Publications

Abstract

It is quite normal for us to produce one or two million word tokens every year. Speaking is a dear occupation and producing words is at the core of it. Still, producing even a single word is a highly complex affair. Recently, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) reviewed their theory of lexical access in speech production, which dissects the word-producing mechanism as a staged application of various dedicated operations. The present paper begins by presenting a bird eye's view of this mechanism. We then square the complexity by asking how speakers control multiple access in generating simple utterances such as a table and a chair. In particular, we address two issues. The first one concerns dependency: Do temporally contiguous access procedures interact in any way, or do they run in modular fashion? The second issue concerns temporal alignment: How much temporal overlap of processing does the system tolerate in accessing multiple content words, such as table and chair? Results from picture-word interference and eye tracking experiments provide evidence for restricted cases of dependency as well as for constraints on the temporal alignment of access procedures.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Comment on Sperber and Wilson

Abstract

This article explores the relation between language and cognition by examining the case of "absolute" (cardinal direction) spatial description in the Australian aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr. This kind of spatial description is incongruent with the "relative" (e.g., left/right/front/back) spatial description familiar in European languages. Building on Haviland's 1993 analysis of Guugu Yimithirr directionals in speech and gesture, a series of informal experiments were developed. It is shown that Guugu Yimithirr speakers predominantly code for nonverbal memory in "absolute" concepts congruent with their language, while a comparative sample of Dutch speakers do so in "relative" concepts. Much anecdotal evidence also supports this. The conclusion is that Whorfian effects may in fact be demonstrable in the spatial domain.

Abstract

This review describes some recent, unexpected findings concerning variation in spatial language across cultures, and places them in the context of the general anthropology of space on the one hand, and theories of spatial cognition in the cognitive sciences on the other. There has been much concern with the symbolism of space in anthropological writings, but little on concepts of space in practical activities. This neglect of everyday spatial notions may be due to unwitting ethnocentrism, the assumption in Western thinking generally that notions of space are universally of a single kind. Recent work shows that systems of spatial reckoning and description can in fact be quite divergent across cultures, linguistic differences correlating with distinct cognitive tendencies. This unexpected cultural variation raises interesting questions concerning the relation between cultural and linguistic concepts and the biological foundations of cognition. It argues for more sophisticated models relating culture and cognition than we currently have available.

Abstract

Philosophers, psychologists, and linguists have argued that spatial conception is pivotal to cognition in general, providing a general, egocentric, and universal framework for cognition as well as metaphors for conceptualizing many other domains. But in an aboriginal community in Northern Queensland, a system of cardinal directions informs not only language, but also memory for arbitrary spatial arrays and directions. This work suggests that fundamental cognitive parameters, like the system of coding spatial locations, can vary cross-culturally, in line with the language spoken by a community. This opens up the prospect of a fruitful dialogue between anthropology and the cognitive sciences on the complex interaction between cultural and universal factors in the constitution of mind.

Abstract

In an earlier article (Levinson, 1987b), I raised the possibility that a Gricean theory of implicature might provide a systematic partial reduction of the Binding Conditions; the briefest of outlines is given in Section 2.1 below but the argumentation will be found in the earlier article. In this article I want, first, to show how that account might be further justified and extended, but then to introduce a radical alternative. This alternative uses the same pragmatic framework, but gives an account better adjusted to some languages. Finally, I shall attempt to show that both accounts can be combined by taking a diachronic perspective. The attraction of the combined account is that, suddenly, many facts about long-range reflexives and their associated logophoricity fall into place.

Abstract

This paper is one in a series that develops a pragmatic framework in loose confederation with Jay Atlas and Larry Horn: thus they may or may not be responsible for the ideas contained herein. Jay Atlas provided many comments which I have utilized or perverted as the case may be. The Australian data to which this framework is applied was collected with the financial and personal assistance of many people and agencies acknowledged separately below; but I must single out for special thanks John Haviland, who recommended the study of Guugu Yimidhirr anaphora to me and upon whose grammatical work on Guugu Yimidhirr this paper is but a minor (and perhaps flawed) elaboration. A grant from the British Academy allowed me to visit Haviland in September 1986 to discuss many aspects of Guugu Yimidhirr with him, and I am most grateful to the Academy for funding this trip and to Haviland for generously making available his time, his texts (from which I have drawn many examples, not always with specific acknowledgement) and most especially his expertise. Where I have diverged from his opinion I may well learn to regret it. I must also thank Nigel Vincent for putting me in touch with a number of recent relevant developments in syntax (only some of which I have been able to address) and for suggestions for numerous improvements. In addition, I have benefited immensely for comments on a distinct but related paper (Levinson, 1987) kindly provided by Jay Atlas, John Haviland, John Heritage, Phil Johnson-Laird, John Lyons, Tanya Reinhart, Emanuel Schegloff and an anonymous referee; and from comments on this paper by participants in the Cambridge Linguistics Department seminar where it was first presented (especial thanks to John Lyons and Huang Yan for further comments, and Mary Smith for a counter-example). Despite all this help, there are sure to be errors of data and analysis that I have persisted in. Aid in gathering the Australian data is acknowledged separately below.

Abstract

The theory of basic color terms was a crucial factor in the demise of linguistic relativity. The theory is now once again under scrutiny and fundamental revision. This article details a case study that undermines one of the central claims of the classical theory, namely that languages universally treat color as a unitary domain, to be exhaustively named. Taken together with other cases, the study suggests that a number of languages have only an incipient color terminology, raising doubts about the linguistic universality of such terminology.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

We propose that the choice between the auxiliaries hebben 'have' and zijn 'be' in Dutch is determined by a particular semantic feature of verbs. In particular we propose a feature of meaning [IEPS] for 'inferable eventual position or state' that characterizes whether the action denoted by the verb allows us to determine the eventual position or state of the verb's highest argument. It is argued that only verbs which exhibit the feature [+IEPS] or which obtain the feature compositionally in the syntax select zijn as their auxiliary. Our analysis is then compared to a number of other analyses of auxiliary selection in Dutch.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Mutations of the renal-specific chloride channel (CLCN5) gene, which is located on chromosome Xp11.22, are associated with hypercalciuric nephrolithiasis (kidney stones) in the Northern European and Japanese populations. CLCN5 encodes a 746 amino acid channel (CLC-5) that has approximately 12 transmembrane domains, and heterologous expression of wild-type CLC-5 in Xenopus oocytes has yielded outwardly rectifying chloride currents that were markedly reduced or abolished by these mutations. In order to assess further the structural and functional relationships of this recently cloned chloride channel, additional CLCN5 mutations have been identified in five unrelated families with this disorder. Three of these mutations were missense (G57V, G512R and E527D), one was a nonsense (R648Stop) and one was an insertion (30:H insertion). In addition, two of the mutations (30:H insertion and E527D) were demonstrated to be de novo, and the G57V and E527D mutations were identified in families of Afro-American and Indian origin, respectively. The G57V and 30:H insertion mutations represent the first CLCN5 mutations to be identified in the N-terminus region, and the R648Stop mutation, which has been observed previously in an unrelated family, suggests that this codon may be particularly prone to mutations. Heterologous expression of the mutations resulted in a marked reduction or abolition of the chloride currents, thereby establishing their functional importance. These results help to elucidate further the structure-function relationships of this renal chloride channel.

