Publications

Abstract

This article presents a new account of the color-word Stroop phenomenon ( J. R. Stroop, 1935) based on an implemented model of word production, WEAVER++ ( W. J. M. Levelt, A. Roelofs, & A. S. Meyer, 1999b; A. Roelofs, 1992, 1997c). Stroop effects are claimed to arise from processing interactions within the language-production architecture and explicit goal-referenced control. WEAVER++ successfully simulates 16 classic data sets, mostly taken from the review by C. M. MacLeod (1991), including incongruency, congruency, reverse-Stroop, response-set, semantic-gradient, time-course, stimulus, spatial, multiple-task, manual, bilingual, training, age, and pathological effects. Three new experiments tested the account against alternative explanations. It is shown that WEAVER++ offers a more satisfactory account of the data than other models.

Abstract

It is a challenge to identify the molecular networks contributing to the neural basis of human speech. Mutations in transcription factor FOXP2 cause difficulties mastering fluent speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia, DVD), while mutations of sushi-repeat protein SRPX2 lead to epilepsy of the rolandic (sylvian) speech areas, with DVD or with bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria. Pathophysiological mechanisms driven by SRPX2 involve modified interaction with the plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR). Independent chromatin-immunoprecipitation microarray screening has identified the uPAR gene promoter as a potential target site bound by FOXP2. Here, we directly tested for the existence of a transcriptional regulatory network between human FOXP2 and the SRPX2/uPAR complex. In silico searches followed by gel retardation assays identified specific efficient FOXP2 binding sites in each of the promoter regions of SRPX2 and uPAR. In FOXP2-transfected cells, significant decreases were observed in the amounts of both SRPX2 (43.6%) and uPAR (38.6%) native transcripts. Luciferase reporter assays demonstrated that FOXP2 expression yielded marked inhibition of SRPX2 (80.2%) and uPAR (77.5%) promoter activity. A mutant FOXP2 that causes DVD (p.R553H) failed to bind to SRPX2 and uPAR target sites, and showed impaired down-regulation of SRPX2 and uPAR promoter activity. In a patient with polymicrogyria of the left rolandic operculum, a novel FOXP2 mutation (p.M406T) was found in the leucine-zipper (dimerization) domain. p.M406T partially impaired FOXP2 regulation of SRPX2 promoter activity, while that of the uPAR promoter remained unchanged. Together with recently described FOXP2-CNTNPA2 and SRPX2/uPAR links, the FOXP2-SRPX2/uPAR network provides exciting insights into molecular pathways underlying speech-related disorders.

Abstract

Questions are design problems for both the questioner and the addressee. They must be produced as recognizable objects and must be comprehended by taking into account the context in which they occur and the local situated interests of the participants. This paper investigates how people do ‘questioning’ and ‘responding’ in Italian ordinary conversations. I focus on the features of both questions and responses. I first discuss formal linguistic features that are peculiar to questions in terms of intonation contours (e.g. final rise), morphology (e.g. tags and question words) and syntax (e.g. inversion). I then show additional features that characterize their actual implementation in conversation such as their minimality (often the subject or the verb is only implied) and the usual occurrence of speaker gaze towards the recipient during questions. I then look at which social actions (e.g. requests for information, requests for confirmation) the different question types implement and which responses are regularly produced in return. The data shows that previous descriptions of “interrogative markings” are neither adequate nor sufficient to comprehend the actual use of questions in natural conversation.

Abstract

Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One explanation of wh-question acquisition in particular suggests that the order in which English speaking children acquire wh-questions is determined by two interlocking linguistic factors; the syntactic function of the wh-word that heads the question and the semantic generality (or ‘lightness’) of the main verb (Bloom, Merkin & Wootten, 1982; Bloom, 1991). Another more recent view, however, is that acquisition is influenced by the relative frequency with which children hear particular wh-words and verbs in their input (e.g. Rowland & Pine, 2000). In the present study over 300 hours of naturalistic data from twelve two- to three-year-old children and their mothers were analysed in order to assess the relative contribution of complexity and input frequency to wh-question acquisition. The analyses revealed, first, that the acquisition order of wh-questions could be predicted successfully from the frequency with which particular wh-words and verbs occurred in the children's input and, second, that syntactic and semantic complexity did not reliably predict acquisition once input frequency was taken into account. These results suggest that the relationship between acquisition and complexity may be a by-product of the high correlation between complexity and the frequency with which mothers use particular wh-words and verbs. We interpret the results in terms of a constructivist view of language acquisition.

Abstract

Van Valin (Journal of Child Language29, 2002, 161–75) presents a critique of Rowland & Pine (Journal of Child Language27, 2000, 157–81) and argues that the wh-question data from Adam (in Brown, A first language, Cambridge, MA, 1973) cannot be explained in terms of input frequencies as we suggest. Instead, he suggests that the data can be more successfully accounted for in terms of Role and Reference Grammar. In this note we re-examine the pattern of inversion and uninversion in Adam's wh-questions and argue that the RRG explanation cannot account for some of the developmental facts it was designed to explain.

Abstract

Although cognitive ability is a highly heritable complex trait, only a few genes have been identified, explaining relatively low proportions of the observed trait variation. This implies that hundreds of genes of small effect may be of importance for cognitive ability. We applied an innovative method in which we tested for the effect of groups of genes defined according to cellular function (functional gene group analysis). Using an initial sample of 627 subjects, this functional gene group analysis detected that synaptic heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide binding proteins (G proteins) play an important role in cognitive ability (P(EMP) = 1.9 x 10(-4)). The association with heterotrimeric G proteins was validated in an independent population sample of 1507 subjects. Heterotrimeric G proteins are central relay factors between the activation of plasma membrane receptors by extracellular ligands and the cellular responses that these induce, and they can be considered a point of convergence, or a "signaling bottleneck." Although alterations in synaptic signaling processes may not be the exclusive explanation for the association of heterotrimeric G proteins with cognitive ability, such alterations may prominently affect the properties of neuronal networks in the brain in such a manner that impaired cognitive ability and lower intelligence are observed. The reported association of synaptic heterotrimeric G proteins with cognitive ability clearly points to a new direction in the study of the genetic basis of cognitive ability.

Abstract

Recent research indicates that language processing relies on brain areas dedicated to perception and action. For example, processing words denoting manipulable objects has been shown to activate a fronto-parietal network involved in actual tool use. This is suggested to reflect the knowledge the subject has about how objects are moved and used. However, information about how to use an object may be much more central to the conceptual representation of an object than information about how to move an object. Therefore, there may be much more fine-grained distinctions between objects on the neural level, especially related to the usability of manipulable objects. In the current study, we investigated whether a distinction can be made between words denoting (1) objects that can be picked up to move (e.g., volumetrically manipulable objects: bookend, clock) and (2) objects that must be picked up to use (e.g., functionally manipulable objects: cup, pen). The results show that functionally manipulable words elicit greater levels of activation in the fronto-parietal sensorimotor areas than volumetrically manipulable words. This suggests that indeed a distinction can be made between different types of manipulable objects. Specifically, how an object is used functionally rather than whether an object can be displaced with the hand is reflected in semantic representations in the brain.

