Publications

Abstract

The acquisition of linguistic structures that require perspective-taking at the level of message generation is challenging. We investigate use of progressive aspect in L2 event encoding, using a sentence priming paradigm. We focus on Dutch, in which use of progressive aspect is optional. The progressive consists of a prepositional phrase (‘aan het,’ at-the), plus a verbal infinitive. We ask, to what extent L2 speakers, in comparison to native speakers, show priming effects in relation to form (prepositional phrase) or conceptual (progressive aspect) prime sentences. In native Dutch speakers we find a priming effect for the ‘progressive prime,’ compared to a ‘neutral prime’ (aspectually neutral event description). In L2 speakers this effect was absent. For the form prime, no priming effects were obtained in native speakers, rather, we find evidence for a partial blocking effect in L2 speakers. Results suggest that the strength of the link between concept and form of progressive aspect differs in native and L2 speakers. Specific factors contributed to the L2 findings, e.g., level of L2 proficiency and degree of L2 exposure. We conclude that (1) the conceptual basis of grammatical aspect can be primed in native speakers, and (2) in L2 speakers, access to conceptual information is less automatized.

Abstract

Gricean pragmatics has often been criticised for being implausible from a psychological point of view. This line of criticism is never backed up by empirical evidence, but more importantly, it ignores the fact that Grice never meant to advance a processing theory, in the first place. Taking our lead from Marr (1982), we distinguish between two levels of explanation: at the W-level, we are concerned with what agents do and why; at the H-level, we ask how agents do whatever it is they do. Whereas pragmatics is pitched at the W-level, processing theories are at the H-level. This is not to say that pragmatics has no implications for psychology at all, but it is to say that its implications are less direct than is often supposed.

Abstract

Background

Reading and language skills have overlapping genetic bases, most of which are still unknown. Part of the missing heritability may be caused by copy number variants (CNVs).
Methods

In a dataset of children recruited for a history of reading disability (RD, also known as dyslexia) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their siblings, we investigated the effects of CNVs on reading and language performance. First, we called CNVs with PennCNV using signal intensity data from Illumina OmniExpress arrays (~723,000 probes). Then, we computed the correlation between measures of CNV genomic burden and the first principal component (PC) score derived from several continuous reading and language traits, both before and after adjustment for performance IQ. Finally, we screened the genome, probe-by-probe, for association with the PC scores, through two complementary analyses: we tested a binary CNV state assigned for the location of each probe (i.e., CNV+ or CNV−), and we analyzed continuous probe intensity data using FamCNV.
Results

No significant correlation was found between measures of CNV burden and PC scores, and no genome-wide significant associations were detected in probe-by-probe screening. Nominally significant associations were detected (p~10−2–10−3) within CNTN4 (contactin 4) and CTNNA3 (catenin alpha 3). These genes encode cell adhesion molecules with a likely role in neuronal development, and they have been previously implicated in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. A further, targeted assessment of candidate CNV regions revealed associations with the PC score (p~0.026–0.045) within CHRNA7 (cholinergic nicotinic receptor alpha 7), which encodes a ligand-gated ion channel and has also been implicated in neurodevelopmental conditions and language impairment. FamCNV analysis detected a region of association (p~10−2–10−4) within a frequent deletion ~6 kb downstream of ZNF737 (zinc finger protein 737, uncharacterized protein), which was also observed in the association analysis using CNV calls.
Conclusions

These data suggest that CNVs do not underlie a substantial proportion of variance in reading and language skills. Analysis of additional, larger datasets is warranted to further assess the potential effects that we found and to increase the power to detect CNV effects on reading and language.

Abstract

People often accommodate to each other's speech by aligning their linguistic production with their partner's. According to an influential theory, the Interactive Alignment Model (Pickering & Garrod, 2004), alignment is the result of priming. When people perceive an utterance, the corresponding linguistic representations are primed, and become easier to produce. Here we tested this theory by investigating whether pitch (F0) alignment shows two characteristic signatures of priming: dose dependence and persistence. In a virtual reality experiment, we manipulated the pitch of a virtual interlocutor's speech to find out (a.) whether participants accommodated to the agent's F0, (b.) whether the amount of accommodation increased with increasing exposure to the agent's speech, and (c.) whether changes to participants' F0 persisted beyond the conversation. Participants accommodated to the virtual interlocutor, but accommodation did not increase in strength over the conversation, and it disappeared immediately after the conversation ended. Results argue against a priming-based account of F0 accommodation, and indicate that an alternative mechanism is needed to explain alignment along continuous dimensions of language such as speech rate and pitch.

Abstract

In cochlear implants (CIs), acoustic speech cues, especially for pitch, are delivered in a degraded form. This study's aim is to assess whether due to degraded pitch cues, normal-hearing listeners and CI users employ different perceptual strategies to recognize vocal emotions, and, if so, how these differ. Voice actors were recorded pronouncing a nonce word in four different emotions: anger, sadness, joy, and relief. These recordings' pitch cues were phonetically analyzed. The recordings were used to test 20 normal-hearing listeners' and 20 CI users' emotion recognition. In congruence with previous studies, high-arousal emotions had a higher mean pitch, wider pitch range, and more dominant pitches than low-arousal emotions. Regarding pitch, speakers did not differentiate emotions based on valence but on arousal. Normal-hearing listeners outperformed CI users in emotion recognition, even when presented with CI simulated stimuli. However, only normal-hearing listeners recognized one particular actor's emotions worse than the other actors'. The groups behaved differently when presented with similar input, showing that they had to employ differing strategies. Considering the respective speaker's deviating pronunciation, it appears that for normal-hearing listeners, mean pitch is a more salient cue than pitch range, whereas CI users are biased toward pitch range cues

Abstract

Advances in molecular technologies make it possible to pinpoint genomic factors associated with complex human traits. For cognition and behaviour, identification of underlying genes provides new entry points for deciphering the key neurobiological pathways. In the past decade, the search for genetic correlates of musicality has gained traction. Reports have documented familial clustering for different extremes of ability, including amusia and absolute pitch (AP), with twin studies demonstrating high heritability for some music-related skills, such as pitch perception. Certain chromosomal regions have been linked to AP and musical aptitude, while individual candidate genes have been investigated in relation to aptitude and creativity. Most recently, researchers in this field started performing genome-wide association scans. Thus far, studies have been hampered by relatively small sample sizes and limitations in defining components of musicality, including an emphasis on skills that can only be assessed in trained musicians. With opportunities to administer standardized aptitude tests online, systematic large-scale assessment of musical abilities is now feasible, an important step towards high-powered genome-wide screens. Here, we offer a synthesis of existing literatures and outline concrete suggestions for the development of comprehensive operational tools for the analysis of musical phenotypes.

Abstract

The ability to recognize speech acts (verbal actions) in conversation is critical for everyday interaction. However, utterances are often underspecified for the speech act they perform, requiring listeners to rely on the context to recognize the action. The goal of this study was to investigate the time-course of auditory speech act recognition in action-underspecified utterances and explore how sequential context (the prior action) impacts this process. We hypothesized that speech acts are recognized early in the utterance to allow for quick transitions between turns in conversation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened to spoken dialogues and performed an action categorization task. The dialogues contained target utterances that each of which could deliver three distinct speech acts depending on the prior turn. The targets were identical across conditions, but differed in the type of speech act performed and how it fit into the larger action sequence. The ERP results show an early effect of action type, reflected by frontal positivities as early as 200 ms after target utterance onset. This indicates that speech act recognition begins early in the turn when the utterance has only been partially processed. Providing further support for early speech act recognition, actions in highly constraining contexts did not elicit an ERP effect to the utterance-final word. We take this to show that listeners can recognize the action before the final word through predictions at the speech act level. However, additional processing based on the complete utterance is required in more complex actions, as reflected by a posterior negativity at the final word when the speech act is in a less constraining context and a new action sequence is initiated. These findings demonstrate that sentence comprehension in conversational contexts crucially involves recognition of verbal action which begins as soon as it can.

Abstract

The ability to repair problems with hearing or understanding in conversation is critical for successful communication. This article describes the linguistic practices of other-initiated repair (OIR) in Icelandic through quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of video-recorded conversations. The study draws on the conceptual distinctions developed in the comparative project on repair described in the introduction to this issue. The main aim is to give an overview of the formats for OIR in Icelandic and the type of repair practices engendered by them. The use of repair initiations in social actions not aimed at solving comprehension problems is also briefly discussed. In particular, the interjection ha has a rich usage extending beyond open other-initiation of repair. By describing the linguistic machinery for other-initiated repair in Icelandic, this study contributes to the typology of conversational structure and to the still nascent field of Icelandic social interaction studies.

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) was performed in normal volunteers during a serial recall task under the influence of irrelevant speech comprising both single item repetition and multi-item sequences. An interaction approach was used to identify brain areas specifically related to the irrelevant speech effect. We interpreted activations as compensatory recruitment of complementary working memory processing, and decreased activity in terms of suppression of task relevant areas invoked by the irrelevant speech. The interaction between the distractors and working memory revealed a significant effect in the left, and to a lesser extent in the right, superior temporal region, indicating that initial phonological processing was relatively suppressed. Additional areas of decreased activity were observed in an a priori defined cortical network related to verbalworking memory, incorporating the bilateral superior temporal and inferior/middle frontal corticesn extending into Broca’s area on the left. We also observed a weak activation in the left inferior parietal cortex, a region suggested to reflect the phonological store, the subcomponent where the interference is assumed to take place. The results suggest that the irrelevant speech effect is correlated with and thus tentatively may be explained in terms of a suppression of components of the verbal working memory network as outlined. The results can be interpreted in terms of inhibitory top–down attentional mechanisms attenuating the influence of the irrelevant speech, although additional studies are clearly necessary to more fully characterize the nature of this phenomenon and its theoretical implications for existing short-term memory models

Abstract

Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from accessing spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language develop gesture systems, called homesigns, which have many of the properties of natural language—the so-called resilient properties of language. We explored the resilience of structure built around the predicate—in particular, how manner and path are mapped onto the verb—in homesign systems developed by deaf children in Turkey and the United States. We also asked whether the Turkish homesigners exhibit sentence-level structures previously identified as resilient in American and Chinese homesigners. We found that the Turkish and American deaf children used not only the same production probability and ordering patterns to indicate who does what to whom, but also used the same segmentation and conflation patterns to package manner and path. The gestures that the hearing parents produced did not, for the most part, display the patterns found in the children's gestures. Although cospeech gesture may provide the building blocks for homesign, it does not provide the blueprint for these resilient properties of language.

