Publications

Abstract

Subcortical brain structures are integral to motion, consciousness, emotions and learning. We identified common genetic variation related to the volumes of the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, brainstem, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus, putamen and thalamus, using genome-wide association analyses in almost 40,000 individuals from CHARGE, ENIGMA and UK Biobank. We show that variability in subcortical volumes is heritable, and identify 48 significantly associated loci (40 novel at the time of analysis). Annotation of these loci by utilizing gene expression, methylation and neuropathological data identified 199 genes putatively implicated in neurodevelopment, synaptic signaling, axonal transport, apoptosis, inflammation/infection and susceptibility to neurological disorders. This set of genes is significantly enriched for Drosophila orthologs associated with neurodevelopmental phenotypes, suggesting evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. Our findings uncover novel biology and potential drug targets underlying brain development and disease.

Abstract

Does our perception of others’ emotional signals depend on the language we speak or is our perception the same regardless of language and culture? It is well established that human emotional facial expressions are perceived categorically by viewers, but whether this is driven by perceptual or linguistic mechanisms is debated. We report an investigation into the perception of emotional facial expressions, comparing German speakers to native speakers of Yucatec Maya, a language with no lexical labels that distinguish disgust from anger. In a free naming task, speakers of German, but not Yucatec Maya, made lexical distinctions between disgust and anger. However, in a delayed match-to-sample task, both groups perceived emotional facial expressions of these and other emotions categorically. The magnitude of this effect was equivalent across the language groups, as well as across emotion continua with and without lexical distinctions. Our results show that the perception of affective signals is not driven by lexical labels, instead lending support to accounts of emotions as a set of biologically evolved mechanisms.

Abstract

The epigenetic enzyme p300/CBP-associated factor (PCAF) belongs to the GCN5-related N-acetyltransferase (GNAT) family together with GCN5. Although its transcriptional and post-translational function is well characterized, little is known about its properties as regulator of cell metabolism. Here, we report the mitochondrial localization of PCAF conferred by an 85 aa mitochondrial targeting sequence (MTS) at the N-terminal region of the protein. In mitochondria, one of the PCAF targets is the isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (IDH2) acetylated at lysine 180. This PCAF-regulated post-translational modification might reduce IDH2 affinity for isocitrate as a result of a conformational shift involving predictively the tyrosine at position 179. Site-directed mutagenesis and functional studies indicate that PCAF regulates IDH2, acting at dual level during myoblast differentiation: at a transcriptional level together with MyoD, and at a post-translational level by direct modification of lysine acetylation in mitochondria. The latter event determines a decrease in IDH2 function with negative consequences on muscle fiber formation in C2C12 cells. Indeed, a MTS-deprived PCAF does not localize into mitochondria, remains enriched into the nucleus, and contributes to a significant increase of muscle-specific gene expression enhancing muscle differentiation. The role of PCAF in mitochondria is a novel finding shedding light on metabolic processes relevant to early muscle precursor differentiation.—Savoia, M., Cencioni, C., Mori, M., Atlante, S., Zaccagnini, G., Devanna, P., Di Marcotullio, L., Botta, B., Martelli, F., Zeiher, A. M., Pontecorvi, A., Farsetti, A., Spallotta, F., Gaetano, C. P300/CBP-associated factor regulates transcription and function of isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 during muscle differentiation.

Abstract

In the current study we use electroencephalography (EEG) to detect heard music from the brain signal, hypothesizing that the time structure in music makes it especially suitable for decoding perception from EEG signals. While excluding music with vocals, we classified the perception of seven different musical fragments of about three seconds, both individually and cross-participants, using only time domain information (the event-related potential, ERP). The best individual results are 70% correct in a seven-class problem while using single trials, and when using multiple trials we achieve 100% correct after six presentations of the stimulus. When classifying across participants, a maximum rate of 53% was reached, supporting a general representation of each musical fragment over participants. While for some music stimuli the amplitude envelope correlated well with the ERP, this was not true for all stimuli. Aspects of the stimulus that may contribute to the differences between the EEG responses to the pieces of music are discussed.

Abstract

This paper explores the use of demonstratives in non-embedded clausal nominalisations. We present data and analysis from three Papuan languages of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family in south-east Indonesia. In these languages, demonstratives can apply to the clausal as well as to the nominal domain, contributing contrastive semantic content in assertive stance-taking and attention-directing utterances. In the Timor-Alor-Pantar constructions, meanings that are to do with spatial and discourse locations at the participant level apply to spatial, temporal and mental locations at the state or event leve

Abstract

Work on animals indicates that BOLD is preferentially sensitive to local field potentials, and that it correlates most strongly with gamma band neuronal synchronization. Here we investigate how the BOLD signal in humans performing a cognitive task is related to neuronal synchronization across different frequency bands. We simultaneously recorded EEG and BOLD while subjects engaged in a visual attention task known to induce sustained changes in neuronal synchronization across a wide range of frequencies. Trial-by-trial BOLD luctuations correlated positively with trial-by-trial fluctuations in high-EEG gamma power (60–80 Hz) and negatively with alpha and beta power. Gamma power on the one hand, and alpha and beta power on the other hand, independently contributed to explaining BOLD variance. These results indicate that the BOLD-gamma coupling observed in animals can be extrapolated to humans performing a task and that neuronal dynamics underlying high- and low-frequency synchronization contribute independently to the BOLD signal.

Abstract

Exposure to traumatic stress increases the odds of developing a broad range of psychiatric conditions. Genetic studies targeting multiple stress-related quantitative phenotypes may shed light on mechanisms underlying vulnerability to psychopathology in the aftermath of stressful events. We applied a multivariate genome-wide association study (GWAS) to a unique military cohort (N = 583) in which we measured biochemical and behavioral phenotypes. The availability of pre- and post-deployment measurements allowed to capture changes in these phenotypes in response to stress. For genome-wide significant loci, we performed functional annotation, phenome-wide analysis and quasi-replication in PTSD case-control GWASs. We discovered one genetic variant reaching genome-wide significant association, surviving permutation and sensitivity analyses (rs10100651, p = 9.9 × 10−9). Functional annotation prioritized the genes INTS8 and TP53INP1. A phenome-wide scan revealed a significant association of these same genes with sleeping problems, hypertension and subjective well-being. Finally, a targeted lookup revealed nominally significant association of rs10100651 in a PTSD case-control GWAS in the UK Biobank (p = 0.02). We provide comprehensive evidence from multiple resources hinting at a role of the highlighted genetic variant in the human stress response, marking the power of multivariate genome-wide analysis of quantitative measures in stress research. Future genetic and functional studies can target this locus to further assess its effects on stress mediation and its possible role in psychopathology or resilience.

Abstract

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants following short vowels, long vowels, and schwa in Dutch. Special interest was paid to words such as letter ['leter] ''id.,'' where a short vowel is followed by a single consonant. On phonological grounds one may predict that the first syllable should always be closed, but earlier psycholinguistic research had shown that speakers tend to leave these syllables open. In our experiments, bisyllabic word forms were presented aurally, and participants produced their syllables in reversed order (Experiments 1 through 5), or repeated the words inserting a pause between the syllables (Experiment 6). The results showed that participants generally closed syllables with a short vowel. However, in a significant number of the cases they produced open short vowel syllables. Syllables containing schwa, like syllables with a long vowel, were hardly ever closed. Word stress, the phonetic quality of the vowel in the first syllable, and the experimental context influenced syllabification. Taken together, the experiments show that native speakers syllabify bisyllabic Dutch nouns in accordance with a small set of prosodic output constraints. To account for the variability of the results, we propose that these constraints differ in their probabilities of being applied.

Abstract

This study examines the placement of finite and nonfinite lexical verbs and finite light verbs (LVs) in semispontaneous production and elicited imitation of adult beginning learners of German and French. Theories assuming nonnativelike syntactic representations at early stages of development predict variable placement of lexical verbs and consistent placement of LVs, whereas theories assuming nativelike syntax predict variability for nonfinite verbs and consistent placement of all finite verbs. The results show that beginning learners of German have consistent preferences only for LVs. More advanced learners of German and learners of French produce and imitate finite verbs in more variable positions than nonfinite verbs. This is argued to support a structure-building view of second-language development.

Abstract

This dataset, colloquially known as the Mother Of Unification Studies (MOUS) dataset, contains multimodal neuroimaging data that has been acquired from 204 healthy human subjects. The neuroimaging protocol consisted of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to derive information at high spatial resolution about brain anatomy and structural connections, and functional data during task, and at rest. In addition, magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to obtain high temporal resolution electrophysiological measurements during task, and at rest. All subjects performed a language task, during which they processed linguistic utterances that either consisted of normal or scrambled sentences. Half of the subjects were reading the stimuli, the other half listened to the stimuli. The resting state measurements consisted of 5 minutes eyes-open for the MEG and 7 minutes eyes-closed for fMRI. The neuroimaging data, as well as the information about the experimental events are shared according to the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) format. This unprecedented neuroimaging language data collection allows for the investigation of various aspects of the neurobiological correlates of language.