Abstract

Kidney stones (nephrolithiasis), which affect 12% of males and 5% of females in the western world, are familial in 45% of patients and are most commonly associated with hypercalciuria. Three disorders of hypercalciuric nephrolithiasis (Dent's disease, X-linked recessive nephrolithiasis (XRN), and X-linked recessive hypophosphataemic rickets (XLRH)) have been mapped to Xp11.22 (refs 5-7). A microdeletion in one Dent's disease kindred allowed the identification of a candidate gene, CLCN5 (refs 8,9) which encodes a putative renal chloride channel. Here we report the investigation of 11 kindreds with these renal tubular disorders for CLCN5 abnormalities; this identified three nonsense, four missense and two donor splice site mutations, together with one intragenic deletion and one microdeletion encompassing the entire gene. Heterologous expression of wild-type CLCN5 in Xenopus oocytes yielded outwardly rectifying chloride currents, which were either abolished or markedly reduced by the mutations. The common aetiology for Dent's disease, XRN and XLRH indicates that CLCN5 may be involved in other renal tubular disorders associated with kidney stones

Abstract

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

Abstract

Typological comparisons have revealed that signers can use manual elements and/or a non-manual marker to express standard negation, but little is known about how such systematic marking emerges from its gestural counterparts as a new sign language arises. We analyzed 1.73 h of spontaneous language data, featuring six deaf native signers from generations III-V of the sign language isolate Kata Kolok (Bali). These data show that Kata Kolok cannot be classified as a manual dominant or non-manual dominant sign language since both the manual negative sign and a side-to-side headshake are used extensively. Moreover, the intergenerational comparisons indicate a considerable increase in the use of headshake spreading for generation V which is unlikely to have resulted from contact with Indonesian Sign Language varieties. We also attest a specialized negative existential marker, namely, tongue protrusion, which does not appear in co-speech gesture in the surrounding community. We conclude that Kata Kolok is uniquely placed in the typological landscape of sign language negation, and that grammaticalization theory is essential to a deeper understanding of the emergence of grammatical structure from gesture.

Abstract

Endophoric demonstratives such as this and that are among the most frequently used words in written texts. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how exactly they should be subdivided and classified in terms of their different types of use. Here, we develop a new taxonomy of endophoric demonstratives based on a large-scale corpus including three written genres: news items, encyclopedic texts, and book reviews. The taxonomy enables analysts to reliably code endophoric demonstratives based on objectively applicable criteria, while at the same time making them aware of many subtle borderline cases. We consider the taxonomy as a theoretical foundation for future theoretical and empirical work into endophoric demonstratives, and as an analytical tool allowing researchers to unify and compare the results of studies on endophoric demonstratives coming from different genres and languages.

Abstract

The existence of language-specific abstract sound-structure units (such as the phoneme) is largely uncontroversial in phonology. However, whether the brain performs abstractions comparable to those assumed in phonology has been difficult to ascertain. Using intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a passive listening task, this study investigates the representation of phonological units in the brain and the relationship between those units, auditory sensory input, and higher levels of language organization, namely morphology. Leveraging the phonological neutralization of coronal stops to tap in English, this study provides evidence of a dissociation between acoustic similarity and phonemic identity in the neural response to speech. Moreover, leveraging morphophonological alternations of the regular plural and past tense, this study further demonstrates early (<500ms) evidence of dissociation between phonological form and morphological exponence. Together these results highlight the central nature of language-specific knowledge in sublexical language processing and improve our understanding of the ways language-specific knowledge structures and organizes speech perception in the brain.

Abstract

Background

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is heritable and a potential consequence of exposure to traumatic stress. Evidence suggests that a quantitative approach to PTSD phenotype measurement and incorporation of lifetime trauma exposure (LTE) information could enhance the discovery power of PTSD genome-wide association studies (GWASs).
Methods

A GWAS on PTSD symptoms was performed in 51 cohorts followed by a fixed-effects meta-analysis (N = 182,199 European ancestry participants). A GWAS of LTE burden was performed in the UK Biobank cohort (N = 132,988). Genetic correlations were evaluated with linkage disequilibrium score regression. Multivariate analysis was performed using Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS. Functional mapping and annotation of leading loci was performed with FUMA. Replication was evaluated using the Million Veteran Program GWAS of PTSD total symptoms.
Results

GWASs of PTSD symptoms and LTE burden identified 5 and 6 independent genome-wide significant loci, respectively. There was a 72% genetic correlation between PTSD and LTE. PTSD and LTE showed largely similar patterns of genetic correlation with other traits, albeit with some distinctions. Adjusting PTSD for LTE reduced PTSD heritability by 31%. Multivariate analysis of PTSD and LTE increased the effective sample size of the PTSD GWAS by 20% and identified 4 additional loci. Four of these 9 PTSD loci were independently replicated in the Million Veteran Program.
Conclusions

Through using a quantitative trait measure of PTSD, we identified novel risk loci not previously identified using prior case-control analyses. PTSD and LTE have a high genetic overlap that can be leveraged to increase discovery power through multivariate methods.

Abstract

When two people read the same story, they might both end up liking it very much. However, this does not necessarily mean that their reasons for liking it were identical. We therefore ask what factors contribute to “liking” a story, and—most importantly—how people vary in this respect. We found that readers like stories because they find them interesting, amusing, suspenseful and/or beautiful. However, the degree to which these components of appreciation were related to how much readers liked stories differed between individuals. Interestingly, the individual slopes of the relationships between many of the components and liking were (positively or negatively) correlated. This indicated, for instance, that individuals displaying a relatively strong relationship between interest and liking, generally display a relatively weak relationship between sadness and liking. The individual differences in the strengths of the relationships between the components and liking were not related to individual differences in expertize, a characteristic strongly associated with aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Our work illustrates that it is important to take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in how they arrive at their evaluation of literary stories, and that it is possible to quantify these differences in empirical experiments. Our work suggests that future research should be careful about “overfitting” theories of aesthetic appreciation to an “idealized reader,” but rather take into consideration variations across individuals in the reason for liking a particular story.

Abstract

Speech produced in noise (Lombard speech) is more intelligible than speech produced in quiet (plain speech). Previous research on the Lombard intelligibility benefit focused almost entirely on how native speakers produce and perceive Lombard speech. In this study, we investigate the size of the Lombard intelligibility benefit of both native (American-English) and non-native (native Dutch) English for native and non-native listeners (Dutch and Spanish). We used a glimpsing metric to measure the energetic masking potential of speech, which predicted that both native and non-native Lombard speech could withstand greater amounts of masking to a similar extent, compared to plain speech. In an intelligibility experiment, native English, Spanish, and Dutch listeners listened to the same words, mixed with noise. While the non-native listeners appeared to benefit more from Lombard speech than the native listeners did, each listener group experienced a similar benefit for native and non-native Lombard speech. Energetic masking, as captured by the glimpsing metric, only accounted for part of the Lombard benefit, indicating that the Lombard intelligibility benefit does not only result from a shift in spectral distribution. Despite subtle native language influences on non-native Lombard speech, both native and non-native speech provides a Lombard benefit.

Abstract

In the following self-paced reading study, we assess the cognitive realism of six widely used corpus-derived measures of association strength between words (collocated modifier–noun combinations like vast majority): MI, MI3, Dice coefficient, T-score, Z-score, and log-likelihood. The ability of these collocation metrics to predict reading times is tested against predictors of lexical processing cost that are widely established in the psycholinguistic and usage-based literature, respectively: forward/backward transition probability and bigram frequency. In addition, the experiment includes the treatment variable of task: it is split into two blocks which only differ in the format of interleaved comprehension questions (multiple choice vs. typed free response). Results show that the traditional corpus-linguistic metrics are outperformed by both backward transition probability and bigram frequency. Moreover, the multiple-choice condition elicits faster overall reading times than the typed condition, and the two winning metrics show stronger facilitation on the critical word (i.e. the noun in the bigrams) in the multiple-choice condition. In the typed condition, we find an effect that is weaker and, in the case of bigram frequency, longer lasting, continuing into the first spillover word. We argue that insufficient attention to task effects might have obscured the cognitive correlates of association scores in earlier research.

Abstract

Scientists who study the brain try to understand how it performs everyday behaviors like language, memory, and emotion. Scientists learn a lot by studying how these behaviors change when the brain is damaged. Over the past 200 years, they have made many discoveries by studying individuals with brain damage. For example, one patient could not form sentences after damaging a specific area of his brain. The scientist who studied him concluded that the damaged brain area was important for producing speech. This approach is called the lesion method, and it has taught us a lot about the brain. In this article, we introduce five patients throughout history who forever changed our understanding of the brain. We describe how researchers use these early discoveries to ask new questions about the brain, and we conclude by discussing how the lesion method is used today.

Abstract

Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.

