Publications

Abstract

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) are common highly heritable disorders of childhood, which frequently co-occur. Data from twin and family studies suggest that this overlap is, in part, due to shared genetic underpinnings. Here, we report the first genome-wide linkage analysis of measures of reading ability in children with ADHD, using a sample of 233 affected sibling pairs who previously participated in a genome-wide scan for susceptibility loci in ADHD. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of a composite reading factor defined from three highly correlated reading measures identified suggestive linkage (multipoint maximum lod score, MLS>2.2) in four chromosomal regions. Two regions (16p, 17q) overlap those implicated by our previous genome-wide scan for ADHD in the same sample: one region (2p) provides replication for an RD susceptibility locus, and one region (10q) falls approximately 35 cM from a modestly highlighted region in an independent genome-wide scan of siblings with ADHD. Investigation of an individual reading measure of Reading Recognition supported linkage to putative RD susceptibility regions on chromosome 8p (MLS=2.4) and 15q (MLS=1.38). Thus, the data support the existence of genetic factors that have pleiotropic effects on ADHD and reading ability--as suggested by shared linkages on 16p, 17q and possibly 10q--but also those that appear to be unique to reading--as indicated by linkages on 2p, 8p and 15q that coincide with those previously found in studies of RD. Our study also suggests that reading measures may represent useful phenotypes in ADHD research. The eventual identification of genes underlying these unique and shared linkages may increase our understanding of ADHD, RD and the relationship between the two.

Abstract

Face-to-face communication is multimodal at its core: it consists of a combination of vocal and visual signalling. However, current evidence suggests that, in the absence of an established communication system, visual signalling, especially in the form of visible gesture, is a more powerful form of communication than vocalisation, and therefore likely to have played a primary role in the emergence of human language. This argument is based on experimental evidence of how vocal and visual modalities (i.e., gesture) are employed to communicate about familiar concepts when participants cannot use their existing languages. To investigate this further, we introduce an experiment where pairs of participants performed a referential communication task in which they described unfamiliar stimuli in order to reduce reliance on conventional signals. Visual and auditory stimuli were described in three conditions: using visible gestures only, using non-linguistic vocalisations only and given the option to use both (multimodal communication). The results suggest that even in the absence of conventional signals, gesture is a more powerful mode of communication compared to vocalisation, but that there are also advantages to multimodality compared to using gesture alone. Participants with an option to produce multimodal signals had comparable accuracy to those using only gesture, but gained an efficiency advantage. The analysis of the interactions between participants showed that interactants developed novel communication systems for unfamiliar stimuli by deploying different modalities flexibly to suit their needs and by taking advantage of multimodality when required.

Abstract

Nyelv és/vagy evolúció: Lehetséges-e a nyelv evolúciós magyarázata? [Derek Bickerton: Nyelv és evolúció] (Magyari Lilla); Történelmi olvasókönyv az agyról [Charles G. Gross: Agy, látás, emlékezet. Mesék az idegtudomány történetéből] (Garab Edit Anna); Művészet vagy tudomány [Margitay Tihamér: Az érvelés mestersége. Érvelések elemzése, értékelése és kritikája] (Zemplén Gábor); Tényleg ésszerűek vagyunk? [Herbert Simon: Az ésszerűség szerepe az emberi életben] (Kardos Péter); Nemi különbségek a megismerésben [Doreen Kimura: Női agy, férfi agy]. (Hahn Noémi);

Abstract

Although onsets do not arbitrate stress placement in English categorically, results from Kelly (2004) and Ryan (2014) suggest that English stress assignment is nevertheless sensitive to onset complexity. Phonetic work on languages in which onsets participate in categorical weight criteria shows that onsets contribute to stress assignment through their phonetic impact on the nucleus, primarily through their effect on nucleus energy (Gordon, 2005). Onsets in English probabilistically participate in weight-based processes, and here it is predicted that they impact the phonetic realization of the syllable similar to the way that onsets do in languages with categorical onset weight criteria. To test this prediction, speakers in this study produced monosyllabic English words varying in onset complexity, and measures of duration, intensity, and f0 were collected. Results of the current study are consistent with the predictions of Gordon’s perceptual account of categorical weight, showing that integrated intensity of the rime is incapable of driving onset weight behavior in English. Furthermore, results indicate that onsets impact the shape of the intensity envelope in a manner consistent with explanations for gradient onset weight that appeal to onset influence on the perceptual center (Ryan, 2014). Together, these results show that cues to gradient weight act independently of primary cues to categorical weight to probabilistically impact weight sensitive stress assignment in English.

Abstract

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. These have long been thought of as innate concepts, built into our neurocognition. However, recent work shows that the use of such frames in language, cognition and gesture varies crossculturally, and that children can acquire different systems with comparable ease. We argue that language can play a significant role in structuring, or restructuring, a domain as fundamental as spatial cognition. This suggests we need to rethink the relation between the neurocognitive underpinnings of spatial cognition and the concepts we use in everyday thinking, and, more generally, to work out how to account for cross-cultural cognitive diversity in core cognitive domains.

Abstract

It is well established that readers form mental images when reading a narrative. However, the consequences of mental imagery (i.e. the influence of mental imagery on the way people experience stories) are still unclear. Here we manipulated the amount of mental imagery that participants engaged in while reading short literary stories in two experiments. Participants received pre-reading instructions aimed at encouraging or discouraging mental imagery. After reading, participants answered questions about their reading experiences. We also measured individual trait differences that are relevant for literary reading experiences. The results from the first experiment suggests an important role of mental imagery in determining reading experiences. However, the results from the second experiment show that mental imagery is only a weak predictor of reading experiences compared to individual (trait) differences in how imaginative participants were. Moreover, the influence of mental imagery instructions did not extend to reading experiences unrelated to mental imagery. The implications of these results for the relationship between mental imagery and reading experiences are discussed.

Abstract

Listeners often experience cocktail-party situations, encountering multiple ongoing conversa-
tions while tracking just one. Capturing the words spoken under such conditions requires selec-
tive attention and processing, which involves using phonetic details to discern phonological
structure. How do bilinguals accomplish this in L1-L2 competition? We addressed that question
using a dichotic listening task with fluent Malayalam-English bilinguals, in which they were pre-
sented with synchronized nonce words, one in each language in separate ears, with competing
onsets of a labial stop (Malayalam) and a labial fricative (English), both voiced or both voiceless.
They were required to attend to the Malayalam or the English item, in separate blocks, and report
the initial consonant they heard. We found that perceptual intrusions from the unattended to the
attended language were influenced by voicing, with more intrusions on voiced than voiceless tri-
als. This result supports our proposal for the feature specification of consonants in Malayalam-
English bilinguals, which makes use of privative features, underspecification and the “standard
approach” to laryngeal features, as against “laryngeal realism”. Given this representational
account, we observe that intrusions result from phonetic properties in the unattended signal
being assimilated to the closest matching phonological category in the attended language, and
are more likely for segments with a greater number of phonological feature specifications.

Abstract

To talk about space, spoken languages rely on arbitrary and categorical forms (e.g., left, right). In sign languages, however, the visual–spatial modality allows for iconic encodings (motivated form-meaning mappings) of space in which form and location of the hands bear resemblance to the objects and spatial relations depicted. We assessed whether the iconic encodings in sign languages guide visual attention to spatial relations differently than spatial encodings in spoken languages during message preparation at the sentence level. Using a visual world production eye-tracking paradigm, we compared 20 deaf native signers of Sign-Language-of-the-Netherlands and 20 Dutch speakers’ visual attention to describe left versus right configurations of objects (e.g., “pen is to the left/right of cup”). Participants viewed 4-picture displays in which each picture contained the same 2 objects but in different spatial relations (lateral [left/right], sagittal [front/behind], topological [in/on]) to each other. They described the target picture (left/right) highlighted by an arrow. During message preparation, signers, but not speakers, experienced increasing eye-gaze competition from other spatial configurations. This effect was absent during picture viewing prior to message preparation of relational encoding. Moreover, signers’ visual attention to lateral and/or sagittal relations was predicted by the type of iconicity (i.e., object and space resemblance vs. space resemblance only) in their spatial descriptions. Findings are discussed in relation to how “thinking for speaking” differs from “thinking for signing” and how iconicity can mediate the link between language and human experience and guides signers’ but not speakers’ attention to visual aspects of the world.

Abstract

Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35, 95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.

Abstract

This study tested whether individual sensitivity to an auditory perceptual cue called amplitude rise time (ART) facilitates novel word learning. Forty adult native speakers of Polish performed a perceptual task testing their sensitivity to ART, learned associations between nonwords and pictures of common objects, and were subsequently tested on their knowledge with a picture recognition (PR) task. In the PR task participants heard each nonword, followed either by a congruent or incongruent picture, and had to assess if the picture matched the nonword. Word learning efficiency was measured by accuracy and reaction time on the PR task and modulation of the N300 ERP. As predicted, participants with greater sensitivity to ART showed better performance in PR suggesting that auditory sensitivity indeed facilitates learning of novel words. Contrary to expectations, the N300 was not modulated by sensitivity to ART suggesting that the behavioral and ERP measures reflect different underlying processes.

