Publications

Abstract

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns.

Abstract

There is a growing consensus that the mental lexicon contains both abstract and word-specific acoustic information. To investigate their relative importance for word recognition, we tested to what extent perceptual learning is word specific or generalizable to other words. In an exposure phase, participants were divided into two groups; each group was semantically biased to interpret an ambiguous Mandarin tone contour as either tone1 or tone2. In a subsequent test phase, the perception of ambiguous contours was dependent on the exposure phase: Participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone1 during exposure were more likely to perceive ambiguous contours as tone1 than participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone2 during exposure. This learning effect was only slightly larger for previously encountered than for not previously encountered words. The results speak for an architecture with prelexical analysis of phonological categories to achieve both lexical access and episodic storage of exemplars.

Abstract

Recognizing phonetically reduced forms is a huge challenge for spoken-word recognition. Phonetic reductions not only occur often, but also come in a variety of forms. The paper investigates how two similar forms of reductions – /t/-reduction and nasal place assimilation in Dutch – can eventually be recognized, focusing on the role of following phonological context. Previous research indicated that listeners take the following phonological context into account when compensating for /t/-reduction and nasal place assimilation. The current paper shows that these context effects arise in early perceptual processes for the perception of assimilated forms, but at a later stage of processing for the perception of /t/-reduced forms. This shows first that the recognition of apparently similarly reduced words may rely on different processing mechanisms and, second, that searching for dissociations over tasks is a promising research strategy to investigate how reduced forms are recognized.

Abstract

Four visual-world experiments, in which listeners heard spoken words and saw printed words, compared an optimal-perception account with the theory of phonological underspecification. This theory argues that default phonological features are not specified in the mental lexicon, leading to asymmetric lexical matching: Mismatching input ("pin") activates lexical entries with underspecified coronal stops ('tin'), but lexical entries with specified labial stops ('pin') are not activated by mismatching input ("tin"). The eye-tracking data failed to show such a pattern. Although words that were phonologically similar to the spoken target attracted more looks than unrelated distractors, this effect was symmetric in Experiment 1 with minimal pairs ("tin"- "pin") and in Experiments 2 and 3 with words with an onset overlap ("peacock" - "teacake"). Experiment 4 revealed that /t/-initial words were looked at more frequently if the spoken input mismatched only in terms of place than if it mismatched in place and voice, contrary to the assumption that /t/ is unspecified for place and voice. These results show that speech perception uses signal-driven information to the fullest, as predicted by an optimal perception account.

Abstract

In this work, Mandarin tone production is examined using simultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound (SLLUS). Laryngoscopy is used to obtain information about laryngeal state, and laryngeal ultrasound is used to quantify changes in larynx height. With this methodology, several observations are made concerning the production of Mandarin tone in citation form. Two production strategies are attested for low tone production: (i) larynx lowering and (ii) larynx raising with laryngeal constriction. Another finding is that the larynx rises continually during level tone production, which is interpreted as a means to compensate for declining subglottal pressure. In general, we argue that larynx height plays a supportive role in facilitating f0 change under circumstances where intrinsic mechanisms for f0 control are insufficient to reach tonal targets due to vocal fold inertia. Activation of the laryngeal constrictor can be used to achieve low tone targets through mechanical adjustment to vocal fold dynamics. We conclude that extra-glottal laryngeal mechanisms play important roles in facilitating the production of tone targets and should be integrated into the contemporary articulatory model of tone production

Abstract

Purpose: Physiological and phonetic studies suggest that, at moderate levels of epilaryngeal stricture, the ventricular folds impinge upon the vocal folds and influence their dynamical behavior, which is thought to be responsible for constricted laryngeal sounds. In this work, the authors examine this hypothesis through biomechanical modeling. Method: The dynamical response of a low-dimensional, lumped-element model of the vocal folds under the influence of vocal-ventricular fold coupling was evaluated. The model was assessed for F0 and cover-mass phase difference. Case studies of simulations of different constricted phonation types and of glottal stop illustrate various additional aspects of model performance. Results: Simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling lowers F0 and perturbs the mucosal wave. It also appears to reinforce irregular patterns of oscillation, and it can enhance laryngeal closure in glottal stop production. Conclusion: The effects of simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling are consistent with sounds, such as creaky voice, harsh voice, and glottal stop, that have been observed to involve epilaryngeal stricture and apparent contact between the vocal folds and ventricular folds. This supports the view that vocal-ventricular fold coupling is important in the vibratory dynamics of such sounds and, furthermore, suggests that these sounds may intrinsically require epilaryngeal stricture

