Publications

Displaying 301 - 400 of 9393
  • Dingemanse, M. (2023). Interjections. In E. Van Lier (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of word classes (pp. 477-491). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    No class of words has better claims to universality than interjections. At the same time, no category has more variable content than this one, traditionally the catch-all basket for linguistic items that bear a complicated relation to sentential syntax. Interjections are a mirror reflecting methodological and theoretical assumptions more than a coherent linguistic category that affords unitary treatment. This chapter focuses on linguistic items that typically function as free-standing utterances, and on some of the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical questions generated by such items. A key move is to study these items in the setting of conversational sequences, rather than from the “flatland” of sequential syntax. This makes visible how some of the most frequent interjections streamline everyday language use and scaffold complex language. Approaching interjections in terms of their sequential positions and interactional functions has the potential to reveal and explain patterns of universality and diversity in interjections.
  • Doerig, A., Sommers, R. P., Seeliger, K., Richards, B., Ismael, J., Lindsay, G. W., Kording, K. P., Konkle, T., Van Gerven, M. A. J., Kriegeskorte, N., & Kietzmann, T. C. (2023). The neuroconnectionist research programme. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 24, 431-450. doi:10.1038/s41583-023-00705-w.

    Abstract

    Artificial neural networks (ANNs) inspired by biology are beginning to be widely used to model behavioural and neural data, an approach we call ‘neuroconnectionism’. ANNs have been not only lauded as the current best models of information processing in the brain but also criticized for failing to account for basic cognitive functions. In this Perspective article, we propose that arguing about the successes and failures of a restricted set of current ANNs is the wrong approach to assess the promise of neuroconnectionism for brain science. Instead, we take inspiration from the philosophy of science, and in particular from Lakatos, who showed that the core of a scientific research programme is often not directly falsifiable but should be assessed by its capacity to generate novel insights. Following this view, we present neuroconnectionism as a general research programme centred around ANNs as a computational language for expressing falsifiable theories about brain computation. We describe the core of the programme, the underlying computational framework and its tools for testing specific neuroscientific hypotheses and deriving novel understanding. Taking a longitudinal view, we review past and present neuroconnectionist projects and their responses to challenges and argue that the research programme is highly progressive, generating new and otherwise unreachable insights into the workings of the brain.
  • Dong, T., & Toneva, M. (2023). Modeling brain responses to video stimuli using multimodal video transformers. In Proceedings of the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN 2023) (pp. 194-197).

    Abstract

    Prior work has shown that internal representations of artificial neural networks can significantly predict brain responses elicited by unimodal stimuli (i.e. reading a book chapter or viewing static images). However, the computational modeling of brain representations of naturalistic video stimuli, such as movies or TV shows, still remains underexplored. In this work, we present a promising approach for modeling vision-language brain representations of video stimuli by a transformer-based model that represents videos jointly through audio, text, and vision. We show that the joint representations of vision and text information are better aligned with brain representations of subjects watching a popular TV show. We further show that the incorporation of visual information improves brain alignment across several regions that support language processing.
  • D’Onofrio, G., Accogli, A., Severino, M., Caliskan, H., Kokotović, T., Blazekovic, A., Jercic, K. G., Markovic, S., Zigman, T., Goran, K., Barišić, N., Duranovic, V., Ban, A., Borovecki, F., Ramadža, D. P., Barić, I., Fazeli, W., Herkenrath, P., Marini, C., Vittorini, R. and 30 moreD’Onofrio, G., Accogli, A., Severino, M., Caliskan, H., Kokotović, T., Blazekovic, A., Jercic, K. G., Markovic, S., Zigman, T., Goran, K., Barišić, N., Duranovic, V., Ban, A., Borovecki, F., Ramadža, D. P., Barić, I., Fazeli, W., Herkenrath, P., Marini, C., Vittorini, R., Gowda, V., Bouman, A., Rocca, C., Alkhawaja, I. A., Murtaza, B. N., Rehman, M. M. U., Al Alam, C., Nader, G., Mancardi, M. M., Giacomini, T., Srivastava, S., Alvi, J. R., Tomoum, H., Matricardi, S., Iacomino, M., Riva, A., Scala, M., Madia, F., Pistorio, A., Salpietro, V., Minetti, C., Rivière, J.-B., Srour, M., Efthymiou, S., Maroofian, R., Houlden, H., Vernes, S. C., Zara, F., Striano, P., & Nagy, V. (2023). Genotype–phenotype correlation in contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP-2) developmental disorder. Human Genetics, 142, 909-925. doi:10.1007/s00439-023-02552-2.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    supplementary tables
  • Drijvers, L., & Holler, J. (2023). The multimodal facilitation effect in human communication. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30(2), 792-801. doi:10.3758/s13423-022-02178-x.

    Abstract

    During face-to-face communication, recipients need to rapidly integrate a plethora of auditory and visual signals. This integration of signals from many different bodily articulators, all offset in time, with the information in the speech stream may either tax the cognitive system, thus slowing down language processing, or may result in multimodal facilitation. Using the classical shadowing paradigm, participants shadowed speech from face-to-face, naturalistic dyadic conversations in an audiovisual context, an audiovisual context without visual speech (e.g., lips), and an audio-only context. Our results provide evidence of a multimodal facilitation effect in human communication: participants were faster in shadowing words when seeing multimodal messages compared with when hearing only audio. Also, the more visual context was present, the fewer shadowing errors were made, and the earlier in time participants shadowed predicted lexical items. We propose that the multimodal facilitation effect may contribute to the ease of fast face-to-face conversational interaction.
  • Drijvers, L., & Mazzini, S. (2023). Neural oscillations in audiovisual language and communication. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264086.013.455.

    Abstract

    How do neural oscillations support human audiovisual language and communication? Considering the rhythmic nature of audiovisual language, in which stimuli from different sensory modalities unfold over time, neural oscillations represent an ideal candidate to investigate how audiovisual language is processed in the brain. Modulations of oscillatory phase and power are thought to support audiovisual language and communication in multiple ways. Neural oscillations synchronize by tracking external rhythmic stimuli or by re-setting their phase to presentation of relevant stimuli, resulting in perceptual benefits. In particular, synchronized neural oscillations have been shown to subserve the processing and the integration of auditory speech, visual speech, and hand gestures. Furthermore, synchronized oscillatory modulations have been studied and reported between brains during social interaction, suggesting that their contribution to audiovisual communication goes beyond the processing of single stimuli and applies to natural, face-to-face communication.

    There are still some outstanding questions that need to be answered to reach a better understanding of the neural processes supporting audiovisual language and communication. In particular, it is not entirely clear yet how the multitude of signals encountered during audiovisual communication are combined into a coherent percept and how this is affected during real-world dyadic interactions. In order to address these outstanding questions, it is fundamental to consider language as a multimodal phenomenon, involving the processing of multiple stimuli unfolding at different rhythms over time, and to study language in its natural context: social interaction. Other outstanding questions could be addressed by implementing novel techniques (such as rapid invisible frequency tagging, dual-electroencephalography, or multi-brain stimulation) and analysis methods (e.g., using temporal response functions) to better understand the relationship between oscillatory dynamics and efficient audiovisual communication.
  • Düngen, D., Fitch, W. T., & Ravignani, A. (2023). Hoover the talking seal [quick guide]. Current Biology, 33, R50-R52. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.023.
  • Düngen, D., & Ravignani, A. (2023). The paradox of learned song in a semi-solitary mammal. Ethology, 129(9), 445-497. doi:10.1111/eth.13385.

    Abstract

    Learning can occur via trial and error; however, learning from conspecifics is faster and more efficient. Social animals can easily learn from conspecifics, but how do less social species learn? In particular, birds provide astonishing examples of social learning of vocalizations, while vocal learning from conspecifics is much less understood in mammals. We present a hypothesis aimed at solving an apparent paradox: how can harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) learn their song when their whole lives are marked by loose conspecific social contact? Harbor seal pups are raised individually by their mostly silent mothers. Pups' first few weeks of life show developed vocal plasticity; these weeks are followed by relatively silent years until sexually mature individuals start singing. How can this rather solitary life lead to a learned song? Why do pups display vocal plasticity at a few weeks of age, when this is apparently not needed? Our hypothesis addresses these questions and tries to explain how vocal learning fits into the natural history of harbor seals, and potentially other less social mammals. We suggest that harbor seals learn during a sensitive period within puppyhood, where they are exposed to adult males singing. In particular, we hypothesize that, to make this learning possible, the following happens concurrently: (1) mothers give birth right before male singing starts, (2) pups enter a sensitive learning phase around weaning time, which (3) coincides with their foraging expeditions at sea which, (4) in turn, coincide with the peak singing activity of adult males. In other words, harbor seals show vocal learning as pups so they can acquire elements of their future song from adults, and solitary adults can sing because they have acquired these elements as pups. We review the available evidence and suggest that pups learn adult vocalizations because they are born exactly at the right time to eavesdrop on singing adults. We conclude by advancing empirical predictions and testable hypotheses for future work.
  • Düngen, D., Sarfati, M., & Ravignani, A. (2023). Cross-species research in biomusicality: Methods, pitfalls, and prospects. In E. H. Margulis, P. Loui, & D. Loughridge (Eds.), The science-music borderlands: Reckoning with the past and imagining the future (pp. 57-95). Cambridge, MA, USA: The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/14186.003.0008.
  • Eekhof, L. S., Van Krieken, K., Sanders, J., & Willems, R. M. (2023). Engagement with narrative characters: The role of social-cognitive abilities and linguistic viewpoint. Discourse Processes, 60(6), 411-439. doi:10.1080/0163853X.2023.2206773.

    Abstract

    This article explores the role of text and reader characteristics in character engagement experiences. In an online study, participants completed several self-report and behavioral measures of social-cognitive abilities and read two literary narratives in which the presence of linguistic viewpoint markers was varied using a highly controlled manipulation strategy. Afterward, participants reported on their character engagement experiences. A principal component analysis on participants’ responses revealed the multidimensional nature of character engagement, which included both self- and other-oriented emotional responses (e.g., empathy, personal distress) as well as more cognitive responses (e.g., identification, perspective taking). Furthermore, character engagement was found to rely on a wide range of social-cognitive abilities but not on the presence of viewpoint markers. Finally, and most importantly, we did not find convincing evidence for an interplay between social-cognitive abilities and the presence of viewpoint markers. These findings suggest that readers rely on their social-cognitive abilities to engage with the inner worlds of fictional others, more so than on the lexical cues of those inner worlds provided by the text.
  • Egger, J. (2023). Need for speed? The role of speed of processing in early lexical development. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Eijk, L. (2023). Linguistic alignment: The syntactic, prosodic, and segmental phonetic levels. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Ekerdt, C., Takashima, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2023). Memory consolidation in second language neurocognition. In K. Morgan-Short, & J. G. Van Hell (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and neurolinguistics. Oxfordshire: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Acquiring a second language (L2) requires newly learned information to be integrated with existing knowledge. It has been proposed that several memory systems work together to enable this process of rapidly encoding new information and then slowly incorporating it with existing knowledge, such that it is consolidated and integrated into the language network without catastrophic interference. This chapter focuses on consolidation of L2 vocabulary. First, the complementary learning systems model is outlined, along with the model’s predictions regarding lexical consolidation. Next, word learning studies in first language (L1) that investigate the factors playing a role in consolidation, and the neural mechanisms underlying this, are reviewed. Using the L1 memory consolidation literature as background, the chapter then presents what is currently known about memory consolidation in L2 word learning. Finally, considering what is already known about L1 but not about L2, future research investigating memory consolidation in L2 neurocognition is proposed.
  • Emmendorfer, A. K., Bonte, M., Jansma, B. M., & Kotz, S. A. (2023). Sensitivity to syllable stress regularities in externally but not self‐triggered speech in Dutch. European Journal of Neuroscience, 58(1), 2297-2314. doi:10.1111/ejn.16003.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Supporting Information
  • Lu, A. T., Fei, Z., Haghani, A., Robeck, T. R., Zoller, J. A., Li, C. Z., Lowe, R., Yan, Q., Zhang, J., Vu, H., Ablaeva, J., Acosta-Rodriguez, V. A., Adams, D. M., Almunia, J., Aloysius, A., Ardehali, R., Arneson, A., Baker, C. S., Banks, G., Belov, K. and 168 moreLu, A. T., Fei, Z., Haghani, A., Robeck, T. R., Zoller, J. A., Li, C. Z., Lowe, R., Yan, Q., Zhang, J., Vu, H., Ablaeva, J., Acosta-Rodriguez, V. A., Adams, D. M., Almunia, J., Aloysius, A., Ardehali, R., Arneson, A., Baker, C. S., Banks, G., Belov, K., Bennett, N. C., Black, P., Blumstein, D. T., Bors, E. K., Breeze, C. E., Brooke, R. T., Brown, J. L., Carter, G. G., Caulton, A., Cavin, J. M., Chakrabarti, L., Chatzistamou, I., Chen, H., Cheng, K., Chiavellini, P., Choi, O. W., Clarke, S. M., Cooper, L. N., Cossette, M. L., Day, J., DeYoung, J., DiRocco, S., Dold, C., Ehmke, E. E., Emmons, C. K., Emmrich, S., Erbay, E., Erlacher-Reid, C., Faulkes, C. G., Ferguson, S. H., Finno, C. J., Flower, J. E., Gaillard, J. M., Garde, E., Gerber, L., Gladyshev, V. N., Gorbunova, V., Goya, R. G., Grant, M. J., Green, C. B., Hales, E. N., Hanson, M. B., Hart, D. W., Haulena, M., Herrick, K., Hogan, A. N., Hogg, C. J., Hore, T. A., Huang, T., Izpisua Belmonte, J. C., Jasinska, A. J., Jones, G., Jourdain, E., Kashpur, O., Katcher, H., Katsumata, E., Kaza, V., Kiaris, H., Kobor, M. S., Kordowitzki, P., Koski, W. R., Krützen, M., Kwon, S. B., Larison, B., Lee, S. G., Lehmann, M., Lemaitre, J. F., Levine, A. J., Li, C., Li, X., Lim, A. R., Lin, D. T. S., Lindemann, D. M., Little, T. J., Macoretta, N., Maddox, D., Matkin, C. O., Mattison, J. A., McClure, M., Mergl, J., Meudt, J. J., Montano, G. A., Mozhui, K., Munshi-South, J., Naderi, A., Nagy, M., Narayan, P., Nathanielsz, P. W., Nguyen, N. B., Niehrs, C., O’Brien, J. K., O’Tierney Ginn, P., Odom, D. T., Ophir, A. G., Osborn, S., Ostrander, E. A., Parsons, K. M., Paul, K. C., Pellegrini, M., Peters, K. J., Pedersen, A. B., Petersen, J. L., Pietersen, D. W., Pinho, G. M., Plassais, J., Poganik, J. R., Prado, N. A., Reddy, P., Rey, B., Ritz, B. R., Robbins, J., Rodriguez, M., Russell, J., Rydkina, E., Sailer, L. L., Salmon, A. B., Sanghavi, A., Schachtschneider, K. M., Schmitt, D., Schmitt, T., Schomacher, L., Schook, L. B., Sears, K. E., Seifert, A. W., Seluanov, A., Shafer, A. B. A., Shanmuganayagam, D., Shindyapina, A. V., Simmons, M., Singh, K., Sinha, I., Slone, J., Snell, R. G., Soltanmaohammadi, E., Spangler, M. L., Spriggs, M. C., Staggs, L., Stedman, N., Steinman, K. J., Stewart, D. T., Sugrue, V. J., Szladovits, B., Takahashi, J. S., Takasugi, M., Teeling, E. C., Thompson, M. J., Van Bonn, B., Vernes, S. C., Villar, D., Vinters, H. V., Wallingford, M. C., Wang, N., Wayne, R. K., Wilkinson, G. S., Williams, C. K., Williams, R. W., Yang, X. W., Yao, M., Young, B. G., Zhang, B., Zhang, Z., Zhao, P., Zhao, Y., Zhou, W., Zimmermann, J., Ernst, J., Raj, K., & Horvath, S. (2023). Universal DNA methylation age across mammalian tissues. Nature aging, 3, 1144-1166. doi:10.1038/s43587-023-00462-6.

