM). Lesion-symptom mapping identified damage to periinsular structure as predictive for overall aphasia severity and damage to frontal lobe white matter as predictive of repetition deficits. Conclusion These findings suggest an important role for the right hemisphere language network in recovery from aphasia after left hemispheric stroke.

Abstract

The occipital and frontal lobes are anatomically distant yet functionally highly integrated to generate some of the most complex behaviour. A series of long associative fibres, such as the fronto-occipital networks, mediate this integration via rapid feed-forward propagation of visual input to anterior frontal regions and direct top–down modulation of early visual processing.

Despite the vast number of anatomical investigations a general consensus on the anatomy of fronto-occipital connections is not forthcoming. For example, in the monkey the existence of a human equivalent of the ‘inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus’ (iFOF) has not been demonstrated. Conversely, a ‘superior fronto-occipital fasciculus’ (sFOF), also referred to as ‘subcallosal bundle’ by some authors, is reported in monkey axonal tracing studies but not in human dissections.

In this study our aim is twofold. First, we use diffusion tractography to delineate the in vivo anatomy of the sFOF and the iFOF in 30 healthy subjects and three acallosal brains. Second, we provide a comprehensive review of the post-mortem and neuroimaging studies of the fronto-occipital connections published over the last two centuries, together with the first integral translation of Onufrowicz's original description of a human fronto-occipital fasciculus (1887) and Muratoff's report of the ‘subcallosal bundle’ in animals (1893).

Our tractography dissections suggest that in the human brain (i) the iFOF is a bilateral association pathway connecting ventro-medial occipital cortex to orbital and polar frontal cortex, (ii) the sFOF overlaps with branches of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and probably represents an ‘occipital extension’ of the SLF, (iii) the subcallosal bundle of Muratoff is probably a complex tract encompassing ascending thalamo-frontal and descending fronto-caudate connections and is therefore a projection rather than an associative tract.

In conclusion, our experimental findings and review of the literature suggest that a ventral pathway in humans, namely the iFOF, mediates a direct communication between occipital and frontal lobes. Whether the iFOF represents a unique human pathway awaits further ad hoc investigations in animals.

Abstract

The human brain supports acquisition mechanisms that extract structural regularities implicitly from experience without the induction of an explicit model. It has been argued that the capacity to generalize to new input is based on the acquisition of abstract representations, which reflect underlying structural regularities in the input ensemble. In this study, we explored the outcome of this acquisition mechanism, and to this end, we investigated the neural correlates of artificial syntactic classification using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. The participants engaged once a day during an 8-day period in a short-term memory acquisition task in which consonant-strings generated from an artificial grammar were presented in a sequential fashion without performance feedback. They performed reliably above chance on the grammaticality classification tasks on days 1 and 8 which correlated with a corticostriatal processing network, including frontal, cingulate, inferior parietal, and middle occipital/occipitotemporal regions as well as the caudate nucleus. Part of the left inferior frontal region (BA 45) was specifically related to syntactic violations and showed no sensitivity to local substring familiarity. In addition, the head of the caudate nucleus correlated positively with syntactic correctness on day 8 but not day 1, suggesting that this region contributes to an increase in cognitive processing fluency.

Abstract

Family and twin studies consistently demonstrate a significant role for genetic factors in the aetiology of the reading disorder dyslexia. However, dyslexia is complex at both the genetic and phenotypic levels, and currently the nature of the core deficit or deficits remains uncertain. Traditional approaches for mapping disease genes, originally developed for single-gene disorders, have limited success when there is not a simple relationship between genotype and phenotype. Recent advances in high-throughput genotyping technology and quantitative statistical methods have made a new approach to identifying genes involved in complex disorders possible. The method involves assessing the genetic similarity of many sibling pairs along the lengths of all their chromosomes and attempting to correlate this similarity with that of their phenotypic scores. We are adopting this approach in an ongoing genome-wide search for genes involved in dyslexia susceptibility, and have already successfully applied the method by replicating results from previous studies suggesting that a quantitative trait locus at 6p21.3 influences reading disability.

Abstract

Prior language input is not lost but integrated with the current input. This principle is demonstrated by “reservoir computing”: Untrained recurrent neural networks project input sequences onto a random point in high-dimensional state space. Earlier inputs can be retrieved from this projection, albeit less reliably so as more input is received. The bottleneck is therefore not “Now-or-Never” but “Sooner-is-Better.

