Publications

Abstract

Listeners cannot recognize highly reduced word forms in isolation, but they can do so when these forms are presented in context (Ernestus, Baayen, & Schreuder, 2002). This suggests that not all possible surface forms of words have equal status in the mental lexicon. The present study shows that the reduced forms are linked to the canonical representations in the mental lexicon, and that these latter representations induce reconstruction processes. Listeners restore suffixes that are partly or completely missing in reduced word forms. A series of phoneme-monitoring experiments reveals the nature of this restoration: the basis for suffix restoration is mainly phonological in nature, but orthography has an influence as well.

Abstract

Science is currently under-utilized as a tool for effective policy and program design. A key part of this research-to-practice gap lies in the ineffectiveness of current models of science translation. Drawing on theory and methods from anthropology and cognitive linguistics, this study explores the role of cultural models and metaphor in the practice of science communication and translation. Qualitative interviews and group sessions, along with quantitative framing experiments, were used to design and test the effectiveness of a set of explanatory metaphors in translating the science of executive function. Developmental and cognitive scientists typically define executive function as a multi-dimensional set of related abilities that include working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. The study finds one metaphor in particular—the brain's air traffic control system—to be effective in bridging gaps between expert and public understandings on this issue and in so doing improving the accessibility of scientific information to members of the public as they reason about public policy issues. Findings suggest both a specific tool that can be used in efforts to translate the science of executive function and a theory and methodology that can be employed to design and test metaphors as communication devices on other science and social issues.

Abstract

Drozd's critique of Crain & Thornton's (C&T) (1998) book Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG) raises many issues concerning theory and experimental design within generative approaches to language acquisition. I focus here on one of the strongest theoretical claims of the Modularity Matching Model (MMM): continuity of processing. For reasons different to Drozd, I argue that the assumption is tenuous. Furthermore, I argue that the focus of the MMM and the methodological prescriptions contained in IUG are too narrow to capture language acquisition.

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to investigate the effectiveness of a language-focused professional development programme on the knowledge and behaviour of preschool practitioners (sometimes called early years practitioners) in the UK. In Study 1 we determined whether the training received by practitioners is effective in improving their knowledge of how to support children’s language and communicative development. In Study 2 we tested whether trained practitioners, and practitioners from centres with embedded Language Champions, were able to implement the techniques they had been taught. For this, we video-recorded practitioners interacting, one to one, with 2- and 3–4-year-old children in their centres. We conclude that (1) practitioners retain the knowledge they have been taught, both about how children learn and about how to promote this learning, and that (2), in some respects, this knowledge translates well into practice; practitioners in centres with embedded Language Champions and trained practitioners used language-enriching behaviours when interacting with children more often than did untrained practitioners. We discuss how the translation of some techniques into overt behaviour could be made more effective

Abstract

This article reviews research that has investigated the role of verbal working memory (VWM) in sentence comprehension in both typical and atypical developmental populations. Two theoretical approaches that specify different roles for VWM in sentence comprehension are considered: (i) capacity-limit approaches, which treat VWM as a theoretical primitive that causally constrains language processing and acquisition, and (ii) the experience-based approach, which argues that VWM is an emergent property of long-term linguistic knowledge. The empirical literature relevant to these different approaches is then reviewed. Although there has been considerable recent research on the topic, it is concluded that the current role of working memory in sentence comprehension in development is unclear, calling for a greater number of controlled systematic developmental studies on the topic.

Abstract

The phonological Stroop task, in which the participant names the color of written distractors, is being used increasingly to study the phonological encoding process in speech production. A brief review of experimental paradigms used to study the phonological encoding process indicated that currently it is not known whether the onset overlap benefit (faster color naming when the distractor shares the onset segment with the color name) in a phonological Stroop task is due to phonology or orthography. The present paper investigated this question using a picture variant of the phonological Stroop task. Participants named a small set of line drawings of animals (e.g., camel) with a pseudoword distractor printed on it. Picture naming was facilitated when the distractor shared the onset segment with the picture name regardless of orthographic overlap (CUST–camel = KUST–camel < NUST–camel). We conclude that the picture variant of the phonological Stroop task is a useful tool to study the phonological encoding process, free of orthographic influence.

Abstract

Are letters with a diacritic (e.g., a) recognized as a variant of the base letter (e.g., a), or as a separate letter identity? Two recent masked priming studies, one in French and one in Spanish, investigated this question, concluding that this depends on the language-specific linguistic function served by the diacritic. Experiment 1 tested this linguistic function hypothesis using Japanese kana, in which diacritics signal consonant voicing, and like French and unlike Spanish, provide lexical contrast. Contrary to the hypothesis, Japanese kana yielded the pattern of diacritic priming like Spanish. Specifically, for a target kana with a diacritic (e.g., (sic), /ga/), the kana prime without the diacritic (e.g., (sic), /ka/) facilitated recognition almost as much as the identity prime (e.g., (sic) = (sic)), whereas for a target kana without a diacritic, the kana prime with the diacritic produced less facilitation than the identity prime (e.g., (sic) < (sic)). We suggest that the pattern of diacritic priming has little to do with linguistic function, and instead it stems from a general property of visual object recognition. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis using visually similar letters of the Latin alphabet that differ in the presence/absence of a visual feature (e.g., O and Q). The same asymmetry in priming was observed. These findings are consistent with the noisy channel model of letter/word recognition (Norris & Kinoshita, Psychological Review, 119, 517-545, 2012a).

Abstract

Pauses during continuous speech, particularly those that occur within clauses, are thought to reflect the planning of forthcoming verbal output. We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine their neural correlates. Six volunteers were scanned while describing seven Rorschach inkblots, producing 3 min of speech per inkblot. In an event-related design, the level of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast during brief speech pauses (mean duration 1.3 s, SD 0.3 s) during overt speech was contrasted with that during intervening periods of articulation. We then examined activity associated with pauses that occurred within clauses and pauses that occurred between grammatical junctions. Relative to articulation during speech, pauses were associated with activation in the banks of the left superior temporal sulcus (BA 39/22), at the temporoparietal junction. Continuous speech was associated with greater activation bilaterally in the inferior frontal (BA 44/45), middle frontal (BA 8) and anterior cingulate (BA 24) gyri, the middle temporal sulcus (BA 21/22), the occipital cortex and the cerebellum. Left temporal activation was evident during pauses that occurred within clauses but not during pauses at grammatical junctions. In summary, articulation during continuous speech involved frontal, temporal and cerebellar areas, while pausing was associated with activity in the left temporal cortex, especially when this occurred within a clause. The latter finding is consistent with evidence that within-clause pauses are a correlate of speech planning and in particular lexical retrieval.

Abstract

This research investigated the developing inter-relationships between language, graphic symbolism and symbolic play both concurrently and longitudinally from the fourth to the fifth year of childhood. Sixty children (n = 60) aged between 3 and 4 years completed multiple assessments of language and assessments of graphic symbolism, symbolic play and non-verbal intelligence. A year later, 31 children (n = 31) were re-tested using the same assessments. The findings revealed that skills within each symbolic domain were inter-related during the fourth year, appearing to develop in a domain-general type fashion based upon a common underlying symbolic mechanism. However, between the fourth and the fifth years, only language had predictive validity, suggesting a shift towards the verbal mediation of symbolic play and graphic symbolism as language becomes progressively internalized (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978).