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as an inability to develop appropriate language skills without explanatory medical conditions, low intelligence or lack of opportunity. Previously, a genome scan of 98 families affected by SLI was completed by the SLI Consortium, resulting in the identification of two quantitative trait loci (QTL) on chromosomes 16q (SLI1) and 19q (SLI2). This was followed by a replication of both regions in an additional 86 families. Both these studies applied linkage methods to one phenotypic trait at a time. However, investigations have suggested that simultaneous analysis of several traits may offer more power. The current study therefore applied a multivariate variance-components approach to the SLI Consortium dataset using additional phenotypic data. A multivariate genome scan was completed and supported the importance of the SLI1 and SLI2 loci, whilst highlighting a possible novel QTL on chromosome 10. Further investigation implied that the effect of SLI1 on non-word repetition was equally as strong on reading and spelling phenotypes. In contrast, SLI2 appeared to have influences on a selection of expressive and receptive language phenotypes in addition to non-word repetition, but did not show linkage to literacy phenotypes.

Abstract

This study investigated primary and secondary morphological family size effects in monolingual and bilingual processing, combining experimentation with computational modeling. Family size effects were investigated in an English lexical decision task for Dutch-English bilinguals and English monolinguals using the same materials. To account for the possibility that family size effects may only show up in words that resemble words in the native language of the bilinguals, the materials included, in addition to purely English items, Dutch-English cognates (identical and non-identical in form). As expected, the monolingual data revealed facilitatory effects of English primary family size. Moreover, while the monolingual data did not show a main effect of cognate status, only form-identical cognates revealed an inhibitory effect of English secondary family size. The bilingual data showed stronger facilitation for identical cognates, but as for monolinguals, this effect was attenuated for words with a large secondary family size. In all, the Dutch-English primary and secondary family size effects in bilinguals were strikingly similar to those of monolinguals. Computational simulations suggest that the primary and secondary family size effects can be understood in terms of discriminative learning of the English lexicon. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Abstract

This study assessed, in a sample of 98 adult native speakers of Dutch, how their lexical skills and their speaking proficiency varied as a function of their age and level of education and profession (EP). Participants, categorized in terms of their age (18–35, 36–50, and 51–76 years old) and the level of their EP (low versus high), were tested on their lexical knowledge, lexical fluency, and lexical memory, and they performed four speaking tasks, differing in genre and formality. Speaking performance was rated in terms of communicative adequacy and in terms of number of words, number of T-units, words per T-unit, content words per T-unit, hesitations per T-unit, and grammatical errors per T-unit. Increasing age affected lexical knowledge positively but lexical fluency and memory negatively. High EP positively affected lexical knowledge and memory but EP did not affect lexical fluency. Communicative adequacy of the responses in the speaking tasks was positively affected by high EP but was not affected by age. It is concluded that, given the large variability in native speakers’ language knowledge and skills, studies investigating the question of whether second-language learners can reach native levels of proficiency, should take native-speaker variability into account.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Smoking behaviors, including heaviness of smoking and smoking cessation, are known to be under a degree of genetic influence. The enzyme catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT) is of relevance in studies of smoking behavior and smoking cessation due to its presence in dopaminergic brain regions. While the COMT gene is therefore one of the more promising candidate genes for smoking behavior, some inconsistencies have begun to emerge. METHODS: We explored whether the rs4680 A (Met) allele of the COMT gene predicts increased heaviness of smoking and reduced likelihood of smoking cessation in a large population-based cohort of pregnant women. We further conducted a meta-analysis of published data from community samples investigating the association of this polymorphism with heaviness of smoking and smoking status. RESULTS: In our primary sample, the A (Met) allele was associated with increased heaviness of smoking before pregnancy but not with the odds of continuing to smoke in pregnancy either in the first trimester or in the third trimester. Meta-analysis also indicated modest evidence of association of the A (Met) allele with increased heaviness of smoking but not with persistent smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest a weak association between COMT genotype and heaviness of smoking, which is supported by our meta-analysis. However, it should be noted that the strength of evidence for this association was modest. Neither our primary data nor our meta-analysis support an association between COMT genotype and smoking cessation. Therefore, COMT remains a plausible candidate gene for smoking behavior phenotypes, in particular, heaviness of smoking.

Abstract

Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. The rhythmic similarity hypothesis holds that where two languages have similar rhythm, listeners of each language should segment their own and the other language similarly. Such similarity in listening was previously observed only for related languages (English-Dutch; French-Spanish). We now report three experiments in which speakers of Telugu, a Dravidian language unrelated to Japanese but similar to it in crucial aspects of rhythmic structure, heard speech in Japanese and in their own language, and Japanese listeners heard Telugu. For the Telugu listeners, detection of target sequences in Japanese speech was harder when target boundaries mismatched mora boundaries, exactly the pattern that Japanese listeners earlier exhibited with Japanese and other languages. The same results appeared when Japanese listeners heard Telugu speech containing only codas permissible in Japanese. Telugu listeners' results with Telugu speech were mixed, but the overall pattern revealed correspondences between the response patterns of the two listener groups, as predicted by the rhythmic similarity hypothesis. Telugu and Japanese listeners appear to command similar procedures for speech segmentation, further bolstering the proposal that aspects of language phonological structure affect listeners' speech segmentation.

