Publications

Abstract

This article discusses lexical and grammatical comparison and sub-grouping in a set of closely related Bantu language varieties in the Morogoro region, Tanzania. The Greater Ruvu Bantu language varieties include Kagulu [G12], Zigua [G31], Kwere [G32], Zalamo [G33], Nguu [G34], Luguru [G35], Kami [G36] and Kutu [G37]. The comparison is based on 27 morphophonological and morphosyntactic parameters, supplemented by a lexicon of 500 items. In order to determine the relationships and boundaries between the varieties, grammatical phenomena constitute a valuable complement to counting the number of identical words or cognates. We have used automated cognate judgment methods, as well as manual cognate judgments based on older sources, in order to compare lexical data. Finally, we have included speaker attitudes (i.e. self-assessment of linguistic similarity) in an attempt to map whether the languages that are perceived by speakers as being linguistically similar really are closely related.

Abstract

Accumulating evidence suggests that some degree of attentional control is required to regulate and monitor processes underlying speaking. Although progress has been made in delineating the neural substrates of the core language processes involved in speaking, substrates associated with regulatory and monitoring processes have remained relatively underspecified. We report the results of an fMRI study examining the neural substrates related to performance in three attention-demanding tasks varying in the amount of linguistic processing: vocal picture naming while ignoring distractors (picture-word interference, PWI); vocal color naming while ignoring distractors (Stroop); and manual object discrimination while ignoring spatial position (Simon task). All three tasks had congruent and incongruent stimuli, while PWI and Stroop also had neutral stimuli. Analyses focusing on common activation across tasks identified a portion of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that was active in incongruent trials for all three tasks, suggesting that this region subserves a domain-general attentional control function. In the language tasks, this area showed increased activity for incongruent relative to congruent stimuli, consistent with the involvement of domain-general mechanisms of attentional control in word production. The two language tasks also showed activity in anterior-superior temporal gyrus (STG). Activity increased for neutral PWI stimuli (picture and word did not share the same semantic category) relative to incongruent (categorically related) and congruent stimuli. This finding is consistent with the involvement of language-specific areas in word production, possibly related to retrieval of lexical-semantic information from memory. The current results thus suggest that in addition to engaging language-specific areas for core linguistic processes, speaking also engages the ACC, a region that is likely implementing domain-general attentional control.

Abstract

Particle verbs (e.g., look up) are lexical items for which particle and verb share a single lexical entry. Using event-related brain potentials, we examined working memory and long-term memory involvement in particle-verb processing. Dutch participants read sentences with head verbs that allow zero, two, or more than five particles to occur downstream. Additionally, sentences were presented for which the encountered particle was semantically plausible, semantically implausible, or forming a non-existing particle verb. An anterior negativity was observed at the verbs that potentially allow for a particle downstream relative to verbs that do not, possibly indexing storage of the verb until the dependency with its particle can be closed. Moreover, a graded N400 was found at the particle (smallest amplitude for plausible particles and largest for particles forming non-existing particle verbs), suggesting that lexical access to a shared lexical entry occurred at two separate time points.

Abstract

In animals, the rhythmical properties of calls are known to be shaped by physical constraints and the necessity of conveying information. As a consequence, investigating rhythmical properties in relation to different environmental conditions can help to shed light on the relationship between environment and species behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Sciaena umbra (fam. Sciaenidae) male fish emit reproductive calls characterized by a simple isochronous, i.e., metronome-like rhythm (the so-called R-pattern). Here, S. umbra R-pattern rhythm properties were assessed and compared between four different sites located along the Mediterranean basin (Mallorca, Venice, Trieste, Crete); furthermore, for one location, two datasets collected 10 years apart were available. Recording sites differed in habitat types, vessel density and acoustic richness; despite this, S. umbra R-calls were isochronous across all locations. A degree of variability was found only when considering the beat frequency, which was temporally stable, but spatially variable, with the beat frequency being faster in one of the sites (Venice). Statistically, the beat frequency was found to be dependent on the season (i.e. month of recording) and potentially influenced by the presence of soniferous competitors and human-generated underwater noise. Overall, the general consistency in the measured rhythmical properties (isochrony and beat frequency) suggests their nature as a fitness-related trait in the context of the S. umbra reproductive behavior and calls for further evaluation as a communicative cue.

Abstract

This study examines online processing and offline judgments of subject-verb person agreement with a focus on how this is impacted by markedness in heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian. To this end, 54 adult HSs living in Germany and 40 homeland Italian speakers completed a self-paced reading task (SPRT) and a grammaticality judgment task (GJT). Markedness was manipulated by probing agreement with both first-person (marked) and third-person (unmarked) subjects. Agreement was manipulated by crossing first-person marked subjects with third-person unmarked verbs and vice versa. Crucially, person violations with 1st person subjects (e.g., io *suona la chitarra “I plays-3rd-person the guitar”) yielded significantly shorter RTs in the SPRT and higher accuracy in the GJT than the opposite error type (e.g., il giornalista *esco spesso “the journalist go-1st-person out often”). This effect is consistent with the claim that when the first element in the dependency is marked (first person), the parser generates stronger predictions regarding upcoming agreeing elements. These results nicely align with work from the same populations investigating the impact of morphological markedness on grammatical gender agreement, suggesting that markedness impacts agreement similarly in two distinct grammatical domains and that sensitivity to markedness is more prevalent for HSs.

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a slow but steady accumulation of psycholinguistic research focusing on typologically diverse languages. In this review, we provide an overview of the psycholinguistic research on Philippine languages at the sentence level. We first discuss the grammatical features of these languages that figure prominently in existing research. We identify four linguistic domains that have received attention from language researchers and summarize the empirical terrain. We advance two claims that emerge across these different domains: (a) The agent-first pressure plays a central role in many of the findings, and (b) the generalization that the patient argument is the syntactically privileged argument cannot be reduced to frequency, but instead is an emergent phenomenon caused by the alignment of competing pressures toward an optimal candidate. We connect these language-specific claims to language-general theories of sentence processing.

Abstract

Background: Social communication difficulties represent an autistic trait that is highly heritable and persistent during the course of development. However, little is known about the underlying genetic architecture of this phenotype. Methods: We performed a genome-wide association study on parent-reported social communication problems using items of the children’s communication checklist (age 10 to 11 years) studying single and/or joint marker effects. Analyses were conducted in a large UK population-based birth cohort (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children, ALSPAC, N = 5,584) and followed-up within a sample of children with comparable measures from Western Australia (RAINE, N = 1364). Results: Two of our seven independent top signals (P- discovery <1.0E-05) were replicated (0.009 < P- replication ≤0.02) within RAINE and suggested evidence for association at 6p22.1 (rs9257616, meta-P = 2.5E-07) and 14q22.1 (rs2352908, meta-P = 1.1E-06). The signal at 6p22.1 was identified within the olfactory receptor gene cluster within the broader major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region. The strongest candidate locus within this genomic area was TRIM27. This gene encodes an ubiquitin E3 ligase, which is an interaction partner of methyl-CpG-binding domain (MBD) proteins, such as MBD3 and MBD4, and rare protein-coding mutations within MBD3 and MBD4 have been linked to autism. The signal at 14q22.1 was found within a gene-poor region. Single-variant findings were complemented by estimations of the narrow-sense heritability in ALSPAC suggesting that approximately a fifth of the phenotypic variance in social communication traits is accounted for by joint additive effects of genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms throughout the genome (h2(SE) = 0.18(0.066), P = 0.0027). Conclusion: Overall, our study provides both joint and single-SNP-based evidence for the contribution of common polymorphisms to variation in social communication phenotypes.

Abstract

Sensitivity to dependencies (correspondences between distant items) in sensory stimuli plays a crucial role in human music and language. Here, we show that squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) can detect abstract, non-adjacent dependencies in auditory stimuli. Monkeys discriminated between tone sequences containing a dependency and those lacking it, and generalized to previously unheard pitch classes and novel dependency distances. This constitutes the first pattern learning study where artificial stimuli were designed with the species' communication system in mind. These results suggest that the ability to recognize dependencies represents a capability that had already evolved in humans’ last common ancestor with squirrel monkeys, and perhaps before.

Abstract

The possibility of achieving experimentally controlled, non-vocal acoustic production in non-human primates is a key step to enable the testing of a number of hypotheses on primate behavior and cognition. However, no device or solution is currently available, with the use of sensors in non-human animals being almost exclusively devoted to applications in food industry and animal surveillance. Specifically, no device exists which simultaneously allows: (i) spontaneous production of sound or music by non-human animals via object manipulation, (ii) systematical recording of data sensed from these movements, (iii) the possibility to alter the acoustic feedback properties of the object using remote control. We present two prototypes we developed for application with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) which, while fulfilling the aforementioned requirements, allow to arbitrarily associate sounds to physical object movements. The prototypes differ in sensing technology, costs, intended use and construction requirements. One prototype uses four piezoelectric elements embedded between layers of Plexiglas and foam. Strain data is sent to a computer running Python through an Arduino board. A second prototype consists in a modified Wii Remote contained in a gum toy. Acceleration data is sent via Bluetooth to a computer running Max/MSP. We successfully pilot tested the first device with a group of chimpanzees. We foresee using these devices for a range of cognitive experiments.