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric illness with high heritability. Brain structure and function differ, on average, between people with schizophrenia and healthy individuals. As common genetic associations are emerging for both schizophrenia and brain imaging phenotypes, we can now use genome-wide data to investigate genetic overlap. Here we integrated results from common variant studies of schizophrenia (33,636 cases, 43,008 controls) and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures (11,840 subjects). We did not find evidence of genetic overlap between schizophrenia risk and subcortical volume measures either at the level of common variant genetic architecture or for single genetic markers. These results provide a proof of concept (albeit based on a limited set of structural brain measures) and define a roadmap for future studies investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders

Abstract

Disruptions of the FOXP2 gene cause a rare speech and language disorder, a discovery that has opened up novel avenues for investigating the relevant neural pathways. FOXP2 shows remarkably high conservation of sequence and neural expression in diverse vertebrates, suggesting that studies in other species are useful in elucidating its functions. Here we describe how investigations of mice that carry disruptions of Foxp2 provide insights at multiple levels: molecules, cells, circuits and behaviour. Work thus far has implicated the gene in key processes including neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity, sensorimotor integration and motor-skill learning.

Abstract

Do people incrementally incorporate the meaning of quantifier expressions to understand an unfolding sentence? Most previous studies concluded that quantifiers do not immediately influence how a sentence is understood based on the observation that online N400-effects differed from offline plausibility judgments. Those studies, however, used serial visual presentation (SVP), which involves unnatural reading. In the current ERP-experiment, we presented spoken positive and negative quantifier sentences (“Practically all/practically no postmen prefer delivering mail, when the weather is good/bad during the day”). Different from results obtained in a previously reported SVP-study (Nieuwland, 2016) sentence truth-value N400 effects occurred in positive and negative quantifier sentences alike, reflecting fully incremental quantifier comprehension. This suggests that the prosodic information available during spoken language comprehension supports the generation of online predictions for upcoming words and that, at least for quantifier sentences, comprehension of spoken language may proceed more incrementally than comprehension during SVP reading.

Abstract

Language learning requires mastering multiple tasks, including segmenting speech to identify words, and learning the syntactic role of these words within sentences. A key question in language acquisition research is the extent to which these tasks are sequential or successive, and consequently whether they may be driven by distinct or similar computations. We explored a classic artificial language learning paradigm, where the language structure is defined in terms of non-adjacent dependencies. We show that participants are able to use the same statistical information at the same time to segment continuous speech to both identify words and to generalise over the structure, when the generalisations were over novel speech that the participants had not previously experienced. We suggest that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the most economical explanation for the effects is that speech segmentation and grammatical generalisation are dependent on similar statistical processing mechanisms.

Abstract

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function.

Abstract

Previous research on language development shows that children are tuned early on to the language-specific semantic and syntactic encoding of events in their native language. Here we ask whether language-specificity is also evident in children's early representations in gesture accompanying speech. In a longitudinal study, we examined the spontaneous speech and cospeech gestures of eight Turkish-speaking children aged one to three and focused on their caused motion event expressions. In Turkish, unlike in English, the main semantic elements of caused motion such as Action and Path can be encoded in the verb (e.g. sok- ‘put in’) and the arguments of a verb can be easily omitted. We found that Turkish-speaking children's speech indeed displayed these language-specific features and focused on verbs to encode caused motion. More interestingly, we found that their early gestures also manifested specificity. Children used iconic cospeech gestures (from 19 months onwards) as often as pointing gestures and represented semantic elements such as Action with Figure and/or Path that reinforced or supplemented speech in language-specific ways until the age of three. In the light of previous reports on the scarcity of iconic gestures in English-speaking children's early productions, we argue that the language children learn shapes gestures and how they get integrated with speech in the first three years of life.

Abstract

Segmentation (and, indeed, definition) of the human body in Kuuk Thaayorre (a Paman language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia) is in some respects typologically unusual, while at other times it conforms to cross-linguistic patterns. The process of deriving complex body part terms from monolexemic items is revealing of metaphorical associations between parts of the body. Associations between parts of the body and entities and phenomena in the broader environment are evidenced by the ubiquity of body part terms (in their extended uses) throughout Thaayorre speech. Understanding the categorisation of the body is therefore prerequisite to understanding the Thaayorre language and worldview.

