Publications

Abstract

Cranial growth and development is a complex process which affects the closely related traits of head circumference (HC) and intracranial volume (ICV). The underlying genetic influences affecting these traits during the transition from childhood to adulthood are little understood, but might include both age-specific genetic influences and low-frequency genetic variation. To understand these influences, we model the developmental genetic architecture of HC, showing this is genetically stable and correlated with genetic determinants of ICV. Investigating up to 46,000 children and adults of European descent, we identify association with final HC and/or final ICV+HC at 9 novel common and low-frequency loci, illustrating that genetic variation from a wide allele frequency spectrum contributes to cranial growth. The largest effects are reported for low-frequency variants within TP53, with 0.5 cm wider heads in increaser-allele carriers versus non-carriers during mid-childhood, suggesting a previously unrecognized role of TP53 transcripts in human cranial development.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Plasma adiponectin is strongly associated with various components of metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular outcomes. Concentrations are highly heritable and differ between men and women. We therefore aimed to investigate the genetics of plasma adiponectin in men and women. METHODS: We combined genome-wide association scans of three population-based studies including 4659 persons. For the replication stage in 13795 subjects, we selected the 20 top signals of the combined analysis, as well as the 10 top signals with p-values less than 1.0 x 10(-4) for each the men- and the women-specific analyses. We further selected 73 SNPs that were consistently associated with metabolic syndrome parameters in previous genome-wide association studies to check for their association with plasma adiponectin. RESULTS: The ADIPOQ locus showed genome-wide significant p-values in the combined (p=4.3 x 10(-24)) as well as in both women- and men-specific analyses (p=8.7 x 10(-17) and p=2.5 x 10(-11), respectively). None of the other 39 top signal SNPs showed evidence for association in the replication analysis. None of 73 SNPs from metabolic syndrome loci exhibited association with plasma adiponectin (p>0.01). CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated the ADIPOQ gene as the only major gene for plasma adiponectin, which explains 6.7% of the phenotypic variance. We further found that neither this gene nor any of the metabolic syndrome loci explained the sex differences observed for plasma adiponectin. Larger studies are needed to identify more moderate genetic determinants of plasma adiponectin.

Abstract

The present article on executive control addresses the issue of the locus of the Stroop effect by examining neurophysiological components marking conflict monitoring, interference suppression, and conflict resolution. Our goal was to provide an overview of a series of determining neurophysiological findings including neural source reconstruction data on distinct executive control processes and sub-processes involved in the Stroop task. Consistently, a fronto-central N2 component is found to reflect conflict monitoring processes, with its main neural generator being the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Then, for cognitive control tasks that involve a linguistic component like the Stroop task, the N2 is followed by a centro-posterior N400 and subsequently a late sustained potential (LSP). The N400 is mainly generated by the ACC and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is thought to reflect interference suppression, whereas the LSP plausibly reflects conflict resolution processes. The present overview shows that ERP constitute a reliable methodological tool for tracing with precision the time course of different executive processes and sub-processes involved in experimental tasks involving a cognitive conflict. Future research should shed light on the fine-grained mechanisms of control respectively involved in linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.

Abstract

Speakers and listeners usually interact in larger discourses than single words or even single sentences. The goal of the present study was to identify the neural bases reflecting how the mental representation of the situation denoted in a multi-sentence discourse (situation model) is constructed and shared between speakers and listeners. An fMRI study using a variant of the ambiguous text paradigm was designed. Speakers (n=15) produced ambiguous texts in the scanner and listeners (n=27) subsequently listened to these texts in different states of ambiguity: preceded by a highly informative, intermediately informative or no title at all. Conventional BOLD activation analyses in listeners, as well as inter-subject correlation analyses between the speakers’ and the listeners’ hemodynamic time courses were performed. Critically, only the processing of disambiguated, coherent discourse with an intelligible situation model representation involved (shared) activation in bilateral lateral parietal and medial prefrontal regions. This shared spatiotemporal pattern of brain activation between the speaker and the listener suggests that the process of memory retrieval in medial prefrontal regions and the binding of retrieved information in the lateral parietal cortex constitutes a core mechanism underlying the communication of complex conceptual representations.

Abstract

Visual context facilitates perception, but how this is neurally implemented remains unclear. One example of contextual facilitation is found in reading, where letters are more easily identified when embedded in a word. Bottom-up models explain this word advantage as a post-perceptual decision bias, while top-down models propose that word contexts enhance perception itself. Here, we arbitrate between these accounts by presenting words and nonwords and probing the representational fidelity of individual letters using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In line with top-down models, we find that word contexts enhance letter representations in early visual cortex. Moreover, we observe increased coupling between letter information in visual cortex and brain activity in key areas of the reading network, suggesting these areas may be the source of the enhancement. Our results provide evidence for top-down representational enhancement in word recognition, demonstrating that word contexts can modulate perceptual processing already at the earliest visual regions.

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the question–response system of Danish, based on a collection of 350 questions (and responses) collected from video recordings of naturally occurring face-to-face interactions between native speakers of Danish. The paper identifies the lexico-grammatical options for formulating questions, the range of social actions that can be implemented through questions and the relationship between questions and responses. It further describes features where Danish questions differ from a range of other languages in terms of, for instance, distribution and the relationship between question format and social action. For instance, Danish has a high frequency of interrogatively formatted questions and questions that are negatively formulated, when compared to languages that have the same grammatical options. In terms of action, Danish shows a higher number of questions that are used for making suggestions, offers and requests and does not use repetition as a way of answering a question as often as other languages.

Abstract

Timing is an essential parameter influencing many behaviours. A previous study demonstrated a high sensitivity of a phocid, the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), in discriminating time intervals. In the present study, we compared the harbour seal’s timing abilities with the timing abilities of an otariid, the South African fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus). This comparison seemed essential as phocids and otariids differ in many respects and might, thus, also differ regarding their timing abilities. We determined time difference thresholds for sub- and suprasecond time intervals marked by a white circle on a black background displayed for a specific time interval on a monitor using a staircase method. Contrary to our expectation, the timing abilities of the fur seal and the harbour seal were comparable. Over a broad range of time intervals, 0.8–7 s in the fur seal and 0.8–30 s in the harbour seal, the difference thresholds followed Weber’s law. In this range, both animals could discriminate time intervals differing only by 12 % and 14 % on average. Timing might, thus be a fundamental cue for pinnipeds in general to be used in various contexts, thereby complementing information provided by classical sensory systems. Future studies will help to clarify if timing is indeed involved in foraging decisions or the estimation of travel speed or distance.

Abstract

Polymorphisms in the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene have been associated with individual differences in cognition, brain structure and brain function. For example, the ε4 allele has been associated with cognitive and brain impairment in old age and increased risk of dementia, while the ε2 allele has been claimed to be neuroprotective. According to the ‘antagonistic pleiotropy’ hypothesis, these polymorphisms have different effects across the lifespan, with ε4, for example, postulated to confer benefits on cognitive and brain functions earlier in life. In this stage 2 of the Registered Report – https://osf.io/bufc4, we report the results from the cognitive and brain measures in the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort (www.cam-can.org). We investigated the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis by testing for allele-by-age interactions in approximately 600 people across the adult lifespan (18–88 years), on six outcome variables related to cognition, brain structure and brain function (namely, fluid intelligence, verbal memory, hippocampal grey-matter volume, mean diffusion within white matter and resting-state connectivity measured by both functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography). We found no evidence to support the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis. Indeed, Bayes factors supported the null hypothesis in all cases, except for the (linear) interaction between age and possession of the ε4 allele on fluid intelligence, for which the evidence for faster decline in older ages was ambiguous. Overall, these pre-registered analyses question the antagonistic pleiotropy of APOE polymorphisms, at least in healthy adults.

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates the relationship of ‘online commentary’(contemporaneous physician comments about physical examination [PE] findings) with (i) parent questioning of the treatment recommendation and (ii) inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. Methods: A nested cross-sectional study of 522 encounters motivated by upper respiratory symptoms in 27 California pediatric practices (38 pediatricians). Physicians completed a post-visit survey regarding physical examination findings, diagnosis, treatment, and whether they perceived the parent as expecting an antibiotic. Taped encounters were coded for ‘problem’ online commentary (PE findings discussed as significant or clearly abnormal) and ‘no problem’ online commentary (PE findings discussed reassuringly as normal or insignificant). Results: Online commentary during the PE occurred in 73% of visits with viral diagnoses (n = 261). Compared to similar cases with ‘no problem’ online commentary, ‘problem’ comments were associated with a 13% greater probability of parents uestioning a non-antibiotic treatment plan (95% CI 0-26%, p = .05,) and a 27% (95% CI: 2-52%, p < .05) greater probability of an inappropriate antibiotic prescription. Conclusion: With viral illnesses, problematic online comments are associated with more pediatrician-parent conflict over non-antibiotic treatment recommendations. This may increase inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. Practice implications: In viral cases, physicians should consider avoiding the use of problematic online commentary.

Abstract

Learning to read is associated with the appearance of an orthographically sensitive brain region known as the visual word form area. It has been claimed that development of this area proceeds by impinging upon territory otherwise available for the processing of culturally relevant stimuli such as faces and houses. In a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging study of a group of individuals of varying degrees of literacy (from completely illiterate to highly literate), we examined cortical responses to orthographic and nonorthographic visual stimuli. We found that literacy enhances responses to other visual input in early visual areas and enhances representational similarity between text and faces, without reducing the extent of response to nonorthographic input. Thus, acquisition of literacy in childhood recycles existing object representation mechanisms but without destructive competition.

Abstract

We argue, based on a study of brain responses to speech sound differences in Japanese, that memory encoding of functional speech sounds-phonemes-are highly abstract. As an example, we provide evidence for a theory where the consonants/p t k b d g/ are not only made up of symbolic features but are underspecified with respect to voicing or laryngeal features, and that languages differ with respect to which feature value is underspecified. In a previous study we showed that voiced stops are underspecified in English [Hestvik, A., & Durvasula, K. (2016). Neurobiological evidence for voicing underspecification in English. Brain and Language], as shown by asymmetries in Mismatch Negativity responses to /t/ and /d/. In the current study, we test the prediction that the opposite asymmetry should be observed in Japanese, if voiceless stops are underspecified in that language. Our results confirm this prediction. This matches a linguistic architecture where phonemes are highly abstract and do not encode actual physical characteristics of the corresponding speech sounds, but rather different subsets of abstract distinctive features.