Abstract

Language is a unique trait of the human species, of which the genetic architecture remains largely unknown. Through language disorders studies, many candidate genes were identified. However, such complex and multifactorial trait is unlikely to be driven by only few genes and case-control studies, suffering from a lack of power, struggle to uncover significant variants. In parallel, neuroimaging has significantly contributed to the understanding of structural and functional aspects of language in the human brain and the recent availability of large scale cohorts like UK Biobank have made possible to study language via image-derived endophenotypes in the general population. Because of its strong relationship with task-based fMRI (tbfMRI) activations and its easiness of acquisition, resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) have been more popularised, making it a good surrogate of functional neuronal processes. Taking advantage of such a synergistic system by aggregating effects across spatially distributed traits, we performed a multivariate genome-wide association study (mvGWAS) between genetic variations and resting-state functional connectivity (FC) of classical brain language areas in the inferior frontal (pars opercularis, triangularis and orbitalis), temporal and inferior parietal lobes (angular and supramarginal gyri), in 32,186 participants from UK Biobank. Twenty genomic loci were found associated with language FCs, out of which three were replicated in an independent replication sample. A locus in 3p11.1, regulating EPHA3 gene expression, is found associated with FCs of the semantic component of the language network, while a locus in 15q14, regulating THBS1 gene expression is found associated with FCs of the perceptual-motor language processing, bringing novel insights into the neurobiology of language.

Abstract

Background

While it is well established that second language (L2) learning success changes with age and across individuals, the underlying neural mechanisms responsible for this developmental shift and these individual differences are largely unknown. We will study the behavioral and neural factors that subserve new grammar and word learning in a large cross-sectional developmental sample. This study falls under the NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [Dutch Research Council]) Language in Interaction consortium (website: https://www.languageininteraction.nl/).
Methods

We will sample 360 healthy individuals across a broad age range between 8 and 25 years. In this paper, we describe the study design and protocol, which involves multiple study visits covering a comprehensive behavioral battery and extensive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocols. On the basis of these measures, we will create behavioral and neural fingerprints that capture age-based and individual variability in new language learning. The behavioral fingerprint will be based on first and second language proficiency, memory systems, and executive functioning. We will map the neural fingerprint for each participant using the following MRI modalities: T1‐weighted, diffusion-weighted, resting-state functional MRI, and multiple functional-MRI paradigms. With respect to the functional MRI measures, half of the sample will learn grammatical features and half will learn words of a new language. Combining all individual fingerprints allows us to explore the neural maturation effects on grammar and word learning.
Discussion

This will be one of the largest neuroimaging studies to date that investigates the developmental shift in L2 learning covering preadolescence to adulthood. Our comprehensive approach of combining behavioral and neuroimaging data will contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms influencing this developmental shift and individual differences in new language learning. We aim to answer: (I) do these fingerprints differ according to age and can these explain the age-related differences observed in new language learning? And (II) which aspects of the behavioral and neural fingerprints explain individual differences (across and within ages) in grammar and word learning? The results of this study provide a unique opportunity to understand how the development of brain structure and function influence new language learning success.

Abstract

During speech processing, neural activity in non-autistic adults and infants tracks the speech envelope. Recent research in adults indicates that this neural tracking relates to linguistic knowledge and may be reduced in autism. Such reduced tracking, if present already in infancy, could impede language development. In the current study, we focused on children with a family history of autism, who often show a delay in first language acquisition. We investigated whether differences in tracking of sung nursery rhymes during infancy relate to language development and autism symptoms in childhood. We assessed speech-brain coherence at either 10 or 14 months of age in a total of 22 infants with high likelihood of autism due to family history and 19 infants without family history of autism. We analyzed the relationship between speech-brain coherence in these infants and their vocabulary at 24 months as well as autism symptoms at 36 months. Our results showed significant speech-brain coherence in the 10- and 14-month-old infants. We found no evidence for a relationship between speech-brain coherence and later autism symptoms. Importantly, speech-brain coherence in the stressed syllable rate (1–3 Hz) predicted later vocabulary. Follow-up analyses showed evidence for a relationship between tracking and vocabulary only in 10-month-olds but not 14-month-olds and indicated possible differences between the likelihood groups. Thus, early tracking of sung nursery rhymes is related to language development in childhood.

Abstract

In deze bijdrage wordt een modulair model van zinsproductie besproken. De planningsprocessen, die aan de productie van een zin voorafgaan, kunnen in twee hoofdcomponenten onderverdeeld worden: deconceptualisering (het bedenken van de inhoud van de uiting) en de formulering (het vastleggen van de linguïstische vorm). Het formuleringsproces bestaat weer uit twee componenten, te weten de grammatische en fonologische codering. Ook deze componenten bestaan elk weer uit een aantal subcomponenten. Dit artikel beschrijft wat de specifieke taak van iedere component is, hoe deze uitgevoerd wordt en hoe de componenten samenwerken. Tevens worden enkele belangrijke methoden van taalproductie-onderzoek besproken.

Abstract

A comparison of Merge, a model of comprehension, and WEAVER, a model of production, raises five issues: (1) merging models of comprehension and production necessarily creates feedback; (2) neither model is a comprehensive account of word processing; (3) the models are incomplete in different ways; (4) the models differ in their handling of competition; (5) as opposed to WEAVER, Merge is a model of metalinguistic behavior.

Abstract

Four experiments investigated the span of advance planning for phrases and short sentences. Dutch subjects were presented with pairs of objects, which they named using noun-phrase conjunctions (e.g., the translation equivalent of ''the arrow and the bag'') or sentences (''the arrow is next to the bag''). Each display was accompanied by an auditory distracter, which was related in form or meaning to the first or second noun of the utterance or unrelated to both. For sentences and phrases, the mean speech onset time was longer when the distracter was semantically related to the first or second noun and shorter when it was phonologically related to the first noun than when it was unrelated. No phonological facilitation was found for the second noun. This suggests that before utterance onset both target lemmas and the first target form were selected.

Abstract

Subjects named pictures while hearing distractor words that shared word-initial or word-final segments with the picture names or were unrelated to the picture names. The relative timing of distractor and picture presentation was varied. Compared with unrelated distractors, both types of related distractors facilitated picture naming under certain timing conditions. Begin-related distractors facilitated the naming responses if the shared segments began 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after picture onset. By contrast, end-related distractors only facilitated the responses if the shared segments began at or 150 ms after picture onset. The results suggest that the phonological encoding of the beginning of a word is initiated before the encoding of its end.

Abstract

Eight experiments were carried out investigating whether different parts of a syllable must be phonologically encoded in a specific order or whether they can be encoded in any order. A speech production task was used in which the subjects in each test trial had to utter one out of three or five response words as quickly as possible. In the so-called homogeneous condition these words were related in form, while in the heterogeneous condition they were unrelated in form. For monosyllabic response words shorter reaction times were obtained in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words had the same onset, but not when they had the same rhyme. Similarly, for disyllabic response words, the reaction times were shorter in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words shared only the onset of the first syllable, but not when they shared only its rhyme. Furthermore, a stronger facilitatory effect was observed when the words had the entire first syllable in common than when they only shared the onset, or the onset and the nucleus, but not the coda of the first syllable. These results suggest that syllables are phonologically encoded in two ordered steps, the first of which is dedicated to the onset and the second to the rhyme.

Abstract

Eye movements have been shown to reflect word recognition and language comprehension processes occurring during reading and auditory language comprehension. The present study examines whether the eye movements speakers make during object naming similarly reflect speech planning processes. In Experiment 1, speakers named object pairs saying, for instance, 'scooter and hat'. The objects were presented as ordinary line drawings or with partly dele:ed contours and had high or low frequency names. Contour type and frequency both significantly affected the mean naming latencies and the mean time spent looking at the objects. The frequency effects disappeared in Experiment 2, in which the participants categorized the objects instead of naming them. This suggests that the frequency effects of Experiment 1 arose during lexical retrieval. We conclude that eye movements during object naming indeed reflect linguistic planning processes and that the speakers' decision to move their eyes from one object to the next is contingent upon the retrieval of the phonological form of the object names.