Abstract

The linguistic expression of the GIVE event is investigated in a sample of 72 Papuan languages, 33 belonging to the Trans New Guinea family, 39 of various non-TNG lineages. Irrespective of the verbal template (prefix, suffix, or no indexation of undergoer), in the majority of languages the recipient is marked as the direct object of a monotransitive verb, which sometimes involves stem suppletion for the recipient. While a few languages allow verbal affixation for all three arguments, a number of languages challenge the universal claim that the `give' verb always has three arguments.

Abstract

Semantic maps are a means of representing universal structure underlying crosslanguage semantic variation. However, no algorithm has existed for inferring a graph-based semantic map from data. Here, we note that this open problem is formally identical to the known problem of inferring a social network from disease outbreaks. From this identity it follows that semantic map inference is computationally intractable, but that an efficient approximation algorithm for it exists. We demonstrate that this algorithm produces sensible semantic maps from two existing bodies of data. We conclude that universal semantic graph structure can be automatically approximated from cross-language semantic data.

Abstract

Native listeners adapt to noncanonically produced speech by retuning phoneme boundaries by means of lexical knowledge. We asked whether a second language lexicon can also guide category retuning and whether perceptual learning transfers from a second language (L2) to the native language (L1). During a Dutch lexical-decision task, German and Dutch listeners were exposed to unusual pronunciation variants in which word-final /f/ or /s/ was replaced by an ambiguous sound. At test, listeners categorized Dutch minimal word pairs ending in sounds along an /f/–/s/ continuum. Dutch L1 and German L2 listeners showed boundary shifts of a similar magnitude. Moreover, following exposure to Dutch-accented English, Dutch listeners also showed comparable effects of category retuning when they heard the same speaker speak her native language (Dutch) during the test. The former result suggests that lexical representations in a second language are specific enough to support lexically guided retuning, and the latter implies that production patterns in a second language are deemed a stable speaker characteristic likely to transfer to the native language; thus retuning of phoneme categories applies across languages.

Abstract

Speech perception is dependent on auditory information within phonemes such as spectral or temporal cues. The perception of those cues, however, is affected by auditory information in surrounding context (e.g., a fast context sentence can make a target vowel sound subjectively longer). In a two-by-two design the current experiments investigated when these different factors influence vowel perception. Dutch listeners categorized minimal word pairs such as /tɑk/–/taːk/ (“branch”–“task”) embedded in a context sentence. Critically, the Dutch /ɑ/–/aː/ contrast is cued by spectral and temporal information. We varied the second formant (F2) frequencies and durations of the target vowels. Independently, we also varied the F2 and duration of all segments in the context sentence. The timecourse of cue uptake on the targets was measured in a printed-word eye-tracking paradigm. Results show that the uptake of spectral cues slightly precedes the uptake of temporal cues. Furthermore, acoustic manipulations of the context sentences influenced the uptake of cues in the target vowel immediately. That is, listeners did not need additional time to integrate spectral or temporal cues of a target sound with auditory information in the context. These findings argue for an early locus of contextual influences in speech perception.

Abstract

Listeners infer which object in a visual scene a speaker refers to from the systematic variation of the speaker's tone of voice (ToV). We examined whether ToV also guides word learning. During exposure, participants heard novel adjectives (e.g., “daxen”) spoken with a ToV representing hot, cold, strong, weak, big, or small while viewing picture pairs representing the meaning of the adjective and its antonym (e.g., elephant-ant for big-small). Eye fixations were recorded to monitor referent detection and learning. During test, participants heard the adjectives spoken with a neutral ToV, while selecting referents from familiar and unfamiliar picture pairs. Participants were able to learn the adjectives' meanings, and, even in the absence of informative ToV, generalise them to new referents. A second experiment addressed whether ToV provides sufficient information to infer the adjectival meaning or needs to operate within a referential context providing information about the relevant semantic dimension. Participants who saw printed versions of the novel words during exposure performed at chance during test. ToV, in conjunction with the referential context, thus serves as a cue to word meaning. ToV establishes relations between labels and referents for listeners to exploit in word learning.

Abstract

The wide variety of scientific user communities work with data since many years and thus have already a wide variety of data infrastructures in production today. The aim of this paper is thus not to create one new general data architecture that would fail to be adopted by each and any individual user community. Instead this contribution aims to design a reference model with abstract entities that is able to federate existing concrete infrastructures under one umbrella. A reference model is an abstract framework for understanding significant entities and relationships between them and thus helps to understand existing data infrastructures when comparing them in terms of functionality, services, and boundary conditions. A derived architecture from such a reference model then can be used to create a federated architecture that builds on the existing infrastructures that could align to a major common vision. This common vision is named as ’ScienceTube’ as part of this contribution that determines the high-level goal that the reference model aims to support. This paper will describe how a well-focused use case around data replication and its related activities in the EUDAT project aim to provide a first step towards this vision. Concrete stakeholder requirements arising from scientific end users such as those of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) projects underpin this contribution with clear evidence that the EUDAT activities are bottom-up thus providing real solutions towards the so often only described ’high-level big data challenges’. The followed federated approach taking advantage of community and data centers (with large computational resources) further describes how data replication services enable data-intensive computing of terabytes or even petabytes of data emerging from ESFRI projects.

Abstract

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment was conducted in a discovery sample of 101,069 individuals and a replication sample of 25,490. Three independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are genome-wide significant (rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266), and all three replicate. Estimated effects sizes are small (coefficient of determination R(2) ≈ 0.02%), approximately 1 month of schooling per allele. A linear polygenic score from all measured SNPs accounts for ≈2% of the variance in both educational attainment and cognitive function. Genes in the region of the loci have previously been associated with health, cognitive, and central nervous system phenotypes, and bioinformatics analyses suggest the involvement of the anterior caudate nucleus. These findings provide promising candidate SNPs for follow-up work, and our effect size estimates can anchor power analyses in social-science genetics.

Abstract

The recent proliferation of digital databases of cultural and linguistic data, together with new statistical techniques becoming available has lead to a rise in so-called nomothetic studies [1]–[8]. These seek relationships between demographic variables and cultural traits from large, cross-cultural datasets. The insights from these studies are important for understanding how cultural traits evolve. While these studies are fascinating and are good at generating testable hypotheses, they may underestimate the probability of finding spurious correlations between cultural traits. Here we show that this kind of approach can find links between such unlikely cultural traits as traffic accidents, levels of extra-martial sex, political collectivism and linguistic diversity. This suggests that spurious correlations, due to historical descent, geographic diffusion or increased noise-to-signal ratios in large datasets, are much more likely than some studies admit. We suggest some criteria for the evaluation of nomothetic studies and some practical solutions to the problems. Since some of these studies are receiving media attention without a widespread understanding of the complexities of the issue, there is a risk that poorly controlled studies could affect policy. We hope to contribute towards a general skepticism for correlational studies by demonstrating the ease of finding apparently rigorous correlations between cultural traits. Despite this, we see well-controlled nomothetic studies as useful tools for the development of theories.

Abstract

Sagarra and Herschensohn’s article examines English L2 learners’ knowledge of Spanish gender and number agreement and their sensitivity to gender and number agreement violations (e.g. *El ingeniero presenta el prototipo *famosa/*famosos en la conferencia) during real-time sentence processing. It raises some interesting questions that are central to both acquisition and processing research. In the following paper, I discuss a selection of these topics, for instance, what types of knowledge may or may not be available/accessible during real-time L2 processing at different proficiency levels, what the differences may be between the processing of number versus gender concord, and perhaps most importantly, the problem of how to characterize the relationship between the grammar and the parser, both in general terms and in the context of language acquisition.

Abstract

In this paper, we report on an eye-tracking study investigating the processing of English VP-ellipsis (John took the rubbish out. Fred did [] too) (VPE) and VP-anaphora (John took the rubbish out. Fred did it too) (VPA) constructions, with syntactically parallel versus nonparallel antecedent clauses (e.g., The rubbish was taken out by John. Fred did [] too/Fred did it too). The results show first that VPE involves greater processing costs than VPA overall. Second, although the structural nonparallelism of the antecedent clause elicited a processing cost for both anaphor types, there was a difference in the timing and the strength of this parallelism effect: it was earlier and more fleeting for VPA, as evidenced by regression path times, whereas the effect occurred later with VPE completions, showing up in second and total fixation times measures, and continuing on into the reading of the adjacent text. Taking the observed differences between the processing of the two anaphor types together with other research findings in the literature, we argue that our data support the idea that in the case of VPE, the VP from the antecedent clause necessitates more computation at the elision site before it is linked to its antecedent than is the case for VPA.

Abstract

First paragraph: A fundamental issue in psycholinguistics concerns how speakers retrieve intended words from long-term memory. According to a selection by competition account (e.g., Levelt
et al., 1999), conceptually driven word retrieval involves the activation of a set of candidate words and a competitive selection
of the intended word from this set.