Abstract

Studying the interaction between brain regions is important to increase our understanding of brain function. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is well suited to investigate brain connectivity, because it provides measurements of activity of the whole brain at very high temporal resolution. Typically, brain activity is reconstructed from the sensor recordings with an inverse method such as a beamformer, and subsequently a connectivity metric is estimated between predefined reference regions-of-interest (ROIs) and the rest of the source space. Unfortunately, this approach relies on a robust estimate of the relevant reference regions and on a robust estimate of the activity in those reference regions, and is not generally applicable to a wide variety of cognitive paradigms. Here, we investigate the possibility to perform all-to-all pairwise connectivity analysis, thus removing the need to define ROIs. Particularly, we evaluate the effect of nonhomogeneous spatial smoothing of differential connectivity maps. This approach is inspired by the fact that the spatial resolution of source reconstructions is typically spatially nonhomogeneous. We use this property to reduce the spatial noise in the cerebro-cerebral connectivity map, thus improving interpretability. Using extensive data simulations we show a superior detection rate and a substantial reduction in the number of spurious connections. We conclude that nonhomogeneous spatial smoothing of cerebro-cerebral connectivity maps could be an important improvement of the existing analysis tools to study neuronal interactions noninvasively.

Abstract

Local groups of neurons engaged in a cognitive task often exhibit rhythmically synchronized activity in the gamma band, a phenomenon that likely enhances their impact on downstream areas. The efficacy of neuronal interactions may be enhanced further by interareal synchronization of these local rhythms, establishing mutually well timed fluctuations in neuronal excitability. This notion suggests that long-range synchronization is enhanced selectively for connections that are behaviorally relevant. We tested this prediction in the human motor system, assessing activity from bilateral motor cortices with magnetoencephalography and corresponding spinal activity through electromyography of bilateral hand muscles. A bimanual isometric wrist extension task engaged the two motor cortices simultaneously into interactions and coherence with their respective corresponding contralateral hand muscles. One of the hands was cued before each trial as the response hand and had to be extended further to report an unpredictable visual go cue. We found that, during the isometric hold phase, corticomuscular coherence was enhanced, spatially selective for the corticospinal connection that was effectuating the subsequent motor response. This effect was spectrally selective in the low gamma-frequency band (40–47 Hz) and was observed in the absence of changes in motor output or changes in local cortical gamma-band synchronization. These findings indicate that, in the anatomical connections between the cortex and the spinal cord, gamma-band synchronization is a mechanism that may facilitate behaviorally relevant interactions between these distant neuronal groups.

Abstract

Speakers are influenced by the linguistic context: hearing one syntactic alternative leads to an increased chance that the speaker will repeat this structure in the subsequent utterance (i.e., syntactic priming, or structural persistence). Top-down influences, such as whether a conversation partner (or, interlocutor) is present, may modulate the degree to which syntactic priming occurs. In the current study, we indeed show that the magnitude of syntactic alignment increases when speakers are interacting with an interlocutor as opposed to doing the experiment alone. The structural persistence effect for passive sentences is stronger in the presence of an interlocutor than when no interlocutor is present (i.e., when the participant is primed by a recording). We did not find evidence, however, that a speaker’s syntactic priming magnitude is influenced by the degree of their conversation partner’s priming magnitude. Together, these results support a mediated account of syntactic priming, in which syntactic choices are not only affected by preceding linguistic input, but also by top-down influences, such as the speakers’ communicative intent.

Abstract

Speakers can adapt their speech and co-speech gestures based on knowledge shared with an addressee (common ground-based recipient design). Here, we investigate whether these adaptations are modulated by the speaker’s age and cognitive abilities. Younger and older participants narrated six short comic stories to a same-aged addressee. Half of each story was known to both participants, the other half only to the speaker. The two age groups did not differ in terms of the number of words and narrative events mentioned per narration, or in terms of gesture frequency, gesture rate, or percentage of events expressed multimodally. However, only the younger participants reduced the amount of verbal and gestural information when narrating mutually known as opposed to novel story content. Age-related differences in cognitive abilities did not predict these differences in common ground-based recipient design. The older participants’ communicative behaviour may therefore also reflect differences in social or pragmatic goals.

Abstract

Background

Voluntary shifts of visuospatial attention are associated with a lateralization of parieto-occipital alpha power (7-13Hz), i.e. higher power in the hemisphere ipsilateral and lower power contralateral to the locus of attention. Recent noninvasive neuromodulation studies demonstrated that alpha power can be experimentally increased using transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS).
Objective/Hypothesis

We hypothesized that tACS at alpha frequency over the left parietal cortex induces shifts of attention to the left hemifield. However, spatial attention shifts not only occur voluntarily (endogenous/ top-down), but also stimulus-driven (exogenous/ bottom-up). To study the task-specificity of the potential effects of tACS on attentional processes, we administered three conceptually different spatial attention tasks.
Methods

36 healthy volunteers were recruited from an academic environment. In two separate sessions, we applied either high-density tACS at 10Hz, or sham tACS, for 35–40 minutes to their left parietal cortex. We systematically compared performance on endogenous attention, exogenous attention, and stimulus detection tasks.
Results

In the endogenous attention task, a greater leftward bias in reaction times was induced during left parietal 10Hz tACS as compared to sham. There were no stimulation effects in either the exogenous attention or the stimulus detection task.
Conclusion

The study demonstrates that high-density tACS at 10Hz can be used to modulate visuospatial attention performance. The tACS effect is task-specific, indicating that not all forms of attention are equally susceptible to the stimulation.

Abstract

In spontaneous, conversational speech, words are often reduced compared to their citation forms, such that a word like yesterday may sound like [’jεsmall eshei]. The present chapter investigates such acoustic reduction. The study of reduction needs large corpora that are transcribed phonetically. The first part of this chapter describes an automatic transcription procedure used to obtain such a large phonetically transcribed corpus of Dutch spontaneous dialogues, which is subsequently used for the investigation of acoustic reduction. First, the orthographic transcriptions were adapted for automatic processing. Next, the phonetic transcription of the corpus was created by means of a forced alignment using a lexicon with multiple pronunciation variants per word. These variants were generated by applying phonological and reduction rules to the canonical phonetic transcriptions of the words. The second part of this chapter reports the results of a quantitative analysis of reduction in the corpus on the basis of the generated transcriptions and gives an inventory of segmental reductions in standard Dutch. Overall, we found that reduction is more pervasive in spontaneous Dutch than previously documented.

Abstract

Exposure to trauma strongly increases the risk to develop stress-related psychopathology, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depressive disorder (MDD). In addition, liability to develop these moderately heritable disorders is partly determined by common genetic variance, which is starting to be uncovered by genome-wide association studies (GWASs). However, it is currently unknown to what extent genetic vulnerability and trauma interact. We investigated whether genetic risk based on summary statistics of large GWASs for PTSD and MDD predisposed individuals to report an increase in MDD and PTSD symptoms in a prospective military cohort (N = 516) at five time points after deployment to Afghanistan: one month, six months and one, two and five years. Linear regression was used to analyze the contribution of polygenic risk scores (PRSs, at multiple p-value thresholds) and their interaction with deployment-related trauma to the development of PTSD- and depression-related symptoms. We found no main effects of PRSs nor evidence for interactions with trauma on the development of PTSD or depressive symptoms at any of the time points in the five years after military deployment. Our results based on a unique long-term follow-up of a deployed military cohort suggest limited validity of current PTSD and MDD polygenic risk scores, albeit in the presence of minimal severe psychopathology in the target cohort. Even though the predictive value of PRSs will likely benefit from larger sample sizes in discovery and target datasets, progress will probably also depend on (endo)phenotype refinement that in turn will reduce etiological heterogeneity.

Abstract

Encoding the temporal properties of external signals that comprise multimodal events is a major factor guiding everyday experience. However, during the natural aging process, impairments to sensory processing can profoundly affect multimodal temporal perception. Various mechanisms can contribute to temporal perception, and thus it is imperative to understand how each can be affected by age. In the current study, using three different temporal order judgement tasks (unisensory, multisensory, and sensorimotor), we investigated the effects of age on two separate temporal processes: synchronization and integration of multiple signals. These two processes rely on different aspects of temporal information, either the temporal alignment of processed signals or the integration/segregation of signals arising from different modalities, respectively. Results showed that the ability to integrate/segregate multiple signals decreased with age regardless of the task, and that the magnitude of such impairment correlated across tasks, suggesting a widespread mechanism affected by age. In contrast, perceptual synchrony remained stable with age, revealing a distinct intact mechanism. Overall, results from this study suggest that aging has differential effects on temporal processing, and general impairments with aging may impact global temporal sensitivity while context-dependent processes remain unaffected.

Abstract

Speakers tend to repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. Although it has been suggested that repeating syntactic structures should result in speeded responses, previous research has focused on effects in response tendencies. We investigated syntactic priming effects simultaneously in response tendencies and response latencies for active and passive transitive sentences in a picture description task. In Experiment 1, there were priming effects in response tendencies for passives and in response latencies for actives. However, when participants' pre-existing preference for actives was altered in Experiment 2, syntactic priming occurred for both actives and passives in response tendencies as well as in response latencies. This is the first investigation of the effects of structure frequency on both response tendencies and latencies in syntactic priming. We discuss the implications of these data for current theories of syntactic processing.

Abstract

The present study investigates the functions of gestures in preschoolers’ descriptions of activities. Specifically, utilizing McNeill’s growth point theory (1992), I examine how gestures contribute to the creation of contrast from the immediate context in the spoken discourse of children. When preschool children describe an activity consisting of multiple actions, like playing on a slide, they often begin with the central action (e.g., sliding-down) instead of with the beginning of the activity sequence (e.g., climbing-up). This study indicates that, in descriptions of activities, gestures may be among the cues the speaker uses for forming a next idea or for repairing the temporal order of the activities described. Gestures may function for the speaker as visual feedback and contribute to the process of utterance formation and provide an index for assessing language development.

