Publications

Abstract

Height-pitch associations are claimed to be universal and independent of language, but this claim remains controversial. The present study sheds new light on this debate with a multimodal analysis of individual sound and melody descriptions obtained in an interactive communication paradigm with speakers of Dutch and Farsi. The findings reveal that, in contrast to Dutch speakers, Farsi speakers do not use a height-pitch metaphor consistently in speech. Both Dutch and Farsi speakers’ co-speech gestures did reveal a mapping of higher pitches to higher space and lower pitches to lower space, and this gesture space-pitch mapping tended to co-occur with corresponding spatial words (high-low). However, this mapping was much weaker in Farsi speakers than Dutch speakers. This suggests that cross-linguistic differences shape the conceptualization of pitch and further calls into question the universality of height-pitch associations.

Abstract

The view put forward here is that visual bodily signals play a core role in human communication and the coordination of minds. Critically, this role goes far beyond referential and propositional meaning. The human communication system that we consider to be the explanandum in the evolution of language thus is not spoken language. It is, instead, a deeply multimodal, multilayered, multifunctional system that developed—and survived—owing to the extraordinary flexibility and adaptability that it endows us with. Beyond their undisputed iconic power, visual bodily signals (manual and head gestures, facial expressions, gaze, torso movements) fundamentally contribute to key pragmatic processes in modern human communication. This contribution becomes particularly evident with a focus that includes non-iconic manual signals, non-manual signals and signal combinations. Such a focus also needs to consider meaning encoded not just via iconic mappings, since kinematic modulations and interaction-bound meaning are additional properties equipping the body with striking pragmatic capacities. Some of these capacities, or its precursors, may have already been present in the last common ancestor we share with the great apes and may qualify as early versions of the components constituting the hypothesized interaction engine.

Abstract

The given-new contract entails that speakers must distinguish for their addressee whether references are new or already part of their dialogue. Past research had found that, in a monologue to a listener, speakers shortened repeated words. However, the notion of the given-new contract is inherently dialogic, with an addressee and the availability of co-speech gestures. Here, two face-to-face dialogue experiments tested whether gesture duration also follows the given-new contract. In Experiment 1, four experimental sequences confirmed that when speakers repeated their gestures, they shortened the duration significantly. Experiment 2 replicated the effect with spontaneous gestures in a different task. This experiment also extended earlier results with words, confirming that speakers shortened their repeated words significantly in a multimodal dialogue setting, the basic form of language use. Because words and gestures were not necessarily redundant, these results offer another instance in which gestures and words independently serve pragmatic requirements of dialogue.

Abstract

Does blinking function as a type of feedback in conversation? To address this question, we built a corpus of Dutch conversations, identified short and long addressee blinks during extended turns, and measured their occurrence relative to the end of turn constructional units (TCUs), the location
where feedback typically occurs. Addressee blinks were indeed timed to the
end of TCUs. Also, long blinks were more likely than short blinks to occur
during mutual gaze, with nods or continuers, and their occurrence was
restricted to sequential contexts in which signaling understanding was
particularly relevant, suggesting a special signaling capacity of long blinks.

Abstract

Abstract Neuroimaging has been extensively used to study brain structure and function in individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over the past decades. Two of the main shortcomings of the neuroimaging literature of these disorders are the small sample sizes employed and the heterogeneity of methods used. In 2013 and 2014, the ENIGMA-ADHD and ENIGMA-ASD working groups were respectively, founded with a common goal to address these limitations. Here, we provide a narrative review of the thus far completed and still ongoing projects of these working groups. Due to an implicitly hierarchical psychiatric diagnostic classification system, the fields of ADHD and ASD have developed largely in isolation, despite the considerable overlap in the occurrence of the disorders. The collaboration between the ENIGMA-ADHD and -ASD working groups seeks to bring the neuroimaging efforts of the two disorders closer together. The outcomes of case–control studies of subcortical and cortical structures showed that subcortical volumes are similarly affected in ASD and ADHD, albeit with small effect sizes. Cortical analyses identified unique differences in each disorder, but also considerable overlap between the two, specifically in cortical thickness. Ongoing work is examining alternative research questions, such as brain laterality, prediction of case–control status, and anatomical heterogeneity. In brief, great strides have been made toward fulfilling the aims of the ENIGMA collaborations, while new ideas and follow-up analyses continue that include more imaging modalities (diffusion MRI and resting-state functional MRI), collaborations with other large databases, and samples with dual diagnoses.

Abstract

A recent trend in psycholinguistic research has been to posit prediction as an essential function of language processing. The present paper develops a linguistic perspective on viewing prediction in terms of pre-activation. We describe what predictions are and how they are produced. Our basic premises are that (a) no prediction can be made without knowledge to support it; and (b) it is therefore necessary to characterize the precise form of that knowledge, as revealed by a suitable theory of linguistic representations. We describe the Parallel Architecture (PA: Jackendoff, 2002; Jackendoff and Audring, 2020), which makes explicit our commitments about linguistic representations, and we develop an account of processing based on these representations. Crucial to our account is that what have been traditionally treated as derivational rules of grammar are formalized by the PA as lexical items, encoded in the same format as words. We then present a theory of prediction in these terms: linguistic input activates lexical items whose beginning (or incipit) corresponds to the input encountered so far; and prediction amounts to pre-activation of the as yet unheard parts of those lexical items (the remainder). Thus the generation of predictions is a natural byproduct of processing linguistic representations. We conclude that the PA perspective on pre-activation provides a plausible account of prediction in language processing that bridges linguistic and psycholinguistic theorizing.

Abstract

Typical adults read remarkably quickly. Such fast reading is facilitated by brain processes that are sensitive to both word frequency and contextual constraints. It is debated as to whether these attributes have additive or interactive effects on language processing in the brain. We investigated this issue by analysing existing magnetoencephalography data from 99 participants reading intact and scrambled sentences. Using a cross-validated model comparison scheme, we found that lexical frequency predicted the word-by-word elicited MEG signal in a widespread cortical network, irrespective of sentential context. In contrast, index (ordinal word position) was more strongly encoded in sentence words, in left front-temporal areas. This confirms that frequency influences word processing independently of predictability, and that contextual constraints affect word-by-word brain responses. With a conservative multiple comparisons correction, only the interaction between lexical frequency and surprisal survived, in anterior temporal and frontal cortex, and not between lexical frequency and entropy, nor between lexical frequency and index. However, interestingly, the uncorrected index*frequency interaction revealed an effect in left frontal and temporal cortex that reversed in time and space for intact compared to scrambled sentences. Finally, we provide evidence to suggest that, in sentences, lexical frequency and predictability may independently influence early (<150ms) and late stages of word processing, but interact during later stages of word processing (>150-250ms), thus helping to converge previous contradictory eye-tracking and electrophysiological literature. Current neuro-cognitive models of reading would benefit from accounting for these differing effects of lexical frequency and predictability on different stages of word processing.

Abstract

Traditional experiments indicate that prediction is important for efficient speech processing. In three virtual reality visual world paradigm experiments, we tested whether such findings hold in naturalistic settings (Experiment 1) and provided novel insights into whether disfluencies in speech (repairs/hesitations) inform one’s predictions in rich environments (Experiments 2–3). Experiment 1 supports that listeners predict upcoming speech in naturalistic environments, with higher proportions of anticipatory target fixations in predictable compared to unpredictable trials. In Experiments 2–3, disfluencies reduced anticipatory fixations towards predicted referents, compared to conjunction (Experiment 2) and fluent (Experiment 3) sentences. Unexpectedly, Experiment 2 provided no evidence that participants made new predictions from a repaired verb. Experiment 3 provided novel findings that fixations towards the speaker increase upon hearing a hesitation, supporting current theories of how hesitations influence sentence processing. Together, these findings unpack listeners’ use of visual (objects/speaker) and auditory (speech/disfluencies) information when predicting upcoming words.

Abstract

Foreign languages are often learned in emotionally neutral academic environments which differ greatly from the familiar context where native languages are acquired. This difference in learning contexts has been argued to lead to reduced emotional resonance when confronted with a foreign language. In the current study, we investigated whether the reactivity of the sympathetic nervous system in response to emotionally-charged stimuli is reduced in a foreign language. To this end, pupil sizes were recorded while reading aloud emotional sentences in the native or foreign language. Additionally, subjective ratings of emotional impact were provided after reading each sentence, allowing us to further investigate foreign language effects on explicit emotional understanding. Pupillary responses showed a larger effect of emotion in the native than in the foreign language. However, such a difference was not present for explicit ratings of emotionality. These results reveal that the sympathetic nervous system reacts differently depending on the language context, which in turns suggests a deeper emotional processing when reading in a native compared to a foreign language.