Abstract

For several decades, context effects in picture naming and word reading have been extensively investigated. However, researchers have found no agreement on the explanation of the effects. Whereas it has long been assumed that several types of effect reflect competition in word selection, recently it has been argued that these effects reflect the exclusion of articulatory responses from an output buffer. Here, we first critically evaluate the findings on context effects in picture naming that have been taken as evidence against the competition account, and we argue that the findings are, in fact, compatible with the competition account. Moreover, some of the findings appear to challenge rather than support the response exclusion account. Next, we compare the response exclusion and competition accounts with respect to their ability to explain data on word reading. It appears that response exclusion does not account well for context effects on word reading times, whereas computer simulations reveal that a competition model like WEAVER++ accounts for the findings.

Abstract

Whereas most theoretical and computational models assume a continuous flow of activation from concepts to lexical items in spoken word production, one prominent model assumes that the mapping of concepts onto words happens in a discrete fashion (Bloem & La Heij, 2003). Semantic facilitation of context pictures on word translation has been taken to support the discrete-flow model. Here, we report results of computer simulations with the continuous-flow WEAVER++ model (Roelofs, 1992, 2006) demonstrating that the empirical observation taken to be in favor of discrete models is, in fact, only consistent with those models and equally compatible with more continuous models of word production by monolingual and bilingual speakers. Continuous models are specifically and independently supported by other empirical evidence on the effect of context pictures on native word production.

Abstract

Roelofs, Piai, and Schriefers argue that several findings on the effect of distractor words and pictures in producing words support a selection-by-competition account and challenge a non-competitive response-exclusion account. Janssen argues that the findings do not challenge response exclusion, and he conjectures that both competitive and non-competitive mechanisms underlie word selection. Here, we maintain that the findings do challenge the response-exclusion account and support the assumption of a single competitive mechanism underlying word selection.

Abstract

The role of visual representations during language processing remains unclear: They could be activated as a necessary part of the comprehension process, or they could be less crucial and influence performance in a task-dependent manner. In the present experiments, participants read sentences about an object. The sentences implied that the object had a specific shape or orientation. They then either named a picture of that object (Experiments 1 and 3) or decided whether the object had been mentioned in the sentence (Experiment 2). Orientation information did not reliably influence performance in any of the experiments. Shape representations influenced performance most strongly when participants were asked to compare a sentence with a picture or when they were explicitly asked to use mental imagery while reading the sentences. Thus, in contrast to previous claims, implied visual information often does not contribute substantially to the comprehension process during normal reading.

Abstract

When comprehending concrete words, listeners and readers can activate specific visual information such as the shape of the words’ referents. In two experiments we examined whether such information can be activated in an anticipatory fashion. In Experiment 1, listeners’ eye movements were tracked while they were listening to sentences that were predictive of a specific critical word (e.g., “moon” in “In 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon”). 500 ms before the acoustic onset of the critical word, participants were shown four-object displays featuring three unrelated distractor objects and a critical object, which was either the target object (e.g., moon), an object with a similar shape (e.g., tomato), or an unrelated control object (e.g., rice). In a time window before shape information from the spoken target word could be retrieved, participants already tended to fixate both the target and the shape competitors more often than they fixated the control objects, indicating that they had anticipatorily activated the shape of the upcoming word's referent. This was confirmed in Experiment 2, which was an ERP experiment without picture displays. Participants listened to the same lead-in sentences as in Experiment 1. The sentence-final words corresponded to the predictable target, the shape competitor, or the unrelated control object (yielding, for instance, “In 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon/tomato/rice”). N400 amplitude in response to the final words was significantly attenuated in the shape-related compared to the unrelated condition. Taken together, these results suggest that listeners can activate perceptual attributes of objects before they are referred to in an utterance.

Abstract

Language comprehension involves activating word meanings and integrating them with the sentence context. This study examined whether these routines are carried out even when they are theoretically unnecessary, namely in the case of opaque idiomatic expressions, for which the literal word meanings are unrelated to the overall meaning of the expression. Predictable words in sentences were replaced by a semantically related or unrelated word. In literal sentences, this yielded previously established behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of semantic processing: semantic facilitation in lexical decision, a reduced N400 for semantically related relative to unrelated words, and a power increase in the gamma frequency band that was disrupted by semantic violations. However, the same manipulations in idioms yielded none of these effects. Instead, semantic violations elicited a late positivity in idioms. Moreover, gamma band power was lower in correct idioms than in correct literal sentences. It is argued that the brain's semantic expectancy and literal word meaning integration operations can, to some extent, be “switched off” when the context renders them unnecessary. Furthermore, the results lend support to models of idiom comprehension that involve unitary idiom representations.

Abstract

Studies investigating language commonly isolate one modality or process, focusing on comprehension or production. Here, we present a framework for a paradigm that combines both: the Concise Language Paradigm (CLaP), tapping into comprehension and production within one trial. The trial structure is identical across conditions, presenting a sentence followed by a picture to be named. We tested 21 healthy speakers with EEG to examine three time periods during a trial (sentence, pre-picture interval, picture onset), yielding contrasts of sentence comprehension, contextually and visually guided word retrieval, object recognition, and naming. In the CLaP, sentences are presented auditorily (constrained, unconstrained, reversed), and pictures appear as normal (constrained, unconstrained, bare) or scrambled objects. Imaging results revealed different evoked responses after sentence onset for normal and time-reversed speech. Further, we replicated the context effect of alpha-beta power decreases before picture onset for constrained relative to unconstrained sentences, and could clarify that this effect arises from power decreases following constrained sentences. Brain responses locked to picture-onset differed as a function of sentence context and picture type (normal vs. scrambled), and naming times were fastest for pictures in constrained sentences, followed by scrambled picture naming, and equally fast for bare and unconstrained picture naming. Finally, we also discuss the potential of the CLaP to be adapted to different focuses, using different versions of the linguistic content and tasks, in combination with electrophysiology or other imaging methods. These first results of the CLaP indicate that this paradigm offers a promising framework to investigate the language system.

Abstract

We investigated 1-year-old infants’ ability to infer an adult’s focus of attention solely on the basis of her voice direction. In Studies 1 and 2, 12- and 16-month-olds watched an adult go behind a barrier and then heard her verbally express excitement about a toy hidden in one of two boxes at either end of the barrier. Even though they could not see the adult, infants of both ages followed her voice direction to the box containing the toy. Study 2 showed that infants could do this even when the adult was positioned closer to the incorrect box while she vocalized toward the correct one (and thus ruled out the possibility that infants were merely approaching the source of the sound). In Study 3, using the same methods as in Study 2, we found that chimpanzees performed the task at chance level. Our results show that infants can determine the focus of another person’s attention through auditory information alone—a useful skill for establishing joint attention.

Abstract

Although it is well established that self-related information can rapidly capture our attention and bias cognitive functioning, whether this self-bias can affect language processing remains largely unknown. In addition, there is an ongoing debate as to the functional independence of language processes, notably regarding the syntactic domain. Hence, this study investigated the influence of self-related content on syntactic speech processing. Participants listened to sentences that could contain morphosyntactic anomalies while the masked face identity (self, friend, or unknown faces) was presented for 16 msec preceding the critical word. The language-related ERP components (left anterior negativity [LAN] and P600) appeared for all identity conditions. However, the largest LAN effect followed by a reduced P600 effect was observed for self-faces, whereas a larger LAN with no reduction of the P600 was found for friend faces compared with unknown faces. These data suggest that both early and late syntactic processes can be modulated by self-related content. In addition, alpha power was more suppressed over the left inferior frontal gyrus only when self-faces appeared before the critical word. This may reflect higher semantic demands concomitant to early syntactic operations (around 150–550 msec). Our data also provide further evidence of self-specific response, as reflected by the N250 component. Collectively, our results suggest that identity-related information is rapidly decoded from facial stimuli and may impact core linguistic processes, supporting an interactive view of syntactic processing. This study provides evidence that the self-reference effect can be extended to syntactic processing.

Abstract

Experimental research on word processing has generally focused on properties that are associated to a concept in long-term memory (e.g., basketball—round). The present study addresses a related issue: the accessibility of “emergent properties” or conceptual properties that have to be inferred in a given context (e.g., basketball—floats). This investigation sheds light on a current debate in cognitive pragmatics about the number of pragmatic systems that are there (Carston, 2002a, 2007; Recanati, 2004, 2007). Two experiments using a self-paced reading task suggest that inferential processes are fully integrated in the processing system. Emergent properties are accessed early on in processing, without delaying later discourse integration processes. I conclude that the theoretical distinction between explicit and implicit meaning is not paralleled by that between associative and inferential processes.

Abstract

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that indirect false-belief tests allow participants to track a protagonist’s perspective uninterruptedly, whereas direct false-belief tests disrupt the process of perspective tracking in various ways. For this purpose, adults’ performance was compared on indirect and direct false-belief tests by means of continuous eye-tracking. Experiment 1 confirmed that the false-belief question used in direct tests disrupts perspective tracking relative to what is observed in an indirect test. Experiment 2 confirmed that perspective tracking is a continuous process that can be easily disrupted in adults by a subtle visual manipulation in both indirect and direct tests. These results call for a closer analysis of the demands of the false-belief tasks that have been used in developmental research.