Abstract

In this article, we present the spatial logistics task (SLOT) platform for investigating multimodal communication between 2 human participants. Presented are the SLOT communication task and the software and hardware that has been developed to run SLOT experiments and record the participants’ multimodal behavior. SLOT offers a high level of flexibility in varying the context of the communication and is particularly useful in studies of the relationship between pen gestures and speech. We illustrate the use of the SLOT platform by discussing the results of some early experiments. The first is an experiment on negotiation with a one-way mirror between the participants, and the second is an exploratory study of automatic recognition of spontaneous pen gestures. The results of these studies demonstrate the usefulness of the SLOT platform for conducting multimodal communication research in both human– human and human–computer interactions.

Abstract

Human communication is often thought about in terms of transmitted messages in a conventional code like a language. But communication requires a specialized interactive intelligence. Senders have to be able to perform recipient design, while receivers need to be able to do intention recognition, knowing that recipient design has taken place. To study this interactive intelligence in the lab, we developed a new task that taps directly into the underlying abilities to communicate in the absence of a conventional code. We show that subjects are remarkably successful communicators under these conditions, especially when senders get feedback from receivers. Signaling is accomplished by the manner in which an instrumental action is performed, such that instrumentally dysfunctional components of an action are used to convey communicative intentions. The findings have important implications for the nature of the human communicative infrastructure, and the task opens up a line of experimentation on human communication.

Abstract

In two studies we investigated 2-year-old children's answers to predicate-focus questions depending on the preceding context. Children were presented with a successive series of short video clips showing transitive actions (e.g., frog washing duck) in which either the action (action-new) or the patient (patient-new) was the changing, and therefore new, element. During the last scene the experimenter asked the question (e.g., “What's the frog doing now?”). We found that children expressed the action and the patient in the patient-new condition but expressed only the action in the action-new condition. These results show that children are sensitive to both the predicate-focus question and newness in context. A further finding was that children expressed new patients in their answers more often when there was a verbal context prior to the questions than when there was not.

Abstract

Participants' eye movements were monitored as they heard sentences and saw four pictured objects on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to click on the object mentioned in the sentence. There were more transitory fixations to pictures representing monosyllabic words (e.g. ham) when the first syllable of the target word (e.g. hamster) had been replaced by a recording of the monosyllabic word than when it came from a different recording of the target word. This demonstrates that a phonemically identical sequence can contain cues that modulate its lexical interpretation. This effect was governed by the duration of the sequence, rather than by its origin (i.e. which type of word it came from). The longer the sequence, the more monosyllabic-word interpretations it generated. We argue that cues to lexical-embedding disambiguation, such as segmental lengthening, result from the realization of a prosodic boundary that often but not always follows monosyllabic words, and that lexical candidates whose word boundaries are aligned with prosodic boundaries are favored in the word-recognition process.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays edited by Matthew Nudds and Casey O'Callaghan (2010). This collection of thought-provoking philosophical essays contains chapters on particular aspects of sound perception, as well as a series of essays focusing on the issue of sound location. The chapters on specific topics include several perspectives on how we hear speech, one of the most well-studied aspects of auditory perception in empirical research. Most of the book consists of a series of essays approaching the experience of hearing sounds by focusing on where sounds are in space. An impressive range of opinions on this issue is presented, likely thanks to the fact that the book's editors represent dramatically different viewpoints. The wave based view argues that sounds are located near the perceiver, although the sounds also provide information about objects around the listener, including the source of the sound. In contrast, the source based view holds that sounds are experienced as near or at their sources. The editors acknowledge that additional methods should be used in conjunction with introspection, but they argue that theories of perceptual experience should nevertheless respect phenomenology. With such a range of views derived largely from the same introspective methodology, it remains unresolved which phenomenological account is to be respected.

Abstract

Emotional signals are crucial for sharing important information, with conspecifics, for example, to warn humans of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. We examined the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs, across two dramatically different cultural groups. Western participants were compared to individuals from remote, culturally isolated Namibian villages. Vocalizations communicating the so-called “basic emotions” (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) were bidirectionally recognized. In contrast, a set of additional emotions was only recognized within, but not across, cultural boundaries. Our findings indicate that a number of primarily negative emotions have vocalizations that can be recognized across cultures, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals.

Abstract

Laughter communicates a feeling of enjoyment across cultures, while non-verbal vocalizations of several other positive emotions, such as achievement or sensual pleasure, are recognizable only within, but not across, cultural boundaries. Are these positive vocalizations nevertheless interpreted cross-culturally as signaling positive affect? In a match-to-sample task, positive emotional vocal stimuli were paired with positive and negative facial expressions, by English participants and members of the Himba, a semi-nomadic, culturally isolated Namibian group. The results showed that laughter was associated with a smiling facial expression across both groups, consistent with previous work showing that human laughter is a positive, social signal with deep evolutionary roots. However, non-verbal vocalizations of achievement, sensual pleasure, and relief were not cross-culturally associated with smiling facial expressions, perhaps indicating that these types of vocalizations are not cross-culturally interpreted as communicating a positive emotional state, or alternatively that these emotions are associated with positive facial expression other than smiling. These results are discussed in the context of positive emotional communication in vocal and facial signals. Research on the perception of non-verbal vocalizations of emotions across cultures demonstrates that some affective signals, including laughter, are associated with particular facial configurations and emotional states, supporting theories of emotions as a set of evolved functions that are shared by all humans regardless of cultural boundaries.

Abstract

Despite great advances in scientific understanding of emotional processes in the last decades, research into the communication of emotions has been constrained by a strong bias toward negative affective states. Typically, studies distinguish between different negative emotions, such as disgust, sadness, anger, and fear. In contrast, most research uses only one category of positive affect, “happiness,” which is assumed to encompass all positive emotional states. This article reviews recent research showing that a number of positive affective states have discrete, recognizable signals. An increased focus on cues other than facial expressions is necessary to understand these positive states and how they are communicated; vocalizations, touch, and postural information offer promising avenues for investigating signals of positive affect. A full scientific understanding of the functions, signals, and mechanisms of emotions requires abandoning the unitary concept of happiness and instead disentangling positive emotions.