Abstract

We investigated how two groups of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals and two groups of monolingual speakers of the two languages described static topological relations. The bilingual groups differed with respect to their first (L1) and second (L2) language proficiencies and a number of sociolinguistic factors. Using an elicitation tool that covers a wide range of topological relations, we first assessed the extensions of different spatial expressions (topological relation markers, TRMs) in the Turkish and Dutch spoken by monolingual speakers. We then assessed differences in the use of TRMs between the two bilingual groups and monolingual speakers. In both bilingual groups, differences compared to monolingual speakers were mainly observed for Turkish. Dutch-dominant bilinguals showed enhanced congruence between translation-equivalent Turkish and Dutch TRMs. Turkish-dominant bilinguals extended the use of a topologically neutral locative marker. Our results can be interpreted as showing different bilingual optimization strategies (Muysken, 2013) in bilingual speakers who live in the same environment but differ with respect to L2 onset, L2 proficiency, and perceived importance of the L1.

Abstract

How individuals learn complex regularities in the environment and generalize them to new instances is a key question in cognitive science. Although previous investigations have advocated the idea that learning and generalizing depend upon separate processes, the same basic learning mechanisms may account for both. In language learning experiments, these mechanisms have typically been studied in isolation of broader cognitive phenomena such as memory, perception, and attention. Here, we show how learning and generalization in language is embedded in these broader theories by testing learners on their ability to chunk nonadjacent dependencies—a key structure in language but a challenge to theories that posit learning through the memorization of structure. In two studies, adult participants were trained and tested on an artificial language containing nonadjacent syllable dependencies, using a novel chunking-based serial recall task involving verbal repetition of target sequences (formed from learned strings) and scrambled foils. Participants recalled significantly more syllables, bigrams, trigrams, and nonadjacent dependencies from sequences conforming to the language’s statistics (both learned and generalized sequences). They also encoded and generalized specific nonadjacent chunk information. These results suggest that participants chunk remote dependencies and rapidly generalize this information to novel structures. The results thus provide further support for learning-based approaches to language acquisition, and link statistical learning to broader cognitive mechanisms of memory.

Abstract

Current psycholinguistic theory proffers prediction as a central, explanatory mechanism in language
processing. However, widely-replicated prediction effects may not mean that prediction is
necessary in language processing. As a case in point, C. D. Martin et al. [2013. Bilinguals reading
in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do.
Journal of
Memory and Language, 69
(4), 574
–
588. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001] reported ERP evidence for
prediction in native- but not in non-native speakers. Articles mismatching an expected noun
elicited larger negativity in the N400 time window compared to articles matching the expected
noun in native speakers only. We attempted to replicate these findings, but found no evidence
for prediction irrespective of language nativeness. We argue that pre-activation of phonological
form of upcoming nouns, as evidenced in article-elicited effects, may not be a robust
phenomenon. A view of prediction as a necessary computation in language comprehension
must be re-evaluated.

Abstract

We used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether Spanish−English bilinguals preactivate form and meaning of predictable words. Participants read high-cloze sentence contexts (e.g., “The student is going to the library to borrow a . . .”), followed by the predictable word (book), a word that was form-related (hook) or semantically related (page) to the predictable word, or an unrelated word (sofa). Word stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) was 500 ms (Experiment 1) or 700 ms (Experiment 2). In both experiments, all nonpredictable words elicited classic N400 effects. Form-related and unrelated words elicited similar N400 effects. Semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, which however, did not depend on cloze value of the predictable word. Thus, we found no N400 evidence for preactivation of form or meaning at either SOA, unlike native-speaker results (Ito, Corley et al., 2016). However, non-native speakers did show the post-N400 posterior positivity (LPC effect) for form-related words like native speakers, but only at the slower SOA. This LPC effect increased gradually with cloze value of the predictable word. We do not interpret this effect as necessarily demonstrating prediction, but rather as evincing combined effects of top-down activation (contextual meaning) and bottom-up activation (form similarity) that result in activation of unseen words that fit the context well, thereby leading to an interpretation conflict reflected in the LPC. Although there was no evidence that non-native speakers preactivate form or meaning, non-native speakers nonetheless appear to use bottom-up and top-down information to constrain incremental interpretation much like native speakers do.

Abstract

Children's abilities to process the phonological structure of words are important predictors of their literacy development. In the current study, we examined the interrelatedness between implicit (i.e., speech decoding) and explicit (i.e., phonological awareness) phonological abilities, and especially the role therein of lexical specificity (i.e., the ability to learn to recognize spoken words based on only minimal acoustic-phonetic differences). We tested 75 Dutch monolingual and 64 Turkish–Dutch bilingual kindergartners. SEM analyses showed that speech decoding predicted lexical specificity, which in turn predicted rhyme awareness in the first language learners but phoneme awareness in the second language learners. Moreover, in the latter group there was an impact of the second language: Dutch speech decoding and lexical specificity predicted Turkish phonological awareness, which in turn predicted Dutch phonological awareness. We conclude that language-specific phonological characteristics underlie different patterns of transfer from implicit to explicit phonological abilities in first and second language learners.

Abstract

Rhythmic stimulation can be applied to modulate neuronal oscillations. Such ‘entrainment’ is optimized when stimulation frequency is individually calibrated based on magneto/encephalography markers. It remains unknown how consistent such individual markers are across days/sessions, within a session, or across cognitive states, hemispheres and estimation methods, especially in a realistic, practical, lab setting. We here estimated individual alpha frequency (IAF) repeatedly from short electroencephalography (EEG) measurements at rest or during an attention task (cognitive state), using single parieto-occipital electrodes in 24 participants on 4 days (between-sessions), with multiple measurements over an hour on 1 day (within-session). First, we introduce an algorithm to automatically reject power spectra without a sufficiently clear peak to ensure unbiased IAF estimations. Then we estimated IAF via the traditional ‘maximum’ method and a ‘Gaussian fit’ method. IAF was reliable within- and between-sessions for both cognitive states and hemispheres, though task-IAF estimates tended to be more variable. Overall, the ‘Gaussian fit’ method was more reliable than the ‘maximum’ method. Furthermore, we evaluated how far from an approximated ‘true’ task-related IAF the selected ‘stimulation frequency’ was, when calibrating this frequency based on a short rest-EEG, a short task-EEG, or simply selecting 10 Hz for all participants. For the ‘maximum’ method, rest-EEG calibration was best, followed by task-EEG, and then 10 Hz. For the ‘Gaussian fit’ method, rest-EEG and task-EEG-based calibration were similarly accurate, and better than 10 Hz. These results lead to concrete recommendations about valid, and automated, estimation of individual oscillation markers in experimental and clinical settings.

Abstract

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) can be used to study causal contributions of oscillatory brain mechanisms to cognition and behavior. For instance, individual alpha frequency (IAF) tACS was reported to enhance alpha power and impact visuospatial attention performance. Unfortunately, such results have been inconsistent and difficult to replicate. In tACS, stimulation generally involves one frequency, sometimes individually calibrated to a peak value observed in an M/EEG power spectrum. Yet, the ‘peak’ actually observed in such power spectra often contains a broader range of frequencies, raising the question whether a biologically calibrated tACS protocol containing this fuller range of alpha-band frequencies might be more effective. Here, we introduce ‘Broadband-alpha-tACS’, a complex individually calibrated electrical stimulation protocol. We band-pass filtered left posterior resting-state EEG data around the IAF (+/- 2 Hz), and converted that time series into an electrical waveform for tACS stimulation of that same left posterior parietal cortex location. In other words, we stimulated a brain region with a ‘replay’ of its own alpha-band frequency content, based on spontaneous activity. Within-subjects (N=24), we compared to a sham tACS session the effects of broadband-alpha tACS, power-matched spectral inverse (‘alpha-removed’) control tACS, and individual alpha frequency tACS, on EEG alpha power and performance in an endogenous attention task previously reported to be affected by alpha tACS. Broadband-alpha-tACS significantly modulated attention task performance (i.e., reduced the rightward visuospatial attention bias in trials without distractors, and reduced attention benefits). Alpha-removed tACS also reduced the rightward visuospatial attention bias. IAF-tACS did not significantly modulate attention task performance compared to sham tACS, but also did not statistically significantly differ from broadband-alpha-tACS. This new broadband-alpha tACS approach seems promising, but should be further explored and validated in future studies.

Abstract

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as necessary, but no more. Yet, people routinely produce redundant adjectives and their propensity to do so varies cross-linguistically. Here, we propose a computational theory, whereby speakers create referential expressions designed to facilitate listeners’ reference resolution, as they process words in real time. We present a computational model of our account, the Incremental Collaborative Efficiency (ICE) model, which generates referential expressions by considering listeners’ real-time incremental processing and reference identification. We apply the ICE framework to physical reference, showing that listeners construct expressions designed to minimize listeners’ expected visual search effort during online language processing. Our model captures a number of known effects in the literature, including cross-linguistic differences in speakers’ propensity to over-specify. Moreover, the ICE model predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming an alternative, brevity-based model. Our findings suggest that physical reference production is best understood as driven by a collaborative goal to help the listener identify the intended referent, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length.