Abstract

The experimental record of the last three decades shows that children under 4 years old fail all sorts of variations on the standard false-belief task, whereas more recent studies have revealed that infants are able to pass nonverbal versions of the task. We argue that these paradoxical results are an artifact of the type of false-belief tasks that have been used to test infants and children: Nonverbal designs allow infants to keep track of a protagonist’s perspective over a course of events, whereas verbal designs tend to disrupt the perspective-tracking process in various ways, which makes it too hard for younger children to demonstrate their capacity for perspective tracking. We report three experiments that confirm this hypothesis by showing that 3-year-olds can pass a suitably streamlined version of the verbal false-belief task. We conclude that young children can pass the verbal false-belief task provided that they are allowed to keep track of the protagonist’s perspective without too much disruption.

Abstract

Language and social cognition come together in communication, but their relation has been intensely contested. Here, I argue that these two distinctively human abilities are connected in a positive feedback loop, whereby the development of one cognitive skill boosts the development of the other. More specifically, I hypothesize that language and social cognition codevelop in ontogeny and coevolve in diachrony through the acquisition, mature use, and cultural evolution of reference systems (e.g., demonstratives: “this” vs. “that”; articles: “a” vs. “the”; pronouns: “I” vs. “you”). I propose to study the connection between reference systems and communicative social cognition across three parallel timescales—language acquisition, language use, and language change, as a new research program for cultural evolutionary pragmatics. Within that framework, I discuss the coevolution of language and communicative social cognition as cognitive gadgets, and introduce a new methodological approach to study how universals and cross-linguistic differences in reference systems may result in different developmental pathways to human social cognition.

Abstract

This study reports effects of a high-variability training procedure on nonnative learning of a Japanese geminate-singleton fricative contrast. Thirty native speakers of Dutch took part in a 5-day training procedure in which they identified geminate and singleton variants of the Japanese fricative /s/. Participants were trained with either many repetitions of a limited set of words recorded by a single speaker (low-variability training) or with fewer repetitions of a more variable set of words recorded by multiple speakers (high-variability training). Both types of training enhanced identification of speech but not of nonspeech materials, indicating that learning was domain specific. High-variability training led to superior performance in identification but not in discrimination tests, and supported better generalization of learning as shown by transfer from the trained fricatives to the identification of untrained stops and affricates. Variability thus helps nonnative listeners to form abstract categories rather than to enhance early acoustic analysis.

Abstract

Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across perceptually and causally dissimilar imitation tasks. To this end, we employed a longitudinal within-participants design to compare the performance of 37 infants on two imitation tasks, with one administered at 13 months and one administered at 14 months. Infants who selectively imitated goal-directed actions in an object-cued task at 13 months also selectively imitated goal-directed actions in a vocal-cued task at 14 months. We conclude that goal-directed imitation reflects a general ability to interpret behavior in terms of mental states.

Abstract

Daily activities of forty-eight 8- to 15-month-olds and their interlocutors were observed to test for the presence and frequency of triadic joint actions and deictic gestures across three different cultures: Yucatec-Mayans (Mexico), Dutch (Netherlands), and Shanghai-Chinese (China). The amount of joint action and deictic gestures to which infants were exposed differed systematically across settings, allowing testing for the role of social–interactional input in the ontogeny of prelinguistic gestures. Infants gestured more and at an earlier age depending on the amount of joint action and gestures infants were exposed to, revealing early prelinguistic sociocultural differences. The study shows that the emergence of basic prelinguistic gestures is socially mediated, suggesting that others' actions structure the ontogeny of human communication from early on.

Abstract

Research on memory for native language (L1) has consistently shown that retention of surface form is inferior to that of gist (e.g., Sachs, 1967). This paper investigates whether the same pattern is found in memory for non-native language (L2). We apply a model of bilingual word processing to more complex linguistic structures and predict that memory for L2 sentences ought to contain more surface information than L1 sentences. Native and non-native speakers of English were tested on a set of sentence pairs with different surface forms but the same meaning (e.g., “The bullet hit/struck the bull's eye”). Memory for these sentences was assessed with a cued recall procedure. Responses showed that native and non-native speakers did not differ in the accuracy of gist-based recall but that non-native speakers outperformed native speakers in the retention of surface form. The results suggest that L2 processing involves more intensive encoding of lexical level information than L1 processing.

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that younger adults engage in lexically guided perceptual learning in speech perception. Here, we investigated whether older listeners are also able to retune their phonetic category boundaries. More specifically, in this research we tried to answer two questions. First, do older adults show perceptual-learning effects of similar size to those of younger adults? Second, do differences in lexical behavior predict the strength of the perceptual-learning effect? An age group comparison revealed that older listeners do engage in lexically guided perceptual learning, but there were two age-related differences: Younger listeners had a stronger learning effect right after exposure than did older listeners, but the effect was more stable for older than for younger listeners. Moreover, a clear link was shown to exist between individuals’ lexical-decision performance during exposure and the magnitude of their perceptual-learning effects. A subsequent analysis on the results of the older participants revealed that, even within the older participant group, with increasing age the perceptual retuning effect became smaller but also more stable, mirroring the age group comparison results. These results could not be explained by differences in hearing loss. The age effect may be accounted for by decreased flexibility in the adjustment of phoneme categories or by age-related changes in the dynamics of spoken-word recognition, with older adults being more affected by competition from similar-sounding lexical competitors, resulting in less lexical guidance for perceptual retuning. In conclusion, our results clearly show that the speech perception system remains flexible over the life span.

Abstract

The coinciding form and meaning similarity of cognates, e.g. ‘flamme’ (French), ‘Flamme’ (German), ‘vlam’ (Dutch), meaning ‘flame’ in English, facilitates learning of additional languages. The cross-language frequency and similarity distributions of cognates vary according to evolutionary change and language contact. We compare frequency and orthographic (O), phonetic (P), and semantic similarity of cognates, automatically identified in semi-complete lexicons of six widely spoken languages. Comparisons of P and O similarity reveal inconsistent mappings in language pairs with deep orthographies. The frequency distributions show that cognate frequency is reduced in less closely related language pairs as compared to more closely related languages (e.g., French-English vs. German-English). These frequency and similarity patterns may support a better understanding of cognate processing in natural and experimental settings. The automatically identified cognates are available in the supplementary materials, including the frequency and similarity measurements.

Abstract

Handedness is a manifestation of brain hemispheric specialization. Left-handedness occurs at increased rates in neurodevelopmental disorders. Genome-wide association studies have identified common genetic effects on handedness or brain asymmetry, which mostly involve variants outside protein-coding regions and may affect gene expression. Implicated genes include several that encode tubulins (microtubule components) or microtubule-associated proteins. Here we examine whether left-handedness is also influenced by rare coding variants (frequencies ≤ 1%), using exome data from 38,043 left-handed and 313,271 right-handed individuals from the UK Biobank. The beta-tubulin gene TUBB4B shows exome-wide significant association, with a rate of rare coding variants 2.7 times higher in left-handers than right-handers. The TUBB4B variants are mostly heterozygous missense changes, but include two frameshifts found only in left-handers. Other TUBB4B variants have been linked to sensorineural and/or ciliopathic disorders, but not the variants found here. Among genes previously implicated in autism or schizophrenia by exome screening, DSCAM and FOXP1 show evidence for rare coding variant association with left-handedness. The exome-wide heritability of left-handedness due to rare coding variants was 0.91%. This study reveals a role for rare, protein-altering variants in left-handedness, providing further evidence for the involvement of microtubules and disorder-relevant genes.

Abstract

Hoewel de spelling van Nederlandse verledentijdsvormen van zwakke werkwoorden algemeen als eenvoudig wordt beschouwd (ze zijn immers klankzuiver) maken zelfs universiteitsstudenten opvallend veel fouten bij de keuze tussen de uitgangen -te en -de. Voor een deel zijn die fouten ‘natuurlijk’ in die zin dat ze het gevolg zijn van de werking van frequentie en analogie. Anderzijds stellen we vast dat Nederlanders veel meer fouten maken dan Vlamingen, althans als de stam op een coronale fricatief eindigt (s, z, f, v). Aangezien de Nederlandse proefpersonen de ‘regel’ (het ezelsbruggetje ’t kofschip) beter lijken te beheersen dan de Vlamingen, moet de verklaring voor het verschil gezocht worden in een klankverandering die zich wel in Nederland maar niet of nauwelijks in Vlaanderen voordoet, de verstemlozing van de fricatieven. Het spellingprobleem vraagt om didactische maatregelen en/of politieke: het kan wellicht grotendeels worden opgelost door de spellingregels een weinig aan te passen.