Abstract

Vocal individuality provides a method of personalization for multiple avian species. However, expression of individual vocal features depends on necessity of recognition. Here we focused on chick vocalizations of demoiselle, Siberian and red-crowned cranes that differ by their body size, developmental rates and some ecological traits. Cranes are territorial during summer, but gather in
large flocks during autumn and winter. Nevertheless, parents keep feeding their chicks, even on winter grounds, despite the potential of confusing their own and alien
chicks. Here we aimed to compare expression of individuality and sex in calls of three crane species between solitary and gregarious periods of a chick’s life, and between species. We found significant individual patterns of
acoustic variables in the calls of all three species both before and after fledging. However, only red-crowned crane chicks increased expression of individuality significantly after the fledging. Also, we found that chicks of all three species significantly increased occurrence of nonlinear phenomena, i.e., irregular oscillations of soundproducing membranes (biphonations, sidebands, and deterministic chaos), in their calls after fledging. Non-linear phenomena can be a way of increasing the potential for
individual recognition as well as avoiding habituation of parents to their chicks’ calls. The older chicks are, the less
their parents feed them, and chicks benefit from keeping the permanent attention.

Abstract

Humans appear to rely on spatial mappings to describe and represent concepts. In particular, conceptual cueing refers to the effect whereby after reading or hearing a particular word, the location of observers’ visual attention in space can be systematically shifted in a particular direction. For example, words such as “sun” and “happy” orient attention upwards, whereas words such as “basement” and “bitter” orient attention downwards. This area of research has garnered much interest, particularly within the embodied cognition framework, for its potential to enhance our understanding of the interaction between abstract cognitive processes such as language and basic visual processes such as attention and stimulus processing. To date, however, this area has relied on subjective classification criteria to determine whether words ought to be classified as having a meaning that implies “up” or “down.” The present study, therefore, provides a set of 498 items that have each been systematically rated by over 90 participants, providing refined, continuous measures of the extent to which people associate given words with particular spatial dimensions. The resulting database provides an objective means to aid item-selection for future research in this area.

Abstract

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is strongly related to literacy gains in developing readers, reading disabilities, and reading ability in children and adults. Because successful RAN performance depends on the close coordination of a number of abilities, it is unclear what specific skills drive this RAN-reading relationship. The current study used concurrent recordings of young adult participants' vocalizations and eye movements during the RAN task to assess how individual variation in RAN performance depends on the coordination of visual and vocal processes. Results showed that fast RAN times are facilitated by having the eyes 1 or more items ahead of the current vocalization, as long as the eyes do not get so far ahead of the voice as to require a regressive eye movement to an earlier item. These data suggest that optimizing RAN performance is a problem of scheduling eye movements and vocalization given memory constraints and the efficiency of encoding and articulatory control. Both RAN completion time (conventionally used to indicate RAN performance) and eye-voice relations predicted some aspects of participants' eye movements on a separate sentence reading task. However, eye-voice relations predicted additional features of first-pass reading that were not predicted by RAN completion time. This shows that measurement of eye-voice patterns can identify important aspects of individual variation in reading that are not identified by the standard measure of RAN performance. We argue that RAN performance predicts reading ability because both tasks entail challenges of scheduling cognitive and linguistic processes that operate simultaneously on multiple linguistic inputs

Abstract

Aims: We aimed to investigate whether bilingual pupil’s perceptions of teachers’ appreciation of their home language were of influence on bilingual cognitive advantages.
Design: We examined whether Dutch bilingual primary school pupils who speak either German or Turkish at home differed in perceptions of their teacher’s appreciation of their HL, and whether these differences could explain differences between the two groups in executive functioning.
Data and analysis: Executive functioning was measured through computer tasks, and perceived home language appreciation through orally administered questionnaires. The relationship between the two was assessed with regression analyses.
Findings: German-Dutch pupils perceived there to be more appreciation of their home language from their teacher than Turkish-Dutch pupils. This difference did partly explain differences in executive functioning. Besides, we replicated bilingual advantages in nonverbal working memory and switching, but not in verbal working memory or inhibition.
Originality and significance: This study demonstrates that bilingual advantages cannot be dissociated from the influence of the sociolinguistic context of the classroom. Thereby, it stresses the importance of culturally responsive teaching.

Abstract

Benefits of being bilingual? The relationship between pupils’ perceptions of
teachers’ appreciation of their home language and executive functioning
We aimed to investigate whether bilingual pupils’ perceptions of their
teachers’ appreciation of their Home Language (HL) were of influence on
bilingual cognitive advantages. We examined whether Dutch bilingual primary
school pupils who speak either German or Turkish at home differed in
perceptions of their teacher’s appreciation of their HL, and whether these
differences could explain differences between the two groups in executive
functioning. Executive functioning was measured through computer tasks,
and perceived HL appreciation through orally administered questionnaires.
The relationship between the two was assessed with regression analyses.
German-Dutch pupils perceived more appreciation of their home language
from their teacher than Turkish-Dutch pupils did. This difference partly
explained differences in executive functioning. Besides, we replicated bilingual
advantages in nonverbal working memory and switching, but not in
verbal working memory or inhibition. This study demonstrates that bilingual
advantages cannot be dissociated from the influence of the sociolinguistic
context of the classroom. Thereby, it stresses the importance of culturally
responsive teaching.

Abstract

Acquiring the sounds of a language involves learning to recognize distributional patterns present in the input. We show that among adult learners, this distributional learning of auditory categories (which are conceived of here as probability density functions in a multidimensional space) is constrained by the salience of the dimensions that form the axes of this perceptual space. Only with a particular ratio of variation in the perceptual dimensions was category learning driven by the distributional properties of the input.

Abstract

The human capacity to acquire sophisticated language is unmatched in the animal kingdom. Despite the discontinuity in communicative abilities between humans and other primates, language is built on ancient genetic foundations, which are being illuminated by comparative genomics. The genetic architecture of the language faculty is also being uncovered by research into neurodevelopmental disorders that disrupt the normally effortless process of language acquisition. In this article, we discuss the strategies that researchers are using to reveal genetic factors contributing to communicative abilities, and review progress in identifying the relevant genes and genetic variants. The first gene directly implicated in a speech and language disorder was FOXP2. Using this gene as a case study, we illustrate how evidence from genetics, molecular cell biology, animal models and human neuroimaging has converged to build a picture of the role of FOXP2 in neurodevelopment, providing a framework for future endeavors to bridge the gaps between genes, brains and behavior

Abstract

Language is a defining characteristic of the human species, but its foundations remain mysterious. Heritable disorders offer a gateway into biological underpinnings, as illustrated by the discovery that FOXP2 disruptions cause a rare form of speech and language impairment. The genetic architecture underlying language-related disorders is complex, and although some progress has been made, it has proved challenging to pinpoint additional relevant genes with confidence. Next-generation sequencing and genome-wide association studies are revolutionizing understanding of the genetic bases of other neurodevelopmental disorders, like autism and schizophrenia, and providing fundamental insights into the molecular networks crucial for typical brain development. We discuss how a similar genomic perspective, brought to the investigation of language-related phenotypes, promises to yield equally informative discoveries. Moreover, we outline how follow-up studies of genetic findings using cellular systems and animal models can help to elucidate the biological mechanisms involved in the development of brain circuits supporting language.

Abstract

Individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk of developing substance use disorders (SUDs) and nicotine dependence. The co-occurrence of ADHD and SUDs/nicotine dependence may in part be mediated by shared genetic liability. Several neurobiological pathways have been implicated in both ADHD and SUDs, including dopamine and serotonin pathways. We hypothesized that variations in dopamine and serotonin neurotransmission genes were involved in the genetic liability to develop SUDs/nicotine dependence in ADHD. The current study included participants with ADHD (n = 280) who were originally part of the Dutch International Multicenter ADHD Genetics study. Participants were aged 5-15 years and attending outpatient clinics at enrollment in the study. Diagnoses of ADHD, SUDs, nicotine dependence, age of first nicotine and substance use, and alcohol use severity were based on semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Genetic risk scores were created for both serotonergic and dopaminergic risk genes previously shown to be associated with ADHD and SUDs and/or nicotine dependence. The serotonin genetic risk score significantly predicted alcohol use severity. No significant serotonin x dopamine risk score or effect of stimulant medication was found. The current study adds to the literature by providing insight into genetic underpinnings of the co-morbidity of ADHD and SUDs. While the focus of the literature so far has been mostly on dopamine, our study suggests that serotonin may also play a role in the relationship between these disorders.

Abstract

When visual stimuli remain present during search, people spend more time fixating objects that are semantically or visually related to the target instruction than fixating unrelated objects. Are these semantic and visual biases also observable when participants search within memory? We removed the visual display prior to search while continuously measuring eye movements towards locations previously occupied by objects. The target absent trials contained objects that were either visually or semantically related to the target instruction. When the overall mean proportion of fixation time was considered, we found biases towards the location previously occupied by the target, but failed to find biases towards visually or semantically related objects. However, in two experiments, the pattern of biases towards the target over time provided a reliable predictor for biases towards the visually and semantically related objects. We therefore conclude that visual and semantic representations alone can guide eye movements in memory search, but that orienting biases are weak when the stimuli are no longer present.