Abstract

Language sometimes requires tracking the same participant in different thematic roles across multiple visual events (e.g., The girl that another girl pushed chased a third girl). To better understand how vision and language interact in role tracking, participants described videos of multiple randomly moving circles where two push events were presented. A circle might have the same role in both push events (e.g., agent) or different roles (e.g., agent of one push and patient of other push). The first three studies found higher production accuracy for the same role conditions compared to the different role conditions across different linguistic structure manipulations. The last three studies compared a featural account, where role information was associated with particular circles, or a relational account, where role information was encoded with particular push events. These studies found no interference between different roles, contrary to the predictions of the featural account. The foil was manipulated in these studies to increase the saliency of the second push and it was found that this changed the accuracy in describing the first push. The results suggest that language-related thematic role processing uses a relational representation that can encode multiple events.

Abstract

Children who hear large amounts of diverse speech learn language more quickly than children who do not. However, high correlations between the amount and the diversity of the input in speech samples makes it difficult to isolate the influence of each. We overcame this problem by controlling the input to a computational model so that amount of exposure to linguistic input (quantity) and the quality of that input (lexical diversity) were independently manipulated. Sublexical, lexical, and multi-word knowledge were charted across development (Study 1), showing that while input quantity may be important early in learning, lexical diversity is ultimately more crucial, a prediction confirmed against children’s data (Study 2). The model trained on a lexically diverse input also performed better on nonword repetition and sentence recall tests (Study 3) and was quicker to learn new words over time (Study 4). A language input that is rich in lexical diversity outperforms equivalent richness in quantity for learned sublexical and lexical knowledge, for well-established language tests, and for acquiring words that have never been encountered before.

Abstract

Sustained attention has previously been shown as a requirement for language production. However, this is mostly evident for difficult conditions, such as a dual-task situation. The current study provides corroborating evidence that this relationship holds even for simple picture naming. Sustained attention ability, indexed both by participants’ reaction times and individuals’ hit rate (the proportion of correctly detected targets) on a digit discrimination task, correlated with picture naming latencies. Individuals with poor sustained attention were consistently slower and their RT distributions were more positively skewed when naming pictures compared to individuals with better sustained attention. Additionally, the need to sustain attention was manipulated by changing the speed of stimulus presentation. Research has suggested that fast event rates tax sustained attention resources to a larger degree than slow event rates. However, in this study the fast event rate did not result in increased difficulty, neither for the picture naming task nor for the sustained attention task. Instead, the results point to a speed-accuracy trade-off in the sustained attention task (lower accuracy but faster responses in the fast than in the slow event rate), and to a benefit for faster rates in the picture naming task (shorter naming latencies with no difference in accuracy). Performance on both tasks was largely comparable, supporting previous findings that sustained attention is called upon during language production

Abstract

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have problems not only with language performance but also with sustained attention, which is the ability to maintain alertness over an extended period of time. Although there is consensus that this ability is impaired with respect to processing stimuli in the auditory perceptual modality, conflicting evidence exists concerning the visual modality.
Aims

To address the outstanding issue whether the impairment in sustained attention is limited to the auditory domain, or if it is domain-general. Furthermore, to test whether children's sustained attention ability relates to their word-production skills.
Methods & Procedures

Groups of 7–9 year olds with SLI (N = 28) and typically developing (TD) children (N = 22) performed a picture-naming task and two sustained attention tasks, namely auditory and visual continuous performance tasks (CPTs).
Outcomes & Results

Children with SLI performed worse than TD children on picture naming and on both the auditory and visual CPTs. Moreover, performance on both the CPTs correlated with picture-naming latencies across developmental groups.
Conclusions & Implications

These results provide evidence for a deficit in both auditory and visual sustained attention in children with SLI. Moreover, the study indicates there is a relationship between domain-general sustained attention and picture-naming performance in both TD and language-impaired children. Future studies should establish whether this relationship is causal. If attention influences language, training of sustained attention may improve language production in children from both developmental groups.

Abstract

Theories of conversation propose that in order to have smooth transitions from one turn to the next, speakers already plan their response while listening to their interlocutor. Moreover, it has been argued that speakers align their linguistic representations (i.e. prime each other), thereby reducing the processing costs associated with concurrent listening and speaking. In two experiments, we assessed how identity and associative priming from spoken words onto picture naming were affected by a concurrent speech planning task. In a baseline (no name) condition, participants heard prime words that were identical, associatively related, or unrelated to target pictures presented two seconds after prime onset. Each prime was accompanied by a non-target picture and followed by its recorded name. The participant did not name the non-target picture. In the plan condition, the participants first named the non-target picture, instead of listening to the recording, and then the target. In Experiment 1, where the plan- and no-plan conditions were tested between participants, priming effects of equal strength were found in the plan and no-plan condition. In Experiment 2, where the two conditions were tested within participants, the identity priming effect was maintained, but the associative priming effect was only seen in the no-plan but not in the plan condition. In this experiment, participant had to decide at the onset of each trial whether or not to name the non-target picture, rendering the task more complex than in Experiment 1. These decision processes may have interfered with the processing of the primes. Thus, associative priming can take place during speech planning, but only if the cognitive load is not too high.

Abstract

Spontaneous language learning both in children learning their mother tongue and in adults learning a second language shows that language development proceeds in a stage-wise manner. Given that a developmental stage is defined as a coherent linguistic system, utterances of language learners can be accounted for in terms of what (Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10. 209-231) referred to with the term Interlanguage. This paper is a study on the early interlanguage systems of children learning Dutch and German as their mother tongue. The present child learner systems, so it is claimed, are coherent lexical systems based on types of verb-argument structure that are either agentive (as in Dutch: kannie bal pakke 'cannot ball get', or German: mag nich nase putzen 'like not nose clean') or non-agentive (as in Dutch: popje valt bijna 'doll falls nearly', or in German: ente fällt 'duck falls'). At this lexical stage, functional morphology (e. g. morphological finiteness, tense), function words (e. g. auxiliary verbs, determiners) and word order variation are absent. For these typically developing children, both in Dutch and in German, it is claimed that developmental progress is driven by the acquisition of the formal properties of topicalization. It is, furthermore, argued that this feature seems to serve as the driving force in the instantiation of the functional, i. e. informational linguistic properties of the target-language system

Abstract

Expressing Left-Right relations is challenging for speaking-children. Yet, this challenge was absent for signing-children, possibly due to iconicity in the visual-spatial modality of expression. We investigate whether there is also a modality advantage when speaking-children’s co-speech gestures are considered. Eight-year-old child and adult hearing monolingual Turkish speakers and deaf signers of Turkish-Sign-Language described pictures of objects in various spatial relations. Descriptions were coded for informativeness in speech, sign, and speech-gesture combinations for encoding Left-Right relations. The use of co-speech gestures increased the informativeness of speakers’ spatial expressions compared to speech-only. This pattern was more prominent for children than adults. However, signing-adults and children were more informative than child and adult speakers even when co-speech gestures were considered. Thus, both speaking- and signing-children benefit from iconic expressions in visual modality. Finally, in each modality, children were less informative than adults, pointing to the challenge of this spatial domain in development.

Abstract

Oral communication often takes place in noisy environments, which challenge spoken-word recognition. Previous research has suggested that the presence of background noise extends the number of candidate words competing with the target word for recognition and that this extension affects the time course and accuracy of spoken-word recognition. In this study, we further investigated the temporal dynamics of competition processes in the presence of background noise, and how these vary in listeners with different language proficiency (i.e., native and non-native) using computational modeling. We developed ListenIN (Listen-In-Noise), a neural-network model based on an autoencoder architecture, which learns to map phonological forms onto meanings in two languages and simulates native and non-native spoken-word comprehension. Simulation A established that ListenIN captures the effects of noise on accuracy rates and the number of unique misperception errors of native and non-native listeners in an offline spoken-word identification task (Scharenborg et al., 2018). Simulation B showed that ListenIN captures the effects of noise in online task settings and accounts for looking preferences of native (Hintz & Scharenborg, 2016) and non-native (new data collected for this study) listeners in a visual-world paradigm. We also examined the model’s activation states during online spoken-word recognition. These analyses demonstrated that the presence of background noise increases the number of competitor words which are engaged in phonological competition and that this happens in similar ways intra- and interlinguistically and in native and non-native listening. Taken together, our results support accounts positing a ‘many-additional-competitors scenario’ for the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Developmental stuttering is a fluency disorder that adversely affect many aspects of a person's life. Recent transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) studies have shown promise to improve fluency in people who stutter. To date, bihemispheric tDCS has not been investigated in this population. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effects of single-session bihemispheric and unihemispheric cathodal tDCS on fluency in adults who stutter. We predicted that bihemispheric tDCS with anodal stimulation to the left IFG and cathodal stimulation to the right IFG would improve fluency better than the sham and cathodal tDCS to the right IFG. Seventeen adults who stutter completed this single-blind, crossover, sham-controlled tDCS experiment. All participants received 20 min of tDCS alongside metronome-timed speech during intervention sessions. Three tDCS interventions were administered: bihemispheric tDCS with anodal stimulation to the left IFG and cathodal stimulation to the right IFG, unihemispheric tDCS with cathodal stimulation to the right IFG, and sham stimulation. Speech fluency during reading and conversation was assessed before, immediately after, and one week after each intervention session. There was no significant fluency improvement in conversation for any tDCS interventions. Reading fluency improved following both bihemispheric and cathodal tDCS interventions. tDCS montages were not significantly different in their effects on fluency.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the first lockdown period in their respective countries(from March to September 2020). Children who had less passive screen exposure and whose caregivers read more to them showed larger gains in vocabulary development during lockdown, after controlling for SES and other caregiver-child activities. Children also gained more words than expected (based on normative data) during lockdown; either caregivers were more aware of their child’s development or vocabulary development benefited from intense caregiver-child interaction during lockdown.