Abstract

Hierarchical structure and compositionality imbue human language with unparalleled expressive power and set it apart from other perception–action systems. However, neither formal nor neurobiological models account for how these defining computational properties might arise in a physiological system. I attempt to reconcile hierarchy and compositionality with principles from cell assembly computation in neuroscience; the result is an emerging theory of how the brain could convert distributed perceptual representations into hierarchical structures across multiple timescales while representing interpretable incremental stages of (de) compositional meaning. The model's architecture—a multidimensional coordinate system based on neurophysiological models of sensory processing—proposes that a manifold of neural trajectories encodes sensory, motor, and abstract linguistic states. Gain modulation, including inhibition, tunes the path in the manifold in accordance with behavior and is how latent structure is inferred. As a consequence, predictive information about upcoming sensory input during production and comprehension is available without a separate operation. The proposed processing mechanism is synthesized from current models of neural entrainment to speech, concepts from systems neuroscience and category theory, and a symbolic-connectionist computational model that uses time and rhythm to structure information. I build on evidence from cognitive neuroscience and computational modeling that suggests a formal and mechanistic alignment between structure building and neural oscillations and moves toward unifying basic insights from linguistics and psycholinguistics with the currency of neural computation.

Abstract

Comprehension of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) requires reevaluation of recently processed constituents, which often necessitates retrieval of information about the elided constituent from memory. A. E. Martin and B. McElree (2008) argued that representations formed during comprehension are content addressable and that VPE antecedents are retrieved from memory via a cue-dependent direct-access pointer rather than via a search process. This hypothesis was further tested by manipulating the location of interfering material—either before the onset of the antecedent (proactive interference; PI) or intervening between antecedent and ellipsis site (retroactive interference; RI). The speed–accuracy tradeoff procedure was used to measure the time course of VPE processing. The location of the interfering material affected VPE comprehension accuracy: RI conditions engendered lower accuracy than PI conditions. Crucially, location did not affect the speed of processing VPE, which is inconsistent with both forward and backward search mechanisms. The observed time-course profiles are consistent with the hypothesis that VPE antecedents are retrieved via a cue-dependent direct-access operation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract

To comprehend speech sounds, listeners tune in to speech rate information in the proximal (immediately adjacent), distal (non-adjacent), and global context (further removed preceding and following sentences). Effects of global contextual speech rate cues on speech perception have been shown to follow constraints not found for proximal and distal speech rate. Therefore, listeners may process such global cues at distinct time points during word recognition. We conducted a printed-word eye-tracking experiment to compare the time courses of distal and global rate effects. Results indicated that the distal rate effect emerged immediately after target sound presentation, in line with a general-auditory account. The global rate effect, however, arose more than 200 ms later than the distal rate effect, indicating that distal and global context effects involve distinct processing mechanisms. Results are interpreted in a two-stage model of acoustic context effects. This model posits that distal context effects involve very early perceptual processes, while global context effects arise at a later stage, involving cognitive adjustments conditioned by higher-level information.

Abstract

Understanding the lyrics of many contemporary songs is difficult, and an earlier study [Hidalgo-Barnes, M., Massaro, D.W., 2007. Read my lips: an animated face helps communicate musical lyrics. Psychomusicology 19, 3–12] showed a benefit for lyrics recognition when seeing a computer-animated talking head (Baldi) mouthing the lyrics along with hearing the singer. However, the contribution of visual information was relatively small compared to what is usually found for speech. In the current experiments, our goal was to determine why the face appears to contribute less when aligned with sung lyrics than when aligned with normal speech presented in noise. The first experiment compared the contribution of the talking head with the originally sung lyrics versus the case when it was aligned with the Festival text-to-speech synthesis (TtS) spoken at the original duration of the song’s lyrics. A small and similar influence of the face was found in both conditions. In the three experiments, we compared the presence of the face when the durations of the TtS were equated with the duration of the original musical lyrics to the case when the lyrics were read with typical TtS durations and this speech embedded in noise. The results indicated that the unusual temporally distorted durations of musical lyrics decreases the contribution of the visible speech from the face.

Abstract

We present an empirical challenge to Jardine's (2016) assertion that only tonal spreading patterns can be unbounded circumambient, meaning that the determination of a phonological value may depend on information that is an unbounded distance away on both sides. We focus on a demonstration that the ATR harmony pattern found in Tutrugbu is unbounded circumambient, and we also cite several other segmental spreading processes with the same general character. We discuss implications for the complexity of phonology and for the relationship between the explanation of typology and the evaluation of phonological theories.

Abstract

The strongest support for feedback in speech perception comes from evidence of apparent lexical influence on prelexical fricative-stop compensation for coarticulation. Lexical knowledge (e.g., that the ambiguous final fricative of Christma? should be [s]) apparently influences perception of following stops. We argue that all such previous demonstrations can be explained without invoking lexical feedback. In particular, we show that one demonstration [Magnuson, J. S., McMurray, B., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Aslin, R. N. (2003). Lexical effects on compensation for coarticulation: The ghost of Christmash past. Cognitive Science, 27, 285–298] involved experimentally-induced biases (from 16 practice trials) rather than feedback. We found that the direction of the compensation effect depended on whether practice stimuli were words or nonwords. When both were used, there was no lexically-mediated compensation. Across experiments, however, there were lexical effects on fricative identification. This dissociation (lexical involvement in the fricative decisions but not in the following stop decisions made on the same trials) challenges interactive models in which feedback should cause both effects. We conclude that the prelexical level is sensitive to experimentally-induced phoneme-sequence biases, but that there is no feedback during speech perception.

Abstract

Learning new words entails, inter alia, encoding of novel sound patterns and transferring those patterns from short-term to long-term memory. We report a series of 5 experiments that investigated whether the memory systems engaged in word learning are specialized for speech and whether utilization of these systems results in a benefit for word learning. Sine-wave synthesis (SWS) was applied to spoken nonwords, and listeners were or were not informed (through instruction and familiarization) that the SWS stimuli were derived from actual utterances. This allowed us to manipulate whether listeners would process sound sequences as speech or as nonspeech. In a sound–picture association learning task, listeners who processed the SWS stimuli as speech consistently learned faster and remembered more associations than listeners who processed the same stimuli as nonspeech. The advantage of listening in “speech mode” was stable over the course of 7 days. These results provide causal evidence that access to a specialized, phonological short-term memory system is important for word learning. More generally, this study supports the notion that subsystems of auditory short-term memory are specialized for processing different types of acoustic information.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Human and animal prion diseases are under genetic control, but apart from PRNP (the gene that encodes the prion protein), we understand little about human susceptibility to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prions, the causal agent of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).METHODS: We did a genome-wide association study of the risk of vCJD and tested for replication of our findings in samples from many categories of human prion disease (929 samples) and control samples from the UK and Papua New Guinea (4254 samples), including controls in the UK who were genotyped by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. We also did follow-up analyses of the genetic control of the clinical phenotype of prion disease and analysed candidate gene expression in a mouse cellular model of prion infection. FINDINGS: The PRNP locus was strongly associated with risk across several markers and all categories of prion disease (best single SNP [single nucleotide polymorphism] association in vCJD p=2.5 x 10(-17); best haplotypic association in vCJD p=1 x 10(-24)). Although the main contribution to disease risk was conferred by PRNP polymorphic codon 129, another nearby SNP conferred increased risk of vCJD. In addition to PRNP, one technically validated SNP association upstream of RARB (the gene that encodes retinoic acid receptor beta) had nominal genome-wide significance (p=1.9 x 10(-7)). A similar association was found in a small sample of patients with iatrogenic CJD (p=0.030) but not in patients with sporadic CJD (sCJD) or kuru. In cultured cells, retinoic acid regulates the expression of the prion protein. We found an association with acquired prion disease, including vCJD (p=5.6 x 10(-5)), kuru incubation time (p=0.017), and resistance to kuru (p=2.5 x 10(-4)), in a region upstream of STMN2 (the gene that encodes SCG10). The risk genotype was not associated with sCJD but conferred an earlier age of onset. Furthermore, expression of Stmn2 was reduced 30-fold post-infection in a mouse cellular model of prion disease. INTERPRETATION: The polymorphic codon 129 of PRNP was the main genetic risk factor for vCJD; however, additional candidate loci have been identified, which justifies functional analyses of these biological pathways in prion disease.