    Abstract

    Aging, often considered a result of random cellular damage, can be accurately estimated using DNA methylation profiles, the foundation of pan-tissue epigenetic clocks. Here, we demonstrate the development of universal pan-mammalian clocks, using 11,754 methylation arrays from our Mammalian Methylation Consortium, which encompass 59 tissue types across 185 mammalian species. These predictive models estimate mammalian tissue age with high accuracy (r > 0.96). Age deviations correlate with human mortality risk, mouse somatotropic axis mutations and caloric restriction. We identified specific cytosines with methylation levels that change with age across numerous species. These sites, highly enriched in polycomb repressive complex 2-binding locations, are near genes implicated in mammalian development, cancer, obesity and longevity. Our findings offer new evidence suggesting that aging is evolutionarily conserved and intertwined with developmental processes across all mammals.
  • Ferré, G. (2023). Pragmatic gestures and prosody. In W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, S. Kadava, L. Van Maastricht, E. Mamus, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.), Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GeSpIn) Conference. doi:10.17617/2.3527215.

    Abstract

    The study presented here focuses on two pragmatic gestures:
    the hand flip (Ferré, 2011), a gesture of the Palm Up Open
    Hand/PUOH family (Müller, 2004) and the closed hand which
    can be considered as the opposite kind of movement to the open-
    ing of the hands present in the PUOH gesture. Whereas one of
    the functions of the hand flip has been described as presenting
    a new point in speech (Cienki, 2021), the closed hand gesture
    has not yet been described in the literature to the best of our
    knowledge. It can however be conceived of as having the oppo-
    site function of announcing the end of a point in discourse. The
    object of the present study is therefore to determine, with the
    study of prosodic features, if the two gestures are found in the
    same type of speech units and what their respective scope is.
    Drawing from a corpus of three TED Talks in French the
    prosodic characteristics of the speech that accompanies the two
    gestures will be examined. The hypothesis developed in the
    present paper is that their scope should be reflected in the
    prosody of accompanying speech, especially pitch key, tone,
    and relative pitch range. The prediction is that hand flips and
    closing hand gestures are expected to be located at the periph-
    ery of Intonation Phrases (IPs), Inter-Pausal Units (IPUs) or
    more conversational Turn Constructional Units (TCUs), and are
    likely to be co-occurrent with pauses in speech. But because of
    the natural slope of intonation in speech, the speech that accom-
    pany early gestures in Intonation Phrases should reveal different
    features from the speech at the end of intonational units. Tones
    should be different as well, considering the prosodic structure
    of spoken French.
  • Ferreira, F., & Huettig, F. (2023). Fast and slow language processing: A window into dual-process models of cognition. [Open Peer commentary on De Neys]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46: e121. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22003041.

    Abstract

    Our understanding of dual-process models of cognition may benefit from a consideration of language processing, as language comprehension involves fast and slow processes analogous to those used for reasoning. More specifically, De Neys's criticisms of the exclusivity assumption and the fast-to-slow switch mechanism are consistent with findings from the literature on the construction and revision of linguistic interpretations.
  • Fiveash, A., Ferreri, L., Bouwer, F. L., Kösem, A., Moghimi, S., Ravignani, A., Keller, P. E., & Tillmann, B. (2023). Can rhythm-mediated reward boost learning, memory, and social connection? Perspectives for future research. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 149: 105153. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105153.

    Abstract

    Studies of rhythm processing and of reward have progressed separately, with little connection between the two. However, consistent links between rhythm and reward are beginning to surface, with research suggesting that synchronization to rhythm is rewarding, and that this rewarding element may in turn also boost this synchronization. The current mini review shows that the combined study of rhythm and reward can be beneficial to better understand their independent and combined roles across two central aspects of cognition: 1) learning and memory, and 2) social connection and interpersonal synchronization; which have so far been studied largely independently. From this basis, it is discussed how connections between rhythm and reward can be applied to learning and memory and social connection across different populations, taking into account individual differences, clinical populations, human development, and animal research. Future research will need to consider the rewarding nature of rhythm, and that rhythm can in turn boost reward, potentially enhancing other cognitive and social processes.
  • Galke, L., Vagliano, I., Franke, B., Zielke, T., & Scherp, A. (2023). Lifelong learning on evolving graphs under the constraints of imbalanced classes and new classes. Neural networks, 164, 156-176. doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2023.04.022.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Link to preprint version code datasets
  • Gamba, M., Raimondi, T., De Gregorio, C., Valente, D., Carugati, F., Cristiano, W., Ferrario, V., Torti, V., Favaro, L., Friard, O., Giacoma, C., & Ravignani, A. (2023). Rhythmic categories across primate vocal displays. In A. Astolfi, F. Asdrubali, & L. Shtrepi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum 2023 (pp. 3971-3974). Torino: European Acoustics Association.

    Abstract

    The last few years have revealed that several species may share the building blocks of Musicality with humans. The recognition of these building blocks (e.g., rhythm, frequency variation) was a necessary impetus for a new round of studies investigating rhythmic variation in animal vocal displays. Singing primates are a small group of primate species that produce modulated songs ranging from tens to thousands of vocal units. Previous studies showed that the indri, the only singing lemur, is currently the only known species that perform duet and choruses showing multiple rhythmic categories, as seen in human music. Rhythmic categories occur when temporal intervals between note onsets are not uniformly distributed, and rhythms with a small integer ratio between these intervals are typical of human music. Besides indris, white-handed gibbons and three crested gibbon species showed a prominent rhythmic category corresponding to a single small integer ratio, isochrony. This study reviews previous evidence on the co-occurrence of rhythmic categories in primates and focuses on the prospects for a comparative, multimodal study of rhythmicity in this clade.
  • Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E. (2023). Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming. Cognition, 236: 105424. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105424.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    data and analysis scripts
  • Garcia, R., Albert, H. M. D., Bondoc, I. P., & Marzan, J. C. B. (2023). Collecting language acquisition data from understudied urban communities: A reply to Cristia et al. Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 522-526. doi:10.1017/S0305000922000721.

    Abstract

    In the target article, Cristia, Foushee, Aravena-Bravo, Cychosz, Scaff, and Casillas (2022) convincingly show the need to broaden the current language acquisition research base, not only in linguistic diversity, but also in terms of regions and cultural groups studied. In conducting acquisition research in understudied populations, such as in rural settings, the authors highlight the importance of using a multi-method approach. They present the challenges in adapting these methods to new settings and offer possible ways to promote this type of research. In this commentary, we extend the discussion to understudied urban communities, as we encounter several of the concerns raised in Cristia et al. when collecting observational and experimental language acquisition data from Metro Manila, Philippines. We first describe the community we study, the challenges and modifications needed for conducting research in this setting, and end with a discussion of possible strategies to promote research in communities with understudied populations.
  • Garrido Rodriguez, G., Norcliffe, E., Brown, P., Huettig, F., & Levinson, S. C. (2023). Anticipatory processing in a verb-initial Mayan language: Eye-tracking evidence during sentence comprehension in Tseltal. Cognitive Science, 47(1): e13292. doi:10.1111/cogs.13219.

    Abstract

    We present a visual world eye-tracking study on Tseltal (a Mayan language) and investigate whether verbal information can be used to anticipate an upcoming referent. Basic word order in transitive sentences in Tseltal is Verb-Object-Subject (VOS). The verb is usually encountered first, making argument structure and syntactic information available at the outset, which should facilitate anticipation of the post-verbal arguments. Tseltal speakers listened to verb-initial sentences with either an object-predictive verb (e.g., ‘eat’) or a general verb (e.g., ‘look for’) (e.g., “Ya slo’/sle ta stukel on te kereme”, Is eating/is looking (for) by himself the avocado the boy/ “The boy is eating/is looking (for) an avocado by himself”) while seeing a visual display showing one potential referent (e.g., avocado) and three distractors (e.g., bag, toy car, coffee grinder). We manipulated verb type (predictive vs. general) and recorded participants' eye-movements while they listened and inspected the visual scene. Participants’ fixations to the target referent were analysed using multilevel logistic regression models. Shortly after hearing the predictive verb, participants fixated the target object before it was mentioned. In contrast, when the verb was general, fixations to the target only started to increase once the object was heard. Our results suggest that Tseltal hearers pre-activate semantic features of the grammatical object prior to its linguistic expression. This provides evidence from a verb-initial language for online incremental semantic interpretation and anticipatory processing during language comprehension. These processes are comparable to the ones identified in subject-initial languages, which is consistent with the notion that different languages follow similar universal processing principles.
  • Giglio, L. (2023). Speaking in the Brain: How the brain produces and understands language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • González-Peñas, J., De Hoyos, L., Díaz-Caneja, C. M., Andreu-Bernabeu, Á., Stella, C., Gurriarán, X., Fañanás, L., Bobes, J., González-Pinto, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Martorell, L., Vilella, E., Muntané, G., Molto, M. D., Gonzalez-Piqueras, J. C., Parellada, M., Arango, C., & Costas, J. (2023). Recent natural selection conferred protection against schizophrenia by non-antagonistic pleiotropy. Scientific Reports, 13: 15500. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-42578-0.

    Abstract

    Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder associated with a reduced fertility and decreased life expectancy, yet common predisposing variation substantially contributes to the onset of the disorder, which poses an evolutionary paradox. Previous research has suggested balanced selection, a mechanism by which schizophrenia risk alleles could also provide advantages under certain environments, as a reliable explanation. However, recent studies have shown strong evidence against a positive selection of predisposing loci. Furthermore, evolutionary pressures on schizophrenia risk alleles could have changed throughout human history as new environments emerged. Here in this study, we used 1000 Genomes Project data to explore the relationship between schizophrenia predisposing loci and recent natural selection (RNS) signatures after the human diaspora out of Africa around 100,000 years ago on a genome-wide scale. We found evidence for significant enrichment of RNS markers in derived alleles arisen during human evolution conferring protection to schizophrenia. Moreover, both partitioned heritability and gene set enrichment analyses of mapped genes from schizophrenia predisposing loci subject to RNS revealed a lower involvement in brain and neuronal related functions compared to those not subject to RNS. Taken together, our results suggest non-antagonistic pleiotropy as a likely mechanism behind RNS that could explain the persistence of schizophrenia common predisposing variation in human populations due to its association to other non-psychiatric phenotypes.
  • Green, K., Osei-Cobbina, C., Perlman, M., & Kita, S. (2023). Infants can create different types of iconic gestures, with and without parental scaffolding. In W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, S. Kadava, L. Van Maastricht, E. Mamus, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.), Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GeSpIn) Conference. doi:10.17617/2.3527188.

    Abstract

    Despite the early emergence of pointing, children are generally not documented to produce iconic gestures until later in development. Although research has described this developmental trajectory and the types of iconic gestures that emerge first, there has been limited focus on iconic gestures within interactional contexts. This study identified the first 10 iconic gestures produced by five monolingual English-speaking children in a naturalistic longitudinal video corpus and analysed the interactional contexts. We found children produced their first iconic gesture between 12 and 20 months and that gestural types varied. Although 34% of gestures could have been imitated or derived from adult or child actions in the preceding context, the majority were produced independently of any observed model. In these cases, adults often led the interaction in a direction where iconic gesture was an appropriate response. Overall, we find infants can represent a referent symbolically and possess a greater capacity for innovation than previously assumed. In order to develop our understanding of how children learn to produce iconic gestures, it is important to consider the immediate interactional context. Conducting naturalistic corpus analyses could be a more ecologically valid approach to understanding how children learn to produce iconic gestures in real life contexts.
  • Guest, O., & Martin, A. E. (2023). On logical inference over brains, behaviour, and artificial neural networks. Computational Brain & Behavior, 6, 213-227. doi:10.1007/s42113-022-00166-x.