Abstract

Counterfactuals such as If the world did not exist, we would not notice it have been a challenge for philosophers and linguists since antiquity. There is no generally accepted semantic analysis. The prevalent view, developed in varying forms by Robert Stalnaker, David Lewis, and others, enriches the idea of strict implication by the idea of a “minimal revision” of the actual world. Objections mainly address problems of maximal similarity between worlds. In this paper, I will raise several problems of a different nature and draw attention to several phenomena that are relevant for counterfactuality but rarely discussed in that context. An alternative analysis that is very close to the linguistic facts is proposed. A core notion is the “situation talked about”: it makes little sense to discuss whether an assertion is true or false unless it is clear which situation is talked about. In counterfactuals, this situation is marked as not belonging to the actual world. Typically, this is done in the form of the finite verb in the main clause. The if-clause is optional and has only a supportive role: it provides information about the world to which the situation talked about belongs. Counterfactuals only speak about some nonactual world, of which we only know what results from the protasis. In order to judge them as true or false, an additional assumption is required: they are warranted according to the same criteria that warrant the corresponding indicative assertion. Overall similarity between worlds is irrelevant.

Abstract

Starting with Ross (1970), various proposals have been made to classify elliptical coordinations and to characterize different languages according to the types of ellipses which they admit. Sanders (1977) discusses four of these proposals, shows that they are inadequate on various grounds and proposes a fifth typology whose central claim is 'evidently correct', as he states (p. 258). In the following, I shall briefly outline this typology and then show that it is inadequate, too. Since there is only one language 1 know — German — I will take all my examples from this language. Moreover, all examples will be straightforward and easy to be judged.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Warning others about unexpected negative action outcomes is a paradigm case of communicative helping and prospective action understanding. The current study addressed the ontogeny of warning in infants’ gestural communication. We found that 12- and 18-month-olds (n = 84) spontaneously warned an adult by pointing out to her an aversive object hidden in her way (Problem condition). In control conditions the object was either positive (No Problem condition) or the adult had witnessed its’ placing (Problem known condition), which resulted in significantly less pointing. Results show that infants intervene spontaneously and with foresight through communication, in order to help others avoid a problem before it has occurred. These acts of warning entail an understanding of others’ negatively defined goals (to avoid an outcome) and their incorrect representations of reality. Findings support theories of altruism and social-pragmatic competencies in infancy.

Abstract

The possibility to combine smaller units of meaning (e.g., words) to create new and more complex meanings (e.g., phrases and sentences) is a fundamental feature of human language. In the present project, we investigated how the brain supports the semantic and syntactic composition of two-word adjective-noun phrases in Dutch, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The present investigation followed up on previous studies reporting a composition effect in the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) when comparing neural activity at nouns combined with adjectives, as opposed to nouns in a non-compositional context. The first aim of the present study was to investigate whether this effect, as well as its modulation by noun specificity and adjective class, can also be observed in Dutch. A second aim was to investigate to what extent these effects may be driven by syntactic composition rather than primarily by semantic composition as was previously proposed. To this end, a novel condition was administered in which participants saw nouns combined with pseudowords lacking meaning but agreeing with the nouns in terms of grammatical gender, as real adjectives would. We failed to observe a composition effect or its modulation in both a confirmatory analysis (focused on the cortical region and time-window where it has previously been reported) and in exploratory analyses (where we tested multiple regions and an extended potential time-window of the effect). A syntactically driven composition effect was also not observed in our data. We do, however, successfully observe an independent, previously reported effect on single word processing in our data, confirming that our MEG data processing pipeline does meaningfully capture language processing activity by the brain. The failure to observe the composition effect in LATL is surprising given that it has been previously reported in multiple studies. Reviewing all previous studies investigating this effect, we propose that materials and a task involving imagery might be necessary for this effect to be observed. In addition, we identified substantial variability in the regions of interest analyzed in previous studies, which warrants additional checks of robustness of the effect. Further research should identify limits and conditions under which this effect can be observed. The failure to observe specifically a syntactic composition effect in such minimal phrases is less surprising given that it has not been previously reported in MEG data.

Abstract

People tend to associate the abstract concepts of “good” and “bad” with their fluent and disfluent sides of space, as determined by their natural handedness or by experimental manipulation (Casasanto, 2011). Here we investigated influences of spatial perspective taking on the spatialization of “good” and “bad.” In the first experiment, participants indicated where a schematically drawn cartoon character would locate “good” and “bad” stimuli. Right-handers tended to assign “good” to the right and “bad” to the left side of egocentric space when the character shared their spatial perspective, but when the character was rotated 180° this spatial mapping was reversed: good was assigned to the character’s right side, not the participant’s. The tendency to spatialize valence from the character’s perspective was stronger in the second experiment, when participants were shown a full-featured photograph of the character. In a third experiment, most participants not only spatialized “good” and “bad” from the character’s perspective, they also based their judgments on a salient attribute of the character’s body (an injured hand) rather than their own body. Taking another’s spatial perspective encourages people to compute space-valence mappings using an allocentric frame of reference, based on the fluency with which the other person could perform motor actions with their right or left hand. When people reason from their own spatial perspective, their judgments depend, in part, on the specifics of their bodies; when people reason from someone else’s perspective, their judgments may depend on the specifics of the other person’s body, instead. - See more at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00266

Abstract

The human cerebral hemispheres show a left–right asymmetrical torque pattern, which has been claimed to be absent in chimpanzees. The functional significance and developmental mechanisms are unknown. Here, we carried out the largest-ever analysis of global brain shape asymmetry in magnetic resonance imaging data. Three population datasets were used, UK Biobank (N = 39 678), Human Connectome Project (N = 1113), and BIL&GIN (N = 453). At the population level, there was an anterior and dorsal skew of the right hemisphere, relative to the left. Both skews were associated independently with handedness, and various regional gray and white matter metrics oppositely in the two hemispheres, as well as other variables related to cognitive functions, sociodemographic factors, and physical and mental health. The two skews showed single nucleotide polymorphisms-based heritabilities of 4–13%, but also substantial polygenicity in causal mixture model analysis, and no individually significant loci were found in genome-wide association studies for either skew. There was evidence for a significant genetic correlation between horizontal brain skew and autism, which requires future replication. These results provide the first large-scale description of population-average brain skews and their inter-individual variations, their replicable associations with handedness, and insights into biological and other factors which associate with human brain asymmetry.

Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to observe the dental condition in a group of elderly patients over a period of 10 years in order to clarify important risk factors. Materials and methods Participants were elderly patients (in their eighties) who took panoramic radiographs between 2015 and 2016, and for whom panoramic radiographs taken around 10 year earlier were also available. The number of remaining and lost teeth, the Eichner Index, the presence or absence of molar occlusion, the respective condition of dental pulp, dental crowns, alveolar bone resorption, as well as periapical lesions were investigated through the analysis of panoramic radiographs. Additionally, other important variables were collected from patients' medical records. From the obtained panoramic radiograph sets, the patients' dental condition was investigated, and a systematic comparison was conducted. Results The analysis of the panoramic radiographs showed that the number of remaining teeth decreased from an average of 20.8-15.5, and the percentage of patients with 20 or more teeth decreased from 69.2 to 26.9%. A factor analysis investigating tooth loss risk suggested that tooth loss was associated with the bridge, P2 or greater resorption of the alveolar bone, and apical lesions, and gender (with males having a higher risk compared to females). Conclusions Teeth showing P2 or greater alveolar bone resorption, bridge, and apical lesions on panoramic radiographs are most likely to be lost in an elderly patient's near future. Consequently, this group should be encouraged to visit their dental clinics regularly and receive comprehensive instruction on individual self-care methods.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the visual characteristics of tongue lesion images obtained through intraoral ultrasonographic examination and the occurrence of late cervical lymph node metastasis in patients with tongue cancer.
Patients and Methods: This study investigated patients with primary tongue cancer who were examined using intraoral ultrasonography at Hiroshima University Hospital between January 2014 and December 2017. The inclusion criteria were squamous cell carcinoma, curative treatment administration, lateral side of tongue, surgery or brachytherapy alone, no cervical lymph node or distant metastasis as primary treatment, and treatment in our hospital. The exclusion criteria were carcinoma in situ, palliative treatment, dorsum of tongue, and multiple primary cancers. The follow-up period was more than 1 year. The primary endpoint was the occurrence of late cervical lymph node metastasis, and the primary predictor variables were age, gender, longest diameter, thickness, margin or border shapes of the lesion, and treatment methods. The relationship between the occurrence of late cervical lymph node metastasis and the longest diameter, thickness, margin types, and border types as evaluated through intraoral ultrasonography were assessed. The data were collected through a retrospective chart review.
Results: Fifty-four patients were included in this study. The analysis indicated that irregular lesion margins were significantly associated with the occurrence of late cervical lymph node metastasis (P < .0001). The cutoff value for late cervical lymph node metastasis was 21.2 mm for the longest diameter and 3.9 mm for the thickness.
Conclusions: The results of this study indicates that the irregular lesion margin assessed using intraoral ultrasonography may serve as an effective predictor of late cervical lymph node metastasis in N0 cases. (C) 2020 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons

Abstract

It is often challenging to determine the accurate size and shape of oral lesions through computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) when they are very small or obscured by metallic artifacts, such as dental prostheses. Intraoral ultrasonography (IUS) has been shown to be beneficial in obtaining precise information about total tumor extension, as well as the exact location and guiding the insertion of catheters during interstitial brachytherapy. We evaluated the role of IUS in assessing the clinical outcomes of interstitial brachytherapy with 198Au grains in tongue cancer through a retrospective medical chart review. The data from 45 patients with T1 (n = 21) and T2 (n = 24) tongue cancer, who were mainly treated with 198Au grain implants between January 2005 and April 2019, were included in this study. 198Au grain implantations were carried out, and positioning of the implants was confirmed by IUS, to ensure that 198Au grains were appropriately placed for the deep border of the tongue lesion. The five-year local control rates of T1 and T2 tongue cancers were 95.2% and 95.5%, respectively. We propose that the use of IUS to identify the extent of lesions and the position of implanted grains is effective when performing brachytherapy with 198Au grains.

Abstract

The ability to extract word forms from continuous speech is a prerequisite for constructing a vocabulary and emerges in the first year of life. Electrophysiological (ERP) studies of speech segmentation by 9- to 12-month-old listeners in several languages have found a left-localized negativity linked to word onset as a marker of word detection. We report an ERP study showing significant evidence of speech segmentation in Dutch-learning 7-month-olds. In contrast to the left-localized negative effect reported with older infants, the observed overall mean effect had a positive polarity. Inspection of individual results revealed two participant sub-groups: a majority showing a positive-going response, and a minority showing the left negativity observed in older age groups. We retested participants at age three, on vocabulary comprehension and word and sentence production. On every test, children who at 7 months had shown the negativity associated with segmentation of words from speech outperformed those who had produced positive-going brain responses to the same input. The earlier that infants show the left-localized brain responses typically indicating detection of words in speech, the better their early childhood language skills.

Abstract

In spoken language, pitch accent can mark certain information as focus, whereby more attentional resources are allocated to the focused information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, this study examined whether pitch accent, used for marking focus, recruited general attention networks during sentence comprehension. In a language task, we independently manipulated the prosody and semantic/pragmatic congruence of sentences. We found that semantic/pragmatic processing affected bilateral inferior and middle frontal gyrus. The prosody manipulation showed bilateral involvement of the superior/inferior parietal cortex, superior and middle temporal cortex, as well as inferior, middle, and posterior parts of the frontal cortex. We compared these regions with attention networks localized in an auditory spatial attention task. Both tasks activated bilateral superior/inferior parietal cortex, superior temporal cortex, and left precentral cortex. Furthermore, an interaction between prosody and congruence was observed in bilateral inferior parietal regions: for incongruent sentences, but not for congruent ones, there was a larger activation if the incongruent word carried a pitch accent, than if it did not. The common activations between the language task and the spatial attention task demonstrate that pitch accent activates a domain general attention network, which is sensitive to semantic/pragmatic aspects of language. Therefore, attention and language comprehension are highly interactive.

Abstract

This study addresses the supralexical inferential processes underlying wellformedness judgements and latencies for a specic sublexical unit that appears in Dutch compounds, the interfix. Production studies have shown that the selection of interfixes in novel Dutch compounds and the speed of
this selection is primarily determined by the distribution of interfixes in existing compounds that share the left constituent with the target compound, i.e. the ‘‘left constituent family’’. In this paper, we consider the question whether constituent families also affect wellformedness decisions of novel as well as existing Dutch compounds in comprehension. We visually presented compounds containing interfixes that were either in line with the bias of the left constituent family or not. In the case of existing compounds, we also presented variants with replaced interfixes. As in production, the bias of the left constituent family emerged as a crucial predictor for both acceptance rates and response latencies. This result supports the hypothesis that, as in production, constituent families are (co-)activated in comprehension. We argue that this co-activation is part of a supralexical inferential process, and we discuss how our data might be interpreted within sublexical and supralexical theories of morphological processing.

Abstract

This study addresses the possibility that interfixes in multiconstituent nominal compounds in German and Dutch are functional as markers of immediate constituent structure.We report a lexical statistical survey of interfixation in the lexicons of German and Dutch which shows that all interfixes of German and one interfix of Dutch are significantly more likely to appear at the major constituent boundary than expected under chance conditions. A series of experiments provides evidence that speakers of German and Dutch are sensitive to the probabilistic cues to constituent structure provided by the interfixes. Thus, our data provide evidence that probability is part and parcel of grammatical competence.

Abstract

Recent experimental findings suggest stable individual differences in the perception of auditory stimuli lacking energy at the fundamental frequency (F0), here called missing fundamental (MF) tones. Specifically, some individuals readily identify the pitch of such tones with the missing F0 ("F0 listeners"), and some base their judgment on the frequency of the partials that make up the tones ("spectral listeners"). However, the diversity of goals and methods in recent research makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions about individual differences. The first purpose of this article is to discuss the influence of methodological choices on listeners' responses. The second goal is to report findings on individual differences in our own studies of the MF phenomenon. In several experiments, participants judged the direction of pitch change in stimuli composed of two MF tones, constructed so as to reveal whether the pitch percept was based on the MF or the partials. The reported difference between F0 listeners and spectral listeners was replicated, but other stable patterns of responses were also observed. Test-retest reliability is high. We conclude that there are genuine, stable individual differences underlying the diverse findings, but also that there are more than two general types of listeners, and that stimulus variables strongly affect some listeners' responses. This suggests that it is generally misleading to classify individuals as "F0 listeners" or "spectral listeners." It may be more accurate to speak of two modes of perception ("F0 listening" and "spectral listening"), both of which are available to many listeners. The individual differences lie in what conditions the choice between the two modes.