Abstract

There is evidence that the human cerebellum is involved not only in motor control but also in other cognitive functions. Several studies have shown that language-related activation is lateralized toward the right cerebellar hemisphere in most people, in accordance with leftward cerebral cortical lateralization for language and a general contralaterality of cerebral–cerebellar activations. In terms of behavior, hand use elicits asymmetrical activation in the cerebellum, while hand preference is weakly associated with language lateralization. However, it is not known how, or whether, these functional relations are reflected in anatomy. We investigated volumetric gray matter asymmetries of cerebellar lobules in an MRI data set comprising 2226 subjects. We tested these cerebellar asymmetries for associations with handedness, and for correlations with cerebral cortical anatomical asymmetries of regions important for language or hand motor control, as defined by two different automated image analysis methods and brain atlases, and supplemented with extensive visual quality control. No significant associations of cerebellar asymmetries to handedness were found. Some significant associations of cerebellar lobular asymmetries to cerebral cortical asymmetries were found, but none of these correlations were greater than 0.14, and they were mostly method-/atlas-dependent. On the basis of this large and highly powered study, we conclude that there is no overt structural manifestation of cerebellar functional lateralization and connectivity, in respect of hand motor control or language laterality

Abstract

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at 10 Hz has been shown to modulate spatial attention. However, the frequency-specificity and the oscillatory changes underlying this tACS effect are still largely unclear. Here, we applied high-definition tACS at individual alpha frequency (IAF), two control frequencies (IAF+/-2Hz) and sham to the left posterior parietal cortex and measured its effects on visuospatial attention performance and offline alpha power (using electroencephalography, EEG). We revealed a behavioural and electrophysiological stimulation effect relative to sham for IAF but not control frequency stimulation conditions: there was a leftward lateralization of alpha power for IAF tACS, which differed from sham for the first out of three minutes following tACS. At a high value of this EEG effect (moderation effect), we observed a leftward attention bias relative to sham. This effect was task-specific, i.e., it could be found in an endogenous attention but not in a detection task. Only in the IAF tACS condition, we also found a correlation between the magnitude of the alpha lateralization and the attentional bias effect. Our results support a functional role of alpha oscillations in visuospatial attention and the potential of tACS to modulate it. The frequency-specificity of the effects suggests that an individualization of the stimulation frequency is necessary in heterogeneous target groups with a large variation in IAF.

Abstract

Visuospatial attention can either be voluntarily directed (endogenous/top-down attention) or automatically triggered (exogenous/bottom-up attention). Recent research showed that dorsal parietal transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at alpha frequency modulates the spatial attentional bias in an endogenous but not in an exogenous visuospatial attention task. Yet, the reason for this task-specificity remains unexplored. Here, we tested whether this dissociation relates to the proposed differential role of the dorsal attention network (DAN) and ventral attention network (VAN) in endogenous and exogenous attention processes respectively. To that aim, we targeted the left and right dorsal parietal node of the DAN, as well as the left and right ventral temporoparietal node of the VAN using tACS at the individual alpha frequency. Every participant completed all four stimulation conditions and a sham condition in five separate sessions. During tACS, we assessed the behavioral visuospatial attention bias via an endogenous and exogenous visuospatial attention task. Additionally, we measured offline alpha power immediately before and after tACS using electroencephalography (EEG). The behavioral data revealed an effect of tACS on the endogenous but not exogenous attention bias, with a greater leftward bias during (sham-corrected) left than right hemispheric stimulation. In line with our hypothesis, this effect was brain area-specific, i.e., present for dorsal parietal but not ventral temporoparietal tACS. However, contrary to our expectations, there was no effect of ventral temporoparietal tACS on the exogenous visuospatial attention bias. Hence, no double dissociation between the two targeted attention networks. There was no effect of either tACS condition on offline alpha power. Our behavioral data reveal that dorsal parietal but not ventral temporoparietal alpha oscillations steer endogenous visuospatial attention. This brain-area specific tACS effect matches the previously proposed dissociation between the DAN and VAN and, by showing that the spatial attention bias effect does not generalize to any lateral posterior tACS montage, renders lateral cutaneous and retinal effects for the spatial attention bias in the dorsal parietal condition unlikely. Yet the absence of tACS effects on the exogenous attention task suggests that ventral temporoparietal alpha oscillations are not functionally relevant for exogenous visuospatial attention. We discuss the potential implications of this finding in the context of an emerging theory on the role of the ventral temporoparietal node.

Abstract

In this article, we examine gaze direction in responses to polar questions using both quantitative and conversation analytic (CA) methods. The data come from a novel corpus of conversations in which participants wore eye-tracking glasses to obtain direct measures of their eye movements. The results show that while most preferred responses are produced with gaze toward the questioner, most dispreferred responses are produced with gaze aversion. We further demonstrate that gaze aversion by respondents can occasion self-repair by questioners in the transition space between turns, indicating that the relationship between gaze direction and preference is more than a mere statistical association. We conclude that gaze direction in responses to polar questions functions as a signal of response preference. Data are in American, British, and Canadian English.

Abstract

A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world’s 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal’s inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world’s languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.

Abstract

Our original target article highlighted some significant shortcomings in the current state of child language research: a large skew in our evidential base towards English and a handful of other Indo-European languages that partly has its origins in a lack of researcher diversity. In this article, we respond to the 21 commentaries on our original article. The commentaries highlighted both the importance of attention to typological features of languages and the environments and contexts in which languages are acquired, with many commentators providing concrete suggestions on how we address the data skew. In this response, we synthesise the main themes of the commentaries and make suggestions for how the field can move towards both improving data coverage and opening up to traditionally under-represented researchers.

Abstract

We report three studies (one corpus, two experimental) that investigated the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) in Finnish-speaking children. Study 1 found that Finnish children's naturalistic exposure to RCs predominantly consists of non-subject relatives (i.e. oblique, object) which typically have inanimate head nouns. Study 2 tested children's comprehension of subject, object, and two types of oblique relatives. No difference was found in the children's performance on different structures, including a lack of previously widely reported asymmetry between subject and object relatives. However, children's comprehension was modulated by animacy of the head referent. Study 3 tested children's production of the same RC structures using sentence repetition. Again we found no subject–object asymmetry. The pattern of results suggested that distributional frequency patterns and the relative complexity of the relativizer contribute to the difficulty associated with particular RC structures.

Abstract

Infant pointing has long been identified as an important precursor and predictor of language development. Infants typically begin to produce index finger pointing around the time of their first birthday and previous research has shown that both the onset and the frequency of pointing can predict aspects of productive and receptive language. The current study used a multivariate meta-analytic approach to estimate the strength of the relationship between infant pointing and language. We identified 30 papers published between 1984 and 2019 that met our stringent inclusion criteria, and 25 studies (comprising 77 effect sizes) with samples ≥10 were analysed. Methodological quality of the studies was assessed to identify potential sources of bias. We found a significant but small overall effect size of r = 0.20. Our findings indicate that the unique contribution of pointing to language development may be less robust than has been previously understood, however our stringent inclusion criteria (as well as our publication bias corrections), means that our data represent a more conservative estimate of the relationship between pointing and language. Moderator analysis showed significant group differences in favour of effect sizes related to language comprehension, non-vocabulary measures of language, pointing assessed after 18 months of age and pointing measured independent of speech. A significant strength of this study is the use of multivariate meta-analysis, which allowed us to utilise all available data to provide a more accurate estimate. We consider the findings in the context of the existing research and discuss the general limitations in this field, including the lack of cultural diversity.

Abstract

Pretence and creativity are often regarded as ubiquitous characteristics of childhood, yet not all education systems value or promote these attributes to the same extent. Different pedagogies and practices are evident within the UK National Curriculum, Steiner and Montessori schools. In this study, 20 children participated from each of these school systems (N = 60, aged 6;10–8;11) completing the test of creative thinking—drawing production (TCT-DP; K. K. Urban, & H. G. Jellen, 1996) and a pretend actions task (W. F. Overton & J. P. Jackson, 1973). Overall, Steiner pupils performed significantly higher on the TCT-DP than both the Montessori and National Curriculum pupils who performed similarly. Steiner pupils also performed significantly better on the pretend actions task than the Montessori pupils, but no other significant differences were found. Overall, there was also a significant positive correlation between pretence and creativity in the current sample, supporting previous research suggesting that these skills are related (e.g., A.S. Kaugars & S. W. Russ, 2009; P. Y. Mullineaux & L. F. Dilalla, 2009).