    Abstract

    In the cognitive, computational, and neuro-sciences, practitioners often reason about what computational models represent or learn, as well as what algorithm is instantiated. The putative goal of such reasoning is to generalize claims about the model in question, to claims about the mind and brain, and the neurocognitive capacities of those systems. Such inference is often based on a model’s performance on a task, and whether that performance approximates human behavior or brain activity. Here we demonstrate how such argumentation problematizes the relationship between models and their targets; we place emphasis on artificial neural networks (ANNs), though any theory-brain relationship that falls into the same schema of reasoning is at risk. In this paper, we model inferences from ANNs to brains and back within a formal framework — metatheoretical calculus — in order to initiate a dialogue on both how models are broadly understood and used, and on how to best formally characterize them and their functions. To these ends, we express claims from the published record about models’ successes and failures in first-order logic. Our proposed formalization describes the decision-making processes enacted by scientists to adjudicate over theories. We demonstrate that formalizing the argumentation in the literature can uncover potential deep issues about how theory is related to phenomena. We discuss what this means broadly for research in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology; what it means for models when they lose the ability to mediate between theory and data in a meaningful way; and what this means for the metatheoretical calculus our fields deploy when performing high-level scientific inference.
  • Haghani, A., Li, C. Z., Robeck, T. R., Zhang, J., Lu, A. T., Ablaeva, J., Acosta-Rodríguez, V. A., Adams, D. M., Alagaili, A. N., Almunia, J., Aloysius, A., Amor, N. M. S., Ardehali, R., Arneson, A., Baker, C. S., Banks, G., Belov, K., Bennett, N. C., Black, P., Blumstein, D. T. and 170 moreHaghani, A., Li, C. Z., Robeck, T. R., Zhang, J., Lu, A. T., Ablaeva, J., Acosta-Rodríguez, V. A., Adams, D. M., Alagaili, A. N., Almunia, J., Aloysius, A., Amor, N. M. S., Ardehali, R., Arneson, A., Baker, C. S., Banks, G., Belov, K., Bennett, N. C., Black, P., Blumstein, D. T., Bors, E. K., Breeze, C. E., Brooke, R. T., Brown, J. L., Carter, G., Caulton, A., Cavin, J. M., Chakrabarti, L., Chatzistamou, I., Chavez, A. S., Chen, H., Cheng, K., Chiavellini, P., Choi, O.-W., Clarke, S., Cook, J. A., Cooper, L. N., Cossette, M.-L., Day, J., DeYoung, J., Dirocco, S., Dold, C., Dunnum, J. L., Ehmke, E. E., Emmons, C. K., Emmrich, S., Erbay, E., Erlacher-Reid, C., Faulkes, C. G., Fei, Z., Ferguson, S. H., Finno, C. J., Flower, J. E., Gaillard, J.-M., Garde, E., Gerber, L., Gladyshev, V. N., Goya, R. G., Grant, M. J., Green, C. B., Hanson, M. B., Hart, D. W., Haulena, M., Herrick, K., Hogan, A. N., Hogg, C. J., Hore, T. A., Huang, T., Izpisua Belmonte, J. C., Jasinska, A. J., Jones, G., Jourdain, E., Kashpur, O., Katcher, H., Katsumata, E., Kaza, V., Kiaris, H., Kobor, M. S., Kordowitzki, P., Koski, W. R., Krützen, M., Kwon, S. B., Larison, B., Lee, S.-G., Lehmann, M., Lemaître, J.-F., Levine, A. J., Li, X., Li, C., Lim, A. R., Lin, D. T. S., Lindemann, D. M., Liphardt, S. W., Little, T. J., Macoretta, N., Maddox, D., Matkin, C. O., Mattison, J. A., McClure, M., Mergl, J., Meudt, J. J., Montano, G. A., Mozhui, K., Munshi-South, J., Murphy, W. J., Naderi, A., Nagy, M., Narayan, P., Nathanielsz, P. W., Nguyen, N. B., Niehrs, C., Nyamsuren, B., O’Brien, J. K., Ginn, P. O., Odom, D. T., Ophir, A. G., Osborn, S., Ostrander, E. A., Parsons, K. M., Paul, K. C., Pedersen, A. B., Pellegrini, M., Peters, K. J., Petersen, J. L., Pietersen, D. W., Pinho, G. M., Plassais, J., Poganik, J. R., Prado, N. A., Reddy, P., Rey, B., Ritz, B. R., Robbins, J., Rodriguez, M., Russell, J., Rydkina, E., Sailer, L. L., Salmon, A. B., Sanghavi, A., Schachtschneider, K. M., Schmitt, D., Schmitt, T., Schomacher, L., Schook, L. B., Sears, K. E., Seifert, A. W., Shafer, A. B. A., Shindyapina, A. V., Simmons, M., Singh, K., Sinha, I., Slone, J., Snell, R. G., Soltanmohammadi, E., Spangler, M. L., Spriggs, M., Staggs, L., Stedman, N., Steinman, K. J., Stewart, D. T., Sugrue, V. J., Szladovits, B., Takahashi, J. S., Takasugi, M., Teeling, E. C., Thompson, M. J., Van Bonn, B., Vernes, S. C., Villar, D., Vinters, H. V., Vu, H., Wallingford, M. C., Wang, N., Wilkinson, G. S., Williams, R. W., Yan, Q., Yao, M., Young, B. G., Zhang, B., Zhang, Z., Zhao, Y., Zhao, P., Zhou, W., Zoller, J. A., Ernst, J., Seluanov, A., Gorbunova, V., Yang, X. W., Raj, K., & Horvath, S. (2023). DNA methylation networks underlying mammalian traits. Science, 381(6658): eabq5693. doi:10.1126/science.abq5693.

    Abstract

    INTRODUCTION
    Comparative epigenomics is an emerging field that combines epigenetic signatures with phylogenetic relationships to elucidate species characteristics such as maximum life span. For this study, we generated cytosine DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles (n = 15,456) from 348 mammalian species using a methylation array platform that targets highly conserved cytosines.
    RATIONALE
    Nature has evolved mammalian species of greatly differing life spans. To resolve the relationship of DNAm with maximum life span and phylogeny, we performed a large-scale cross-species unsupervised analysis. Comparative studies in many species enables the identification of epigenetic correlates of maximum life span and other traits.
    RESULTS
    We first tested whether DNAm levels in highly conserved cytosines captured phylogenetic relationships among species. We constructed phyloepigenetic trees that paralleled the traditional phylogeny. To avoid potential confounding by different tissue types, we generated tissue-specific phyloepigenetic trees. The high phyloepigenetic-phylogenetic congruence is due to differences in methylation levels and is not confounded by sequence conservation.
    We then interrogated the extent to which DNA methylation associates with specific biological traits. We used an unsupervised weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) to identify clusters of highly correlated CpGs (comethylation modules). WGCNA identified 55 distinct comethylation modules, of which 30 were significantly associated with traits including maximum life span, adult weight, age, sex, human mortality risk, or perturbations that modulate murine life span.
    Both the epigenome-wide association analysis (EWAS) and eigengene-based analysis identified methylation signatures of maximum life span, and most of these were independent of aging, presumably set at birth, and could be stable predictors of life span at any point in life. Several CpGs that are more highly methylated in long-lived species are located near HOXL subclass homeoboxes and other genes that play a role in morphogenesis and development. Some of these life span–related CpGs are located next to genes that are also implicated in our analysis of upstream regulators (e.g., ASCL1 and SMAD6). CpGs with methylation levels that are inversely related to life span are enriched in transcriptional start site (TSS1) and promoter flanking (PromF4, PromF5) associated chromatin states. Genes located in chromatin state TSS1 are constitutively active and enriched for nucleic acid metabolic processes. This suggests that long-living species evolved mechanisms that maintain low methylation levels in these chromatin states that would favor higher expression levels of genes essential for an organism’s survival.
    The upstream regulator analysis of the EWAS of life span identified the pluripotency transcription factors OCT4, SOX2, and NANOG. Other factors, such as POLII, CTCF, RAD21, YY1, and TAF1, showed the strongest enrichment for negatively life span–related CpGs.
    CONCLUSION
    The phyloepigenetic trees indicate that divergence of DNA methylation profiles closely parallels that of genetics through evolution. Our results demonstrate that DNA methylation is subjected to evolutionary pressures and selection. The publicly available data from our Mammalian Methylation Consortium are a rich source of information for different fields such as evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and aging.
  • Hagoort, P. (2023). The language marker hypothesis. Cognition, 230: 105252. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105252.

    Abstract

    According to the language marker hypothesis language has provided homo sapiens with a rich symbolic system that plays a central role in interpreting signals delivered by our sensory apparatus, in shaping action goals, and in creating a powerful tool for reasoning and inferencing. This view provides an important correction on embodied accounts of language that reduce language to action, perception, emotion and mental simulation. The presence of a language system has, however, also important consequences for perception, action, emotion, and memory. Language stamps signals from perception, action, and emotional systems with rich cognitive markers that transform the role of these signals in the overall cognitive architecture of the human mind. This view does not deny that language is implemented by means of universal principles of neural organization. However, language creates the possibility to generate rich internal models of the world that are shaped and made accessible by the characteristics of a language system. This makes us less dependent on direct action-perception couplings and might even sometimes go at the expense of the veridicality of perception. In cognitive (neuro)science the pendulum has swung from language as the key to understand the organization of the human mind to the perspective that it is a byproduct of perception and action. It is time that it partly swings back again.
  • Hagoort, P. (2023). Zij zijn ons brein en andere beschouwingen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguistiek.
  • Hamilton, A., & Holler, J. (Eds.). (2023). Face2face: Advancing the science of social interaction [Special Issue]. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences. Retrieved from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2023/378/1875.

    Abstract

    Face to face interaction is fundamental to human sociality but is very complex to study in a scientific fashion. This theme issue brings together cutting-edge approaches to the study of face-to-face interaction and showcases how we can make progress in this area. Researchers are now studying interaction in adult conversation, parent-child relationships, neurodiverse groups, interactions with virtual agents and various animal species. The theme issue reveals how new paradigms are leading to more ecologically grounded and comprehensive insights into what social interaction is. Scientific advances in this area can lead to improvements in education and therapy, better understanding of neurodiversity and more engaging artificial agents
  • Hamilton, A., & Holler, J. (2023). Face2face: Advancing the science of social interaction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 378(1875): 20210470. doi:10.1098/rstb.2021.0470.

    Abstract

    Face-to-face interaction is core to human sociality and its evolution, and provides the environment in which most of human communication occurs. Research into the full complexities that define face-to-face interaction requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-level approach, illuminating from different perspectives how we and other species interact. This special issue showcases a wide range of approaches, bringing together detailed studies of naturalistic social-interactional behaviour with larger scale analyses for generalization, and investigations of socially contextualized cognitive and neural processes that underpin the behaviour we observe. We suggest that this integrative approach will allow us to propel forwards the science of face-to-face interaction by leading us to new paradigms and novel, more ecologically grounded and comprehensive insights into how we interact with one another and with artificial agents, how differences in psychological profiles might affect interaction, and how the capacity to socially interact develops and has evolved in the human and other species. This theme issue makes a first step into this direction, with the aim to break down disciplinary boundaries and emphasizing the value of illuminating the many facets of face-to-face interaction.
  • Harmon, Z., Barak, L., Shafto, P., Edwards, J., & Feldman, N. H. (2023). The competition-compensation account of developmental language disorder. Developmental Science, 26(4): e13364. doi:10.1111/desc.13364.

    Abstract

    Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) regularly use the bare form of verbs (e.g., dance) instead of inflected forms (e.g., danced). We propose an account of this behavior in which processing difficulties of children with DLD disproportionally affect processing novel inflected verbs in their input. Limited experience with inflection in novel contexts leads the inflection to face stronger competition from alternatives. Competition is resolved through a compensatory behavior that involves producing a more accessible alternative: in English, the bare form. We formalize this hypothesis within a probabilistic model that trades off context-dependent versus independent processing. Results show an over-reliance on preceding stem contexts when retrieving the inflection in a model that has difficulty with processing novel inflected forms. We further show that following the introduction of a bias to store and retrieve forms with preceding contexts, generalization in the typically developing (TD) models remains more or less stable, while the same bias in the DLD models exaggerates difficulties with generalization. Together, the results suggest that inconsistent use of inflectional morphemes by children with DLD could stem from inferences they make on the basis of data containing fewer novel inflected forms. Our account extends these findings to suggest that problems with detecting a form in novel contexts combined with a bias to rely on familiar contexts when retrieving a form could explain sequential planning difficulties in children with DLD.
  • Heim, F., Fisher, S. E., Scharff, C., Ten Cate, C., & Riebel, K. (2023). Effects of cortical FoxP1 knockdowns on learned song preference in female zebra finches. eNeuro, 10(3): ENEURO.0328-22.2023. doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0328-22.2023.

    Abstract

    The search for molecular underpinnings of human vocal communication has focused on genes encoding forkhead-box transcription factors, as rare disruptions of FOXP1, FOXP2, and FOXP4 have been linked to disorders involving speech and language deficits. In male songbirds, an animal model for vocal learning, experimentally altered expression levels of these transcription factors impair song production learning. The relative contributions of auditory processing, motor function or auditory-motor integration to the deficits observed after different FoxP manipulations in songbirds are unknown. To examine the potential effects on auditory learning and development, we focused on female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) that do not sing but develop song memories, which can be assayed in operant preference tests. We tested whether the relatively high levels of FoxP1 expression in forebrain areas implicated in female song preference learning are crucial for the development and/or maintenance of this behavior. Juvenile and adult female zebra finches received FoxP1 knockdowns targeted to HVC (proper name) or to the caudomedial mesopallium (CMM). Irrespective of target site and whether the knockdown took place before (juveniles) or after (adults) the sensitive phase for song memorization, all groups preferred their tutor’s song. However, adult females with FoxP1 knockdowns targeted at HVC showed weaker motivation to hear song and weaker song preferences than sham-treated controls, while no such differences were observed after knockdowns in CMM or in juveniles. In summary, FoxP1 knockdowns in the cortical song nucleus HVC were not associated with impaired tutor song memory but reduced motivation to actively request tutor songs.
  • Hellwig, B., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., Defina, R., Kelly, B. F., & Kidd, E. (Eds.). (2023). The acquisition sketch project [Special Issue]. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication, 28.

    Abstract

    This special publication aims to build a renewed enthusiasm for collecting acquisition data across many languages, including those facing endangerment and loss. It presents a guide for documenting and describing child language and child-directed language in diverse languages and cultures, as well as a collection of acquisition sketches based on this guide. The guide is intended for anyone interested in working across child language and language documentation, including, for example, field linguists and language documenters, community language workers, child language researchers or graduate students.
  • Hellwig, B., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., Defina, R., Kelly, B. F., & Kidd, E. (2023). Introduction: The acquisition sketch project. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication, 28, 1-3. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10125/74718.
  • Henke, L., Lewis, A. G., & Meyer, L. (2023). Fast and slow rhythms of naturalistic reading revealed by combined eye-tracking and electroencephalography. The Journal of Neuroscience, 43(24), 4461-4469. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1849-22.2023.

    Abstract

    Neural oscillations are thought to support speech and language processing. They may not only inherit acoustic rhythms, but might also impose endogenous rhythms onto processing. In support of this, we here report that human (both male and female) eye movements during naturalistic reading exhibit rhythmic patterns that show frequency-selective coherence with the EEG, in the absence of any stimulation rhythm. Periodicity was observed in two distinct frequency bands: First, word-locked saccades at 4-5 Hz display coherence with whole-head theta-band activity. Second, fixation durations fluctuate rhythmically at ∼1 Hz, in coherence with occipital delta-band activity. This latter effect was additionally phase-locked to sentence endings, suggesting a relationship with the formation of multi-word chunks. Together, eye movements during reading contain rhythmic patterns that occur in synchrony with oscillatory brain activity. This suggests that linguistic processing imposes preferred processing time scales onto reading, largely independent of actual physical rhythms in the stimulus.
  • Hersh, T. A., Ravignani, A., & Burchardt, L. (2023). Robust rhythm reporting will advance ecological and evolutionary research. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 14(6), 1398-1407. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.14118.

    Abstract


    Rhythmicity in the millisecond to second range is a fundamental building block of communication and coordinated movement. But how widespread are rhythmic capacities across species, and how did they evolve under different environmental pressures? Comparative research is necessary to answer these questions but has been hindered by limited crosstalk and comparability among results from different study species.
    Most acoustics studies do not explicitly focus on characterising or quantifying rhythm, but many are just a few scrapes away from contributing to and advancing the field of comparative rhythm research. Here, we present an eight-level rhythm reporting framework which details actionable steps researchers can take to report rhythm-relevant metrics. Levels fall into two categories: metric reporting and data sharing. Metric reporting levels include defining rhythm-relevant metrics, providing point estimates of temporal interval variability, reporting interval distributions, and conducting rhythm analyses. Data sharing levels are: sharing audio recordings, sharing interval durations, sharing sound element start and end times, and sharing audio recordings with sound element start/end times.
    Using sounds recorded from a sperm whale as a case study, we demonstrate how each reporting framework level can be implemented on real data. We also highlight existing best practice examples from recent research spanning multiple species. We clearly detail how engagement with our framework can be tailored case-by-case based on how much time and effort researchers are willing to contribute. Finally, we illustrate how reporting at any of the suggested levels will help advance comparative rhythm research.
    This framework will actively facilitate a comparative approach to acoustic rhythms while also promoting cooperation and data sustainability. By quantifying and reporting rhythm metrics more consistently and broadly, new avenues of inquiry and several long-standing, big picture research questions become more tractable. These lines of research can inform not only about the behavioural ecology of animals but also about the evolution of rhythm-relevant phenomena and the behavioural neuroscience of rhythm production and perception. Rhythm is clearly an emergent feature of life; adopting our framework, researchers from different fields and with different study species can help understand why.