Abstract

Behavioral syntactic priming effects during sentence comprehension are typically observed only if both the syntactic structure and lexical head are repeated. In contrast, during production syntactic priming occurs with structure repetition alone, but the effect is boosted by repetition of the lexical head. We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal correlates of syntactic priming and lexical boost effects during sentence production and comprehension. The critical measure was the magnitude of fMRI adaptation to repetition of sentences in active or passive voice, with or without verb repetition. In conditions with repeated verbs, we observed adaptation to structure repetition in the left IFG and MTG, for active and passive voice. However, in the absence of repeated verbs, adaptation occurred only for passive sentences. None of the fMRI adaptation effects yielded differential effects for production versus comprehension, suggesting that sentence comprehension and production are subserved by the same neuronal infrastructure for syntactic processing.

Abstract

Repetition suppression in fMRI studies is generally thought to underlie behavioural facilitation effects (i.e., priming) and it is often used to identify the neuronal representations associated with a stimulus. However, this pays little heed to the large number of repetition enhancement effects observed under similar conditions. In this review, we identify several cognitive variables biasing repetition effects in the BOLD response towards enhancement instead of suppression. These variables are stimulus recognition, learning, attention, expectation and explicit memory. We also evaluate which models can account for these repetition effects and come to the conclusion that there is no one single model that is able to embrace all repetition enhancement effects. Accumulation, novel network formation as well as predictive coding models can all explain subsets of repetition enhancement effects.

Abstract

During communication in real-life settings, our brain often needs to integrate auditory and visual information, and at the same time actively focus on the relevant sources of information, while ignoring interference from irrelevant events. The interaction between integration and attention processes remains poorly understood. Here, we use rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate how attention affects auditory and visual information processing and integration, during multimodal communication. We presented human participants (male and female) with videos of an actress uttering action verbs (auditory; tagged at 58 Hz) accompanied by two movie clips of hand gestures on both sides of fixation (attended stimulus tagged at 65 Hz; unattended stimulus tagged at 63 Hz). Integration difficulty was manipulated by a lower-order auditory factor (clear/degraded speech) and a higher-order visual semantic factor (matching/mismatching gesture). We observed an enhanced neural response to the attended visual information during degraded speech compared to clear speech. For the unattended information, the neural response to mismatching gestures was enhanced compared to matching gestures. Furthermore, signal power at the intermodulation frequencies of the frequency tags, indexing non-linear signal interactions, was enhanced in left frontotemporal and frontal regions. Focusing on LIFG (Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus), this enhancement was specific for the attended information, for those trials that benefitted from integration with a matching gesture. Together, our results suggest that attention modulates audiovisual processing and interaction, depending on the congruence and quality of the sensory input.

Abstract

Background: Gesture frequently accompanies speech in healthy speakers. For many individuals with aphasia, gestures are a target of speech-language pathology intervention, either as an alternative form of communication or as a facilitative device for language restoration. The patterns of gesture production for people with aphasia and the participant variables that predict these patterns remain unclear. Aims: We aimed to examine gesture production during conversational discourse in a large sample of individuals with aphasia. We used a detailed gesture coding system to determine patterns of gesture production associated with specific aphasia types and severities. Methods & Procedures: We analysed conversation samples from AphasiaBank, gathered from 46 people with post-stroke aphasia and 10 healthy matched controls all of whom had gestured at least once during a story re-tell task. Twelve gesture types were coded. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the patterns of gesture production. Possible significant differences in production patterns according to aphasia type and severity were examined with a series of analyses of variance (ANOVA) statistics, and multiple regression analysis was used to examine these potential predictors of gesture production patterns. Outcomes & Results: Individuals with aphasia gestured significantly more frequently than healthy controls. Aphasia type and severity impacted significantly on gesture type in specific identified patterns detailed here, especially on the production of meaning-laden gestures. Conclusions: These patterns suggest the opportunity for gestures as targets of aphasia therapy. Aphasia fluency accounted for a greater degree of data variability than aphasia severity or naming skills. More work is required to delineate predictive factors.

Abstract

Purpose For many individuals with aphasia, gestures form a vital component of message transfer and are the target of speech-language pathology intervention. What remains unclear are the participant variables that predict successful outcomes from gesture treatments. The authors examined the gesture production of a large number of individuals with aphasia—in a consistent discourse sampling condition and with a detailed gesture coding system—to determine patterns of gesture production associated with specific types of aphasia. Method The authors analyzed story retell samples from AphasiaBank (TalkBank, n.d.), gathered from 98 individuals with aphasia resulting from stroke and 64 typical controls. Twelve gesture types were coded. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the patterns of gesture production. Possible significant differences in production patterns according to aphasia type were examined using a series of chi-square, Fisher exact, and logistic regression statistics. Results A significantly higher proportion of individuals with aphasia gestured as compared to typical controls, and for many individuals with aphasia, this gesture was iconic and was capable of communicative load. Aphasia type impacted significantly on gesture type in specific identified patterns, detailed here. Conclusion These type-specific patterns suggest the opportunity for gestures as targets of aphasia therapy.

Abstract

The present study investigated to what extent children, compared to adults, benefit from gestures to disambiguate degraded speech by manipulating speech signals and manual modality. Dutch-speaking adults (N = 20) and 6- and 7-year-old children (N = 15) were presented with a series of video clips in which an actor produced a Dutch action verb with or without an accompanying iconic gesture. Participants were then asked to repeat what they had heard. The speech signal was either clear or altered into 4- or 8-band noise-vocoded speech. Children had more difficulty than adults in disambiguating degraded speech in the speech-only condition. However, when presented with both speech and gestures, children reached a comparable level of accuracy to that of adults in the degraded-speech-only condition. Furthermore, for adults, the enhancement of gestures was greater in the 4-band condition than in the 8-band condition, whereas children showed the opposite pattern. Gestures help children to disambiguate degraded speech, but children need more phonological information than adults to benefit from use of gestures. Children’s multimodal language integration needs to further develop to adapt flexibly to challenging situations such as degraded speech, as tested in our study, or instances where speech is heard with environmental noise or through a face mask.

Abstract

Different talkers speak differently, even within the same homogeneous group. These differences lead to acoustic variability in speech, causing challenges for correct perception of the intended message. Because previous descriptions of this acoustic variability have focused mostly on segments, talker variability in prosodic structures is not yet well documented. The present study therefore examined acoustic between-talker variability in word stress in Dutch. We recorded 40 native Dutch talkers from a participant sample with minimal dialectal variation and balanced gender, producing segmentally overlapping words (e.g., VOORnaam vs. voorNAAM; ‘first name’ vs. ‘respectable’, capitalization indicates lexical stress), and measured different acoustic cues to stress. Each individual participant’s acoustic measurements were analyzed using Linear Discriminant Analyses, which provide coefficients for each cue, reflecting the strength of each cue in a talker’s productions. On average, talkers primarily used mean F0, intensity, and duration. Moreover, each participant also employed a unique combination of cues, illustrating large prosodic variability between talkers. In fact, classes of cue-weighting tendencies emerged, differing in which cue was used as the main cue. These results offer the most comprehensive acoustic description, to date, of word stress in Dutch, and illustrate that large prosodic variability is present between individual talkers.

Abstract

Background: Positive parental interactions may buffer maltreated children from poor psychosocial outcomes. The study aims to evaluate the associations between various types of maltreatment and psychosocial outcomes in early childhood, and examine the moderating effect of positive parent-child interactions on them.

Methods: Data were from a representative Chinese 6-year-old children sample (n = 17,088). Caregivers reported the history of child maltreatment perpetrated by any individuals, completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire as a proxy for psychosocial well-being, and reported the frequency of their interactions with children by the Chinese Parent-Child Interaction Scale.

Results: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse were all associated with higher odds of psychosocial problems (aOR = 1.90 [95% CI: 1.57-2.29], aOR = 1.92 [95% CI: 1.75-2.10], aOR = 1.64 [95% CI: 1.17-2.30], aOR = 2.03 [95% CI: 1.30-3.17]). Positive parent-child interactions were associated with lower odds of psychosocial problems after accounting for different types of maltreatment. The moderating effect of frequent parent-child interactions was found only in the association between occasional only physical abuse and psychosocial outcomes (interaction term: aOR = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.15-0.77).

Conclusions: Maltreatment and positive parent-child interactions have impacts on psychosocial well-being in early childhood. Positive parent-child interactions could only buffer the adverse effect of occasional physical abuse on psychosocial outcomes. More frequent parent-child interactions may be an important intervention opportunity among some children.

Impact: It provides the first data on the prevalence of different single types and combinations of maltreatment in early childhood in Shanghai, China by drawing on a city-level population-representative sample. It adds to evidence that different forms and degrees of maltreatment were all associated with a higher risk of psychosocial problems in early childhood. Among them, sexual abuse posed the highest risk, followed by emotional abuse. It innovatively found that higher frequencies of parent-child interactions may provide buffering effects only to children who are exposed to occasional physical abuse. It provides a potential intervention opportunity, especially for physically abused children.