Abstract

Lifelong graph learning deals with the problem of continually adapting graph neural network (GNN) models to changes in evolving graphs. We address two critical challenges of lifelong graph learning in this work: dealing with new classes and tackling imbalanced class distributions. The combination of these two challenges is particularly relevant since newly emerging classes typically resemble only a tiny fraction of the data, adding to the already skewed class distribution. We make several contributions: First, we show that the amount of unlabeled data does not influence the results, which is an essential prerequisite for lifelong learning on a sequence of tasks. Second, we experiment with different label rates and show that our methods can perform well with only a tiny fraction of annotated nodes. Third, we propose the gDOC method to detect new classes under the constraint of having an imbalanced class distribution. The critical ingredient is a weighted binary cross-entropy loss function to account for the class imbalance. Moreover, we demonstrate combinations of gDOC with various base GNN models such as GraphSAGE, Simplified Graph Convolution, and Graph Attention Networks. Lastly, our k-neighborhood time difference measure provably normalizes the temporal changes across different graph datasets. With extensive experimentation, we find that the proposed gDOC method is consistently better than a naive adaption of DOC to graphs. Specifically, in experiments using the smallest history size, the out-of-distribution detection score of gDOC is 0.09 compared to 0.01 for DOC. Furthermore, gDOC achieves an Open-F1 score, a combined measure of in-distribution classification and out-of-distribution detection, of 0.33 compared to 0.25 of DOC (32% increase).

Abstract

The Error-Related Negativity (ERN) is a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) that is associated with action monitoring and error detection. The present study addressed the question whether or not an ERN occurs after verbal error detection, e.g., during phoneme monitoring.We obtained an ERN following verbal errors which showed a typical decrease in amplitude under severe time pressure. This result demonstrates that the functioning of the verbal self-monitoring system is comparable to other performance monitoring, such as action monitoring. Furthermore, we found that participants made more errors in phoneme monitoring under time pressure than in a control condition. This may suggest that time pressure decreases the amount of resources available to a capacity-limited self-monitor thereby leading to more errors.

Abstract

This study investigated how sentence formulation is influenced by a preceding discourse context. In two eye-tracking experiments, participants described pictures of two-character transitive events in Dutch (Experiment 1) and Chinese (Experiment 2). Focus was manipulated by presenting questions before each picture. In the Neutral condition, participants first heard ‘What is happening here?’ In the Object or Subject Focus conditions, the questions asked about the Object or Subject character (What is the policeman stopping? Who is stopping the truck?). The target response was the same in all conditions (The policeman is stopping the truck). In both experiments, sentence formulation in the Neutral condition showed the expected pattern of speakers fixating the subject character (policeman) before the object character (truck). In contrast, in the focus conditions speakers rapidly directed their gaze preferentially only to the character they needed to encode to answer the question (the new, or focused, character). The timing of gaze shifts to the new character varied by language group (Dutch vs. Chinese): shifts to the new character occurred earlier when information in the question can be repeated in the response with the same syntactic structure (in Chinese but not in Dutch). The results show that discourse affects the timecourse of linguistic formulation in simple sentences and that these effects can be modulated by language-specific linguistic structures such as parallels in the syntax of questions and declarative sentences.

Abstract

Researchers have long avoided neurophysiological experiments of overt speech production due to the suspicion that artifacts caused by muscle activity may lead to a bad signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements. However, the need to actually produce speech may influence earlier processing and qualitatively change speech production processes and what we can infer from neurophysiological measures thereof. Recently, however, overt speech has been successfully investigated using EEG, MEG, and fMRI. The aim of this Research Topic is to draw together recent research on the neurophysiological basis of language production, with the aim of developing and extending theoretical accounts of the language production process. In this Research Topic of Frontiers in Language Sciences, we invite both experimental and review papers, as well as those about the latest methods in acquisition and analysis of overt language production data. All aspects of language production are welcome: i.e., from conceptualization to articulation during native as well as multilingual language production. Focus should be placed on using the neurophysiological data to inform questions about the processing stages of language production. In addition, emphasis should be placed on the extent to which the identified components of the electrophysiological signal (e.g., ERP/ERF, neuronal oscillations, etc.), brain areas or networks are related to language comprehension and other cognitive domains. By bringing together electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence on language production mechanisms, a more complete picture of the locus of language production processes and their temporal and neurophysiological signatures will emerge.