Abstract

People spontaneously produce gestures during speaking and thinking. The authors focus here on gestures that depict or indicate information related to the contents of concurrent speech or thought (i.e., representational gestures). Previous research indicates that such gestures have not only communicative functions, but also self-oriented cognitive functions. In this article, the authors propose a new theoretical framework, the gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis, which explains the self-oriented functions of representational gestures. According to this framework, representational gestures affect cognitive processes in 4 main ways: gestures activate, manipulate, package, and explore spatio-motoric information for speaking and thinking. These four functions are shaped by gesture's ability to schematize information, that is, to focus on a small subset of available information that is potentially relevant to the task at hand. The framework is based on the assumption that gestures are generated from the same system that generates practical actions, such as object manipulation; however, gestures are distinct from practical actions in that they represent information. The framework provides a novel, parsimonious, and comprehensive account of the self-oriented functions of gestures. The authors discuss how the framework accounts for gestures that depict abstract or metaphoric content, and they consider implications for the relations between self-oriented and communicative functions of gestures

Abstract

Neurodevelopmental disorders are defined by highly heritable problems during development and brain growth. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), and intellectual disability (ID) are frequent neurodevelopmental disorders, with common comorbidity among them. Imaging genetics studies on the role of disease-linked genetic variants on brain structure and function have been performed to unravel the etiology of these disorders. Here, we reviewed imaging genetics literature on these disorders attempting to understand the mechanisms of individual disorders and their clinical overlap. For ADHD and ASD, we selected replicated candidate genes implicated through common genetic variants. For ID, which is mainly caused by rare variants, we included genes for relatively frequent forms of ID occurring comorbid with ADHD or ASD. We reviewed case-control studies and studies of risk variants in healthy individuals. Imaging genetics studies for ADHD were retrieved for SLC6A3/DAT1, DRD2, DRD4, NOS1, and SLC6A4/5HTT. For ASD, studies on CNTNAP2, MET, OXTR, and SLC6A4/5HTT were found. For ID, we reviewed the genes FMR1, TSC1 and TSC2, NF1, and MECP2. Alterations in brain volume, activity, and connectivity were observed. Several findings were consistent across studies, implicating, for example, SLC6A4/5HTT in brain activation and functional connectivity related to emotion regulation. However, many studies had small sample sizes, and hypothesis-based, brain region-specific studies were common. Results from available studies confirm that imaging genetics can provide insight into the link between genes, disease-related behavior, and the brain. However, the field is still in its early stages, and conclusions about shared mechanisms cannot yet be drawn.

Abstract

Recently, the Max Planck Society founded a new Project group for Psycholinguistics. This article reviews some of the kernel issues of the group's research program. The central concern is with the context dependency of the speaker's linguistic behavior. The process of linguistically formulating depends not only on what the speaker wants to express, but also on what has been said previously (linguistic context), and on the physical and social situation (nonlinguistic context). Special attention is paid to two context-dependent phenomena.

Abstract

The interaction of action-related language processing with actual movement is an indicator of the functional role of motor cortical involvement in language understanding. This paper describes two experiments using single action verb stimuli. Motor responses were performed with the hand or the foot. To test the double dissociation of language-motor facilitation effects within subjects, Experiments 1 and 2 used a priming procedure where both hand and foot reactions had to be performed in response to different geometrical shapes, which were preceded by action verbs. In Experiment 1, the semantics of the verbs could be ignored whereas Experiment 2 included semantic decisions. Only Experiment 2 revealed a clear double dissociation in reaction times: reactions were facilitated when preceded by verbs describing actions with the matching effector. In Experiment 1, by contrast, there was an interaction between verb-response congruence and a semantic variable related to motor features of the verbs. Thus, the double dissociation paradigm of semantic motor priming was effective, corroborating the role of the motor system in action-related language processing. Importantly, this effect was body part specific.

Abstract

The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p‐hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left–right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta‐analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an “ideal publishing environment,” that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically‐used sample sizes.

Abstract

Left-right asymmetry of the human brain is one of its cardinal features, and also a complex, multivariate trait. Decades of research have suggested that brain asymmetry may be altered in psychiatric disorders. However, findings have been inconsistent and often based on small sample sizes. There are also open questions surrounding which structures are asymmetrical on average in the healthy population, and how variability in brain asymmetry relates to basic biological variables such as age and sex. Over the last four years, the ENIGMA-Laterality Working Group has published six studies of grey matter morphological asymmetry based on total sample sizes from roughly 3,500 to 17,000 individuals, which were between one and two orders of magnitude larger than those published in previous decades. A population-level mapping of average asymmetry was achieved, including an
intriguing fronto-occipital gradient of cortical thickness asymmetry in healthy brains. ENIGMA’s multidataset approach also supported an empirical illustration of reproducibility of hemispheric differences across datasets. Effect sizes were estimated for grey matter asymmetry based on large, international,
samples in relation to age, sex, handedness, and brain volume, as well as for three psychiatric disorders:Autism Spectrum Disorder was associated with subtly reduced asymmetry of cortical thickness at regions spread widely over the cortex; Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder was associated with altered subcortical asymmetry; Major Depressive Disorder was not significantly associated with changes
of asymmetry. Ongoing studies are examining brain asymmetry in other disorders. Moreover, a groundwork has been laid for possibly identifying shared genetic contributions to brain asymmetry and disorders.

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a crucial ability for living. Previous animal studies have shown that the S100B gene is causally related to spatial navigation performance in mice. However, the genetic factors influencing human navigation and its neural substrates remain unclear. Here, we provided the first evidence that the S100B gene modulates neural processing of navigationally relevant scenes in humans. First, with a novel protocol, we demonstrated that the spatial pattern of S100B gene expression in postmortem brains was associated with brain activation pattern for spatial navigation in general, and for scene processing in particular. Further, in a large fMRI cohort of healthy adults of Han Chinese (N = 202), we found that S100B gene polymorphisms modulated scene selectivity in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and parahippocampal place area. Finally, the serum levels of S100B protein mediated the association between S100B gene polymorphism and scene selectivity in the RSC. Our study takes the first step toward understanding the neurogenetic mechanism of human spatial navigation and suggests a novel approach to discover candidate genes modulating cognitive functions.

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a crucial ability for living. Previous work has revealed multiple distributed brain regions associated with human navigation. However, little is known about how these regions work together as a network (referred to as navigation network) to support flexible navigation. In a novel protocol, we combined neuroimaging meta-analysis, and functional connectivity and behavioral data from the same subjects. Briefly, we first constructed the navigation network for each participant, by combining a large-scale neuroimaging meta-analysis (with the Neurosynth) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Then, we investigated multiple topological properties of the navigation networks, including small-worldness, modularity, and highly connected hubs. Finally, we explored the behavioral relevance of these intrinsic properties in a large sample of healthy young adults (N = 190). We found that navigation networks showed small-world and modular organization at global level. More importantly, we found that increased small-worldness and modularity of the navigation network were associated with better navigation ability. Finally, we found that the right retrosplenial complex (RSC) acted as one of the hubs in the navigation network, and that higher betweenness of this region correlated with better navigation ability, suggesting a critical role of the RSC in modulating the navigation network in human brain. Our study takes one of the first steps toward understanding the underlying organization of the navigation network. Moreover, these findings suggest the potential applications of the novel approach to investigating functionally meaningful networks in human brain and their relations to the behavioral impairments in the aging and psychiatric patients.

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a crucial ability for living. Previous studies have shown that males are better at navigation than females, but little is known about the neural basis underlying the sex differences. In this study, we investigated whether cortical scene processing in three well-established scene-selective regions was sexually different, by examining sex differences in scene selectivity and its behavioral relevance to navigation. To do this, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the parahippocampal place area (PPA), retrosplenial complex (RSC), and occipital place area (OPA) in a large cohort of healthy young adults viewing navigationally relevant scenes (N = 202), and correlated their neural selectivity to scenes with their self-reported navigational ability. Behaviorally, we replicated the previous finding that males were better at navigation than females. Neurally, we found that the scene selectivity in the bilateral PPA, not in the RSC or OPA, was significantly higher in males than females. Such differences could not be explained by confounding factors including brain size and fMRI data quality. Importantly, males, not females, with stronger scene selectivity in the left PPA possessed better navigational ability. This brain-behavior association could not be accounted for by non-navigational abilities (i.e., intelligence and mental rotation ability). Overall, our study provides novel empirical evidence demonstrating sex differences in the brain activity, inviting further studies on sex differences in the neural network for spatial navigation.