Abstract

This study investigates how speakers of Dutch compute and produce relative time expressions. Naming digital clocks (e.g., 2:45, say ‘‘quarter to three’’) requires conceptual operations on the minute and hour information for the correct relative time expression. The interplay of these conceptual operations was investigated using a repetition priming paradigm. Participants named analog clocks (the primes) directly before naming digital clocks (the targets). The targets referred to the hour (e.g., 2:00), half past the hour (e.g., 2:30), or the coming hour (e.g., 2:45). The primes differed from the target in one or two hour and in five or ten minutes. Digital clock naming latencies were shorter with a five- than with a ten-min difference between prime and target, but the difference in hour had no effect. Moreover, the distance in minutes had only an effect for half past the hour and the coming hour, but not for the hour. These findings suggest that conceptual facilitation occurs when conceptual transformations are shared between prime and target in telling time.

Abstract

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

Abstract

This paper aims to determine whether iconic tracing gestures produced while speaking constitute part of the speaker’s communicative intention. We used a picture description task in which speakers must communicate the spatial and color information of each picture to an interlocutor. By establishing the necessary minimal content of an intended message, we determined whether speech produced with concurrent gestures is less explicit than speech without gestures. We argue that a gesture must be communicatively intended if it expresses necessary information that was nevertheless omitted from speech. We found that speakers who produced iconic gestures representing spatial relations omitted more required spatial information from their descriptions than speakers who did not gesture. These results provide evidence that speakers intend these gestures to communicate. The results have implications for the cognitive architectures that underlie the production of gesture and speech.

Abstract

Both local discourse and world knowledge are known to influence sentence processing. We investigated how these two sources of information conspire in language comprehension. Two types of critical sentences, correct and world knowledge anomalies, were preceded by either a neutral or a local context. The latter made the world knowledge anomalies more acceptable or plausible. We predicted that the effect of world knowledge anomalies would be weaker for the local context. World knowledge effects have previously been observed in the left inferior frontal region (Brodmann's area 45/47). In the current study, an effect of world knowledge was present in this region in the neutral context. We also observed an effect in the right inferior frontal gyrus, which was more sensitive to the discourse manipulation than the left inferior frontal gyrus. In addition, the left angular gyrus reacted strongly to the degree of discourse coherence between the context and critical sentence. Overall, both world knowledge and the discourse context affect the process of meaning unification, but do so by recruiting partly different sets of brain areas.

Abstract

The dendritic cell receptor DC-SIGN mediates pathogen recognition by binding to glycans characteristic of pathogen surfaces, including those found on HIV. Clustering of carbohydrate-binding sites in the receptor tetramer is believed to be critical for targeting of pathogen glycans, but the arrangement of these sites remains poorly understood. Surface force measurements between apposed lipid bilayers displaying the extracellular domain of DC-SIGN and a neoglycolipid bearing an oligosaccharide ligand provide evidence that the receptor is in an extended conformation and that glycan docking is associated with a conformational change that repositions the carbohydrate-recognition domains during ligand binding. The results further show that the lateral mobility of membrane-bound ligands enhances the engagement of multiple carbohydrate-recognition domains in the receptor oligomer with appropriately spaced ligands. These studies highlight differences between pathogen targeting by DC-SIGN and receptors in which binding sites at fixed spacing bind to simple molecular patterns

Abstract

Spatial memory deficits are core features of aging-related changes in cognitive abilities. The neural correlates of these deficits are largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the neural underpinnings of age-related differences in spatial memory by functional MRI using a navigational memory task with route encoding and route recognition conditions. We investigated 20 healthy young (18 - 29 years old) and 20 healthy old adults (53 - 78 years old) in a random effects analysis. Old subjects showed slightly poorer performance than young subjects. Compared to the control condition, route encoding and route recognition showed activation of the dorsal and ventral visual processing streams and the frontal eye fields in both groups of subjects. Compared to old adults, young subjects showed during route encoding stronger activations in the dorsal and the ventral visual processing stream (supramarginal gyrus and posterior fusiform/parahippocampal areas). In addition, young subjects showed weaker anterior parahippocampal activity during route recognition compared to the old group. In contrast, old compared to young subjects showed less suppressed activity in the left perisylvian region and the anterior cingulate cortex during route encoding. Our findings suggest that agerelated navigational memory deficits might be caused by less effective route encoding based on reduced posterior fusiform/parahippocampal and parietal functionality combined with diminished inhibition of perisylvian and anterior cingulate cortices correlated with less effective suppression of task-irrelevant information. In contrast, age differences in neural correlates of route recognition seem to be rather subtle. Old subjects might show a diminished familiarity signal during route recognition in the anterior parahippocampal region.

Abstract

Research on speech processing is often focused on a phenomenon termed “entrainment”, whereby the cortex shadows rhythmic acoustic information with oscillatory activity. Entrainment has been observed to a range of rhythms present in speech; in addition, synchronicity with abstract information (e.g. syntactic structures) has been observed. Entrainment accounts face two challenges: First, speech is not exactly rhythmic; second, synchronicity with representations that lack a clear acoustic counterpart has been described. We propose that apparent entrainment does not always result from acoustic information. Rather, internal rhythms may have functionalities in the generation of abstract representations and predictions. While acoustics may often provide punctate opportunities for entrainment, internal rhythms may also live a life of their own to infer and predict information, leading to intrinsic synchronicity – not to be counted as entrainment. This possibility may open up new research avenues in the psycho– and neurolinguistic study of language processing and language development.

Abstract

Could meaning be read from acoustics, or from the refraction rate of pyramidal cells innervated by the cochlea, everyone would be an omniglot. Speech does not contain sufficient acoustic cues to identify linguistic units such as morphemes, words, and phrases without prior knowledge. Our target article (Meyer, L., Sun, Y., & Martin, A. E. (2019). Synchronous, but not entrained: Exogenous and endogenous cortical rhythms of speech and language processing. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1693050) thus questioned the concept of “entrainment” of neural oscillations to such units. We suggested that synchronicity with these points to the existence of endogenous functional “oscillators”—or population rhythmic activity in Giraud’s (2020) terms—that underlie the inference, generation, and prediction of linguistic units. Here, we address a series of inspirational commentaries by our colleagues. As apparent from these, some issues raised by our target article have already been raised in the literature. Psycho– and neurolinguists might still benefit from our reply, as “oscillations are an old concept in vision and motor functions, but a new one in linguistics” (Giraud, A.-L. 2020. Oscillations for all A commentary on Meyer, Sun & Martin (2020). Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–8).

Abstract

Earlier work has shown that speakers naming several objects usually look at each of them before naming them (e.g., Meyer, Sleiderink, & Levelt, 1998). In the present study, participants saw pictures and described them in utterances such as "The chair next to the cross is brown", where the colour of the first object was mentioned after another object had been mentioned. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the speakers would look at the first object (the chair) only once, before naming the object, or twice (before naming the object and before naming its colour). In Experiment 2, we examined whether speakers about to name the colour of the object would look at the object region again when the colour or the entire object had been removed while they were looking elsewhere. We found that speakers usually looked at the target object again before naming its colour, even when the colour was not displayed any more. Speakers were much less likely to fixate upon the target region when the object had been removed from view. We propose that the object contours may serve as a memory cue supporting the retrieval of the associated colour information. The results show that a speaker's eye movements in a picture description task, far from being random, depend on the available visual information and the content and structure of the planned utterance.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Research in the domain of memory suggests that forgetting is primarily driven by interference and competition from other, related memories. Here we ask whether similar dynamics are at play in foreign language (FL) attrition. We tested whether interference from translation equivalents in other, more recently used languages causes subsequent retrieval failure in L3. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether interference from the native language (L1) and/or from another foreign language (L2) affected L3 vocabulary retention. On day 1, Dutch native speakers learned 40 new Spanish (L3) words. On day 2, they performed a number of retrieval tasks in either Dutch (L1) or English (L2) on half of these words, and then memory for all items was tested again in L3 Spanish. Recall in Spanish was slower and less complete for words that received interference than for words that did not. In naming speed, this effect was larger for L2 compared to L1 interference. Experiment 2 replicated the interference effect and asked if the language difference can be explained by frequency of use differences between native- and non-native languages. Overall, these findings suggest that competition from more recently used languages, and especially other foreign languages, is a driving force behind FL attrition.

Abstract

One challenge of learning a foreign language (L2) in adulthood is the mastery of syntactic structures that are implemented differently in L2 and one's native language (L1). Here, we asked how L2 speakers learn to process syntactic constructions that are in direct conflict between L1 and L2, in comparison to structures without such a conflict. To do so, we measured EEG during sentence reading in three groups of German learners of Dutch with different degrees of L2 experience (from 3 to more than 18 months of L2 immersion) as well as a control group of Dutch native speakers. They read grammatical and ungrammatical Dutch sentences that, in the conflict condition, contained a structure with opposing word orders in Dutch and German (sentence-final double infinitives) and, in the no-conflict condition, a structure for which word order is identical in Dutch and German (subordinate clause inversion). Results showed, first, that beginning learners showed N400-like signatures instead of the expected P600 for both types of violations, suggesting that, in the very early stages of learning, different neurocognitive processes are employed compared with native speakers, regardless of L1–L2 similarity. In contrast, both advanced and intermediate learners already showed native-like P600 signatures for the no-conflict sentences. However, their P600 signatures were significantly delayed in processing the conflicting structure, even though behavioral performance was on a native level for both these groups and structures. These findings suggest that L1–L2 word order conflicts clearly remain an obstacle to native-like processing, even for advanced L2 learners.