Abstract

In everyday life, we actively engage in different activities from a first-person perspective. However, experimental psychological research in the field of event perception is often limited to relatively passive, third-person computer-based paradigms. In the present study, we tested the feasibility of using immersive virtual reality in combination with eye tracking with participants in active motion. Behavioral research has shown that speakers of aspectual and non-aspectual languages attend to goals (endpoints) in motion events differently, with speakers of non-aspectual languages showing relatively more attention to goals (endpoint bias). In the current study, native speakers of German (non-aspectual) and English (aspectual) walked on a treadmill across 3-D terrains in VR, while their eye gaze was continuously tracked. Participants encountered landmark objects on the side of the road, and potential endpoint objects at the end of it. Using growth curve analysis to analyze fixation patterns over time, we found no differences in eye gaze behavior between German and English speakers. This absence of cross-linguistic differences was also observed in behavioral tasks with the same participants. Methodologically, based on the quality of the data, we conclude that our dynamic eye-tracking setup can be reliably used to study what people look at while moving through rich and dynamic environments that resemble the real world.

Abstract

Autosomal recessive Achromatopsia (ACHM) is a rare inherited disorder associated with dysfunctional cone photoreceptors resulting in a congenital absence of cone input to visual cortex. This might lead to distinct changes in cortical architecture with a negative impact on the success of gene augmentation therapies. To investigate the status of the visual cortex in these patients, we performed a multi-centre study focusing on the cortical structure of regions that normally receive predominantly cone input. Using high-resolution T1-weighted MRI scans and surface-based morphometry, we compared cortical thickness, surface area and grey matter volume in foveal, parafoveal and paracentral representations of primary visual cortex in 15 individuals with ACHM and 42 normally sighted, healthy controls (HC). In ACHM, surface area was reduced in all tested representations, while thickening of the cortex was found highly localized to the most central representation. These results were comparable to more widespread changes in brain structure reported in congenitally blind individuals, suggesting similar developmental processes, i.e., irrespective of the underlying cause and extent of vision loss. The cortical differences we report here could limit the success of treatment of ACHM in adulthood. Interventions earlier in life when cortical structure is not different from normal would likely offer better visual outcomes for those with ACHM.

Abstract

Increasing evidence implicates the sensorimotor systems with high-level cognition, but the extent to which these systems play a functional role remains debated. Using an elegant design, Shebani and Pulvermüller (2013) reported that carrying out a demanding rhythmic task with the hands led to selective impairment of working memory for hand-related words (e.g., clap), while carrying out the same task with the feet led to selective memory impairment for foot-related words (e.g., kick). Such a striking double dissociation is acknowledged even by critics to constitute strong evidence for an embodied account of working memory. Here, we report on an attempt at a direct replication of this important finding. We followed a sequential sampling design and stopped data collection at N=77 (more than five times the original sample size), at which point the evidence for the lack of the critical selective interference effect was very strong (BF01 = 91). This finding constitutes strong evidence against a functional contribution of the motor system to keeping action words in working memory. Our finding fits into the larger emerging picture in the field of embodied cognition that sensorimotor simulations are neither required nor automatic in high-level cognitive processes, but that they may play a role depending on the task. Importantly, we urge researchers to engage in transparent, high-powered, and fully pre-registered experiments like the present one to ensure the field advances on a solid basis.

Abstract

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the movement (e.g., toward) matches the direction of the action in the to-be-judged sentence (e.g., Art gave you the pen describes action toward you). We report on a pre- registered, multi-lab replication of one version of the ACE. The results show that none of the 18 labs involved in the study observed a reliable ACE, and that the meta-analytic estimate of the size of the ACE was essentially zero.

Abstract

The ability to comprehend phrases is an essential integrative property of the brain. Here we evaluate the neural processes that enable the transition from single word processing to a minimal compositional scheme. Previous research has reported conflicting timing effects of composition, and disagreement persists with respect to inferior frontal and posterior temporal contributions. To address these issues, 19 patients (10 male, 19 female) implanted with penetrating depth or surface subdural intracranial electrodes heard auditory recordings of adjective-noun, pseudoword-noun and adjective-pseudoword phrases and judged whether the phrase matched a picture. Stimulus-dependent alterations in broadband gamma activity, low frequency power and phase-locking values across the language-dominant left hemisphere were derived. This revealed a mosaic located on the lower bank of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), in which closely neighboring cortical sites displayed exclusive sensitivity to either lexicality or phrase structure, but not both. Distinct timings were found for effects of phrase composition (210–300 ms) and pseudoword processing (approximately 300–700 ms), and these were localized to neighboring electrodes in pSTS. The pars triangularis and temporal pole encoded anticipation of composition in broadband low frequencies, and both regions exhibited greater functional connectivity with pSTS during phrase composition. Our results suggest that the pSTS is a highly specialized region comprised of sparsely interwoven heterogeneous constituents that encodes both lower and higher level linguistic features. This hub in pSTS for minimal phrase processing may form the neural basis for the human-specific computational capacity for forming hierarchically organized linguistic structures.

Abstract

Using individual differences approaches, a growing body of literature finds positive associations between musicality and language-related abilities, complementing prior findings of links between musical training and language skills. Despite these associations, musicality has been often overlooked in mainstream models of individual differences in language acquisition and development. To better understand the biological basis of these individual differences, we propose the Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE) framework. This novel integrative framework posits that musical and language-related abilities likely share some common genetic architecture (i.e., genetic pleiotropy) in addition to some degree of overlapping neural endophenotypes, and genetic influences on musically and linguistically enriched environments. Drawing upon recent advances in genomic methodologies for unraveling pleiotropy, we outline testable predictions for future research on language development and how its underlying neurobiological substrates may be supported by genetic pleiotropy with musicality. In support of the MAPLE framework, we review and discuss findings from over seventy behavioral and neural studies, highlighting that musicality is robustly associated with individual differences in a range of speech-language skills required for communication and development. These include speech perception-in-noise, prosodic perception, morphosyntactic skills, phonological skills, reading skills, and aspects of second/foreign language learning. Overall, the current work provides a clear agenda and framework for studying musicality-language links using individual differences approaches, with an emphasis on leveraging advances in the genomics of complex musicality and language traits.

Abstract

Substantial genetic correlations have been reported across psychiatric disorders and numerous cross-disorder genetic variants have been detected. To identify the genetic variants underlying general psychopathology in childhood, we performed a genome-wide association study using a total psychiatric problem score. We analyzed 6,844,199 common SNPs in 38,418 school-aged children from 20 population-based cohorts participating in the EAGLE consortium. The SNP heritability of total psychiatric problems was 5.4% (SE = 0.01) and two loci reached genome-wide significance: rs10767094 and rs202005905. We also observed an association of SBF2, a gene associated with neuroticism in previous GWAS, with total psychiatric problems. The genetic effects underlying the total score were shared with common psychiatric disorders only (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, insomnia) (rG > 0.49), but not with autism or the less common adult disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or eating disorders) (rG < 0.01). Importantly, the total psychiatric problem score also showed at least a moderate genetic correlation with intelligence, educational attainment, wellbeing, smoking, and body fat (rG > 0.29). The results suggest that many common genetic variants are associated with childhood psychiatric symptoms and related phenotypes in general instead of with specific symptoms. Further research is needed to establish causality and pleiotropic mechanisms between related traits.

Abstract

Moving in synchrony to the beat is a fundamental component of musicality. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study to identify common genetic variants associated with beat synchronization in 606,825 individuals. Beat synchronization exhibited a highly polygenic architecture, with 69 loci reaching genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10−8) and single-nucleotide-polymorphism-based heritability (on the liability scale) of 13%–16%. Heritability was enriched for genes expressed in brain tissues and for fetal and adult brain-specific gene regulatory elements, underscoring the role of central-nervous-system-expressed genes linked to the genetic basis of the trait. We performed validations of the self-report phenotype (through separate experiments) and of the genome-wide association study (polygenic scores for beat synchronization were associated with patients algorithmically classified as musicians in medical records of a separate biobank). Genetic correlations with breathing function, motor function, processing speed and chronotype suggest shared genetic architecture with beat synchronization and provide avenues for new phenotypic and genetic explorations.