Abstract

How stable is the lexicon for perceptual experiences? This article presents results on how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea talk about color and taste and whether this has changed over the years. Comparing the results of research on color terms conducted in 1983 with data collected in 2008 revealed that many English color terms have been integrated into the Kilivila lexicon. Members of the younger generation with school education have been the agents of this language change. However, today not all English color terms are produced correctly according to English lexical semantics. The traditional Kilivila color terms bwabwau ‘black’, pupwakau ‘white’, and bweyani ‘red’ are not affected by this change, probably because of the cultural importance of the art of coloring canoes, big yams houses, and bodies. Comparing the 1983 data on taste vocabulary with the results of my 2008 research revealed no substantial change. The conservatism of the Trobriand Islanders' taste vocabulary may be related to the conservatism of their palate. Moreover, they are more interested in displaying and exchanging food than in savoring it. Although English color terms are integrated into the lexicon, Kilivila provides evidence that traditional terms used for talking about color and terms used to refer to tastes have remained stable over time.

Abstract

Without Abstract

Abstract

The Open Access Movement promotes free and unfettered access to research publications and, increasingly, to the primary data which underly those publications. As the field of documentary linguistics seeks to record and preserve culturally and linguistically relevant materials, the question of how openly accessible these materials should be becomes increasingly important. This paper aims to guide researchers and other stakeholders in finding an appropriate balance between accessibility and confidentiality of data, addressing community questions and legal, institutional, and intellectual issues that pose challenges to accessible data.

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder is increasingly associated with atypical perceptual and sensory symptoms. Here we explore the hypothesis
that aberrant sensory processing in autism spectrum disorder could be linked to atypical intra- (local) and interregional (global)
brain connectivity. To elucidate oscillatory dynamics and connectivity in the visual domain we used magnetoencephalography and
a simple visual grating paradigm with a group of 18 adolescent autistic participants and 18 typically developing control subjects.
Both groups showed similar increases in gamma (40–80 Hz) and decreases in alpha (8–13 Hz) frequency power in occipital cortex.
However, systematic group differences emerged when analysing intra- and interregional connectivity in detail. First, directed
connectivity was estimated using non-parametric Granger causality between visual areas V1 and V4. Feedforward V1-to-V4
connectivity, mediated by gamma oscillations, was equivalent between autism spectrum disorder and control groups, but importantly,
feedback V4-to-V1 connectivity, mediated by alpha (8–13 Hz) oscillations, was significantly reduced in the autism spectrum
disorder group. This reduction was positively correlated with autistic quotient scores, consistent with an atypical visual hierarchy
in autism, characterized by reduced top-down modulation of visual input via alpha-band oscillations. Second, at the local level in
V1, coupling of alpha-phase to gamma amplitude (alpha-gamma phase amplitude coupling) was reduced in the autism spectrum
disorder group. This implies dysregulated local visual processing, with gamma oscillations decoupled from patterns of wider alphaband
phase synchrony (i.e. reduced phase amplitude coupling), possibly due to an excitation-inhibition imbalance. More generally,
these results are in agreement with predictive coding accounts of neurotypical perception and indicate that visual processes in
autism are less modulated by contextual feedback information.

Abstract

Background Cognitive dysfunction is one of the most prominent characteristics of psychiatric disorders. At present, the neural correlates of cognitive dysfunction across psychiatric disorders are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to investigate functional connectivity and structural perturbations across psychiatric diagnoses in three neurocognitive networks of interest, including the default-mode (DMN), the frontoparietal (FPN) and the salience network (SN). Methods We performed meta-analyses of resting-state functional MRI (R-fMRI) whole-brain seed-based functional connectivity in 8,298 patients (involving 8 disorders) and 8,165 healthy controls and a voxel-based morphometry analysis of structural MRI data in 14,027 patients (involving 8 disorders) and healthy 14,504 controls. To aid the interpretation of the results, we examined neurocognitive function in 776 healthy participants from the Human Connectome Project. Results We found that the three neurocognitive networks of interest were characterized by shared alterations of functional connectivity architecture across psychiatric disorders. More specifically, hypoconnectivity was expressed between the DMN and ventral SN and between the SN and FPN, whereas hyperconnectivity was evident between the DMN and FPN and between the DMN and dorsal SN. This pattern of network alterations was associated with gray matter reductions in patients, and was localized in regions that subserve general cognitive performance. Conclusions This study is the first to provide meta-analytic evidence of common alterations of functional connectivity within and between neurocognitive networks. The findings suggest a shared mechanism of network interactions that may associate with the generalized cognitive deficits observed in psychiatric disorders.

Abstract

There is mounting evidence that the ease of producing and understanding language depends not only on the frequencies of individual words but also on the frequencies of word combinations. However, in two picture description experiments, Janssen and Barber (2012) found that French and Spanish speakers' speech onset latencies for short phrases depended exclusively on the frequencies of the phrases but not on the frequencies of the individual words. They suggested that speakers retrieved phrase-sized units from the mental lexicon. In the present study, we examined whether the time required to plan complex noun phrases in Dutch would likewise depend only on phrase frequencies. Participants described line drawings in phrases such as rode schoen [red shoe] (Experiments 1 and 2) or de rode schoen [the red shoe] (Experiment 3). Replicating Janssen and Barber's findings, utterance onset latencies depended on the frequencies of the phrases but, deviating from their findings, also depended on the frequencies of the adjectives in adjective-noun phrases and the frequencies of the nouns in determiner-adjective-noun phrases. We conclude that individual word frequencies and phrase frequencies both affect the time needed to produce noun phrases and discuss how these findings may be captured in models of the mental lexicon and of phrase production

Abstract

Interactions between top-down and bottom-up information streams are integral to brain function but challenging to measure noninvasively. Laminar resolution, functional MRI (lfMRI) is sensitive to depth-dependent properties of the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response, which can be potentially related to top-down and bottom-up signal contributions. In this work, we used lfMRI to dissociate the top-down and bottom-up signal contributions to the left occipitotemporal sulcus (LOTS) during word reading. We further demonstrate that laminar resolution measurements could be used to identify condition-specific distributed networks on the basis of whole-brain connectivity patterns specific to the depth-dependent BOLD signal. The networks corresponded to top-down and bottom-up signal pathways targeting the LOTS during word reading. We show that reading increased the top-down BOLD signal observed in the deep layers of the LOTS and that this signal uniquely related to the BOLD response in other language-critical regions. These results demonstrate that lfMRI can reveal important patterns of activation that are obscured at standard resolution. In addition to differences in activation strength as a function of depth, we also show meaningful differences in the interaction between signals originating from different depths both within a region and with the rest of the brain. We thus show that lfMRI allows the noninvasive measurement of directed interaction between brain regions and is capable of resolving different connectivity patterns at submillimeter resolution, something previously considered to be exclusively in the domain of invasive recordings.

Abstract

Speakers use vocabulary for spatial verticality and size to describe pitch. A high–low contrast is common to many languages, but others show contrasts like thick–thin and big–small. We consider uses of thick for low pitch and thin for high pitch in three languages: Farsi, Turkish, and Zapotec. We ask how metaphors for pitch structure the sound space. In a language like English, high applies to both high-pitched as well as high-amplitude (loud) sounds; low applies to low-pitched as well as low-amplitude (quiet) sounds. Farsi, Turkish, and Zapotec organize sound in a different way. Thin applies to high pitch and low amplitude and thick to low pitch and high amplitude. We claim that these metaphors have their sources in life experiences. Musical instruments show co-occurrences of higher pitch with thinner, smaller objects and lower pitch with thicker, larger objects. On the other hand bodily experience can ground the high–low metaphor. A raised larynx produces higher pitch and lowered larynx lower pitch. Low-pitched sounds resonate the chest, a lower place than highpitched sounds. While both patterns are available from life experience, linguistic experience privileges one over the other, which results in differential structuring of the multiple dimensions of sound.

Abstract

Aboriginal languages threatened by speakers poor economic and social conditions; some may survive through support for community development, language maintenance, bilingual education and training of Aboriginal teachers and linguists, and nonAboriginal teachers of Aboriginal and Islander students.

Abstract

Listeners tune in to talkers’ vowels through extrinsic normalization. We asked here whether this process could be based on compensation for the Long Term Average Spectrum (LTAS) of preceding sounds and whether the mechanisms responsible for normalization are indifferent to the nature of those sounds. If so, normalization should apply to nonspeech stimuli. Previous findings were replicated with first formant (F1) manipulations of speech. Targets on a [pIt]-[pEt] (low-high F1) continuum were labeled as [pIt] more after high-F1 than after low-F1 precursors. Spectrally-rotated nonspeech versions of these materials produced similar normalization. None occurred, however, with nonspeech stimuli that were less speech-like, even though precursor-target LTAS relations were equivalent to those used earlier. Additional experiments investigated the roles of pitch movement, amplitude variation, formant location, and the stimuli's perceived similarity to speech. It appears that normalization is not restricted to speech, but that the nature of the preceding sounds does matter. Extrinsic normalization of vowels is due at least in part to an auditory process which may require familiarity with the spectro-temporal characteristics of speech.