Abstract

The effect of phonological similarity on L1-L2 cognate translation priming was examined with Japanese-English bilinguals. According to the phonological account, the cognate priming effect for different-script bilinguals consists of additive effects of phonological and conceptual facilitation. If true, then the size of the cognate priming effect would be directly influenced by the phonological similarity of cognate translation equivalents. The present experiment tested and confirmed this prediction: the cognate priming effect was significantly larger for cognate prime-target pairs with high-phonological similarity than pairs with low-phonological similarity. Implications for the nature of lexical processing in same-versus different-script bilinguals are discussed.

Abstract

This issue investigates the linguistic encoding of events with three or more participants from the perspectives of language typology and acquisition. Such “multiple-participant events” include (but are not limited to) any scenario involving at least three participants, typically encoded using transactional verbs like 'give' and 'show', placement verbs like 'put', and benefactive and applicative constructions like 'do (something for someone)', among others. There is considerable crosslinguistic and withinlanguage variation in how the participants (the Agent, Causer, Theme, Goal, Recipient, or Experiencer) and the subevents involved in multipleparticipant situations are encoded, both at the lexical and the constructional levels

Abstract

Tamil and Hindi verbs of cutting, breaking, and tearing are shown to have a high degree of overlap in their extensions. However, there are also differences in the lexicalization patterns of these verbs in the two languages with regard to their category boundaries, and the number of verb types that are available to make finer-grained distinctions. Moreover, differences in the extensional ranges of corresponding verbs in the two languages can be motivated in terms of the properties of the instrument and the theme object.

Abstract

This introduction to a special issue of the journal Linguistics sketches the challenges that multiple-participant events pose for linguistic and psycholinguistic theories, and summarizes the articles in the volume.

Abstract

We investigate how Tamil- and Dutch-speaking adults and 4- to 5-year-old children use caused posture verbs (‘lay/stand a bottle on a table’) to label placement events in which objects are oriented vertically or horizontally. Tamil caused posture verbs consist of morphemes that individually label the causal and result subevents (nikka veyyii ‘make stand’; paDka veyyii ‘make lie’), occurring in situational and discourse contexts where object orientation is at issue. Dutch caused posture verbs are less semantically transparent: they are monomorphemic (zetten ‘set/stand’; leggen ‘lay’), often occurring in contexts where factors other than object orientation determine use. Caused posture verbs occur rarely in corpora of Tamil input, whereas in Dutch input, they are used frequently. Elicited production data reveal that Tamil four-year-olds use infrequent placement verbs appropriately whereas Dutch children use high-frequency placement verbs inappropriately even at age five. Semantic transparency exerts a stronger influence than input frequency in constraining children’s verb meaning acquisition.

Abstract

Within a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech relates to statistical learning, as sensitivity to probabilistic information may aid identification of relevant cues in novel speech input. If statistical learning and perceptual learning (partly) draw on the same general mechanisms, then statistical learning in a non-auditory modality using non-linguistic sequences should predict adaptation to degraded speech. In the present study, 73 older adults (aged over 60 years) and 60 younger adults (aged between 18 and 30 years) performed a visual artificial grammar learning task and were presented with sixty meaningful noise-vocoded sentences in an auditory recall task. Within age groups, sentence recognition performance over exposure was analyzed as a function of statistical learning performance, and other variables that may predict learning (i.e., hearing, vocabulary, attention switching control, working memory and processing speed). Younger and older adults showed similar amounts of perceptual learning, but only younger adults showed significant statistical learning. In older adults, improvement in understanding noise-vocoded speech was constrained by age. In younger adults, amount of adaptation was associated with lexical knowledge and with statistical learning ability. Thus, individual differences in general cognitive abilities explain listeners' variability in adapting to noise-vocoded speech. Results suggest that perceptual and statistical learning share mechanisms of implicit regularity detection, but that the ability to detect statistical regularities is impaired in older adults if visual sequences are presented quickly.