Abstract

An important question is to what extent visual attention is driven by the semantics of individual objects, rather than by their visual appearance. This study investigates the hypothesis that timing is a crucial factor in the occurrence and strength of semantic influences on visual orienting. To assess the dynamics of such influences, the target instruction was presented either before or after visual stimulus onset, while eye movements were continuously recorded throughout the search. The results show a substantial but delayed bias in orienting towards semantically related objects compared to visually related objects when target instruction is presented before visual stimulus onset. However, this delay can be completely undone by presenting the visual information before the target instruction (Experiment 1). Moreover, the absence or presence of visual competition does not change the temporal dynamics of the semantic bias (Experiment 2). Visual orienting is thus driven by priority settings that dynamically shift between visual and semantic representations, with each of these types of bias operating largely independently. The findings bridge the divide between the visual attention and the psycholinguistic literature.

Abstract

Researchers in different fields of psychology have been interested in how vision and language interact, and what type of representations are involved in such interactions. We introduce a stimulus set that facilitates such research (available online). The set consists of 100 words each of which is paired with four pictures of objects: One semantically similar object (but visually dissimilar), one visually similar object (but semantically dissimilar), and two unrelated objects. Visual and semantic similarity ratings between corresponding items are provided for every picture for Dutch and for English. In addition, visual and linguistic parameters of each picture are reported. We thus present a stimulus set from which researchers can select, on the basis of various parameters, the items most optimal for their research question.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether point-accompanying characteristics, like vocalizations and hand shape, differentiate infants' underlying motives of prelinguistic pointing. We elicited imperative (requestive) and declarative (expressive and informative) pointing acts in experimentally controlled situations, and analyzed accompanying characteristics. Experiment 1 revealed that prosodic characteristics of point-accompanying vocalizations distinguished requestive from both expressive and informative pointing acts, with little differences between the latter two. In addition, requestive points were more often realized with the whole hand than the index finger, while this was the opposite for expressive and informative acts. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, revealing distinct prosodic characteristics for requestive pointing also when the referent was distal and when it had an index-finger shape. Findings reveal that beyond the social context, point-accompanying vocalizations give clues to infants' underlying intentions when pointing.

Abstract

The genetic determinants of cerebral asymmetries are unknown. Sex differences in asymmetry of the planum temporale, that overlaps Wernicke’s classical language area, have been inconsistently reported. Meta-analysis of previous studies has suggested that publication bias established this sex difference in the literature. Using probabilistic definitions of cortical regions we screened over the cerebral cortex for sexual dimorphisms of asymmetry in 2337 healthy subjects, and found the planum temporale to show the strongest sex-linked asymmetry of all regions, which was supported by two further datasets, and also by analysis with the Freesurfer package that performs automated parcellation of cerebral cortical regions. We performed a genome-wide association scan meta-analysis of planum temporale asymmetry in a pooled sample of 3095 subjects, followed by a candidate-driven approach which measured a significant enrichment of association in genes of the ´steroid hormone receptor activity´ and 'steroid metabolic process' pathways. Variants in the genes and pathways identified may affect the role of the planum temporale in language cognition.

Abstract

The study of phonetic contrasts and related phenomena, e.g. inter- and intra-speaker variability, often requires to analyse data in the form of measured time series, like f0 contours and formant trajectories. As a consequence, the investigator has to find suitable ways to reduce the raw and abundant numerical information contained in a bundle of time series into a small but sufficient set of numerical descriptors of their shape. This approach requires one to decide in advance which dynamic traits to include in the analysis and which not. For example, a rising pitch gesture may be represented by its duration and slope, hence reducing it to a straight segment, or by a richer coding specifying also whether (and how much) the rising contour is concave or convex, the latter being irrelevant in some context but crucial in others. Decisions become even more complex when a phenomenon is described by a multidimensional time series, e.g. by the first two formants. In this paper we introduce a methodology based on Functional Data Analysis (FDA) that allows the investigator to delegate most of the decisions involved in the quantitative description of multidimensional time series to the data themselves. FDA produces a data-driven parametrisation of the main shape traits present in the data that is visually interpretable, in the same way as slopes or peak heights are. These output parameters are numbers that are amenable to ordinary statistical analysis, e.g. linear (mixed effects) models. FDA is also able to capture correlations among different dimensions of a time series, e.g. between formants F1 and F2. We present FDA by means of an extended case study on diphthong – hiatus distinction in Spanish, a contrast that involves duration, formant trajectories and pitch contours.

Abstract

In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of ‘chance’, ‘coincidence’ or ‘randomness’ that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention to Action, Action to Outcome, and Intention to Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like causality are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action to Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law causality. The data suggests that the concept of ‘chance’ is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group

Abstract

When the dead come home… Remarks on ancestor worship among the Lowland Mayas. In Amerindian ethnographical literature, ancestor worship is often mentioned but evidence of its existence is lacking. This article will try to demonstrate that some Lowland Maya do worship ancestors ; it will use precise criteria taken from ethnological studies of societies where ancestor worship is common, compared to maya beliefs and practices. The All Souls’ Day, or hanal pixan, seems to be the most significant manifestation of this cult. Our approach will be comparative, through time – using colonial and ethnographical data of the twentieth century, and space – contemplating uses and beliefs of two maya groups, the Yucatec and the Lacandon Maya.

Abstract

Studies in relatives have generally yielded high heritability estimates for refractive error: twins 75–90%, families 15–70%. However, because related individuals often share a common environment, these estimates are inflated (via misallocation of unique/common environment variance). We calculated a lower-bound heritability estimate for refractive error free from such bias.
Between the ages 7 and 15 years, participants in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) underwent non-cycloplegic autorefraction at regular research clinics. At each age, an estimate of the variance in refractive error explained by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genetic variants was calculated using genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) using high-density genome-wide SNP genotype information (minimum N at each age=3,404).
The variance in refractive error explained by the SNPs (“SNP heritability”) was stable over childhood: Across age 7–15 years, SNP heritability averaged 0.28 (SE=0.08, p<0.001). The genetic correlation for refractive error between visits varied from 0.77 to 1.00 (all p<0.001) demonstrating that a common set of SNPs was responsible for the genetic contribution to refractive error across this period of childhood. Simulations suggested lack of cycloplegia during autorefraction led to a small underestimation of SNP heritability (adjusted SNP heritability=0.35; SE=0.09). To put these results in context, the variance in refractive error explained (or predicted) by the time participants spent outdoors was <0.005 and by the time spent reading was <0.01, based on a parental questionnaire completed when the child was aged 8–9 years old.
Genetic variation captured by common SNPs explained approximately 35% of the variation in refractive error between unrelated subjects. This value sets an upper limit for predicting refractive error using existing SNP genotyping arrays, although higher-density genotyping in larger samples and inclusion of interaction effects is expected to raise this figure toward twin- and family-based heritability estimates. The same SNPs influenced refractive error across much of childhood. Notwithstanding the strong evidence of association between time outdoors and myopia, and time reading and myopia, less than 1% of the variance in myopia at age 15 was explained by crude measures of these two risk factors, indicating that their effects may be limited, at least when averaged over the whole population.

Abstract

This paper outlines some reasons for why gestures are relevant to the study of SLA. First, given cross-cultural and cross-linguistic gestural repertoires, gestures can be treated as part of what learners can acquire in a target language. Gestures can therefore be studied as a developing system in their own right both in L2 production and comprehension. Second, because of the close link between gestures, language, and speech, learners' gestures as deployed in L2 usage and interaction can offer valuable insights into the processes of acquisition, such as the handling of expressive difficulties, the influence of the first language, interlanguage phenomena, and possibly even into planning and processing difficulties. As a form of input to learners and to their interlocutors alike, finally, gestures also play a potential role for comprehension and learning.

Abstract

This study investigates whether addressees visually attend to speakers’ gestures in interaction and whether attention is modulated by changes in social setting and display size. We compare a live face-to-face setting to two video conditions. In all conditions, the face dominates as a fixation target and only a minority of gestures draw fixations. The social and size parameters affect gaze mainly when combined and in the opposite direction from the predicted with fewer gestures fixated on video than live. Gestural holds and speakers’ gaze at their own gestures reliably attract addressees’ fixations in all conditions. The attraction force of holds is unaffected by changes in social and size parameters, suggesting a bottom-up response, whereas speaker-fixated gestures draw significantly less attention in both video conditions, suggesting a social effect for overt gaze-following and visual joint attention. The study provides and validates a video-based paradigm enabling further experimental but ecologically valid explorations of cross-modal information processing.