Abstract

Recent research indicates that interpersonal communication is noisy, and that people exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication. Using a dyadic referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, this study examined the extent to which interlocutors are sensitive to problems in communication and use other‐initiated repairs (OIRs) to address them. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads (N = 88 participants, or 44 dyads) and tried to communicate a series of recurring abstract geometric shapes to a partner across a text–chat interface. Participants alternated between directing (describing shapes) and matching (interpreting shape descriptions) roles across 72 trials of the task. Replicating prior research, over repeated social interactions communication success improved and the shape descriptions became increasingly efficient. In addition, confidence in having successfully communicated the different shapes increased over trials. Importantly, matchers were less confident on trials in which communication was unsuccessful, communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain an OIR, and OIR trials were associated with lower Director Confidence. This pattern of results demonstrates that (a) interlocutors exhibit (a degree of) sensitivity to problems in communication, (b) they appropriately use OIRs to address problems in communication, and (c) OIRs signal problems in communication.

Abstract

Nonhuman primate neuroimaging is on the cusp of a transformation, much in the same way its human counterpart was in 2010, when the Human Connectome Project was launched to accelerate progress. Inspired by an open data-sharing initiative, the global community recently met and, in this article, breaks through obstacles to define its ambitions.

Abstract

Understanding foreign speech is difficult, in part because of unusual mappings between sounds and words. It is known that listeners in their native language can use lexical knowledge (about how words ought to sound) to learn how to interpret unusual speech-sounds. We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken.

Abstract

Two experiments examined how Dutch listeners deal with the effects of connected-speech processes, specifically those arising from word-final /t/ reduction (e.g., whether Dutch [tas] is tas, bag, or a reduced-/t/ version of tast, touch). Eye movements of Dutch participants were tracked as they looked at arrays containing 4 printed words, each associated with a geometrical shape. Minimal pairs (e.g., tas/tast) were either both above (boven) or both next to (naast) different shapes. Spoken instructions (e.g., “Klik op het woordje tas boven de ster,” [Click on the word bag above the star]) thus became unambiguous only on their final words. Prior to disambiguation, listeners' fixations were drawn to /t/-final words more when boven than when naast followed the ambiguous sequences. This behavior reflects Dutch speech-production data: /t/ is reduced more before /b/ than before /n/. We thus argue that probabilistic knowledge about the effect of following context in speech production is used prelexically in perception to help resolve lexical ambiguities caused by continuous-speech processes.

Abstract

World knowledge influences how we perceive the world. This study shows that this influence is at least partly mediated by declarative memory. Dutch and German participants categorized hues from a yellow-to-orange continuum on stimuli that were prototypically orange or yellow and that were also associated with these color labels. Both groups gave more “yellow” responses if an ambiguous hue occurred on a prototypically yellow stimulus. The language groups were also tested on a stimulus (traffic light) that is associated with the label orange in Dutch and with the label yellow in German, even though the objective color is the same for both populations. Dutch observers categorized this stimulus as orange more often than German observers, in line with the assumption that declarative knowledge mediates the influence of world knowledge on color categorization.

Abstract

Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-native learners of a second language (L2) similarly draw on expectations, and whether these expectations are based on learners’ L1 or L2 knowledge. We approach this question by studying inverse preference effects on lexical encoding. L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish described motion events, while they were either primed to express path, manner, or neither. In line with other work, we find that L1 speakers adapted more strongly after primes that are unexpected in their L1. For L2 speakers, adaptation depended on their L2 proficiency: The least proficient speakers exhibited the inverse preference effect on adaptation based on what was unexpected in their L1; but the more proficient speakers were, the more they exhibited inverse preference effects based on what was unexpected in the L2. We discuss implications for L1 transfer and L2 acquisition.

Abstract

In a recent article, Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) propose that mental imagery is less vivid when evoked in a foreign than in a native language. The authors argue that reduced mental imagery could even account for moral foreign language effects, whereby moral choices become more utilitarian when made in a foreign language. Here we demonstrate that Hayakawa and Keysar's (2018) key results are better explained by reduced language comprehension in a foreign language than by less vivid imagery. We argue that the paradigm used in Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) does not provide a satisfactory test of reduced imagery and we discuss an alternative paradigm based on recent experimental developments.

Abstract

In this study we introduce an information-theoretical formulation of the emergence of type- and token-based effects in morphological processing. We describe a probabilistic measure of the informational complexity of a word, its information residual, which encompasses the combined influences of the amount of information contained by the target word and the amount of information carried by its nested morphological paradigms. By means of re-analyses of previously published data on Dutch words we show that the information residual outperforms the combination of traditional token- and type-based counts in predicting response latencies in visual lexical decision, and at the same time provides a parsimonious account of inflectional, derivational, and compounding processes.

Abstract

In this paper, we show that both token and type-based effects in lexical processing can result from a single, token-based, system, and therefore, do not necessarily reflect different levels of processing. We report three Simple Recurrent Networks modeling Dutch past-tense formation. These networks show token-based frequency effects and type-based analogical effects closely matching the behavior of human participants when producing past-tense forms for both existing verbs and pseudo-verbs. The third network covers the full vocabulary of Dutch, without imposing predefined linguistic structure on the input or output words.

Abstract

Finnish has a very productive morphology in which a stem can give rise to several thousand words. This study presents a visual lexical decision experiment addressing the processing consequences of the huge productivity of Finnish morphology. The authors observed that in Finnish words with larger morphological families elicited shorter response latencies. However, in contrast to Dutch and Hebrew, it is not the complete morphological family of a complex Finnish word that codetermines response latencies but only the subset of words directly derived from the complex word itself. Comparisons with parallel experiments using translation equivalents in Dutch and Hebrew showed substantial cross-language predictivity of family size between Finnish and Dutch but not between Finnish and Hebrew, reflecting the different ways in which the Hebrew and Finnish morphological systems contribute to the semantic organization of concepts in the mental lexicon.

Abstract

Sign languages can be categorized as shared sign languages or deaf community sign languages, depending on the context in which they emerge. It has been suggested that shared sign languages exhibit more variation in the expression of everyday concepts than deaf community sign languages (Meir, Israel, Sandler, Padden, & Aronoff, 2012). For deaf community sign languages, it has been shown that various sociolinguistic factors condition this variation. This study presents one of the first in-depth investigations of how sociolinguistic factors (deaf status, age, clan, gender and having a deaf family member) affect lexical variation in a shared sign language, using a picture description task in Kata Kolok. To study lexical variation in Kata Kolok, two methodologies are devised: the identification of signs by underlying iconic motivation and mapping, and a way to compare individual repertoires of signs by calculating the lexical distances between participants. Alongside presenting novel methodologies to study this type of sign language, we present preliminary evidence of sociolinguistic factors that may influence variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon.

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the influence of the complexity of the story-book on caregiver extra-textual talk (i.e., interactions beyond text reading) during shared reading with preschool-age children. Fifty-three mother–child dyads (3;00–4;11) were video-recorded sharing two ostensibly similar picture-books: a simple story (containing no false belief) and a complex story (containing a false belief central to the plot, which provided content that was more challenging for preschoolers to understand). Book-reading interactions were transcribed and coded. Results showed that the complex stories facilitated more extra-textual talk from mothers, and a higher quality of extra-textual talk (as indexed by linguistic richness and level of abstraction). Although the type of story did not affect the number of questions mothers posed, more elaborative follow-ups on children's responses were provided by mothers when sharing complex stories. Complex stories may facilitate more and linguistically richer caregiver extra-textual talk, having implications for preschoolers’ developing language abilities.

Abstract

Objectives: A new computer-aided screening system for osteoporosis using panoramic radiographs was developed. The conventional system could detect porotic changes within the lower border of the mandible, but its severity could not be evaluated. Our aim was to enable the system to measure severity by implementing a linear bone resorption severity index (BRSI) based on the cortical bone shape.
Methods: The participants were 68 females (>50 years) who underwent panoramic radiography and lumbar spine bone density measurements. The new system was designed to extract the lower border of the mandible as region of interests and convert them into morphological skeleton line images. The total perimeter length of the skeleton lines was defined as the BRSI. 40 images were visually evaluated for the presence of cortical bone porosity. The correlation between visual evaluation and BRSI of the participants, and the optimal threshold value of BRSI for new system were investigated through a receiver operator characteristic analysis. The diagnostic performance of the new system was evaluated by comparing the results from new system and lumbar bone density tests using 28 participants.
Results: BRSI and lumbar bone density showed a strong negative correlation (p < 0.01). BRSI showed a strong correlation with visual evaluation. The new system showed high diagnostic efficacy with sensitivity of 90.9%, specificity of 64.7%, and accuracy of 75.0%.
Conclusions: The new screening system is able to quantitatively evaluate mandibular cortical porosity. This allows for preventive screening for osteoporosis thereby enhancing clinical prospects.