Abstract

This study used an active multiple-deviant oddball design to investigate the time-course of normalization processes that help listeners deal with between-speaker variability. Electroencephalograms were recorded while Dutch listeners heard sequences of non-words (standards and occasional deviants). Deviants were [ɪ papu] or [ɛ papu], and the standard was [ɪɛpapu], where [ɪɛ] was a vowel that was ambiguous between [ɛ] and [ɪ]. These sequences were presented in two conditions, which differed with respect to the vocal-tract characteristics (i.e., the average 1st formant frequency) of the [papu] part, but not of the initial vowels [ɪ], [ɛ] or [ɪɛ] (these vowels were thus identical across conditions). Listeners more often detected a shift from [ɪɛpapu] to [ɛ papu] than from [ɪɛpapu] to [ɪ papu] in the high F1 context condition; the reverse was true in the low F1 context condition. This shows that listeners’ perception of vowels differs depending on the speaker‘s vocal-tract characteristics, as revealed in the speech surrounding those vowels. Cortical electrophysiological responses reflected this normalization process as early as about 120 ms after vowel onset, which suggests that shifts in perception precede influences due to conscious biases or decision strategies. Listeners’ abilities to normalize for speaker-vocal-tract properties are for an important part the result of a process that influences representations of speech sounds early in the speech processing stream.

Abstract

The acoustic dimensions that distinguish speech sounds (like the vowel differences in “boot” and “boat”) also differentiate speakers’ voices. Therefore, listeners must normalize across speakers without losing linguistic information. Past behavioral work suggests an important role for auditory contrast enhancement in normalization: preceding context affects listeners’ perception of subsequent speech sounds. Here, using intracranial electrocorticography in humans, we investigate whether and how such context effects arise in auditory cortex. Participants identified speech sounds that were preceded by phrases from two different speakers whose voices differed along the same acoustic dimension as target words (the lowest resonance of the vocal tract). In every participant, target vowels evoke a speaker-dependent neural response that is consistent with the listener’s perception, and which follows from a contrast enhancement model. Auditory cortex processing thus displays a critical feature of normalization, allowing listeners to extract meaningful content from the voices of diverse speakers.

Abstract

Adult speakers of different free stress languages (e.g., English, Spanish) differ both in their sensitivity to lexical stress and in their processing of suprasegmental and vowel quality cues to stress. In a head-turn preference experiment with a familiarization phase, both 8-month-old and 12-month-old English-learning infants discriminated between initial stress and final stress among lists of Spanish-spoken disyllabic nonwords that were segmentally varied (e.g. [ˈnila, ˈtuli] vs [luˈta, puˈki]). This is evidence that English-learning infants are sensitive to lexical stress patterns, instantiated primarily by suprasegmental cues, during the second half of the first year of life.

Abstract

It is widely accepted that specific memory processes, such as serial-order memory, are involved in written language development and predictive of reading and spelling abilities. The reverse question, namely whether orthographic abilities also affect serial-order memory, has hardly been investigated. In the current study, we compared 20 illiterate people with a group of 20 literate matched controls on a verbal and a visuospatial version of the Hebb paradigm, measuring both short- and long-term serial-order memory abilities. We observed better short-term serial-recall performance for the literate compared with the illiterate people. This effect was stronger in the verbal than in the visuospatial modality, suggesting that the improved capacity of the literate group is a consequence of learning orthographic skills. The long-term consolidation of ordered information was comparable across groups, for both stimulus modalities. The implications of these findings for current views regarding the bi-directional interactions between memory and written language development are discussed.

Abstract

Blindsight refers to the observation of residual visual abilities in the hemianopic field of patients without a functional V1. Given the within- and between-subject variability in the preserved abilities and the phenomenal experience of blindsight patients, the fine-grained description of the phenomenon is still debated. Here we tested a patient with established “perceptual” and “attentional” blindsight (c.f. Danckert and Rossetti, 2005). Using a pointing paradigm patient MS, who suffers from a complete left homonymous hemianopia, showed clear above chance manual localisation of ‘unseen’ targets. In addition, target presentations in his blind field led MS, on occasion, to spontaneous responses towards his sighted field. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted to evaluate the magnitude of V1 damage. Results revealed the presence of a calcarine sulcus in both hemispheres, yet his right V1 is reduced, structurally disconnected and shows no fMRI response to visual stimuli. Thus, visual stimulation of his blind field can lead to “action blindsight” and spontaneous antipointing, in absence of a functional right V1. With respect to the antipointing, we suggest that MS may have registered the stimulation and subsequently presumes it must have been in his intact half field.

Abstract

POU3F3, also referred to as Brain-1, is a well-known transcription factor involved in the development of the central nervous system, but it has not previously been associated with a neurodevelopmental disorder. Here, we report the identification of 19 individuals with heterozygous POU3F3 disruptions, most of which are de novo variants. All individuals had developmental delays and/or intellectual disability and impairments in speech and language skills. Thirteen individuals had characteristic low-set, prominent, and/or cupped ears. Brain abnormalities were observed in seven of eleven MRI reports. POU3F3 is an intronless gene, insensitive to nonsense-mediated decay, and 13 individuals carried protein-truncating variants. All truncating variants that we tested in cellular models led to aberrant subcellular localization of the encoded protein. Luciferase assays demonstrated negative effects of these alleles on transcriptional activation of a reporter with a FOXP2-derived binding motif. In addition to the loss-of-function variants, five individuals had missense variants that clustered at specific positions within the functional domains, and one small in-frame deletion was identified. Two missense variants showed reduced transactivation capacity in our assays, whereas one variant displayed gain-of-function effects, suggesting a distinct pathophysiological mechanism. In bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) interaction assays, all the truncated POU3F3 versions that we tested had significantly impaired dimerization capacities, whereas all missense variants showed unaffected dimerization with wild-type POU3F3. Taken together, our identification and functional cell-based analyses of pathogenic variants in POU3F3, coupled with a clinical characterization, implicate disruptions of this gene in a characteristic neurodevelopmental disorder.

Abstract

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) are involved in conflict detection and
conflict resolution, respectively. Here, we investigate how lifelong bilingualism induces neuroplasticity to these structures by
employing a novel analysis of behavioural performance. We correlated grey matter volume (GMV) in seniors reported by
Abutalebi et al. (2015) with behavioral Flanker task performance fitted using the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978). As
predicted, we observed significant correlations between GMV in the DLPFC and Flanker performance. However, for
monolinguals the non-decision time parameter was significantly correlated with GMV in the left DLPFC, whereas for
bilinguals the correlation was significant in the right DLPFC. We also found a significant correlation between age and GMV
in left DLPFC and the non-decision time parameter for the conflict effect for monolinguals only.
We submit that this is due to cumulative demands on cognitive control over a lifetime of bilingual language processing

Abstract

In language comprehension, a variety of contextual cues act in unison to render upcoming words more or less predictable. As a sentence unfolds, we use prior context (sentential constraints) to predict what the next words might be. Additionally, in a conversation, we can predict upcoming sounds through observing the mouth movements of a speaker (visual constraints). In electrophysiological studies, effects of visual constraints have typically been observed early in language processing, while effects of sentential constraints have typically been observed later. We hypothesized that the visual and the sentential constraints might feed into the same predictive process such that effects of sentential constraints might also be detectable early in language processing through modulations of the early effects of visual salience. We presented participants with audiovisual speech while recording their brain activity with magnetoencephalography. Participants saw videos of a person saying sentences where the last word was either sententially constrained or not, and began with a salient or non-salient mouth movement. We found that sentential constraints indeed exerted an early (N1) influence on language processing. Sentential modulations of the N1 visual predictability effect were visible in brain areas associated with semantic processing, and were differently expressed in the two hemispheres. In the left hemisphere, visual and sentential constraints jointly suppressed the auditory evoked field, while the right hemisphere was sensitive to visual constraints only in the absence of strong sentential constraints. These results suggest that sentential and visual constraints can jointly influence even very early stages of audiovisual speech comprehension.

Abstract

The way a language encodes sensory experiences changes over time, and often this correlates with other changes in the society. There are noticeable differences in the language of perception between older and younger speakers of Cantonese in Hong Kong and Macau. Younger speakers make finer distinctions in the distal senses, but have less knowledge of the finer categories of the proximal senses than older speakers. The difference in the language of perception between older and younger speakers probably reflects the rapid changes that happened in Hong Kong and Macau in the last fifty years, from an underdeveloped and lessliterate society, to a developed and highly literate society. In addition to the increase in literacy, the education system has also undergone significant Westernization. Western-style education systems have most likely created finer categorizations in the distal senses. At the same time, the traditional finer distinctions of the proximal senses have become less salient: as the society became more urbanized and sanitized, people have had fewer opportunities to experience the variety of olfactory sensations experienced by their ancestors. This case study investigating interactions between social-economic 'development' and the elaboration of the senses hopefully contributes to the study of the ineffability of senses.

Abstract

Odors are often difficult to identify and name, which leaves them vulnerable to the influence of language. The present study tests the boundaries of the effect of language on odor cognition by examining the effect of grammatical gender. We presented participants with male and female fragrances paired with descriptions of masculine or feminine grammatical gender. In Experiment 1 we found that memory for fragrances was enhanced when the grammatical gender of a fragrance description matched the gender of the fragrance. In Experiment 2 we found memory for fragrances was affected by both grammatical gender and gender associations in fragrance descriptions – recognition memory for odors was higher when the gender was incongruent. In sum, we demonstrated that even subtle aspects of language can affect odor cognition.

Abstract

Bilingual children are often exposed to non-native speech through their parents. Yet, little is known about the relation between bilingual preschoolers’ speech production and their speech input. The present study investigated the production of voice onset time (VOT) by Dutch-German bilingual preschoolers and their sequential bilingual mothers. The findings reveal an association between maternal VOT and bilingual children’s VOT in the heritage language German as well as in the majority language Dutch. By contrast, no input-production association was observed in the VOT production of monolingual German-speaking children and monolingual Dutch-speaking children. The results of this study provide the first empirical evidence that non-native and attrited maternal speech contributes to the often-observed linguistic differences between bilingual children and their monolingual peers.