Abstract

The production of cohesive discourse, especially maintained reference, poses problems for early second language (L2) speakers. This paper considers a communicative account of overexplicit L2 discourse by focusing on the interdependence between spoken and gestural cohesion, the latter being expressed by anchoring of referents in gesture space. Specifically, this study investigates whether overexplicit maintained reference in speech (lexical noun phrases [NPs]) and gesture (anaphoric gestures) constitutes an interactional communication strategy. We examine L2 speech and gestures of 16 Dutch learners of French retelling stories to addressees under two visibility conditions. The results indicate that the overexplicit properties of L2 speech are not motivated by interactional strategic concerns. The results for anaphoric gestures are more complex. Although their presence is not interactionally

Abstract

Analyses of gray matter concentration (GMC) deficits in patients with schizophrenia (Sz) have identified robust changes throughout the cortex. We assessed the relationships between diagnosis, overall symptom severity, and patterns of gray matter in the largest aggregated structural imaging dataset to date. We performed both source-based morphometry (SBM) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analyses on GMC images from 784 Sz and 936 controls (Ct) across 23 scanning sites in Europe and the United States. After correcting for age, gender, site, and diagnosis by site interactions, SBM analyses showed 9 patterns of diagnostic differences. They comprised separate cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions. Seven patterns showed greater GMC in Ct than Sz, while 2 (brainstem and cerebellum) showed greater GMC for Sz. The greatest GMC deficit was in a single pattern comprising regions in the superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and medial frontal cortex, which replicated over analyses of data subsets. VBM analyses identified overall cortical GMC loss and one small cluster of increased GMC in Sz, which overlapped with the SBM brainstem component. We found no significant association between the component loadings and symptom severity in either analysis. This mega-analysis confirms that the commonly found GMC loss in Sz in the anterior temporal lobe, insula, and medial frontal lobe form a single, consistent spatial pattern even in such a diverse dataset. The separation of GMC loss into robust, repeatable spatial patterns across multiple datasets paves the way for the application of these methods to identify subtle genetic and clinical cohort effects.

Abstract

In two studies subjects were required to read Dutch sentences that in some cases contained a syntactic violation, in other cases a semantic violation. All syntactic violations were word category violations. The design excluded differential contributions of expectancy to influence the syntactic violation effects. The syntactic violations elicited an Anterior Negativity between 300 and 500 ms. This negativity was bilateral and had a frontal distribution. Over posterior sites the same violations elicited a P600/SPS starting at about 600 ms. The semantic violations elicited an N400 effect. The topographic distribution of the AN was more frontal than the distribution of the classical N400 effect, indicating that the underlying generators of the AN and the N400 are, at least to a certain extent, non-overlapping. Experiment 2 partly replicated the design of Experiment 1, but with differences in rate of presentation and in the distribution of items over subjects, and without semantic violations. The word category violations resulted in the same effects as were observed in Experiment 1, showing that they were independent of some of the specific parameters of Experiment 1. The discussion presents a tentative account of the functional differences in the triggering conditions of the AN and the P600/SPS.

Abstract

To understand spoken language requires that the brain provides rapid access to different kinds of knowledge, including the sounds and meanings of words, and syntax. Syntax specifies constraints on combining words in a grammatically well formed manner. Agrammatic patients are deficient in their ability to use these constraints, due to a lesion in the perisylvian area of the languagedominant hemisphere. We report a study on real-time auditory sentence processing in agrammatic comprehenders, examining
their ability to accommodate damage to the language system. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in agrammatic comprehenders, nonagrammatic aphasics, and age-matched controls. When listening to sentences with grammatical violations, the agrammatic aphasics did not show the same syntax-related ERP effect as the two other subject groups. Instead, the waveforms of the agrammatic aphasics were dominated by a meaning-related ERP effect, presumably reflecting their attempts to achieve understanding by the use of semantic constraints. These data demonstrate that although agrammatic aphasics are impaired in their ability to exploit syntactic information in real time, they can reduce the consequences of a syntactic deficit by exploiting a semantic route. They thus provide evidence for the compensation of a syntactic deficit by a stronger reliance on another route in mapping
sound onto meaning. This is a form of plasticity that we refer to as multiple-route plasticity.

Abstract

Syntax is one of the components in the architecture of language processing that allows the listener/reader to bind single-word information into a unified interpretation of multiword utterances. This paper discusses ERP effects that have been observed in relation to syntactic processing. The fact that these effects differ from the semantic N400 indicates that the brain honors the distinction between semantic and syntactic binding operations. Two models of syntactic processing attempt to account for syntax-related ERP effects. One type of model is serial, with a first phase that is purely syntactic in nature (syntax-first model). The other type of model is parallel and assumes that information immediately guides the interpretation process once it becomes available. This is referred to as the immediacy model. ERP evidence is presented in support of the latter model. Next, an explicit computational model is proposed to explain the ERP data. This Unification Model assumes that syntactic frames are stored in memory and retrieved on the basis of the spoken or written word form input. The syntactic frames associated with the individual lexical items are unified by a dynamic binding process into a structural representation that spans the whole utterance. On the basis of a meta-analysis of imaging studies on syntax, it is argued that the left posterior inferior frontal cortex is involved in binding syntactic frames together, whereas the left superior temporal cortex is involved in retrieval of the syntactic frames stored in memory. Lesion data that support the involvement of this left frontotemporal network in syntactic processing are discussed.

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of combined semantic and syntactic violations in relation to the effects of single semantic and single syntactic violations on language-related event-related brain potential (ERP) effects (N400 and P600/ SPS). Syntactic violations consisted of a mismatch in grammatical gender or number features of the definite article and the noun in sentence-internal or sentence-final noun phrases (NPs). Semantic violations consisted of semantically implausible adjective–noun combinations in the same NPs. Combined syntactic and semantic violations were a summation of these two respective violation types. ERPs were recorded while subjects read the sentences with the different types of violations and the correct control sentences. ERP effects were computed relative to ERPs elicited by the sentence-internal or sentence-final nouns. The size of the N400 effect to the semantic violation was increased by an additional syntactic violation (the syntactic boost). In contrast, the size of the P600/ SPS to the syntactic violation was not affected by an additional semantic violation. This suggests that in the absence of syntactic ambiguity, the assignment of syntactic structure is independent of semantic context. However, semantic integration is influenced by syntactic processing. In the sentence-final position, additional global processing consequences were obtained as a result of earlier violations in the sentence. The resulting increase in the N400 amplitude to sentence-final words was independent of the nature of the violation. A speeded anomaly detection task revealed that it takes substantially longer to detect semantic than syntactic anomalies. These results are discussed in relation to the latency and processing characteristics of the N400 and P600/SPS effects. Overall, the results reveal an asymmetry in the interplay between syntax and semantics during on-line sentence comprehension.

Abstract

In a study by Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987), normal control subjects and Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics performed a lexical decision task on the third element of auditorily presented triplets of words with either a word or a nonword as target. In three of the four types of word triplets, the first and the third words were related to one or both meanings of the second word, which was semantically ambiguous. The fourth type of word triplet consisted of three unrelated, unambiguous words, functioning as baseline. Milberg et al. (1987) claim that the results for their control subjects are similar to those reported by Schvaneveldt, Meyer, and Becker's original study (1976) with the same prime types, and so interpret these as evidence for a selective lexical access of the different meanings of ambiguous words. It is argued here that Milberg et al. only partially replicate the Schvaneveldt et al. results. Moreover, the results of Milberg et al. are not fully in line with the selective access hypothesis adopted. Replication of the Milberg et al. (1987) study with Dutch materials, using both a design without and a design with repetition of the same target words for the same subjects led to the original pattern as reported by Schvaneveldt et al. (1976). In the design with four separate presentations of the same target word, a strong repetition effect was found. It is therefore argued that the discrepancy between the Milberg et al. results on the one hand, and the Schvaneveldt et al. results on the other, might be due to the absence of a control for repetition effects in the within-subject design used by Milberg et al. It is concluded that this makes the results for both normal and aphasic subjects in the latter study difficult to interpret in terms of a selective access model for normal processing.

Abstract

We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More specifically, we examine whether increases in theta (≈3–7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically incongruent word (semantic violation). ERP results indicated a classical N400 effect. A wavelet-based time-frequency analysis revealed a theta band power increase during an interval of 300–800 ms after critical word onset, at temporal electrodes bilaterally for both sentence conditions, and over midfrontal areas for the semantic violations only. In the gamma frequency band, a predominantly frontal power increase was observed during the processing of correct sentences. This effect was absent following semantic violations. These results provide a characterization of the oscillatory brain dynamics, and notably of both theta and gamma oscillations, that occur during language comprehension.

Abstract

All natural languages develop devices to communicate who did what to whom. Elicited pantomime provides one model for studying this process, by providing a window into how humans (hearing non-signers) behave in a natural communicative modality (silent gesture) without established conventions from a grammar. Most studies in this paradigm focus on production, although they sometimes make assumptions about how comprehenders would likely behave. Here, we directly assess how naïve speakers of English (Experiments 1 & 2), Korean (Experiment 1), and Turkish (Experiment 2) comprehend pantomimed descriptions of transitive events, which are either semantically reversible (Experiments 1 & 2) or not (Experiment 2). Contrary to previous assumptions, we find no evidence that Person-Person-Action sequences are ambiguous to comprehenders, who simply adopt an agent-first parsing heuristic for all constituent orders. We do find that Person-Action-Person sequences yield the most consistent interpretations, even in native speakers of SOV languages. The full range of behavior in both production and comprehension provides counter-evidence to the notion that producers’ utterances are motivated by the needs of comprehenders. Instead, we argue that production and comprehension are subject to different sets of cognitive pressures, and that the dynamic interaction between these competing pressures can help explain synchronic and diachronic constituent order phenomena in natural human languages, both signed and spoken.

Abstract

What would your ideas about language evolution be if there was only one language left on earth? Fortunately, our investigation need not be that impoverished. In the present article, we survey the state of knowledge regarding the kinds of language found among humans, the language inventory, population sizes, time depth, grammatical variation, and other relevant issues that a theory of language evolution should minimally take into account

Abstract

Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com) is the most widely consulted inventory of the world’slanguages used today. The present review article looks carefully at the goals and description of the content of the Ethnologue’s 16th, 17th, and 18th editions, and reports on a comprehensive survey of the accuracy of the inventory itself. While hundreds of spurious and missing languages can be documented for Ethnologue, it is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope, in all aspects but one. Ethnologue fails to disclose the sources for the information presented, at odds with well-established scientific principles. The classification of languages into families in Ethnologue is also evaluated, and found to be far off from that argued in the specialist literature on the classification of individual languages. Ethnologue is frequently held to be splitting: that is, it tends to recognize more languages than an application of the criterion of mutual intelligibility would yield. By means of a random sample, we find that, indeed, with confidence intervals, the number of mutually unintelligible languages is on average 85% of the number found in Ethnologue. © 2015, Linguistic Society of America. All rights reserved.