Abstract

This study compares the role of exemplars in native and non-native listening. Two English identity priming experiments were conducted with native English, Dutch non-native, and Spanish non-native listeners. In Experiment 1, primes and targets were spoken in the same or a different voice. Only the native listeners showed exemplar effects. In Experiment 2, primes and targets had the same or a different degree of vowel reduction. The Dutch, but not the Spanish, listeners were familiar with this reduction pattern from their L1 phonology. In this experiment, exemplar effects only arose for the Spanish listeners. We propose that in these lexical decision experiments the use of exemplars is co-determined by listeners’ available processing resources, which is modulated by the familiarity with the variation type from their L1 phonology. The use of exemplars differs between native and non-native listening, suggesting qualitative differences between native and non-native speech comprehension processes.

Abstract

The reading process depends both on the text and on the reader. When we read a text, propositions in the current input are matched to propositions in the memory representation of the previous discourse but also to knowledge structures in long‐term memory. Therefore, memory‐based text processing refers both to the bottom‐up processing of the text and to the top‐down activation of the reader's knowledge. In this article, we focus on the role of cognitive structures in the reader's knowledge. We argue that causality is an important category in structuring human knowledge and that this property has consequences for text processing. Some research is discussed that illustrates that the more the information in the text reflects causal categories, the more easily the information is processed.

Abstract

Psycholinguistic theories are based on a very small set of unrepresentative languages, so it is as yet unclear how typological variation shapes mechanisms supporting language use. In this article we report the first on-line experimental study of sentence production in an Australian free word order language: Murrinhpatha. Forty-six adult native speakers of Murrinhpatha described a series of unrelated transitive scenes that were manipulated for humanness (±human) in the agent and patient roles while their eye movements were recorded. Speakers produced a large range of word orders, consistent with the language having flexible word order, with variation significantly influenced by agent and patient humanness. An analysis of eye movements showed that Murrinhpatha speakers' first fixation on an event character did not alone determine word order; rather, early in speech planning participants rapidly encoded both event characters and their relationship to each other. That is, they engaged in relational encoding, laying down a very early conceptual foundation for the word order they eventually produced. These results support a weakly hierarchical account of sentence production and show that speakers of a free word order language encode the relationships between event participants during earlier stages of sentence planning than is typically observed for languages with fixed word orders.

Abstract

The central thesis of the target article was that feedback is never necessary in spoken word recognition. The commentaries present no new data and no new theoretical arguments which lead us to revise this position. In this response we begin by clarifying some terminological issues which have lead to a number of significant misunderstandings. We provide some new arguments to support our case that the feedforward model Merge is indeed more parsimonious than the interactive alternatives, and that it provides a more convincing account of the data than alternative models. Finally, we extend the arguments to deal with new issues raised by the commentators such as infant speech perception and neural architecture.

Abstract

Top-down feedback does not benefit speech recognition; on the contrary, it can hinder it. No experimental data imply that feedback loops are required for speech recognition. Feedback is accordingly unnecessary and spoken word recognition is modular. To defend this thesis, we analyse lexical involvement in phonemic decision making. TRACE (McClelland & Elman 1986), a model with feedback from the lexicon to prelexical processes, is unable to account for all the available data on phonemic decision making. The modular Race model (Cutler & Norris 1979) is likewise challenged by some recent results, however. We therefore present a new modular model of phonemic decision making, the Merge model. In Merge, information flows from prelexical processes to the lexicon without feedback. Because phonemic decisions are based on the merging of prelexical and lexical information, Merge correctly predicts lexical involvement in phonemic decisions in both words and nonwords. Computer simulations show how Merge is able to account for the data through a process of competition between lexical hypotheses. We discuss the issue of feedback in other areas of language processing and conclude that modular models are particularly well suited to the problems and constraints of speech recognition.

Abstract

We propose that word recognition in continuous speech is subject to constraints on what may constitute a viable word of the language. This Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) reduces activation of candidate words if their recognition would imply word status for adjacent input which could not be a word - for instance, a single consonant. In two word-spotting experiments, listeners found it much harder to detectapple,for example, infapple(where [f] alone would be an impossible word), than invuffapple(wherevuffcould be a word of English). We demonstrate that the PWC can readily be implemented in a competition-based model of continuous speech recognition, as a constraint on the process of competition between candidate words; where a stretch of speech between a candidate word and a (known or likely) word boundary is not a possible word, activation of the candidate word is reduced. This implementation accurately simulates both the present results and data from a range of earlier studies of speech segmentation.

Abstract

Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.

Abstract

Memorializes Martin D. S. Braine, whose research on child language acquisition and on both child and adult thinking and reasoning had a major influence on modern cognitive psychology. Addressing meaning as well as position, Braine argued that children start acquiring language by learning narrow-scope positional formulas that map components of meaning to positions in the utterance. These proposals were critical in starting discussions of the possible universality of the pivot-grammar stage and of the role of syntax, semantics,and pragmatics in children's early grammar and were pivotal to the rise of approaches in which cognitive development in language acquisition is stressed.

Abstract

Background: Perioperative assessment of language function in brain tumor patients commonly relies on administration of object naming during stimulation mapping. Ample research, however, points to the benefit of adding verb tasks to the testing paradigm in order to delineate and preserve postoperative language function more comprehensively. This research uses a case series approach to explore the feasibility and added value of a dual-task protocol that includes both a noun task (object naming) and a verb task (action naming) in perioperative delineation of language functions.

Materials and Methods: Seven neurosurgical cases underwent perioperative language assessment with both object and action naming. This entailed preoperative baseline testing, preoperative stimulation mapping with navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS) with subsequent white matter visualization, intraoperative mapping with Direct Electrical Stimulation (DES) in 4 cases, and postoperative imaging and examination of language change.

Results: We observed a divergent pattern of language organization and decline between cases who showed lesions close to the delineated language network and hence underwent DES mapping, and those that did not. The latter displayed no new impairment postoperatively consistent with an unharmed network for the neural circuits of both object and action naming. For the cases who underwent DES, on the other hand, a higher sensitivity was found for action naming over object naming. Firstly, action naming preferentially predicted the overall language state compared to aphasia batteries. Secondly, it more accurately predicted intraoperative positive language areas as revealed by DES. Thirdly, double dissociations between postoperatively unimpaired object naming and impaired action naming and vice versa indicate segregated skills and neural representation for noun versus verb processing, especially in the ventral stream. Overlaying postoperative imaging with object and action naming networks revealed that dual-task nTMS mapping can explain the drop in performance in those cases where the network appeared in proximity to the resection cavity.

Conclusion: Using a dual-task protocol for visualization of cortical and subcortical language areas through nTMS mapping proved to be able to capture network-to-deficit relations in our case series. Ultimately, adding action naming to clinical nTMS and DES mapping may help prevent postoperative deficits of this seemingly segregated skill.

Abstract

We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12–16% of EA variance and contributes to risk prediction for ten diseases. Direct effects (i.e., controlling for parental PGIs) explain roughly half the PGI’s magnitude of association with EA and other phenotypes. The correlation between mate-pair PGIs is far too large to be consistent with phenotypic assortment alone, implying additional assortment on PGI-associated factors. In an additional GWAS of dominance deviations from the additive model, we identify no genome-wide-significant SNPs, and a separate X-chromosome additive GWAS identifies 57.

Abstract

The centrosome provides an intracellular anchor for the cytoskeleton, regulating cell division, cell migration, and cilia formation. We used spatial proteomics to elucidate protein interaction networks at the centrosome of human induced pluripotent stem cell–derived neural stem cells (NSCs) and neurons. Centrosome-associated proteins were largely cell type–specific, with protein hubs involved in RNA dynamics. Analysis of neurodevelopmental disease cohorts identified a significant overrepresentation of NSC centrosome proteins with variants in patients with periventricular heterotopia (PH). Expressing the PH-associated mutant pre-mRNA-processing factor 6 (PRPF6) reproduced the periventricular misplacement in the developing mouse brain, highlighting missplicing of transcripts of a microtubule-associated kinase with centrosomal location as essential for the phenotype. Collectively, cell type–specific centrosome interactomes explain how genetic variants in ubiquitous proteins may convey brain-specific phenotypes.