    Additional information

    Research Data availability
  • Hintz, F., Khoe, Y. H., Strauß, A., Psomakas, A. J. A., & Holler, J. (2023). Electrophysiological evidence for the enhancement of gesture-speech integration by linguistic predictability during multimodal discourse comprehension. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 23, 340-353. doi:10.3758/s13415-023-01074-8.

    Abstract

    In face-to-face discourse, listeners exploit cues in the input to generate predictions about upcoming words. Moreover, in addition to speech, speakers produce a multitude of visual signals, such as iconic gestures, which listeners readily integrate with incoming words. Previous studies have shown that processing of target words is facilitated when these are embedded in predictable compared to non-predictable discourses and when accompanied by iconic compared to meaningless gestures. In the present study, we investigated the interaction of both factors. We recorded electroencephalogram from 60 Dutch adults while they were watching videos of an actress producing short discourses. The stimuli consisted of an introductory and a target sentence; the latter contained a target noun. Depending on the preceding discourse, the target noun was either predictable or not. Each target noun was paired with an iconic gesture and a gesture that did not convey meaning. In both conditions, gesture presentation in the video was timed such that the gesture stroke slightly preceded the onset of the spoken target by 130 ms. Our ERP analyses revealed independent facilitatory effects for predictable discourses and iconic gestures. However, the interactive effect of both factors demonstrated that target processing (i.e., gesture-speech integration) was facilitated most when targets were part of predictable discourses and accompanied by an iconic gesture. Our results thus suggest a strong intertwinement of linguistic predictability and non-verbal gesture processing where listeners exploit predictive discourse cues to pre-activate verbal and non-verbal representations of upcoming target words.
  • Hintz, F., Voeten, C. C., & Scharenborg, O. (2023). Recognizing non-native spoken words in background noise increases interference from the native language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30, 1549-1563. doi:10.3758/s13423-022-02233-7.

    Abstract

    Listeners frequently recognize spoken words in the presence of background noise. Previous research has shown that noise reduces phoneme intelligibility and hampers spoken-word recognition—especially for non-native listeners. In the present study, we investigated how noise influences lexical competition in both the non-native and the native language, reflecting the degree to which both languages are co-activated. We recorded the eye movements of native Dutch participants as they listened to English sentences containing a target word while looking at displays containing four objects. On target-present trials, the visual referent depicting the target word was present, along with three unrelated distractors. On target-absent trials, the target object (e.g., wizard) was absent. Instead, the display contained an English competitor, overlapping with the English target in phonological onset (e.g., window), a Dutch competitor, overlapping with the English target in phonological onset (e.g., wimpel, pennant), and two unrelated distractors. Half of the sentences was masked by speech-shaped noise; the other half was presented in quiet. Compared to speech in quiet, noise delayed fixations to the target objects on target-present trials. For target-absent trials, we observed that the likelihood for fixation biases towards the English and Dutch onset competitors (over the unrelated distractors) was larger in noise than in quiet. Our data thus show that the presence of background noise increases lexical competition in the task-relevant non-native (English) and in the task-irrelevant native (Dutch) language. The latter reflects stronger interference of one’s native language during non-native spoken-word recognition under adverse conditions.

    Additional information

    table 2 target-absent items
  • De Hoop, H., Levshina, N., & Segers, M. (2023). The effect of the use of T and V pronouns in Dutch HR communication. Journal of Pragmatics, 203, 96-109. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2022.11.017.

    Abstract

    In an online experiment among native speakers of Dutch we measured addressees' responses to emails written in the informal pronoun T or the formal pronoun V in HR communication. 172 participants (61 male, mean age 37 years) read either the V-versions or the T-versions of two invitation emails and two rejection emails by four different fictitious recruiters. After each email, participants had to score their appreciation of the company and the recruiter on five different scales each, such as The recruiter who wrote this email seems … [scale from friendly to unfriendly]. We hypothesized that (i) the V-pronoun would be more appreciated in letters of rejection, and the T-pronoun in letters of invitation, and (ii) older people would appreciate the V-pronoun more than the T-pronoun, and the other way around for younger people. Although neither of these hypotheses was supported, we did find a small effect of pronoun: Emails written in V were more highly appreciated than emails in T, irrespective of type of email (invitation or rejection), and irrespective of the participant's age, gender, and level of education. At the same time, we observed differences in the strength of this effect across different scales.
  • Horton, S., Jackson, V., Boyce, J., Franken, M.-C., Siemers, S., St John, M., Hearps, S., Van Reyk, O., Braden, R., Parker, R., Vogel, A. P., Eising, E., Amor, D. J., Irvine, J., Fisher, S. E., Martin, N. G., Reilly, S., Bahlo, M., Scheffer, I., & Morgan, A. (2023). Self-reported stuttering severity is accurate: Informing methods for large-scale data collection in stuttering. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. doi:10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00081.

    Abstract

    Purpose:
    To our knowledge, there are no data examining the agreement between self-reported and clinician-rated stuttering severity. In the era of big data, self-reported ratings have great potential utility for large-scale data collection, where cost and time preclude in-depth assessment by a clinician. Equally, there is increasing emphasis on the need to recognize an individual's experience of their own condition. Here, we examined the agreement between self-reported stuttering severity compared to clinician ratings during a speech assessment. As a secondary objective, we determined whether self-reported stuttering severity correlated with an individual's subjective impact of stuttering.

    Method:
    Speech-language pathologists conducted face-to-face speech assessments with 195 participants (137 males) aged 5–84 years, recruited from a cohort of people with self-reported stuttering. Stuttering severity was rated on a 10-point scale by the participant and by two speech-language pathologists. Participants also completed the Overall Assessment of the Subjective Experience of Stuttering (OASES). Clinician and participant ratings were compared. The association between stuttering severity and the OASES scores was examined.

    Results:
    There was a strong positive correlation between speech-language pathologist and participant-reported ratings of stuttering severity. Participant-reported stuttering severity correlated weakly with the four OASES domains and with the OASES overall impact score.

    Conclusions:
    Participants were able to accurately rate their stuttering severity during a speech assessment using a simple one-item question. This finding indicates that self-report stuttering severity is a suitable method for large-scale data collection. Findings also support the collection of self-report subjective experience data using questionnaires, such as the OASES, which add vital information about the participants' experience of stuttering that is not captured by overt speech severity ratings alone.
  • Huettig, F., Voeten, C. C., Pascual, E., Liang, J., & Hintz, F. (2023). Do autistic children differ in language-mediated prediction? Cognition, 239: 105571. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105571.

    Abstract

    Prediction appears to be an important characteristic of the human mind. It has also been suggested that prediction is a core difference of autistic children. Past research exploring language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children, however, has been somewhat contradictory, with some studies finding normal anticipatory processing in autistic children with low levels of autistic traits but others observing weaker prediction effects in autistic children with less receptive language skills. Here we investigated language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in young children who differed in the severity of their level of autistic traits and were in professional institutional care in Hangzhou, China. We chose the same spoken sentences (translated into Mandarin Chinese) and visual stimuli as a previous study which observed robust prediction effects in young children (Mani & Huettig, 2012) and included a control group of typically-developing children. Typically developing but not autistic children showed robust prediction effects. Most interestingly, autistic children with lower communication, motor, and (adaptive) behavior scores exhibited both less predictive and non-predictive visual attention behavior. Our results raise the possibility that differences in language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children with higher levels of autistic traits may be differences in visual attention in disguise, a hypothesis that needs further investigation.
  • Huettig, F., & Ferreira, F. (2023). The myth of normal reading. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 863-870. doi:10.1177/17456916221127226.

    Abstract

    We argue that the educational and psychological sciences must embrace the diversity of reading rather than chase the phantom of normal reading behavior. We critically discuss the research practice of asking participants in experiments to read “normally”. We then draw attention to the large cross-cultural and linguistic diversity around the world and consider the enormous diversity of reading situations and goals. Finally, we observe that people bring a huge diversity of brains and experiences to the reading task. This leads to certain implications. First, there are important lessons for how to conduct psycholinguistic experiments. Second, we need to move beyond Anglo-centric reading research and produce models of reading that reflect the large cross-cultural diversity of languages and types of writing systems. Third, we must acknowledge that there are multiple ways of reading and reasons for reading, and none of them is normal or better or a “gold standard”. Finally, we must stop stigmatizing individuals who read differently and for different reasons, and there should be increased focus on teaching the ability to extract information relevant to the person’s goals. What is important is not how well people decode written language and how fast people read but what people comprehend given their own stated goals.
  • Huisman, J. L. A., Van Hout, R., & Majid, A. (2023). Cross-linguistic constraints and lineage-specific developments in the semantics of cutting and breaking in Japonic and Germanic. Linguistic Typology, 27(1), 41-75. doi:10.1515/lingty-2021-2090.

    Abstract

    Semantic variation in the cutting and breaking domain has been shown to be constrained across languages in a previous typological study, but it was unclear whether Japanese was an outlier in this domain. Here we revisit cutting and breaking in the Japonic language area by collecting new naming data for 40 videoclips depicting cutting and breaking events in Standard Japanese, the highly divergent Tohoku dialects, as well as four related Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama). We find that the Japonic languages recapitulate the same semantic dimensions attested in the previous typological study, confirming that semantic variation in the domain of cutting and breaking is indeed cross-linguistically constrained. We then compare our new Japonic data to previously collected Germanic data and find that, in general, related languages resemble each other more than unrelated languages, and that the Japonic languages resemble each other more than the Germanic languages do. Nevertheless, English resembles all of the Japonic languages more than it resembles Swedish. Together, these findings show that the rate and extent of semantic change can differ between language families, indicating the existence of lineage-specific developments on top of universal cross-linguistic constraints.
  • Huizeling, E., Alday, P. M., Peeters, D., & Hagoort, P. (2023). Combining EEG and 3D-eye-tracking to study the prediction of upcoming speech in naturalistic virtual environments: A proof of principle. Neuropsychologia, 191: 108730. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108730.

    Abstract

    EEG and eye-tracking provide complementary information when investigating language comprehension. Evidence that speech processing may be facilitated by speech prediction comes from the observation that a listener's eye gaze moves towards a referent before it is mentioned if the remainder of the spoken sentence is predictable. However, changes to the trajectory of anticipatory fixations could result from a change in prediction or an attention shift. Conversely, N400 amplitudes and concurrent spectral power provide information about the ease of word processing the moment the word is perceived. In a proof-of-principle investigation, we combined EEG and eye-tracking to study linguistic prediction in naturalistic, virtual environments. We observed increased processing, reflected in theta band power, either during verb processing - when the verb was predictive of the noun - or during noun processing - when the verb was not predictive of the noun. Alpha power was higher in response to the predictive verb and unpredictable nouns. We replicated typical effects of noun congruence but not predictability on the N400 in response to the noun. Thus, the rich visual context that accompanied speech in virtual reality influenced language processing compared to previous reports, where the visual context may have facilitated processing of unpredictable nouns. Finally, anticipatory fixations were predictive of spectral power during noun processing and the length of time fixating the target could be predicted by spectral power at verb onset, conditional on the object having been fixated. Overall, we show that combining EEG and eye-tracking provides a promising new method to answer novel research questions about the prediction of upcoming linguistic input, for example, regarding the role of extralinguistic cues in prediction during language comprehension.
  • Hustá, C., Nieuwland, M. S., & Meyer, A. S. (2023). Effects of picture naming and categorization on concurrent comprehension: Evidence from the N400. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1): 88129. doi:10.1525/collabra.88129.

    Abstract

    n conversations, interlocutors concurrently perform two related processes: speech comprehension and speech planning. We investigated effects of speech planning on comprehension using EEG. Dutch speakers listened to sentences that ended with expected or unexpected target words. In addition, a picture was presented two seconds after target onset (Experiment 1) or 50 ms before target onset (Experiment 2). Participants’ task was to name the picture or to stay quiet depending on the picture category. In Experiment 1, we found a strong N400 effect in response to unexpected compared to expected target words. Importantly, this N400 effect was reduced in Experiment 2 compared to Experiment 1. Unexpectedly, the N400 effect was not smaller in the naming compared to categorization condition. This indicates that conceptual preparation or the decision whether to speak (taking place in both task conditions of Experiment 2) rather than processes specific to word planning interfere with comprehension.
  • Jadoul, Y., & Ravignani, A. (2023). Modelling the emergence of synchrony from decentralized rhythmic interactions in animal communication. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 290(2003). doi:10.1098/rspb.2023.0876.

    Abstract

    To communicate, an animal's strategic timing of rhythmic signals is crucial. Evolutionary, game-theoretical, and dynamical systems models can shed light on the interaction between individuals and the associated costs and benefits of signalling at a specific time. Mathematical models that study rhythmic interactions from a strategic or evolutionary perspective are rare in animal communication research. But new inspiration may come from a recent game theory model of how group synchrony emerges from local interactions of oscillatory neurons. In the study, the authors analyse when the benefit of joint synchronization outweighs the cost of individual neurons sending electrical signals to each other. They postulate there is a benefit for pairs of neurons to fire together and a cost for a neuron to communicate. The resulting model delivers a variant of a classical dynamical system, the Kuramoto model. Here, we present an accessible overview of the Kuramoto model and evolutionary game theory, and of the 'oscillatory neurons' model. We interpret the model's results and discuss the advantages and limitations of using this particular model in the context of animal rhythmic communication. Finally, we sketch potential future directions and discuss the need to further combine evolutionary dynamics, game theory and rhythmic processes in animal communication studies.
  • Jadoul, Y., Düngen, D., & Ravignani, A. (2023). PyGellermann: a Python tool to generate pseudorandom series for human and non-human animal behavioural experiments. BMC Research Notes, 16: 135. doi:10.1186/s13104-023-06396-x.