Abstract

Finnish vowel harmony rules require that if the vowel in the first syllable of a word belongs to one of two vowel sets, then all subsequent vowels in that word must belong either to the same set or to a neutral set. A harmony mismatch between two syllables containing vowels from the opposing sets thus signals a likely word boundary. We report five experiments showing that Finnish listeners can exploit this information in an on-line speech segmentation task. Listeners found it easier to detect words likehymyat the end of the nonsense stringpuhymy(where there is a harmony mismatch between the first two syllables) than in the stringpyhymy(where there is no mismatch). There was no such effect, however, when the target words appeared at the beginning of the nonsense string (e.g.,hymypuvshymypy). Stronger harmony effects were found for targets containing front harmony vowels (e.g.,hymy) than for targets containing back harmony vowels (e.g.,paloinkypaloandkupalo). The same pattern of results appeared whether target position within the string was predictable or unpredictable. Harmony mismatch thus appears to provide a useful segmentation cue for the detection of word onsets in Finnish speech.

Abstract

In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line integration of lexical information. Subjects listened to sentences spoken at a normal rate. In half of these sentences, the meaning of the final word of the sentence matched the semantic specifications of the preceding sentence context. In the other half of the sentences, the sentence-final word was anomalous with respect to the preceding sentence context. The N400 was measured to the sentence-final words in both conditions. The results for the aphasic patients (n = 14) were analyzed according to the severity of their comprehension deficit and compared to a group of 12 neurologically unimpaired age-matched controls, as well as a group of 6 nonaphasic patients with a lesion in the right hemisphere. The nonaphasic brain damaged patients and the aphasic patients with a light comprehension deficit (high comprehenders, n = 7) showed an N400 effect that was comparable to that of the neurologically unimpaired subjects. In the aphasic patients with a moderate to severe comprehension deficit (low comprehenders, n = 7), a reduction and delay of the N400 effect was obtained. In addition, the P300 component was measured in a classical oddball paradigm, in which subjects were asked to count infrequent low tones in a random series of high and low tones. No correlation was found between the occurrence of N400 and P300 effects, indicating that changes in the N400 results were related to the patients' language deficit. Overall, the pattern of results was compatible with the idea that aphasic patients with moderate to severe comprehension problems are impaired in the integration of lexical information into a higher order representation of the preceding sentence context.

Abstract

There exists a clear association between animacy and the grammatical function of transitive subject. The grammar of some languages require the transitive subject to be high in animacy, or at least higher than the object. A similar animacy preference has been observed in processing studies in languages without such a categorical animacy effect. This animacy preference has been mainly established in structures in which either one or both arguments are provided before the verb. Our goal was to establish (i) whether this preference can already be observed before any argument is provided, and (ii) whether this preference is mediated by verbal information. To this end we exploited the V2 property of Dutch which allows the verb to precede its arguments. Using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm we presented participants with V2 structures with either an auxiliary (e.g. Gisteren heeft X … ‘Yesterday, X has …’) or a lexical main verb (e.g. Gisteren motiveerde X … ‘Yesterday, X motivated …’) and we measured looks to the animate referent. The results indicate that the animacy preference can already be observed before arguments are presented and that the selectional restrictions of the verb mediate this bias, but do not override it completely.

Abstract

Memory representations of words are thought to undergo changes with consolidation: Episodic memories of novel words are transformed into lexical representations that interact with other words in the mental dictionary. Behavioral studies have shown that this lexical integration process is enhanced when there is more time for consolidation. Neuroimaging studies have further revealed that novel word representations are initially represented in a hippocampally-centered system, whereas left posterior middle temporal cortex activation increases with lexicalization. In this study, we measured behavioral and brain responses to newly-learned words in children. Two groups of Dutch children, aged between 8-10 and 14-16 years, were trained on 30 novel Japanese words depicting novel concepts. Children were tested on word-forms, word-meanings, and the novel words’ influence on existing word processing immediately after training, and again after a week. In line with the adult findings, hippocampal involvement decreased with time. Lexical integration, however, was not observed immediately or after a week, neither behaviorally nor neurally. It appears that time alone is not always sufficient for lexical integration to occur. We suggest that other factors (e.g., the novelty of the concepts and familiarity with the language the words are derived from) might also influence the integration process.

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine whether repetition of radicals during training of Chinese characters leads to better word acquisition performance in beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign language. Thirty Dutch university students were trained on 36 Chinese one-character words for their pronunciations and meanings. They were also exposed to the specifics of the radicals, that is, for phonetic radicals, the associated pronunciation was explained, and for semantic radicals the associated categorical meanings were explained. Results showed that repeated exposure to phonetic and semantic radicals through character pronunciation and meaning trainings indeed induced better understanding of those radicals that were shared among different characters. Furthermore, characters in the training set that shared phonetic radicals were pronounced better than those that did not. Repetition of semantic radicals across different characters, however, hindered the learning of exact meanings. Students generally confused the meanings of other characters that shared the semantic radical. The study shows that in the initial stage of learning, overlapping information of the shared radicals are effectively learned. Acquisition of the specifics of individual characters, however, requires more training.

Abstract

The brain is inherently proactive, constantly predicting the when (moment) and what (content) of future input in order to optimize information processing. Previous research on such predictions has mainly studied the “when” or “what” domain separately, missing to investigate the potential integration of both types of predictive information. In the absence of such integration, temporal cues are assumed to enhance any upcoming content at the predicted moment in time (general temporal predictor). However, if the when and what prediction domain were integrated, a much more flexible neural mechanism may be proposed in which temporal-feature interactions would allow for the creation of multiple concurrent time-content predictions (parallel time-content predictor). Here, we used a temporal association paradigm in two experiments in which sound identity was systematically paired with a specific time delay after the offset of a rhythmic visual input stream. In Experiment 1, we revealed that participants associated the time delay of presentation with the identity of the sound. In Experiment 2, we unexpectedly found that the strength of this temporal association was negatively related to the EEG steady-state evoked responses (SSVEP) in preceding trials, showing that after high neuronal responses participants responded inconsistent with the time-content associations, similar to adaptation mechanisms. In this experiment, time-content associations were only present for low SSVEP responses in previous trials. These results tentatively show that it is possible to represent multiple time-content paired predictions in parallel, however, future research is needed to investigate this interaction further.

Abstract

The Papuan-Oceanic world has long been considered a hotbed of contact-induced linguistic change, and there have been a number of studies of deep linguistic influence between Papuan and Oceanic languages (like those by Thurston and Ross). This paper assesses the degree and type of contact-induced language change in the Solomon Islands, between the four Papuan languages—Bilua (spoken on Vella Lavella, Western Province), Touo (spoken on southern Rendova, Western Province), Savosavo (spoken on Savo Island, Central Province), and Lavukaleve (spoken in the Russell Islands, Central Province)—and their Oceanic neighbors. First, a claim is made for a degree of cultural homogeneity for Papuan and Oceanic-speaking populations within the Solomons. Second, lexical and grammatical borrowing are considered in turn, in an attempt to identify which elements in each of the four Papuan languages may have an origin in Oceanic languages—and indeed which elements in Oceanic languages may have their origin in Papuan languages. Finally, an assessment is made of the degrees of stability versus change in the Papuan and Oceanic languages of the Solomon Islands.

Abstract

In individuals with ASD, difficulties with language comprehension are most evident when higher-level semantic-pragmatic language processing is required, for instance when context has to be used to interpret the meaning of an utterance. Until now, it is unclear at what level of processing and for what type of context these difficulties in language comprehension occur. Therefore, in the current fMRI study, we investigated the neural correlates of the integration of contextual information during auditory language comprehension in 24 adults with ASD and 24 matched control participants. Different levels of context processing were manipulated by using spoken sentences that were correct or contained either a semantic or world knowledge anomaly. Our findings demonstrated significant differences between the groups in inferior frontal cortex that were only present for sentences with a world knowledge anomaly. Relative to the ASD group, the control group showed significantly increased activation in left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) for sentences with a world knowledge anomaly compared to correct sentences. This effect possibly indicates reduced integrative capacities of the ASD group. Furthermore, world knowledge anomalies elicited significantly stronger activation in right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG) in the control group compared to the ASD group. This additional RIFG activation probably reflects revision of the situation model after new, conflicting information. The lack of recruitment of RIFG is possibly related to difficulties with exception handling in the ASD group.

Abstract

Right hemisphere dominance for visuospatial attention is characteristic of most humans, but its anatomical basis remains unknown. We report the first evidence in humans for a larger parieto-frontal network in the right than left hemisphere, and a significant correlation between the degree of anatomical lateralization and asymmetry of performance on visuospatial tasks. Our results suggest that hemispheric specialization is associated with an unbalanced speed of visuospatial processing.

Abstract

Our understanding of the functioning of the brain is primarily based on an average model of the brain's functional organisation, and any deviation from the standard is considered as random noise or a pathological appearance. Studying pathologies has, however, greatly contributed to our understanding of brain functions. For instance, the study of naturally-occurring or surgically-induced brain lesions revealed that language is predominantly lateralised to the left hemisphere while perception/action and emotion are commonly lateralised to the right hemisphere. The lateralisation of function was subsequently replicated by task-related functional neuroimaging in the healthy population. Despite its high significance and reproducibility, this pattern of lateralisation of function is true for most, but not all participants. Bilateral and flipped representations of classically lateralised functions have been reported during development and in the healthy adult population for language, perception/action and emotion. Understanding these different functional representations at an individual level is crucial to improve the sophistication of our models and account for the variance in developmental trajectories, cognitive performance differences and clinical recovery. With the availability of in vivo neuroimaging, it has become feasible to study large numbers of participants and reliably characterise individual differences, also referred to as phenotypes. Yet, we are at the beginning of inter-individual variability modelling, and new theories of brain function will have to account for these differences across participants.