Abstract

We describe the phenomenon of schwa-deletion in Hindi and how it is handled in the pronunciation component of a multilingual concatenative text-to-speech system. Each of the consonants in written Hindi is associated with an “inherent” schwa vowel which is not represented in the orthography. For instance, the Hindi word pronounced as [namak] (’salt’) is represented in the orthography using the consonantal characters for [n], [m], and [k]. Two main factors complicate the issue of schwa pronunciation in Hindi. First, not every schwa following a consonant is pronounced within the word. Second, in multimorphemic words, the presence of a morpheme boundary can block schwa deletion where it might otherwise occur. We propose a model for schwa-deletion which combines a general purpose schwa-deletion rule proposed in the linguistics literature (Ohala, 1983), with additional morphological analysis necessitated by the high frequency of compounds in our database. The system is implemented in the framework of finite-state transducer technology.

Abstract

We report a genome-wide assessment of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) in schizophrenia. We investigated SNPs using 871 patients and 863 controls, following up the top hits in four independent cohorts comprising 1,460 patients and 12,995 controls, all of European origin. We found no genome-wide significant associations, nor could we provide support for any previously reported candidate gene or genome-wide associations. We went on to examine CNVs using a subset of 1,013 cases and 1,084 controls of European ancestry, and a further set of 60 cases and 64 controls of African ancestry. We found that eight cases and zero controls carried deletions greater than 2 Mb, of which two, at 8p22 and 16p13.11-p12.4, are newly reported here. A further evaluation of 1,378 controls identified no deletions greater than 2 Mb, suggesting a high prior probability of disease involvement when such deletions are observed in cases. We also provide further evidence for some smaller, previously reported, schizophrenia-associated CNVs, such as those in NRXN1 and APBA2. We could not provide strong support for the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients have a significantly greater “load” of large (>100 kb), rare CNVs, nor could we find common CNVs that associate with schizophrenia. Finally, we did not provide support for the suggestion that schizophrenia-associated CNVs may preferentially disrupt genes in neurodevelopmental pathways. Collectively, these analyses provide the first integrated study of SNPs and CNVs in schizophrenia and support the emerging view that rare deleterious variants may be more important in schizophrenia predisposition than common polymorphisms. While our analyses do not suggest that implicated CNVs impinge on particular key pathways, we do support the contribution of specific genomic regions in schizophrenia, presumably due to recurrent mutation. On balance, these data suggest that very few schizophrenia patients share identical genomic causation, potentially complicating efforts to personalize treatment regimens.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a common developmental disorder haracterized by difficulties in language acquisition despite otherwise normal development and in the absence of any obvious explanatory factors. We performed a high-density screen of SLI1, a region of chromosome 16q that shows highly significant and consistent linkage to nonword repetition, a measure of phonological short-term memory that is commonly impaired in SLI. Using two independent language-impaired samples, one family-based (211 families) and another selected from a population cohort on the basis of extreme language measures (490 cases), we detected association to two genes in the SLI1 region: that encoding c-maf-inducing protein (CMIP, minP = 5.5 × 10−7 at rs6564903) and that encoding calcium-transporting ATPase, type2C, member2 (ATP2C2, minP = 2.0 × 10−5 at rs11860694). Regression modeling indicated that each of these loci exerts an independent effect upon nonword repetition ability. Despite the consistent findings in language-impaired samples, investigation in a large unselected cohort (n = 3612) did not detect association. We therefore propose that variants in CMIP and ATP2C2 act to modulate phonological short-term memory primarily in the context of language impairment. As such, this investigation supports the hypothesis that some causes of language impairment are distinct from factors that influence normal language variation. This work therefore implicates CMIP and ATP2C2 in the etiology of SLI and provides molecular evidence for the importance of phonological short-term memory in language acquisition.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as an unexplained failure to acquire normal language skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. We have reported elsewhere a full-genome scan in 98 nuclear families affected by this disorder, with the use of three quantitative traits of language ability (the expressive and receptive tests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals and a test of nonsense word repetition). This screen implicated two quantitative trait loci, one on chromosome 16q (SLI1) and a second on chromosome 19q (SLI2). However, a second independent genome screen performed by another group, with the use of parametric linkage analyses in extended pedigrees, found little evidence for the involvement of either of these regions in SLI. To investigate these loci further, we have collected a second sample, consisting of 86 families (367 individuals, 174 independent sib pairs), all with probands whose language skills are ⩾1.5 SD below the mean for their age. Haseman-Elston linkage analysis resulted in a maximum LOD score (MLS) of 2.84 on chromosome 16 and an MLS of 2.31 on chromosome 19, both of which represent significant linkage at the 2% level. Amalgamation of the wave 2 sample with the cohort used for the genome screen generated a total of 184 families (840 individuals, 393 independent sib pairs). Analysis of linkage within this pooled group strengthened the evidence for linkage at SLI1 and yielded a highly significant LOD score (MLS = 7.46, interval empirical P<.0004). Furthermore, linkage at the same locus was also demonstrated to three reading-related measures (basic reading [MLS = 1.49], spelling [MLS = 2.67], and reading comprehension [MLS = 1.99] subtests of the Wechsler Objectives Reading Dimensions).

Abstract

The ability to design tailored messages for specific listeners is an important aspect of
human communication. The present study investigates whether a mere belief about an
addressee’s identity influences the generation and production of a communicative message in
a novel, non-verbal communication task. Participants were made to believe they were playing a game with a child or an adult partner, while a confederate acted as both child
and adult partners with matched performance and response times. The participants’ belief
influenced their behavior, spending longer when interacting with the presumed child
addressee, but only during communicative portions of the game, i.e. using time as a tool
to place emphasis on target information. This communicative adaptation attenuated with
experience, and it was related to personality traits, namely Empathy and Need for Cognition
measures. Overall, these findings indicate that novel nonverbal communicative interactions
are selected according to a socio-centric perspective, and they are strongly
influenced by participants’ traits.

Abstract

The present study discusses psycholinguistic evidence for a difference between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology by investigating the processing of Finnish inflected and cliticized words. The data are derived from three sources of Finnish: from single-word reading performance in an agrammatic deep dyslectic speaker, as well as from visual lexical decision and wordness/learnability ratings of cliticized vs. inflected items by normal Finnish speakers. The agrammatic speaker showed awareness of the suffixes in multimorphemic words, including clitics, since he attempted to fill in this slot with morphological material. However, he never produced a clitic — either as the correct response or as an error — in any morphological configuration (simplex, derived, inflected, compound). Moreover, he produced more nominative singular errors for case-inflected nouns than he did for the cliticized words, a pattern that is expected if case-inflected forms were closely associated with their lexical heads, i.e., if they were paradigmatic and cliticized words were not. Furthermore, a visual lexical decision task with normal speakers of Finnish, showed an additional processing cost (longer latencies and more errors on cliticized than on case-inflected noun forms). Finally, a rating task indicated no difference in relative wordness between these two types of words. However, the same cliticized words were judged harder to learn as L2 items than the inflected words, most probably due to their conceptual/semantic properties, in other words due to their lack of word-level translation equivalents in SAVE languages. Taken together, the present results suggest that the distinction between paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic morphology is psychologically real.

Abstract

Numerous studies report brain potential evidence for the anticipation of specific words during language comprehension. In the most convincing demonstrations, highly predictable nouns exert an influence on processing even before they appear to a reader or listener, as indicated by the brain's neural response to a prenominal adjective or article when it mismatches the expectations about the upcoming noun. However, recent studies suggest that some well-known demonstrations of prediction may be hard to replicate. This could signal the use of data-contingent analysis, but might also mean that readers and listeners do not always use prediction-relevant information in the way that psycholinguistic theories typically suggest. To shed light on this issue, we performed a close replication of one of the best-cited ERP studies on word anticipation (Van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood, Kooijman & Hagoort, 2005; Experiment 1), in which participants listened to Dutch spoken mini-stories. In the original study, the marking of grammatical gender on pre-nominal adjectives (‘groot/grote’) elicited an early positivity when mismatching the gender of an unseen, highly predictable noun, compared to matching gender. The current pre-registered study involved that same manipulation, but used a novel set of materials twice the size of the original set, an increased sample size (N = 187), and Bayesian mixed-effects model analyses that better accounted for known sources of variance than the original. In our study, mismatching gender elicited more negative voltage than matching gender at posterior electrodes. However, this N400-like effect was small in size and lacked support from Bayes Factors. In contrast, we successfully replicated the original's noun effects. While our results yielded some support for prediction, they do not support the Van Berkum et al. effect and highlight the risks associated with commonly employed data-contingent analyses and small sample sizes. Our results also raise the question whether Dutch listeners reliably or consistently use adjectival inflection information to inform their noun predictions.