Abstract

In the last decade, the involvement of neural oscillatory mechanisms in speech comprehension has been increasingly investigated. Current evidence suggests that low-frequency and high-frequency neural entrainment to the acoustic dynamics of speech are linked to its analysis. One crucial question is whether acoustical processing primarily modulates neural entrainment, or whether entrainment instead reflects linguistic processing. Here, we review studies investigating the effect of linguistic manipulations on neural oscillatory activity. In light of the current findings, we argue that theta (3–8 Hz) entrainment may primarily reflect the analysis of the acoustic features of speech. In contrast, recent evidence suggests that delta (1–3 Hz) and high-frequency activity (>40 Hz) are reliable indicators of perceived linguistic representations. The interdependence between low-frequency and high-frequency neural oscillations, as well as their causal role on speech comprehension, is further discussed with regard to neurophysiological models of speech processing

Abstract

Background

Left-right asymmetry is a fundamental organizing feature of the human brain, and neuro-psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia sometimes involve alterations of brain asymmetry. As early as 8 weeks post conception, the majority of human fetuses move their right arms more than their left arms, but because nerve fibre tracts are still descending from the forebrain at this stage, spinal-muscular asymmetries are likely to play an important developmental role.
Methods

We used RNA sequencing to measure gene expression levels in the left and right spinal cords, and left and right hindbrains, of 18 post-mortem human embryos aged 4-8 weeks post conception. Genes showing embryonic lateralization were tested for an enrichment of signals in genome-wide association data for schizophrenia.
Results

The left side of the embryonic spinal cord was found to mature faster than the right side. Both sides transitioned from transcriptional profiles associated with cell division and proliferation at earlier stages, to neuronal differentiation and function at later stages, but the two sides were not in synchrony (p = 2.2 E-161). The hindbrain showed a left-right mirrored pattern compared to the spinal cord, consistent with the well-known crossing over of function between these two structures. Genes that showed lateralization in the embryonic spinal cord were enriched for association signals with schizophrenia (p = 4.3 E-05).
Conclusions
These are the earliest-stage left-right differences of human neural development ever reported. Disruption of the lateralised developmental programme may play a role in the genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia.

Abstract

Importance Knowing the range of symptoms seen in patients with a missense or loss-of-function variant in KCNB1 and how these symptoms correlate with the type of variant will help clinicians with diagnosis and prognosis when treating new patients. Objectives To investigate the clinical spectrum associated with KCNB1 variants and the genotype-phenotype correlations. Design, Setting, and Participants This study summarized the clinical and genetic information of patients with a presumed pathogenic variant in KCNB1.Patients were identified in research projects or during clinical testing. Information on patients from previously published articles was collected and authors contacted if feasible. All patients were seen at a clinic at one of the participating institutes because of presumed genetic disorder. They were tested in a clinical setting or included in a research project. Main Outcomes and Measures The genetic variant and its inheritance and information on the patient's symptoms and characteristics in a predefined format. All variants were identified with massive parallel sequencing and confirmed with Sanger sequencing in the patient. Absence of the variant in the parents could be confirmed with Sanger sequencing in all families except one. Results Of 26 patients (10 female, 15 male, 1 unknown; mean age at inclusion, 9.8 years; age range, 2-32 years) with developmental delay, 20 (77%) carried a missense variant in the ion channel domain of KCNB1, with a concentration of variants in region S5 to S6. Three variants that led to premature stops were located in the C-terminal and 3 in the ion channel domain. Twenty-one of 25 patients (84%) had seizures, with 9 patients (36%) starting with epileptic spasms between 3 and 18 months of age. All patients had developmental delay, with 17 (65%) experiencing severe developmental delay; 14 (82%) with severe delay had behavioral problems. The developmental delay was milder in 4 of 6 patients with stop variants and in a patient with a variant in the S2 transmembrane element rather than the S4 to S6 region. Conclusions and Relevance De novo KCNB1 missense variants in the ion channel domain and loss-of-function variants in this domain and the C-terminal likely cause neurodevelopmental disorders with or without seizures. Patients with presumed pathogenic variants in KCNB1 have a variable phenotype. However, the type and position of the variants in the protein are (imperfectly) correlated with the severity of the disorder.

Abstract

In this exploratory study we test the hypothesis that the retrieval from memory of proper noun Agents (PNAs) under processing pressure causes a greater proportion of such semantic arguments to be placed to the right of the initial position in a clause than would be the case if such retrieval from memory were not necessary. This effect is manifest in sports commentary. Processing pressure on sports commentators is modulated by the speed at which the sport is played and reported. Non-initial placement is also facilitated by formulae which have slots in non-initial position. It follows that the non-initial placement of PNAs is not always semantically or pragmatically motivated. This finding therefore runs counter to a strong form of the functionalist hypothesis that syntactic choices available in the systemic structure of the syntax of a language offer solely semantic or pragmatic choices. It is an open question in a weak functionalist account of language and language use how processing and communicative functions interact in general.

Abstract

The article considers the pragmatics of silence image in English poetry. Silence being a communicative unit is
associated with verbal and non-verbal communication. The purpose of the article is to study the discursive and
communicative-pragmatic nature of poetical images of silence in the English-language literary discourse. The universal
and cultural functions of this notion were analysed and the main approaches to the poetical silence study were
determined. It became clear that the phenomenon of Nature Silence can be actualised with the help of Nature and other
landscape images in the field of English literary discourse. Such images must belong to the paradigm of English
landscape images represented by Earthy, Aerial and Celestial substantial nature symbols. In terms of
discourse-communicative approach to the study of communicative silence, these elements play an important role of the
main producers of Nature Silence. This work proposes the new pragmatic and communicative approach of
understanding the Nature silence in English literary discourse. The main verbal units that can actualise the poetical
image of silence are characterised by the permanent correlation with the different symbols of nature, showing the
dominant and peripheral characteristics. Being the pragmatic realisation of silence image, motives of Nature Silence
may be considered both as dominant and background.

Abstract

Theories of language acquisition vary significantly in their assumptions regarding the content of children’s early syntactic representations and how they subsequently develop towards the adult state. An important methodological tool in tapping syntactic knowledge is priming. In the current paper, we report the first longitudinal investigation of syntactic priming in children, to test the competing predictions of three different theoretical accounts. A sample of 106 children completed a syntactic priming task testing the English active/passive alternation every six months from 36 months to 54 months of age. We tracked both the emergence and development of the abstract priming effect and lexical boost effect. The lexical boost effect emerged late and increased in magnitude over development, whilst the abstract priming effect emerged early and, in a subsample of participants who produced at least one passive at 36 months, decreased in magnitude over time. In addition, there was substantial variation in the emergence of abstract priming amongst our sample, which was significantly predicted by language proficiency measured six months prior. We conclude that children’s representation of the passive is abstracted early, with lexically dependent priming coming online only later in development. The results are best explained by an implicit learning account of acquisition (Chang, F., Dell, G., S., & Bock, K. 2006. Becoming Syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–272), which induces dynamic syntactic representations from the input that continue to change across developmental time.

Abstract

Many natural auditory signals, including music and language, change periodically. The effect of such auditory rhythms on the brain is unclear however. One widely held view, dynamic attending theory, proposes that the attentional system entrains to the rhythm and increases attention at moments of rhythmic salience. In support, 2 experiments reported here show reduced response times to visual letter strings shown at auditory rhythm peaks, compared with rhythm troughs. However, we argue that an account invoking the entrainment of general attention should further predict rhythm entrainment to also influence memory for visual stimuli. In 2 pseudoword memory experiments we find evidence against this prediction. Whether a pseudoword is shown during an auditory rhythm peak or not is irrelevant for its later recognition memory in silence. Other attention manipulations, dividing attention and focusing attention, did result in a memory effect. This raises doubts about the suggested attentional nature of rhythm entrainment. We interpret our findings as support for auditory rhythm perception being based on auditory-motor entrainment, not general attention entrainment.

Abstract

Introduction: Mood is a constant in our daily life and can permeate all levels of cognition. We examined whether and how mood influences the processing of discourse content that is relatively neutral and not loaded with emotion. During discourse processing, readers have to constantly strike a balance between what they know in long term memory and what the current discourse is about. Our general hypothesis is that mood states would affect this balance. We hypothesized that readers in a positive mood would rely more on default world knowledge, whereas readers in a negative mood would be more inclined to analyze the details in the current discourse.

Methods: Participants were put in a positive and a negative mood via film clips, one week apart. In each session, after mood manipulation, they were presented with sentences in discourse materials. We created sentences such as “With the lights on you can see...” that end with critical words (CWs) “more” or “less”, where general knowledge supports “more”, not “less”. We then embedded each of these sentences in a wider discourse that does/does not support the CWs (a story about driving in the night vs. stargazing). EEG was recorded throughout.

Results: The results showed that first, mood manipulation was successful in that there was a significant mood difference between sessions. Second, mood did not modulate the N400 effects. Participants in both moods detected outright semantic violations and allowed world knowledge to be overridden by discourse context. Third, mood modulated the LPC (Late Positive Component) effects, distributed in the frontal region. In negative moods, the LPC was sensitive to one-level violation. That is, CWs that were supported by only world knowledge, only discourse, and neither, elicited larger frontal LPCs, in comparison to the condition where CWs were supported by both world knowledge and discourse.