Abstract

In an event-related fMRI study, we examined the cortical networks involved in establishing reference during language comprehension. We compared BOLD responses to sentences containing referentially ambiguous pronouns (e.g., “Ronald told Frank that he…”), referentially failing pronouns (e.g., “Rose told Emily that he…”) or coherent pronouns. Referential ambiguity selectively recruited medial prefrontal regions, suggesting that readers engaged in problem-solving to select a unique referent from the discourse model. Referential failure elicited activation increases in brain regions associated with morpho-syntactic processing, and, for those readers who took failing pronouns to refer to unmentioned entities, additional regions associated with elaborative inferencing were observed. The networks activated by these two referential problems did not overlap with the network activated by a standard semantic anomaly. Instead, we observed a double dissociation, in that the systems activated by semantic anomaly are deactivated by referential ambiguity, and vice versa. This inverse coupling may reflect the dynamic recruitment of semantic and episodic processing to resolve semantically or referentially problematic situations. More generally, our findings suggest that neurocognitive accounts of language comprehension need to address not just how we parse a sentence and combine individual word meanings, but also how we determine who's who and what's what during language comprehension.

Abstract

In this event-related brain potentials (ERPs) study, we explored the possibility to selectively track referential ambiguity during spoken discourse comprehension. Earlier ERP research has shown that referentially ambiguous nouns (e.g., “the girl” in a two-girl context) elicit a frontal, sustained negative shift relative to unambiguous control words. In the current study, we examined whether this ERP effect reflects “deep” situation model ambiguity or “superficial” textbase ambiguity. We contrasted these different interpretations by investigating whether a discourse-level semantic manipulation that prevents referential ambiguity also averts the elicitation of a referentially induced ERP effect. We compared ERPs elicited by nouns that were referentially nonambiguous but were associated with two discourse entities (e.g., “the girl” with two girls introduced in the context, but one of which has died or left the scene), with referentially ambiguous and nonambiguous control words. Although temporally referentially ambiguous nouns elicited a frontal negative shift compared to control words, the “double bound” but referentially nonambiguous nouns did not. These results suggest that it is possible to selectively track referential ambiguity with ERPs at the level that is most relevant to discourse comprehension, the situation model.

Abstract

Three experiments used event-related potentials to examine the processing consequences of gender-mismatching pronouns (e.g., “The aunt found out that he had won the lottery”), which have been shown to elicit P600 effects when judged as syntactically anomalous (Osterhout & Mobley, 1995). In each experiment, mismatching pronouns elicited a sustained, frontal negative shift (Nref) compared to matching pronouns: when participants were instructed to posit a new referent for mismatching pronouns (Experiment 1), and without this instruction (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiments 1 and 2, the observed Nref was robust only in individuals with higher reading span scores. In Experiment 1, participants with lower reading span showed P600 effects instead, consistent with an attempt at coreferential interpretation despite gender mismatch. The results from the experiments combined suggest that, in absence of an acceptability judgment task, people are more likely to interpret mismatching pronouns as referring to an unknown, unheralded antecedent than as a grammatically anomalous anaphor for a given antecedent.

Abstract

The role of linguistic experience in structural priming is unclear. Although it is explicitly predicted that experience contributes to priming effects on several theoretical accounts, to date the empirical data has been mixed. To investigate this issue, we conducted four sentence-picture-matching experiments that primed for the comprehension of object relative clauses in L1 and proficient L2 speakers of German. It was predicted that an effect of experience would only be observed in instances where priming effects are likely to be weak in experienced L1 speakers. In such circumstances, priming should be stronger in L2 speakers because of their comparative lack of experience using and processing the L2 test structures. The experiments systematically manipulated the primes to decrease lexical and conceptual overlap between primes and targets. The results supported the hypothesis: in two of the four studies, the L2 group showed larger priming effects in comparison to the L1 group. This effect only occurred when animacy differences were introduced between the prime and target. The results suggest that linguistic experience as operationalised by nativeness affects the strength of priming, specifically in cases where there is a lack of lexical and conceptual overlap between prime and target.

Abstract

Research using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has consistently shown that English-learning children aged 2 can associate transitive argument structure with causal events. However, studies using the same methodology investigating 2-year-old children’s knowledge of the conjoined agent intransitive and semantic role assignment have reported inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to establish at what age English-learning children have verb-general knowledge of both transitive and intransitive argument structure using a new method: the forced-choice pointing paradigm. The results suggest that young 2-year-olds can associate transitive structures with causal (or externally caused) events and can use transitive structure to assign agent and patient roles correctly. However, the children were unable to associate the conjoined agent intransitive with noncausal events until aged 3;4. The results confirm the pattern from previous IPLP studies and indicate that children may develop the ability to comprehend different aspects of argument structure at different ages. The implications for theories of language acquisition and the nature of the language acquisition mechanism are discussed.