Abstract

Work on facial expressions of emotions (Calder, Burton, Miller, Young, & Akamatsu, 2001) and emotionally inflected speech (Banse & Scherer, 1996) has successfully delineated some of the physical properties that underlie emotion recognition. To identify the acoustic cues used in the perception of nonverbal emotional expressions like laugher and screams, an investigation was conducted into vocal expressions of emotion, using nonverbal vocal analogues of the “basic” emotions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and surprise; Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Scott et al., 1997), and of positive affective states (Ekman, 1992, 2003; Sauter & Scott, 2007). First, the emotional stimuli were categorized and rated to establish that listeners could identify and rate the sounds reliably and to provide confusion matrices. A principal components analysis of the rating data yielded two underlying dimensions, correlating with the perceived valence and arousal of the sounds. Second, acoustic properties of the amplitude, pitch, and spectral profile of the stimuli were measured. A discriminant analysis procedure established that these acoustic measures provided sufficient discrimination between expressions of emotional categories to permit accurate statistical classification. Multiple linear regressions with participants' subjective ratings of the acoustic stimuli showed that all classes of emotional ratings could be predicted by some combination of acoustic measures and that most emotion ratings were predicted by different constellations of acoustic features. The results demonstrate that, similarly to affective signals in facial expressions and emotionally inflected speech, the perceived emotional character of affective vocalizations can be predicted on the basis of their physical features.

Abstract

The rapid detection of affective signals from conspecifics is crucial for the survival of humans and other animals; if those around you are scared, there is reason for you to be alert and to prepare for impending danger. Previous research has shown that the human brain detects emotional faces within 150 msec of exposure, indicating a rapid differentiation of visual social signals based on emotional content. Here we use event-related brain potential (ERP) measures to show for the first time that this mechanism extends to the auditory domain, using human nonverbal vocalizations, such as screams. An early fronto-central positivity to fearful vocalizations compared with spectrally rotated and thus acoustically matched versions of the same sounds started 150 msec after stimulus onset. This effect was also observed for other vocalized emotions (achievement and disgust), but not for affectively neutral vocalizations, and was linked to the perceived arousal of an emotion category. That the timing, polarity, and scalp distribution of this new ERP correlate are similar to ERP markers of emotional face processing suggests that common supramodal brain mechanisms may be involved in the rapid detection of affectively relevant visual and auditory signals.

Abstract

We agree with Gewald (1) that historical and anthropological accounts are essential tools for understanding the Himba culture, and these accounts are valuable to both us and him. However, we contest his claim that the Himba individuals in our study were not culturally isolated. Gewald (1) claims that it would be “unlikely” that the Himba people with whom we worked had “not been exposed to the affective signals of individuals from cultural groups other than their own” as stated in our paper (2). Gewald (1) seems to argue that, because outside groups have had contact with some Himba, this means that these events affected all Himba. Yet, the Himba constitute a group of 20,000-50,000 people (3) living in small settlements scattered across the vast Kaokoland region, an area of 49,000 km2 (4).

Abstract

Differentiation of the forms and functions of different smiles is needed, but they should be based on empirical data on distinctions that senders and receivers make, and the physical cues that are employed. Such data would allow for a test of whether smiles can be differentiated using perceptual cues alone or whether mimicry or simulation are necessary.

Abstract

This letter evaluates potential benefits of combining human speech recognition ~HSR! and automatic speech recognition by building a joint model of an automatic phone recognizer ~APR! and a computational model of HSR, viz., Shortlist @Norris, Cognition 52, 189–234 ~1994!#. Experiments based on ‘‘real-life’’ speech highlight critical limitations posed by some of the simplifying assumptions made in models of human speech recognition. These limitations could be overcome by avoiding hard phone decisions at the output side of the APR, and by using a match between the input and the internal lexicon that flexibly copes with deviations from canonical phonemic representations.

Abstract

Computational modelling has proven to be a valuable approach in developing theories of spoken-word processing. In this paper, we focus on a particular class of theories in which it is assumed that the spoken-word recognition process consists of two consecutive stages, with an 'abstract' discrete symbolic representation at the interface between the stages. In evaluating computational models, it is important to bring in independent arguments for the cognitive plausibility of the algorithms that are selected to compute the processes in a theory. This paper discusses the relation between behavioural studies, theories, and computational models of spoken-word recognition. We explain how computational models can be assessed in terms of the goodness of fit with the behavioural data and the cognitive plausibility of the algorithms. An in-depth analysis of several models provides insights into how computational modelling has led to improved theories and to a better understanding of the human spoken-word recognition process.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system based on the combination of an automatic phone recogniser and a computational model of human speech recognition – SpeM – that is capable of computing ‘word activations’ during the recognition process, in addition to doing normal speech recognition, a task in which conventional ASR architectures only provide output after the end of an utterance. We explain the notion of word activation and show that it can be used for ‘early recognition’, i.e. recognising a word before the end of the word is available. Our ASR system was tested on 992 continuous speech utterances, each containing at least one target word: a city name of at least two syllables. The results show that early recognition was obtained for 72.8% of the target words that were recognised correctly. Also, it is shown that word activation can be used as an effective confidence measure.

Abstract

Evidence that listeners, at least in a laboratory environment, use durational cues to help resolve temporarily ambiguous speech input has accumulated over the past decades. This paper introduces Fine-Tracker, a computational model of word recognition specifically designed for tracking fine-phonetic information in the acoustic speech signal and using it during word recognition. Two simulations were carried out using real speech as input to the model. The simulations showed that the Fine-Tracker, as has been found for humans, benefits from durational information during word recognition, and uses it to disambiguate the incoming speech signal. The availability of durational information allows the computational model to distinguish embedded words from their matrix words first simulation, and to distinguish word final realizations of s from word initial realizations second simulation. Fine-Tracker thus provides the first computational model of human word recognition that is able to extract durational information from the speech signal and to use it to differentiate words.

Abstract

Despite using different algorithms, most unsupervised automatic phone segmentation methods achieve similar performance in terms of percentage correct boundary detection. Nevertheless, unsupervised segmentation algorithms are not able to perfectly reproduce manually obtained reference transcriptions. This paper investigates fundamental problems for unsupervised segmentation algorithms by comparing a phone segmentation obtained using only the acoustic information present in the signal with a reference segmentation created by human transcribers. The analyses of the output of an unsupervised speech segmentation method that uses acoustic change to hypothesize boundaries showed that acoustic change is a fairly good indicator of segment boundaries: over two-thirds of the hypothesized boundaries coincide with segment boundaries. Statistical analyses showed that the errors are related to segment duration, sequences of similar segments, and inherently dynamic phones. In order to improve unsupervised automatic speech segmentation, current one-stage bottom-up segmentation methods should be expanded into two-stage segmentation methods that are able to use a mix of bottom-up information extracted from the speech signal and automatically derived top-down information. In this way, unsupervised methods can be improved while remaining flexible and language-independent.

Abstract

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors.