Abstract

Cognitive linguists suggest that understanding metaphors requires activation of conceptual mappings between the involved concepts. We tested whether mappings are indeed in use during metaphor comprehension, and what mapping means as a cognitive process with Event-Related Potentials. Participants read literal, conventional metaphorical, novel metaphorical, and anomalous target sentences preceded by primes with related or unrelated mappings. Experiment 1 used sentence-primes to activate related mappings, and Experiment 2 used simile-primes to induce comparison thinking. In the unprimed conditions of both experiments, metaphors elicited N400s more negative than the literals. In Experiment 1, related sentence-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in conventional, but not in novel metaphors. In Experiment 2, related simile-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in novel, but not clearly in conventional metaphors. We suggest that mapping as a process occurs in metaphors, and the ways in which it can be facilitated by comparison differ between conventional and novel metaphors.

Abstract

Hierarchical centre-embedded structures pose a large difficulty for language learners due to their complexity. A recent artificial grammar learning study (Lai & Poletiek, 2011) demonstrated a starting-small (SS) effect, i.e., staged-input and sufficient exposure to 0-level-of-embedding exemplars were the critical conditions in learning AnBn structures. The current study aims to test: (1) a more sophisticated type of SS (a gradually rather than discretely growing input), and (2) the frequency distribution of the input. The results indicate that SS optimally works under other conditional cues, such as a skewed frequency distribution with simple stimuli being more numerous than complex ones.

Abstract

In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people’s representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatiotemporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME) bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2), and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1). These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatiotemporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience.

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterized by a debilitating fatigue of unknown aetiology. Patients who suffer from CFS report a variety of physical complaints as well as neuropsychological complaints. Therefore, it is conceivable that the CNS plays a role in the pathophysiology of CFS. The purpose of this study was to investigate neural correlates of CFS, and specifically whether there exists a linkage between disturbances in the motor system and CFS. We measured behavioural performance and cerebral activity using rapid event-related functional MRI in 16 CFS patients and 16 matched healthy controls while they were engaged in a motor imagery task and a control visual imagery task. CFS patients were considerably slower on performance of both tasks, but the increase in reaction time with increasing task load was similar between the groups. Both groups used largely overlapping neural resources. However, during the motor imagery task, CFS patients evoked stronger responses in visually related structures. Furthermore, there was a marked between-groups difference during erroneous performance. In both groups, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was specifically activated during error trials. Conversely, ventral anterior cingulate cortex was active when healthy controls made an error, but remained inactive when CFS patients made an error. Our results support the notion that CFS may be associated with dysfunctional motor planning. Furthermore, the between-groups differences observed during erroneous performance point to motivational disturbances as a crucial component of CFS.

Abstract

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) seeks to map the structural and functional connections between network elements in the human brain. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) provides a temporally rich source of information on brain network dynamics and represents one source of functional connectivity data to be provided by the HCP. High quality MEG data will be collected from 50 twin pairs both in the resting state and during performance of motor, working memory and language tasks. These data will be available to the general community. Additionally, using the cortical parcellation scheme common to all imaging modalities, the HCP will provide processing pipelines for calculating connection matrices as a function of time and frequency. Together with structural and functional data generated using magnetic resonance imaging methods, these data represent a unique opportunity to investigate brain network connectivity in a large cohort of normal adult human subjects. The analysis pipeline software and the dynamic connectivity matrices that it generates will all be made freely available to the research community.

Abstract

Vocal production learning (VPL) is the capacity to learn to produce new vocalizations, which is a rare ability in the animal kingdom and thus far has only been identified in a handful of mammalian taxa and three groups of birds. Over the last few decades, approaches to the demonstration of VPL have varied among taxa, sound production systems and functions. These discrepancies strongly impede direct comparisons between studies. In the light of the growing number of experimental studies reporting VPL, the need for comparability is becoming more and more pressing. The comparative evaluation of VPL across studies would be facilitated by unified and generalized reporting standards, which would allow a better positioning of species on any proposed VPL continuum. In this paper, we specifically highlight five factors influencing the comparability of VPL assessments: (i) comparison to an acoustic baseline, (ii) comprehensive reporting of acoustic parameters, (iii) extended reporting of training conditions and durations, (iv) investigating VPL function via behavioural, perception-based experiments and (v) validation of findings on a neuronal level. These guidelines emphasize the importance of comparability between studies in order to unify the field of vocal learning.

Abstract

Human vocal development and speech learning require acoustic feedback, and
humans who are born deaf do not acquire a normal adult speech capacity. Most
other mammals display a largely innate vocal repertoire. Like humans, bats are
thought to be one of the few taxa capable of vocal learning as they can acquire
new vocalizations by modifying vocalizations according to auditory experiences.
We investigated the effect of acoustic deafening on the vocal development of the
pale spear-nosed bat. Three juvenile pale spear-nosed bats were deafened, and
their vocal development was studied in comparison with an age-matched, hear-
ing control group. The results show that during development the deafened bats
increased their vocal activity, and their vocalizations were substantially altered,
being much shorter, higher in pitch, and more aperiodic than the vocalizations
of the control animals. The pale spear-nosed bat relies on auditory feedback
for vocal development and, in the absence of auditory input, species-atypical
vocalizations are acquired. This work serves as a basis for further research
using the pale spear-nosed bat as a mammalian model for vocal learning, and
contributes to comparative studies on hearing impairment across species.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and
humans’.

Abstract

Differences in auditory perception between species are influenced by phylogenetic origin and the perceptual challenges imposed by the natural environment, such as detecting prey- or predator-generated sounds and communication signals. Bats are well suited for comparative studies on auditory perception since they predominantly rely on echolocation to perceive the world, while their social calls and most environmental sounds have low frequencies. We tested if hearing sensitivity and stimulus level coding in bats differ between high and low-frequency ranges by measuring auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) of 86 bats belonging to 11 species. In most species, auditory sensitivity was equally good at both high- and low-frequency ranges, while amplitude was more finely coded for higher frequency ranges. Additionally, we conducted a phylogenetic comparative analysis by combining our ABR data with published data on 27 species. Species-specific peaks in hearing sensitivity correlated with peak frequencies of echolocation calls and pup isolation calls, suggesting that changes in hearing sensitivity evolved in response to frequency changes of echolocation and social calls. Overall, our study provides the most comprehensive comparative assessment of bat hearing capacities to date and highlights the evolutionary pressures acting on their sensory perception.

Abstract

In the neurobiology of language, a fundamental challenge is deconfounding syntax from semantics. Changes in syntactic structure usually correlate with changes in meaning. We approached this challenge from a new angle. We deployed word lists, which are usually the unstructured control in studies of syntax, as both the test and the control stimulus. Three-noun lists (lamps, dolls, guitars) were embedded in sentences (The eccentric man hoarded lamps, dolls, guitars…) and in longer lists (forks, pen, toilet, rodeo, graves, drums, mulch, lamps, dolls, guitars…). This allowed us to perfectly control both lexical characteristics and local combinatorics: the same words occurred in both conditions and in neither case did the list items locally compose into phrases (e.g. ‘lamps’ and ‘dolls’ do not form a phrase). But in one case, the list partakes in a syntactic tree, while in the other, it does not. Being embedded inside a syntactic tree increased source-localized MEG activity at ~250-300ms from word onset in the left inferior frontal cortex, at ~300-350ms in the left anterior temporal lobe and, most reliably, at ~330-400ms in left posterior temporal cortex. In contrast, effects of semantic association strength, which we also varied, localized in left temporo-parietal cortex, with high associations increasing activity at around 400ms. This dissociation offers a novel characterization of the structure vs. meaning contrast in the brain: The fronto-temporal network that is familiar from studies of sentence processing can be driven by the sheer presence of global sentence structure, while associative semantics has a more posterior neural signature.