Abstract

Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon affecting perception, where triggering stimuli (e.g. letters and numbers) elicit unusual secondary sensory experiences (e.g. colours). Family-based studies point to a role for genetic factors in the development of this trait. However, the contributions of common genomic variation to synaesthesia have not yet been investigated. Here, we present the SynGenes cohort, the largest genotyped collection of unrelated people with grapheme–colour synaesthesia (n = 723). Synaesthesia has been associated with a range of other neuropsychological traits, including enhanced memory and mental imagery, as well as greater sensory sensitivity. Motivated by the prior literature on putative trait overlaps, we investigated polygenic scores derived from published genome-wide scans of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), comparing our SynGenes cohort to 2181 non-synaesthetic controls. We found a very slight association between schizophrenia polygenic scores and synaesthesia (Nagelkerke's R2 = 0.0047, empirical p = 0.0027) and no significant association for scores related to ASD (Nagelkerke's R2 = 0.00092, empirical p = 0.54) or body mass index (R2 = 0.00058, empirical p = 0.60), included as a negative control. As sample sizes for studying common genomic variation continue to increase, genetic investigations of the kind reported here may yield novel insights into the shared biology between synaesthesia and other traits, to complement findings from neuropsychology and brain imaging.

Abstract

The present study compares the realization of intervocalic voiceless stops and vowels surrounded by voiceless stops in conversational Spanish and French. Our data reveal significant differences in how these segments are realized in each language. Spanish voiceless stops tend to have shorter stop closures, display incomplete closures more often, and exhibit more voicing than French voiceless stops. As for vowels, more cases of complete devoicing and greater degrees of partial devoicing were found in French than in Spanish. Moreover, all French vowel types exhibit significantly lower F1 values than their Spanish counterparts. These findings indicate that the extent of reduction that a segment type can undergo in conversational speech can vary significantly across languages. Language differences in coarticulatory strategies and “base-of-articulation” are discussed as possible causes of our observations.

Abstract

This study investigates the reduction of vowel /e/ in the French word c’était /setε/ ‘it was’. This reduction phenomenon appeared to be highly frequent, as more than half of the occurrences of this word in a corpus of casual French contained few or no acoustic traces of a vowel between [s] and [t]. All our durational analyses clearly supported a categorical absence of vowel /e/ in a subset of c’était tokens. This interpretation was also supported by our finding that the occurrence of complete elision and [e] duration in non-elision tokens were conditioned by different factors. However, spectral measures were consistent with the possibility that a highly reduced /e/ vowel is still present in elision tokens in spite of the durational evidence for categorical elision. We discuss how these findings can be reconciled, and conclude that acoustic analysis of uncontrolled materials can provide valuable information about the mechanisms underlying reduction phenomena in casual speech.

Abstract

Contrary to the Gricean maxims of quantity (Grice, in: Cole, Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics: speech acts, vol III, pp 41–58, Academic Press, New York, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over-specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present an information-theoretic explanation for the use of over-specification in visually-situated communication, which quantifies the amount of uncertainty regarding the referent as entropy (Shannon in Bell Syst Tech J 5:10, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x, 1948). Examining both the comprehension and production of over-specifications, we present evidence that (a) listeners’ processing is facilitated by the use of redundancy as well as by a greater reduction of uncertainty early on in the utterance, and (b) that at least for some speakers, listeners’ processing concerns influence their encoding of over-specifications: Speakers were more likely to use redundant adjectives when these adjectives reduced entropy to a higher degree than adjectives necessary for target identification.

Abstract

Action, gesture, and sign represent unique aspects of human communication that use form and movement to convey meaning. Researchers typically use manual coding of video data to characterize naturalistic, meaningful movements at various levels of description, but the availability of markerless motion-tracking technology allows for quantification of the kinematic features of gestures or any meaningful human movement. We present a novel protocol for extracting a set of kinematic features from movements recorded with Microsoft Kinect. Our protocol captures spatial and temporal features, such as height, velocity, submovements/strokes, and holds. This approach is based on studies of communicative actions and gestures and attempts to capture features that are consistently implicated as important kinematic aspects of communication. We provide open-source code for the protocol, a description of how the features are calculated, a validation of these features as quantified by our protocol versus manual coders, and a discussion of how the protocol can be applied. The protocol effectively quantifies kinematic features that are important in the production (e.g., characterizing different contexts) as well as the comprehension (e.g., used by addressees to understand intent and semantics) of manual acts. The protocol can also be integrated with qualitative analysis, allowing fast and objective demarcation of movement units, providing accurate coding even of complex movements. This can be useful to clinicians, as well as to researchers studying multimodal communication or human–robot interactions. By making this protocol available, we hope to provide a tool that can be applied to understanding meaningful movement characteristics in human communication.

Abstract

Background Rapid automatised naming (RAN) and rapid alternating stimulus (RAS) are reliable predictors of reading disability. The underlying biology of reading disability is poorly understood. However, the high correlation among RAN, RAS and reading could be attributable to shared genetic factors that contribute to common biological mechanisms.

Objective To identify shared genetic factors that contribute to RAN and RAS performance using a multivariate approach.

Methods We conducted a multivariate genome-wide association analysis of RAN Objects, RAN Letters and RAS Letters/Numbers in a sample of 1331 Hispanic American and African–American youth. Follow-up neuroimaging genetic analysis of cortical regions associated with reading ability in an independent sample and epigenetic examination of extant data predicting tissue-specific functionality in the brain were also conducted.

Results Genome-wide significant effects were observed at rs1555839 (p=4.03×10−8) and replicated in an independent sample of 318 children of European ancestry. Epigenetic analysis and chromatin state models of the implicated 70 kb region of 10q23.31 support active transcription of the gene RNLS in the brain, which encodes a catecholamine metabolising protein. Chromatin contact maps of adult hippocampal tissue indicate a potential enhancer–promoter interaction regulating RNLS expression. Neuroimaging genetic analysis in an independent, multiethnic sample (n=690) showed that rs1555839 is associated with structural variation in the right inferior parietal lobule.

Conclusion This study provides support for a novel trait locus at chromosome 10q23.31 and proposes a potential gene–brain–behaviour relationship for targeted future functional analysis to understand underlying biological mechanisms for reading disability.

Abstract

The current study investigated the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in bilingual Mandarin-English children (N = 55, Mage = 7;5, SD = 1;8) and language-matched monolingual Mandarin-speaking children (N = 59, Mage = 5;4, SD = 0;7). The children completed a referent selection task that tested their comprehension of subject and object RCs, and standardised assessments of vocabulary knowledge. Results showed a very similar pattern of responding in both groups. In comparison to past studies of Cantonese, the bilingual and monolingual children both showed a significant subject-over-object RC advantage. An error analysis suggested that the children’s difficulty with object RCs reflected the tendency to interpret the sentential subject as the head noun. A subsequent corpus analysis suggested that children’s difficulty with object RCs may be in part due to distributional information favouring subject RC analyses. Individual differences analyses suggested cross-linguistic transfer from English to Mandarin in the bilingual children at the individual but not the group level, with the results indicating that comparative English-dominance makes children vulnerable to error

Abstract

In the interplay between language, culture, and perception, iconicity structures our representations of what we experience. By examining secondary iconicity in sensory vocabulary, this study draws attention to diagrammatic qualities in human interaction with, and representation of, the sensory world. In Semai (Mon-Khmer, Aslian), spoken on Peninsular Malaysia, sensory experiences are encoded by expressives. Expressives display a diagrammatic iconic structure whereby related sensory experiences receive related linguistic forms. Through this type of formmeaning mapping, gradient relationships in the perceptual world receive gradient linguistic representations. Form-meaning mapping such as this enables speakers to categorize sensory events into types and subtypes of perceptions, and provide illustrates how a diagrammatic iconic structure within sensory vocabulary creates networks of relational sensory knowledge. Through analogy, speakers draw on this knowledge to comprehend sensory referents and create new unconventional forms, which are easily understood by other members of the community. Analogy-making such as this allows speakers to capture fine-grained differences between sensory events, and effectively guide each other through the Semai sensory landscape. sensory specifics of various kinds. This studyillustrates how a diagrammatic iconic structure within sensory vocabulary creates networks of relational sensory knowledge. Through analogy, speakers draw on this knowledge to comprehend sensory referents and create new unconventional forms, which are easily understood by other members of the community. Analogy-making such as this allows speakers to capture fine-grained differences between sensory events, and effectively guide each other through the Semai sensory landscape.

Abstract

In sequences such as law and order, speakers of British English often insert /r/ between law and and. Acoustic analyses revealed such “intrusive” /r/ to be significantly shorter than canonical /r/. In a 2AFC experiment, native listeners heard British English sentences in which /r/ duration was manipulated across a word boundary [e.g., saw (r)ice], and orthographic and semantic factors were varied. These listeners responded categorically on the basis of acoustic evidence for /r/ alone, reporting ice after short /r/s, rice after long /r/s; orthographic and semantic factors had no effect. Dutch listeners proficient in English who heard the same materials relied less on durational cues than the native listeners, and were affected by both orthography and semantic bias. American English listeners produced intermediate responses to the same materials, being sensitive to duration (less so than native, more so than Dutch listeners), and to orthography (less so than the Dutch), but insensitive to the semantic manipulation. Listeners from language communities without common use of intrusive /r/ may thus interpret intrusive /r/ as canonical /r/, with a language difference increasing this propensity more than a dialect difference. Native listeners, however, efficiently distinguish intrusive from canonical /r/ by exploiting the relevant acoustic variation.