Abstract

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

Abstract

We propose that word recognition in continuous speech is subject to constraints on what may constitute a viable word of the language. This Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) reduces activation of candidate words if their recognition would imply word status for adjacent input which could not be a word - for instance, a single consonant. In two word-spotting experiments, listeners found it much harder to detectapple,for example, infapple(where [f] alone would be an impossible word), than invuffapple(wherevuffcould be a word of English). We demonstrate that the PWC can readily be implemented in a competition-based model of continuous speech recognition, as a constraint on the process of competition between candidate words; where a stretch of speech between a candidate word and a (known or likely) word boundary is not a possible word, activation of the candidate word is reduced. This implementation accurately simulates both the present results and data from a range of earlier studies of speech segmentation.

Abstract

Background Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci have been implicated in several neurodevelopmental disorders in which language is affected. However, to date, no studies have investigated the possible involvement of HLA loci in specific language impairment (SLI), a disorder that is defined primarily upon unexpected language impairment. We report association analyses of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and HLA types in a cohort of individuals affected by language impairment. Methods We perform quantitative association analyses of three linguistic measures and case-control association analyses using both SNP data and imputed HLA types. Results Quantitative association analyses of imputed HLA types suggested a role for the HLA-A locus in susceptibility to SLI. HLA-A A1 was associated with a measure of short-term memory (P = 0.004) and A3 with expressive language ability (P = 0.006). Parent-of-origin effects were found between HLA-B B8 and HLA-DQA1*0501 and receptive language. These alleles have a negative correlation with receptive language ability when inherited from the mother (P = 0.021, P = 0.034, respectively) but are positively correlated with the same trait when paternally inherited (P = 0.013, P = 0.029, respectively). Finally, case control analyses using imputed HLA types indicated that the DR10 allele of HLA-DRB1 was more frequent in individuals with SLI than population controls (P = 0.004, relative risk = 2.575), as has been reported for individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Conclusion These preliminary data provide an intriguing link to those described by previous studies of other neurodevelopmental disorders and suggest a possible role for HLA loci in language disorders.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects
linguistic abilities when development is otherwise normal. We report the results of a genomewide association study of SLI which included parent-of-origin effects and child genotype effects and used 278 families of language-impaired children. The child genotype effects analysis did not identify significant associations. We found genome-wide significant paternal
parent-of-origin effects on chromosome 14q12 (P=3.74×10-8) and suggestive maternal parent-of-origin-effects on chromosome 5p13 (P=1.16×10-7). A subsequent targeted association of six single-nucleotide-polymorphisms (SNPs) on chromosome 5 in 313 language-impaired individuals from the ALSPAC cohort replicated the maternal effects,
albeit in the opposite direction (P=0.001); as fathers’ genotypes were not available in the ALSPAC study, the replication analysis did not include paternal parent-of-origin effects. The paternally-associated SNP on chromosome 14 yields a non-synonymous coding change within the NOP9 gene. This gene encodes an RNA-binding protein that has been reported to be significantly dysregulated in individuals with schizophrenia. The region of maternal
association on chromosome 5 falls between the PTGER4 and DAB2 genes, in a region
previously implicated in autism and ADHD. The top SNP in this association locus is a
potential expression QTL of ARHGEF19 (also called WGEF) on chromosome 1. Members of this protein family have been implicated in intellectual disability. In sum, this study implicates parent-of-origin effects in language impairment, and adds an interesting new dimension to the emerging picture of shared genetic etiology across various neurodevelopmental disorders.

Abstract

Present approaches to the semantics of the German prepositions auf an and unter draw on two propositions: First, that spatial prepositions in general specify a region in the surrounding of the relatum object. Second, that in the case of auf an and unter, these regions are to be defined with concepts like the vertical and/or the topological surfa¬ce (the whole surrounding exterior of an object). The present paper argues that the first proposition is right and that the second is wrong. That is, while it is true that prepositions specify regions, the regions specified by auf, an and unter should rather be defined in terms of everyday concepts like SURFACE, SIDE and UNDERSIDE. This idea is suggested by the fact that auf an and unter refer to different regions in different kinds of relatum objects, and that these regions are the same as the regions called surfaces, sides and undersides. Furthermore, reading and usage preferences of auf an and unter can be explained by a corresponding salience of the surfaces, sides and undersides of the relatum objects in question. All in all, therefore, a close look at the use of auf an and unter with different classes of relatum objects reveals problems for a semantic approach that draws on concepts like the vertical, while it suggests mea¬nings of these prepositions that refer to the surface, side and underside of an object.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Typological descriptions of understudied languages reveal intriguing crosslinguistic variation in descriptions of events of object separation and destruction. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, verbs of cutting and breaking lexicalize event perspectives that range from the common to the quite unusual, from the tearing of cloth to the snapping apart on the cross-grain of yarn. This paper describes the semantic and syntactic criteria that characterize three verb classes in this semantic domain, examines patterns of event construal, and takes a look at likely changes in these event descriptions from the perspective of endangered language recovery.