Abstract

Composing sentence meaning is easier for predictable words than for unpredictable words. Are predictable words genuinely predicted, or simply more plausible and therefore easier to integrate with sentence context? We addressed this persistent and fundamental question using data from a recent, large-scale (N = 334) replication study, by investigating the effects of word predictability and sentence plausibility on the N400, the brain’s electrophysiological index of semantic processing. A spatiotemporally fine-grained mixed-effects multiple regression analysis revealed overlapping effects of predictability and plausibility on the N400, albeit with distinct spatiotemporal profiles. Our results challenge the view that the predictability-dependent N400 reflects the effects of either prediction or integration, and suggest that semantic facilitation of predictable words arises from a cascade of processes that activate and integrate word meaning with context into a sentence-level meaning.

Abstract

Purpose: Research has indicated that interactive shared
book reading can support a wide range of early language
skills and that children who are read to regularly in the early
years learn language faster, enter school with a larger
vocabulary, and become more successful readers at school.
Despite the large volume of research suggesting interactive
shared reading is beneficial for language development, two
fundamental issues remain outstanding: whether shared
book reading interventions are equally effective (a) for children
from all socioeconomic backgrounds and (b) for a range of
language skills.
Method: To address these issues, we conducted a
randomized controlled trial to investigate the effects of two
6-week interactive shared reading interventions on a
range of language skills in children across the socioeconomic
spectrum. One hundred and fifty children aged between
2;6 and 3;0 (years;months) were randomly assigned to one

of three conditions: a pause reading, a dialogic reading, or
an active shared reading control condition.
Results: The findings indicated that the interventions were
effective at changing caregiver reading behaviors. However,
the interventions did not boost children’s language skills
over and above the effect of an active reading control
condition. There were also no effects of socioeconomic status.
Conclusion: This randomized controlled trial showed
that caregivers from all socioeconomic backgrounds
successfully adopted an interactive shared reading style.
However, while the interventions were effective at increasing
caregivers’ use of interactive shared book reading behaviors,
this did not have a significant impact on the children’s
language skills. The findings are discussed in terms of
practical implications and future research.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Human communication has been described as involving the coding-decoding of a conventional symbol system, which could be supported by parts of the human motor system (i.e. the “mirror neurons system”). However, this view does not explain how these conventions could develop in the first place. Here we target the neglected but crucial issue of how people organize their non-verbal behavior to communicate a given intention without pre-established conventions. We have measured behavioral and brain responses in pairs of subjects during communicative exchanges occurring in a real, interactive, on-line social context. In two fMRI studies, we found robust evidence that planning new communicative actions (by a sender) and recognizing the communicative intention of the same actions (by a receiver) relied on spatially overlapping portions of their brains (the right posterior superior temporal sulcus). The response of this region was lateralized to the right hemisphere, modulated by the ambiguity in meaning of the communicative acts, but not by their sensorimotor complexity. These results indicate that the sender of a communicative signal uses his own intention recognition system to make a prediction of the intention recognition performed by the receiver. This finding supports the notion that our communicative abilities are distinct from both sensorimotor processes and language abilities.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Speech perception requires the decoding of complex acoustic patterns. According to most cognitive models of spoken word recognition, this complexity is dealt with before lexical access via a process of abstraction from the acoustic signal to pre-lexical categories. It is currently unclear how these categories are implemented in the auditory cortex. Recent advances in animal neurophysiology and human functional imaging have made it possible to investigate the processing of speech in terms of probabilistic cortical maps rather than simple cognitive subtraction, which will enable us to relate neurometric data more directly to behavioural studies. We suggest that integration of insights from cognitive science, neurophysiology and functional imaging is necessary for furthering our understanding of pre-lexical abstraction in the cortex.

Abstract

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

Abstract

The acoustic realisation of a speech sound varies, often showing allophonic variation triggered by surrounding sounds. Listeners recognise words and sounds well despite such variation, and even make use of allophonic variability in processing. This study reports five experiments on processing of the reduced/unreduced allophonic alternation of Japanese high vowels. The results show that listeners use phonological knowledge of their native language during phoneme processing and word recognition. However, interactions of the phonological and acoustic effects differ in these two processes. A facilitatory phonological effect and an inhibitory acoustic effect cancel one another out in phoneme processing; while in word recognition, the facilitatory phonological effect overrides the inhibitory acoustic effect. Four potential models of the processing of allophonic variation are discussed. The results can be accommodated in two of them, but require additional assumptions or modifications to the models, and primarily support lexical specification of allophonic variability.

Abstract

We completed fine mapping of nine positional candidate regions for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in an extended population sample of 308 affected sibling pairs (ASPs), constituting the largest linkage sample of families with ADHD published to date. The candidate chromosomal regions were selected from all three published genomewide scans for ADHD, and fine mapping was done to comprehensively validate these positional candidate regions in our sample. Multipoint maximum LOD score (MLS) analysis yielded significant evidence of linkage on 6q12 (MLS 3.30; empiric P=.024) and 17p11 (MLS 3.63; empiric P=.015), as well as suggestive evidence on 5p13 (MLS 2.55; empiric P=.091). In conjunction with the previously reported significant linkage on the basis of fine mapping 16p13 in the same sample as this report, the analyses presented here indicate that four chromosomal regions—5p13, 6q12, 16p13, and 17p11—are likely to harbor susceptibility genes for ADHD. The refinement of linkage within each of these regions lays the foundation for subsequent investigations using association methods to detect risk genes of moderate effect size.

Abstract

Background

Protocols for intraoperative language mapping with direct electrical stimulation (DES) often include various language tasks triggering both nouns and verbs in sentences. Such protocols are not readily available for navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS), where only single word object naming is generally used. Here, we present the development, norming, and standardization of the verb and noun test for peri-operative testing (VAN-POP) that measures language skills more extensively.
Methods

The VAN-POP tests noun and verb retrieval in sentence context. Items are marked and balanced for several linguistic factors known to influence word retrieval. The VAN-POP was administered in English, German, and Dutch under conditions that are used for nTMS and DES paradigms. For each language, 30 speakers were tested.
Results

At least 50 items per task per language were named fluently and reached a high naming agreement.
Conclusion

The protocol proved to be suitable for pre- and intraoperative language mapping with nTMS and DES.

Abstract

Do all components of a sign contribute equally to its recognition? In the present study, misperceptions in the sign-spotting task (based on the word-spotting task; Cutler & Norris, 1988) were analyzed to address this question. Three groups of deaf signers of British Sign Language (BSL) with different ages of acquisition (AoA) saw BSL signs combined with nonsense signs, along with combinations of two nonsense signs. They were asked to spot real signs and report what they had spotted. We will present an analysis of false alarms to the nonsense-sign combinations—that is, misperceptions of nonsense signs as real signs (cf. van Ooijen, 1996). Participants modified the movement and handshape parameters more than the location parameter. Within this pattern, however, there were differences as a function of AoA. These results show that the theoretical distinctions between form-based parameters in sign-language models have consequences for online processing. Vowels and consonants have different roles in speech recognition; similarly, it appears that movement, handshape, and location parameters contribute differentially to sign recognition.

Abstract

When learning a second spoken language, cognates, words overlapping in form and meaning with one’s native language, help breaking into the language one wishes to acquire. But what happens when the to-be-acquired second language is a sign language? We tested whether hearing nonsigners rely on their gestural repertoire at first exposure to a sign language. Participants saw iconic signs with high and low overlap with the form of iconic gestures while electrophysiological brain activity was recorded. Upon first exposure, signs with low overlap with gestures elicited enhanced positive amplitude in the P3a component compared to signs with high overlap. This effect disappeared after a training session. We conclude that nonsigners generate expectations about the form of iconic signs never seen before based on their implicit knowledge of gestures, even without having to produce them. Learners thus draw from any available semiotic resources when acquiring a second language, and not only from their linguistic experience

Abstract

An unprecedented number of empirical studies have shown that iconic gestures—those that mimic the sensorimotor attributes of a referent—contribute significantly to language acquisition, perception, and processing. However, there has been a lack of normed studies describing generalizable principles in gesture production and in comprehension of the mappings of different types of iconic strategies (i.e., modes of representation; Müller, 2013). In Study 1 we elicited silent gestures in order to explore the implementation of different types of iconic representation (i.e., acting, representing, drawing, and personification) to express concepts across five semantic domains. In Study 2 we investigated the degree of meaning transparency (i.e., iconicity ratings) of the gestures elicited in Study 1. We found systematicity in the gestural forms of 109 concepts across all participants, with different types of iconicity aligning with specific semantic domains: Acting was favored for actions and manipulable objects, drawing for nonmanipulable objects, and personification for animate entities. Interpretation of gesture–meaning transparency was modulated by the interaction between mode of representation and semantic domain, with some couplings being more transparent than others: Acting yielded higher ratings for actions, representing for object-related concepts, personification for animate entities, and drawing for nonmanipulable entities. This study provides mapping principles that may extend to all forms of manual communication (gesture and sign). This database includes a list of the most systematic silent gestures in the group of participants, a notation of the form of each gesture based on four features (hand configuration, orientation, placement, and movement), each gesture’s mode of representation, iconicity ratings, and professionally filmed videos that can be used for experimental and clinical endeavors.