Abstract

Prediction is one characteristic of the human mind. But what does it mean to say the mind is a ’prediction machine’ and inherently forward looking as is frequently claimed? In natural languages, many contexts are not easily predictable in a forward fashion. In English for example many frequent verbs do not carry unique meaning on their own, but instead rely on another word or words that follow them to become meaningful. Upon reading take a the processor often cannot easily predict walk as the next word. But the system can ‘look back’ and integrate walk more easily when it follows take a (e.g., as opposed to make|get|have a walk). In the present paper we provide further evidence for the importance of both forward and backward looking in language processing. In two self-paced reading tasks and an eye-tracking reading task, we found evidence that adult English native speakers’ sensitivity to word forward and backward conditional probability significantly explained variance in reading times over and above psycholinguistic predictors of reading latencies. We conclude that both forward and backward-looking (prediction and integration) appear to be important characteristics of language processing. Our results thus suggest that it makes just as much sense to call the mind an ’integration machine’ which is inherently backward looking.

Abstract

The field of bioacoustics is rapidly developing and characterized by diverse methodologies, approaches and aims. For instance, bioacoustics encompasses studies on the perception of pure tones in meticulously controlled laboratory settings, documentation of species’ presence and activities using recordings from the field, and analyses of circadian calling patterns in animal choruses. Newcomers to the field are confronted with a vast and fragmented literature, and a lack of accessible reference papers or textbooks. In this paper we contribute towards filling this gap. Instead of a classical list of “dos” and “don’ts”, we review some key papers which, we believe, embody best practices in several bioacoustic subfields. In the first three case studies, we discuss how bioacoustics can help identify the ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘how many’ of animals within a given ecosystem. Specifically, we review cases in which bioacoustic methods have been applied with success to draw inferences regarding species identification, population structure, and biodiversity. In fourth and fifth case studies, we highlight how structural properties in signal evolution can emerge via ecological constraints or cultural transmission. Finally, in a sixth example, we discuss acoustic methods that have been used to infer predator–prey dynamics in cases where direct observation was not feasible. Across all these examples, we emphasize the importance of appropriate recording parameters and experimental design. We conclude by highlighting common best practices across studies as well as caveats about our own overview. We hope our efforts spur a more general effort in standardizing best practices across the subareas we’ve highlighted in order to increase compatibility among bioacoustic studies and inspire cross-pollination across the discipline.

Abstract

Nasal consonants in syllabic coda position in Japanese assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. The resulting forms may be perceived as different realizations of a single underlying unit, and indeed the kana orthographies represent them with a single character. In the present study, Japanese listeners' response time to detect nasal consonants was measured. Nasals in coda position, i.e., moraic nasals, were detected faster and more accurately than nonmoraic nasals, as reported in previous studies. The place of articulation with which moraic nasals were realized affected neither response time nor accuracy. Non-native subjects who knew no Japanese, given the same materials with the same instructions, simply failed to respond to moraic nasals which were realized bilabially. When the nasals were cross-spliced across place of articulation contexts the Japanese listeners still showed no significant place of articulation effects, although responses were faster and more accurate to unspliced than to cross-spliced nasals. When asked to detect the phoneme following the (cross-spliced) moraic nasal, Japanese listeners showed effects of mismatch between nasal and context, but non-native listeners did not. Together, these results suggest that Japanese listeners are capable of very rapid abstraction from phonetic realization to a unitary representation of moraic nasals; but they can also use the phonetic realization of a moraic nasal effectively to obtain anticipatory information about following phonemes.

Abstract

In this increasingly data-rich world, visual recordings of human behavior are often unable to be shared due to concerns about privacy. Consequently, data sharing in fields such as behavioral science, multimodal communication, and human movement research is often limited. In addition, in legal and other non-scientific contexts, privacy-related concerns may preclude the sharing of video recordings and thus remove the rich multimodal context that humans recruit to communicate. Minimizing the risk of identity exposure while preserving critical behavioral information would maximize utility of public resources (e.g., research grants) and time invested in audio–visual​ research. Here we present an open-source computer vision tool that masks the identities of humans while maintaining rich information about communicative body movements. Furthermore, this masking tool can be easily applied to many videos, leveraging computational tools to augment the reproducibility and accessibility of behavioral research. The tool is designed for researchers and practitioners engaged in kinematic and affective research. Application areas include teaching/education, communication and human movement research, CCTV, and legal contexts.

Abstract

Hearing one’s own voice is critical for fluent speech production as it allows for the detection and correction of vocalization errors in real time. This behavior known as the auditory feedback control of speech is impaired in various neurological disorders ranging from stuttering to aphasia; however, the underlying neural mechanisms are still poorly understood. Computational models of speech motor control suggest that, during speech production, the brain uses an efference copy of the motor command to generate an internal estimate of the speech output. When actual feedback differs from this internal estimate, an error signal is generated to correct the internal estimate and update necessary motor commands to produce intended speech. We were able to localize the auditory error signal using electrocorticographic recordings from neurosurgical participants during a delayed auditory feedback (DAF) paradigm. In this task, participants hear their voice with a time delay as they produced words and sentences (similar to an echo on a conference call), which is well known to disrupt fluency by causing slow and stutter-like speech in humans. We observed a significant response enhancement in auditory cortex that scaled with the duration of feedback delay, indicating an auditory speech error signal. Immediately following auditory cortex, dorsal precentral gyrus (dPreCG), a region that has not been implicated in auditory feedback processing before, exhibited a markedly similar response enhancement, suggesting a tight coupling between the 2 regions. Critically, response enhancement in dPreCG occurred only during articulation of long utterances due to a continuous mismatch between produced speech and reafferent feedback. These results suggest that dPreCG plays an essential role in processing auditory error signals during speech production to maintain fluency.

Abstract

This study investigates how children of different ages talk about a conversation that they have witnessed. 48 Turkish children, five, nine and thirteen years in age, saw a televised dialogue between two Sesame Street characters (Bert and Ernie). Afterward, they narrated what they had seen and heard. Their reports were analysed for the development of linguistic devices used to orient their listeners to the relevant properties of a conversational exchange. Each utterance in the child's narrative was analysed as to its conversational role: (1) whether the child used direct or indirect quotation frames; (2) whether the child marked the boundaries of conversational turns using speakers' names and (3) whether the child used a marker for pairing of utterances made by different speakers (agreement-disagreement, request-refusal, questioning-answering). Within pairings, children's use of (a) the temporal and evaluative connectivity markers and (b) the kind of verb of saying were identified. The data indicate that there is a developmental change in children's ability to use appropriate linguistic means to orient their listeners to the different properties of a conversation. The development and use of these linguistic means enable the child to establish different social roles in a narrative interaction. The findings are interpreted in terms of the child's social-communicative development from being a ' character' to becoming a ' narrator' and ' author' of the reported conversation in the narrative situation.

Abstract

Evaluation plays a role in the telling and understanding of narratives, in communicative interaction, emotional understanding, and in psychological well-being. This article reports a study of evaluation by describing how readers monitor the concerns of characters over the course of a narrative. The main hypothesis is that readers tract the well-being via the expression of a character's internal states. Reader evaluations were revealed in think aloud protocols obtained during reading of narrative texts, one sentence at a time. Five kinds of evaluative inferences were found: appraisals (good versus bad), preferences (like versus don't like), emotions (happy versus frustrated), goals (want versus don't want), or purposes (to attain or maintain X versus to prevent or avoid X). Readers evaluated all sentences. The mean rate of evaluation per sentence was 0.55. Positive and negative evaluations over the course of the story indicated that things initially went badly for characters, improved with the formulation and execution of goal plans, declined with goal failure, and improved as characters formulated new goals and succeeded. The kind of evaluation made depended upon the episodic category of the event and the event's temporal location in the story. Evaluations also served to explain or predict events. In making evaluations, readers stayed within the frame of the story and perspectives of the character or narrator. They also moved out of the narrative frame and addressed evaluations towards the experimenter in a communicative context.

Abstract

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), a common drug-resistant epilepsy in adults, is primarily a limbic network disorder associated with predominant unilateral hippocampal pathology. Structural MRI has provided an in vivo window into whole-brain grey matter structural alterations in TLE relative to controls, by either mapping (i) atypical inter-hemispheric asymmetry or (ii) regional atrophy. However, similarities and differences of both atypical asymmetry and regional atrophy measures have not been systematically investigated.

