Publications

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

It is an important feature of the human sentence production system that semantic and syntactic processes may overlap in time and do not proceed strictly serially. That is, the process of building the syntactic form of an utterance does not always wait until the complete semantic content for that utterance has been decided upon. On the contrary, speakers will often start pronouncing the first words of a sentence while still working on further details of its semantic content. An important advantage is memory economy. Semantic and syntactic fragments do not have to occupy working memory until complete semantic and syntactic structures for an utterance have been computed. Instead, each semantic and syntactic fragment is processed as soon as possible and is kept in working memory for a minimum period of time. This raises the question of how the sentence production system can maintain syntactic coherence across syntactic fragments. Presumably there are processes of "syntactic bookkeeping" which (1) store in working memory those syntactic properties of a fragmentary sentence which are needed to eliminate ungrammatical continuations, and (2) check whether a prospective continuation is indeed compatible with the sentence constructed so far. In reaction time experiments where subjects described, under time pressure, simple static pictures of an action performed by an actor, the second aspect of syntactic bookkeeping could be demonstrated. This evidence is used for modelling bookkeeping processes as part of a computational sentence generator which aims at simulating the syntactic operations people carry out during spontaneous speech.

Abstract

When you compare the behavior of two different age groups which are trying to master the same sensori-motor or cognitive skill, you are likely to discover varying learning routes: different stages, different intervals between stages, or even different orderings of stages. Such heterogeneous learning trajectories may be caused by at least six different types of factors: (1) Initial state: the kinds and levels of skills the learners have available at the onset of the learning episode. (2) Learning mechanisms: rule-based, inductive, connectionist, parameter setting, and so on. (3) Input and feedback characteristics: learning stimuli, information about success and failure. (4) Information processing mechanisms: capacity limitations, attentional biases, response preferences. (5) Energetic variables: motivation, emotional reactions. (6) Final state: the fine-structure of kinds and levels of subskills at the end of the learning episode. This applies to language acquisition as well. First and second language learners probably differ on all six factors. Nevertheless, the debate between advocates and opponents of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis concerning L1 and L2 acquisition have looked almost exclusively at the first two factors. Those who believe that L1 learners have access to Universal Grammar whereas L2 learners rely on language processing strategies, postulate different learning mechanisms (UG parameter setting in L1, more general inductive strategies in L2 learning). Pienemann opposes this view and, based on his Processability Theory, argues that L1 and L2 learners start out from different initial states: they come to the grammar learning task with different structural hypotheses (SOV versus SVO as basic word order of German).

Abstract

We outline an algorithm capable of generating varied but natural sounding sequences of argument NPs in subordinate clauses of German, a semi-free word order language. In order to attain the right level of output flexibility, the algorithm considers (1) the relevant lexical properties of the head verb (not only transitivity type but also reflexivity, thematic relations expressed by the NPs, etc.), and (2) the animacy and definiteness values of the arguments, and their length. The relevant statistical data were extracted from the NEGRA–II treebank and from hand-coded features for animacy and definiteness. The algorithm maps the relevant properties onto “primary” versus “secondary” placement options in the generator. The algorithm is restricted in that it does not take into account linear order determinants related to the sentence’s information structure and its discourse context (e.g. contrastiveness). These factors may modulate the above preferences or license “tertiary” linear orders beyond the primary and secondary options considered here.

Abstract

Remarques sur les facteurs intervenant dans le processus de formulation des énoncés.

Abstract

The psychology of language as developed by Wilhelm Wundt in his fundamental work Die Sprache (1900) has a strongly mentalistic character. The dominating positions held by behaviorism in psychology and structuralism in linguistics have overruled Wundt’s language theory to the effect that it has remained relatively unknown. This situation has changed recently under the influence of transformational linguistics and cognitive psychology. The paper discusses how Wundt applied the basic psychological concepts of apperception and association to language behavior, in particular to the construction and production of sentences during unprepared speech. The final part of the paper is devoted to the work, published in 1917, of the Dutch linguistic scholar Jacques van Ginneken, who elaborated Wundt’s ideas towards an explanation of some syntactic phenomena during the language acquisition of children.

Abstract

Four probe latency experiments show that the ‘constituent boundary effect’ (transitions between constituents are more difficult than within constituents) is a retrieval and not a storage phenomenon. The experimental logic used is called paraphrastic reproduction: after verbatim memorization of some sentences, subjects were instructed to reproduce them both in their original wording and in the form of sentences that, whilst preserving the original meaning, embodied different syntactic constructions. Syntactic constructions are defined as pairs which consist of a pattern of conceptual information and a syntactic scheme, i.e. a sequence of syntactic word categories and function words. For example, the sequence noun + finite intransitive main verb (‘John runs’) expresses a conceptual actor-action relationship. It is proposed that for each overlearned and simple syntactic construction there exists a retrieval plan which does the following. It searches through the long-term memory information that has been designated as the conceptual content of the utterance(s) to be produced, looking for a token of its conceptual pattern. The retrieved information is then cast into the format of its syntactic scheme. The organization of such plans is held responsible for the constituent boundary effect.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.

Abstract

During the last 25 years, second language acquisition (SLA) research hasmade considerable progress, but is still far from proving a solid basis for foreign language teaching, or from a general theory of SLA. In addition, its status within the linguistic disciplines is still very low. I argue this has not much to do with low empirical or theoretical standards in the field—in this regard, SLA research is fully competitive—but with a particular perspective on the acquisition process: SLA researches learners' utterances as deviations from a certain target, instead of genuine manifestations of underlying language capacity; it analyses them in terms of what they are not rather than what they are. For some purposes such a "target deviation perspective" makes sense, but it will not help SLA researchers to substantially and independently contribute to a deeper understanding of the structure and function of the human language faculty. Therefore, these findings will remain of limited interest to other scientists until SLA researchers consider learner varieties a normal, in fact typical, manifestation of this unique human capacity.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

In various applications of forensic phonetics the question arises as to how far aural-perceptual speaker recognition performance is reliable. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the relationship between speaker recognition results and human perception/production abilities like musicality or speech sensitivity. In this study, performance in a speaker recognition experiment and a speech sensitivity test are correlated. The results show a moderately significant positive correlation between the two tasks. Generally, performance in the speaker recognition task was better than in the speech sensitivity test. Professionals in speech and singing yielded a more homogeneous correlation than non-experts. Training in speech as well as choir-singing seems to have a positive effect on performance in speaker recognition. It may be concluded, firstly, that in cases where the reliability of voice line-up results or the credibility of a testimony have to be considered, the speech sensitivity test could be a useful indicator. Secondly, the speech sensitivity test might be integrated into the canon of possible procedures for the accreditation of forensic phoneticians. Both tests may also be used in combination.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

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

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

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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