Abstract

We investigate the type of attention (domain-general or language-specific) used during
syntactic processing. We focus on syntactic priming: In this task, participants listen to a
sentence that describes a picture (prime sentence), followed by a picture the participants need
to describe (target sentence). We measure the proportion of times participants use the
syntactic structure they heard in the prime sentence to describe the current target sentence as a
measure of syntactic processing. Participants simultaneously conducted a motion-object
tracking (MOT) task, a task commonly used to tax domain-general attentional resources. We
manipulated the number of objects the participant had to track; we thus measured
participants’ ability to process syntax while their attention is not-, slightly-, or overly-taxed.
Performance in the MOT task was significantly worse when conducted as a dual-task
compared to as a single task. We observed an inverted U-shaped curve on priming magnitude
when conducting the MOT task concurrently with prime sentences (i.e., memory encoding),
but no effect when conducted with target sentences (i.e., memory retrieval). Our results
illustrate how, during the encoding of syntactic information, domain-general attention
differentially affects syntactic processing, whereas during the retrieval of syntactic
information domain-general attention does not influence syntactic processing

Abstract

Objective
Determining the genetic basis of speech disorders provides insight into the neurobiology of
human communication. Despite intensive investigation over the past 2 decades, the etiology of
most speech disorders in children remains unexplained. To test the hypothesis that speech
disorders have a genetic etiology, we performed genetic analysis of children with severe speech
disorder, specifically childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).
Methods
Precise phenotyping together with research genome or exome analysis were performed on
children referred with a primary diagnosis of CAS. Gene coexpression and gene set enrichment
analyses were conducted on high-confidence gene candidates.
Results
Thirty-four probands ascertained for CAS were studied. In 11/34 (32%) probands, we identified
highly plausible pathogenic single nucleotide (n = 10; CDK13, EBF3, GNAO1, GNB1,
DDX3X, MEIS2, POGZ, SETBP1, UPF2, ZNF142) or copy number (n = 1; 5q14.3q21.1 locus)
variants in novel genes or loci for CAS. Testing of parental DNA was available for 9 probands
and confirmed that the variants had arisen de novo. Eight genes encode proteins critical for
regulation of gene transcription, and analyses of transcriptomic data found CAS-implicated
genes were highly coexpressed in the developing human brain.
Conclusion
We identify the likely genetic etiology in 11 patients with CAS and implicate 9 genes for the first
time. We find that CAS is often a sporadic monogenic disorder, and highly genetically heterogeneous.
Highly penetrant variants implicate shared pathways in broad transcriptional
regulation, highlighting the key role of transcriptional regulation in normal speech development.
CAS is a distinctive, socially debilitating clinical disorder, and understanding its
molecular basis is the first step towards identifying precision medicine approaches.

Abstract

Contemporary accounts of anticipatory language processing assume that individuals predict upcoming information at multiple levels of representation. Research investigating language-mediated anticipatory eye gaze typically assumes that linguistic input restricts the domain of subsequent reference (visual target objects). Here, we explored the converse case: Can visual input restrict the dynamics of anticipatory language processing? To this end, we recorded participants’ eye movements as they listened to sentences in which an object was predictable based on the verb’s selectional restrictions (“The man peels a banana”). While listening, participants looked at different types of displays: The target object (banana) was either present or it was absent. On target-absent trials, the displays featured objects that had a similar visual shape as the target object (canoe) or objects that were semantically related to the concepts invoked by the target (monkey). Each trial was presented in a long preview version, where participants saw the displays for approximately 1.78 seconds before the verb was heard (pre-verb condition), and a short preview version, where participants saw the display approximately 1 second after the verb had been heard (post-verb condition), 750 ms prior to the spoken target onset. Participants anticipated the target objects in both conditions. Importantly, robust evidence for predictive looks to objects related to the (absent) target objects in visual shape and semantics was found in the post-verb but not in the pre-verb condition. These results suggest that visual information can restrict language-mediated anticipatory gaze and delineate theoretical accounts of predictive processing in the visual world.

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that during comprehension readers activate words beyond the unfolding sentence. An open question concerns the mechanisms underlying this behavior. One proposal is that readers mentally simulate the described event and activate related words that might be referred to as the discourse further unfolds. Another proposal is that activation between words spreads in an automatic, associative fashion. The empirical support for these proposals is mixed. Therefore, theoretical accounts differ with regard to how much weight they place on the contributions of these sources to sentence comprehension. In the present study, we attempted to assess the contributions of event simulation and lexical associations to discourse reading, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants read target words, which were preceded by associatively related words either appearing in a coherent discourse event (Experiment 1) or in sentences that did not form a coherent discourse event (Experiment 2). Contextually unexpected target words that were associatively related to the described events elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to contextually unexpected target words that were unrelated to the events (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a similar but reduced effect was observed. These findings support the notion that during discourse reading event simulation and simple word associations jointly contribute to language comprehension by activating words that are beyond contextually congruent sentence continuations.

Abstract

- * indicates joint first authorship - Lexical access is a core component of word processing. In order to produce or comprehend a word, language users must access word forms in their mental lexicon. However, despite its involvement in both tasks, previous research has often studied lexical access in either production or comprehension alone. Therefore, it is unknown to which extent lexical access processes are shared across both tasks. Picture naming and auditory lexical decision are considered good tools for studying lexical access. Both of them are speeded tasks. Given these commonalities, another open question concerns the involvement of general cognitive abilities (e.g., processing speed) in both linguistic tasks. In the present study, we addressed these questions. We tested a large group of young adults enrolled in academic and vocational courses. Participants completed picture naming and auditory lexical decision tasks as well as a battery of tests assessing non-verbal processing speed, vocabulary, and non-verbal intelligence. Our results suggest that the lexical access processes involved in picture naming and lexical decision are related but less closely than one might have thought. Moreover, reaction times in picture naming and lexical decision depended as least as much on general processing speed as on domain-specific linguistic processes (i.e., lexical access processes).

Abstract

This resource contains data from 112 Dutch adults (18–29 years of age) who completed the Individual Differences in Language Skills test battery that included 33 behavioural tests assessing language skills and domain-general cognitive skills likely involved in language tasks. The battery included tests measuring linguistic experience (e.g. vocabulary size, prescriptive grammar knowledge), general cognitive skills (e.g. working memory, non-verbal intelligence) and linguistic processing skills (word production/comprehension, sentence production/comprehension). Testing was done in a lab-based setting resulting in high quality data due to tight monitoring of the experimental protocol and to the use of software and hardware that were optimized for behavioural testing. Each participant completed the battery twice (i.e., two test days of four hours each). We provide the raw data from all tests on both days as well as pre-processed data that were used to calculate various reliability measures (including internal consistency and test-retest reliability). We encourage other researchers to use this resource for conducting exploratory and/or targeted analyses of individual differences in language and general cognitive skills.

Abstract

Dialogue requires speakers to coordinate. According to the model of dialogue as joint action, interlocutors achieve this coordination by corepresenting their own and each other’s task share in a functionally equivalent manner. In two experiments, we investigated this corepresentation account using an interactive joint naming task in which pairs of participants took turns naming sets of objects on a shared display. Speaker A named the first, or the first and third object, and Speaker B named the second object. In control conditions, Speaker A named one, two, or all three objects and Speaker B remained silent. We recorded the timing of the speakers’ utterances and Speaker A’s eye movements. Interturn pause durations indicated that the speakers effectively coordinated their utterances in time. Speaker A’s speech onset latencies depended on the number of objects they named, but were unaffected by Speaker B’s naming task. This suggests speakers were not fully incorporating their partner’s task into their own speech planning. Moreover, Speaker A’s eye movements indicated that they were much less likely to attend to objects their partner named than to objects they named themselves. When speakers did inspect their partner’s objects, viewing times were too short to suggest that speakers were retrieving these object names as if they were planning to name the objects themselves. These results indicate that speakers prioritized planning their own responses over attending to their interlocutor’s task and suggest that effective coordination can be achieved without full corepresentation of the partner’s task.

Abstract

Multiple layers of visual (and vocal) signals, plus their different onsets and offsets, represent a significant semantic and temporal binding problem during face-to-face conversation.
Despite this complex unification process, multimodal messages appear to be processed faster than unimodal messages.

Multimodal gestalt recognition and multilevel prediction are proposed to play a crucial role in facilitating multimodal language processing.

The basis of the processing mechanisms involved in multimodal language comprehension is hypothesized to be domain general, coopted for communication, and refined with domain-specific characteristics.
A new, situated framework for understanding human language processing is called for that takes into consideration the multilayered, multimodal nature of language and its production and comprehension in conversational interaction requiring fast processing.

Abstract

Bats use a large repertoire of calls for social communication, which are often characterized by temporal amplitude and frequency modulations. As bats are considered to be among the few mammalian species capable of vocal learning, the perception of temporal sound modulations should be crucial for juvenile bats to develop social communication abilities. However, the post-natal development of auditory processing of temporal modulations has not been investigated in bats, so far. Here we use the minimally invasive technique of recording auditory brainstem responses to measure the envelope following response (EFR) to sinusoidally amplitude modulated noise (range of modulation frequencies: 11–130 Hz) in three juveniles (p8-p72) of the bat, Phyllostomus discolor. In two out of three animals, we show that although amplitude modulation processing is basically developed at p8, EFRs maturated further over a period of about two weeks until p33. Maturation of the EFR generally took longer for higher modulation frequencies (87–130 Hz) than for lower modulation frequencies (11–58 Hz).

Abstract

Speakers often use gesture to demonstrate how to perform actions—for example, they might show how to open the top of a jar by making a twisting motion above the jar. Yet it is unclear whether listeners learn as much from seeing such gestures as they learn from seeing actions that physically change the position of objects (i.e., actually opening the jar). Here, we examined participants' implicit and explicit understanding about a series of movements that demonstrated how to move a set of objects. The movements were either shown with actions that physically relocated each object or with gestures that represented the relocation without touching the objects. Further, the end location that was indicated for each object covaried with whether the object was grasped with one or two hands. We found that memory for the end location of each object was better after seeing the physical relocation of the objects, that is, after seeing action, than after seeing gesture, regardless of whether speech was absent (Experiment 1) or present (Experiment 2). However, gesture and action built similar implicit understanding of how a particular handgrasp corresponded with a particular end location. Although gestures miss the benefit of showing the end state of objects that have been acted upon, the data show that gestures are as good as action in building knowledge of how to perform an action.

Abstract

Dutch-learning and English-learning 9-month-olds were tested, using the Headturn Preference Procedure, for their ability to segment Dutch words with strong/weak stress patterns from fluent Dutch speech. This prosodic pattern is highly typical for words of both languages. The infants were familiarized with pairs of words and then tested on four passages, two that included the familiarized words and two that did not. Both the Dutch- and the English-learning infants gave evidence of segmenting the targets from the passages, to an equivalent degree. Thus, English-learning infants are able to extract words from fluent speech in a language that is phonetically different from English. We discuss the possibility that this cross-language segmentation ability is aided by the similarity of the typical rhythmic structure of Dutch and English words.