Here, we addressed this gap using the multi-site ENIGMA-Epilepsy dataset comprising MRI brain morphological measures in 732 TLE patients and 1,418 healthy controls. We compared spatial distributions of grey matter asymmetry and atrophy in TLE, contextualized their topographies relative to spatial gradients in cortical microstructure and functional connectivity calculated using 207 healthy controls obtained from Human Connectome Project and an independent dataset containing 23 TLE patients and 53 healthy controls, and examined clinical associations using machine learning.

We identified a marked divergence in the spatial distribution of atypical inter-hemispheric asymmetry and regional atrophy mapping. The former revealed a temporo-limbic disease signature while the latter showed diffuse and bilateral patterns. Our findings were robust across individual sites and patients. Cortical atrophy was significantly correlated with disease duration and age at seizure onset, while degrees of asymmetry did not show a significant relationship to these clinical variables.

Our findings highlight that the mapping of atypical inter-hemispheric asymmetry and regional atrophy tap into two complementary aspects of TLE-related pathology, with the former revealing primary substrates in ipsilateral limbic circuits and the latter capturing bilateral disease effects. These findings refine our notion of the neuropathology of TLE and may inform future discovery and validation of complementary MRI biomarkers in TLE.

Abstract

In many musical styles, vocalists manually gesture while they sing. Coupling between gesture kinematics and vocalization has been examined in speech contexts, but it is an open question how these couple in music making. We examine this in a corpus of South Indian, Karnatak vocal music that includes motion-capture data. Through peak magnitude analysis (linear mixed regression) and continuous time-series analyses (generalized additive modeling), we assessed whether vocal trajectories around peaks in vertical velocity, speed, or acceleration were coupling with changes in vocal acoustics (namely, F0 and amplitude). Kinematic coupling was stronger for F0 change versus amplitude, pointing to F0's musical significance. Acceleration was the most predictive for F0 change and had the most reliable magnitude coupling, showing a one-third power relation. That acceleration, rather than other kinematics, is maximally predictive for vocalization is interesting because acceleration entails force transfers onto the body. As a theoretical contribution, we argue that gesturing in musical contexts should be understood in relation to the physical connections between gesturing and vocal production that are brought into harmony with the vocalists’ (enculturated) performance goals. Gesture–vocal coupling should, therefore, be viewed as a neuro–bodily distributed aesthetic entanglement.

Abstract

Models on L3/Ln acquisition differ with respect to how they envisage degree (holistic
vs. selective transfer of the L1, L2 or both) and/or timing (initial stages vs. development) of how
the influence of source languages unfolds. This study uses EEG/ERPs to examine these models,
bringing together two types of bilinguals: heritage speakers (HSs) (Italian-German, n = 15) compared
to adult L2 learners (L1 German, L2 English, n = 28) learning L3/Ln Latin. Participants were trained
on a selected Latin lexicon over two sessions and, afterward, on two grammatical properties: case
(similar between German and Latin) and adjective–noun order (similar between Italian and Latin).
Neurophysiological findings show an N200/N400 deflection for the HSs in case morphology and a
P600 effect for the German L2 group in adjectival position. None of the current L3/Ln models predict
the observed results, which questions the appropriateness of this methodology. Nevertheless, the
results are illustrative of differences in how HSs and L2 learners approach the very initial stages of
additional language learning, the implications of which are discussed

Abstract

The present study uses EEG time-frequency representations (TFRs) with a Flanker task to investigate if and how individual differences in bilingual language experience modulate neurocognitive outcomes (oscillatory dynamics) in two bilingual group types: late bilinguals (L2 learners) and early bilinguals (heritage speakers—HSs). TFRs were computed for both incongruent and congruent trials. The difference between the two (Flanker effect vis-à-vis cognitive interference) was then (1) compared between the HSs and the L2 learners, (2) modeled as a function of individual differences with bilingual experience within each group separately and (3) probed for its potential (a)symmetry between brain and behavioral data. We found no differences at the behavioral and neural levels for the between-groups comparisons. However, oscillatory dynamics (mainly theta increase and alpha suppression) of inhibition and cognitive control were found to be modulated by individual differences in bilingual language experience, albeit distinctly within each bilingual group. While the results indicate adaptations toward differential brain recruitment in line with bilingual language experience variation overall, this does not manifest uniformly. Rather, earlier versus later onset to bilingualism—the bilingual type—seems to constitute an independent qualifier to how individual differences play out.

Abstract

Humans have the ability to learn surprisingly complicated statistical information in a variety of modalities and situations, often based on relatively little input. These statistical learning (SL) skills appear to underlie many kinds of learning, but despite their ubiquity, we still do not fully understand precisely what SL is and what individual differences on SL tasks reflect. Here, we present experimental work suggesting that at least some individual differences arise from stimulus-specific variation in perceptual fluency: the ability to rapidly or efficiently code and remember the stimuli that SL occurs over. Experiment 1 demonstrates that participants show improved SL when the stimuli are simple and familiar; Experiment 2 shows that this improvement is not evident for simple but unfamiliar stimuli; and Experiment 3 shows that for the same stimuli (Chinese characters), SL is higher for people who are familiar with them (Chinese speakers) than those who are not (English speakers matched on age and education level). Overall, our findings indicate that performance on a standard SL task varies substantially within the same (visual) modality as a function of whether the stimuli involved are familiar or not, independent of stimulus complexity. Moreover, test–retest correlations of performance in an SL task using stimuli of the same level of familiarity (but distinct items) are stronger than correlations across the same task with stimuli of different levels of familiarity. Finally, we demonstrate that SL performance is predicted by an independent measure of stimulus-specific perceptual fluency that contains no SL component at all. Our results suggest that a key component of SL performance may be related to stimulus-specific processing and familiarity.

Abstract

Understanding the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in learning and memory is an important problem in cognitive neuroscience. Memory and learning processes that depend on the function of the MTL and related diencephalic structures (e.g., the anterior and mediodorsal thalamic nuclei) are defined as declarative. We have studied the MTL activity as indicated by regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography and statistical parametric mapping during recall of abstract designs in a less practiced memory state as well as in a well-practiced (well-encoded) memory state. The results showed an increased activity of the MTL bilaterally (including parahippocampal gyrus extending into hippocampus proper, as well as anterior lingual and anterior fusiform gyri) during retrieval in the less practiced memory state compared to the well-practiced memory state, indicating a dynamic role of the MTL in retrieval during the learning processes. The results also showed that the activation of the MTL decreases as the subjects learn to draw abstract designs from memory, indicating a changing role of the MTL during recall in the earlier stages of acquisition compared to the well-encoded declarative memory state.

Abstract

It has previously been suggested that the activity in sensory regions of the brain can be modulated by attentional mechanisms during parallel cognitive processing. To investigate whether such attention-related modulations are present in the processing of pain, the regional cerebral blood ¯ow was measured using [15O]butanol and positron emission tomography in conditions involving both pain and parallel cognitive demands. The painful stimulus consisted of the standard cold pressor test and the cognitive task was a computerised perceptual maze test. The activations during the maze test reproduced findings in previous studies of the same cognitive task. The cold pressor test evoked signi®cant activity in the contralateral S1, and bilaterally in the somatosensory association areas (including S2), the ACC and the mid-insula. The activity in the somatosensory association areas and periaqueductal gray/midbrain were significantly modified, i.e. relatively decreased, when the subjects also were performing the maze task. The altered activity was accompanied with significantly lower ratings of pain during the cognitive task. In contrast, lateral orbitofrontal regions showed a relative increase of activity during pain combined with the maze task as compared to only pain, which suggests the possibility of the involvement of frontal cortex in modulation of regions processing pain

Abstract

In The Netherlands, grammar teaching is an especially important subject in the curriculum of children aged 10-15 for several reasons. However, in spite of all attention and time invested, the results are poor. This article describes the problems and our attempt to overcome them by developing an intelligent computational instructional environment consisting of: a linguistic expert system, containing a module representing grammar and spelling rules and a number of modules to manipulate these rules; a didactic module; and a student interface with special facilities for grammar and spelling. Three prototypes of the functionality are discussed: BOUWSTEEN and COGO, which are programs for constructing and analyzing Dutch sentences; and TDTDT, a program for the conjugation of Dutch verbs.