Abstract

This paper investigates whether individual speakers forming a homogeneous group differ in their choice and pronunciation of words when engaged in casual conversation, and if so, how they differ. More specifically, it examines whether the Balanced Winnow classifier is able to distinguish between the twenty speakers of the Ernestus Corpus of Spontaneous Dutch, who all have the same social background. To examine differences in choice and pronunciation of words, instead of characteristics of the speech signal itself, classification was based on lexical and pronunciation features extracted from hand-made orthographic and automatically generated broad phonetic transcriptions. The lexical features consisted of words and two-word combinations. The pronunciation features represented pronunciation variations at the word and phone level that are typical for casual speech. The best classifier achieved a performance of 79.9% and was based on the lexical features and on the pronunciation features representing single phones and triphones. The speakers must thus differ from each other in these features. Inspection of the relevant features indicated that, among other things, the words relevant for classification generally do not contain much semantic content, and that speakers differ not only from each other in the use of these words but also in their pronunciation.

Abstract

Treatment with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) has been associated with an increased risk of preterm birth, but causality remains unclear. While placental CRH production is correlated with gestational length and preterm birth, it has been difficult to establish if psychological stress or mental health problems are associated with increased CRH levels. This study compared second trimester CRH serum concentrations in pregnant women on SSRI treatment (n=207) with untreated depressed women (n=56) and controls (n=609). A secondary aim was to investigate the combined effect of SSRI treatment and CRH levels on gestational length and risk for preterm birth. Women on SSRI treatment had significantly higher second trimester CRH levels than controls, and untreated depressed women. CRH levels and SSRI treatment were independently associated with shorter gestational length. The combined effect of SSRI treatment and high CRH levels yielded the highest risk estimate for preterm birth. SSRI treatment during pregnancy is associated with increased CRH levels. However, the elevated risk for preterm birth in SSRI users appear not to be mediated by increased placental CRH production, instead CRH appear as an independent risk factor for shorter gestational length and preterm birth.

Abstract

Introduction: Navigation is a fundamental and multidimensional cognitive function that individuals rely on to move around the environment. In this study, we investigated the neural basis of human spatial navigation ability. Methods: A large cohort of participants (N > 200) was examined on their navigation ability behaviorally and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were then used to explore the corresponding neural basis of spatial navigation. Results: The gray matter volume (GMV) of the bilateral parahippocampus (PHG), retrosplenial complex (RSC), entorhinal cortex (EC), hippocampus (HPC), and thalamus (THAL) was correlated with the participants’ self-reported navigational ability in general, and their sense of direction in particular. Further fMRI studies showed that the PHG, RSC, and EC selectively responded to visually presented scenes, whereas the HPC and THAL showed no selectivity, suggesting a functional division of labor among these regions in spatial navigation. The resting-state functional connectivity analysis further revealed a hierarchical neural network for navigation constituted by these regions, which can be further categorized into three relatively independent components (i.e., scene recognition component, cognitive map component, and the component of heading direction for locomotion, respectively). Conclusions: Our study combined multi-modality imaging data to illustrate that multiple brain regions may work collaboratively to extract, integrate, store, and orientate spatial information to guide navigation behaviors.

Abstract

Many current sentence generators lack the ability to compute elliptical versions of coordinated clauses in accordance with the rules for Gapping, Forward and Backward Conjunction Reduction, and SGF (Subject Gap in clauses with Finite/ Fronted verb). We describe a module (implemented in JAVA, with German and Dutch as target languages) that takes non-elliptical coordinated clauses as input and returns all reduced versions licensed by coordinative ellipsis. It is loosely based on a new psycholinguistic theory of coordinative ellipsis proposed by Kempen. In this theory, coordinative ellipsis is not supposed to result from the application of declarative grammar rules for clause formation but from a procedural component that interacts with the sentence generator and may block the overt expression of certain constituents.

Abstract

We describe a generation-oriented workbench for the Performance Grammar (PG) formalism, highlighting the treatment of certain word order and movement constraints in Dutch and German. PG enables a simple and uniform treatment of a heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in the domain of verb constructions (variably known as Cross-serial Dependencies, Verb Raising, Clause Union, Extraposition, Third Construction, Particle Hopping, etc.). The central data structures enabling this feature are clausal “topologies”: one-dimensional arrays associated with clauses, whose cells (“slots”) provide landing sites for the constituents of the clause. Movement operations are enabled by unification of lateral slots of topologies at adjacent levels of the clause hierarchy. The PGW generator assists the grammar developer in testing whether the implemented syntactic knowledge allows all and only the well-formed permutations of constituents.

Abstract

The epileptic encephalopathies are a clinically and aetiologically heterogeneous subgroup of epilepsy syndromes. Most epileptic encephalopathies have a genetic cause and patients are often found to carry a heterozygous de novo mutation in one of the genes associated with the disease entity. Occasionally recessive mutations are identified: a recent publication described a distinct neonatal epileptic encephalopathy (MIM 615905) caused by autosomal recessive mutations in the SLC13A5 gene. Here, we report eight additional patients belonging to four different families with autosomal recessive mutations in SLC13A5. SLC13A5 encodes a high affinity sodium-dependent citrate transporter, which is expressed in the brain. Neurons are considered incapable of de novo synthesis of tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates; therefore they rely on the uptake of intermediates, such as citrate, to maintain their energy status and neurotransmitter production. The effect of all seven identified mutations (two premature stops and five amino acid substitutions) was studied in vitro, using immunocytochemistry, selective western blot and mass spectrometry. We hereby demonstrate that cells expressing mutant sodium-dependent citrate transporter have a complete loss of citrate uptake due to various cellular loss-of-function mechanisms. In addition, we provide independent proof of the involvement of autosomal recessive SLC13A5 mutations in the development of neonatal epileptic encephalopathies, and highlight teeth hypoplasia as a possible indicator for SLC13A5 screening. All three patients who tried the ketogenic diet responded well to this treatment, and future studies will allow us to ascertain whether this is a recurrent feature in this severe disorder.

Abstract

Faced with planning problems related to lexical access, speakers take advantage of a major function of disfluencies: buying time. It is reasonable, then, to expect that the structure of disfluencies sheds light on the mechanisms underlying lexical access. Using data from the Switchboard Corpus, we investigated the effect of semantic competition during lexical access on repetition disfluencies. We hypothesized that the more time the speaker needs to access the following unit, the longer the repetition. We examined the repetitions preceding verbs and nouns and tested predictors influencing the accessibility of these items. Results suggest that speed of lexical access negatively correlates with the length of repetition and that the main determinants of lexical access speed differ for verbs and nouns. Longer disfluencies before verbs appear to be due to significant paradigmatic competition from semantically similar verbs. For nouns, they occur when the noun is relatively unpredictable given the preceding context.

Abstract

Several studies examined cue competition in human learning by testing learners on a combination of conflicting cues rooting for different outcomes, with each cue perfectly predicting its outcome. A common result has been that learners faced with cue conflict choose the outcome associated with the rare cue (the Inverse Base Rate Effect, IBRE). Here, we investigate cue competition including IBRE with sentences containing cues to meanings in a visual world. We do not observe IBRE. Instead we find that position in the sentence strongly influences cue salience. Faced with conflict between an initial cue and a non-initial cue, learners choose the outcome associated with the initial cue, whether frequent or rare. However, a frequent configuration of non-initial cues that are not sufficiently salient on their own can overcome a competing salient initial cue rooting for a different meaning. This provides a possible explanation for certain recurring patterns in language change.

Abstract

Personal pronouns have been shown to influence cognitive perspective taking during comprehension. Studies using single sentences found that 3rd person pronouns facilitate the construction of a mental model from an observer’s perspective, whereas 2nd person pronouns support an actor’s perspective. The direction of the effect for 1st person pronouns seems to depend on the situational context. In the present study, we investigated how personal pronouns influence discourse comprehension when people read fiction stories and if this has consequences for affective components like emotion during reading or appreciation of the story. We wanted to find out if personal pronouns affect immersion and arousal, as well as appreciation of fiction. In a natural reading paradigm, we measured electrodermal activity and story immersion, while participants read literary stories with 1st and 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist. In addition, participants rated and ranked the stories for appreciation. Our results show that stories with 1st person pronouns lead to higher immersion. Two factors—transportation into the story world and mental imagery during reading—in particular showed higher scores for 1st person as compared to 3rd person pronoun stories. In contrast, arousal as measured by electrodermal activity seemed tentatively higher for 3rd person pronoun stories. The two measures of appreciation were not affected by the pronoun manipulation. Our findings underscore the importance of perspective for language processing, and additionally show which aspects of the narrative experience are influenced by a change in perspective.

Abstract

Comparatively little is known about the inherited primate background underlying human cognition, the human cognitive “wild-type.” Yet it is possible to trace the evolution of human cognitive abilities and tendencies by contrasting the skills of our nearest cousins, not just chimpanzees, but all the extant great apes, thus showing what we are likely to have inherited from the common ancestor [1]. By looking at human infants early in cognitive development, we can also obtain insights into native cognitive biases in our species [2]. Here, we focus on spatial memory, a central cognitive domain. We show, first, that all nonhuman great apes and 1-year-old human infants exhibit a preference for place over feature strategies for spatial memory. This suggests the common ancestor of all great apes had the same preference. We then examine 3-year-old human children and find that this preference reverses. Thus, the continuity between our species and the other great apes is masked early in human ontogeny. These findings, based on both phylogenetic and ontogenetic contrasts, open up the prospect of a systematic evolutionary psychology resting upon the cladistics of cognitive preferences.