    Abstract

    Objective

    Researchers in animal cognition, psychophysics, and experimental psychology need to randomise the presentation order of trials in experimental sessions. In many paradigms, for each trial, one of two responses can be correct, and the trials need to be ordered such that the participant’s responses are a fair assessment of their performance. Specifically, in some cases, especially for low numbers of trials, randomised trial orders need to be excluded if they contain simple patterns which a participant could accidentally match and so succeed at the task without learning.
    Results

    We present and distribute a simple Python software package and tool to produce pseudorandom sequences following the Gellermann series. This series has been proposed to pre-empt simple heuristics and avoid inflated performance rates via false positive responses. Our tool allows users to choose the sequence length and outputs a .csv file with newly and randomly generated sequences. This allows behavioural researchers to produce, in a few seconds, a pseudorandom sequence for their specific experiment. PyGellermann is available at https://github.com/YannickJadoul/PyGellermann.
  • Jadoul, Y., Düngen, D., & Ravignani, A. (2023). Live-tracking acoustic parameters in animal behavioural experiments: Interactive bioacoustics with parselmouth. In A. Astolfi, F. Asdrubali, & L. Shtrepi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum 2023 (pp. 4675-4678). Torino: European Acoustics Association.

    Abstract

    Most bioacoustics software is used to analyse the already collected acoustics data in batch, i.e., after the data-collecting phase of a scientific study. However, experiments based on animal training require immediate and precise reactions from the experimenter, and thus do not easily dovetail with a typical bioacoustics workflow. Bridging this methodological gap, we have developed a custom application to live-monitor the vocal development of harbour seals in a behavioural experiment. In each trial, the application records and automatically detects an animal's call, and immediately measures duration and acoustic measures such as intensity, fundamental frequency, or formant frequencies. It then displays a spectrogram of the recording and the acoustic measurements, allowing the experimenter to instantly evaluate whether or not to reinforce the animal's vocalisation. From a technical perspective, the rapid and easy development of this custom software was made possible by combining multiple open-source software projects. Here, we integrated the acoustic analyses from Parselmouth, a Python library for Praat, together with PyAudio and Matplotlib's recording and plotting functionality, into a custom graphical user interface created with PyQt. This flexible recombination of different open-source Python libraries allows the whole program to be written in a mere couple of hundred lines of code
  • Jago, L. S., Alcock, K., Meints, K., Pine, J. M., & Rowland, C. F. (2023). Language outcomes from the UK-CDI Project: Can risk factors, vocabulary skills and gesture scores in infancy predict later language disorders or concern for language development? Frontiers in Psychology, 14: 1167810. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1167810.

    Abstract

    At the group level, children exposed to certain health and demographic risk factors, and who have delayed language in early childhood are, more likely to have language problems later in childhood. However, it is unclear whether we can use these risk factors to predict whether an individual child is likely to develop problems with language (e.g., be diagnosed with a developmental language disorder). We tested this in a sample of 146 children who took part in the UK-CDI norming project. When the children were 15–18 months old, 1,210 British parents completed: (a) the UK-CDI (a detailed assessment of vocabulary and gesture use) and (b) the Family Questionnaire (questions about health and demographic risk factors). When the children were between 4 and 6  years, 146 of the same parents completed a short questionnaire that assessed (a) whether children had been diagnosed with a disability that was likely to affect language proficiency (e.g., developmental disability, language disorder, hearing impairment), but (b) also yielded a broader measure: whether the child’s language had raised any concern, either by a parent or professional. Discriminant function analyses were used to assess whether we could use different combinations of 10 risk factors, together with early vocabulary and gesture scores, to identify children (a) who had developed a language-related disability by the age of 4–6 years (20 children, 13.70% of the sample) or (b) for whom concern about language had been expressed (49 children; 33.56%). The overall accuracy of the models, and the specificity scores were high, indicating that the measures correctly identified those children without a language-related disability and whose language was not of concern. However, sensitivity scores were low, indicating that the models could not identify those children who were diagnosed with a language-related disability or whose language was of concern. Several exploratory analyses were carried out to analyse these results further. Overall, the results suggest that it is difficult to use parent reports of early risk factors and language in the first 2 years of life to predict which children are likely to be diagnosed with a language-related disability. Possible reasons for this are discussed.

    Additional information

    follow up questionnaire table S1
  • Jin, H., Wang, Q., Yang, Y.-F., Zhang, H., Gao, M. (., Jin, S., Chen, Y. (., Xu, T., Zheng, Y.-R., Chen, J., Xiao, Q., Yang, J., Wang, X., Geng, H., Ge, J., Wang, W.-W., Chen, X., Zhang, L., Zuo, X.-N., & Chuan-Peng, H. (2023). The Chinese Open Science Network (COSN): Building an open science community from scratch. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 6(1): 10.1177/25152459221144986. doi:10.1177/25152459221144986.

    Abstract

    Open Science is becoming a mainstream scientific ideology in psychology and related fields. However, researchers, especially early-career researchers (ECRs) in developing countries, are facing significant hurdles in engaging in Open Science and moving it forward. In China, various societal and cultural factors discourage ECRs from participating in Open Science, such as the lack of dedicated communication channels and the norm of modesty. To make the voice of Open Science heard by Chinese-speaking ECRs and scholars at large, the Chinese Open Science Network (COSN) was initiated in 2016. With its core values being grassroots-oriented, diversity, and inclusivity, COSN has grown from a small Open Science interest group to a recognized network both in the Chinese-speaking research community and the international Open Science community. So far, COSN has organized three in-person workshops, 12 tutorials, 48 talks, and 55 journal club sessions and translated 15 Open Science-related articles and blogs from English to Chinese. Currently, the main social media account of COSN (i.e., the WeChat Official Account) has more than 23,000 subscribers, and more than 1,000 researchers/students actively participate in the discussions on Open Science. In this article, we share our experience in building such a network to encourage ECRs in developing countries to start their own Open Science initiatives and engage in the global Open Science movement. We foresee great collaborative efforts of COSN together with all other local and international networks to further accelerate the Open Science movement.
  • Jodzio, A., Piai, V., Verhagen, L., Cameron, I., & Indefrey, P. (2023). Validity of chronometric TMS for probing the time-course of word production: A modified replication. Cerebral Cortex, 33(12), 7816-7829. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhad081.

    Abstract

    In the present study, we used chronometric TMS to probe the time-course of 3 brain regions during a picture naming task. The left inferior frontal gyrus, left posterior middle temporal gyrus, and left posterior superior temporal gyrus were all separately stimulated in 1 of 5 time-windows (225, 300, 375, 450, and 525 ms) from picture onset. We found posterior temporal areas to be causally involved in picture naming in earlier time-windows, whereas all 3 regions appear to be involved in the later time-windows. However, chronometric TMS produces nonspecific effects that may impact behavior, and furthermore, the time-course of any given process is a product of both the involved processing stages along with individual variation in the duration of each stage. We therefore extend previous work in the field by accounting for both individual variations in naming latencies and directly testing for nonspecific effects of TMS. Our findings reveal that both factors influence behavioral outcomes at the group level, underlining the importance of accounting for individual variations in naming latencies, especially for late processing stages closer to articulation, and recognizing the presence of nonspecific effects of TMS. The paper advances key considerations and avenues for future work using chronometric TMS to study overt production.
  • Jordanoska, I. (2023). Focus marking and size in some Mande and Atlantic languages. In N. Sumbatova, I. Kapitonov, M. Khachaturyan, S. Oskolskaya, & V. Verhees (Eds.), Songs and Trees: Papers in Memory of Sasha Vydrina (pp. 311-343). St. Petersburg: Institute for Linguistic Studies and Russian Academy of Sciences.

    Abstract

    This paper compares the focus marking systems and the focus size that can be expressed by the different focus markings in four Mande and three Atlantic languages and varieties, namely: Bambara, Dyula, Kakabe, Soninke (Mande), Wolof, Jóola Foñy and Jóola Karon (Atlantic). All of these languages are known to mark focus morphosyntactically, rather than prosodically, as the more well-studied Germanic languages do. However, the Mande languages under discussion use only morphology, in the form of a particle that follows the focus, while the Atlantic ones use a more complex morphosyntactic system in which focus is marked by morphology in the verbal complex and movement of the focused term. It is shown that while there are some syntactic restrictions to how many different focus sizes can be marked in a distinct way, there is also a certain degree of arbitrariness as to which focus sizes are marked in the same way as each other.
  • Jordanoska, I., Kocher, A., & Bendezú-Araujo, R. (2023). Introduction special issue: Marking the truth: A cross-linguistic approach to verum. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 42(3), 429-442. doi:10.1515/zfs-2023-2012.

    Abstract

    This special issue focuses on the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of truth-marking. The names that have been used to refer to this phenomenon include, among others, counter-assertive focus, polar(ity) focus, verum focus, emphatic polarity or simply verum. This terminological variety is suggestive of the wide range of ideas and conceptions that characterizes this research field. This collection aims to get closer to the core of what truly constitutes verum. We want to expand the empirical base and determine the common and diverging properties of truth-marking in the languages of the world. The objective is to set a theoretical and empirical baseline for future research on verum and related phenomena.
  • Jordanoska, I., Kocher, A., & Bendezú-Araujo, R. (Eds.). (2023). Marking the truth: A cross-linguistic approach to verum [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 42(3). Retrieved from https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/zfsw/42/3/html.
  • Kałamała, P., Chuderski, A., Szewczyk, J., Senderecka, M., & Wodniecka, Z. (2023). Bilingualism caught in a net: A new approach to understanding the complexity of bilingual experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(1), 157-174. doi:10.1037/xge0001263.

    Abstract

    The growing importance of research on bilingualism in psychology and neuroscience motivates the need for a psychometric model that can be used to understand and quantify this phenomenon. This research is the first to meet this need. We reanalyzed two data sets (N = 171 and N = 112) from relatively young adult language-unbalanced bilinguals and asked whether bilingualism is best described by the factor structure or by the network structure. The factor and network models were established on one data set and then validated on the other data set in a fully confirmatory manner. The network model provided the best fit to the data. This implies that bilingualism should be conceptualized as an emergent phenomenon arising from direct and idiosyncratic dependencies among the history of language acquisition, diverse language skills, and language-use practices. These dependencies can be reduced to neither a single universal quotient nor to some more general factors. Additional in-depth network analyses showed that the subjective perception of proficiency along with language entropy and language mixing were the most central indices of bilingualism, thus indicating that these measures can be especially sensitive to variation in the overall bilingual experience. Overall, this work highlights the great potential of psychometric network modeling to gain a more accurate description and understanding of complex (psycho)linguistic and cognitive phenomena.
  • Kanakanti, M., Singh, S., & Shrivastava, M. (2023). MultiFacet: A multi-tasking framework for speech-to-sign language generation. In E. André, M. Chetouani, D. Vaufreydaz, G. Lucas, T. Schultz, L.-P. Morency, & A. Vinciarelli (Eds.), ICMI '23 Companion: Companion Publication of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 205-213). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/3610661.3616550.

    Abstract

    Sign language is a rich form of communication, uniquely conveying meaning through a combination of gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. Existing research in sign language generation has predominantly focused on text-to-sign pose generation, while speech-to-sign pose generation remains relatively underexplored. Speech-to-sign language generation models can facilitate effective communication between the deaf and hearing communities. In this paper, we propose an architecture that utilises prosodic information from speech audio and semantic context from text to generate sign pose sequences. In our approach, we adopt a multi-tasking strategy that involves an additional task of predicting Facial Action Units (FAUs). FAUs capture the intricate facial muscle movements that play a crucial role in conveying specific facial expressions during sign language generation. We train our models on an existing Indian Sign language dataset that contains sign language videos with audio and text translations. To evaluate our models, we report Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Probability of Correct Keypoints (PCK) scores. We find that combining prosody and text as input, along with incorporating facial action unit prediction as an additional task, outperforms previous models in both DTW and PCK scores. We also discuss the challenges and limitations of speech-to-sign pose generation models to encourage future research in this domain. We release our models, results and code to foster reproducibility and encourage future research1.
  • Karadöller, D. Z., Sumer, B., Ünal, E., & Özyürek, A. (2023). Late sign language exposure does not modulate the relation between spatial language and spatial memory in deaf children and adults. Memory & Cognition, 51, 582-600. doi:10.3758/s13421-022-01281-7.

    Abstract

    Prior work with hearing children acquiring a spoken language as their first language shows that spatial language and cognition are related systems and spatial language use predicts spatial memory. Here, we further investigate the extent of this relationship in signing deaf children and adults and ask if late sign language exposure, as well as the frequency and the type of spatial language use that might be affected by late exposure, modulate subsequent memory for spatial relations. To do so, we compared spatial language and memory of 8-year-old late-signing children (after 2 years of exposure to a sign language at the school for the deaf) and late-signing adults to their native-signing counterparts. We elicited picture descriptions of Left-Right relations in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili) and measured the subsequent recognition memory accuracy of the described pictures. Results showed that late-signing adults and children were similar to their native-signing counterparts in how often they encoded the spatial relation. However, late-signing adults but not children differed from their native-signing counterparts in the type of spatial language they used. However, neither late sign language exposure nor the frequency and type of spatial language use modulated spatial memory accuracy. Therefore, even though late language exposure seems to influence the type of spatial language use, this does not predict subsequent memory for spatial relations. We discuss the implications of these findings based on the theories concerning the correspondence between spatial language and cognition as related or rather independent systems.
  • Kaspi, A., Hildebrand, M. S., Jackson, V. E., Braden, R., Van Reyk, O., Howell, T., Debono, S., Lauretta, M., Morison, L., Coleman, M. J., Webster, R., Coman, D., Goel, H., Wallis, M., Dabscheck, G., Downie, L., Baker, E. K., Parry-Fielder, B., Ballard, K., Harrold, E. and 10 moreKaspi, A., Hildebrand, M. S., Jackson, V. E., Braden, R., Van Reyk, O., Howell, T., Debono, S., Lauretta, M., Morison, L., Coleman, M. J., Webster, R., Coman, D., Goel, H., Wallis, M., Dabscheck, G., Downie, L., Baker, E. K., Parry-Fielder, B., Ballard, K., Harrold, E., Ziegenfusz, S., Bennett, M. F., Robertson, E., Wang, L., Boys, A., Fisher, S. E., Amor, D. J., Scheffer, I. E., Bahlo, M., & Morgan, A. T. (2023). Genetic aetiologies for childhood speech disorder: Novel pathways co-expressed during brain development. Molecular Psychiatry, 28, 1647-1663. doi:10.1038/s41380-022-01764-8.

    Abstract

    Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), the prototypic severe childhood speech disorder, is characterized by motor programming and planning deficits. Genetic factors make substantive contributions to CAS aetiology, with a monogenic pathogenic variant identified in a third of cases, implicating around 20 single genes to date. Here we aimed to identify molecular causation in 70 unrelated probands ascertained with CAS. We performed trio genome sequencing. Our bioinformatic analysis examined single nucleotide, indel, copy number, structural and short tandem repeat variants. We prioritised appropriate variants arising de novo or inherited that were expected to be damaging based on in silico predictions. We identified high confidence variants in 18/70 (26%) probands, almost doubling the current number of candidate genes for CAS. Three of the 18 variants affected SETBP1, SETD1A and DDX3X, thus confirming their roles in CAS, while the remaining 15 occurred in genes not previously associated with this disorder. Fifteen variants arose de novo and three were inherited. We provide further novel insights into the biology of child speech disorder, highlighting the roles of chromatin organization and gene regulation in CAS, and confirm that genes involved in CAS are co-expressed during brain development. Our findings confirm a diagnostic yield comparable to, or even higher, than other neurodevelopmental disorders with substantial de novo variant burden. Data also support the increasingly recognised overlaps between genes conferring risk for a range of neurodevelopmental disorders. Understanding the aetiological basis of CAS is critical to end the diagnostic odyssey and ensure affected individuals are poised for precision medicine trials.
  • Kendrick, K. H., Holler, J., & Levinson, S. C. (2023). Turn-taking in human face-to-face interaction is multimodal: Gaze direction and manual gestures aid the coordination of turn transitions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 378(1875): 20210473. doi:10.1098/rstb.2021.0473.