Abstract

The present study examined the relation between nonselective inhibition and selective inhibition in picture naming performance. Nonselective inhibition refers to the ability to suppress any unwanted response, whereas selective inhibition refers to the ability to suppress specific competing responses. The degree of competition in picture naming was manipulated by presenting targets along with distractor words that could be semantically related (e.g., a picture of a dog combined with the word cat) or unrelated (tree) to the picture name. The mean naming response time (RT) was longer in the related than in the unrelated condition, reflecting semantic interference. Delta plot analyses showed that participants with small mean semantic interference effects employed selective inhibition more effectively than did participants with larger semantic interference effects. The participants were also tested on the stop-signal task, which taps nonselective inhibition. Their performance on this task was correlated with their mean naming RT but, importantly, not with the selective inhibition indexed by the delta plot analyses and the magnitude of the semantic interference effect. These results indicate that nonselective inhibition ability and selective inhibition of competitors in picture naming are separable to some extent.

Abstract

A t(X;1)(p11.2;q21.2) has been reported in cases of papillary renal cell tumors arising in males. In this study two cell lines derived from this tumor type have been used to indicate the breakpoint region on the X chromosome. Both cell lines have the translocation in addition to other rearrangements and one is derived from the first female case to be reported with the t(X;1)(p11.2;q21.2). Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) has been used to position YACs belonging to contigs in the Xp11.2 region relative to the breakpoint. When considered together with detailed mapping information from the Xp11.2 region the position of the breakpoint in both cell lines was suggested as follows: Xpter-->Xp11.23-OATL1-GATA1-WAS-TFE3-SY P-t(X;1)-DXS255-CLCN5-DXS146-OATL2- Xp11.22-->Xcen. The breakpoint was determined to lie in an uncloned region between SYP and a YAC called FTDM/1 which extends 1 Mb distal to DXS255. These results are contrary to the conclusion from previous FISH studies that the breakpoint was near the OATL2 locus, but are consistent with, and considerably refine, the position that had been established by molecular analysis.

Abstract

Perceptual compensation for speaker vocal tract properties was investigated in four groups of listeners: native speakers of English and native speakers of Dutch, native speakers of Spanish with low proficiency in English, and Spanish-English bilinguals. Listeners categorized targets on a [sofo] to [sufu] continuum. Targets were preceded by sentences that were manipulated to have either a high or a low F1 contour. All listeners performed the categorization task for targets that were preceded by Spanish, English and Dutch precursors. Results show that listeners from each of the four language backgrounds compensate for speaker vocal tract properties regardless of language-specific vowel inventory properties. Listeners also compensate when they listen to stimuli in another language. The results suggest that patterns of compensation are mainly determined by auditory properties of precursor sentences.

Abstract

One of the important challenges for the development of science communication concerns the current problems with the under-exposure of null results. I suggest that each article published in a top scientific journal can get tagged (online) with attempts to replicate. As such, a future reader of an article will also be able to see whether replications have been attempted and how these turned out. Editors and/or reviewers decide whether a replication is of sound quality. The authors of the main article have the option to review the replication and can provide a supplementary comment with each attempt that is added. After 5 or 10 years, and provided enough attempts to replicate, the authors of the main article get the opportunity to discuss/review their original study in light of the outcomes of the replications. This approach has two important strengths: 1) The approach would provide researchers with the opportunity to show that they deliver scientifically thorough work, but sometimes just fail to replicate the result that others have reported. This can be especially valuable for the career opportunities of promising young researchers; 2) perhaps even more important, the visibility of replications provides an important incentive for researchers to publish findings only if they are sure that their effects are reliable (and thereby reduce the influence of "experimenter degrees of freedom" or even outright fraud). The proposed approach will stimulate researchers to look beyond the point of publication of their studies.

Abstract

Three experiments investigated whether extrinsic vowel normalization takes place largely at a categorical or a precategorical level of processing. Traditional vowel normalization effects in categorization were replicated in Experiment 1: Vowels taken from an [ɪ]-[ε] continuum were more often interpreted as /ɪ/ (which has a low first formant, F (1)) when the vowels were heard in contexts that had a raised F (1) than when the contexts had a lowered F (1). This was established with contexts that consisted of only two syllables. These short contexts were necessary for Experiment 2, a discrimination task that encouraged listeners to focus on the perceptual properties of vowels at a precategorical level. Vowel normalization was again found: Ambiguous vowels were more easily discriminated from an endpoint [ε] than from an endpoint [ɪ] in a high-F (1) context, whereas the opposite was true in a low-F (1) context. Experiment 3 measured discriminability between pairs of steps along the [ɪ]-[ε] continuum. Contextual influences were again found, but without discrimination peaks, contrary to what was predicted from the same participants' categorization behavior. Extrinsic vowel normalization therefore appears to be a process that takes place at least in part at a precategorical processing level.

Abstract

Language-mediated visual attention describes the interaction of two fundamental components of the human cognitive system, language and vision. Within this paper we present an amodal shared resource model of language-mediated visual attention that offers a description of the information and processes involved in this complex multimodal behavior and a potential explanation for how this ability is acquired. We demonstrate that the model is not only sufficient to account for the experimental effects of Visual World Paradigm studies but also that these effects are emergent properties of the architecture of the model itself, rather than requiring separate information processing channels or modular processing systems. The model provides an explicit description of the connection between the modality-specific input from language and vision and the distribution of eye gaze in language-mediated visual attention. The paper concludes by discussing future applications for the model, specifically its potential for investigating the factors driving observed individual differences in language-mediated eye gaze.

Abstract

Atypical visual perception in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is hypothesized to stem from an imbalance in excitatory and inhibitory processes in the brain. We used neuronal oscillations in the gamma frequency range (30 – 90 Hz), which emerge from a balanced interaction of excitation and inhibition in the brain, to assess contextual modulation processes in early visual perception. Electroencephalography was recorded in 12 high-functioning adults with ASD and 12 age- and IQ-matched control participants. Oscilla- tions in the gamma frequency range were analyzed in response to stimuli consisting of small line-like elements. Orientation-speci fi c contextual modulation was manipulated by parametrically increasing the amount of homogeneously oriented elements in the stimuli. The stimuli elicited a strong steady-state gamma response around the refresh-rate of 60 Hz, which was larger for controls than for participants with ASD. The amount of orientation homogeneity (contextual modulation) in fl uenced the gamma response in control subjects, while for subjects with ASD this was not the case. The atypical steady-state gamma response to contextual modulation in subjects with ASD may capture the link between an imbalance in excitatory and inhibitory neuronal processing and atypical visual processing in ASD

Abstract

Recent studies of aging organisms have identified a systematic phenomenon, characterized by a negative correlation between gene length and their expression in various cell types, species, and diseases. We term this phenomenon gene-length-dependent transcription decline (GLTD) and suggest that it may represent a bottleneck in the transcription machinery and thereby significantly contribute to aging as an etiological factor. We review potential links between GLTD and key aging processes such as DNA damage and explore their potential in identifying disease modification targets. Notably, in Alzheimer’s disease, GLTD spotlights extremely long synaptic genes at chromosomal fragile sites (CFSs) and their vulnerability to postmitotic DNA damage. We suggest that GLTD is an integral element of biological aging.

Abstract

The response exclusion account (REA), advanced by Mahon and colleagues, localises the distractor frequency effect and the semantic interference effect in picture naming at the level of the response output buffer. We derive four predictions from the REA: (1) the size of the distractor frequency effect should be identical to the frequency effect obtained when distractor words are read aloud, (2) the distractor frequency effect should not change in size when stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) is manipulated, (3) the interference effect induced by a distractor word (as measured from a nonword control distractor) should increase in size with increasing SOA, and (4) the word frequency effect and the semantic interference effect should be additive. The results of the picture-naming task in Experiment 1 and the word-reading task in Experiment 2 refute all four predictions. We discuss a tentative account of the findings obtained within a traditional selection-by-competition model in which both context effects are localised at the level of lexical selection.

Abstract

Neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) genes (CHRNA5/CHRNA3/CHRNB4) have been reproducibly associated with nicotine dependence, smoking behaviors, and lung cancer risk. Of the few reports that have focused on early smoking behaviors, association results have been mixed. This meta-analysis examines early smoking phenotypes and SNPs in the gene cluster to determine: (1) whether the most robust association signal in this region (rs16969968) for other smoking behaviors is also associated with early behaviors, and/or (2) if additional statistically independent signals are important in early smoking. We focused on two phenotypes: age of tobacco initiation (AOI) and age of first regular tobacco use (AOS). This study included 56,034 subjects (41 groups) spanning nine countries and evaluated five SNPs including rs1948, rs16969968, rs578776, rs588765, and rs684513. Each dataset was analyzed using a centrally generated script. Meta-analyses were conducted from summary statistics. AOS yielded significant associations with SNPs rs578776 (beta = 0.02, P = 0.004), rs1948 (beta = 0.023, P = 0.018), and rs684513 (beta = 0.032, P = 0.017), indicating protective effects. There were no significant associations for the AOI phenotype. Importantly, rs16969968, the most replicated signal in this region for nicotine dependence, cigarettes per day, and cotinine levels, was not associated with AOI (P = 0.59) or AOS (P = 0.92). These results provide important insight into the complexity of smoking behavior phenotypes, and suggest that association signals in the CHRNA5/A3/B4 gene cluster affecting early smoking behaviors may be different from those affecting the mature nicotine dependence phenotype

Abstract

The principle of common coding suggests that a joint representation is formed when actions are repeatedly paired with a specific perceptual event. Musicians are occupationally specialized with regard to the coupling between actions and their auditory effects. In the present study, we employed a novel paradigm to demonstrate automatic action–effect associations in pianists. Pianists and nonmusicians pressed keys according to aurally presented number sequences. Numbers were presented at pitches that were neutral, congruent, or incongruent with respect to pitches that would normally be produced by such actions. Response time differences were seen between congruent and incongruent sequences in pianists alone. A second experiment was conducted to determine whether these effects could be attributed to the existence of previously documented spatial/pitch compatibility effects. In a “stretched” version of the task, the pitch distance over which the numbers were presented was enlarged to a range that could not be produced by the hand span used in Experiment 1. The finding of a larger response time difference between congruent and incongruent trials in the original, standard, version compared with the stretched version, in pianists, but not in nonmusicians, indicates that the effects obtained are, at least partially, attributable to learned action effects.