Abstract

Currently one in five adults is still unable to read despite a rapidly developing world. Here we show that (il)literacy has important consequences for the cognitive ability of selecting relevant information from a visual display of non-linguistic material. In two experiments we compared low to high literacy observers on both an easy and a more difficult visual search task involving different types of chicken. Low literates were consistently slower (as indicated by overall RTs) in both experiments. More detailed analyses, including eye movement measures, suggest that the slowing is partly due to display wide (i.e. parallel) sensory processing but mainly due to post-selection processes, as low literates needed more time between fixating the target and generating a manual response. Furthermore, high and low literacy groups differed in the way search performance was distributed across the visual field. High literates performed relatively better when the target was presented in central regions, especially on the right. At the same time, high literacy was also associated with a more general bias towards the top and the left, especially in the more difficult search. We conclude that learning to read results in an extension of the functional visual field from the fovea to parafoveal areas, combined with some asymmetry in scan pattern influenced by the reading direction, both of which also influence other (e.g. non-linguistic) tasks such as visual search.

Abstract

Despite growing clinical and neurobiological interest in the brain mechanisms that process emotion in music, these mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) frequently exhibit clinical syndromes that illustrate the effects of breakdown in emotional and social functioning. Here we investigated the neuroanatomical substrate for recognition of musical emotion in a cohort of 26 patients with FTLD (16 with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, bvFTD, 10 with semantic dementia, SemD) using voxel-based morphometry. On neuropsychological evaluation, patients with FTLD showed deficient recognition of canonical emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) from music as well as faces and voices compared with healthy control subjects. Impaired recognition of emotions from music was specifically associated with grey matter loss in a distributed cerebral network including insula, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex, anterior temporal and more posterior temporal and parietal cortices, amygdala and the subcortical mesolimbic system. This network constitutes an essential brain substrate for recognition of musical emotion that overlaps with brain regions previously implicated in coding emotional value, behavioural context, conceptual knowledge and theory of mind. Musical emotion recognition may probe the interface of these processes, delineating a profile of brain damage that is essential for the abstraction of complex social emotions.

Abstract

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have smaller volumes of total brain matter and subcortical regions, but it is unclear whether these represent delayed maturation or persist into adulthood. We performed a structural MRI study in 119 adult ADHD patients and 107 controls and investigated total gray and white matter and volumes of accumbens, caudate, globus pallidus, putamen, thalamus, amygdala and hippocampus. Additionally, we investigated effects of gender, stimulant treatment and history of major depression (MDD). There was no main effect of ADHD on the volumetric measures, nor was any effect observed in a secondary voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis of the entire brain. However, in the volumetric analysis a significant gender by diagnosis interaction was found for caudate volume. Male patients showed reduced right caudate volume compared to male controls, and caudate volume correlated with hyperactive/impulsive symptoms. Furthermore, patients using stimulant treatment had a smaller right hippocampus volume compared to medication-naïve patients and controls. ADHD patients with previous MDD showed smaller hippocampus volume compared to ADHD patients with no MDD. While these data were obtained in a cross-sectional sample and need to be replicated in a longitudinal study, the findings suggest that developmental brain differences in ADHD largely normalize in adulthood. Reduced caudate volume in male patients may point to distinct neurobiological deficits underlying ADHD in the two genders. Smaller hippocampus volume in ADHD patients with previous MDD is consistent with neurobiological alterations observed in MDD.

Abstract

This paper describes FieldTrip, an open source software package that we developed for the analysis of MEG, EEG, and other electrophysiological data. The software is implemented as a MATLAB toolbox and includes a complete set of consistent and user-friendly high-level functions that allow experimental neuroscientists to analyze experimental data. It includes algorithms for simple and advanced analysis, such as time-frequency analysis using multitapers, source reconstruction using dipoles, distributed sources and beamformers, connectivity analysis, and nonparametric statistical permutation tests at the channel and source level. The implementation as toolbox allows the user to perform elaborate and structured analyses of large data sets using the MATLAB command line and batch scripting. Furthermore, users and developers can easily extend the functionality and implement new algorithms. The modular design facilitates the reuse in other software packages.