    Abstract

    Human communicative interaction is characterized by rapid and precise turn-taking. This is achieved by an intricate system that has been elucidated in the field of conversation analysis, based largely on the study of the auditory signal. This model suggests that transitions occur at points of possible completion identified in terms of linguistic units. Despite this, considerable evidence exists that visible bodily actions including gaze and gestures also play a role. To reconcile disparate models and observations in the literature, we combine qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse turn-taking in a corpus of multimodal interaction using eye-trackers and multiple cameras. We show that transitions seem to be inhibited when a speaker averts their gaze at a point of possible turn completion, or when a speaker produces gestures which are beginning or unfinished at such points. We further show that while the direction of a speaker's gaze does not affect the speed of transitions, the production of manual gestures does: turns with gestures have faster transitions. Our findings suggest that the coordination of transitions involves not only linguistic resources but also visual gestural ones and that the transition-relevance places in turns are multimodal in nature.

    Additional information

    supplemental material
  • Kholodova, A., Peter, M., Rowland, C. F., Jacob, G., & Allen, S. E. M. (2023). Abstract priming and the lexical boost effect across development in a structurally biased language. Languages, 8: 264. doi:10.3390/languages8040264.

    Abstract

    The present study investigates the developmental trajectory of abstract representations for syntactic structures in children. In a structural priming experiment on the dative alternation in German, we primed children from three different age groups (3–4 years, 5–6 years, 7–8 years) and adults with double object datives (Dora sent Boots the rabbit) or prepositional object datives (Dora sent the rabbit to Boots). Importantly, the prepositional object structure in German is dispreferred and only rarely encountered by young children. While immediate as well as cumulative structural priming effects occurred across all age groups, these effects were strongest in the 3- to 4-year-old group and gradually decreased with increasing age. These results suggest that representations in young children are less stable than in adults and, therefore, more susceptible to adaptation both immediately and across time, presumably due to stronger surprisal. Lexical boost effects, in contrast, were not present in 3- to 4-year-olds but gradually emerged with increasing age, possibly due to limited working-memory capacity in the younger child groups.
  • Kidd, E., Arciuli, J., Christiansen, M. H., & Smithson, M. (2023). The sources and consequences of individual differences in statistical learning for language development. Cognitive Development, 66: 101335. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101335.

    Abstract

    Statistical learning (SL)—sensitivity to statistical regularities in the environment—has been postulated to support language development. While even young infants are capable of using distributional statistics to learn in linguistic and non-linguistic domains, efforts to measure SL at the level of the individual and link it to language proficiency in individual differences designs have been mixed, which has at least in part been attributed to problems with task reliability. In the current study we present the first prospective longitudinal study of the relationship between both non-linguistic SL (measured with visual stimuli) and linguistic SL (measured with auditory stimuli) and language in a group of English-speaking children. One-hundred and twenty-one (N = 121) children in their first two years of formal schooling (Mage = 6;1 years, Range: 5;2 – 7;2) completed tests of visual SL (VSL) and auditory SL (ASL) and several control variables at time 1. Both forms of SL were then measured every 6 months for the next 18 months, and at the final testing session (time 4) their language proficiency was measured using a standardised test. The results showed that the reliability of the SL tasks increased across the course of the study. A series of path analyses showed that both VSL and ASL independently predicted individual differences in language proficiency at time 4. The evidence is consistent with the suggestion that, when measured reliably, an observable relationship between SL and language proficiency exists. Theoretical and methodological issues are discussed.

    Additional information

    data and code
  • Kornfeld, L., & Rossi, G. (2023). Enforcing rules during play: Knowledge, agency, and the design of instructions and reminders. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 56(1), 42-64. doi:10.1080/08351813.2023.2170637.

    Abstract

    Rules of behavior are fundamental to human sociality. Whether on the road, at the dinner table, or during a game, people monitor one another’s behavior for conformity to rules and may take action to rectify violations. In this study, we examine two ways in which rules are enforced during games: instructions and reminders. Building on prior research, we identify instructions as actions produced to rectify violations based on another’s lack of knowledge of the relevant rule; knowledge that the instruction is designed to impart. In contrast to this, the actions we refer to as reminders are designed to enforce rules presupposing the transgressor’s competence and treating the violation as the result of forgetfulness or oversight. We show that instructing and reminding actions differ in turn design, sequential development, the epistemic stances taken by transgressors and enforcers, and in how the action affects the progressivity of the interaction. Data are in German and Italian from the Parallel European Corpus of Informal Interaction (PECII).
  • Kösem, A., Dai, B., McQueen, J. M., & Hagoort, P. (2023). Neural envelope tracking of speech does not unequivocally reflect intelligibility. NeuroImage, 272: 120040. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120040.

    Abstract

    During listening, brain activity tracks the rhythmic structures of speech signals. Here, we directly dissociated the contribution of neural envelope tracking in the processing of speech acoustic cues from that related to linguistic processing. We examined the neural changes associated with the comprehension of Noise-Vocoded (NV) speech using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Participants listened to NV sentences in a 3-phase training paradigm: (1) pre-training, where NV stimuli were barely comprehended, (2) training with exposure of the original clear version of speech stimulus, and (3) post-training, where the same stimuli gained intelligibility from the training phase. Using this paradigm, we tested if the neural responses of a speech signal was modulated by its intelligibility without any change in its acoustic structure. To test the influence of spectral degradation on neural envelope tracking independently of training, participants listened to two types of NV sentences (4-band and 2-band NV speech), but were only trained to understand 4-band NV speech. Significant changes in neural tracking were observed in the delta range in relation to the acoustic degradation of speech. However, we failed to find a direct effect of intelligibility on the neural tracking of speech envelope in both theta and delta ranges, in both auditory regions-of-interest and whole-brain sensor-space analyses. This suggests that acoustics greatly influence the neural tracking response to speech envelope, and that caution needs to be taken when choosing the control signals for speech-brain tracking analyses, considering that a slight change in acoustic parameters can have strong effects on the neural tracking response.
  • Lai, J., Chan, A., & Kidd, E. (2023). Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder. PLoS One, 18: e0288021. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288021.

    Abstract

    Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), present in 2 out of every 30 children, affects primarily oral language abilities and development in the absence of associated biomedical conditions. We report the first experimental study that examines relative clause (RC) comprehension accuracy and processing (via looking preference) in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, testing the predictions from competing domain-specific versus domain-general theoretical accounts. We compared children with DLD (N = 22) with their age-matched typically-developing (TD) children (AM-TD, N = 23) aged 6;6–9;7 and language-matched (and younger) TD children (YTD, N = 21) aged 4;7–7;6, using a referent selection task. Within-subject factors were: RC type (subject-RCs (SRCs) versus object-RCs (ORCs); relativizer (classifier (CL) versus relative marker ge3 RCs). Accuracy measures and looking preference to the target were analyzed using generalized linear mixed effects models. Results indicated Cantonese children with DLD scored significantly lower than their AM-TD peers in accuracy and processed RCs significantly slower than AM-TDs, but did not differ from the YTDs on either measure. Overall, while the results revealed evidence of a SRC advantage in the accuracy data, there was no indication of additional difficulty associated with ORCs in the eye-tracking data. All children showed a processing advantage for the frequent CL relativizer over the less frequent ge3 relativizer. These findings pose challenges to domain-specific representational deficit accounts of DLD, which primarily explain the disorder as a syntactic deficit, and are better explained by domain-general accounts that explain acquisition and processing as emergent properties of multiple converging linguistic and non-linguistic processes.

    Additional information

    S1 appendix
  • Laparle, S. (2023). Moving past the lexical affiliate with a frame-based analysis of gesture meaning. In W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, S. Kadava, L. Van Maastricht, E. Mamus, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.), Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GeSpIn) Conference. doi:10.17617/2.3527218.

    Abstract

    Interpreting the meaning of co-speech gesture often involves
    identifying a gesture’s ‘lexical affiliate’, the word or phrase to
    which it most closely relates (Schegloff 1984). Though there is
    work within gesture studies that resists this simplex mapping of
    meaning from speech to gesture (e.g. de Ruiter 2000; Kendon
    2014; Parrill 2008), including an evolving body of literature on
    recurrent gesture and gesture families (e.g. Fricke et al. 2014; Müller 2017), it is still the lexical affiliate model that is most ap-
    parent in formal linguistic models of multimodal meaning(e.g.
    Alahverdzhieva et al. 2017; Lascarides and Stone 2009; Puste-
    jovsky and Krishnaswamy 2021; Schlenker 2020). In this work,
    I argue that the lexical affiliate should be carefully reconsidered
    in the further development of such models.
    In place of the lexical affiliate, I suggest a further shift
    toward a frame-based, action schematic approach to gestural
    meaning in line with that proposed in, for example, Parrill and
    Sweetser (2004) and Müller (2017). To demonstrate the utility
    of this approach I present three types of compositional gesture
    sequences which I call spatial contrast, spatial embedding, and
    cooperative abstract deixis. All three rely on gestural context,
    rather than gesture-speech alignment, to convey interactive (i.e.
    pragmatic) meaning. The centrality of gestural context to ges-
    ture meaning in these examples demonstrates the necessity of
    developing a model of gestural meaning independent of its in-
    tegration with speech.
  • Lee, C., Jessop, A., Bidgood, A., Peter, M. S., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., & Durrant, S. (2023). How executive functioning, sentence processing, and vocabulary are related at 3 years of age. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 233: 105693. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105693.

    Abstract

    There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that executive function (EF) abilities are positively associated with language development during the preschool years, such that children with good executive functions also have larger vocabularies. However, why this is the case remains to be discovered. In this study, we focused on the hypothesis that sentence processing abilities mediate the association between EF skills and receptive vocabulary knowledge, in that the speed of language acquisition is at least partially dependent on a child’s processing ability, which is itself dependent on executive control. We tested this hypothesis in longitudinal data from a cohort of 3- and 4-year-old children at three age points (37, 43, and 49 months). We found evidence, consistent with previous research, for a significant association between three EF skills (cognitive flexibility, working memory [as measured by the Backward Digit Span], and inhibition) and receptive vocabulary knowledge across this age range. However, only one of the tested sentence processing abilities (the ability to maintain multiple possible referents in mind) significantly mediated this relationship and only for one of the tested EFs (inhibition). The results suggest that children who are better able to inhibit incorrect responses are also better able to maintain multiple possible referents in mind while a sentence unfolds, a sophisticated sentence processing ability that may facilitate vocabulary learning from complex input.

    Additional information

    table S1 code and data
  • Lehecka, T. (2023). Normative ratings for 111 Swedish nouns and corresponding picture stimuli. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 46(1), 20-45. doi:10.1017/S0332586521000123.

    Abstract

    Normative ratings are a means to control for the effects of confounding variables in psycholinguistic experiments. This paper introduces a new dataset of normative ratings for Swedish encompassing 111 concrete nouns and the corresponding picture stimuli in the MultiPic database (Duñabeitia et al. 2017). The norms for name agreement, category typicality, age of acquisition and subjective frequency were collected using online surveys among native speakers of the Finland-Swedish variety of Swedish. The paper discusses the inter-correlations between these variables and compares them against available ratings for other languages. In doing so, the paper argues that ratings for age of acquisition and subjective frequency collected for other languages may be applied to psycholinguistic studies on Finland-Swedish, at least with respect to concrete and highly imageable nouns. In contrast, norms for name agreement should be collected from speakers of the same language variety as represented by the subjects in the actual experiments.
  • Lei, A., Willems, R. M., & Eekhof, L. S. (2023). Emotions, fast and slow: Processing of emotion words is affected by individual differences in need for affect and narrative absorption. Cognition and Emotion, 37(5), 997-1005. doi:10.1080/02699931.2023.2216445.

    Abstract

    Emotional words have consistently been shown to be processed differently than neutral words. However, few studies have examined individual variability in emotion word processing with longer, ecologically valid stimuli (beyond isolated words, sentences, or paragraphs). In the current study, we re-analysed eye-tracking data collected during story reading to reveal how individual differences in need for affect and narrative absorption impact the speed of emotion word reading. Word emotionality was indexed by affective-aesthetic potentials (AAP) calculated by a sentiment analysis tool. We found that individuals with higher levels of need for affect and narrative absorption read positive words more slowly. On the other hand, these individual differences did not influence the reading time of more negative words, suggesting that high need for affect and narrative absorption are characterised by a positivity bias only. In general, unlike most previous studies using more isolated emotion word stimuli, we observed a quadratic (U-shaped) effect of word emotionality on reading speed, such that both positive and negative words were processed more slowly than neutral words. Taken together, this study emphasises the importance of taking into account individual differences and task context when studying emotion word processing.
  • Lemaitre, H., Le Guen, Y., Tilot, A. K., Stein, J. L., Philippe, C., Mangin, J.-F., Fisher, S. E., & Frouin, V. (2023). Genetic variations within human gained enhancer elements affect human brain sulcal morphology. NeuroImage, 265: 119773. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119773.

    Abstract

    The expansion of the cerebral cortex is one of the most distinctive changes in the evolution of the human brain. Cortical expansion and related increases in cortical folding may have contributed to emergence of our capacities for high-order cognitive abilities. Molecular analysis of humans, archaic hominins, and non-human primates has allowed identification of chromosomal regions showing evolutionary changes at different points of our phylogenetic history. In this study, we assessed the contributions of genomic annotations spanning 30 million years to human sulcal morphology measured via MRI in more than 18,000 participants from the UK Biobank. We found that variation within brain-expressed human gained enhancers, regulatory genetic elements that emerged since our last common ancestor with Old World monkeys, explained more trait heritability than expected for the left and right calloso-marginal posterior fissures and the right central sulcus. Intriguingly, these are sulci that have been previously linked to the evolution of locomotion in primates and later on bipedalism in our hominin ancestors.

    Additional information

    tables
  • Levinson, S. C. (2023). On cognitive artifacts. In R. Feldhay (Ed.), The evolution of knowledge: A scientific meeting in honor of Jürgen Renn (pp. 59-78). Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

    Abstract

    Wearing the hat of a cognitive anthropologist rather than an historian, I will try to amplify the ideas of Renn’s cited above. I argue that a particular subclass of material objects, namely “cognitive artifacts,” involves a close coupling of mind and artifact that acts like a brain prosthesis. Simple cognitive artifacts are external objects that act as aids to internal
    computation, and not all cultures have extended inventories of these. Cognitive artifacts in this sense (e.g., calculating or measuring devices) have clearly played a central role in the history of science. But the notion can be widened to take in less material externalizations of cognition, like writing and language itself. A critical question here is how and why this close coupling of internal computation and external device actually works, a rather neglected question to which I’ll suggest some answers.