Abstract

In this study data from the first six months of 12 children s multiword speech were used to test the validity of Valian's (1991) syntactic perfor-mance-limitation account and Tomasello s (1992) verb-island account of early multiword speech with particular reference to the development of the English verb category. The results provide evidence for appropriate use of verb morphology, auxiliary verb structures, pronoun case marking, and SVO word order from quite early in development. However, they also demonstrate a great deal of lexical specificity in the children's use of these systems, evidenced by a lack of overlap in the verbs to which different morphological markers were applied, a lack of overlap in the verbs with which different auxiliary verbs were used, a disproportionate use of the first person singular nominative pronoun I, and a lack of overlap in the lexical items that served as the subjects and direct objects of transitive verbs. These findings raise problems for both a syntactic performance-limitation account and a strong verb-island account of the data and suggest the need to develop a more general lexiealist account of early multiword speech that explains why some words come to function as "islands" of organization in the child's grammar and others do not.

Abstract

Observational and checklist measures of vocabulary composition have both recently been used to look at the absolute proportion of nouns in children's early vocabularies. However, they have tended to generate rather different results. The present study is an attempt to investigate the relationship between such measures in a sample of 26 children between 1;1 and 2;1 at approximately 50 and 100 words. The results show that although observational and checklist measures are significantly correlated, there are also systematic quantitative differences between them which seem to reflect a combination of checklist, maternal-report and observational sampling biases. This suggests that, although both kinds of measure may represent good indices of differences in vocabulary size and composition across children and hence be useful as dependent variables in correlational research, neither may be ideal for estimating the absolute proportion of nouns in children's vocabularies. The implication is that questions which rely on information about the absolute proportion of particular kinds of words in children's vocabularies can only be properly addressed by detailed longitudinal studies in which an attempt is made to collect more comprehensive vocabulary records for individual children.

Abstract

In this study we test a number of different claims about the nature of stylistic variation at the “single-word” stage by examining the relation between variation in early vocabulary composition, variation in early language use, and variation in the structural and functional propreties of mothers' child-directed speech. Maternal-report and observational data were collected for 26 children at 10, 50, and 100 words, These were then correlated with a variety of different measures of maternal speech at 10 words, The results show substantial variation in the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's vocabularies, and singficant relations between this variation and the way in which language is used by the child. They also reveal singficant relations between the way in whch mothers use language at 10 words and the way in chich their children use language at 50 words and between certain formal properties of mothers speech at 10 words and the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's early vocabularies, However, most of these relations desappear when an attempt is made to control for ossible effects of the child on the mother at Time 1. The exception is a singficant negative correlation between mothers tendency to produce speech that illustrates word boundaries and the percentage of unanalyzed phrases at 50 and 100 words. This suggests that mothers whose sprech provides the child with information about where new words begin and end tend to have children with few unanalyzed. phrases in their early vocabularies.

Abstract

In this paper hypothesis‐testing behaviour is compared to risk‐taking behaviour. It is proposed that choosing a suitable test for a given hypothesis requires making a preposterior analysis of two aspects of such a test: the probability of obtaining supporting evidence and the evidential value of this evidence. This consideration resembles the one a gambler makes when choosing among bets, each having a probability of winning and an amount to be won. A confirmatory testing strategy can be defined within this framework as a strategy directed at maximizing either the probability or the value of a confirming outcome. Previous theories on testing behaviour have focused on the human tendency to maximize the probability of a confirming outcome. In this paper, two experiments are presented in which participants tend to maximize the confirming value of the test outcome. Motivational factors enhance this tendency dependent on the context of the testing situation. Both this result and the framework are discussed in relation to other studies in the field of testing behaviour.

Abstract

Many word forms exist in multiple languages, and can have either the same meaning (cognates) or a different meaning (interlingual homographs). Previous experiments have shown that processing of interlingual homographs in a bilingual’s second language is slowed down by recent experience with these words in the bilingual’s native language, while processing of cognates can be speeded up (Poort et al., 2016; Poort & Rodd, 2019a). The current experiment replicated Poort and Rodd’s (2019a) Experiment 2 but switched the direction of priming: Dutch–English bilinguals (n = 106) made Dutch semantic relatedness judgements to probes related to cognates (n = 50), interlingual homographs (n = 50) and translation equivalents (n = 50) they had seen 15 minutes previously embedded in English sentences. The current experiment is the first to show that a single encounter with an interlingual homograph in one’s second language can also affect subsequent processing in one’s native language. Cross-lingual priming did not affect the cognates. The experiment also extended Poort and Rodd (2019a)’s finding of a large interlingual homograph inhibition effect in a semantic relatedness task in the participants’ L2 to their L1, but again found no evidence for a cognate facilitation effect in a semantic relatedness task. These findings extend the growing literature that emphasises the high level of interaction in a bilingual’s mental lexicon, by demonstrating the influence of L2 experience on the processing of L1 words. Data, scripts, materials and pre-registration available via https://osf.io/2swyg/?view_only=b2ba2e627f6f4eaeac87edab2b59b236.

Abstract

Combining academics and athletics is challenging but important for the psychological and psychosocial development of those involved. However, little is known about how experiences in academics spill over and relate to athletics. Drawing on the enrichment mechanisms proposed by the Work-Home Resources model, we posit that study crafting behaviours are positively related to volatile personal resources, which, in turn, are related to higher athletic achievement. Via structural equation modelling, we examine a path model among 243 student-athletes, incorporating study crafting behaviours and personal resources (i.e., positive affect and study engagement), and self- and coach-rated athletic achievement measured two weeks later. Results show that optimising the academic environment by crafting challenging study demands relates positively to positive affect and study engagement. In turn, positive affect related positively to self-rated athletic achievement, whereas – unexpectedly – study engagement related negatively to coach-rated athletic achievement. Optimising the academic environment through cognitive crafting and crafting social study resources did not relate to athletic outcomes. We discuss how these findings offer new insights into the interplay between academics and athletics.

Abstract

Prediction-based theories of language comprehension assume that listeners predict both the meaning and phonological form of likely upcoming words. In alleged event-related potential (ERP) demonstrations of phonological prediction, prediction-mismatching words elicit a phonological mismatch negativity (PMN), a frontocentral negativity that precedes the centroparietal N400 component. However, classification and replicability of the PMN has proven controversial, with ongoing debate on whether the PMN is a distinct component or merely an early part of the N400. In this electroencephalography (EEG) study, we therefore attempted to replicate the PMN effect and its separability from the N400, using a participant sample size (N = 48) that was more than double that of previous studies. Participants listened to sentences containing either a predictable word or an unpredictable word with/without phonological overlap with the predictable word. Preregistered analyses revealed a widely distributed negative-going ERP in response to unpredictable words in both the early (150–250 ms) and the N400 (300–500 ms) time windows. Bayes factor analysis yielded moderate evidence against a different scalp distribution of the effects in the two time windows. Although our findings do not speak against phonological prediction during sentence comprehension, they do speak against the PMN effect specifically as a marker of phonological prediction mismatch. Instead of an PMN effect, our results demonstrate the early onset of the auditory N400 effect associated with unpredictable words. Our failure to replicate further highlights the risk associated with commonly employed data-contingent analyses (e.g., analyses involving time windows or electrodes that were selected based on visual inspection) and small sample sizes in the cognitive neuroscience of language.

Abstract

Conversational turn taking in humans involves incredibly rapid responding. The timing mechanisms underpinning such responses have been heavily debated, including questions such as who is doing the timing. Similar to findings on rhythmic tapping to a metronome, we show that floor transfer offsets (FTOs) in telephone conversations are serially dependent, such that FTOs are lag-1 negatively autocorrelated. Finding this serial dependence on a turn-by-turn basis (lag-1) rather than on the basis of two or more turns, suggests a counter-adjustment mechanism operating at the level of the dyad in FTOs during telephone conversations, rather than a more individualistic self-adjustment within speakers. This finding, if replicated, has major implications for models describing turn taking, and confirms the joint, dyadic nature of human conversational dynamics. Future research is needed to see how pervasive serial dependencies in FTOs are, such as for example in richer communicative face-to-face contexts where visual signals affect conversational timing.