Abstract

Many women diagnosed with a major depression continue or initiate antidepressant treatment during pregnancy. Both maternal stress and selective serotonin inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant treatment during pregnancy have been associated with changes in offspring behavior, including increased anxiety and depressive-like behavior. Our aim was to investigate the effects of the SSRI fluoxetine (FLX), with and without the presence of a maternal depression, on affective behavior in male and female rat offspring. As reduced serotonin transporter (SERT) availability has been associated with altered behavioral outcome, both offspring with normal (SERT+/+) and reduced (SERT+/−) SERT expression were included. For our animal model of maternal depression, SERT+/− dams exposed to early life stress were used. Perinatal FLX treatment and early life stress in dams (ELSD) had sex- and genotype-specific effects on affective behavior in the offspring. In female offspring, perinatal FLX exposure interacted with SERT genotype to increase anxiety and depressive-like behavior in SERT+/+, but not SERT+/−, females. In male offspring, ELSD reduced anxiety and interacted with SERT genotype to decrease depressive-like behavior in SERT+/−, but not SERT+/+, males. Altogether, SERT+/+ female offspring appear to be more sensitive than SERT+/− females to the effects of perinatal FLX exposure, while SERT+/− male offspring appear more sensitive than SERT+/+ males to the effects of ELSD on affective behavior. Our data suggest a role for offspring SERT genotype and sex in FLX and ELSD-induced effects on affective behavior, thereby contributing to our understanding of the effects of perinatal SSRI treatment on offspring behavior later in life.

Abstract

Very little research has attempted to describe normal human variation in female genitalia, and no studies have compared the visual images that women might use in constructing their ideas of average and acceptable genital morphology to see if there are any systematic differences. Our objective was to determine if visual depictions of the vulva differed according to their source so as to alert medical professionals and their patients to how these depictions might capture variation and thus influence perceptions of "normality". We conducted a comparative analysis by measuring (a) published visual materials from human anatomy textbooks in a university library, (b) feminist publications (both print and online) depicting vulval morphology, and (c) online pornography, focusing on the most visited and freely accessible sites in the UK. Post-hoc tests showed that labial protuberance was significantly less (p < .001, equivalent to approximately 7 mm) in images from online pornography compared to feminist publications. All five measures taken of vulval features were significantly correlated (p < .001) in the online pornography sample, indicating a less varied range of differences in organ proportions than the other sources where not all measures were correlated. Women and health professionals should be aware that specific sources of imagery may depict different types of genital morphology and may not accurately reflect true variation in the population, and consultations for genital surgeries should include discussion about the actual and perceived range of variation in female genital morphology.

Abstract

Alcohol use is correlated within spouse-pairs, but it is difficult to disentangle effects of alcohol consumption on mate-selection from social factors or the shared spousal environment. We hypothesised that genetic variants related to alcohol consumption may, via their effect on alcohol behaviour, influence mate selection. Here, we find strong evidence that an individual’s self-reported alcohol consumption and their genotype at rs1229984, a missense variant in ADH1B, are associated with their partner’s self-reported alcohol use. Applying Mendelian randomization, we estimate that a unit increase in an individual’s weekly alcohol consumption increases partner’s alcohol consumption by 0.26 units (95% C.I. 0.15, 0.38; P = 8.20 × 10−6). Furthermore, we find evidence of spousal genotypic concordance for rs1229984, suggesting that spousal concordance for alcohol consumption existed prior to cohabitation. Although the SNP is strongly associated with ancestry, our results suggest some concordance independent of population stratification. Our findings suggest that alcohol behaviour directly influences mate selection.

Abstract

It has been hypothesised that nonsyndromic cleft lip/palate (nsCL/P) and cancer may share aetiological risk factors. Population studies have found inconsistent evidence for increased incidence of cancer in nsCL/P cases, but several genes (e.g.,CDH1,AXIN2) have been implicated in the aetiologies of both phenotypes. We aimed to evaluate shared genetic aetiology between nsCL/P and oral cavity/oropharyngeal cancers (OC/OPC), which affect similar anatomical regions. Using a primary sample of 5,048 OC/OPC cases and 5,450 controls of European ancestry and a replication sample of 750 cases and 336,319 controls from UK Biobank, we estimate genetic overlap using nsCL/P polygenic risk scores (PRS) with Mendelian randomization analyses performed to evaluate potential causal mechanisms. In the primary sample, we found strong evidence for an association between a nsCL/P PRS and increased odds of OC/OPC (per standard deviation increase in score, odds ratio [OR]: 1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.04, 1.13;p = .000053). Although confidence intervals overlapped with the primary estimate, we did not find confirmatory evidence of an association between the PRS and OC/OPC in UK Biobank (OR 1.02; 95% CI: 0.95, 1.10;p = .55). Mendelian randomization analyses provided evidence that major nsCL/P risk variants are unlikely to influence OC/OPC. Our findings suggest possible shared genetic influences on nsCL/P and OC/OPC.

Abstract

Aim: To determine if nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate (nsCL/P) genetic risk variants influence liability to nsCL/P through gene regulation pathways, such as those involving DNA methylation. Materials & methods: nsCL/P genetic summary data and methylation data from four studies were used in conjunction with Mendelian randomization and joint likelihood mapping to investigate potential mediation of nsCL/P genetic variants. Results & conclusion: Evidence was found at VAX1 (10q25.3), LOC146880 (17q23.3) and NTN1 (17p13.1), that liability to nsCL/P and variation in DNA methylation might be driven by the same genetic variant, suggesting that genetic variation at these loci may increase liability to nsCL/P by influencing DNA methylation. Follow-up analyses using different tissues and gene expression data provided further insight into possible biological mechanisms.

Abstract

Strong right-hand preference on the population level is a uniquely human feature, although its neural basis is still not clearly defined. Recent behavioural and neuroimaging literature suggests that hand preference may be related to the orchestrated function and size of fronto-parietal white matter tracts bilaterally. Lesions to these tracts induced during tumour resection may provide an opportunity to test this hypothesis. In the present study, a cohort of seventeen neurosurgical patients with left hemisphere brain tumours were recruited to investigate whether resection of certain white matter tracts affects the choice of hand selected for the execution of a goal-directed task (assembly of jigsaw puzzles). Patients performed the puzzles, but also tests for basic motor ability, selective attention and visuo-constructional ability, preoperatively and one month after surgery. An atlas-based disconnectome analysis was conducted to evaluate whether resection of tracts was significantly associated with changes in hand selection. Diffusion tractography was also used to dissect fronto-parietal tracts (the superior longitudinal fasciculus) and the corticospinal tract. Results showed a shift in hand selection despite the absence of any motor or cognitive deficits, which was significantly associated with frontal and parietal resections rather than other lobes. In particular, the shift in hand selection was significantly associated with the resection of dorsal rather than ventral fronto-parietal white matter connections. Dorsal white matter pathways contribute bilaterally to control of goal-directed hand movements. We show that unilateral lesions, that may unbalance the cooperation of the two hemispheres, can alter the choice of hand selected to accomplish movements.

Abstract

This paper examines ╪Ākhoe Hai||om, a Khoe language of the Khoisan family spoken in Northern Namibia. I document the way questions are posed in natural conversation, the actions the questions are used for and the manner in which they are responded to. I show that in this language speakers rely most heavily on content questions. I also find that speakers of ╪Ākhoe Hai||om address fewer questions to a specific individual than would be expected from prior research on Indo European languages. Finally, I discuss some possible explanations for these findings.

Abstract

When people process language, they can use context to predict upcoming information,
influencing processing and comprehension as seen in both behavioral and neural
measures. Although numerous studies have shown immediate facilitative effects
of confirmed predictions, the downstream consequences of prediction have been
less explored. In the current study, we examined those consequences by probing
participants’ recognition memory for words after they read sets of sentences.
Participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences with expected or
unexpected endings (“I added my name to the list/basket”), and later were tested on
their memory for the sentence endings while EEG was recorded. Critically, the memory
test contained words that were predictable (“list”) but were never read (participants
saw “basket”). Behaviorally, participants showed successful discrimination between old
and new items, but false alarmed to the expected-item lures more often than to new
items, showing that predicted words or concepts can linger, even when predictions
are disconfirmed. Although false alarm rates did not differ by constraint, event-related
potentials (ERPs) differed between false alarms to strongly and weakly predictable words.
Additionally, previously unexpected (compared to previously expected) endings that
appeared on the memory test elicited larger N1 and LPC amplitudes, suggesting greater
attention and episodic recollection. In contrast, highly predictable sentence endings that
had been read elicited reduced LPC amplitudes during the memory test. Thus, prediction
can facilitate processing in the moment, but can also lead to false memory and reduced
recollection for predictable information.

Abstract

Speakers of a language sometimes use particular constructions which violate prescriptive grammar rules. Despite their prescriptive ungrammaticality, they can occur rather frequently. One such example is the comparative construction in Dutch and similarly in German, where the equative particle is used in comparative constructions instead of the prescriptively correct comparative particle (Dutch beter als Jan and German besser wie Jan ‘lit. better as John’). From a theoretical linguist’s point of view, these so-called grammatical norm violations are perfectly grammatical, even though they are not part of the language’s prescriptive grammar. In a series of three experiments using sentence-matching and eye-tracking methodology, we investigated whether grammatical norm violations are processed as truly grammatical, as truly ungrammatical, or whether they fall in between these two. We hypothesized that the latter would be the case. We analyzed our data using linear mixed effects models in order to capture possible individual differences. The results of the sentence-matching experiments, which were conducted in both Dutch and German, showed that the grammatical norm violation patterns with ungrammatical sentences in both languages. Our hypothesis was therefore not borne out. However, using the more sensitive eye-tracking method on Dutch speakers only, we found that the ungrammatical alternative leads to higher reading times than the grammatical norm violation. We also found significant individual variation regarding this very effect. We furthermore replicated the processing difference between the grammatical norm violation and the prescriptively correct variant. In summary, we conclude that while the results of the more sensitive eye-tracking experiment suggest that grammatical norm violations are not processed on a par with ungrammatical sentences, the results of all three experiments clearly show that grammatical norm violations cannot be considered grammatical, either.