Abstract

This study investigated the time course of phonological encoding during speech production planning. Previous research has shown that conceptual/semantic information precedes syntactic information in the planning of speech production and that syntactic information is available earlier than phonological information. Here, we studied the relative time courses of the two different processes within phonological encoding, i.e. metrical encoding and syllabification. According to one prominent theory of language production, metrical encoding involves the retrieval of the stress pattern of a word, while syllabification is carried out to construct the syllabic structure of a word. However, the relative timing of these two processes is underspecified in the theory. We employed an implicit picture naming task and recorded event-related brain potentials to obtain fine-grained temporal information about metrical encoding and syllabification. Results revealed that both tasks generated effects that fall within the time window of phonological encoding. However, there was no timing difference between the two effects, suggesting that they occur approximately at the same time.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated grammatical feature selection during noun phrase production in German and Dutch. More specifically, we studied the conditions under which different grammatical genders select either the same or different determiners or suffixes. Pictures of one or two objects paired with a gender-congruent or a gender-incongruent distractor word were presented. Participants named the pictures using a singular or plural noun phrase with the appropriate determiner and/or adjective in German or Dutch. Significant effects of gender congruency were only obtained in the singular condition where the selection of determiners is governed by the target’s gender, but not in the plural condition where the determiner is identical for all genders. When different suffixes were to be selected in the gender-incongruent condition, no gender congruency effect was obtained. The results suggest that the so-called gender congruency effect is really a determiner congruency effect. The overall pattern of results is interpreted as indicating that grammatical feature selection is an automatic consequence of lexical node selection and therefore not subject to interference from other grammatical features. This implies that lexical node and grammatical feature selection operate with distinct principles.

Abstract

Toward the end of their first year of life, infants’ overly specified word representations are thought to give way to more abstract ones, which helps them to better cope with variation not relevant to word identity (e.g., voice and affect). This developmental change may help infants process the ambient language more efficiently, thus enabling rapid gains in vocabulary growth. One particular kind of variability that infants must accommodate is that of dialectal accent, because most children will encounter speakers from different regions and backgrounds. In this study, we explored developmental changes in infants’ ability to recognize words in continuous speech by familiarizing them with words spoken by a speaker of their own region (North Midland-American English) or a different region (Southern Ontario Canadian English), and testing them with passages spoken by a speaker of the opposite dialectal accent. Our results demonstrate that 12- but not 9-month-olds readily recognize words in the face of dialectal variation.

Abstract

This study investigates the development of bi-modal reference maintenance by focusing on how Japanese elementary school children introduce and track animate referents in their narratives. Sixty elementary school children participated in this study, 10 from each school year (from 7 to 12 years of age). They were instructed to remember a cartoon and retell the story to their parents. We found that although there were no differences in the speech indices among the different ages, the average scores for the gesture indices of the 12-year-olds were higher than those of the other age groups. In particular, the amount of referential gestures radically increased at 12, and these children tended to use referential gestures not only for tracking referents but also for introducing characters. These results indicate that the ability to maintain a reference to create coherent narratives increases at about age 12.

Abstract

Seit 1982 erforsche ich die Sprache und die Kultur der Trobriand-Insulaner in Papua-Neuguinea. Nach inzwischen 15 Reisen zu den Trobriand-Inseln, die sich bis heute zu nahezu vier Jahren Leben und Arbeit im Dorf Tauwema auf der Insel Kaile'una addieren, wurde ich von Markus Schindlbeck und Alix Hänsel dazu eingeladen, den Mitgliedern der „Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte“ über meine Feldforschungen zu berichten. Das werde ich im Folgenden tun. Zunächst beschreibe ich, wie ich zu den Trobriand-Inseln kam, wie ich mich dort zurechtgefunden habe und berichte dann, welche Art von Forschung ich all die Jahre betrieben, welche Formen von Sprach- und Kulturwandel ich dabei beobachtet und welche Erwartungen ich auf der Basis meiner bisherigen Erfahrungen für die Zukunft der Trobriander und für ihre Sprache und ihre Kultur habe.

Abstract

After an exposé of the programme involved, it is shown that the Gricean maxims fail to do their job in so far as they are meant to account for the well-known problem of natural intuitions of logical entailment that deviate from standard modern logic. It is argued that there is no reason why natural logical and ontological intuitions should conform to standard logic, because standard logic is based on mathematics while natural logical and ontological intuitions derive from a cognitive system in people's minds (supported by their brain structures). A proposal is then put forward to try a totally different strategy, via (a) a grammatical reduction of surface sentences to their logico-semantic form and (b) via logic itself, in particular the notion of natural logic, based on a natural ontology and a natural set theory. Since any logical system is fully defined by (a) its ontology and its overarching notions and axioms regarding truth, (b) the meanings of its operators, and (c) the ranges of its variables, logical systems can be devised that deviate from modern logic in any or all of the above respects, as long as they remain consistent. This allows one, as an empirical enterprise, to devise a natural logic, which is as sound as standard logic but corresponds better with natural intuitions. It is hypothesised that at least two varieties of natural logic must be assumed in order to account for natural logical and ontological intuitions, since culture and scholastic education have elevated modern societies to a higher level of functionality and refinement. These two systems correspond, with corrections and additions, to Hamilton's 19th-century logic and to the classic Square of Opposition, respectively. Finally, an evaluation is presented, comparing the empirical success rates of the systems envisaged.

Abstract

The main thesis of the article is that language change is only partially subject to criteria of functionality and that, as a rule, opposing forces are also at work which often correlate directly with psychological and sociopsychological parameters reflecting themselves in all areas of linguistic competence. We sketch a complex interplay of horizontal versus vertical, deliberate versus nondeliberate, functional versus antifunctional linguistic changes, which, through a variety of processes have an effect upon the languages concerned, whether in the lexicon, the grammar, the phonology or the phonetics. Despite the overall unclarity regarding the notion of functionality in language, there are clear cases of both functionality and antifunctionality. Antifunctionality is deliberately striven for by groups of speakers who wish to distinguish themselves from other groups, for whatever reason. Antifunctionality, however, also occurs as a, probably unwanted, result of syntactic change in the acquisition process by young or adult language learners. The example is discussed of V-clustering through Predicate Raising in German and Dutch, a process that started during the early Middle Ages and was highly functional as long as it occurred on a limited scale but became antifunctional as it pervaded the entire complementation system of these languages.

Abstract

Although an increasing number of sociolinguistic researchers consider functions of voice qualities as stylistic features, few studies consider cases where voice qualities serve as the primary signs of speech registers. This article addresses this gap through the presentation of a case study of Lachixio Zapotec speech registers indexed though falsetto, breathy, creaky, modal, and whispered voice qualities. I describe the system of contrastive speech registers in Lachixio Zapotec and then track a speaker on a single evening where she switches between three of these registers. Analyzing line-by-line conversational structure I show both obligatory and creative shifts between registers that co-occur with shifts in the participant structures of the situated social interactions. I then examine similar uses of voice qualities in other Zapotec languages and in the two unrelated language families Nahuatl and Mayan to suggest the possibility that such voice registers are a feature of the Mesoamerican culture area.