Discussion: These results suggest that mood does not influence all processes involved in discourse processing. Specifically, mood does not influence lexical-semantic retrieval (N400), but it does influence elaborative processes for sensemaking (P600) during discourse processing. These results advance our understanding of the impact and time course of mood on discourse.

Abstract

The current electroencephalography study investigated the relationship between the motor and (language) comprehension systems by simultaneously measuring mu and N400 effects. Specifically, we examined whether the pattern of motor activation elicited by verbs depends on the larger sentential context. A robust N400 congruence effect confirmed the contextual manipulation of action plausibility, a form of semantic congruency. Importantly, this study showed that: (1) Action verbs elicited more mu power decrease than non-action verbs when sentences described plausible actions. Action verbs thus elicited more motor activation than non-action verbs. (2) In contrast, when sentences described implausible actions, mu activity was present but the difference between the verb types was not observed. The increased processing associated with a larger N400 thus coincided with mu activity in sentences describing implausible actions. Altogether, context-dependent motor activation appears to play a functional role in deriving context-sensitive meaning

Abstract

Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components.

Abstract

Using real-time eye-movement measures, we asked how a fantastical discourse context competes with stored representations of real-world events to influence the moment-by-moment interpretation of a story by 7-year-old children and adults. Seven-year-olds were less effective at bypassing stored real-world knowledge during real-time interpretation than adults. Our results suggest that children privilege stored semantic knowledge over situation-specific information presented in a fictional story context. We suggest that 7-year-olds’ canonical semantic and conceptual relations are sufficiently strongly rooted in statistical patterns in language that have consolidated over time that they overwhelm new and unexpected information even when the latter is fantastical and highly salient.

Abstract

The way we process language is influenced by our experience. We are more likely to attend to features that proved to be useful in the past. Importantly, the size of individuals’ social network can influence their experience, and consequently, how they process language. In the case of voice recognition, having a larger social network might provide more variable input and thus enhance the ability to recognise new voices. On the other hand, learning to recognise voices is more demanding and less beneficial for people with a larger social network as they have more speakers to learn yet spend less time with each. This paper tests whether social network size influences voice recognition, and if so, in which direction. Native Dutch speakers listed their social network and performed a voice recognition task. Results showed that people with larger social networks were poorer at learning to recognise voices. Experiment 2 replicated the results with a British sample and English stimuli. Experiment 3 showed that the effect does not generalise to voice recognition in an unfamiliar language suggesting that social network size influences attention to the linguistic rather than non-linguistic markers that differentiate speakers. The studies thus show that our social network size influences our inclination to learn speaker-specific patterns in our environment, and consequently, the development of skills that rely on such learned patterns, such as voice recognition.

Abstract

People learn language from their social environment. As individuals differ in their social networks, they might be exposed to input with different lexical distributions, and these might influence their linguistic representations and lexical choices. In this article we test the relation between linguistic performance and 3 social network properties that should influence input variability, namely, network size, network heterogeneity, and network density. In particular, we examine how these social network properties influence lexical prediction, lexical access, and lexical use. To do so, in Study 1, participants predicted how people of different ages would name pictures, and in Study 2 participants named the pictures themselves. In both studies, we examined how participants’ social network properties related to their performance. In Study 3, we ran simulations on norms we collected to see how age variability in one’s network influences the distribution of different names in the input. In all studies, network age heterogeneity influenced performance leading to better prediction, faster response times for difficult-to-name items, and less entropy in input distribution. These results suggest that individual differences in social network properties can influence linguistic behavior. Specifically, they show that having a more heterogeneous network is associated with better performance. These results also show that the same factors influence lexical prediction and lexical production, suggesting the two might be related.

Abstract

Speakers constantly learn language from the environment by sampling their linguistic input and adjusting their representations accordingly. Logically, people should attend more to the environment and adjust their behavior in accordance with it more the lower their success in the environment is. We test whether the learning of linguistic input follows this general principle in two studies: a corpus analysis of a TV game show, Jeopardy, and a laboratory task modeled after Go Fish. We show that lower (non-linguistic) success in the task modulates learning of and reliance on linguistic patterns in the environment. In Study 1, we find that poorer performance increases conformity with linguistic norms, as reflected by increased preference for frequent grammatical structures. In Study 2, which consists of a more interactive setting, poorer performance increases learning from the immediate social environment, as reflected by greater repetition of others’ grammatical structures. We propose that these results have implications for models of language production and language learning and for the propagation of language change. In particular, they suggest that linguistic changes might spread more quickly in times of crisis, or when the gap between more and less successful people is larger. The results might also suggest that innovations stem from successful individuals while their propagation would depend on relatively less successful individuals. We provide a few historical examples that are in line with the first suggested implication, namely, that the spread of linguistic changes is accelerated during difficult times, such as war time and an economic downturn

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech is generally harder to understand than native-accented speech. This difficulty is reduced for non-native listeners who share their first language with the non-native speaker. It is currently unclear, however, how non-native listeners deal with foreign-accented speech produced by speakers of a different language. We show that the process of (second) language acquisition is associated with an increase in the relative difficulty of processing foreign-accented speech. Therefore, experiencing greater relative difficulty with foreign-accented speech compared with native speech is a marker of language proficiency. These results contribute to our understanding of how phonological categories are acquired during second language learning.

Abstract

We learn language from our social environment. In general, the more sources we have, the less informative each of them is, and the less weight we should assign it. If this is the case, people who interact with fewer others should be more susceptible to the influence of each of their interlocutors. This paper tests whether indeed people who interact with fewer other people have more malleable phonological representations. Using a perceptual learning paradigm, this paper shows that individuals who regularly interact with fewer others are more likely to change their boundary between /d/ and /t/ following exposure to an atypical speaker. It further shows that the effect of number of interlocutors is not due to differences in ability to learn the speaker’s speech patterns, but specific to likelihood of generalizing the learned pattern. These results have implications for both language learning and language change, as they suggest that individuals with smaller social networks might play an important role in propagating linguistic changes.

Abstract

The deep structural diversity of languages suggests that our language capacities are not based on
any single template but rather on an underlying ability and motivation for infants to acquire a
culturally transmitted system. The hypothesis is that this ability has an interactional base that has
discernable precursors in other primates. In this paper I explore a specific evolutionary route for the
most puzzling aspect of this interactional base in humans, namely the development of an empathetic
intentional stance. The route involves a generalization of mother-infant interaction patterns to all
adults via a process (‘ cuteness selection’ ) analogous to, but distinct from, RA Fisher’s runaway
sexual selection. This provides a cornerstone for the carrying capacity for language.

Abstract

Zipf’s law of abbreviation, which posits a negative correlation between word frequency and length, is one of the most famous and robust cross-linguistic generalizations. At the same time, it has been shown that contextual informativity (average surprisal given previous context) is more strongly correlated with word length, although this tendency is not observed consistently, depending on several methodological choices. The present study examines a more diverse sample of languages than the previous studies (Arabic, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish). I use large web-based corpora from the Leipzig Corpora Collection to estimate word lengths in UTF-8 characters and in phonemes (for some of the languages), as well as word frequency, informativity given previous word and informativity given next word, applying different methods of bigrams processing. The results show different correlations between word length and the corpus-based measure for different languages. I argue that these differences can be explained by the properties of noun phrases in a language, most importantly, by the order of heads and modifiers and their relative morphological complexity, as well as by orthographic conventions

Abstract

We investigate the correlations between A- and P-lability for verbal arguments with other typological parameters using large, syntactically annotated corpora of online news in 28 languages. To estimate how much lability is observed in a language, we measure associations between Verbs or Verb + Noun combinations and the alternating constructions in which they occur. Our correlational analyses show that high P-lability scores correlate strongly with the following parameters: little or no case marking; weaker associations between lexemes and the grammatical roles A and P; rigid order of Subject and Object; and a high proportion of verb-medial clauses (SVO). Low P-lability correlates with the presence of case marking, stronger associations between nouns and grammatical roles, relatively flexible ordering of Subject and Object, and verb-final order. As for A-lability, it is not correlated with any other parameters. A possible reason is that A-lability is a result of more universal discourse processes, such as deprofiling of the object, and also exhibits numerous lexical and semantic idiosyncrasies. The fact that P-lability is strongly correlated with other parameters can be interpreted as evidence for a more general typology of languages, in which some tend to have highly informative morphosyntactic and lexical cues, whereas others rely predominantly on contextual environment, which is possibly due to fixed word order. We also find that P-lability is more strongly correlated with the other parameters than any of these parameters are with each other, which means that it can be a very useful typological variable.