Abstract

A commonly held assumption in cognitive neuroscience is that, because measures of human brain function are closer to underlying biology than distal indices of behavior/cognition, they hold more promise for uncovering genetic pathways. Supporting this view is an influential fMRI-based study of sentence reading/listening by Pinel et al. (2012), who reported that common DNA variants in specific candidate genes were associated with altered neural activation in language-related regions of healthy individuals that carried them. In particular, different single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of FOXP2 correlated with variation in task-based activation in left inferior frontal and precentral gyri, whereas a SNP at the KIAA0319/TTRAP/THEM2 locus was associated with variable functional asymmetry of the superior temporal sulcus. Here, we directly test each claim using a closely matched neuroimaging genetics approach in independent cohorts comprising 427 participants, four times larger than the original study of 94 participants. Despite demonstrating power to detect associations with substantially smaller effect sizes than those of the original report, we do not replicate any of the reported associations. Moreover, formal Bayesian analyses reveal substantial to strong evidence in support of the null hypothesis (no effect). We highlight key aspects of the original investigation, common to functional neuroimaging genetics studies, which could have yielded elevated false-positive rates. Genetic accounts of individual differences in cognitive functional neuroimaging are likely to be as complex as behavioral/cognitive tests, involving many common genetic variants, each of tiny effect. Reliable identification of true biological signals requires large sample sizes, power calculations, and validation in independent cohorts with equivalent paradigms.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT A pervasive idea in neuroscience is that neuroimaging-based measures of brain function, being closer to underlying neurobiology, are more amenable for uncovering links to genetics. This is a core assumption of prominent studies that associate common DNA variants with altered activations in task-based fMRI, despite using samples (10–100 people) that lack power for detecting the tiny effect sizes typical of genetically complex traits. Here, we test central findings from one of the most influential prior studies. Using matching paradigms and substantially larger samples, coupled to power calculations and formal Bayesian statistics, our data strongly refute the original findings. We demonstrate that neuroimaging genetics with task-based fMRI should be subject to the same rigorous standards as studies of other complex traits.

Abstract

We describe a highly sensitive, quantitative, and inexpensive technique for targeted sequencing of transcript cohorts or genomic regions from thousands of bulk samples or single cells in parallel. Multiplexing is based on a simple method that produces extensive matrices of diverse DNA barcodes attached to invariant primer sets, which are all pre-selected and optimized in silico. By applying the matrices in a novel workflow named Barcode Assembly foR Targeted Sequencing (BART-Seq), we analyze developmental states of thousands of single human pluripotent stem cells, either in different maintenance media or upon Wnt/β-catenin pathway activation, which identifies the mechanisms of differentiation induction. Moreover, we apply BART-Seq to the genetic screening of breast cancer patients and identify BRCA mutations with very high precision. The processing of thousands of samples and dynamic range measurements that outperform global transcriptomics techniques makes BART-Seq first targeted sequencing technique suitable for numerous research applications.

Abstract

This study investigates the lifespans of lexical traces for novel morphologically complex words. In two visual lexical decision experiments, a neologism was either primed by itself or by its stem. The target occurred 40 trials after the prime (Experiments 1 & 2), after a 12 hour delay (Experiment 1), or after a one week delay (Experiment 2). Participants recognized neologisms more quickly if they had seen them before in the experiment. These results show that memory traces for novel morphologically complex words already come into existence after a very first exposure and that they last for at least a week. We did not find evidence for a role of sleep in the formation of memory traces. Interestingly, Base Frequency appeared to play a role in the processing of the neologisms also when they were presented a second time and had their own memory traces.

Abstract

Speech prosody, the variation in sentence melody and rhythm, plays a crucial role in sentence comprehension. Specifically, changes in intonational pitch along a sentence can affect our understanding of who did what to whom. To date, it remains unclear how the brain processes this particular use of intonation and which brain regions are involved. In particular, one central matter of debate concerns the lateralisation of intonation processing. To study the role of intonation in sentence comprehension, we designed a functional MRI experiment in which participants listened to spoken sentences. Critically, the interpretation of these sentences depended on either intonational or grammatical cues. Our results
showed stronger functional activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) when the intonational cue was crucial for sentence comprehension compared to when it was not. When instead a grammatical cue was crucial for sentence comprehension, we found involvement of an overlapping region in the left IFG, as well as in a posterior temporal
region. A further analysis revealed that the lateralisation of intonation processing depends on its role in syntactic processing: activity in the IFG was lateralised to the left hemisphere when intonation was the only source of information to comprehend the sentence. In contrast, activity in the IFG was right-lateralised when intonation did not contribute to sentence comprehension. Together, these results emphasise the key role of the left IFG in sentence comprehension, showing the importance of this region when intonation
establishes sentence structure. Furthermore, our results provide evidence for the theory
that the lateralisation of prosodic processing is modulated by its linguistic role.

Abstract

In synaesthetes specific sensory stimuli (e.g., black letters) elicit additional experiences (e.g. colour). Synaesthesia is highly prevalent among individuals with autism spectrum disorder but the mechanisms of this co-occurrence are not clear. We hypothesized autism and synaesthesia share atypical sensory sensitivity and perception. We assessed autistic traits, sensory sensitivity, and visual perception in two synaesthete populations. In Study 1, synaesthetes (N=79, of different types) scored higher than non-synaesthetes (N=76) on the Attention-to-detail and Social skills subscales of the Autism Spectrum Quotient indexing autistic traits, and on the Glasgow Sensory Questionnaire indexing sensory hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity which frequently occur in autism. Synaesthetes performed two local/global visual tasks because individuals with autism typically show a bias toward detail processing. In synaesthetes, elevated motion coherence thresholds suggested reduced global motion perception and higher accuracy on an embedded figures task suggested enhanced local perception. In Study 2 sequence-space synaesthetes (N=18) completed the same tasks. Questionnaire and embedded figures results qualitatively resembled Study 1 results but no significant group differences with non-synaesthetes (N=20) were obtained. Unexpectedly, sequence-space synaesthetes had reduced motion coherence thresholds. Altogether, our studies suggest atypical sensory sensitivity and a bias towards detail processing are shared features of synaesthesia and autism spectrum disorder.

Abstract

In simultaneous interpreting, speech comprehension and production processes have to be coordinated in close temporal proximity. To examine the coordination, Dutch-English bilingual participants were presented with narrative fragments recorded in English at speech rates varying from 100 to 200 words per minute and they were asked to translate the fragments into Dutch (interpreting) or repeat them in English (shadowing). Interpreting yielded more errors than shadowing at every speech rate, and increasing speech rate had a stronger negative effect on interpreting than on shadowing. To understand the differential effect of speech rate, a computational model was created of sub-lexical and lexical processes in comprehension and production. Computer simulations revealed that the empirical findings could be captured by assuming a bottleneck preventing simultaneous lexical selection in production and comprehension. To conclude, our empirical and modelling results suggest the existence of a lexical bottleneck that limits the translation of narratives at high speed.

Abstract

An essential phenomenon in the development towards syntactic maturity after early childhood is the increasing use of so-called sentence-combining transformations. Especially by using subordination, complex sentences are produced. The research reported here is an attempt to arrive at a more adequate characterization and explanation. Our starting point was an analysis of 280 texts written by Dutch-speaking pupils of the two highest grades of the primary school and the four lowest grades of three different types of secondary education. It was examined whether systematic shifts in the use of certain groups of so-called function words could be traced. We concluded that the development of the syntactic formulating ability can be characterized as an increase in connectivity: the use of all kinds of function words which explicitly mark logico-semantic relations between propositions. This development starts by inserting special adverbs and coordinating conjunctions resulting in various types of coordination. In a later stage, the syntactic patterning of the sentence is affected as well (various types of subordination). The increase in sentence complexity is only one aspect of the entire development. An explanation for the increase in connectivity is offered based upon a distinction between narrative and expository language use. The latter, but not the former, is characterized by frequent occurrence of connectives. The development in syntactic formulating ability includes a high level of skill in expository language use. Speed of development is determined by intensity of training, e.g. in scholastic and occupational settings.

Abstract

Synesthesia provides an elegant model to investigate neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in subjective experience in humans. In grapheme–color synesthesia, written letters induce color sensations, accompanied by activation of color area V4. Competing hypotheses suggest that enhanced V4 activity during synesthesia is either induced by direct bottom-up cross-activation from grapheme processing areas within the fusiform gyrus, or indirectly via higher-order parietal areas. Synesthetes differ in the way synesthetic color is perceived: “projector” synesthetes experience color externally colocalized with a presented grapheme, whereas “associators” report an internally evoked association. Using dynamic causal modeling for fMRI, we show that V4 cross-activation during synesthesia was induced via a bottom-up pathway (within fusiform gyrus) in projector synesthetes, but via a top-down pathway (via parietal lobe) in associators. These findings show how altered coupling within the same network of active regions leads to differences in subjective experience. Our findings reconcile the two most influential cross-activation accounts of synesthesia.

Abstract

This study explores the effect of feedback with hints on students’ recall of words. In three classroom experiments, high school students individually practiced vocabulary words through computerized retrieval practice with either standard show-answer feedback (display of answer) or hints feedback after incorrect responses. Hints feedback gave students a second chance to find the correct response using orthographic (Experiment 1), mnemonic (Experiment 2), or cross-language hints (Experiment 3). During practice, hints led to a shift of practice time from further repetitions to longer feedback processing but did not reduce (repeated) errors. There was no effect of feedback on later recall except when the hints from practice were also available on the test, indicating limited transfer of practice with hints to later recall without hints (in Experiments 1 and 2). Overall, hints feedback was not preferable over show-answer feedback. The common notion that hints are beneficial may not hold when the total practice time is limited.