Abstract

Current approaches to human cognition often take a strong nativist stance based on Western adult performance, backed up where possible by neonate and infant research and almost never by comparative research across the Hominidae. Recent research suggests considerable cross-cultural differences in cognitive strategies, including relational thinking, a domain where infant research is impossible because of lack of cognitive maturation. Here, we apply the same paradigm across children and adults of different cultures and across all nonhuman great ape genera. We find that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies with language and culture but that, nevertheless, there is a clear inherited bias for one spatial strategy in the great apes. It is reasonable to conclude, we argue, that language and culture mask the native tendencies in our species. This cladistic approach suggests that the correct perspective on human cognition is neither nativist uniformitarian nor ‘‘blank slate’’ but recognizes the powerful impact that language and culture can have on our shared primate cognitive biases.

Abstract

In the present electroencephalographical study, we asked to which extent executive control processes are shared by both the language and motor domain. The rationale was to examine whether executive control processes whose efficiency is reinforced by the frequent use of a second language can lead to a benefit in the control of eye movements, i.e. a non-linguistic activity. For this purpose, we administrated to 19 highly proficient late French-German bilingual participants and to a control group of 20 French monolingual participants an antisaccade task, i.e. a specific motor task involving control. In this task, an automatic saccade has to be suppressed while a voluntary eye movement in the opposite direction has to be carried out. Here, our main hypothesis is that an advantage in the antisaccade task should be observed in the bilinguals if some properties of the control processes are shared between linguistic and motor domains. ERP data revealed clear differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. Critically, we showed an increased N2 effect size in bilinguals, thought to reflect better efficiency to monitor conflict, combined with reduced effect sizes on markers reflecting inhibitory control, i.e. cue-locked positivity, the target-locked P3 and the saccade-locked presaccadic positivity (PSP). Moreover, effective connectivity analyses (dynamic causal modelling; DCM) on the neuronal source level indicated that bilinguals rely more strongly on ACC-driven control while monolinguals rely on PFC-driven control. Taken together, our combined ERP and effective connectivity findings may reflect a dynamic interplay between strengthened conflict monitoring, associated with subsequently more efficient inhibition in bilinguals. Finally, L2 proficiency and immersion experience constitute relevant factors of the language background that predict efficiency of inhibition. To conclude, the present study provided ERP and effective connectivity evidence for domain-general executive control involvement in handling multiple language use, leading to a control advantage in bilingualism.

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine the impact of bilingualism on the neuronal activity in different executive control processes namely conflict monitoring, control implementation (i.e., interference suppression and conflict resolution) and overcoming of inhibition. Twenty-two highly proficient but non-balanced successive French–German bilingual adults and 22 monolingual adults performed a combined Stroop/Negative priming task while event-related potential (ERP) were recorded online. The data revealed that the ERP effects were reduced in bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals but only in the Stroop task and limited to the N400 and the sustained fronto-central negative-going potential time windows. This result suggests that bilingualism may impact the process of control implementation rather than the process of conflict monitoring (N200). Critically, our study revealed a differential time course of the involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conflict processing. While the ACC showed major activation in the early time windows (N200 and N400) but not in the latest time window (late sustained negative-going potential), the PFC became unilaterally active in the left hemisphere in the N400 and the late sustained negative-going potential time windows. Taken together, the present electroencephalography data lend support to a cascading neurophysiological model of executive control processes, in which ACC and PFC may play a determining role.

Abstract

Interrogative structures such as ‘Could you pass the salt? and ‘Couldn’t you pass the salt?’ can be used for making requests. A study of such pairs within a conversation analytic framework suggests that these are not used interchangeably, and that they have different impacts on the interaction. Focusing on Danish interactions between elderly care recipients and their home help assistants, I demonstrate how the care recipient displays different degrees of stance towards whether she is entitled to make a request or not, depending on whether she formats her request as a positive or a negative interrogative. With a positive interrogative request, the care recipient orients to her request as one she is not entitled to make. This is underscored by other features, such as the use of mitigating devices and the choice of verb. When accounting for this type of request, the care recipient ties the request to the specific situation she is in, at the moment in which the request is produced. In turn, the home help assistant orients to the lack of entitlement by resisting the request. With a negative interrogative request, the care recipient, in contrast, orients to her request as one she is entitled to make. This is strengthened by the choice of verb and the lack of mitigating devices. When such requests are accounted for, the requested task is treated as something that should be routinely performed, and hence as something the home help assistant has neglected to do. In turn, the home help assistant orients to the display of entitlement by treating the request as unproblematic, and by complying with it immediately.

Abstract

We automatically predict properties of
wines on the basis of smell and flavor de-
scriptions from experts’ wine reviews. We
show wine experts are capable of describ-
ing their smell and flavor experiences in
wine reviews in a sufficiently consistent
manner, such that we can use their descrip-
tions to predict properties of a wine based
solely on language. The experimental re-
sults show promising F-scores when using
lexical and semantic information to predict
the color, grape variety, country of origin,
and price of a wine. This demonstrates,
contrary to popular opinion, that wine ex-
perts’ reviews really are informative.

Abstract

Longitudinally collected VOT data from an early English-Italian bilingual who became increasingly English-dominant was analyzed. Stops in English were always produced with significantly longer VOT than in Italian. However, the speaker did not show any significant change in the VOT production in either language over time, despite the clear dominance of English in his every day language use later in his life. The results indicate that – unlike L2 learners – early bilinguals may remain unaffected by language use with respect to phonetic realization.

Abstract

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to longitudinally examine brain plasticity arising from long-term, intensive simultaneous interpretation training. Simultaneous interpretation is a bilingual task with heavy executive control demands. We compared brain responses observed during simultaneous interpretation with those observed during simultaneous speech repetition (shadowing) in a group of trainee simultaneous interpreters, at the beginning and at the end of their professional training program. Age, sex and language-proficiency matched controls were scanned at similar intervals. Using multivariate pattern classification, we found distributed patterns of changes in functional responses from the first to second scan that distinguished the interpreters from the controls. We also found reduced recruitment of the right caudate nucleus during simultaneous interpretation as a result of training. Such practice-related change is consistent with decreased demands on multilingual language control as the task becomes more automatized with practice. These results demonstrate the impact of simultaneous interpretation training on the brain functional response in a cerebral structure that is not specifically linguistic, but that is known to be involved in learning, in motor control, and in a variety of domain-general executive functions. Along with results of recent studies showing functional and structural adaptations in the caudate nuclei of experts in a broad range of domains, our results underline the importance of this structure as a central node in expertise-related networks. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Abstract

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural basis of extreme multilingual language control in a group of 50 multilingual participants. Comparing brain responses arising during simultaneous interpretation (SI) with those arising during simultaneous repetition revealed activation of regions known to be involved in speech perception and production, alongside a network incorporating the caudate nucleus that is known to be implicated in domain-general cognitive control. The similarity between the networks underlying bilingual language control and general executive control supports the notion that the frequently reported bilingual advantage on executive tasks stems from the day-to-day demands of language control in the multilingual brain. We examined neural correlates of the management of simultaneity by correlating brain activity during interpretation with the duration of simultaneous speaking and hearing. This analysis showed significant modulation of the putamen by the duration of simultaneity. Our findings suggest that, during SI, the caudate nucleus is implicated in the overarching selection and control of the lexico-semantic system, while the putamen is implicated in ongoing control of language output. These findings provide the first clear dissociation of specific dorsal striatum structures in polyglot language control, roles that are consistent with previously described involvement of these regions in nonlinguistic executive control.

Abstract

Fast and automatic behavioral responses are required to avoid collision with an approaching stimulus. Accordingly, looming stimuli have been found to be highly salient and efficient attractors of attention due to the implication of potential collision and potential threat. Here, we address the question of whether looming motion is processed in the absence of any functional primary visual cortex and consequently without awareness. For this, we investigated a patient (TN) suffering from complete, bilateral damage to his primary visual cortex. Using an fMRI paradigm, we measured TN's brain activation during the presentation of looming, receding, rotating, and static point lights, of which he was unaware. When contrasted with other conditions, looming was found to produce bilateral activation of the middle temporal areas, as well as the superior temporal sulcus and inferior parietal lobe (IPL). The latter are generally thought to be involved in multisensory processing of motion in extrapersonal space, as well as attentional capture and saliency. No activity was found close to the lesioned V1 area. This demonstrates that looming motion is processed in the absence of awareness through direct subcortical projections to areas involved in multisensory processing of motion and saliency that bypass V-1.