Abstract

Multivariate pattern analysis is a technique that allows the decoding of conceptual information such as the semantic category of a perceived object from neuroimaging data. Impressive single-trial classification results have been reported in studies that used fMRI. Here, we investigate the possibility to identify conceptual representations from event-related EEG based on the presentation of an object in different modalities: its spoken name, its visual representation and its written name. We used Bayesian logistic regression with a multivariate Laplace prior for classification. Marked differences in classification performance were observed for the tested modalities. Highest accuracies (89% correctly classified trials) were attained when classifying object drawings. In auditory and orthographical modalities, results were lower though still significant for some subjects. The employed classification method allowed for a precise temporal localization of the features that contributed to the performance of the classifier for three modalities. These findings could help to further understand the mechanisms underlying conceptual representations. The study also provides a first step towards the use of concept decoding in the context of real-time brain-computer interface applications.

Abstract

The present experiment tested the suggestion that human listeners may exploit durational information in speech to parse continuous utterances into words. Listeners were presented with six-syllable unpredictable utterances under noise-masking, and were required to judge between alternative word strings as to which best matched the rhythm of the masked utterances. For each utterance there were four alternative strings: (a) an exact rhythmic and word boundary match, (b) a rhythmic mismatch, and (c) two utterances with the same rhythm as the masked utterance, but different word boundary locations. Listeners were clearly able to perceive the rhythm of the masked utterances: The rhythmic mismatch was chosen significantly less often than any other alternative. Within the three rhythmically matched alternatives, the exact match was chosen significantly more often than either word boundary mismatch. Thus, listeners both perceived speech rhythm and used durational cues effectively to locate the position of word boundaries.

Abstract

We present the results of a large-scale study on speech perception, assessing the number and type of perceptual hypotheses which listeners entertain about possible phoneme sequences in their language. Dutch listeners were asked to identify gated fragments of all 1179 diphones of Dutch, providing a total of 488 520 phoneme categorizations. The results manifest orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal. Differences across phonemes in the rate at which fully correct recognition was achieved arose as a result of whether or not potential confusions could occur with other phonemes of the language ~long with short vowels, affricates with their initial components, etc.!. These data can be used to improve models of how acoustic phonetic information is mapped onto the mental lexicon during speech comprehension.

Abstract

In a recent fMRI study we showed that left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG) subserves the retrieval of a word's lexical-syntactic properties from the mental lexicon (long-term memory), while left posterior inferior frontal gyrus (LpIFG) is involved in unifying (on-line integration of) this information into a sentence structure (Snijders et al., 2009). In addition, the right IFG, right MTG, and the right striatum were involved in the unification process. Here we report results from a psychophysical interactions (PPI) analysis in which we investigated the effective connectivity between LpIFG and LpMTG during unification, and how the right hemisphere areas and the striatum are functionally connected to the unification network. LpIFG and LpMTG both showed enhanced connectivity during the unification process with a region slightly superior to our previously reported LpMTG. Right IFG better predicted right temporal activity when unification processes were more strongly engaged, just as LpIFG better predicted left temporal activity. Furthermore, the striatum showed enhanced coupling to LpIFG and LpMTG during unification. We conclude that bilateral inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions are functionally connected during sentence-level unification. Cortico-subcortical connectivity patterns suggest cooperation between inferior frontal and striatal regions in performing unification operations on lexical-syntactic representations retrieved from LpMTG.

Abstract

Oxytocin plays an important role in monogamous pairbonded female voles, but not in polygamous voles. Here we examined a socially monogamous cooperatively breeding primate where both sexes share in parental care and territory defense for within species variation in behavior and female and male oxytocin levels in 14 pairs of cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus). In order to obtain a stable chronic assessment of hormones and behavior, we observed behavior and collected urinary hormonal samples across the tamarins’ 3-week ovulatory cycle. We found similar levels of urinary oxytocin in both sexes. However, basal urinary oxytocin levels varied 10-fold across pairs and pair-mates displayed similar oxytocin levels. Affiliative behavior (contact, grooming, sex) also varied greatly across the sample and explained more than half the variance in pair oxytocin levels. The variables accounting for variation in oxytocin levels differed by sex. Mutual contact and grooming explained most of the variance in female oxytocin levels, whereas sexual behavior explained most of the variance in male oxytocin levels. The initiation of contact by males and solicitation of sex by females were related to increased levels of oxytocin in both. This study demonstrates within-species variation in oxytocin that is directly related to levels of affiliative and sexual behavior. However, different behavioral mechanisms influence oxytocin levels in males and females and a strong pair relationship (as indexed by high levels of oxytocin) may require the activation of appropriate mechanisms for both sexes.

Abstract

This article, part of a 10 language comparative project on question–response sequences, discusses these sequences in American English conversation. The data are video-taped spontaneous naturally occurring conversations involving two to five adults. Relying on these data I document the basic distributional patterns of types of questions asked (polar, Q-word or alternative as well as sub-types), types of social actions implemented by these questions (e.g., repair initiations, requests for confirmation, offers or requests for information), and types of responses (e.g., repetitional answers or yes/no tokens). I show that declarative questions are used more commonly in conversation than would be suspected by traditional grammars of English and questions are used for a wider range of functions than grammars would suggest. Finally, this article offers distributional support for the idea that responses that are better “fitted” with the question are preferred.

Abstract

no abstract is available for this article

Abstract

A fundamental puzzle in the organization of social interaction concerns how one individual elicits a response from another. This article asks what it is about some sequentially initial turns that reliably mobilizes a coparticipant to respond and under what circumstances individuals are accountable for producing a response. Whereas a linguistic approach suggests that this is what oquestionso (more generally) and interrogativity (more narrowly) are for, a sociological approach to social interaction suggests that the social action a person is implementing mobilizes a recipient's response. We find that although both theories have merit, neither adequately solves the puzzle. We argue instead that different actions mobilize response to different degrees. Speakers then design their turns to perform actions, and with particular response-mobilizing features of turn-design speakers can hold recipients more accountable for responding or not. This model of response relevance allows sequential position, action, and turn design to each contribute to response relevance.

Abstract

A number of Conversation Analytic studies have documented that question recipients have a variety of ways to push against the constraints that questions impose on them. This article explores the concept of transformative answers – answers through which question recipients retroactively adjust the question posed to them. Two main sorts of adjustments are discussed: question term transformations and question agenda transformations. It is shown that the operations through which interactants implement term transformations are different from the operations through which they implement agenda transformations. Moreover, term-transforming answers resist only the question’s design, while agenda-transforming answers effectively resist both design and agenda, thus implying that agenda-transforming answers resist more strongly than design-transforming answers. The implications of these different sorts of transformations for alignment and affiliation are then explored.