Abstract

Prescriptive grammar rules are taught in education, generally to ban the use of certain frequently encountered constructions in everyday language. This may lead to hypercorrection, meaning that the prescribed form in one construction is extended to another one in which it is in fact prohibited by prescriptive grammar. We discuss two such cases in Dutch: the hypercorrect use of the comparative particle dan ‘than’ in equative constructions, and the hypercorrect use of the accusative pronoun hen ‘them’ for a dative object. In two experiments, high school students of three educational levels were tested on their use of these hypercorrect forms (nexp1 = 162, nexp2 = 159). Our results indicate an overall large amount of hypercorrection across all levels of education, including pre-university level students who otherwise perform better in constructions targeted by prescriptive grammar rules. We conclude that while teaching prescriptive grammar rules to high school students seems to increase their use of correct forms in certain constructions, this comes at a cost of hypercorrection in others.

Abstract

The processing of idiomatic expressions is a topical issue in empirical research. Various factors have been found to influence idiom processing, such as idiom familiarity and idiom transparency. Information on these variables is usually obtained through norming studies. Studies investigating the effect of various properties on idiom processing have led to ambiguous results. This may be due to the variability of operationalizations of the idiom properties across norming studies, which in turn may affect the reliability of the subjective judgements. However, not all studies that collected normative data on idiomatic expressions investigated their reliability, and studies that did address the reliability of subjective ratings used various measures and produced mixed results. In this study, we investigated the reliability of subjective judgements, the relation between subjective and objective idiom frequency, and the impact of these dimensions on the participants’ idiom knowledge by collecting normative data of five subjective idiom properties (Frequency of Exposure, Meaning Familiarity, Frequency of Usage, Transparency, and Imageability) from 390 native speakers and objective corpus frequency for 374 Dutch idiomatic expressions. For reliability, we compared measures calculated in previous studies, with the D-coefficient, a metric taken from Generalizability Theory. High reliability was found for all subjective dimensions. One reliability metric, Krippendorff’s alpha, generally produced lower values, while similar values were obtained for three other measures (Cronbach’s alpha, Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, and the D-coefficient). Advantages of the D-coefficient are that it can be applied to unbalanced research designs, and to estimate the minimum number of raters required to obtain reliable ratings. Slightly higher coefficients were observed for so-called experience-based dimensions (Frequency of Exposure, Meaning Familiarity, and Frequency of Usage) than for content-based dimensions (Transparency and Imageability). In addition, fewer raters were required to obtain reliable ratings for the experience-based dimensions. Subjective and objective frequency appeared to be poorly correlated, while all subjective idiom properties and objective frequency turned out to affect idiom knowledge. Meaning Familiarity, Subjective and Objective Frequency of Exposure, Frequency of Usage, and Transparency positively contributed to idiom knowledge, while a negative effect was found for Imageability. We discuss these relationships in more detail, and give methodological recommendations with respect to the procedures and the measure to calculate reliability.

Abstract

Literacy has many obvious benefits—it exposes the reader to a wealth of new information and enhances syntactic knowledge. However, we argue that literacy has an additional, often overlooked, benefit: it enhances people’s ability to predict spoken language thereby aiding comprehension. Readers are under pressure to process information more quickly than listeners, and reading provides excellent conditions, in particular a stable environment, for training the predictive system. It also leads to increased awareness of words as linguistic units, and more fine-grained phonological and additional orthographic representations, which sharpen lexical representations and facilitate predicted representations to be retrieved. Thus, reading trains core processes and representations involved in language prediction that are common to both reading and listening.

Abstract

A main challenge for theories of embodied cognition is to understand the task dependency of embodied language processing. One possibility is that perceptual representations (e.g., typical colour of objects mentioned in spoken sentences) are not activated routinely but the influence of perceptual representation emerges only when context strongly supports their involvement in language. To explore this question, we tested the effects of colour representations during language processing in three visual- world eye-tracking experiments. On critical trials, participants listened to sentence- embedded words associated with a prototypical colour (e.g., ‘...spinach...’) while they inspected a visual display with four printed words (Experiment 1), coloured or greyscale line drawings (Experiment 2) and a ‘blank screen’ after a preview of coloured or greyscale line drawings (Experiment 3). Visual context always presented a word/object (e.g., frog) associated with the same prototypical colour (e.g. green) as the spoken target word and three distractors. When hearing spinach participants did not prefer the written word frog compared to other distractor words (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, colour competitors attracted more overt attention compared to average distractors, but only for the coloured condition and not for greyscale trials. Finally, when the display was removed at the onset of the sentence, and in contrast to the previous blank-screen experiments with semantic competitors, there was no evidence of colour competition in the eye-tracking record (Experiment 3). These results fit best with the notion that the main role of perceptual representations in language processing is to contextualize language in the immediate environment.

Abstract

There is a consensus among language researchers that people can predict upcoming language. But do people always predict when comprehending language? Notions that “brains … are essentially prediction machines” certainly suggest so. In three eye-tracking experiments we tested this view. Participants listened to simple Dutch sentences (‘Look at the displayed bicycle’) while viewing four objects (a target, e.g. a bicycle, and three unrelated distractors). We used the identical visual stimuli and the same spoken sentences but varied speech rates, preview time, and participant instructions. Target nouns were preceded by definite gender-marked determiners, which allowed participants to predict the target object because only the targets but not the distractors agreed in gender with the determiner. In Experiment 1, participants had four seconds preview and sentences were presented either in a slow or a normal speech rate. Participants predicted the targets as soon as they heard the determiner in both conditions. Experiment 2 was identical except that participants were given only a one second preview. Participants predicted the targets only in the slow speech condition. Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2 except that participants were explicitly told to predict. This led only to a small prediction effect in the normal speech condition. Thus, a normal speech rate only afforded prediction if participants had an extensive preview. Even the explicit instruction to predict the target resulted in only a small anticipation effect with a normal speech rate and a short preview. These findings are problematic for theoretical proposals that assume that prediction pervades cognition.

Abstract

In two eye-tracking studies we investigated the influence of Mandarin numeral classifiers - a grammatical category in the language - on online overt attention. Mandarin speakers were presented with simple sentences through headphones while their eye-movements to objects presented on a computer screen were monitored. The crucial question is what participants look at while listening to a pre-specified target noun. If classifier categories influence Mandarin speakers' general conceptual processing, then on hearing the target noun they should look at objects that are members of the same classifier category - even when the classifier is not explicitly present (cf. Huettig & Altmann, 2005). The data show that when participants heard a classifier (e.g., ba3, Experiment 1) they shifted overt attention significantly more to classifier-match objects (e.g., chair) than to distractor objects. But when the classifier was not explicitly presented in speech, overt attention to classifier-match objects and distractor objects did not differ (Experiment 2). This suggests that although classifier distinctions do influence eye-gaze behavior, they do so only during linguistic processing of that distinction and not in moment-to-moment general conceptual processing.

Abstract

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioral consequences as listening to someone else's speech. Our experiment therefore registered eye-movements while speakers named objects accompanied by phonologically related or unrelated written words. The data showed that listening to one's own speech drives eye-movements to phonologically related words, just as listening to someone else's speech does in perception experiments. The time-course of these eye-movements was very similar to that in other-perception (starting 300 ms post-articulation), which demonstrates that these eye-movements were driven by the perception of overt speech, not inner speech. We conclude that external, but not internal monitoring, is based on speech perception.

Abstract

Like the transfer of genetic variation through gene flow, language changes constantly as a result of its use in human interaction. Contact between speakers is most likely to happen when they are close in space, time, and social setting. Here, we investigated the role of geographical configuration in this process by studying linguistic diversity in Japan, which comprises a large connected mainland (less isolation, more potential contact) and smaller island clusters of the Ryukyuan archipelago (more isolation, less potential contact). We quantified linguistic diversity using dialectometric methods, and performed regression analyses to assess the extent to which distance in space and time predict contemporary linguistic diversity. We found that language diversity in general increases as geographic distance increases and as time passes—as with biodiversity. Moreover, we found that (I) for mainland languages, linguistic diversity is most strongly related to geographic distance—a so-called isolation-by-distance pattern, and that (II) for island languages, linguistic diversity reflects the time since varieties separated and diverged—an isolation-by-colonisation pattern. Together, these results confirm previous findings that (linguistic) diversity is shaped by distance, but also goes beyond this by demonstrating the critical role of geographic configuration.

Abstract

We recently reported that refocusing attention between temporal and spatial tasks becomes more difficult with increasing age, which could impair daily activities such as driving (Callaghan et al., 2017). Here, we investigated the extent to which difficulties in refocusing attention extend to naturalistic settings such as simulated driving. A total of 118 participants in five age groups (18–30; 40–49; 50–59; 60–69; 70–91 years) were compared during continuous simulated driving, where they repeatedly switched from braking due to traffic ahead (a spatially focal yet temporally complex task) to reading a motorway road sign (a spatially more distributed task). Sequential-Task (switching) performance was compared to Single-Task performance (road sign only) to calculate age-related switch-costs. Electroencephalography was recorded in 34 participants (17 in the 18–30 and 17 in the 60+ years groups) to explore age-related changes in the neural oscillatory signatures of refocusing attention while driving. We indeed observed age-related impairments in attentional refocusing, evidenced by increased switch-costs in response times and by deficient modulation of theta and alpha frequencies. Our findings highlight virtual reality (VR) and Neuro-VR as important methodologies for future psychological and gerontological research.

Abstract

Human language processing involves combinatorial operations that make human communication stand out in the animal kingdom. These operations rely on a dynamic interplay between the inferior frontal and the posterior temporal cortices. Using source reconstructed magnetoencephalography, we tracked language processing in the brain, in order to investigate how individual words are interpreted when part of sentence context. The large sample size in this study (n = 68) allowed us to assess how event-related activity is associated across distinct cortical areas, by means of inter-areal co-modulation within an individual. We showed that, within 500 ms of seeing a word, the word's lexical information has been retrieved and unified with the sentence context. This does not happen in a strictly feed-forward manner, but by means of co-modulation between the left posterior temporal cortex (LPTC) and left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC), for each individual word. The co-modulation of LIFC and LPTC occurs around 400 ms after the onset of each word, across the progression of a sentence. Moreover, these core language areas are supported early on by the attentional network. The results provide a detailed description of the temporal orchestration related to single word processing in the context of ongoing language.

Abstract

The acquisition and maintenance of new language information, such as picking up new words, is a critical human ability that is needed throughout the life span. Most likely you learned the word “blog” quite recently as an adult, whereas the word “kipe,” which in the 1970s denoted stealing, now seems unfamiliar. Brain mechanisms underlying the long-term maintenance of new words have remained unknown, albeit they could provide important clues to the considerable individual differences in the ability to remember words. After successful training of a set of novel object names we tracked, over a period of 10 months, the maintenance of this new vocabulary in 10 human participants by repeated behavioral tests and magnetoencephalography measurements of overt picture naming. When namingrelated activation in the left frontal and temporal cortex was enhanced 1 week after training, compared with the level at the end of training, the individual retained a good command of the new vocabulary at 10 months; vice versa, individuals with reduced activation at 1 week posttraining were less successful in recalling the names at 10 months. This finding suggests an individual neural marker for memory, in the context of language. Learning is not over when the acquisition phase has been successfully completed: neural events during the access to recently established word representations appear to be important for the long-term outcome of learning.