Abstract

Evidence for the etiology of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has consistently pointed to a strong genetic component complicated by substantial locus heterogeneity1, 2. We sequenced the exomes of 20 individuals with sporadic ASD (cases) and their parents, reasoning that these families would be enriched for de novo mutations of major effect. We identified 21 de novo mutations, 11 of which were protein altering. Protein-altering mutations were significantly enriched for changes at highly conserved residues. We identified potentially causative de novo events in 4 out of 20 probands, particularly among more severely affected individuals, in FOXP1, GRIN2B, SCN1A and LAMC3. In the FOXP1 mutation carrier, we also observed a rare inherited CNTNAP2 missense variant, and we provide functional support for a multi-hit model for disease risk3. Our results show that trio-based exome sequencing is a powerful approach for identifying new candidate genes for ASDs and suggest that de novo mutations may contribute substantially to the genetic etiology of ASDs.

Abstract

A discourse context provides a reader with a great deal of information that can provide constraints for further language processing, at several different levels. In this experiment we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore whether discourse-generated contextual constraints are based on the precise message of the discourse or, more `loosely', on the scenario suggested by one or more content words in the text. Participants read constraining stories whose precise message rendered a particular word highly predictable ("The manager thought that the board of directors should assemble to discuss the issue. He planned a...[meeting]") as well as non-constraining control stories that were only biasing in virtue of the scenario suggested by some of the words ("The manager thought that the board of directors need not assemble to discuss the issue. He planned a..."). Coherent words that were inconsistent with the message-level expectation raised in a constraining discourse (e.g., "session" instead of "meeting") elicited a classic centroparietal N400 effect. However, when the same words were only inconsistent with the scenario loosely suggested by earlier words in the text, they elicited a different negativity around 400 ms, with a more anterior, left-lateralized maximum. The fact that the discourse-dependent N400 effect cannot be reduced to scenario-mediated priming reveals that it reflects the rapid use of precise message-level constraints in comprehension. At the same time, the left-lateralized negativity in non-constraining stories suggests that, at least in the absence of strong message-level constraints, scenario-mediated priming does also rapidly affect comprehension.

Abstract

Background Recently several studies have shown that people use contextual information to make predictions about the rest of the sentence or story as the text unfolds. Using event related potentials (ERPs) we tested whether these on-line predictions are based on a message-based representation of the discourse or on simple automatic activation by individual words. Subjects heard short stories that were highly constraining for one specific noun, or stories that were not specifically predictive but contained the same prime words as the predictive stories. To test whether listeners make specific predictions critical nouns were preceded by an adjective that was inflected according to, or in contrast with, the gender of the expected noun. Results When the message of the preceding discourse was predictive, adjectives with an unexpected gender-inflection evoked a negative deflection over right-frontal electrodes between 300 and 600 ms. This effect was not present in the prime control context, indicating that the prediction mismatch does not hinge on word-based priming but is based on the actual message of the discourse. Conclusions When listening to a constraining discourse people rapidly make very specific predictions about the remainder of the story, as the story unfolds. These predictions are not simply based on word-based automatic activation, but take into account the actual message of the discourse.

Abstract

The archaeological site of Sagalassos is located in Southwest Turkey, in the western part of the Taurus mountain range. Human occupation of its territory is attested from the late 12th millennium BP up to the 13th century AD. By analysing the mtDNA variation in 85 skeletons from Sagalassos dated to the 11th–13th century AD, this study attempts to reconstruct the genetic signature potentially left in this region of Anatolia by the many civilizations, which succeeded one another over the centuries until the mid-Byzantine period (13th century BC). Authentic ancient DNA data were determined from the control region and some SNPs in the coding region of the mtDNA in 53 individuals. Comparative analyses with up to 157 modern populations allowed us to reconstruct the origin of the mid-Byzantine people still dwelling in dispersed hamlets in Sagalassos, and to detect the maternal contribution of their potential ancestors. By integrating the genetic data with historical and archaeological information, we were able to attest in Sagalassos a significant maternal genetic signature of Balkan/Greek populations, as well as ancient Persians and populations from the Italian peninsula. Some contribution from the Levant has been also detected, whereas no contribution from Central Asian population could be ascertained.

Abstract

Disagreement exists about how speakers monitor their internal speech. Production-based accounts assume that self-monitoring mechanisms exist within the production system, whereas comprehension-based accounts assume that monitoring is achieved through the speech comprehension system. Comprehension-based accounts predict perception-specific effects, like the perceptual uniqueness-point effect, in the monitoring of internal speech. We ran an extensive experiment testing this prediction using internal phoneme monitoring and picture naming tasks. Our results show an effect of the perceptual uniqueness point of a word in internal phoneme monitoring in the absence of such an effect in picture naming. These results support comprehension-based accounts of the monitoring of internal speech.