Abstract

Spoken language comprehension requires rapid integration of information from multiple linguistic sources. In the present study we addressed the temporal aspects of this integration process by focusing on the time course of the selection of the appropriate meaning of lexical ambiguities (“bank”) in sentence contexts. Successful selection of the contextually appropriate meaning of the ambiguous word is dependent upon the rapid binding of the contextual information in the sentence to the appropriate meaning of the ambiguity. We used the N400 to identify the time course of this binding process. The N400 was measured to target words that followed three types of context sentences. In the concordant context, the sentence biased the meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous word so that it was related to the target. In the discordant context, the sentence context biased the meaning so that it was not related to the target. In the unrelated control condition, the sentences ended in an unambiguous noun that was unrelated to the target. Half of the concordant sentences biased the dominant meaning, and the other half biased the subordinate meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous words. The ISI between onset of the target word and offset of the sentence-final word of the context sentence was 100 ms in one version of the experiment, and 1250 ms in the second version. We found that (i) the lexically dominant meaning is always partly activated, independent of context, (ii) initially both dominant and subordinate meaning are (partly) activated, which suggests that contextual and lexical factors both contribute to sentence interpretation without context completely overriding lexical information, and (iii) strong lexical influences remain present for a relatively long period of time.

Abstract

Although infants show remarkable sensitivity to linguistically relevant phonetic variation in speech, young children sometimes appear not to make use of this sensitivity. Here, children's knowledge of the sound-forms of familiar words was assessed using a visual fixation task. Dutch 19-month-olds were shown pairs of pictures and heard correct pronunciations and mispronunciations of familiar words naming one of the pictures. Mispronunciations were word-initial in Experiment 1 and word-medial in Experiment 2, and in both experiments involved substituting one segment with [d] (a common sound in Dutch) or [g] (a rare sound). In both experiments, word recognition performance was better for correct pronunciations than for mispronunciations involving either substituted consonant. These effects did not depend upon children's knowledge of lexical or nonlexical phonological neighbors of the tested words. The results indicate the encoding of phonetic detail in words at 19 months.

Abstract

The roles which word class (open/closed) and sentential stress play in the sentence comprehension processes of both agrammatic (Broca's) aphasics and normal listeners were examined with a word monitoring task. Overall, normal listeners responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed items, but showed no effect of word class. Aphasics also responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed materials, but, unlike the normals, responded faster to open than to closed class words regardless of their stress. The results are interpreted as support for the theory that Broca's aphasics lack the functional underlying open/closed class word distinction used in word recognition by normal listeners.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the nature of access, storage, and comprehension of idiomatic phrases. In both studies a Phrase Classification Task was utilized. In this, reaction times to determine whether or not word strings constituted acceptable English phrases were measured. Classification times were significantly faster to idiom than to matched control phrases. This effect held under conditions involving different categories of idioms, different transitional probabilities among words in the phrases, and different levels of awareness of the presence of idioms in the materials. The data support a Lexical Representation Hypothesis for the processing of idioms.

Abstract

Four cross-modal repetition priming experiments examined whether consonant duration in Italian provides listeners with information not only for segmental identification ("what" information: whether the consonant is a geminate or a singleton) but also for lexical segmentation (“where” information: whether the consonant is in word-initial or word-medial position). Italian participants made visual lexical decisions to words containing geminates or singletons, preceded by spoken primes (whole words or fragments) containing either geminates or singletons. There were effects of segmental identity (geminates primed geminate recognition; singletons primed singleton recognition), and effects of consonant position (regression analyses revealed graded effects of geminate duration only for geminates which can vary in position, and mixed-effect modeling revealed a positional effect for singletons only in low-frequency words). Durational information appeared to be more important for segmental identification than for lexical segmentation. These findings nevertheless indicate that the same kind of information can serve both "what" and "where" functions in speech comprehension, and that the perceptual processes underlying those functions are interdependent.

Abstract

Purpose: Delayed auditory feedback is a technique that can improve fluency in stutterers, while disrupting fluency in many non-stuttering individuals. The aim of this study was to determine the neural basis for the detection of and compensation for such a delay, and the effects of increases in the delay duration. Method: Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to image regional cerebral blood flow changes, an index of neural activity, and assessed the influence of increasing amounts of delay. Results: Delayed auditory feedback led to increased activation in the bilateral superior temporal lobes, extending into posterior-medial auditory areas. Similar peaks in the temporal lobe were sensitive to increases in the amount of delay. A single peak in the temporal parietal junction responded to the amount of delay but not to the presence of a delay (relative to no delay). Conclusions: This study permitted distinctions to be made between the neural response to hearing one's voice at a delay, and the neural activity that correlates with this delay. Notably all the peaks showed some influence of the amount of delay. This result confirms a role for the posterior, sensori-motor ‘how’ system in the production of speech under conditions of delayed auditory feedback.

Abstract

Visual evoked responses were monitored while participants searched for a target (e.g., bird) in a four-object display that could include a semantically related distractor (e.g., fish). The occurrence of both the target and the semantically related distractor modulated the N2pc response to the search display: The N2pc amplitude was more pronounced when the target and the distractor appeared in the same visual field, and it was less pronounced when the target and the distractor were in opposite fields, relative to when the distractor was absent. Earlier components (P1, N1) did not show any differences in activity across the different distractor conditions. The data suggest that semantic distractors influence early stages of selecting stimuli in multielement displays.

Abstract

When young adults carry out visual search, distractors that are semantically related, rather than unrelated, to targets can disrupt target selection (see [Belke et al., 2008] and [Moores et al., 2003]). This effect is apparent on the first eye movements in search, suggesting that attention is sometimes captured by related distractors. Here we assessed effects of semantically related distractors on search in patients with frontal-lobe lesions and compared them to the effects in age-matched controls. Compared with the controls, the patients were less likely to make a first saccade to the target and they were more likely to saccade to distractors (whether related or unrelated to the target). This suggests a deficit in a first stage of selecting a potential target for attention. In addition, the patients made more errors by responding to semantically related distractors on target-absent trials. This indicates a problem at a second stage of target verification, after items have been attended. The data suggest that frontal lobe damage disrupts both the ability to use peripheral information to guide attention, and the ability to keep separate the target of search from the related items, on occasions when related items achieve selection.