Abstract

The highly complex structure of the human brain is strongly shaped by genetic influences. Subcortical brain regions form circuits with cortical areas to coordinate movement, learning, memory and motivation, and altered circuits can lead to abnormal behaviour and disease. To investigate how common genetic variants affect the structure of these brain regions, here we conduct genome-wide association studies of the volumes of seven subcortical regions and the intracranial volume derived from magnetic resonance images of 30,717 individuals from 50 cohorts. We identify five novel genetic variants influencing the volumes of the putamen and caudate nucleus. We also find stronger evidence for three loci with previously established influences on hippocampal volume and intracranial volume. These variants show specific volumetric effects on brain structures rather than global effects across structures. The strongest effects were found for the putamen, where a novel intergenic locus with replicable influence on volume (rs945270; P = 1.08 × 10-33; 0.52% variance explained) showed evidence of altering the expression of the KTN1 gene in both brain and blood tissue. Variants influencing putamen volume clustered near developmental genes that regulate apoptosis, axon guidance and vesicle transport. Identification of these genetic variants provides insight into the causes of variability in human brain development, and may help to determine mechanisms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction

Abstract

To accomplish a smooth transition in conversation from one speaker to the next, a tight coordination of interaction between speakers is required. Recent studies of adult conversation suggest that this close timing of interaction may well be a universal feature of conversation. In the present paper, we set out to assess the development of this close timing of turns in infancy in vocal exchanges between mothers and infants. Previous research has demonstrated an early sensitivity to timing in interactions (e.g. Murray & Trevarthen, 1985). In contrast, less is known about infants’ abilities to produce turns in a timely manner and existing findings are rather patchy. We conducted a longitudinal study of twelve mother-infant dyads in free-play interactions at the ages of 3, 4, 5, 9, 12 and 18 months. Based on existing work and the predictions made by the Interaction Engine Hypothesis (Levinson, 2006), we expected that infants would begin to develop the temporal properties of turn-taking early in infancy but that their timing of turns would slow down at 12 months, which is around the time when infants start to produce their first words. Findings were consistent with our predictions: Infants were relatively fast at timing their turn early in infancy but slowed down towards the end of the first year. Furthermore, the changes observed in infants’ turn-timing skills were not caused by changes in maternal timing, which remained stable across the 3-18 month period. However, the slowing down of turn-timing started somewhat earlier than predicted: at 9 months.

Abstract

Many studies have shown that a supportive context facilitates language comprehension. A currently influential view is that language production may support prediction in language comprehension. Experimental evidence for this, however, is relatively sparse. Here we explored whether encouraging prediction in a language production task encourages the use of predictive contexts in an interleaved comprehension task. In Experiment 1a, participants listened to the first part of a sentence and provided the final word by naming aloud a picture. The picture name was predictable or not predictable from the sentence context. Pictures were named faster when they could be predicted than when this was not the case. In Experiment 1b the same sentences, augmented by a final spill-over region, were presented in a self-paced reading task. No difference in reading times for predictive vs. non-predictive sentences was found. In Experiment 2, reading and naming trials were intermixed. In the naming task, the advantage for predictable picture names was replicated. More importantly, now reading times for the spill-over region were considerable faster for predictive vs. non-predictive sentences. We conjecture that these findings fit best with the notion that prediction in the service of language production encourages the use of predictive contexts in comprehension. Further research is required to identify the exact mechanisms by which production exerts its influence on comprehension.

Abstract

During spoken-word recognition, listeners experience phonological competition between multiple word candidates, which increases, relative to optimal listening conditions, when speech is masked by noise. Moreover, listeners activate semantic word knowledge during the word’s unfolding. Here, we replicated the effect of background noise on phonological competition and investigated to which extent noise affects the activation of semantic information in phonological competitors. Participants’ eye movements were recorded when they listened to sentences containing a target word and looked at three types of displays. The displays either contained a picture of the target word, or a picture of a phonological onset competitor, or a picture of a word semantically related to the onset competitor, each along with three unrelated distractors. The analyses revealed that, in noise, fixations to the target and to the phonological onset competitor were delayed and smaller in magnitude compared to the clean listening condition, most likely reflecting enhanced phonological competition. No evidence for the activation of semantic information in the phonological competitors was observed in noise and, surprisingly, also not in the clear. We discuss the implications of the lack of an effect and differences between the present and earlier studies.

Abstract

The relationship between the production and the comprehension systems has recently become a topic of interest for many psycholinguists. It has been argued that these systems are tightly linked and in particular that listeners use the production system to predict upcoming content. In this study, we tested how similar production and prediction processes are in a novel version of the visual world paradigm. Dutch speaking participants (native speakers in Experiment 1; German-Dutch bilinguals in Experiment 2) listened to mathematical equations while looking at a clock face featuring the numbers 1 to 12. On alternating trials, they either heard a complete equation ("three plus eight is eleven") or they heard the first part ("three plus eight is") and had to produce the result ("eleven") themselves. Participants were encouraged to look at the relevant numbers throughout the trial. Their eye movements were recorded and analyzed. We found that the participants' eye movements in the two tasks were overall very similar. They fixated the first and second number of the equations shortly after they were mentioned, and fixated the result number well before they named it on production trials and well before the recorded speaker named it on comprehension trials. However, all fixation latencies were shorter on production than on comprehension trials. These findings suggest that the processes involved in planning to say a word and anticipating hearing a word are quite similar, but that people are more aroused or engaged when they intend to respond than when they merely listen to another person.

Abstract

When faced with the noun phrase (NP) versus sentence (S) coordination ambiguity as in, for example, The thief shot the jeweller and the cop hellip, readers prefer the reading with NP-coordination (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop yesterday") over one with two conjoined sentences (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop panicked"). A corpus study is presented showing that NP-coordinations are produced far more often than S-coordinations, which in frequency-based accounts of parsing might be taken to explain the NP-coordination preference. In addition, we describe an eye-tracking experiment investigating S-coordinated sentences such as Jasper sanded the board and the carpenter laughed, where the poor thematic fit between carpenter and sanded argues against NP-coordination. Our results indicate that information regarding poor thematic fit was used rapidly, but not without leaving some residual processing difficulty. This is compatible with claims that thematic information can reduce but not completely eliminate garden-path effects.

Abstract

Interaction includes moments of silence. When all participants forgo the option to speak, the silence can be called a “lapse.” This article builds on existing work on lapses and other kinds of silences (gaps, pauses, and so on) to examine how participants reach a point where lapsing is a possibility and how they orient to the lapse that subsequently develops. Drawing from a wide range of activities and settings, I will show that participants may treat lapses as (a) the relevant cessation of talk, (b) the allowable development of silence, or (c) the conspicuous absence of talk. Data are in American and British English.

Abstract

The importance of high quality teacher–student relationships for students' well-being has been long documented. Nonetheless, most studies focus either on teachers' perceptions of provided support or on students' perceptions of support. The degree to which teachers and students agree is often neither measured nor taken into account. In the current study, we will therefore use a dyadic analysis strategy called the one-with-many design. This design takes into account the nestedness of the data and looks at the importance of reciprocity when examining the influence of teacher support for students' academic and social functioning. Two samples of teachers and their students from Grade 4 (age 9–10 years) have been recruited in primary schools, located in Turkey and Romania. By using the one-with-many design we can first measure to what degree teachers' perceptions of support are in line with students' experiences. Second, this level of consensus is taken into account when examining the influence of teacher support for students' social well-being and academic functioning.

Abstract

Recipients process information from speech and co-speech gestures, but it is currently unknown how this processing is influenced by the presence of other important social cues, especially gaze direction, a marker of communicative intent. Such cues may modulate neural activity in regions associated either with the processing of ostensive cues, such as eye gaze, or with the processing of semantic information, provided by speech and gesture.
Participants were scanned (fMRI) while taking part in triadic communication involving two recipients and a speaker. The speaker uttered sentences that
were and were not accompanied by complementary iconic gestures. Crucially, the speaker alternated her gaze direction, thus creating two recipient roles: addressed (direct gaze) vs unaddressed (averted gaze) recipient. The comprehension of Speech&Gesture relative to SpeechOnly utterances recruited middle occipital, middle temporal and inferior frontal gyri, bilaterally. The calcarine sulcus and posterior cingulate cortex were sensitive to differences between direct and averted gaze. Most importantly, Speech&Gesture utterances, but not SpeechOnly utterances, produced additional activity in the right middle temporal gyrus when participants were addressed. Marking communicative intent with gaze direction modulates the processing of speech–gesture utterances in cerebral areas typically associated with the semantic processing of multi-modal communicative acts.

Abstract

One of the most intriguing aspects of human communication is its turn-taking system. It requires the ability to process on-going turns at talk while planning the next, and to launch this next turn without considerable overlap or delay. Recent research has investigated the eye movements of observers of dialogues to gain insight into how we process turns at talk. More specifically, this research has focused on the extent to which we are able to anticipate the end of current and the beginning of next turns. At the same time, there has been a call for shifting experimental paradigms exploring social-cognitive processes away from passive observation towards online processing. Here, we present research that responds to this call by situating state-of-the-art technology for tracking interlocutors’ eye movements within spontaneous, face-to-face conversation. Each conversation involved three native speakers of English. The analysis focused on question-response sequences involving just two of those participants, thus rendering the third momentarily unaddressed. Temporal analyses of the unaddressed participants’ gaze shifts from current to next speaker revealed that unaddressed participants are able to anticipate next turns, and moreover, that they often shift their gaze towards the next speaker before the current turn ends. However, an analysis of the complex structure of turns at talk revealed that the planning of these gaze shifts virtually coincides with the points at which the turns first become recog-nizable as possibly complete. We argue that the timing of these eye movements is governed by an organizational principle whereby unaddressed participants shift their gaze at a point that appears interactionally most optimal: It provides unaddressed participants with access to much of the visual, bodily behavior that accompanies both the current speaker’s and the next speaker’s turn, and it allows them to display recipiency with regard to both speakers’ turns.

Abstract

Here, we report evidence for oscillatory bi-directional interactions between the nucleus accumbens and the neocortex in humans. Six patients performed a demanding covert visual attention task while we simultaneously recorded brain activity from deep-brain electrodes implanted in the nucleus accumbens and the surface electroencephalogram (EEG). Both theta and alpha oscillations were strongly coherent with the frontal and parietal EEG during the task. Theta-band coherence increased during processing of the visual stimuli. Granger causality analysis revealed that the nucleus accumbens was communicating with the neocortex primarily in the theta-band, while the cortex was communicating the nucleus accumbens in the alpha-band. These data are consistent with a model, in which theta- and alpha-band oscillations serve dissociable roles: Prior to stimulus processing, the cortex might suppress ongoing processing in the nucleus accumbens by modulating alpha-band activity. Subsequently, upon stimulus presentation, theta oscillations might facilitate the active exchange of stimulus information from the nucleus accumbens to the cortex.