    Additional information

    link to book
  • Levinson, S. C. (2023). Gesture, spatial cognition and the evolution of language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 378(1875): 20210481. doi:10.1098/rstb.2021.0481.

    Abstract

    Human communication displays a striking contrast between the diversity of languages and the universality of the principles underlying their use in conversation. Despite the importance of this interactional base, it is not obvious that it heavily imprints the structure of languages. However, a deep-time perspective suggests that early hominin communication was gestural, in line with all the other Hominidae. This gestural phase of early language development seems to have left its traces in the way in which spatial concepts, implemented in the hippocampus, provide organizing principles at the heart of grammar.
  • Levshina, N. (2023). Communicative efficiency: Language structure and use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    All living beings try to save effort, and humans are no exception. This groundbreaking book shows how we save time and energy during communication by unconsciously making efficient choices in grammar, lexicon and phonology. It presents a new theory of 'communicative efficiency', the idea that language is designed to be as efficient as possible, as a system of communication. The new framework accounts for the diverse manifestations of communicative efficiency across a typologically broad range of languages, using various corpus-based and statistical approaches to explain speakers' bias towards efficiency. The author's unique interdisciplinary expertise allows her to provide rich evidence from a broad range of language sciences. She integrates diverse insights from over a hundred years of research into this comprehensible new theory, which she presents step-by-step in clear and accessible language. It is essential reading for language scientists, cognitive scientists and anyone interested in language use and communication.
  • Levshina, N., Namboodiripad, S., Allassonnière-Tang, M., Kramer, M., Talamo, L., Verkerk, A., Wilmoth, S., Garrido Rodriguez, G., Gupton, T. M., Kidd, E., Liu, Z., Naccarato, C., Nordlinger, R., Panova, A., & Stoynova, N. (2023). Why we need a gradient approach to word order. Linguistics, 61(4), 825-883. doi:10.1515/ling-2021-0098.

    Abstract

    This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language acquisition, processing, typology, language contact, language evolution and change, and formal approaches. Gradient approaches have been very fruitful in some domains, such as language processing, but their potential is not fully realized yet. This may be due to practical reasons. We discuss the most pressing methodological challenges in corpus-based and experimental research of word order and propose some practical solutions.
  • Levshina, N. (2023). Testing communicative and learning biases in a causal model of language evolution:A study of cues to Subject and Object. In M. Degano, T. Roberts, G. Sbardolini, & M. Schouwstra (Eds.), The Proceedings of the 23rd Amsterdam Colloquium (pp. 383-387). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
  • Levshina, N. (2023). Word classes in corpus linguistics. In E. Van Lier (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of word classes (pp. 833-850). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198852889.013.34.

    Abstract

    Word classes play a central role in corpus linguistics under the name of parts of speech (POS). Many popular corpora are provided with POS tags. This chapter gives examples of popular tagsets and discusses the methods of automatic tagging. It also considers bottom-up approaches to POS induction, which are particularly important for the ‘poverty of stimulus’ debate in language acquisition research. The choice of optimal POS tagging involves many difficult decisions, which are related to the level of granularity, redundancy at different levels of corpus annotation, cross-linguistic applicability, language-specific descriptive adequacy, and dealing with fuzzy boundaries between POS. The chapter also discusses the problem of flexible word classes and demonstrates how corpus data with POS tags and syntactic dependencies can be used to quantify the level of flexibility in a language.
  • Lewis, A. G., Schoffelen, J.-M., Bastiaansen, M., & Schriefers, H. (2023). Is beta in agreement with the relatives? Using relative clause sentences to investigate MEG beta power dynamics during sentence comprehension. Psychophysiology, 60(10): e14332. doi:10.1111/psyp.14332.

    Abstract

    There remains some debate about whether beta power effects observed during sentence comprehension reflect ongoing syntactic unification operations (beta-syntax hypothesis), or instead reflect maintenance or updating of the sentence-level representation (beta-maintenance hypothesis). In this study, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate beta power neural dynamics while participants read relative clause sentences that were initially ambiguous between a subject- or an object-relative reading. An additional condition included a grammatical violation at the disambiguation point in the relative clause sentences. The beta-maintenance hypothesis predicts a decrease in beta power at the disambiguation point for unexpected (and less preferred) object-relative clause sentences and grammatical violations, as both signal a need to update the sentence-level representation. While the beta-syntax hypothesis also predicts a beta power decrease for grammatical violations due to a disruption of syntactic unification operations, it instead predicts an increase in beta power for the object-relative clause condition because syntactic unification at the point of disambiguation becomes more demanding. We observed decreased beta power for both the agreement violation and object-relative clause conditions in typical left hemisphere language regions, which provides compelling support for the beta-maintenance hypothesis. Mid-frontal theta power effects were also present for grammatical violations and object-relative clause sentences, suggesting that violations and unexpected sentence interpretations are registered as conflicts by the brain's domain-general error detection system.

    Additional information

    data
  • Liesenfeld, A., Lopez, A., & Dingemanse, M. (2023). Opening up ChatGPT: Tracking Openness, Transparency, and Accountability in Instruction-Tuned Text Generators. In CUI '23: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces. doi:10.1145/3571884.3604316.

    Abstract

    Large language models that exhibit instruction-following behaviour represent one of the biggest recent upheavals in conversational interfaces, a trend in large part fuelled by the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a proprietary large language model for text generation fine-tuned through reinforcement learning from human feedback (LLM+RLHF). We review the risks of relying on proprietary software and survey the first crop of open-source projects of comparable architecture and functionality. The main contribution of this paper is to show that openness is differentiated, and to offer scientific documentation of degrees of openness in this fast-moving field. We evaluate projects in terms of openness of code, training data, model weights, RLHF data, licensing, scientific documentation, and access methods. We find that while there is a fast-growing list of projects billing themselves as 'open source', many inherit undocumented data of dubious legality, few share the all-important instruction-tuning (a key site where human labour is involved), and careful scientific documentation is exceedingly rare. Degrees of openness are relevant to fairness and accountability at all points, from data collection and curation to model architecture, and from training and fine-tuning to release and deployment.
  • Liesenfeld, A., Lopez, A., & Dingemanse, M. (2023). The timing bottleneck: Why timing and overlap are mission-critical for conversational user interfaces, speech recognition and dialogue systems. In Proceedings of the 24rd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDial 2023). doi:10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.45.

    Abstract

    Speech recognition systems are a key intermediary in voice-driven human-computer interaction. Although speech recognition works well for pristine monologic audio, real-life use cases in open-ended interactive settings still present many challenges. We argue that timing is mission-critical for dialogue systems, and evaluate 5 major commercial ASR systems for their conversational and multilingual support. We find that word error rates for natural conversational data in 6 languages remain abysmal, and that overlap remains a key challenge (study 1). This impacts especially the recognition of conversational words (study 2), and in turn has dire consequences for downstream intent recognition (study 3). Our findings help to evaluate the current state of conversational ASR, contribute towards multidimensional error analysis and evaluation, and identify phenomena that need most attention on the way to build robust interactive speech technologies.
  • Lingwood, J., Lampropoulou, S., De Bezena, C., Billington, J., & Rowland, C. F. (2023). Children’s engagement and caregivers’ use of language-boosting strategies during shared book reading: A mixed methods approach. Journal of Child Language, 50(6), 1436-1458. doi:10.1017/S0305000922000290.

    Abstract

    For shared book reading to be effective for language development, the adult and child need to be highly engaged. The current paper adopted a mixed-methods approach to investigate caregiver’s language-boosting behaviours and children’s engagement during shared book reading. The results revealed there were more instances of joint attention and caregiver’s use of prompts during moments of higher engagement. However, instances of most language-boosting behaviours were similar across episodes of higher and lower engagement. Qualitative analysis assessing the link between children’s engagement and caregiver’s use of speech acts, revealed that speech acts do seem to contribute to high engagement, in combination with other aspects of the interaction.
  • Lumaca, M., Bonetti, L., Brattico, E., Baggio, G., Ravignani, A., & Vuust, P. (2023). High-fidelity transmission of auditory symbolic material is associated with reduced right–left neuroanatomical asymmetry between primary auditory regions. Cerebral Cortex, 33(11), 6902-6919. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhad009.

    Abstract

    The intergenerational stability of auditory symbolic systems, such as music, is thought to rely on brain processes that allow the faithful transmission of complex sounds. Little is known about the functional and structural aspects of the human brain which support this ability, with a few studies pointing to the bilateral organization of auditory networks as a putative neural substrate. Here, we further tested this hypothesis by examining the role of left–right neuroanatomical asymmetries between auditory cortices. We collected neuroanatomical images from a large sample of participants (nonmusicians) and analyzed them with Freesurfer’s surface-based morphometry method. Weeks after scanning, the same individuals participated in a laboratory experiment that simulated music transmission: the signaling games. We found that high accuracy in the intergenerational transmission of an artificial tone system was associated with reduced rightward asymmetry of cortical thickness in Heschl’s sulcus. Our study suggests that the high-fidelity copying of melodic material may rely on the extent to which computational neuronal resources are distributed across hemispheres. Our data further support the role of interhemispheric brain organization in the cultural transmission and evolution of auditory symbolic systems.
  • Mak, M., Faber, M., & Willems, R. M. (2023). Different kinds of simulation during literary reading: Insights from a combined fMRI and eye-tracking study. Cortex, 162, 115-135. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.01.014.

    Abstract

    Mental simulation is an important aspect of narrative reading. In a previous study, we found that gaze durations are differentially impacted by different kinds of mental simulation. Motor simulation, perceptual simulation, and mentalizing as elicited by literary short stories influenced eye movements in distinguishable ways (Mak & Willems, 2019). In the current study, we investigated the existence of a common neural locus for these different kinds of simulation. We additionally investigated whether individual differences during reading, as indexed by the eye movements, are reflected in domain-specific activations in the brain. We found a variety of brain areas activated by simulation-eliciting content, both modality-specific brain areas and a general simulation area. Individual variation in percent signal change in activated areas was related to measures of story appreciation as well as personal characteristics (i.e., transportability, perspective taking). Taken together, these findings suggest that mental simulation is supported by both domain-specific processes grounded in previous experiences, and by the neural mechanisms that underlie higher-order language processing (e.g., situation model building, event indexing, integration).

    Additional information

    figures localizer tasks appendix C1
  • Mamus, E., Speed, L. J., Rissman, L., Majid, A., & Özyürek, A. (2023). Lack of visual experience affects multimodal language production: Evidence from congenitally blind and sighted people. Cognitive Science, 47(1): e13228. doi:10.1111/cogs.13228.

    Abstract

    The human experience is shaped by information from different perceptual channels, but it is still debated whether and how differential experience influences language use. To address this, we compared congenitally blind, blindfolded, and sighted people's descriptions of the same motion events experienced auditorily by all participants (i.e., via sound alone) and conveyed in speech and gesture. Comparison of blind and sighted participants to blindfolded participants helped us disentangle the effects of a lifetime experience of being blind versus the task-specific effects of experiencing a motion event by sound alone. Compared to sighted people, blind people's speech focused more on path and less on manner of motion, and encoded paths in a more segmented fashion using more landmarks and path verbs. Gestures followed the speech, such that blind people pointed to landmarks more and depicted manner less than sighted people. This suggests that visual experience affects how people express spatial events in the multimodal language and that blindness may enhance sensitivity to paths of motion due to changes in event construal. These findings have implications for the claims that language processes are deeply rooted in our sensory experiences.
  • Mamus, E., Speed, L., Özyürek, A., & Majid, A. (2023). The effect of input sensory modality on the multimodal encoding of motion events. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 38(5), 711-723. doi:10.1080/23273798.2022.2141282.

    Abstract

    Each sensory modality has different affordances: vision has higher spatial acuity than audition, whereas audition has better temporal acuity. This may have consequences for the encoding of events and its subsequent multimodal language production—an issue that has received relatively little attention to date. In this study, we compared motion events presented as audio-only, visual-only, or multimodal (visual + audio) input and measured speech and co-speech gesture depicting path and manner of motion in Turkish. Input modality affected speech production. Speakers with audio-only input produced more path descriptions and fewer manner descriptions in speech compared to speakers who received visual input. In contrast, the type and frequency of gestures did not change across conditions. Path-only gestures dominated throughout. Our results suggest that while speech is more susceptible to auditory vs. visual input in encoding aspects of motion events, gesture is less sensitive to such differences.

    Additional information

    Supplemental material
  • Manhardt, F., Brouwer, S., Van Wijk, E., & Özyürek, A. (2023). Word order preference in sign influences speech in hearing bimodal bilinguals but not vice versa: Evidence from behavior and eye-gaze. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(1), 48-61. doi:10.1017/S1366728922000311.

    Abstract

    We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilinguals’ spatial expressions and visual attention in Dutch and Dutch Sign Language (N = 18) to those of their hearing non-signing (N = 20) and deaf signing peers (N = 18). In speech, hearing bimodal bilinguals expressed more ground-first descriptions and fixated grounds more than hearing non-signers, showing influence from sign. In sign, they used as many ground-first descriptions as deaf signers and fixated grounds equally often, demonstrating no influence from speech. Cross-linguistic influence of word order preference and visual attention in hearing bimodal bilinguals appears to be one-directional modulated by modality-driven differences.
  • Maskalenka, K., Alagöz, G., Krueger, F., Wright, J., Rostovskaya, M., Nakhuda, A., Bendall, A., Krueger, C., Walker, S., Scally, A., & Rugg-Gunn, P. J. (2023). NANOGP1, a tandem duplicate of NANOG, exhibits partial functional conservation in human naïve pluripotent stem cells. Development, 150(2): dev201155. doi:10.1242/dev.201155.

    Abstract

    Gene duplication events can drive evolution by providing genetic material for new gene functions, and they create opportunities for diverse developmental strategies to emerge between species. To study the contribution of duplicated genes to human early development, we examined the evolution and function of NANOGP1, a tandem duplicate of the transcription factor NANOG. We found that NANOGP1 and NANOG have overlapping but distinct expression profiles, with high NANOGP1 expression restricted to early epiblast cells and naïve-state pluripotent stem cells. Sequence analysis and epitope-tagging revealed that NANOGP1 is protein coding with an intact homeobox domain. The duplication that created NANOGP1 occurred earlier in primate evolution than previously thought and has been retained only in great apes, whereas Old World monkeys have disabled the gene in different ways, including homeodomain point mutations. NANOGP1 is a strong inducer of naïve pluripotency; however, unlike NANOG, it is not required to maintain the undifferentiated status of human naïve pluripotent cells. By retaining expression, sequence and partial functional conservation with its ancestral copy, NANOGP1 exemplifies how gene duplication and subfunctionalisation can contribute to transcription factor activity in human pluripotency and development.
  • Mazzini, S., Holler, J., & Drijvers, L. (2023). Studying naturalistic human communication using dual-EEG and audio-visual recordings. STAR Protocols, 4(3): 102370. doi:10.1016/j.xpro.2023.102370.