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of an orthography for the Touo language (Solomon Islands). Various orthographies have been proposed for this language in the past, and the paper discusses why they are perceived by the community to have failed. Current opinion about orthography development within the Touo-speaking community is divided along religious, political, and geographical grounds; and the development of a successful orthography must take into account a variety of opinions. The paper examines the social, historical, and linguistic obstacles that have hitherto prevented the development of an accepted Touo orthography, and presents a new proposal which has thus far gained acceptance with community leaders. The fundamental issue is that creating an orthography for a language takes place in a social, political, and historical context; and for an orthography to be acceptable for the speakers of a language, all these factors must be taken into account.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. This is a marvelous, dense, scholarly, detailed, exhaustive, and ambitious book. In 800-odd pages, it seeks to describe the whole huge majesty of the Austronesian language family, as well as the history of the family, the history of ideas relating to the family, and all the ramifications of such topics. Blust doesn't just describe, he goes into exhaustive detail, and not just over a few topics, but over every topic he covers. This is an incredible achievement, representing a lifetime of experience. This is not a book to be read from cover to cover—it is a book to be dipped into, pondered, and considered, slowly and carefully. The book is not organized by area or subfamily; readers interested in one area or family can consult the authoritative work on Western Austronesian (Adelaar and Himmelmann 2005), or, for the Oceanic languages, Lynch, Ross, and Crowley (2002). Rather, Blust's stated aim "is to provide a comprehensive overview of Austronesian languages which integrates areal interests into a broader perspective" (xxiii). Thus the aim is more ambitious than just discussion of areal features or historical connections, but seeks to describe the interconnections between these. The Austronesian language family is very large, second only in size to Niger-Congo (xxii). It encompasses over 1,000 members, and its protolanguage has been dated back to 6,000 years ago (xxii). The exact groupings of some Austronesian languages are still under discussion, but broadly, the family is divided into ten major subgroups, nine of which are spoken in Taiwan, the homeland of the Austronesian family. The tenth, Malayo-Polynesian, is itself divided into two major groups: Western Malayo-Polynesian, which is spread throughout the Philippines, Indonesia, and mainland Southeast Asia to Madagascar; and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, spoken from eastern Indonesia throughout the Pacific. The geographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the family

Abstract

The extent to which linguistic borrowing can be used to shed light on the existence and nature of early contact between Papuan and Oceanic speakers is examined. The question is addressed by taking one Papuan language, Lavukaleve, spoken in the Russell Islands, central Solomon Islands and examining lexical borrowings between it and nearby Oceanic languages, and with reconstructed forms of Proto Oceanic. Evidence from ethnography, culture history and archaeology, when added to the linguistic evidence provided in this study, indicates long-standing cultural links between other (non-Russell) islands. The composite picture is one of a high degree of cultural contact with little linguistic mixing, i.e., little or no changes affecting the structure of the languages and actually very little borrowed vocabulary.

Abstract

This article describes the preparation, recording and orthographic transcription of a new speech corpus, the Nijmegen Corpus of Casual French (NCCFr). The corpus contains a total of over 36 h of recordings of 46 French speakers engaged in conversations with friends. Casual speech was elicited during three different parts, which together provided around 90 min of speech from every pair of speakers. While Parts 1 and 2 did not require participants to perform any specific task, in Part 3 participants negotiated a common answer to general questions about society. Comparisons with the ESTER corpus of journalistic speech show that the two corpora contain speech of considerably different registers. A number of indicators of casualness, including swear words, casual words, verlan, disfluencies and word repetitions, are more frequent in the NCCFr than in the ESTER corpus, while the use of double negation, an indicator of formal speech, is less frequent. In general, these estimates of casualness are constant through the three parts of the recording sessions and across speakers. Based on these facts, we conclude that our corpus is a rich resource of highly casual speech, and that it can be effectively exploited by researchers in language science and technology.

Abstract

phonological patterns and detailed phonetic patterns can combine to produce unusual acoustic results, but criteria for what aspects of a pattern are phonetic and what aspects are phonological are often disputed. Early literature on Romanian makes mention of nasal devoicing in word-final clusters (e.g. in /basm/ 'fairy-tale'). Using acoustic, aerodynamic and ultrasound data, the current work investigates how syllable structure, prosodic boundaries, phonetic paradigm uniformity and assimilation influence Romanian nasal devoicing. It provides instrumental phonetic documentation of devoiced nasals, a phenomenon that has not been widely studied experimentally, in a phonetically underdocumented language. We argue that sound patterns should not be separated into phonetics and phonology as two distinct systems, but neither should they all be grouped together as a single, undifferentiated system. Instead, we argue for viewing the distinction between phonetics and phonology as a largely continuous multidimensional space, within which sound patterns, including Romanian nasal devoicing, fall.

Abstract

Two decades of pharmacologic research on the human capacity to implicitly acquire knowledge as well as cognitive skills and procedures have yielded surprisingly few conclusive insights. We review the empirical literature of the neuropharmacology of implicit learning. We evaluate the findings in the context of relevant computational models related to neurotransmittors such as dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and noradrenalin. These include models for reinforcement learning, sequence production, and categorization. We conclude, based on the reviewed literature, that one can predict improved implicit acquisition by moderately elevated dopamine levels and impaired implicit acquisition by moderately decreased dopamine levels. These effects are most prominent in the dorsal striatum. This is supported by a range of behavioral tasks in the empirical literature. Similar predictions can be made for serotonin, although there is yet a lack of support in the literature for serotonin involvement in classical implicit learning tasks. There is currently a lack of evidence for a role of the noradrenergic and cholinergic systems in implicit and related forms of learning. GABA modulators, including benzodiazepines, seem to affect implicit learning in a complex manner and further research is needed. Finally, we identify allosteric AMPA receptors modulators as a potentially interesting target for future investigation of the neuropharmacology of procedural and implicit learning.

Abstract

Many languages exploit suprasegmental devices in signaling word meaning. Tone languages exploit fundamental frequency whereas quantity languages rely on segmental durations to distinguish otherwise similar words. Traditionally, duration and tone have been taken as mutually exclusive. However, some evidence suggests that, in addition to durational cues, phonological quantity is associated with and co-signaled by changes in fundamental frequency in quantity languages such as Finnish, Estonian, and Serbo-Croat. The results from the present experiment show that the structure of disyllabic word stems in Finnish are indeed signaled tonally and that the phonological length of the stressed syllable is further tonally distinguished within the disyllabic sequence. The results further indicate that the observed association of tone and duration in perception is systematically exploited in speech production in Finnish.

Abstract

Repeated exposure to objects improves our ability to identify and name them, even after a long delay. Previous brain imaging studies have demonstrated that this experience-related facilitation of object naming is associated with neural changes in distinct brain regions. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the modulation of neural activity in the object naming system as a function of experience and time. Pictures of common objects were presented repeatedly for naming at different time intervals (1 h, 6 h and 3 days) before scanning, or at 30 s intervals during scanning. The results revealed that as objects became more familiar with experience, activity in occipitotemporal and left inferior frontal regions decreased while activity in the left insula and basal ganglia increased. In posterior regions, reductions in activity as a result of multiple repetitions did not interact with time, whereas in left inferior frontal cortex larger decreases were observed when repetitions were spaced out over time. This differential modulation of activity in distinct brain regions provides support for the idea that long-lasting object priming is mediated by two neural mechanisms. The first mechanism may involve changes in object-specific representations in occipitotemporal cortices, the second may be a form of procedural learning involving a reorganization in brain circuitry that leads to more efficient name retrieval.