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that the pupillary light response (PLR) is modulated by higher cognitive functions, presumably through activity in visual sensory brain areas. Here we use the PLR to test the involvement of sensory areas in visual working memory (VWM). In two experiments, participants memorized either bright or dark stimuli. We found that pupils were smaller when a prestimulus cue indicated that a bright stimulus should be memorized; this reflects a covert shift of attention during encoding of items into VWM. Crucially, we obtained the same result with a poststimulus cue, which shows that internal shifts of attention within VWM affect pupil size as well. Strikingly, the effect of VWM content on pupil size was most pronounced immediately after the poststimulus cue, and then dissipated. This suggests that a shift of attention within VWM momentarily activates an "active" memory representation, but that this representation quickly transforms into a "hidden" state that does not rely on sensory areas.

Abstract

An important issue in theories of word learning is how abstract or context-specific representations of novel words are. One aspect of this broad issue is how well learners maintain information about the source of novel words. We investigated whether listeners’ source memory was better for words learned from members of their in-group (students of their own university) than it is for words learned from members of an out-group (students from another institution). In the first session, participants saw 6 faces and learned which of the depicted students attended either their own or a different university. In the second session, they learned competing labels (e.g., citrus-peller and citrus-schiller; in English, lemon peeler and lemon stripper) for novel gadgets, produced by the in-group and out-group speakers. Participants were then tested for source memory of these labels and for the strength of their in-group bias, that is, for how much they preferentially process in-group over out-group information. Analyses of source memory accuracy demonstrated an interaction between speaker group membership status and participants’ in-group bias: Stronger in-group bias was associated with less accurate source memory for out-group labels than in-group labels. These results add to the growing body of evidence on the importance of social variables for adult word learning.

Abstract

Individuals rapidly extract information about others’ social identity, including whether or not they belong to their in-group. Group membership status has been shown to affect how attentively people encode information conveyed by those others. These findings are highly relevant for the field of psycholinguistics where there exists an open debate on how words are represented in the mental lexicon and how abstract or context-specific these representations are. Here, we used a novel word learning paradigm to test our proposal that the group membership status of speakers also affects how speaker-specific representations of novel words are. Participants learned new words from speakers who either attended their own university (in-group speakers) or did not (out-group speakers) and performed a task to measure their individual in-group bias. Then, their source memory of the new words was tested in a recognition test to probe the speaker-specific content of the novel lexical representations and assess how it related to individual in-group biases. We found that speaker group membership and participants’ in-group bias affected participants’ decision biases. The stronger the in-group bias, the more cautious participants were in their decisions. This was particularly applied to in-group related decisions. These findings indicate that social biases can influence recognition threshold. Taking a broader scope, defining how information is represented is a topic of great overlap between the fields of memory and psycholinguistics. Nevertheless, researchers from these fields tend to stay within the theoretical and methodological borders of their own field, missing the chance to deepen their understanding of phenomena that are of common interest. Here we show how methodologies developed in the memory field can be implemented in language research to shed light on an important theoretical issue that relates to the composition of lexical representations.

Abstract

The articles in this volume are the result of an invited conference entitled "The Earliest Stages of Language Learning" held at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in October 2009.

Abstract

The Abelson helper integration site 1 (AHI1) gene locus on chromosome 6q23 is among a group of candidate loci for schizophrenia susceptibility that were initially identified by linkage followed by linkage disequilibrium mapping, and subsequent replication of the association in an independent sample. Here, we present results of a replication study of AHI1 locus markers, previously implicated in schizophrenia, in a large European sample (in total 3907 affected and 7429 controls). Furthermore, we perform a meta-analysis of the implicated markers in 4496 affected and 18,920 controls. Both the replication study of new samples and the meta-analysis show evidence for significant overrepresentation of all tested alleles in patients compared with controls (meta-analysis; P = 8.2 x 10(-5)-1.7 x 10(-3), common OR = 1.09-1.11). The region contains two genes, AHI1 and C6orf217, and both genes-as well as the neighbouring phosphodiesterase 7B (PDE7B)-may be considered candidates for involvement in the genetic aetiology of schizophrenia.

Abstract

Mirror-sensory synaesthetes mirror the pain or touch that they observe in other people on their own bodies. This type of synaesthesia has been associated with enhanced empathy. We investigated whether the enhanced empathy of people with mirror-sensory synesthesia influences the experience of situations involving touch or pain and whether it affects their prosocial decision making. Mirror-sensory synaesthetes (N = 18, all female), verified with a touch-interference paradigm, were compared with a similar number of age-matched control individuals (all female). Participants viewed arousing images depicting pain or touch; we recorded subjective valence and arousal ratings, and physiological responses, hypothesizing more extreme reactions in synaesthetes. The subjective impact of positive and negative images was stronger in synaesthetes than in control participants; the stronger the reported synaesthesia, the more extreme the picture ratings. However, there was no evidence for differential physiological or hormonal responses to arousing pictures. Prosocial decision making was assessed with an economic game assessing altruism, in which participants had to divide money between themselves and a second player. Mirror-sensory synaesthetes donated more money than non-synaesthetes, showing enhanced prosocial behaviour, and also scored higher on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index as a measure of empathy. Our study demonstrates the subjective impact of mirror-sensory synaesthesia and its stimulating influence on prosocial behaviour.

Abstract

The computations involved in statistical learning have long been debated. Here, we build on work suggesting that a basic memory process, chunking , may account for the processing of statistical regularities into larger units. Drawing on methods from the memory literature, we developed a novel paradigm to test statistical learning by leveraging a robust phenomenon observed in serial recall tasks: that short‐term memory is fundamentally shaped by long‐term distributional learning. In the statistically induced chunking recall (SICR) task, participants are exposed to an artificial language, using a standard statistical learning exposure phase. Afterward, they recall strings of syllables that either follow the statistics of the artificial language or comprise the same syllables presented in a random order. We hypothesized that if individuals had chunked the artificial language into word‐like units, then the statistically structured items would be more accurately recalled relative to the random controls. Our results demonstrate that SICR effectively captures learning in both the auditory and visual modalities, with participants displaying significantly improved recall of the statistically structured items, and even recall specific trigram chunks from the input. SICR also exhibits greater test–retest reliability in the auditory modality and sensitivity to individual differences in both modalities than the standard two‐alternative forced‐choice task. These results thereby provide key empirical support to the chunking account of statistical learning and contribute a valuable new tool to the literature.

Abstract

Phosphomannomutase 2 deficiency, or PMM2-CDG, is the most common congenital disorder of glycosylation and affects over 1000 patients globally. There are no approved drugs that treat the symptoms or root cause of PMM2-CDG. To identify clinically actionable compounds that boost human PMM2 enzyme function, we performed a multispecies drug repurposing screen using a novel worm model of PMM2-CDG, followed by PMM2 enzyme functional studies in PMM2-CDG patient fibroblasts. Drug repurposing candidates from this study, and drug repurposing candidates from a previously published study using yeast models of PMM2-CDG, were tested for their effect on human PMM2 enzyme activity in PMM2-CDG fibroblasts. Of the 20 repurposing candidates discovered in the worm-based phenotypic screen, 12 were plant-based polyphenols. Insights from structure-activity relationships revealed epalrestat, the only antidiabetic aldose reductase inhibitor approved for use in humans, as a first-in-class PMM2 enzyme activator. Epalrestat increased PMM2 enzymatic activity in four PMM2-CDG patient fibroblast lines with genotypes R141H/F119L, R141H/E139K, R141H/N216I and R141H/F183S. PMM2 enzyme activity gains ranged from 30% to 400% over baseline, depending on genotype. Pharmacological inhibition of aldose reductase by epalrestat may shunt glucose from the polyol pathway to glucose-1,6-bisphosphate, which is an endogenous stabilizer and coactivator of PMM2 homodimerization. Epalrestat is a safe, oral and brain penetrant drug that was approved 27 years ago in Japan to treat diabetic neuropathy in geriatric populations. We demonstrate that epalrestat is the first small molecule activator ofPMM2 enzyme activity with the potential to treat peripheral neuropathy and correct the underlying enzyme deficiency in a majority of pediatric and adult PMM2-CDG patients.

Abstract

The results of a self-paced reading study with German second language (L2) learners of Dutch showed that noun animacy affected the learners' on-line commitments when comprehending relative clauses in their L2. Earlier research has found that German L2 learners of Dutch do not show an on-line preference for subject–object word order in temporarily ambiguous relative clauses when no disambiguating material is available prior to the auxiliary verb. We investigated whether manipulating the animacy of the ambiguous noun phrases would push the learners to make an on-line commitment to either a subject- or object-first analysis. Results showed they performed like Dutch native speakers in that their reading times reflected an interaction between topichood and animacy in the on-line assignment of grammatical roles

Abstract

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of “music” and “culture.”

Abstract

Initial lexical activation in typical populations is a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. In this study, lexical activation was investigated upon presentation of polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile for crocodile) for the atypical population of dyslexic adults to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information affects lexical activation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that sensitivity to phonemic mismatch was less in the dyslexic population, compared to the respective control group. However, the dyslexic participants were outperformed by their controls only for word-initial mismatches. It is argued that a subtle speech decoding deficit affects lexical activation levels and makes spoken word processing less robust against distortion.

Abstract

Background: There is evidence that, unlike in typical populations, initial lexical activation upon hearing spoken words in aphasic patients is not a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. Earlier studies have mainly used short monosyllabic target words. Short words are relatively difficult to recognise because they are not highly redundant: changing one phoneme will often result in a (similar-sounding) different word. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate sensitivity of the lexical recognition system in aphasia. The focus was on longer words that contain more redundancy, to investigate whether aphasic adults might be impaired in deactivation of strongly activated lexical candidates. This was done by studying lexical activation upon presentation of spoken polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile) to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information leads to deactivation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Methods & Procedures: Speeded auditory lexical decision was used to investigate response time and accuracy to pseudowords with a word-initial or word-final phonemic mismatch in 21 aphasic patients and in an age-matched control group. Outcomes & Results: Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that aphasic participants were less sensitive to phonemic mismatch if there was strong evidence for one particular lexical candidate, compared to the control group. Classifications of patients as Broca's vs Wernicke's or as fluent vs non-fluent did not reveal differences in sensitivity to mismatch between aphasia types. There was no reliable relationship between measures of auditory verbal short-term memory and lexical decision performance. Conclusions: It is argued that the aphasic results can best be viewed as lexical “overactivation” and that a verbal short-term memory account is less appropriate.