Abstract

There is ample psycholinguistic evidence that speakers behave efficiently, using shorter and less effortful constructions when the meaning is more predictable, and longer and more effortful ones when it is less predictable. However, the Principle of No Synonymy requires that all formally distinct variants should also be functionally different. The question is how much two related constructions should overlap semantically and pragmatically in order to be used for the purposes of efficient communication. The case study focuses on want to + Infinitive and its reduced variant with wanna, which have different stylistic and sociolinguistic connotations. Bayesian mixed-effects regression modelling based on the spoken part of the British National Corpus reveals a very limited effect of efficiency: predictability increases the chances of the reduced variant only in fast speech. We conclude that efficient use of more and less effortful variants is restricted when two variants are associated with different registers or styles. This paper also pursues a methodological goal regarding missing values in speech corpora. We impute missing data based on the existing values. A comparison of regression models with and without imputed values reveals similar tendencies. This means that imputation is useful for dealing with missing values in corpora.

Abstract

The present paper discusses connectivity and proximity maps of causative constructions and combines them with different types of typological data. In the first case study, I show how one can create a connectivity map based on a parallel corpus. This allows us to solve many problems, such as incomplete descriptions, inconsistent terminology and the problem of determining the semantic nodes. The second part focuses on proximity maps based on Multidimensional Scaling and compares the most important semantic distinctions, which are inferred from a parallel corpus of film subtitles and from grammar descriptions. The results suggest that corpus-based maps of tokens are more sensitive to cultural and genre-related differences in the prominence of specific causation scenarios than maps based on constructional types, which are described in reference grammars. The grammar-based maps also reveal a less clear structure, which can be due to incomplete semantic descriptions in grammars. Therefore, each approach has its shortcomings, which researchers need to be aware of.

Abstract

Over the last few years, the number of corpora that can be used for language comparison has dramatically increased. The corpora are so diverse in their structure, size and annotation style, that a novice might not know where to start. The present paper charts this new and changing territory, providing a few landmarks, warning signs and safe paths. Although no corpora corpus at present can replace the traditional type of typological data based on language description in reference grammars, they corpora can help with diverse tasks, being particularly well suited for investigating probabilistic and gradient properties of languages and for discovering and interpreting cross-linguistic generalizations based on processing and communicative mechanisms. At the same time, the use of corpora for typological purposes has not only advantages and opportunities, but also numerous challenges. This paper also contains an empirical case study addressing two pertinent problems: the role of text types in language comparison and the problem of the word as a comparative concept.

Abstract

In this study, we used electroencephalography to investigate the influence of discourse-level semantic coherence on electrophysiological signatures of local sentence-level processing. Participants read groups of four sentences that could either form coherent stories or were semantically unrelated. For semantically coherent discourses compared to incoherent ones, the N400 was smaller at sentences 2–4, while the visual N1 was larger at the third and fourth sentences. Oscillatory activity in the beta frequency range (13–21 Hz) was higher for coherent discourses. We relate the N400 effect to a disruption of local sentence-level semantic processing when sentences are unrelated. Our beta findings can be tentatively related to disruption of local sentence-level syntactic processing, but it cannot be fully ruled out that they are instead (or also) related to disrupted local sentence-level semantic processing. We conclude that manipulating discourse-level semantic coherence does have an effect on oscillatory power related to local sentence-level processing.

Abstract

Arbitrary communication systems can emerge from iconic beginnings through processes of conventionalisation via interaction. Here, we explore whether this process of conventionalisation occurs with continuous, auditory signals. We conducted an artificial signalling experiment. Participants either created signals for themselves, or for a partner in a communication game. We found no evidence that the speech-like signals in our experiment became less iconic or simpler through interaction. We hypothesise that the reason for our results is that when it is difficult to be iconic initially because of the constraints of the modality, then iconicity needs to emerge to enable grounding before conventionalisation can occur. Further, pressures for discrimination, caused by the expanding meaning space in our study, may cause more complexity to emerge, again as a result of the restrictive signalling modality. Our findings have possible implications for the processes of conventionalisation possible in signed and spoken languages, as the spoken modality is more restrictive than the manual modality.

Abstract

In language evolution research, the use of computational and experimental methods to investigate the emergence of structure in language is exploding. In this review, we look exclusively at work exploring the emergence of structure in speech, on both a categorical level (what drives the emergence of an inventory of individual speech sounds), and a combinatorial level (how these individual speech sounds emerge and are reused as part of larger structures). We show that computational and experimental methods for investigating population-level processes can be effectively used to explore and measure the effects of learning, communication and transmission on the emergence of structure in speech. We also look at work on child language acquisition as a tool for generating and validating hypotheses for the emergence of speech categories. Further, we review the effects of noise, iconicity and production effects.

Abstract

How did human sound systems get to be the way they are? Collecting contributions implementing a wealth of methods to address this question, this special issue treats language and speech as being the result of a complex adaptive system. The work throughout provides evidence and theory at the levels of phylogeny, glossogeny and ontogeny. In taking a multi-disciplinary approach that considers interactions within and between these levels of selection, the papers collectively provide a valuable, integrated contribution to existing work on the evolution of speech and sound systems.

Abstract

In language, a small number of meaningless building blocks can be combined into an unlimited set of meaningful utterances. This is known as combinatorial structure. One hypothesis for the initial emergence of combinatorial structure in language is that recombining elements of signals solves the problem of overcrowding in a signal space. Another hypothesis is that iconicity may impede the emergence of combinatorial structure. However, how these two hypotheses relate to each other is not often discussed. In this paper, we explore how signal space dimensionality relates to both overcrowding in the signal space and iconicity. We use an artificial signalling experiment to test whether a signal space and a meaning space having similar topologies will generate an iconic system and whether, when the topologies differ, the emergence of combinatorially structured signals is facilitated. In our experiments, signals are created from participants' hand movements, which are measured using an infrared sensor. We found that participants take advantage of iconic signal-meaning mappings where possible. Further, we use trajectory predictability, measures of variance, and Hidden Markov Models to measure the use of structure within the signals produced and found that when topologies do not match, then there is more evidence of combinatorial structure. The results from these experiments are interpreted in the context of the differences between the emergence of combinatorial structure in different linguistic modalities (speech and sign).

Abstract

Prediction is an important part of language processing. An open question is to what extent people predict language in challenging circumstances. Here we tested the limits of prediction by asking bilingual Dutch native speakers to interpret Dutch sentences into their English counterparts. In two visual world experiments, we recorded participants’ eye movements to co-present visual objects while they engaged in interpreting tasks (consecutive and simultaneous interpreting). Most participants showed anticipatory eye movements to semantically-related upcoming target words in their L1 source language during both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. A quarter of participants during simultaneous interpretation however did not move their eyes, an extremely unusual participant behaviour in visual world studies. Overall, the findings suggest that most people predict in the source language under challenging interpreting situations. Further work is required to understand the causes of the absence of (anticipatory) eye movements during simultaneous interpretation in a substantial subset of individuals.

Abstract

As many distributional learning (DL) studies have shown, adult listeners can achieve discrimination of a difficult non-native contrast after a short repetitive exposure to tokens falling at the extremes of that contrast. Such studies have shown using behavioural methods that a short distributional training can induce perceptual learning of vowel and consonant contrasts. However, much less is known about the neurological correlates of DL, and few studies have examined non-native lexical tone contrasts. Here, Australian-English speakers underwent DL training on a Mandarin tone contrast using behavioural (discrimination, identification) and neural (oddball-EEG) tasks, with listeners hearing either a bimodal or a unimodal distribution. Behavioural results show that listeners learned to discriminate tones after both unimodal and bimodal training; while EEG responses revealed more learning for listeners exposed to the bimodal distribution. Thus, perceptual learning through exposure to brief sound distributions (a) extends to non-native tonal contrasts, and (b) is sensitive to task, phonetic distance, and acoustic cue-weighting. Our findings have implications for models of how auditory and phonetic constraints influence speech learning.

Abstract

Recurrent processing is a crucial feature in human visual processing supporting perceptual grouping, figure-ground segmentation, and recognition under challenging conditions. There is a clear need to incorporate recurrent processing in deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) but the computations underlying recurrent processing remain unclear. In this paper, we tested a form of recurrence in deep residual networks (ResNets) to capture recurrent processing signals in the human brain. Though ResNets are feedforward networks, they approximate an excitatory additive form of recurrence. Essentially, this form of recurrence consists of repeating excitatory activations in response to a static stimulus. Here, we used ResNets of varying depths (reflecting varying levels of recurrent processing) to explain electroencephalography (EEG) activity within a visual masking paradigm. Sixty-two humans and fifty artificial agents (10 ResNet models of depths - 4, 6, 10, 18 and 34) completed an object categorization task. We show that deeper networks (ResNet-10, 18 and 34) explained more variance in brain activity compared to shallower networks (ResNet-4 and 6). Furthermore, all ResNets captured differences in brain activity between unmasked and masked trials, with differences starting at ∼98ms (from stimulus onset). These early differences indicated that EEG activity reflected ‘pure’ feedforward signals only briefly (up to ∼98ms). After ∼98ms, deeper networks showed a significant increase in explained variance which peaks at ∼200ms, but only within unmasked trials, not masked trials. In summary, we provided clear evidence that excitatory additive recurrent processing in ResNets captures some of the recurrent processing in humans.