Abstract

In this study we explore whether different types of iconic gestures
(i.e., acting, drawing, representing) and their combinations are used
systematically to distinguish between different semantic categories in
production and comprehension. In Study 1, we elicited silent gestures
from Mexican and Dutch participants to represent concepts from three
semantic categories: actions, manipulable objects, and non-manipulable
objects. Both groups favoured the acting strategy to represent actions and
manipulable objects; while non-manipulable objects were represented
through the drawing strategy. Actions elicited primarily single gestures
whereas objects elicited combinations of different types of iconic gestures
as well as pointing. In Study 2, a different group of participants were
shown gestures from Study 1 and were asked to guess their meaning.
Single-gesture depictions for actions were more accurately guessed than
for objects. Objects represented through two-gesture combinations (e.g.,
acting + drawing) were more accurately guessed than objects represented
with a single gesture. We suggest iconicity is exploited to make direct
links with a referent, but when it lends itself to ambiguity, individuals
resort to combinatorial structures to clarify the intended referent.
Iconicity and the need to communicate a clear signal shape the structure
of silent gestures and this in turn supports comprehension.

Abstract

Prior research has indicated that readers and listeners can use information in the prior discourse to rapidly predict specific upcoming words, as the text is unfolding. Here we used event-related potentials to explore whether the ability to make rapid online predictions depends on a reader's working memory capacity (WMC). Readers with low WMC were hypothesized to differ from high WMC readers either in their overall capability to make predictions (because of their lack of cognitive resources). High and low WMC participants read highly constraining stories that supported the prediction of a specific noun, mixed with coherent but essentially unpredictive ‘prime control’ control stories that contained the same content words as the predictive stories. To test whether readers were anticipating upcoming words, critical nouns were preceded by a determiner whose gender agreed or disagreed with the gender of the expected noun. In predictive stories, both high and low WMC readers displayed an early negative deflection (300–600 ms) to unexpected determiners, which was not present in prime control stories. Only the low WMC participants displayed an additional later negativity (900–1500 ms) to unexpected determiners. This pattern of results suggests that WMC does not influence the ability to anticipate upcoming words per se, but does change the way in which readers deal with information that disconfirms the generated prediction.

Abstract

Perhaps the main advantage of being bilingual is the capacity to communicate with interlocutors that have different language backgrounds. In the life of a bilingual, switching interlocutors hence sometimes involves switching languages. We know that the capacity to switch from one language to another is supported by control mechanisms, such as task-set reconfiguration. This study investigates whether similar neurophysiological mechanisms support bilingual switching between different listeners, within and across languages. A group of 48 unbalanced Dutch-English bilinguals named pictures for two monolingual Dutch and two monolingual English life-size virtual listeners in an immersive virtual reality environment. In terms of reaction times, switching languages came at a cost over and above the significant cost of switching from one listener to another. Analysis of event-related potentials showed similar electrophysiological correlates for switching listeners and switching languages. However, it was found that having to switch listeners and languages at the same time delays the onset of lexical processes more than a switch between listeners within the same language. Findings are interpreted in light of the interplay between proactive (sustained inhibition) and reactive (task-set reconfiguration) control in bilingual speech production. It is argued that a possible bilingual advantage in executive control may not be due to the process of switching per se. This study paves the way for the study of bilingual language switching in ecologically valid, naturalistic, experimental settings.

Abstract

Pharmacological inhibition of phosphodiesterase 10A (PDE10A) is being investigated as a treatment option in schizophrenia. PDE10A acts postsynaptically on striatal dopamine signaling by regulating neuronal excitability through its inhibition of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), and we recently found it to be reduced in schizophrenia compared to controls. Here, this finding of reduced PDE10A in schizophrenia was followed up in the same sample to investigate the effect of reduced striatal PDE10A on the neural and behavioral function of striatal and downstream basal ganglia regions. A positron emission tomography (PET) scan with the PDE10A ligand [11C]Lu AE92686 was performed, followed by a 6 min resting-state magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in ten patients with schizophrenia. To assess the relationship between striatal function and neurophysiological and behavioral functioning, salience processing was assessed using a mismatch negativity paradigm, an auditory event-related electroencephalographic measure, episodic memory was assessed using the Rey auditory verbal learning test (RAVLT) and executive functioning using trail-making test B. Reduced striatal PDE10A was associated with increased amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) within the putamen and substantia nigra, respectively. Higher ALFF in the substantia nigra, in turn, was associated with lower episodic memory performance. The findings are in line with a role for PDE10A in striatal functioning, and suggest that reduced striatal PDE10A may contribute to cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia.

Abstract

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated a group of participants on a grammaticality classification task after they had been exposed to well-formed consonant strings generated from an artificial regular grammar.We used an implicit acquisition paradigm in which the participants were exposed to positive examples. The objective of this studywas to investigate whether brain regions related to language processing overlap with the brain regions activated by the grammaticality classification task used in the present study. Recent meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies indicate that syntactic processing is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) or Broca's region. In the present study, we observed that artificial grammaticality violations activated Broca's region in all participants. This observation lends some support to the suggestions that artificial grammar learning represents a model for investigating aspects of language learning in infants.

Abstract

The autonomic responses to acute pain exposure usually habituate rapidly while the subjective ratings of pain remain high for more extended periods of time. Thus, systems involved in the autonomic response to painful stimulation, for example the hypothalamus and the brainstem, would be expected to attenuate the response to pain during prolonged stimulation. This suggestion is in line with the hypothesis that the brainstem is specifically involved in the initial response to pain. To probe this hypothesis, we performed a positron emission tomography (PET) study where we scanned subjects during the first and second minute of a prolonged tonic painful cold stimulation (cold pressor test) and nonpainful cold stimulation. Galvanic skin response (GSR) was recorded during the PET scanning as an index of autonomic sympathetic response. In the main effect of pain, we observed increased activity in the thalamus bilaterally, in the contralateral insula and in the contralateral anterior cingulate cortex but no significant increases in activity in the primary or secondary somatosensory cortex. The autonomic response (GSR) decreased with stimulus duration. Concomitant with the autonomic response, increased activity was observed in brainstem and hypothalamus areas during the initial vs. the late stimulation. This effect was significantly stronger for the painful than for the cold stimulation. Activity in the brainstem showed pain-specific covariation with areas involved in pain processing, indicating an interaction between the brainstem and cortical pain networks. The findings indicate that areas in the brainstem are involved in the initial response to noxious stimulation, which is also characterized by an increased sympathetic response.

Abstract

The amygdala has been implicated in fundamental functions for the survival of the organism, such as fear and pain. In accord with this, several studies have shown increased amygdala activity during fear conditioning and the processing of fear-relevant material in human subjects. In contrast, functional neuroimaging studies of pain have shown a decreased amygdala activity. It has previously been proposed that the observed deactivations of the amygdala in these studies indicate a cognitive strategy to adapt to a distressful but in the experimental setting unavoidable painful event. In this positron emission tomography study, we show that a simple contextual manipulation, immediately preceding a painful stimulation, that increases the anticipated duration of the painful event leads to a decrease in amygdala activity and modulates the autonomic response during the noxious stimulation. On a behavioral level, 7 of the 10 subjects reported that they used coping strategies more intensely in this context. We suggest that the altered activity in the amygdala may be part of a mechanism to attenuate pain-related stress responses in a context that is perceived as being more aversive. The study also showed an increased activity in the rostral part of anterior cingulate cortex in the same context in which the amygdala activity decreased, further supporting the idea that this part of the cingulate cortex is involved in the modulation of emotional and pain networks

Abstract

While autism is one of the most intensively researched psychiatric disorders, little is known about reasoning skills of people with autism. The focus of this study was on defeasible inferences, that is inferences that can be revised in the light of new information. We used a behavioral task to investigate (a) conditional reasoning and (b) the suppression of conditional inferences in high-functioning adults with autism. In the suppression task a possible exception was made salient which could prevent a conclusion from being drawn. We predicted that the autism group would have difficulties dealing with such exceptions because they require mental flexibility to adjust to the context, which is often impaired in autism. The findings confirm our hypothesis that high-functioning adults with autism have a specific difficulty with exception-handling during reasoning. It is suggested that defeasible reasoning is also involved in other cognitive domains. Implications for neural underpinnings of reasoning and autism are discussed.