Abstract

Research Findings: The present study compared effects of explicit instruction on and practice with the phonological form of words (form-focused instruction) versus explicit instruction on and practice with the meaning of words (meaning-focused instruction). Instruction was given via interactive storybook reading in the kindergarten classroom of children learning Dutch. We asked whether the 2 types of instruction had different effects on vocabulary development and 2 precursors of reading ability—phonological awareness and letter knowledge—and we examined effects on these measures of the ability to learn new words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences. Learners showed similar receptive target-word vocabulary gain after both types of instruction, but learners who received form-focused vocabulary instruction showed more gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge than learners who received meaning-focused vocabulary instruction. Level of ability to learn pairs of words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences predicted gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary and in letter knowledge in the form-focused instruction group only. Practice or Policy: A focus on the form of words during instruction appears to have benefits for young children learning vocabulary.

Abstract

The influence of larynx position on vowel articulation is an important topic in understanding speech production, the present-day distribution of linguistic diversity and the evolution of speech and language in our lineage. We introduce here a realistic computer model of the vocal tract, constructed from actual human MRI data, which can learn, using machine learning techniques, to control the articulators in such a way as to produce speech sounds matching as closely as possible to a given set of target vowels. We systematically control the vertical position of the larynx and we quantify the differences between the target and produced vowels for each such position across multiple replications. We report that, indeed, larynx height does affect the accuracy of reproducing the target vowels and the distinctness of the produced vowel system, that there is a “sweet spot” of larynx positions that are optimal for vowel production, but that nevertheless, even extreme larynx positions do not result in a collapsed or heavily distorted vowel space that would make speech unintelligible. Together with other lines of evidence, our results support the view that the vowel space of human languages is influenced by our larynx position, but that other positions of the larynx may also be fully compatible with speech.

Abstract

Discrete phonological phenomena form our conscious experience of language: continuous changes in pitch appear as distinct tones to the speakers of tone languages, whereas the speakers of quantity languages experience duration categorically. The categorical nature of our linguistic experience is directly reflected in the traditionally clear-cut linguistic classification of languages into tonal or non-tonal. However, some evidence suggests that duration and pitch are fundamentally interconnected and co-vary in signaling word meaning in non-tonal languages as well. We show that pitch information affects real-time language processing in a (non-tonal) quantity language. The results suggest that there is no unidirectional causal link from a genetically-based perceptual sensitivity towards pitch information to the appearance of a tone language. They further suggest that the contrastive categories tone and quantity may be based on simultaneously co-varying properties of the speech signal and the processing system, even though the conscious experience of the speakers may highlight only one discrete variable at a time.

Abstract

Bats possess extraordinary adaptations, including flight, echolocation, extreme longevity and unique immunity. High-quality genomes are crucial for understanding the molecular basis and evolution of these traits. Here we incorporated long-read sequencing and state-of-the-art scaffolding protocols1 to generate, to our knowledge, the first reference-quality genomes of six bat species (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Rousettus aegyptiacus, Phyllostomus discolor, Myotis myotis, Pipistrellus kuhlii and Molossus molossus). We integrated gene projections from our ‘Tool to infer Orthologs from Genome Alignments’ (TOGA) software with de novo and homology gene predictions as well as short- and long-read transcriptomics to generate highly complete gene annotations. To resolve the phylogenetic position of bats within Laurasiatheria, we applied several phylogenetic methods to comprehensive sets of orthologous protein-coding and noncoding regions of the genome, and identified a basal origin for bats within Scrotifera. Our genome-wide screens revealed positive selection on hearing-related genes in the ancestral branch of bats, which is indicative of laryngeal echolocation being an ancestral trait in this clade. We found selection and loss of immunity-related genes (including pro-inflammatory NF-κB regulators) and expansions of anti-viral APOBEC3 genes, which highlights molecular mechanisms that may contribute to the exceptional immunity of bats. Genomic integrations of diverse viruses provide a genomic record of historical tolerance to viral infection in bats. Finally, we found and experimentally validated bat-specific variation in microRNAs, which may regulate bat-specific gene-expression programs. Our reference-quality bat genomes provide the resources required to uncover and validate the genomic basis of adaptations of bats, and stimulate new avenues of research that are directly relevant to human health and disease

Abstract

When listening to speech, we often benefit when also seeing the speaker talk. If this benefit is not domain-specific for speech, then the recognition of sung lyrics should likewise benefit from seeing the singer. Nevertheless, previous research failed to obtain a substantial improvement in that domain. Our study shows that this failure was not due to inherent differences between singing and speaking but rather to less informative visual presentations. By presenting a professional singer, we found a substantial audiovisual benefit of about 35% improvement for lyrics recognition. This benefit was further robust across participants, phrases, and repetition of the test materials. Our results provide the first evidence that lyrics recognition just like speech and music perception is a multimodal process.

Abstract

Language processing is influenced by multiple sources of information. We examined whether the performance in simultaneous interpreting would be improved when providing two sources of information, the auditory speech as well as corresponding lip-movements, in comparison to presenting the auditory speech alone. Although there was an improvement in sentence recognition when presented with visible speech, there was no difference in performance between these two presentation conditions when bilinguals simultaneously interpreted from English to German or from English to Spanish. The reason why visual speech did not contribute to performance could be the presentation of the auditory signal without noise (Massaro, 1998). This hypothesis should be tested in the future. Furthermore, it should be investigated if an effect of visible speech can be found for other contexts, when visual information could provide cues for emotions, prosody, or syntax.

Abstract

In the present study, we examined the distribution and processing of information over time in auditory and visual speech as it is used in unimodal and bimodal word recognition. English consonant—vowel—consonant words representing all possible initial consonants were presented as auditory, visual, or audiovisual speech in a gating task. The distribution of information over time varied across and within features. Visual speech information was generally fully available early during the phoneme, whereas auditory information was still accumulated. An audiovisual benefit was therefore already found early during the phoneme. The nature of the audiovisual recognition benefit changed, however, as more of the phoneme was presented. More features benefited at short gates rather than at longer ones. Visual speech information plays, therefore, a more important role early during the phoneme rather than later. The results of the study showed the complex interplay of information across modalities and time, since this is essential in determining the time course of audiovisual spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Thematic roles characterise the functions of participants in events, but there is no agreement on how these roles are identified in the real world. In three experiments, we examined how role identification in push events is supported by the visual object-tracking system. Participants saw one to three push events in visual scenes with nine identical randomly moving circles. After a period of random movement, two circles from one of the push events and a foil object were given different colours and the participants had to identify their roles in the push with an active sentence, such as red pushed blue. It was found that the participants could track the agent and patient targets and generate descriptions that identified their roles at above chance levels, even under difficult conditions, such as when tracking multiple push events (Experiments 1–3), fixating their gaze (Experiment 1), performing a concurrent speeded-response task (Experiment 2), and when tracking objects that were temporarily invisible (Experiment 3). The results were consistent with previous findings of an average tracking capacity limit of four objects, individual differences in this capacity, and the use of attentional strategies. The studies demonstrated that thematic role information can be maintained when tracking the identity of visually identical objects, then used to map role fillers (e.g., the agent of a push event) into their appropriate sentence positions. This suggests that thematic role features are stored temporarily in the visual object-tracking system.

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that infants can rapidly extract syllable distribution information from an artificial language and use this knowledge to infer likely word boundaries in speech. However, artificial languages are extremely simplified with respect to natural language. In this study, we ask whether infants’ ability to track transitional probabilities between syllables in an artificial language can scale up to the challenge of natural language. We do so by testing both 5.5- and 8-month-olds’ ability to segment an artificial language containing four words of uniform length (all CVCV) or four words of varying length (two CVCV, two CVCVCV). The transitional probability cues to word boundaries were held equal across the two languages. Both age groups segmented the language containing words of uniform length, demonstrating that even 5.5-month-olds are extremely sensitive to the conditional probabilities in their environment. However, either age group succeeded in segmenting the language containing words of varying length, despite the fact that the transitional probability cues defining word boundaries were equally strong in the two languages. We conclude that infants’ statistical learning abilities may not be as robust as earlier studies have suggested.

Abstract

There is a range of variability in the speed with which a single speaker will produce the same word from one instance to another. Individual differences studies have shown that the speed of production and the ability to maintain attention are related. This study investigated whether fluctuations in production latencies can be explained by spontaneous fluctuations in speakers' attention just prior to initiating speech planning. A relationship between individuals' incidental attentional state and response performance is well attested in visual perception, with lower prestimulus alpha power associated with faster manual responses. Alpha is thought to have an inhibitory function: Low alpha power suggests less inhibition of a specific brain region, whereas high alpha power suggests more inhibition. Does the same relationship hold for cognitively demanding tasks such as word production? In this study, participants named pictures while EEG was recorded, with alpha power taken to index an individual's momentary attentional state. Participants' level of alpha power just prior to picture presentation and just prior to speech onset predicted subsequent naming latencies. Specifically, higher alpha power in the motor system resulted in faster speech initiation. Our results suggest that one index of a lapse of attention during speaking is reduced inhibition of motor-cortical regions: Decreased motor-cortical alpha power indicates reduced inhibition of this area while early stages of production planning unfold, which leads to increased interference from motor-cortical signals and longer naming latencies. This study shows that the language production system is not impermeable to the influence of attention.

Abstract

In conversation, speech planning can overlap with listening to the interlocutor. It has been
postulated that once there is enough information to formulate a response, planning is initiated
and the response is maintained in working memory. Concurrently, the auditory input is
monitored for the turn end such that responses can be launched promptly. In three EEG
experiments, we aimed to identify the neural signature of phonological planning and monitoring
by comparing delayed responding to not responding (reading aloud, repetition and lexical
decision). These comparisons consistently resulted in a sustained positivity and beta power
reduction over posterior regions. We argue that these effects reflect attention to the sequence
end. Phonological planning and maintenance were not detected in the neural signature even
though it is highly likely these were taking place. This suggests that EEG must be used cautiously
to identify response planning when the neural signal is overridden by attention effects

Abstract

Explanations in the domain of kinship can be sought on several different levels: Jones addresses online processing, as well as issues of origins and innateness. We argue that his framework can more usefully be applied at the levels of developmental and historical change, the latter especially. A phylogenetic approach to the diversity of kinship terminologies is most urgently required.