    Abstract

    We present a protocol to study naturalistic human communication using dual-EEG and audio-visual recordings. We describe preparatory steps for data collection including setup preparation, experiment design, and piloting. We then describe the data collection process in detail which consists of participant recruitment, experiment room preparation, and data collection. We also outline the kinds of research questions that can be addressed with the current protocol, including several analysis possibilities, from conversational to advanced time-frequency analyses.
    For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Drijvers and Holler (2022).
  • McConnell, K. (2023). Individual Differences in Holistic and Compositional Language Processing. Journal of Cognition, 6. doi:10.5334/joc.283.

    Abstract

    Individual differences in cognitive abilities are ubiquitous across the spectrum of proficient language users. Although speakers differ with regard to their memory capacity, ability for inhibiting distraction, and ability to shift between different processing levels, comprehension is generally successful. However, this does not mean it is identical across individuals; listeners and readers may rely on different processing strategies to exploit distributional information in the service of efficient understanding. In the following psycholinguistic reading experiment, we investigate potential sources of individual differences in the processing of co-occurring words. Participants read modifier-noun bigrams like absolute silence in a self-paced reading task. Backward transition probability (BTP) between the two lexemes was used to quantify the prominence of the bigram as a whole in comparison to the frequency of its parts. Of five individual difference measures (processing speed, verbal working memory, cognitive inhibition, global-local scope shifting, and personality), two proved to be significantly associated with the effect of BTP on reading times. Participants who could inhibit a distracting global environment in order to more efficiently retrieve a single part and those that preferred the local level in the shifting task showed greater effects of the co-occurrence probability of the parts. We conclude that some participants are more likely to retrieve bigrams via their parts and their co-occurrence statistics whereas others more readily retrieve the two words together as a single chunked unit.
  • McLean, B., Dunn, M., & Dingemanse, M. (2023). Two measures are better than one: Combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon. Language and Cognition, 15(4), 719-739. doi:10.1017/langcog.2023.9.

    Abstract

    Iconicity in language is receiving increased attention from many fields, but our understanding of iconicity is only as good as the measures we use to quantify it. We collected iconicity measures for 304 Japanese words from English-speaking participants, using rating and guessing tasks. The words included ideophones (structurally marked depictive words) along with regular lexical items from similar semantic domains (e.g., fuwafuwa ‘fluffy’, jawarakai ‘soft’). The two measures correlated, speaking to their validity. However, ideophones received consistently higher iconicity ratings than other items, even when guessed at the same accuracies, suggesting the rating task is more sensitive to cues like structural markedness that frame words as iconic. These cues did not always guide participants to the meanings of ideophones in the guessing task, but they did make them more confident in their guesses, even when they were wrong. Consistently poor guessing results reflect the role different experiences play in shaping construals of iconicity. Using multiple measures in tandem allows us to explore the interplay between iconicity and these external factors. To facilitate this, we introduce a reproducible workflow for creating rating and guessing tasks from standardised wordlists, while also making improvements to the robustness, sensitivity and discriminability of previous approaches.
  • McQueen, J. M., Jesse, A., & Mitterer, H. (2023). Lexically mediated compensation for coarticulation still as elusive as a white christmash. Cognitive Science: a multidisciplinary journal, 47(9): e13342. doi:10.1111/cogs.13342.

    Abstract

    Luthra, Peraza-Santiago, Beeson, Saltzman, Crinnion, and Magnuson (2021) present data from the lexically mediated compensation for coarticulation paradigm that they claim provides conclusive evidence in favor of top-down processing in speech perception. We argue here that this evidence does not support that conclusion. The findings are open to alternative explanations, and we give data in support of one of them (that there is an acoustic confound in the materials). Lexically mediated compensation for coarticulation thus remains elusive, while prior data from the paradigm instead challenge the idea that there is top-down processing in online speech recognition.

    Additional information

    supplementary materials
  • Meyer, A. S. (2023). Timing in conversation. Journal of Cognition, 6(1), 1-17. doi:10.5334/joc.268.

    Abstract

    Turn-taking in everyday conversation is fast, with median latencies in corpora of conversational speech often reported to be under 300 ms. This seems like magic, given that experimental research on speech planning has shown that speakers need much more time to plan and produce even the shortest of utterances. This paper reviews how language scientists have combined linguistic analyses of conversations and experimental work to understand the skill of swift turn-taking and proposes a tentative solution to the riddle of fast turn-taking.
  • Mickan, A., McQueen, J. M., Brehm, L., & Lemhöfer, K. (2023). Individual differences in foreign language attrition: A 6-month longitudinal investigation after a study abroad. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 38(1), 11-39. doi:10.1080/23273798.2022.2074479.

    Abstract

    While recent laboratory studies suggest that the use of competing languages is a driving force in foreign language (FL) attrition (i.e. forgetting), research on “real” attriters has failed to demonstrate
    such a relationship. We addressed this issue in a large-scale longitudinal study, following German students throughout a study abroad in Spain and their first six months back in Germany. Monthly,
    percentage-based frequency of use measures enabled a fine-grained description of language use.
    L3 Spanish forgetting rates were indeed predicted by the quantity and quality of Spanish use, and
    correlated negatively with L1 German and positively with L2 English letter fluency. Attrition rates
    were furthermore influenced by prior Spanish proficiency, but not by motivation to maintain
    Spanish or non-verbal long-term memory capacity. Overall, this study highlights the importance
    of language use for FL retention and sheds light on the complex interplay between language
    use and other determinants of attrition.
  • Mishra, C., Offrede, T., Fuchs, S., Mooshammer, C., & Skantze, G. (2023). Does a robot’s gaze aversion affect human gaze aversion? Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 10: 1127626. doi:10.3389/frobt.2023.1127626.

    Abstract

    Gaze cues serve an important role in facilitating human conversations and are generally considered to be one of the most important non-verbal cues. Gaze cues are used to manage turn-taking, coordinate joint attention, regulate intimacy, and signal cognitive effort. In particular, it is well established that gaze aversion is used in conversations to avoid prolonged periods of mutual gaze. Given the numerous functions of gaze cues, there has been extensive work on modelling these cues in social robots. Researchers have also tried to identify the impact of robot gaze on human participants. However, the influence of robot gaze behavior on human gaze behavior has been less explored. We conducted a within-subjects user study (N = 33) to verify if a robot’s gaze aversion influenced human gaze aversion behavior. Our results show that participants tend to avert their gaze more when the robot keeps staring at them as compared to when the robot exhibits well-timed gaze aversions. We interpret our findings in terms of intimacy regulation: humans try to compensate for the robot’s lack of gaze aversion.
  • Mishra, C., Verdonschot, R. G., Hagoort, P., & Skantze, G. (2023). Real-time emotion generation in human-robot dialogue using large language models. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 10: 1271610. doi:10.3389/frobt.2023.1271610.

    Abstract

    Affective behaviors enable social robots to not only establish better connections with humans but also serve as a tool for the robots to express their internal states. It has been well established that emotions are important to signal understanding in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). This work aims to harness the power of Large Language Models (LLM) and proposes an approach to control the affective behavior of robots. By interpreting emotion appraisal as an Emotion Recognition in Conversation (ERC) tasks, we used GPT-3.5 to predict the emotion of a robot’s turn in real-time, using the dialogue history of the ongoing conversation. The robot signaled the predicted emotion using facial expressions. The model was evaluated in a within-subjects user study (N = 47) where the model-driven emotion generation was compared against conditions where the robot did not display any emotions and where it displayed incongruent emotions. The participants interacted with the robot by playing a card sorting game that was specifically designed to evoke emotions. The results indicated that the emotions were reliably generated by the LLM and the participants were able to perceive the robot’s emotions. It was found that the robot expressing congruent model-driven facial emotion expressions were perceived to be significantly more human-like, emotionally appropriate, and elicit a more positive impression. Participants also scored significantly better in the card sorting game when the robot displayed congruent facial expressions. From a technical perspective, the study shows that LLMs can be used to control the affective behavior of robots reliably in real-time. Additionally, our results could be used in devising novel human-robot interactions, making robots more effective in roles where emotional interaction is important, such as therapy, companionship, or customer service.
  • Monaghan, P., Donnelly, S., Alcock, K., Bidgood, A., Cain, K., Durrant, S., Frost, R. L. A., Jago, L. S., Peter, M. S., Pine, J. M., Turnbull, H., & Rowland, C. F. (2023). Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children’s language skills 3 years later. Cognitive Psychology, 147: 101607. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101607.

    Abstract

    We investigated whether learning an artificial language at 17 months was predictive of children’s natural language vocabulary and grammar skills at 54 months. Children at 17 months listened to an artificial language containing non-adjacent dependencies, and were then tested on their learning to segment and to generalise the structure of the language. At 54 months, children were then tested on a range of standardised natural language tasks that assessed receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar. A structural equation model demonstrated that learning the artificial language generalisation at 17 months predicted language abilities – a composite of vocabulary and grammar skills – at 54 months, whereas artificial language segmentation at 17 months did not predict language abilities at this age. Artificial language learning tasks – especially those that probe grammar learning – provide a valuable tool for uncovering the mechanisms driving children’s early language development.

    Additional information

    supplementary data
  • Mooijman, S., Schoonen, R., Ruiter, M. B., & Roelofs, A. (2023). Voluntary and cued language switching in late bilingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Advance online publication. doi:10.1017/S1366728923000755.

    Abstract

    Previous research examining the factors that determine language choice and voluntary switching mainly involved early bilinguals. Here, using picture naming, we investigated language choice and switching in late Dutch–English bilinguals. We found that naming was overall slower in cued than in voluntary switching, but switch costs occurred in both types of switching. The magnitude of switch costs differed depending on the task and language, and was moderated by L2 proficiency. Self-rated rather than objectively assessed proficiency predicted voluntary switching and ease of lexical access was associated with language choice. Between-language and within-language switch costs were not correlated. These results highlight self-rated proficiency as a reliable predictor of voluntary switching, with language modulating switch costs. As in early bilinguals, ease of lexical access was related to word-level language choice of late bilinguals.
  • Morison, L., Meffert, E., Stampfer, M., Steiner-Wilke, I., Vollmer, B., Schulze, K., Briggs, T., Braden, R., Vogel, A. P., Thompson-Lake, D., Patel, C., Blair, E., Goel, H., Turner, S., Moog, U., Riess, A., Liegeois, F., Koolen, D. A., Amor, D. J., Kleefstra, T. and 3 moreMorison, L., Meffert, E., Stampfer, M., Steiner-Wilke, I., Vollmer, B., Schulze, K., Briggs, T., Braden, R., Vogel, A. P., Thompson-Lake, D., Patel, C., Blair, E., Goel, H., Turner, S., Moog, U., Riess, A., Liegeois, F., Koolen, D. A., Amor, D. J., Kleefstra, T., Fisher, S. E., Zweier, C., & Morgan, A. T. (2023). In-depth characterisation of a cohort of individuals with missense and loss-of-function variants disrupting FOXP2. Journal of Medical Genetics, 60(6), 597-607. doi:10.1136/jmg-2022-108734.

    Abstract

    Background
    Heterozygous disruptions of FOXP2 were the first identified molecular cause for severe speech disorder; childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), yet few cases have been reported, limiting knowledge of the condition.

    Methods
    Here we phenotyped 29 individuals from 18 families with pathogenic FOXP2-only variants (13 loss-of-function, 5 missense variants; 14 males; aged 2 years to 62 years). Health and development (cognitive, motor, social domains) was examined, including speech and language outcomes with the first cross-linguistic analysis of English and German.

    Results
    Speech disorders were prevalent (24/26, 92%) and CAS was most common (23/26, 89%), with similar speech presentations across English and German. Speech was still impaired in adulthood and some speech sounds (e.g. ‘th’, ‘r’, ‘ch’, ‘j’) were never acquired. Language impairments (22/26, 85%) ranged from mild to severe. Comorbidities included feeding difficulties in infancy (10/27, 37%), fine (14/27, 52%) and gross (14/27, 52%) motor impairment, anxiety (6/28, 21%), depression (7/28, 25%), and sleep disturbance (11/15, 44%). Physical features were common (23/28, 82%) but with no consistent pattern. Cognition ranged from average to mildly impaired, and was incongruent with language ability; for example, seven participants with severe language disorder had average non-verbal cognition.

    Conclusions
    Although we identify increased prevalence of conditions like anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance, we confirm that the consequences of FOXP2 dysfunction remain relatively specific to speech disorder, as compared to other recently identified monogenic conditions associated with CAS. Thus, our findings reinforce that FOXP2 provides a valuable entrypoint for examining the neurobiological bases of speech disorder.
  • Muhinyi, A., & Rowland, C. F. (2023). Contributions of abstract extratextual talk and interactive style to preschoolers’ vocabulary development. Journal of Child Language, 50(1), 198-213. doi:10.1017/S0305000921000696.

    Abstract

    Caregiver abstract talk during shared reading predicts preschool-age children’s vocabulary development. However, previous research has focused on level of abstraction with less consideration of the style of extratextual talk. Here, we investigated the relation between these two dimensions of extratextual talk, and their contributions to variance in children’s vocabulary skills. Caregiver level of abstraction was associated with an interactive reading style. Controlling for socioeconomic status and child age, high interactivity predicted children’s concurrent vocabulary skills whereas abstraction did not. Controlling for earlier vocabulary skills, neither dimension of the extratextual talk predicted later vocabulary. Theoretical and practical relevance are discussed.
  • Nabrotzky, J., Ambrazaitis, G., Zellers, M., & House, D. (2023). Temporal alignment of manual gestures’ phase transitions with lexical and post-lexical accentual F0 peaks in spontaneous Swedish interaction. In W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, S. Kadava, L. Van Maastricht, E. Mamus, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.), Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GeSpIn) Conference. doi:10.17617/2.3527194.

    Abstract

    Many studies investigating the temporal alignment of co-speech
    gestures to acoustic units in the speech signal find a close
    coupling of the gestural landmarks and pitch accents or the
    stressed syllable of pitch-accented words. In English, a pitch
    accent is anchored in the lexically stressed syllable. Hence, it is
    unclear whether it is the lexical phonological dimension of
    stress, or the phrase-level prominence that determines the
    details of speech-gesture synchronization. This paper explores
    the relation between gestural phase transitions and accentual F0
    peaks in Stockholm Swedish, which exhibits a lexical pitch
    accent distinction. When produced with phrase-level
    prominence, there are three different configurations of
    lexicality of F0 peaks and the status of the syllable it is aligned
    with. Through analyzing the alignment of the different F0 peaks
    with gestural onsets in spontaneous dyadic conversations, we
    aim to contribute to our understanding of the role of lexical
    prosodic phonology in the co-production of speech and gesture.
    The results, though limited by a small dataset, still suggest
    differences between the three types of peaks concerning which
    types of gesture phase onsets they tend to align with, and how
    well these landmarks align with each other, although these
    differences did not reach significance.

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