Abstract

Social interaction is organized around norms and preferences that guide our construction of actions and our interpretation of those of others, creating a reflexive moral order. Sociological theory suggests two possibilities for the type of moral order that underlies the policing of interactional norm and preference violations: a morality that focuses on the nature of violations themselves and a morality that focuses on the positioning of actors as they maintain their conduct comprehensible, even when they depart from norms and preferences. We find that actors are more likely to reproach interactional violations for which an account is not provided by the transgressor, and that actors weakly reproach or let pass first offenses while more strongly policing violators who persist in bad behavior. Based on these findings, we outline a theory of interactional policing that rests not on the nature of the violation but rather on actors' moral positioning.

Abstract

Human referential communication is often thought as coding-decoding a set of symbols, neglecting that establishing shared meanings requires a computational mechanism powerful enough to mutually negotiate them. Sharing the meaning of a novel symbol might rely on similar conceptual inferences across communicators or on statistical similarities in their sensorimotor behaviors. Using magnetoencephalography, we assess spectral, temporal, and spatial characteristics of neural activity evoked when people generate and understand novel shared symbols during live communicative interactions. Solving those communicative problems induced comparable changes in the spectral profile of neural activity of both communicators and addressees. This shared neuronal up-regulation was spatially localized to the right temporal lobe and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and emerged already before the occurrence of a specific communicative problem. Communicative innovation relies on neuronal computations that are shared across generating and understanding novel shared symbols, operating over temporal scales independent from transient sensorimotor behavior.

Abstract

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is measured above the head, which makes it sensitive to variations of the head position with respect to the sensors. Head movements blur the topography of the neuronal sources of the MEG signal, increase localization errors, and reduce statistical sensitivity. Here we describe two novel and readily applicable methods that compensate for the detrimental effects of head motion on the statistical sensitivity of MEG experiments. First, we introduce an online procedure that continuously monitors head position. Second, we describe an offline analysis method that takes into account the head position time-series. We quantify the performance of these methods in the context of three different experimental settings, involving somatosensory, visual and auditory stimuli, assessing both individual and group-level statistics. The online head localization procedure allowed for optimal repositioning of the subjects over multiple sessions, resulting in a 28% reduction of the variance in dipole position and an improvement of up to 15% in statistical sensitivity. Offline incorporation of the head position time-series into the general linear model resulted in improvements of group-level statistical sensitivity between 15% and 29%. These tools can substantially reduce the influence of head movement within and between sessions, increasing the sensitivity of many cognitive neuroscience experiments.

Abstract

When preparing to name an object, semantic knowledge about the object and its attributes is activated, including perceptual properties. It is unclear, however, whether semantic attribute activation contributes to lexical access or is a consequence of activating a concept irrespective of whether that concept is to be named or not. In this study, we measured neural responses using fMRI while participants named objects that are typically green or red, presented in black line drawings. Furthermore, participants underwent two other tasks with the same objects, color naming and semantic judgment, to see if the activation pattern we observe during picture naming is (a) similar to that of a task that requires accessing the color attribute and (b) distinct from that of a task that requires accessing the concept but not its name or color. We used representational similarity analysis to detect brain areas that show similar patterns within the same color category, but show different patterns across the two color categories. In all three tasks, activation in the bilateral fusiform gyri (“Human V4”) correlated with a representational model encoding the red–green distinction weighted by the importance of color feature for the different objects. This result suggests that when seeing objects whose color attribute is highly diagnostic, color knowledge about the objects is retrieved irrespective of whether the color or the object itself have to be named.

Abstract

This study explored sentence processing in two typologically distinct languages: Korean, a verb-final language, and Tongan, a verb-initial language. The first experiment revealed that in Korean, sentences arranged in the scrambled OSV (Object, Subject, Verb) order were processed more slowly than those in the canonical SOV order, highlighting a scrambling effect. It also found that sentences with subject topicalization in the SOV order were processed as swiftly as those in the canonical form, whereas sentences with object topicalization in the OSV order were processed with speeds and accuracy comparable to scrambled sentences. However, since topicalization and scrambling in Korean use the same OSV order, independently distinguishing the effects of topicalization is challenging. In contrast, Tongan allows for a clear separation of word orders for topicalization and scrambling, facilitating an independent evaluation of topicalization effects. The second experiment, employing a maze task, confirmed that Tongan’s canonical VSO order was processed more efficiently than the VOS scrambled order, thereby verifying a scrambling effect. The third experiment investigated the effects of both scrambling and topicalization in Tongan, finding that the canonical VSO order was processed most efficiently in terms of speed and accuracy, unlike the VOS scrambled and SVO topicalized orders. Notably, the OVS object-topicalized order was processed as efficiently as the VSO canonical order, while the SVO subject-topicalized order was slower than VSO but faster than VOS. By independently assessing the effects of topicalization apart from scrambling, this study demonstrates that both subject and object topicalization in Tongan facilitate sentence processing, contradicting the predictions based on movement-based anticipation.

Abstract

Content and temporal cues have been shown to interact during audio-visual (AV) speech identification. Typically, the most reliable unimodal cue is used more strongly to identify specific speech features; however, visual cues are only used if the AV stimuli are presented within a certain temporal window of integration (TWI). This suggests that temporal cues denote whether unimodal stimuli belong together, that is, whether they should be integrated. It is not known whether temporal cues also provide information about the identity of a syllable. Since spoken syllables have naturally varying AV onset asynchronies, we hypothesize that for suboptimal AV cues presented within the TWI, information about the natural AV onset differences can aid in speech identification. To test this, we presented low-intensity auditory syllables concurrently with visual speech signals, and varied the stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of the AV pair, while participants were instructed to identify the auditory syllables. We revealed that specific speech features (e.g., voicing) were identified by relying primarily on one modality (e.g., auditory). Additionally, we showed a wide window in which visual information influenced auditory perception, that seemed even wider for congruent stimulus pairs. Finally, we found a specific response pattern across the SOA range for syllables that were not reliably identified by the unimodal cues, which we explained as the result of the use of natural onset differences between AV speech signals. This indicates that temporal cues not only provide information about the temporal integration of AV stimuli, but additionally convey information about the identity of AV pairs. These results provide a detailed behavioral basis for further neuro-imaging and stimulation studies to unravel the neurofunctional mechanisms of the audio-visual-temporal interplay within speech perception.

Abstract

Neural oscillations reflect fluctuations in excitability, which biases the percept of ambiguous sensory input. Why this bias occurs is still not fully understood. We hypothesized that neural populations representing likely events are more sensitive, and thereby become active on earlier oscillatory phases, when the ensemble itself is less excitable. Perception of ambiguous input presented during less-excitable phases should therefore be biased toward frequent or predictable stimuli that have lower activation thresholds. Here, we show such a frequency bias in spoken word recognition using psychophysics, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and computational modelling. With MEG, we found a double dissociation, where the phase of oscillations in the superior temporal gyrus and medial temporal gyrus biased word-identification behavior based on phoneme and lexical frequencies, respectively. This finding was reproduced in a computational model. These results demonstrate that oscillations provide a temporal ordering of neural activity based on the sensitivity of separable neural populations.

Abstract

From a brain's-eye-view, when a stimulus occurs and what it is are interrelated aspects of interpreting the perceptual world. Yet in practice, the putative perceptual inferences about sensory content and timing are often dichotomized and not investigated as an integrated process. We here argue that neural temporal dynamics can influence what is perceived, and in turn, stimulus content can influence the time at which perception is achieved. This computational principle results from the highly interdependent relationship of what and when in the environment. Both brain processes and perceptual events display strong temporal variability that is not always modeled; we argue that understanding—and, minimally, modeling—this temporal variability is key for theories of how the brain generates unified and consistent neural representations and that we ignore temporal variability in our analysis practice at the peril of both data interpretation and theory-building. Here, we review what and when interactions in the brain, demonstrate via simulations how temporal variability can result in misguided interpretations and conclusions, and outline how to integrate and synthesize what and when in theories and models of brain computation.