Abstract

Objective. The aims of this study were to compare the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times between patients with temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) and asymptomatic volunteers and to assess the diagnostic potential of this approach.
Study Design. Patients with TMD (n = 173) and asymptomatic volunteers (n = 17) were examined by using a 1.5-T magnetic resonance scanner. The imaging protocol consisted of oblique sagittal, T2-weighted, 8-echo fast spin echo sequences in the closed mouth position. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were obtained. Additionally, disc location and reduction, disc configuration, joint effusion, osteoarthritis, and bone edema or osteonecrosis were classified using MRI scans. The T2 relaxation times of each group were statistically compared.
Results. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were significantly longer in patient groups than in asymptomatic volunteers (P < .01). T2 relaxation times were significantly longer in all of the morphologic categories. The most important variables affecting retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were disc configuration, joint effusion, and osteoarthritis.
Conclusion. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times of patients with TMD were significantly longer than those of healthy volunteers. This finding may lead to the development of a diagnostic marker to aid in the early detection of TMDs.

Abstract

Is visual reinterpretation of bistable figures (e.g., duck/rabbit figure) in visual imagery possible? Current consensus suggests that it is in principle possible because of converging evidence of quasi-pictorial functioning of visual imagery. Yet, studies that have directly tested and found evidence for reinterpretation in visual imagery, allow for the possibility that reinterpretation was already achieved during memorization of the figure(s). One study resolved this issue, providing evidence for reinterpretation in visual imagery (Mast and Kosslyn, Cognition 86:57-70, 2002). However, participants in that study performed reinterpretations with aid of visual cues. Hence, reinterpretation was not performed with mental imagery alone. Therefore, in this study we assessed the possibility of reinterpretation without visual support. We further explored the possible role of haptic cues to assess the multimodal nature of mental imagery. Fifty-three participants were consecutively presented three to be remembered bistable 2-D figures (reinterpretable when rotated 180 degrees), two of which were visually inspected and one was explored hapticly. After memorization of the figures, a visually bistable exemplar figure was presented to ensure understanding of the concept of visual bistability. During recall, 11 participants (out of 36; 30.6%) who did not spot bistability during memorization successfully performed reinterpretations when instructed to mentally rotate their visual image, but additional haptic cues during mental imagery did not inflate reinterpretation ability. This study validates previous findings that reinterpretation in visual imagery is possible.

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined the role of gesture in reinterpreting a mental image. In Experiment 1, we found that participants gestured more about a figure they had learned through manual exploration than about a figure they had learned through vision. This supports claims that gestures emerge from the activation of perception-relevant actions during mental imagery. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether such gestures have a causal role in affecting the quality of mental imagery. Participants were randomly assigned to gesture, not gesture, or engage in a manual interference task as they attempted to reinterpret a figure they had learned through manual exploration. We found that manual interference significantly impaired participants' success on the task. Taken together, these results suggest that gestures reflect mental imaginings of interactions with a mental image and that these imaginings are critically important for mental manipulation and reinterpretation of that image. However, our results suggest that enacting the imagined movements in gesture is not critically important on this particular task.

Abstract

Understanding spoken language requires the integration and weighting of multiple cues, and may call on cue integration mechanisms that have been studied in other areas of perception. In the current study, we used eye-tracking (visual-world paradigm) to examine how contextual speech rate (a lower-level, perceptual cue) and morphosyntactic knowledge (a higher-level, linguistic cue) are iteratively combined and integrated. Results indicate that participants used contextual rate information immediately, which we interpret as evidence of perceptual inference and the generation of predictions about upcoming morphosyntactic information. Additionally, we observed that early rate effects remained active in the presence of later conflicting lexical information. This result demonstrates that (1) contextual speech rate functions as a cue to morphosyntactic inferences, even in the presence of subsequent disambiguating information; and (2) listeners iteratively use multiple sources of information to draw inferences and generate predictions during speech comprehension. We discuss the implication of these demonstrations for theories of language processing

Abstract

During spoken language comprehension, listeners make use of both knowledge-based and signal-based sources of information, but little is known about how cues from these distinct levels of representational hierarchy are weighted and integrated online. In an eye-tracking experiment using the visual world paradigm, we investigated the flexible weighting and integration of morphosyntactic gender marking (a knowledge-based cue) and contextual speech rate (a signal-based cue). We observed that participants used the morphosyntactic cue immediately to make predictions about upcoming referents, even in the presence of uncertainty about the cue’s reliability. Moreover, we found speech rate normalization effects in participants’ gaze patterns even in the presence of preceding morphosyntactic information. These results demonstrate that cues are weighted and integrated flexibly online, rather than adhering to a strict hierarchy. We further found rate normalization effects in the looking behavior of participants who showed a strong behavioral preference for the morphosyntactic gender cue. This indicates that rate normalization effects are robust and potentially automatic. We discuss these results in light of theories of cue integration and the two-stage model of acoustic context effects

Abstract

Neural oscillations track linguistic information during speech comprehension (e.g., Ding et al., 2016; Keitel et al., 2018), and are known to be modulated by acoustic landmarks and speech intelligibility (e.g., Doelling et al., 2014; Zoefel & VanRullen, 2015). However, studies investigating linguistic tracking have either relied on non-naturalistic isochronous stimuli or failed to fully control for prosody. Therefore, it is still unclear whether low frequency activity tracks linguistic structure during natural speech, where linguistic structure does not follow such a palpable temporal pattern. Here, we measured electroencephalography (EEG) and manipulated the presence of semantic and syntactic information apart from the timescale of their occurrence, while carefully controlling for the acoustic-prosodic and lexical-semantic information in the signal. EEG was recorded while 29 adult native speakers (22 women, 7 men) listened to naturally-spoken Dutch sentences, jabberwocky controls with morphemes and sentential prosody, word lists with lexical content but no phrase structure, and backwards acoustically-matched controls. Mutual information (MI) analysis revealed sensitivity to linguistic content: MI was highest for sentences at the phrasal (0.8-1.1 Hz) and lexical timescale (1.9-2.8 Hz), suggesting that the delta-band is modulated by lexically-driven combinatorial processing beyond prosody, and that linguistic content (i.e., structure and meaning) organizes neural oscillations beyond the timescale and rhythmicity of the stimulus. This pattern is consistent with neurophysiologically inspired models of language comprehension (Martin, 2016, 2020; Martin & Doumas, 2017) where oscillations encode endogenously generated linguistic content over and above exogenous or stimulus-driven timing and rhythm information.

Abstract

Intergroup variation (IGV) refers to variation between different groups of the same species. While its existence in the behavioural realm has been expected and evidenced, the potential effects of IGV are rarely considered in studies that aim to shed light on the evolutionary origins of human socio-cognition, especially in our closest living relatives—the great apes. Here, by taking chimpanzees as a point of reference, we argue that (i) IGV could plausibly explain inconsistent research findings across numerous topics of inquiry (experimental/behavioural studies on chimpanzees), (ii) understanding the evolutionary origins of behaviour requires an accurate assessment of species' modes of behaving across different socio-ecological contexts, which necessitates a reliable estimation of variation across intraspecific groups, and (iii) IGV in the behavioural realm is increasingly likely to be expected owing to the progressive identification of non-human animal cultures. With these points, and by extrapolating from chimpanzees to generic guidelines, we aim to encourage researchers to explicitly consider IGV as an explanatory variable in future studies attempting to understand the socio-cognitive and evolutionary determinants of behaviour in group-living animals.

Abstract

Gesture and speech are assumed to form an integrated system during language production. Based on this view, we propose the integrated‐systems hypothesis, which explains two ways in which gesture and speech are integrated—through mutual and obligatory interactions—in language comprehension. Experiment 1 presented participants with action primes (e.g., someone chopping vegetables) and bimodal speech and gesture targets. Participants related primes to targets more quickly and accurately when they contained congruent information (speech: “chop”; gesture: chop) than when they contained incongruent information (speech: “chop”; gesture: twist). Moreover, the strength of the incongruence affected processing, with fewer errors for weak incongruities (speech: “chop”; gesture: cut) than for strong incongruities (speech: “chop”; gesture: twist). Crucial for the integrated‐systems hypothesis, this influence was bidirectional. Experiment 2 demonstrated that gesture’s influence on speech was obligatory. The results confirm the integrated‐systems hypothesis and demonstrate that gesture and speech form an integrated system in language comprehension.

Abstract

This paper presents a theory of the syntactic aspects of human sentence production. An important characteristic of unprepared speech is that overt pronunciation of a sentence can be initiated before the speaker has completely worked out the meaning content he or she is going to express in that sentence. Apparently, the speaker is able to build up a syntactically coherent utterance out of a series of syntactic fragments each rendering a new part of the meaning content. This incremental, left-to-right mode of sentence production is the central capability of the proposed Incremental Procedural Grammar (IPG). Certain other properties of spontaneous speech, as derivable from speech errors, hesitations, self-repairs, and language pathology, are accounted for as well. The psychological plausibility thus gained by the grammar appears compatible with a satisfactory level of linguistic plausibility in that sentences receive structural descriptions which are in line with current theories of grammar. More importantly, an explanation for the existence of configurational conditions on transformations and other linguistics rules is proposed. The basic design feature of IPG which gives rise to these psychologically and linguistically desirable properties, is the “Procedures + Stack” concept. Sentences are built not by a central constructing agency which overlooks the whole process but by a team of syntactic procedures (modules) which work-in parallel-on small parts of the sentence, have only a limited overview, and whose sole communication channel is a stock. IPG covers object complement constructions, interrogatives, and word order in main and subordinate clauses. It handles unbounded dependencies, cross-serial dependencies and coordination phenomena such as gapping and conjunction reduction. It is also capable of generating self-repairs and elliptical answers to questions. IPG has been implemented as an incremental Dutch sentence generator written in LISP.

Abstract

We report a hitherto unknown statistical relationship between the corpus frequency of finite verbs and their fixed linear positions (early vs. late) in finite clauses of English, Dutch, and German. Compared to the overall frequency distribution of verb lemmas in the corpora, high-frequency finite verbs are overused in main clauses, at the expense of nonfinite verbs. This finite versus nonfinite split of high-frequency verbs is basically absent from subordinate clauses. Furthermore, this “main-clause bias” (MCB) of high-frequency verbs is more prominent in German and Dutch (SOV languages) than in English (an SVO language). We attribute the MCB and its varying effect sizes to faster accessibility of high-frequency finite verbs, which (1) increases the probability for these verbs to land in clauses mandating early verb placement, and (2) boosts the activation of clause plans that assign verbs to early linear positions (in casu: clauses with SVO as opposed to SOV order).