Abstract

Objective Wnt signalling is critical for normal intestinal development and homeostasis. Wnt dysregulation occurs in almost all human and murine intestinal tumours and an optimal but not excessive level of Wnt activation is considered favourable for tumourigenesis. The authors assessed effects of pan-intestinal Wnt activation on tissue homeostasis, taking into account underlying physiological Wnt activity and stem-cell number in each region of the bowel. Design The authors generated mice that expressed temporally controlled, stabilised β-catenin along the crypt–villus axis throughout the intestines. Physiological Wnt target gene activity was assessed in different regions of normal mouse and human tissue. Human intestinal tumour mutation spectra were analysed. Results In the mouse, β-catenin stabilisation resulted in a graduated neoplastic response, ranging from dysplastic transformation of the entire epithelium in the proximal small bowel to slightly enlarged crypts of non-dysplastic morphology in the colorectum. In contrast, stem and proliferating cell numbers were increased in all intestinal regions. In the normal mouse and human intestines, stem-cell and Wnt gradients were non-identical, but higher in the small bowel than large bowel in both species. There was also variation in the expression of some Wnt modulators. Human tumour analysis confirmed that different APC mutation spectra are selected in different regions of the bowel. Conclusions There are variable gradients in stem-cell number, physiological Wnt activity and response to pathologically increased Wnt signalling along the crypt-villus axis and throughout the length of the intestinal tract. The authors propose that this variation influences regional mutation spectra, tumour susceptibility and lesion distribution in mice and humans.

Abstract

Findings from corpus (e.g. Diessel, 2004) and comprehension (e.g. De Ruiter et al., 2018) studies show that children produce the adverbial connectives because and if long before they seem able to understand them. However, although children's comprehension is typically tested on sentences expressing the pragmatic relationship which Sweetser (1990) calls “Content”, children also hear and produce sentences expressing “Speech–Act” relationships (e.g. De Ruiter et al., 2021; Kyratzis et al., 1990). To better understand the possible influence of pragmatic variation on 2- to 4- year-old children's acquisition of these connectives, we coded the because and if Speech–Act sentences of 14 British English-speaking mother-child dyads for the type of illocutionary act they contained, as well as the phrasing following the connective. Analyses revealed that children's because Speech–Act sentences were primarily explanations of Statements/Claims, while their if Speech–Act sentences typically related to permission and politeness. While children's because-sentences showed a great deal of individuality, their if-sentences closely resembled their mothers’, containing a high proportion of recurring phrases which appear to be abstracted from input. We discuss how these patterns might help shape children's understanding of each connective and contribute to the children's overall difficulty with because and if.

Abstract

In this article, we propose a novel image segmentation method called the whole mesh deformation (WMD) model, which aims at addressing the problems of modern medical imaging. Such problems have raised from the combination of several factors: (1) significant growth of medical image volumes sizes due to increasing capabilities of medical acquisition devices; (2) the will to increase the complexity of image processing algorithms in order to explore new functionality; (3) change in processor development and turn towards multi processing units instead of growing bus speeds and the number of operations per second of a single processing unit. Our solution is based on the concept of deformable models and is characterized by a very effective and precise segmentation capability. The proposed WMD model uses a volumetric mesh instead of a contour or a surface to represent the segmented shapes of interest, which allows exploiting more information in the image and obtaining results in shorter times, independently of image contents. The model also offers a good ability for topology changes and allows effective parallelization of workflow, which makes it a very good choice for large datasets. We present a precise model description, followed by experiments on artificial images and real medical data.

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Learning a second language influences speakers’ first language, but there is great variability in the degree of influence that speakers exhibit. We show that some of this variability is due to individual differences in inhibitory skill. Particularly, we propose that poorer inhibitory skill leads to greater activation of competing items from the language not in use, and that this greater co-activation ultimately leads to greater influence of the co-activated items on one another. Specifically, we show that bilinguals with lower inhibitory skill exhibit greater influence of the second language on the first. Late English–French bilinguals residing in France produced and perceived Voice Onset Time of voiceless stops in English in a more French-like manner, the lower their inhibitory skill was. We discuss the implications of these results for the role of inhibitory skill in shaping representation in bilingual as well as monolingual language processing.

Abstract

How can one conceive of the neuronal implementation of the processing model we proposed in our target article? In his commentary (Pulvermüller 1999, reprinted here in this issue), Pulvermüller makes various proposals concerning the underlying neural mechanisms and their potential localizations in the brain. These proposals demonstrate the compatibility of our processing model and current neuroscience. We add further evidence on details of localization based on a recent meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of word production (Indefrey & Levelt 2000). We also express some minor disagreements with respect to Pulvermüller’s interpretation of the “lemma” notion, and concerning his neural modeling of phonological code retrieval. Branigan & Pickering discuss important aspects of syntactic encoding, which was not the topic of the target article. We discuss their well-taken proposal that multiple syntactic frames for a single verb lemma are represented as independent nodes, which can be shared with other verbs, such as accounting for syntactic priming in speech production. We also discuss how, in principle, the alternative multiple-frame-multiplelemma account can be tested empirically. The available evidence does not seem to support that account.

Abstract

During the second half of the 19th century, the psychology of language was invented as a discipline for the sole purpose of explaining the evolution of spoken language. These efforts culminated in Wilhelm Wundt’s monumental Die Sprache of 1900, which outlined the psychological mechanisms involved in producing utterances and considered how these mechanisms could have evolved. Wundt assumes that articulatory movements were originally rather arbitrary concomitants of larger, meaningful expressive bodily gestures. The sounds such articulations happened to produce slowly acquired the meaning of the gesture as a whole, ultimately making the gesture superfluous. Over a century later, gestural theories of language origins still abound. I argue that such theories are unlikely and wasteful, given the biological, neurological and genetic evidence.

Abstract

Describes the history of the field in terms of its multidisciplinary "roots" so that readers from different disciplines can concentrate on, or selectively read, the corresponding chapters. * Explores the history of research on brain and language, making the book valuable for aphasiologists, communication scientists and neuroscientists of language. * Covers the history of linguistic approaches to psycholinguistics - making the book of interest to both theoretical and applied linguists. * Written by a scientist whose own contribution to the field has been seminal, resulting in a work that will be seen as the definitive of psycholinguistics, for many years to come How do we manage to speak and understand language? How do children acquire these skills and how does the brain support them?These psycholinguistic issues have been studied for more than two centuries. Though many Psycholinguists tend to consider their history as beginning with the Chomskyan "cognitive revolution" of the late 1950s/1960s, the history of empirical psycholinguistics actually goes back to the end of the 18th century. This is the first book to comprehensively treat this "pre-Chomskyan" history. It tells the fascinating history of the doctors, pedagogues, linguists and psychologists who created this discipline, looking at how they made their important discoveries about the language regions in the brain, about the high-speed accessing of words in speaking and listening, on the child's invention of syntax, on the disruption of language in aphasic patients and so much more. The book is both a history of ideas as well of the men and women whose intelligence, brilliant insights, fads, fallacies, cooperations, and rivalries created this discipline. Psycholinguistics has four historical roots, which, by the end of the 19th century, had merged. By then, the discipline, usually called the psychology of language, was established. The first root was comparative linguistics, which raised the issue of the psychological origins of language. The second root was the study of language in the brain, with Franz Gall as the pioneer and the Broca and Wernicke discoveries as major landmarks. The third root was the diary approach to child development, which emerged from Rousseau's Émile. The fourth root was the experimental laboratory approach to speech and language processing, which originated from Franciscus Donders' mental chronometry. Wilhelm Wundt unified these four approaches in his monumental Die Sprache of 1900. These four perspectives of psycholinguistics continued into the 20th century but in quite divergent frameworks. There was German consciousness and thought psychology, Swiss/French and Prague/Viennese structuralism, Russian and American behaviorism, and almost aggressive holism in aphasiology. As well as reviewing all these perspectives, the book looks at the deep disruption of the field during the Third Reich and its optimistic, multidisciplinary re-emergence during the 1950s with the mathematical theory of communication as a major impetus. A tour de force from one of the seminal figures in the field, this book will be essential reading for all linguists, psycholinguists, and psychologists with an interest in language. Readership: Linguists, psychologists, aphasiologists, communication scientists, cognitive (neuro-)scientists, whether professionals or graduate students. Historians of science