Abstract

Creativity is crucial to the progression of human civilization and has led to important scientific discoveries. Especially, individuals are more likely to have scientific discoveries if they possess certain personality traits of creativity (trait creativity), including imagination, curiosity, challenge and risk-taking. This study used voxel-based morphometry to identify the brain regions underlying individual differences in trait creativity, as measured by the Williams creativity aptitude test, in a large sample (n = 246). We found that creative individuals had higher gray matter volume in the right posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), which might be related to semantic processing during novelty seeking (e.g. novel association, conceptual integration and metaphor understanding). More importantly, although basic personality factors such as openness to experience, extroversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness (as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory) all contributed to trait creativity, only openness to experience mediated the association between the right pMTG volume and trait creativity. Taken together, our results suggest that the basic personality trait of openness might play an important role in shaping an individual’s trait creativity.

Abstract

The functional region of interest (fROI) approach has increasingly become a favored methodology in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) because it can circumvent inter-subject anatomical and functional variability, and thus increase the sensitivity and functional resolution of fMRI analyses. The standard fROI method requires human experts to meticulously examine and identify subject-specific fROIs within activation clusters. This process is time-consuming and heavily dependent on experts’ knowledge. Several algorithmic approaches have been proposed for identifying subject-specific fROIs; however, these approaches cannot easily incorporate prior knowledge of inter-subject variability. In the present study, we improved the multi-atlas labeling approach for defining subject-specific fROIs. In particular, we used a classifier-based atlas-encoding scheme and an atlas selection procedure to account for the large spatial variability across subjects. Using a functional atlas database for face recognition, we showed that with these two features, our approach efficiently circumvented inter-subject anatomical and functional variability and thus improved labeling accuracy. Moreover, in comparison with a single-atlas approach, our multi-atlas labeling approach showed better performance in identifying subject-specific fROIs.

Abstract

Native speakers of Dutch do not always adhere to prescriptive grammar rules in their daily speech. These grammatical norm violations can elicit emotional reactions in language purists, mostly high-educated people, who claim that for them these constructions are truly ungrammatical. However, linguists generally assume that grammatical norm violations are in fact truly grammatical, especially when they occur frequently in a language. In an fMRI study we investigated the processing of grammatical norm violations in the brains of language purists, and compared them with truly grammatical and truly ungrammatical sentences. Grammatical norm violations were found to be unique in that their processing resembled not only the processing of truly grammatical sentences (in left medial Superior Frontal Gyrus and Angular Gyrus), but also that of truly ungrammatical sentences (in Inferior Frontal Gyrus), despite what theories of grammar would usually lead us to believe

Abstract

It is now well-established that anticipation of up-coming input is a key characteristic of spoken language comprehension. It has also frequently been observed that literacy influences spoken language processing. Here we investigated whether anticipatory spoken language processing is related to individuals’ word reading abilities. Dutch adults with dyslexia and a control group participated in two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted to assess whether adults with dyslexia show the typical language-mediated eye gaze patterns. Eye movements of both adults with and without dyslexia closely replicated earlier research: spoken language is used to direct attention to relevant objects in the environment in a closely time-locked manner. In Experiment 2, participants received instructions (e.g., "Kijk naar deCOM afgebeelde pianoCOM", look at the displayed piano) while viewing four objects. Articles (Dutch “het” or “de”) were gender-marked such that the article agreed in gender only with the target and thus participants could use gender information from the article to predict the target object. The adults with dyslexia anticipated the target objects but much later than the controls. Moreover, participants' word reading scores correlated positively with their anticipatory eye movements. We conclude by discussing the mechanisms by which reading abilities may influence predictive language processing.

Abstract

It is now well established that anticipation of up-coming input is a key characteristic of spoken language comprehension. Several mechanisms of predictive language processing have been proposed. The possible influence of mediating factors such as working memory and processing speed however has hardly been explored. We sought to find evidence for such an influence using an individual differences approach. 105 participants from 32 to 77 years of age received spoken instructions (e.g., "Kijk naar deCOM afgebeelde pianoCOM" - look at the displayed piano) while viewing four objects. Articles (Dutch “het” or “de”) were gender-marked such that the article agreed in gender only with the target. Participants could thus use gender information from the article to predict the upcoming target object. The average participant anticipated the target objects well in advance of the critical noun. Multiple regression analyses showed that working memory and processing speed had the largest mediating effects: Enhanced working memory abilities and faster processing speed supported anticipatory spoken language processing. These findings suggest that models of predictive language processing must take mediating factors such as working memory and processing speed into account. More generally, our results are consistent with the notion that working memory grounds language in space and time, linking linguistic and visual-spatial representations.

Abstract

The notion that prediction is a fundamental principle of human information processing has been en vogue over recent years. The investigation of language processing may be particularly illuminating for testing this claim. Linguists traditionally have argued prediction plays only a minor role during language understanding because of the vast possibilities available to the language user as each word is encountered. In the present review I consider four central questions of anticipatory language processing: Why (i.e. what is the function of prediction in language processing)? What (i.e. what are the cues used to predict up-coming linguistic information and what type of representations are predicted)? How (what mechanisms are involved in predictive language processing and what is the role of possible mediating factors such as working memory)? When (i.e. do individuals always predict up-coming input during language processing)? I propose that prediction occurs via a set of diverse PACS (production-, association-, combinatorial-, and simulation-based prediction) mechanisms which are minimally required for a comprehensive account of predictive language processing. Models of anticipatory language processing must be revised to take multiple mechanisms, mediating factors, and situational context into account. Finally, I conjecture that the evidence considered here is consistent with the notion that prediction is an important aspect but not a fundamental principle of language processing.

Abstract

Many psycholinguistic experiments suggest that prediction is an important characteristic of language processing. Some recent theoretical accounts in the cognitive sciences (e.g., Clark, 2013; Friston, 2010) and psycholinguistics (e.g., Dell & Chang, 2014) appear to suggest that prediction is even necessary to understand language. In the present opinion paper we evaluate this proposal. We first critically discuss several arguments that may appear to be in line with the notion that prediction is necessary for language processing. These arguments include that prediction provides a unified theoretical principle of the human mind and that it pervades cortical function. We discuss whether evidence of human abilities to detect statistical regularities is necessarily evidence for predictive processing and evaluate suggestions that prediction is necessary for language learning. Five arguments are then presented that question the claim that all language processing is predictive in nature. We point out that not all language users appear to predict language and that suboptimal input makes prediction often very challenging. Prediction, moreover, is strongly context-dependent and impeded by resource limitations. We also argue that it may be problematic that most experimental evidence for predictive language processing comes from 'prediction-encouraging' experimental set-ups. Finally, we discuss possible ways that may lead to a further resolution of this debate. We conclude that languages can be learned and understood in the absence of prediction. Claims that all language processing is predictive in nature are premature.

Abstract

In the visual world paradigm, participants are more likely to fixate a visual referent that has some semantic relationship with a heard word, than they are to fixate an unrelated referent [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language. A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 813–839]. Here, this method is used to examine the psychological validity of models of high-dimensional semantic space. The data strongly suggest that these corpus-based measures of word semantics predict fixation behavior in the visual world and provide further evidence that language-mediated eye movements to objects in the concurrent visual environment are driven by semantic similarity rather than all-or-none categorical knowledge. The data suggest that the visual world paradigm can, together with other methodologies, converge on the evidence that may help adjudicate between different theoretical accounts of the psychological semantics.

Abstract

We examined whether assortative mating for educational attainment (“like marries like”) can be detected in the genomes of ~ 1600 UK spouse pairs of European descent. Assortative mating on heritable traits like educational attainment increases the genetic variance and heritability of the trait in the population, which may increase social inequalities. We test for genetic assortative mating in the UK on educational attainment, a phenotype that is indicative of socio-economic status and has shown substantial levels of assortative mating. We use genome-wide allelic effect sizes from a large genome-wide association study on educational attainment (N ~ 300 k) to create polygenic scores that are predictive of educational attainment in our independent sample (r = 0.23, p < 2 × 10− 16). The polygenic scores significantly predict partners' educational outcome (r = 0.14, p = 4 × 10− 8 and r = 0.19, p = 2 × 10− 14, for prediction from males to females and vice versa, respectively), and are themselves significantly correlated between spouses (r = 0.11, p = 7 × 10− 6). Our findings provide molecular genetic evidence for genetic assortative mating on education in the UK

Abstract

A combination of impaired motor and cognitive function in Parkinson’s disease (PD) can impact on language and communication, with patients exhibiting a particular difficulty processing action verbs. Co-speech gestures embody a link between action and language and contribute significantly to communication in healthy people. Here, we investigated how co-speech gestures depicting actions are affected in PD, in particular with respect to the visual perspective—or the viewpoint – they depict. Gestures are closely related to mental imagery and motor simulations, but people with PD may be impaired in the way they simulate actions from a first-person perspective and may compensate for this by relying more on third-person visual features. We analysed the action-depicting gestures produced by mild-moderate PD patients and age-matched controls on an action description task and examined the relationship between gesture viewpoint, action naming, and performance on an action observation task (weight judgement). Healthy controls produced the majority of their action gestures from a first-person perspective, whereas PD patients produced a greater proportion of gestures produced from a third-person perspective. We propose that this reflects a compensatory reliance on third-person visual features in the simulation of actions in PD. Performance was also impaired in action naming and weight judgement, although this was unrelated to gesture viewpoint. Our findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of how action-language impairments in PD impact on action communication, on the cognitive underpinnings of this impairment, as well as elucidating the role of action simulation in gesture production