Abstract

This article makes the case for the universality of the sequence organization observable in informal human conversational interaction. Using the descriptive schema developed by Schegloff (2007), we examine the major patterns of action-sequencing in a dozen nearly all unrelated languages. What we find is that these patterns are instantiated in very similar ways for the most part right down to the types of different action sequences. There are also some notably different cultural exploitations of the patterns, but the patterns themselves look strongly universal. Recent work in gestural communication in the great apes suggests that sequence organization may have been a crucial route into the development of language. Taken together with the fundamental role of this organization in language acquisition, sequential behavior of this kind seems to have both phylogenetic and ontogenetic priority, which probably puts substantial functional pressure on language form.

Abstract

Autosomal recessive Stargardt disease (STGD1) is associated with variants in the ABCA4 gene. The phenotypes range from early-onset STGD1, that clinically resembles severe cone-rod dystrophy, to intermediate STGD1 and late-onset STGD1. These different phenotypes can be correlated with different combinations of ABCA4 variants which can be classified according to their degree of severity. A significant fraction of STGD1 cases, particularly late-onset STGD1 cases, were shown to carry only a single ABCA4 variant. A frequent coding variant (p.Asn1868Ile) was recently identified which – in combination with a severe ABCA4 variant – is generally associated with late-onset STGD1. In addition, an increasing number of rare deep-intronic variants have been found and some of these are also associated with late-onset STGD1. The effect of these and other variants on ABCA4 RNA was tested using in vitro assays in human kidney cells using specially designed midigenes. With stem cells and photoreceptor progenitor cells derived from patient skin or blood cells, retina-specific splice defects can be assessed. With expert clinical examination to distinguish STGD1 cases from other maculopathies, as well as in-depth genomics and transcriptomics data, it is now possible to identify both mutant ABCA4 alleles in > 95% of cases.

Abstract

Noncanonical splice-site mutations are an important cause of inherited diseases. Based on in vitro and stem-cell-based studies, some splice-site variants show a stronger splice defect than expected based on their predicted effects, suggesting that other sequence motifs influence the outcome. We investigated whether splice defects due to human-inherited-disease-associated variants in noncanonical splice-site sequences in ABCA4, DMD, and TMC1 could be rescued by strengthening the splice site on the other side of the exon. Noncanonical 5′- and 3′-splice-site variants were selected. Rescue variants were introduced based on an increase in predicted splice-site strength, and the effects of these variants were analyzed using in vitro splice assays in HEK293T cells. Exon skipping due to five variants in noncanonical splice sites of exons in ABCA4, DMD, and TMC1 could be partially or completely rescued by increasing the predicted strengths of the other splice site of the same exon. We named this mechanism “splicing interdependency”, and it is likely based on exon recognition by splicing machinery. Awareness of this interdependency is of importance in the classification of noncanonical splice-site variants associated with disease and may open new opportunities for treatments

Abstract

English speakers have been shown to map abstract concepts in space, which occurs on both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. For example, words such as God are associated with up and right spatial locations, and words such as Satan with down and left. If the tendency to map concepts in space is a universal property of human cognition, then it is likely that such mappings may be at least partly culturally-specific, since many concepts are themselves language-specific and therefore cultural conventions. Here we investigated whether Mandarin speakers report spatial mapping of concepts, and how these mappings compare with English speakers (i.e. are words with the same meaning associated with the same spatial locations). Across two studies, results showed that both native English and Mandarin speakers reported spatial mapping of concepts, and that the distribution of mappings was highly similar for the two groups. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Abstract

Humans vary in almost every dimension imaginable, and language is no
exception. In this article, we review the past research that has focused on
individual differences (IDs) in first language acquisition. We first consider
how different theoretical traditions in language acquisition treat IDs, and
we argue that a focus on IDs is important given its potential to reveal the
developmental dynamics and architectural constraints of the linguistic system.
We then review IDs research that has examined variation in children’s
linguistic input, early speech perception, and vocabulary and grammatical
development. In each case, we observe systematic and meaningful variation,
such that variation in one domain (e.g., early auditory and speech
processing) has meaningful developmental consequences for development
in higher-order domains (e.g., vocabulary). The research suggests a high
degree of integration across the linguistic system, in which development
across multiple linguistic domains is tightly coupled.

Abstract

Statistical learning (SL) has been a prominent focus of research in developmental and adult populations, guided by the assumption that it is a fundamental component of learning underlying higher-order cognition. In developmental populations, however, there have been recent concerns regarding the degree to which many current tasks reliably measure SL, particularly in younger children. In the current article, we present the results of two studies that measured auditory statistical learning (ASL) of linguistic stimuli in children aged 5–8 years. Children listened to 6 min of continuous syllables comprising four trisyllabic pseudowords. Following the familiarization phase, children completed (a) a two-alternative forced-choice task and (b) a serial recall task in which they repeated either target sequences embedded during familiarization or foils, manipulated for sequence length. Results showed that, although both measures consistently revealed learning at the group level, the recall task better captured learning across the full range of abilities and was more reliable at the individual level. We conclude that, as has also been demonstrated in adults, the method holds promise for future studies of individual differences in ASL of linguistic stimuli.

Abstract

Usage-based approaches to language acquisition argue that children acquire the grammar of their target language using general-cognitive learning principles. The current paper reports on an experiment that tested a central assumption of the usage-based approach: argument structure patterns are connected to high frequency verbs that facilitate acquisition. Sixty children (N = 60) aged 4- and 6-years participated in a sentence recall/lexical priming experiment that manipulated the frequency with which the target verbs occurred in the finite sentential complement construction in English. The results showed that the children performed better on sentences that contained high frequency verbs. Furthermore, the children’s performance suggested that their knowledge of finite sentential complements relies most heavily on one particular verb – think, supporting arguments made by Goldberg [Goldberg, A.E., 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford], who argued that skewed input facilitates language learning.

Abstract

Two studies showed that adults who reported having an imaginary companion as a child differed from adults who did not on certain personality dimensions. The first yielded a higher mean on the Gough Creative Personality Scale for the group who had imaginary companions. Study 2 showed that such adults scored higher on the Achievement and Absorption subscales of Tellegen's Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. The results suggest that some differences reported in the developmental literature may be observed in adults

Abstract

This study attempts to reveal the mechanisms behind the online formation of Wh-Filler-Gap Dependencies (WhFGD). Specifically, we aim to uncover the way in which maintenance and retrieval work in WhFGD processing, by paying special attention to the information that is retrieved when the gap is recognized. We use the agreement attraction phenomenon (Wagers, M. W., Lau, E. F., & Phillips, C. (2009). Agreement attraction in comprehension: Representations and processes. Journal of Memory and Language, 61(2), 206-237) as a probe. The first and second experiments examined the type of information that is maintained and how maintenance is motivated, investigating the retrieved information at the gap for reactivated fillers and definite NPs. The third experiment examined the role of the retrieval, comparing reactivated and active fillers. We contend that the information being accessed reflects the extent to which the filler is maintained, where the reader is able to access fine-grained information including category information as well as a representation of both the head and the modifier at the verb.

Abstract

We investigate whether grammatical information is accessed in processing noun phrase ellipsis (NPE) and other anaphoric constructions. The first experiment used an agreement attraction paradigm to reveal that ungrammatical plural verbs following NPE with an antecedent containing a plural modifier (e.g. Derek’s key to the boxes … and Mary’s_ probably *are safe in the drawer) show similar facilitation to non-elided NPs. The second experiment used the same paradigm to examine a coordination construction without anaphoric elements, and the third examined anaphoric one. Agreement attraction was not observed in either experiment, suggesting that processing NPE is different from processing non-anaphoric coordination constructions or anaphoric one. Taken together, the results indicate that the parser is sensitive to grammatical distinctions at the ellipsis site where it prioritises and retrieves the head at the initial stage of processing and retrieves the local noun within the modifier phrase only when it is necessary in parsing NPE.

Abstract

It is well-established that allographs like the uppercase and lowercase forms of the Roman alphabet (e.g., a and A) map onto the same "abstract letter identity," orthographic representations that are independent of the visual form. Consistent with this, in the allograph match task ("Are 'a' and 'A' the same letter?"), priming by a masked letter prime is equally robust for visually dissimilar prime-target pairs (e.g., d and D) and similar pairs (e.g., c and C). However, in principle this pattern of priming is also consistent with the possibility that allograph priming is purely phonological, based on the letter name. Because different allographic forms of the same letter, by definition, share a letter name, it is impossible to rule out this possibility a priori. In the present study, we investigated the influence of shared letter names by taking advantage of the fact that Japanese is written in two distinct writing systems, syllabic kana-that has two parallel forms, hiragana and katakana-and logographic kanji. Using the allograph match task, we tested whether a kanji prime with the same pronunciation as the target kana (e.g., both pronounced /i/) produces the same amount of priming as a kana prime in the opposite kana form (e.g.,). We found that the kana primes produced substantially greater priming than the phonologically identical kanji prime. which we take as evidence that allograph priming is based on abstract kana identity, not purely phonology.

Abstract

The Japanese kana syllabary has 2 allographic forms, hiragana and katakana. As with other allographic variants like the uppercase and lowercase letters of the Roman alphabet, they show robust formindependent priming effects in the allograph match task (e.g., Kinoshita. Schubert. & Verdonschot, 2019). suggesting that they share abstract character-level representations. In direct contradiction, Perea. Nakayama, and Lupker (2017) argued that hiragana and katakana do not share character-level representations. based on their finding of reduced priming with identity prime containing a mix of hiragana and katakana (the mixed-kana prime) relative to the all-katakana identity prime in a lexical-decision task with loanword targets written in katakana. Here we sought to reconcile these seemingly contradictory claims, using mixed-kana. hiragana, and katakana primes in lexical decision. The mixed-kana prime and hiragana prime produced priming effects that are indistinguishable, and both were reduced in size relative to the priming effect produced by the katakana identity prime. Furthermore, this pattern was unchanged when the target was presented in hiragana. The findings are interpreted in terms of the assumption that the katakana format is specified in the orthographic representation of loanwords in Japanese readers. Implications of the account for the universality across writing systems is discussed.

Abstract

In a Turing test, a judge decides whether their conversation partner is either a machine or human. What cues does the judge use to determine this? In particular, are presumably unique features of human language actually perceived as humanlike? Participants rated the humanness of a set of sentences that were manipulated for grammatical construction: linear right-branching or hierarchical center-embedded and their plausibility with regard to world knowledge.

We found that center-embedded sentences are perceived as less humanlike than right-branching sentences and more plausible sentences are regarded as more humanlike. However, the effect of plausibility of the sentence on perceived humanness is smaller for center-embedded sentences than for right-branching sentences.

Participants also rated a conversation with either correct or incorrect use of the context by the agent. No effect of context use was found. Also, participants rated a full transcript of either a real human or a real chatbot, and we found that chatbots were reliably perceived as less humanlike than real humans, in line with our expectation. We did, however, find individual differences between chatbots and humans.