Abstract

The temporal properties of semantic and phonological processes in speech production were investigated in a new experimental paradigm using movement-related brain potentials. The main experimental task was picture naming. In addition, a 2-choice reaction go/no-go procedure was included, involving a semantic and a phonological categorization of the picture name. Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether semantic and phonological information activated motor processes at separate moments in time. An LRP was only observed on no-go trials when the semantic (not the phonological) decision determined the response hand. Varying the position of the critical phoneme in the picture name did not affect the onset of the LRP but rather influenced when the LRP began to differ on go and no-go trials and allowed the duration of phonological encoding of a word to be estimated. These results provide electrophysiological evidence for early semantic activation and later phonological encoding.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

The use of computer simulations in education and training can have substantial advantages over other approaches. In comparison with alternatives such as textbooks, lectures, and tutorial courseware, a simulation-based approach offers the opportunity to learn in a relatively realistic problem-solving context, to practise task performance without stress, to systematically explore both realistic and hypothetical situations, to change the time-scale of events, and to interact with simplified versions of the process or system being simulated. However, learners are often unable to cope with the freedom offered by, and the complexity of, a simulation. As a result many of them resort to an unsystematic, unproductive mode of exploration. There is evidence that simulation-based learning can be improved if the learner is supported while working with the simulation. Constructing such an instructional environment around simulations seems to run counter to the freedom the learner is allowed to in ‘stand alone’ simulations. The present article explores instructional measures that allow for an optimal freedom for the learner. An extensive discussion of learning goals brings two main types of learning goals to the fore: conceptual knowledge and operational knowledge. A third type of learning goal refers to the knowledge acquisition (exploratory learning) process. Cognitive theory has implications for the design of instructional environments around simulations. Most of these implications are quite general, but they can also be related to the three types of learning goals. For conceptual knowledge the sequence and choice of models and problems is important, as is providing the learner with explanations and minimization of error. For operational knowledge cognitive theory recommends learning to take place in a problem solving context, the explicit tracing of the behaviour of the learner, providing immediate feedback and minimization of working memory load. For knowledge acquisition goals, it is recommended that the tutor takes the role of a model and coach, and that learning takes place together with a companion. A second source of inspiration for designing instructional environments can be found in Instructional Design Theories. Reviewing these shows that interacting with a simulation can be a part of a more comprehensive instructional strategy, in which for example also prerequisite knowledge is taught. Moreover, information present in a simulation can also be represented in a more structural or static way and these two forms of presentation provoked to perform specific learning processes and learner activities by tutor controlled variations in the simulation, and by tutor initiated prodding techniques. And finally, instructional design theories showed that complex models and procedures can be taught by starting with central and simple elements of these models and procedures and subsequently presenting more complex models and procedures. Most of the recent simulation-based intelligent tutoring systems involve troubleshooting of complex technical systems. Learners are supposed to acquire knowledge of particular system principles, of troubleshooting procedures, or of both. Commonly encountered instructional features include (a) the sequencing of increasingly complex problems to be solved, (b) the availability of a range of help information on request, (c) the presence of an expert troubleshooting module which can step in to provide criticism on learner performance, hints on the problem nature, or suggestions on how to proceed, (d) the option of having the expert module demonstrate optimal performance afterwards, and (e) the use of different ways of depicting the simulated system. A selection of findings is summarized by placing them under the four themes we think to be characteristic of learning with computer simulations (see de Jong, this volume).

Abstract

The monitoring theory of language perception proposes that competing representations that are caused by strong expectancy violations can trigger a conflict which elicits reprocessing of the input to check for possible processing errors. This monitoring process is thought to be reflected by the P600 component in the EEG. The present study further investigated this monitoring process by comparing syntactic and spelling violations in an EEG and an fMRI experiment. To assess the effect of conflict strength, misspellings were embedded in sentences that were weakly or strongly predictive of a critical word. In support of the monitoring theory, syntactic and spelling violations elicited similarly distributed P600 effects. Furthermore, the P600 effect was larger to misspellings in the strongly compared to the weakly predictive sentences. The fMRI results showed that both syntactic and spelling violations increased activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG), while only the misspellings activated additional areas. Conflict strength did not affect the hemodynamic response to spelling violations. These results extend the idea that the lIFG is involved in implementing cognitive control in the presence of representational conflicts in general to the processing of errors in language perception.

Abstract

A corpus of Dutch falling-rising intonation contours with early nuclear accent was elicited from nine speakers with a view to establishing the extent to which the low F0 target immediately preceding the final rise, was attracted by a post-nuclear stressed syllable (PNS) in either of the last two words or by Second Occurrence Contrastive Focus (SOCF) on either of these words. We found a small effect of foot type, which we interpret as due to a rhythmic 'trochaic enhancement' effect. The results show that neither PNS nor SOCF influences the location of the low F0 target, which appears consistently to be timed with reference to the utterance end. It is speculated that there are two ways in which postnuclear tones can be timed. The first is by means of a phonological association with a post-nuclear stressed syllable, as in Athenian Greek and Roermond Dutch. The second is by a fixed distance from the utterance end or from the target of an adjacent tone. Accordingly, two phonological mechanisms are defended, association and edge alignment, such that all tones edge-align, but only some associate. Specifically, no evidence was found for a third situation that can be envisaged, in which a post-nuclear tone is gradiently attracted to a post-nuclear stress.

Abstract

I thank the speakers of Yurakaré who have taught me their language for sharing their knowledge with me. I would furthermore like to thank Grev Corbett, Michael Cysouw, and an anonymous reviewer for commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. All remaining errors are mine. The research reported in this paper was made possible by grants from Prof. Pieter Muysken’s Spinoza project Lexicon & Syntax, the University of Surrey, the DoBeS foundation, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, for which I am grateful. Pronominal affixes in polysynthetic languages have an ambiguous status in the sense that they have characteristics normally associated with free pronouns as well as characteristics associated with agreement markers. This situation arises because pronominal affixes represent intermediate stages in a diachronic development from independent pronouns to agreement markers. Because this diachronic change is not abrupt, pronominal affixes can show different characteristics from language to language. By presenting an in-depth discussion of the pronominal affixes of Yurakaré, an unclassified language from Bolivia, I argue that these so-called intermediate stages as typically attested in polysynthetic languages actually represent economical systems that combine advantages of agreement markers and of free pronouns. In terms of diachronic development, such ‘intermediate’ systems, being functionally well-adapted, appear to be rather stable, and it can even be reinforced by subsequent diachronic developments.

Abstract

Although much is known about how nouns facilitate object categorization, very little is known about how verbs (e.g., posture verbs such as stand or lie) facilitate object categorization. Native Dutch speakers are a unique population to investigate this issue with because the configurational categories distinguished by staan (to stand) and liggen (to lie) are inherent in everyday Dutch language. Using an ERP component (N2pc), four experiments demonstrate that selection of posture verb categories is rapid (between 220–320 ms). The effect was attenuated, though present, when removing the perceptual distinction between categories. A similar attenuated effect was obtained in native English speakers, where the category distinction is less familiar, and when category labels were implicit for native Dutch speakers. Our results are among the first to demonstrate that category search based on verbs can be rapid, although extensive linguistic experience and explicit labels may not be necessary to facilitate categorization in this case.

Abstract

Farine and Aplin (1) question the validity of our study reporting group-specific social dynamics in chimpanzees (2). As alternative to our approach, Farine and Aplin advance a “prenetwork permutation” methodology that tests against random assortment (3). We appreciate Farine and Aplin’s interest and applied their suggested approaches to our data. The new analyses revealed highly similar results to those of our initial approach. We further dispel Farine and Aplin’s critique by outlining its incompatibility to our study system, methodology, and analysis.First, when we apply the suggested prenetwork permutation to our proximity dataset, we again find significant population-level differences in association rates, while controlling for population size [as derived from Farine and Aplin’s script (4); original result, P < 0.0001; results including prenetwork permutation, P < 0.0001]. Furthermore, when we … ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: ejcvanleeuwen{at}gmail.com.

Abstract

As a preliminary to further research on musical consonance an explanatory investigation was made on the different modes of judgment of musical intervals. This was done by way of a semantic differential. Subjects rated 23 intervals against 10 scales. In a factor analysis three factors appeared: pitch, evaluation and fusion. The relation between these factors and some physical characteristics has been investigated. The scale consonant-dissonant showed to be purely evaluative (in opposition to Stumpf's theory). This evaluative connotation is not in accordance with the musicological meaning of consonance. Suggestions to account for this difference have been given.

Abstract

Atypical visual segmentation, affecting object perception, might contribute to face processing problems in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The current study investigated impairments in visual segmentation of faces in ASD. Thirty participants (ASD: 16; Control: 14) viewed texture-defined faces, houses, and homogeneous images, while electroencephalographic and behavioral responses were recorded. The ASD group showed slower face-segmentation related brain activity and longer segmentation reaction times than the control group, but no difference in house-segmentation related activity or behavioral performance. Furthermore, individual differences in face-segmentation but not house-segmentation correlated with score on the Autism Quotient. Segmentation is thus selectively impaired for faces in ASD, and relates to the degree of ASD traits. Face segmentation relates to recurrent connectivity from the fusiform face area (FFA) to the visual cortex. These findings thus suggest that atypical connectivity from the FFA might contribute to delayed face processing in ASD.