Abstract

Formerly published in: Cognition : international journal of cognitive science, vol. 42, nos. 1-3, 1992

Abstract

There has been a recent spate of work on recursion as a central design feature of language. This short report points out that there is little evidence that unlimited recursion, understood as center-embedding, is typical of natural language syntax. Nevertheless, embedded pragmatic construals seem available in every language. Further, much deeper center-embedding can be found in dialogue or conversation structure than can be found in syntax. Existing accounts for the 'performance' limitations on center-embedding are thus thrown into doubt. Dialogue materials suggest that center-embedding is perhaps a core part of the human interaction system, and is for some reason much more highly restricted in syntax than in other aspects of cognition.

Abstract

Survey article

Abstract

This paper describes the linguistic description of time, the accompanying gestural system, and the “mental time lines” found in the speakers of Yélî Dnye, an isolate language spoken offshore from Papua New Guinea. Like many indigenous languages, Yélî Dnye has no fixed anchoring of time and thus no calendrical time. Instead, time in Yélî Dnye linguistic
description is primarily anchored to the time of speaking, with six diurnal tenses and special nominals for n days from coding time; this is supplemented with special constructions for overlapping events. Consequently there is relatively little cross-over or metaphor from space to time. The gesture system, on the other hand, uses pointing to sun position to indicate time of day and may make use of systematic time lines. Experimental evidence fails to show a single robust axis used for mapping time to space. This suggests that there may not be a strong, universal tendency for systematic space-time mappings.

Abstract

Cross-linguistic studies focus on inverse correlations (trade-offs) between linguistic variables that reflect different cues to linguistic meanings. For example, if a language has no case marking, it is likely to rely on word order as a cue for identification of grammatical roles. Such inverse correlations are interpreted as manifestations of language users’ tendency to use language efficiently. The present study argues that this interpretation is problematic. Linguistic variables, such as the presence of case, or flexibility of word order, are aggregate properties, which do not represent the use of linguistic cues in context directly. Still, such variables can be useful for circumscribing the potential role of communicative efficiency in language evolution, if we move from cross-linguistic trade-offs to multivariate causal networks. This idea is illustrated by a case study of linguistic variables related to four types of Subject and Object cues: case marking, rigid word order of Subject and Object, tight semantics and verb-medial order. The variables are obtained from online language corpora in thirty languages, annotated with the Universal Dependencies. The causal model suggests that the relationships between the variables can be explained predominantly by sociolinguistic factors, leaving little space for a potential impact of efficient linguistic behavior.

Abstract

Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in communicative efficiency. It has been argued that language users act efficiently, saving effort for processing and articulation, and that language structure and use reflect this tendency. The emergence of new corpus data has brought to life numerous studies on efficient language use in the lexicon, in morphosyntax, and in discourse and phonology in different languages. In this introductory paper, we discuss communicative efficiency in human languages, focusing on evidence of efficient language use found in multilingual corpora. The evidence suggests that efficiency is a universal feature of human language. We provide an overview of different manifestations of efficiency on different levels of language structure, and we discuss the major questions and findings so far, some of which are addressed for the first time in the contributions in this special collection.

Abstract

The paper demonstrates how verb and noun classes can be used as a common interface in contrastive Construction Grammar. It presents an innovative approach to the contrastive analysis of constructional spaces (sets of constructions covering a certain semantic domain). We compare English and Dutch analytic causatives by using the statistical technique of multiple correspondence analysis applied to data from large monolingual corpora. The method allows us to explore the common conceptual space of the constructions, in particular the salient semantic dimensions and causation types, which emerge on the basis of co-occurring semantic classes of the nominal and verbal slot fillers in constructional exemplars. The formal patterns of the constructions at different levels of specificity are projected onto this space. Our analyses show that an average Dutch analytic causative refers to more indirect and abstract causation with fewer animate than its English counterpart. We have also found that the languages “cut” the common conceptual space in unique ways, although the semantic areas of many English and Dutch constructions overlap substantially. Nevertheless, the form-meaning mapping in the two languages displays commonalities. Both English and Dutch constructions with prepositionally marked or implicit causees are strongly associated with animate causees. We have also observed a correlation between the directness of causation and the crosslinguistic hierarchy of affectedness marking proposed by Kemmer and Verhagen (1994).

Abstract

The integration of three main dimensions of linguistic usage and variation – formal, social and conceptual – can be seen as a major ambition of the Cognitive Sociolinguistics enterprise. The paper illustrates this theoretical approach with a corpus-based study of near-synonymous causative constructions with doen and laten in the Belgian and Netherlandic varieties of Dutch. A series of quantitative analyses show a complex interplay of the dimensions at different levels of constructional schematicity. At the more schematic level, the results indicate that the effects of transitivity and coreferentiality on the probability of the two constructions are slightly different in the two varieties. However, incorporating the effected predicate slot fillers in a mixed-effect model reveals that these differences can be explained to a large extent by the country-specific lexical patterns. These findings suggest that the interplay of the lectal and conceptual factors in constructional variation should be studied at varying degrees of constructional schematicity.

Abstract

Over the past decade the neuromarketing of educational products has become increasingly common. Researchers have however expressed concern about the misapplication of neuroscience to education marketing, fearing that consumers may be deceived into investing in apparently “brain-based” products under the misapprehension that they will be more effective. This study provides the first demonstration that these fears are justified. We presented 180 participants with one of four advertisements for an identical educational program, named either “Right Brain” or “Right Start” Training; the advertisements either did, or did not, include an MRI brain image in one corner. Results demonstrated that “Right Brain” training was deemed more interesting, educationally valuable, and scientifically strong than an identical product named “Right Start” training. Advertisements including an unrelated brain image enhanced ratings of scientific rationale. These results confirm that by implying a strong scientific basis, “brain-based” product names are remarkably effective in implicitly manipulating consumer opinion.

Abstract

Infants point for various motives. Classically, one such motive is declarative, to share attention and interest with adults to events. Recently, some researchers have questioned whether infants have this motivation. In the current study, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds' pointing in different ways, and infants' responses were observed. Results showed that when the adult shared attention and interest (i.e. alternated gaze and emoted), infants pointed more frequently across trials and tended to prolong each point – presumably to prolong the satisfying interaction. However, when the adult emoted to the infant alone or looked only to the event, infants pointed less across trials and repeated points more within trials – presumably in an attempt to establish joint attention. Results suggest that 12-month-olds point declaratively and understand that others have psychological states that can be directed and shared.

Abstract

The ability to flexibly predict others' behaviors has been ascribed to a theory of mind (ToM) system. Most research has focused on formal conceptual definitions of such a system, and the question of whom to credit with a ToM. In this article, I suggest shifting perspective from formal definitions to a usage-based approach. This approach views action within human interaction as central to the emergence and continuous development of the ability to flexibly predict others' behaviors. Addressing the current debate about whether infants have a ToM, I illustrate how infants use flexible action expectations to interact with others appropriately. I also discuss the continuous development of ToM and its natural structure from a usage-based perspective.