Abstract

The current research investigated structural priming in Tagalog, a symmetrical voice language containing rich verbal morphology that results in changes in mapping between syntactic positions and thematic roles. This grammatically rare feature, which results in multiple transitive structures that are balanced in terms of the grammatical status of their arguments, provides the opportunity to test whether word order priming is sensitive to the voice morphology of the verb. In three sentence priming experiments (Ns = 64), we manipulated whether the target-verb prompt carried the same voice as the verb in the prime sentence. In all experiments, priming occurred only when the prime and target had the same voice morphology. Additionally, we found that the strength of word order priming depends on voice: stronger priming effects were found for the voice morpheme associated with a more flexible word order. The findings are consistent with learning-based accounts where language-specific representations for syntax emerge across developmental time. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of Tagalog's grammar. The results reveal the value of crosslinguistic data for theory-testing, and the value of structural priming in determining the representational nature of linguistic structure.

Abstract

In the target article, Cristia, Foushee, Aravena-Bravo, Cychosz, Scaff, and Casillas (2022) convincingly show the need to broaden the current language acquisition research base, not only in linguistic diversity, but also in terms of regions and cultural groups studied. In conducting acquisition research in understudied populations, such as in rural settings, the authors highlight the importance of using a multi-method approach. They present the challenges in adapting these methods to new settings and offer possible ways to promote this type of research. In this commentary, we extend the discussion to understudied urban communities, as we encounter several of the concerns raised in Cristia et al. when collecting observational and experimental language acquisition data from Metro Manila, Philippines. We first describe the community we study, the challenges and modifications needed for conducting research in this setting, and end with a discussion of possible strategies to promote research in communities with understudied populations.

Abstract

We present a visual world eye-tracking study on Tseltal (a Mayan language) and investigate whether verbal information can be used to anticipate an upcoming referent. Basic word order in transitive sentences in Tseltal is Verb-Object-Subject (VOS). The verb is usually encountered first, making argument structure and syntactic information available at the outset, which should facilitate anticipation of the post-verbal arguments. Tseltal speakers listened to verb-initial sentences with either an object-predictive verb (e.g., ‘eat’) or a general verb (e.g., ‘look for’) (e.g., “Ya slo’/sle ta stukel on te kereme”, Is eating/is looking (for) by himself the avocado the boy/ “The boy is eating/is looking (for) an avocado by himself”) while seeing a visual display showing one potential referent (e.g., avocado) and three distractors (e.g., bag, toy car, coffee grinder). We manipulated verb type (predictive vs. general) and recorded participants' eye-movements while they listened and inspected the visual scene. Participants’ fixations to the target referent were analysed using multilevel logistic regression models. Shortly after hearing the predictive verb, participants fixated the target object before it was mentioned. In contrast, when the verb was general, fixations to the target only started to increase once the object was heard. Our results suggest that Tseltal hearers pre-activate semantic features of the grammatical object prior to its linguistic expression. This provides evidence from a verb-initial language for online incremental semantic interpretation and anticipatory processing during language comprehension. These processes are comparable to the ones identified in subject-initial languages, which is consistent with the notion that different languages follow similar universal processing principles.

Abstract

The constraints that govern acceptable phoneme combinations in speech perception and production have considerable plasticity. We addressed whether sleep influences the acquisition of new constraints and their integration into the speech-production system. Participants repeated sequences of syllables in which two phonemes were artificially restricted to syllable onset or syllable coda, depending on the vowel in that sequence. After 48 sequences, participants either had a 90-min nap or remained awake. Participants then repeated 96 sequences so implicit constraint learning could be examined, and then were tested for constraint generalization in a forced-choice task. The sleep group, but not the wake group, produced speech errors at test that were consistent with restrictions on the placement of phonemes in training. Furthermore, only the sleep group generalized their learning to new materials. Polysomnography data showed that implicit constraint learning was associated with slow-wave sleep. These results show that sleep facilitates the integration of new linguistic knowledge with existing production constraints. These data have relevance for systems-consolidation models of sleep.