Abstract

Although people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have severe problems with pragmatic aspects of language, little is known about their pragmatic reasoning. We carried out a behavioral study on highfunctioning adults with autistic disorder (n = 11) and Asperger syndrome (n = 17) and matched controls (n = 28) to investigate whether they are capable of deriving scalar implicatures, which are generally considered to be pragmatic inferences. Participants were presented with underinformative sentences like ‘‘Some sparrows are birds’’. This sentence is logically true, but pragmatically inappropriate if the scalar implicature ‘‘Not all sparrows are birds’’ is derived. The present findings indicate that the combined ASD group was just as likely as controls to derive scalar implicatures, yet there was a difference between participants with autistic disorder and Asperger syndrome, suggesting a potential differentiation between these disorders in pragmatic reasoning. Moreover, our results suggest that verbal intelligence is a constraint for task performance in autistic disorder but not in Asperger syndrome.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Adults and children acquire knowledge of the structure of their environment on the basis of repeated exposure to samples of structured stimuli. In the study of inductive learning, a straightforward issue is how much sample information is needed to learn the structure. The present study distinguishes between two measures for the amount of information in the sample: set size and the extent to which the set of exemplars statistically covers the underlying structure. In an artificial grammar learning experiment, learning was affected by the sample’s statistical coverage of the grammar, but not by its mere size. Our result suggests an alternative explanation of the set size effects on learning found in previous studies (McAndrews & Moscovitch, 1985; Meulemans & Van der Linden, 1997), because, as we argue, set size was confounded with statistical coverage in these studies. nt]mis|This research was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. We thank Jarry Porsius for his help with the data analyses.

Abstract

Learning local regularities in sequentially structured materials is typically assumed to be based on encoding of the frequencies of these regularities. We explore the view that transitional probabilities between elements of chunks, rather than frequencies of chunks, may be the primary factor in artificial grammar learning (AGL). The transitional probability model (TPM) that we propose is argued to provide an adaptive and parsimonious strategy for encoding local regularities in order to induce sequential structure from an input set of exemplars of the grammar. In a variant of the AGL procedure, in which participants estimated the frequencies of bigrams occurring in a set of exemplars they had been exposed to previously, participants were shown to be more sensitive to local transitional probability information than to mere pattern frequencies.

Abstract

Situs inversus (SI), a left-right mirror reversal of the visceral organs, can occur with recessive Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD). However, most people with SI do not have PCD, and the etiology of their condition remains poorly studied. We sequenced the genomes of 15 people with SI, of which six had PCD, as well as 15 controls. Subjects with non-PCD SI in this sample had an elevated rate of left-handedness (five out of nine), which suggested possible developmental mechanisms linking brain and body laterality. The six SI subjects with PCD all had likely recessive mutations in genes already known to cause PCD. Two non-PCD SI cases also had recessive mutations in known PCD genes, suggesting reduced penetrance for PCD in some SI cases. One non-PCD SI case had recessive mutations in PKD1L1, and another in CFAP52 (also known as WDR16). Both of these genes have previously been linked to SI without PCD. However, five of the nine non-PCD SI cases, including three of the left-handers in this dataset, had no obvious monogenic basis for their condition. Environmental influences, or possible random effects in early development, must be considered.

Abstract

We show that the human voice has complex acoustic qualities that are directly coupled to peripheral musculoskeletal tensioning of the body, such as subtle wrist movements. In this study, human vocalizers produced a steady-state vocalization while rhythmically moving the wrist or the arm at different tempos. Although listeners could only hear but not see the vocalizer, they were able to completely synchronize their own rhythmic wrist or arm movement with the movement of the vocalizer which they perceived in the voice acoustics. This study corroborates
recent evidence suggesting that the human voice is constrained by bodily tensioning affecting the respiratory-vocal system. The current results show that the human voice contains a bodily imprint that is directly informative for the interpersonal perception of another’s dynamic physical states.

Abstract

Co-speech gestures have been proposed to strengthen sensorimotor knowledge related to objects’ weight and manipulability.
This pre-registered study (https ://www.osf.io/9uh6q /) was designed to explore how gestures affect memory for sensorimotor
information through the application of the visual-haptic size-weight illusion (i.e., objects weigh the same, but are experienced
as different in weight). With this paradigm, a discrepancy can be induced between participants’ conscious illusory
perception of objects’ weight and their implicit sensorimotor knowledge (i.e., veridical motor coordination). Depending on
whether gestures reflect and strengthen either of these types of knowledge, gestures may respectively decrease or increase
the magnitude of the size-weight illusion. Participants (N = 159) practiced a problem-solving task with small and large
objects that were designed to induce a size-weight illusion, and then explained the task with or without co-speech gesture
or completed a control task. Afterwards, participants judged the heaviness of objects from memory and then while holding
them. Confirmatory analyses revealed an inverted size-weight illusion based on heaviness judgments from memory and we
found gesturing did not affect judgments. However, exploratory analyses showed reliable correlations between participants’
heaviness judgments from memory and (a) the number of gestures produced that simulated actions, and (b) the kinematics of
the lifting phases of those gestures. These findings suggest that gestures emerge as sensorimotor imaginings that are governed
by the agent’s conscious renderings about the actions they describe, rather than implicit motor routines.

Abstract

Expressive moments in communicative hand gestures often align with emphatic stress in speech. It has recently been found that acoustic markers of emphatic stress arise naturally during steady-state phonation when upper-limb movements impart physical impulses on the body, most likely affecting acoustics via respiratory activity. In this confirmatory study, participants (N = 29) repeatedly uttered consonant-vowel (/pa/) mono-syllables while moving in particular phase relations with speech, or not moving the upper limbs. This study shows that respiration-related activity is affected by (especially high-impulse) gesturing when vocalizations occur near peaks in physical impulse. This study further shows that gesture-induced moments of bodily impulses increase the amplitude envelope of speech, while not similarly affecting the Fundamental Frequency (F0). Finally, tight relations between respiration-related activity and vocalization were observed, even in the absence of movement, but even more so when upper-limb movement is present. The current findings expand a developing line of research showing that speech is modulated by functional biomechanical linkages between hand gestures and the respiratory system. This identification of gesture-speech biomechanics promises to provide an alternative phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and mechanistic explanatory route of why communicative upper limb movements co-occur with speech in humans.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Abstract

We introduce applications of established methods in time-series and network
analysis that we jointly apply here for the kinematic study of gesture
ensembles. We define a gesture ensemble as the set of gestures produced
during discourse by a single person or a group of persons. Here we are
interested in how gestures kinematically relate to one another. We use
a bivariate time-series analysis called dynamic time warping to assess how
similar each gesture is to other gestures in the ensemble in terms of their
velocity profiles (as well as studying multivariate cases with gesture velocity
and speech amplitude envelope profiles). By relating each gesture event to
all other gesture events produced in the ensemble, we obtain a weighted
matrix that essentially represents a network of similarity relationships. We
can therefore apply network analysis that can gauge, for example, how
diverse or coherent certain gestures are with respect to the gesture ensemble.
We believe these analyses promise to be of great value for gesture
studies, as we can come to understand how low-level gesture features
(kinematics of gesture) relate to the higher-order organizational structures
present at the level of discourse.

Abstract

The phenomenon of gesture–speech synchrony involves tight coupling of prosodic contrasts in gesture
movement (e.g., peak velocity) and speech (e.g., peaks in fundamental frequency; F0). Gesture–speech
synchrony has been understood as completely governed by sophisticated neural-cognitive mechanisms.
However, gesture–speech synchrony may have its original basis in the resonating forces that travel through the
body. In the current preregistered study, movements with high physical impact affected phonation in line with
gesture–speech synchrony as observed in natural contexts. Rhythmic beating of the arms entrained phonation
acoustics (F0 and the amplitude envelope). Such effects were absent for a condition with low-impetus
movements (wrist movements) and a condition without movement. Further, movement–phonation synchrony
was more pronounced when participants were standing as opposed to sitting, indicating a mediating role for
postural stability. We conclude that gesture–speech synchrony has a biomechanical basis, which will have
implications for our cognitive, ontogenetic, and phylogenetic understanding of multimodal language.

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that hand gestures and speech synchronize their activity on multiple dimensions and timescales. For example, gesture’s kinematic peaks (e.g., maximum speed) are coupled with prosodic markers in speech. Such coupling operates on very short timescales at the level of syllables (200 ms), and therefore requires high-resolution measurement of gesture kinematics and speech acoustics. High-resolution speech analysis is common for gesture studies, given that field’s classic ties with (psycho)linguistics. However, the field has lagged behind in the objective study of gesture kinematics (e.g., as compared to research on instrumental action). Often kinematic peaks in gesture are measured by eye, where a “moment of maximum effort” is determined by several raters. In the present article, we provide a tutorial on more efficient methods to quantify the temporal properties of gesture kinematics, in which we focus on common challenges and possible solutions that come with the complexities of studying multimodal language. We further introduce and compare, using an actual gesture dataset (392 gesture events), the performance of two video-based motion-tracking methods (deep learning vs. pixel change) against a high-performance wired motion-tracking system (Polhemus Liberty). We show that the videography methods perform well in the temporal estimation of kinematic peaks, and thus provide a cheap alternative to expensive motion-tracking systems. We hope that the present article incites gesture researchers to embark on the widespread objective study of gesture kinematics and their relation to speech.