Abstract

Background Cortical inhibition plays a critical role in controlling and modulating cortical excitation and a more detailed understanding of the neuronal circuits contributing to each will provide more insight into their roles in complex cortical computations. Traditional neuronal tracers lack a means for easily distinguishing between circuits of inhibitory and excitatory neurons. To overcome this limitation, we developed a technique for retrogradely labeling inputs to local clusters of inhibitory or excitatory neurons, but not both, using neurotropic adeno-associated and lentiviral vectors, cell-type specific promoters and a modified rabies virus. Results Applied to primary visual cortex (V1) in mouse, the cell-type specific tracing technique labeled thousands of presynaptically connected neurons, and revealed that the dominant source of input to inhibitory and excitatory neurons is local in origin. Neurons in other visual areas are also labeled; the percentage of these inter-cortical inputs to excitatory neurons is somewhat higher (~20%) than to inhibitory neurons (<10%), suggesting that inter-cortical connections have less direct control over inhibition. The inputs to inhibitory neurons were also traced in cat V1, and when aligned with the orientation preference map, revealed for the first time that long-range inputs to inhibitory neurons are well tuned to orientation. Conclusions These novel findings for inhibitory and excitatory circuits in the visual cortex demonstrate the efficacy of our new technique and its ability to work across species, including larger-brained mammals such as the cat. This paves the way for better understanding the roles of specific cell-types in higher-order perceptual and cognitive processes.

Abstract

We hypothesize that contrast perception works as a visual heuristic, such that when speakers perceive a significant degree of contrast in a visual context, they tend to produce the corresponding adjective to describe a referent. The contrast perception heuristic supports efficient audience design, allowing speakers to produce referential expressions with minimum expenditure of cognitive resources, while facilitating the listener's visual search for the referent. We tested the perceptual contrast hypothesis in three language-production experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that speakers overspecify color adjectives in polychrome displays, whereas in monochrome displays they overspecified other properties that were contrastive. Further support for the contrast perception hypothesis comes from a re-analysis of previous work, which confirmed that color contrast elicits color overspecification when detected in a given display, but not when detected across monochrome trials. Experiment 2 revealed that even atypical colors (which are often overspecified) are only mentioned if there is color contrast. In Experiment 3, participants named a target color faster in monochrome than in polychrome displays, suggesting that the effect of color contrast is not analogous to ease of production. We conclude that the tendency to overspecify color in polychrome displays is not a bottom-up effect driven by the visual salience of color as a property, but possibly a learned communicative strategy. We discuss the implications of our account for pragmatic theories of referential communication and models of audience design, challenging the view that overspecification is a form of egocentric behavior.

Abstract

Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., “Lucy is like a parrot” normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 48; ages 3–5) understood “X is like a Y” as an expression of similarity. In Experiment 2 (N = 99; ages 3–6, 13) and Experiment 3 (N = 201; ages 3–5 and adults), participants received metaphors (“Lucy is a parrot”) or similes (“Lucy is like a parrot”) as clues to select one of three images (a parrot, a girl or a parrot-looking girl). An early developmental trend revealed that 3-year-olds started deriving the implicature “X is not a Y,” whereas 5-year-olds performed like adults.

Abstract

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) are common highly heritable disorders of childhood, which frequently co-occur. Data from twin and family studies suggest that this overlap is, in part, due to shared genetic underpinnings. Here, we report the first genome-wide linkage analysis of measures of reading ability in children with ADHD, using a sample of 233 affected sibling pairs who previously participated in a genome-wide scan for susceptibility loci in ADHD. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of a composite reading factor defined from three highly correlated reading measures identified suggestive linkage (multipoint maximum lod score, MLS>2.2) in four chromosomal regions. Two regions (16p, 17q) overlap those implicated by our previous genome-wide scan for ADHD in the same sample: one region (2p) provides replication for an RD susceptibility locus, and one region (10q) falls approximately 35 cM from a modestly highlighted region in an independent genome-wide scan of siblings with ADHD. Investigation of an individual reading measure of Reading Recognition supported linkage to putative RD susceptibility regions on chromosome 8p (MLS=2.4) and 15q (MLS=1.38). Thus, the data support the existence of genetic factors that have pleiotropic effects on ADHD and reading ability--as suggested by shared linkages on 16p, 17q and possibly 10q--but also those that appear to be unique to reading--as indicated by linkages on 2p, 8p and 15q that coincide with those previously found in studies of RD. Our study also suggests that reading measures may represent useful phenotypes in ADHD research. The eventual identification of genes underlying these unique and shared linkages may increase our understanding of ADHD, RD and the relationship between the two.

Abstract

Finding the structure of a sentence — the way its words hold together to convey meaning — is a fundamental step in language comprehension. Several brain regions, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the left anterior temporal pole, are supposed to support this operation. The exact role of these areas is nonetheless still debated. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that different brain regions could be sensitive to different kinds of syntactic computations. We compare the fit of phrase-structure and dependency structure descriptors to activity in brain areas using fMRI. Our results show a division between areas with regard to the type of structure computed, with the left ATP and left IFG favouring dependency structures and left pSTG favouring phrase structures.

Abstract

Most individuals with congenital achromatopsia (ACHM) carry mutations that affect the retinal phototransduction pathway of cone photoreceptors, fundamental to both high acuity vision and colour perception. As the central fovea is occupied solely by cones, achromats have an absence of retinal input to the visual cortex and a small central area of blindness. Additionally, those with complete ACHM have no colour perception, and colour processing regions of the ventral cortex also lack typical chromatic signals from the cones. This study examined the cortical morphology (grey matter volume, cortical thickness, and cortical surface area) of multiple visual cortical regions in ACHM (n = 15) compared to normally sighted controls (n = 42) to determine the cortical changes that are associated with the retinal characteristics of ACHM. Surface-based morphometry was applied to T1-weighted MRI in atlas-defined early, ventral and dorsal visual regions of interest. Reduced grey matter volume in V1, V2, V3, and V4 was found in ACHM compared to controls, driven by a reduction in cortical surface area as there was no significant reduction in cortical thickness. Cortical surface area (but not thickness) was reduced in a wide range of areas (V1, V2, V3, TO1, V4, and LO1). Reduction in early visual areas with large foveal representations (V1, V2, and V3) suggests that the lack of foveal input to the visual cortex was a major driving factor in morphological changes in ACHM. However, the significant reduction in ventral area V4 coupled with the lack of difference in dorsal areas V3a and V3b suggest that deprivation of chromatic signals to visual cortex in ACHM may also contribute to changes in cortical morphology. This research shows that the congenital lack of cone input to the visual cortex can lead to widespread structural changes across multiple visual areas.