Abstract

In two ERP experiments, we assessed the impact of discourse-level information on the processing of an unfolding spoken sentence. Subjects listened to sentences like Jane told her brother that he was exceptionally quick/slow, designed such that the alternative critical words were equally acceptable within the local sentence context. In Experiment 1, these sentences were embedded in a discourse that rendered one of the critical words anomalous (e.g. because Jane’s brother had in fact done something very quickly). Relative to the coherent alternative, these discourse-anomalous words elicited a standard N400 effect that started at 150–200 ms after acoustic word onset. Furthermore, when the same sentences were heard in isolation in Experiment 2, the N400 effect disappeared. The results demonstrate that our listeners related the unfolding spoken words to the wider discourse extremely rapidly, after having heard the first two or three phonemes only, and in many cases well before the end of the word. In addition, the identical nature of discourse- and sentence-dependent N400 effects suggests that from the perspective of the word-elicited comprehension process indexed by the N400, the interpretive context delineated by a single unfolding sentence and a larger discourse is functionally identical.

Abstract

An introductory study of the perception of stochastically specified events is reported. The initial problem was to determine whether the perceiver can split visual input data of this kind into random and determined components. The inability of subjects to do so with the stimulus material used (a filmlike sequence of dot patterns), led to the more general question of how subjects code this kind of visual material. To meet the difficulty of defining the subjects' responses, two experiments were designed. In both, patterns were presented as a rapid sequence of dots on a screen. The patterns were more or less disturbed by “noise,” i.e. the dots did not appear exactly at their proper places. In the first experiment the response was a rating on a semantic scale, in the second an identification from among a set of alternative patterns. The results of these experiments give some insight in the coding systems adopted by the subjects. First, noise appears to be detrimental to pattern recognition, especially to patterns with little spread. Second, this shows connections with the factors obtained from analysis of the semantic ratings, e.g. easily disturbed patterns show a large drop in the semantic regularity factor, when only a little noise is added.

Abstract

Computer simulations in an instructional context can be characterized according to four aspects (themes): simulation models, learning goals, learning processes and learner activity. The present paper provides an outline of these four themes. The main classification criterion for simulation models is quantitative vs. qualitative models. For quantitative models a further subdivision can be made by classifying the independent and dependent variables as continuous or discrete. A second criterion is whether one of the independent variables is time, thus distinguishing dynamic and static models. Qualitative models on the other hand use propositions about non-quantitative properties of a system or they describe quantitative aspects in a qualitative way. Related to the underlying model is the interaction with it. When this interaction has a normative counterpart in the real world we call it a procedure. The second theme of learning with computer simulation concerns learning goals. A learning goal is principally classified along three dimensions, which specify different aspects of the knowledge involved. The first dimension, knowledge category, indicates that a learning goal can address principles, concepts and/or facts (conceptual knowledge) or procedures (performance sequences). The second dimension, knowledge representation, captures the fact that knowledge can be represented in a more declarative (articulate, explicit), or in a more compiled (implicit) format, each one having its own advantages and drawbacks. The third dimension, knowledge scope, involves the learning goal's relation with the simulation domain; knowledge can be specific to a particular domain, or generalizable over classes of domains (generic). A more or less separate type of learning goal refers to knowledge acquisition skills that are pertinent to learning in an exploratory environment. Learning processes constitute the third theme. Learning processes are defined as cognitive actions of the learner. Learning processes can be classified using a multilevel scheme. The first (highest) of these levels gives four main categories: orientation, hypothesis generation, testing and evaluation. Examples of more specific processes are model exploration and output interpretation. The fourth theme of learning with computer simulations is learner activity. Learner activity is defined as the ‘physical’ interaction of the learner with the simulations (as opposed to the mental interaction that was described in the learning processes). Five main categories of learner activity are distinguished: defining experimental settings (variables, parameters etc.), interaction process choices (deciding a next step), collecting data, choice of data presentation and metacontrol over the simulation.

Abstract

In two experiments, we explored the use of event-related brain potentials to selectively track the processes that establish reference during spoken language comprehension. Subjects listened to stories in which a particular noun phrase like "the girl" either uniquely referred to a single referent mentioned in the earlier discourse, or ambiguously referred to two equally suitable referents. Referentially ambiguous nouns ("the girl" with two girls introduced in the discourse context) elicited a frontally dominant and sustained negative shift in brain potentials, emerging within 300–400 ms after acoustic noun onset. The early onset of this effect reveals that reference to a discourse entity can be established very rapidly. Its morphology and distribution suggest that at least some of the processing consequences of referential ambiguity may involve an increased demand on memory resources. Furthermore, because this referentially induced ERP effect is very different from that of well-known ERP effects associated with the semantic (N400) and syntactic (e.g., P600/SPS) aspects of language comprehension, it suggests that ERPs can be used to selectively keep track of three major processes involved in the comprehension of an unfolding piece of discourse.

Abstract

An eye-movement reading experiment investigated whether the ease with which pronouns are processed is affected by the lexical frequency of their antecedent. Reading times following pronouns with infrequent antecedents were faster than following pronouns with frequent antecedents. We argue that this is consistent with a saliency account, according to which infrequent antecedents are more salient than frequent antecedents. The results are not predicted by accounts which claim that readers access all or part of the lexical properties of the antecedent during the processing of pronouns.

Abstract

The human brain contains cortical areas specialized in representing object categories. Visual experience is known to change the responses in these category-selective areas of the brain. However, little is known about how category training specifically affects cortical category selectivity. Here, we investigated the experience-dependent formation of object categories using an fMRI adaptation paradigm. Outside the scanner, subjects were trained to categorize artificial bird types into arbitrary categories (jungle birds and desert birds). After training, neuronal populations in the occipito-temporal cortex, such as the fusiform and the lateral occipital gyrus, were highly sensitive to perceptual stimulus differences. This sensitivity was not present for novel birds, indicating experience-related changes in neuronal representations. Neurons in STS showed category selectivity. A release from adaptation in STS was only observed when two birds in a pair crossed the category boundary. This dissociation could not be explained by perceptual similarities because the physical difference between birds from the same side of the category boundary and between birds from opposite sides of the category boundary was equal. Together, the occipito-temporal cortex and the STS have the properties suitable for a system that can both generalize across stimuli and discriminate between them.