Abstract

During face-to-face conversation, transitions between speaker turns are incredibly fast. These fast turn exchanges seem to involve next speakers predicting upcoming semantic information, such that next turn planning can begin before a current turn is complete. Given that face-to-face conversation also involves the use of communicative bodily signals, an important question is how bodily signals such as co-speech hand gestures play into these processes of prediction and fast responding. In this corpus study, we found that hand gestures that depict or refer to semantic information started before the corresponding information in speech, which held both for the onset of the gesture as a whole, as well as the onset of the stroke (the most meaningful part of the gesture). This early timing potentially allows listeners to use the gestural information to predict the corresponding semantic information to be conveyed in speech. Moreover, we provided further evidence that questions with gestures got faster responses than questions without gestures. However, we found no evidence for the idea that how much a gesture precedes its lexical affiliate (i.e., its predictive potential) relates to how fast responses were given. The findings presented here highlight the importance of the temporal relation between speech and gesture and help to illuminate the potential mechanisms underpinning multimodal language processing during face-to-face conversation.

Abstract

Most language use occurs in face-to-face conversation, which involves rapid turn-taking. Seeing communicative bodily signals in addition to hearing speech may facilitate such fast responding. We tested whether this holds for co-speech hand gestures by investigating whether these gestures speed up button press responses to questions. Sixty native speakers of Dutch viewed videos in which an actress asked yes/no-questions, either with or without a corresponding iconic hand gesture. Participants answered the questions as quickly and accurately as possible via button press. Gestures did not impact response accuracy, but crucially, gestures sped up responses, suggesting that response planning may be finished earlier when gestures are seen. How much gestures sped up responses was not related to their timing in the question or their timing with respect to the corresponding information in speech. Overall, these results are in line with the idea that multimodality may facilitate fast responding during face-to-face conversation.

Abstract

The typical pattern of alternating turns in conversation seems trivial at first sight. But a closer look quickly reveals the cognitive challenges involved, with much of it resulting from the fast-paced nature of conversation. One core ingredient to turn coordination is the anticipation of upcoming turn ends so as to be able to ready oneself for providing the next contribution. Across two experiments, we investigated two variables inherent to face-to-face conversation, the presence of visual bodily signals and preceding discourse context, in terms of their contribution to turn end anticipation. In a reaction time paradigm, participants anticipated conversational turn ends better when seeing the speaker and their visual bodily signals than when they did not, especially so for longer turns. Likewise, participants were better able to anticipate turn ends when they had access to the preceding discourse context than when they did not, and especially so for longer turns. Critically, the two variables did not interact, showing that visual bodily signals retain their influence even in the context of preceding discourse. In a pre-registered follow-up experiment, we manipulated the visibility of the speaker's head, eyes and upper body (i.e. torso + arms). Participants were better able to anticipate turn ends when the speaker's upper body was visible, suggesting a role for manual gestures in turn end anticipation. Together, these findings show that seeing the speaker during conversation may critically facilitate turn coordination in interaction.

Abstract

Words are not processed in isolation; instead, they are commonly embedded in phrases and sentences. The sentential context influences the perception and processing of a word. However, how this is achieved by brain processes and whether predictive mechanisms underlie this process remain a debated topic. Here, we employed an experimental paradigm in which we orthogonalized sentence context constraints and predictive validity, which was defined as the ratio of congruent to incongruent sentence endings within the experiment. While recording electroencephalography, participants read sentences with three levels of sentential context constraints (high, medium, and low). Participants were also separated into two groups that differed in their ratio of valid congruent to incongruent target words that could be predicted from the sentential context. For both groups, we investigated modulations of alpha power before, and N400 amplitude modulations after target word onset. The results reveal that the N400 amplitude gradually decreased with higher context constraints and cloze probability. In contrast, alpha power was not significantly affected by context constraint. Neither the N400 nor alpha power were significantly affected by changes in predictive validity.

Abstract

Sentence comprehension is highly practiced and largely automatic, but this belies the complexity of the underlying processes. We used functional neuroimaging to investigate garden-path sentences that cause difficulty during comprehension, in order to unpack the different processes used to support sentence interpretation. By investigating garden-path and other types of sentences within the same individuals, we functionally profiled different regions within the temporal and frontal cortices in the left hemisphere. The results revealed that different aspects of comprehension difficulty are handled by left posterior temporal, left anterior temporal, ventral left frontal, and dorsal left frontal cortices. The functional profiles of these regions likely lie along a spectrum of specificity to generality, including language-specific processing of linguistic representations, more general conflict resolution processes operating over linguistic representations, and processes for handling difficulty in general. These findings suggest that difficulty is not unitary and that there is a role for a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic processes in supporting comprehension.

Abstract

Bilinguals possess the ability of expressing themselves in more than one language, and typically do so in contextually rich and dynamic settings. Theories and models have indeed long considered context factors to affect bilingual language production in many ways. However, most experimental studies in this domain have failed to fully incorporate linguistic, social, or physical context aspects, let alone combine them in the same study. Indeed, most experimental psycholinguistic research has taken place in isolated and constrained lab settings with carefully selected words or sentences, rather than under rich and naturalistic conditions. We argue that the most influential experimental paradigms in the psycholinguistic study of bilingual language production fall short of capturing the effects of context on language processing and control presupposed by prominent models. This paper therefore aims to enrich the methodological basis for investigating context aspects in current experimental paradigms and thereby move the field of bilingual language production research forward theoretically. After considering extensions of existing paradigms proposed to address context effects, we present three far-ranging innovative proposals, focusing on virtual reality, dialog situations, and multimodality in the context of bilingual language production.

Abstract

Stem cell-based approaches to restore function after stroke through replacement of dead neurons require the generation of specific neuronal subtypes. Loss of neurons in the cerebral cortex is a major cause of stroke-induced neurological deficits in adult humans. Reprogramming of adult human somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells is a novel approach to produce patient-specific cells for autologous transplantation. Whether such cells can be converted to functional cortical neurons that survive and give rise to behavioural recovery after transplantation in the stroke-injured cerebral cortex is not known. We have generated progenitors in vitro, expressing specific cortical markers and giving rise to functional neurons, from long-term self-renewing neuroepithelial-like stem cells, produced from adult human fibroblast-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. At 2 months after transplantation into the stroke-damaged rat cortex, the cortically fated cells showed less proliferation and more efficient conversion to mature neurons with morphological and immunohistochemical characteristics of a cortical phenotype and higher axonal projection density as compared with non-fated cells. Pyramidal morphology and localization of the cells expressing the cortex-specific marker TBR1 in a certain layered pattern provided further evidence supporting the cortical phenotype of the fated, grafted cells, and electrophysiological recordings demonstrated their functionality. Both fated and non-fated cell-transplanted groups showed bilateral recovery of the impaired function in the stepping test compared with vehicle-injected animals. The behavioural improvement at this early time point was most likely not due to neuronal replacement and reconstruction of circuitry. At 5 months after stroke in immunocompromised rats, there was no tumour formation and the grafted cells exhibited electrophysiological properties of mature neurons with evidence of integration in host circuitry. Our findings show, for the first time, that human skin-derived induced pluripotent stem cells can be differentiated to cortical neuronal progenitors, which survive, differentiate to functional neurons and improve neurological outcome after intracortical implantation in a rat stroke model.

Abstract

The natural ecology of language is conversation, with individuals taking turns speaking to communicate in a back-and-forth fashion. Language in this context involves strings of words that a listener must process while simultaneously planning their own next utterance. It would thus be highly advantageous if language users distributed information within an utterance in a way that may facilitate this processing–planning dynamic. While some studies have investigated how information is distributed at the level of single words or clauses, or in written language, little is known about how information is distributed within spoken utterances produced during naturalistic conversation. It also is not known how information distribution patterns of spoken utterances may differ across languages. We used a set of matched corpora (CallHome) containing 898 telephone conversations conducted in six different languages (Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish), analyzing more than 58,000 utterances, to assess whether there is evidence of distinct patterns of information distributions at the utterance level, and whether these patterns are similar or differed across the languages. We found that English, Spanish, and Mandarin typically show a back-loaded distribution, with higher information (i.e., surprisal) in the last half of utterances compared with the first half, while Arabic, German, and Japanese showed front-loaded distributions, with higher information in the first half compared with the last half. Additional analyses suggest that these patterns may be related to word order and rate of noun and verb usage. We additionally found that back-loaded languages have longer turn transition times (i.e.,time between speaker turns)

Abstract

Human language is extremely versatile, combining a limited set of signals in an unlimited number of ways. However, it is unknown whether conversational visual signals feed into the composite utterances with which speakers communicate their intentions. We assessed whether different combinations of visual signals lead to different intent interpretations of the same spoken utterance. Participants viewed a virtual avatar uttering spoken questions while producing single visual signals (i.e., head turn, head tilt, eyebrow raise) or combinations of these signals. After each video, participants classified the communicative intention behind the question. We found that composite utterances combining several visual signals conveyed different meaning compared to utterances accompanied by the single visual signals. However, responses to combinations of signals were more similar to the responses to related, rather than unrelated, individual signals, indicating a consistent influence of the individual visual signals on the whole. This study therefore provides first evidence for compositional, non-additive (i.e., Gestalt-like) perception of multimodal language.