Abstract

Purpose The brain is a highly interconnected neuronal assembly in which network analyses can greatly enlarge our knowledge on seizure generation. The cortico-thalamo-cortical network is the brain-network of interest in absence epilepsy. Here, network synchronization is assessed in a genetic absence model during 5 second long pre-ictal- > ictal transition periods. Method 16 male WAG/Rij rats were equipped with multiple electrodes targeting layer 4 to 6 of the somatosensory-cortex, rostral and caudal RTN, VPM, anterior-(ATN) and posterior (Po) thalamic nucleus. Local Field Potentials measured during pre-ictal- > ictal transition and during control periods were subjected to time-frequency and pairwise phase consistency analysis. Results Pre-ictally, all channels showed Spike-Wave Discharge (SWD) precursor activity (increases in spectral power), which were earliest and most pronounced in the somatosensory cortex. The caudal RTN decoupled from VPM, Po and cortical layer 4. Strong increases in synchrony were found between cortex and thalamus during SWD. Although increases between cortex and VPM were seen in SWD frequencies and its harmonics, boarder spectral increases (6-48 Hz) were seen between cortex and Po. All thalamic nuclei showed increased phase synchronization with Po but not with VPM. Conclusion Absence seizures are not sudden and unpredictable phenomena: the somatosensory cortex shows highest and earliest precursor activity. The pre-ictal decoupling of the caudal RTN might be a prerequisite of SWD generation. Po nucleus might be the primary thalamic counterpart to the somatosensory-cortex in the generation of the cortico-thalamic-cortical oscillations referred to as SWD.

Abstract

Sign language lexicons incorporate phonological specifications. Evidence from emerging sign languages suggests that phonological structure emerges gradually in a new language. In this study, we investigate variation in the form of signs across 20 deaf adult signers of Kata Kolok, a sign language that emerged spontaneously in a Balinese village community. Combining methods previously used for sign comparisons, we introduce a new numeric measure of variation. Our nuanced yet comprehensive approach to form variation integrates three levels (iconic motivation, surface realisation, feature differences) and allows for refinement through weighting the variation score by token and signer frequency. We demonstrate that variation in the form of signs appears in different degrees at different levels. Token frequency in a given dataset greatly affects how much variation can surface, suggesting caution in interpreting previous findings. Different sign variants have different scopes of use among the signing population, with some more widely used than others. Both frequency weightings (token and signer) identify dominant sign variants, i.e., sign forms that are produced frequently or by many signers. We argue that variation does not equal the absence of conventionalisation. Indeed, especially in micro-community sign languages, variation may be key to understanding patterns of language emergence.

Abstract

Nyelv és/vagy evolúció: Lehetséges-e a nyelv evolúciós magyarázata? [Derek Bickerton: Nyelv és evolúció] (Magyari Lilla); Történelmi olvasókönyv az agyról [Charles G. Gross: Agy, látás, emlékezet. Mesék az idegtudomány történetéből] (Garab Edit Anna); Művészet vagy tudomány [Margitay Tihamér: Az érvelés mestersége. Érvelések elemzése, értékelése és kritikája] (Zemplén Gábor); Tényleg ésszerűek vagyunk? [Herbert Simon: Az ésszerűség szerepe az emberi életben] (Kardos Péter); Nemi különbségek a megismerésben [Doreen Kimura: Női agy, férfi agy]. (Hahn Noémi);

Abstract

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. These have long been thought of as innate concepts, built into our neurocognition. However, recent work shows that the use of such frames in language, cognition and gesture varies crossculturally, and that children can acquire different systems with comparable ease. We argue that language can play a significant role in structuring, or restructuring, a domain as fundamental as spatial cognition. This suggests we need to rethink the relation between the neurocognitive underpinnings of spatial cognition and the concepts we use in everyday thinking, and, more generally, to work out how to account for cross-cultural cognitive diversity in core cognitive domains.

Abstract

An eye-tracking data set is described of 102 participants reading three Dutch literary short stories each (7790 words in total per participant). The pre-processed data set includes (1) Fixation report, (2) Saccade report, (3) Interest Area report, (4) Trial report (aggregated data for each page), (5) Sample report (sampling rate = 500 Hz), (6) Questionnaire data on reading experiences and participant characteristics, and (7) word characteristics for all words (with the potential of calculating additional word characteristics). It is stored on DANS, and can be used to study word characteristics or literary reading and all facets of eye movements.

Abstract

To English speakers, the distinctions between blue and green, cup and glass, or cut and break seem self-evident. The intuition is that these words label categories that have an existence independent of language, and language merely captures the pre-existing categories. But cross-linguistic work shows that the named distinctions are not nearly as self-evident as they may feel. There is diversity in how languages divide up domains including color, number, plants and animals, drinking vessels and household containers, body parts, spatial relations, locomotion, acts of cutting and breaking, acts of carrying and holding, and more. Still, studies documenting variability across languages also uncover striking commonalities. Such commonalities indicate that there are sources of constraint on the variation. Both the commonalities and divergences carry important lessons for Cognitive Science. They speak to the causal relations among language, thought, and culture; the possibility of cross-culturally shared aspects of perception and cognition; the methods needed for studying general-purpose, nonlinguistic concepts; and how languages are learned

Abstract

Objectives Oppositional behavior in childhood is a probabilistic risk factor for the subsequent development of more serious conduct problems characteristic of conduct disorder (CD). The capacity to understand the subjective states of others (socioemotional competence) helps regulate antisocial behavior in typical development. We hypothesized that socioemotional competence moderates the developmental relationship between oppositionality and CD symptoms, such that oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms pose the greatest risk for subsequent CD symptoms in children with poor socioemotional competence. Method Parent-report data were collected for 6,218 children at 7 and 10 years of age. Bootstrap multiple regression predicting CD symptoms at age 10 was used to test for an interaction between socioemotional competence and ODD symptoms, while also accounting for direct effects and controlling for sex, maternal education, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, and CD symptoms at 7 years. We further tested whether the interaction applied to both males and females, and to both aggressive and rule-breaking CD symptoms. Results A significant interaction was found between ODD and socioemotional competence: the association between oppositionality at 7 years and CD traits at 10 years was strongest for children with poor socioemotional capacities. As predicted, this moderation effect was significant in a model predicting aggression, but it was not significant for rule-breaking CD symptoms. Conclusion Socioemotional competence moderates the developmental relationship between mid-childhood oppositionality and more serious conduct problems in later childhood. A capacity to understand the subjective states of others may buffer the risk posed by oppositionality for later CD symptoms, including aggression.

Abstract

Bimodal bilinguals are hearing individuals fluent in a sign and a spoken language. Can the two languages influence each other in such individuals despite differences in the visual (sign) and vocal (speech) modalities of expression? We investigated cross-linguistic influences on bimodal bilinguals’ expression of spatial relations. Unlike spoken languages, sign uses iconic linguistic forms that resemble physical features of objects in a spatial relation and thus expresses specific semantic information. Hearing bimodal bilinguals (n = 21) fluent in Dutch and Sign Language of the Netherlands and their hearing nonsigning and deaf signing peers (n = 20 each) described left/right relations between two objects. Bimodal bilinguals expressed more specific information about physical features of objects in speech than nonsigners, showing influence from sign language. They also used fewer iconic signs with specific semantic information than deaf signers, demonstrating influence from speech. Bimodal bilinguals’ speech and signs are shaped by two languages from different modalities.

Abstract

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing.

Abstract

What is the relative salience of different aspects of word meaning in the developing lexicon? The current study examines the time-course of retrieval of semantic and color knowledge associated with words during toddler word recognition: at what point do toddlers orient towards an image of a yellow cup upon hearing color-matching words such as “banana” (typically yellow) relative to unrelated words (e.g., “house”)? Do children orient faster to semantic matching images relative to color matching images, e.g., orient faster to an image of a cookie relative to a yellow cup upon hearing the word “banana”? The results strongly suggest a prioritization of semantic information over color information in children’s word-referent mappings. This indicates that, even for natural objects (e.g., food, animals that are more likely to have a prototypical color), semantic knowledge is a more salient aspect of toddler's word meaning than color knowledge. For 24-month-old Dutch toddlers, bananas are thus more edible than they are yellow.