Abstract

During language comprehension, listeners use the global semantic representation from previous sentence or discourse context to immediately integrate the meaning of each upcoming word into the unfolding message-level representation. Here we investigate whether communicative gestures that often spontaneously co-occur with speech are processed in a similar fashion and integrated to previous sentence context in the same way as lexical meaning. Event-related potentials were measured while subjects listened to spoken sentences with a critical verb (e.g., knock), which was accompanied by an iconic co-speech gesture (i.e., KNOCK). Verbal and/or gestural semantic content matched or mismatched the content of the preceding part of the sentence. Despite the difference in the modality and in the specificity of meaning conveyed by spoken words and gestures, the latency, amplitude, and topographical distribution of both word and gesture mismatches are found to be similar, indicating that the brain integrates both types of information simultaneously. This provides evidence for the claim that neural processing in language comprehension involves the simultaneous incorporation of information coming from a broader domain of cognition than only verbal semantics. The neural evidence for similar integration of information from speech and gesture emphasizes the tight interconnection between speech and co-speech gestures.

Abstract

As we speak, we use not only the arbitrary form–meaning mappings of the speech channel but also motivated form–meaning correspondences, i.e. iconic gestures that accompany speech (e.g. inverted V-shaped hand wiggling across gesture space to demonstrate walking). This article reviews what we know about processing of semantic information from speech and iconic gestures in spoken languages during comprehension of such composite utterances. Several studies have shown that comprehension of iconic gestures involves brain activations known to be involved in semantic processing of speech: i.e. modulation of the electrophysiological recording component N400, which is sensitive to the ease of semantic integration of a word to previous context, and recruitment of the left-lateralized frontal–posterior temporal network (left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), medial temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/S)). Furthermore, we integrate the information coming from both channels recruiting brain areas such as left IFG, posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS)/MTG and even motor cortex. Finally, this integration is flexible: the temporal synchrony between the iconic gesture and the speech segment, as well as the perceived communicative intent of the speaker, modulate the integration process. Whether these findings are special to gestures or are shared with actions or other visual accompaniments to speech (e.g. lips) or other visual symbols such as pictures are discussed, as well as the implications for a multimodal view of language.

Abstract

Evaluation plays a role in the telling and understanding of narratives, in communicative interaction, emotional understanding, and in psychological well-being. This article reports a study of evaluation by describing how readers monitor the concerns of characters over the course of a narrative. The main hypothesis is that readers tract the well-being via the expression of a character's internal states. Reader evaluations were revealed in think aloud protocols obtained during reading of narrative texts, one sentence at a time. Five kinds of evaluative inferences were found: appraisals (good versus bad), preferences (like versus don't like), emotions (happy versus frustrated), goals (want versus don't want), or purposes (to attain or maintain X versus to prevent or avoid X). Readers evaluated all sentences. The mean rate of evaluation per sentence was 0.55. Positive and negative evaluations over the course of the story indicated that things initially went badly for characters, improved with the formulation and execution of goal plans, declined with goal failure, and improved as characters formulated new goals and succeeded. The kind of evaluation made depended upon the episodic category of the event and the event's temporal location in the story. Evaluations also served to explain or predict events. In making evaluations, readers stayed within the frame of the story and perspectives of the character or narrator. They also moved out of the narrative frame and addressed evaluations towards the experimenter in a communicative context.

Abstract

Recent studies have emphasized that developmental dyslexia is a multiple-deficit disorder, in contrast to the traditional single-deficit view. In this context, cognitive profiling of children with dyslexia may be a relevant contribution to this unresolved discussion. The aim of this study was to profile 36 Portuguese children with dyslexia from the 2nd to 5th grade. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group participants according to their phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence abilities. The results suggested a two-cluster solution: a group with poorer performance on phoneme deletion and rapid automatized naming compared with the remaining variables (Cluster 1) and a group characterized by underperforming on the variables most related to phonological processing (phoneme deletion and digit span), but not on rapid automatized naming (Cluster 2). Overall, the results seem more consistent with a hybrid perspective, such as that proposed by Pennington and colleagues (2012), for understanding the heterogeneity of dyslexia. The importance of characterizing the profiles of individuals with dyslexia becomes clear within the context of constructing remediation programs that are specifically targeted and are more effective in terms of intervention outcome.

Abstract

Background Thirty-two common variants associated with body mass index (BMI) have been identified in genome-wide association studies, explaining ∼1.45% of BMI variation in general population cohorts. We performed a genome-wide association study in a sample of young adults enriched for extremely overweight individuals. We aimed to identify new loci associated with BMI and to ascertain whether using an extreme sampling design would identify the variants known to be associated with BMI in general populations. Methodology/Principal Findings From two large Danish cohorts we selected all extremely overweight young men and women (n = 2,633), and equal numbers of population-based controls (n = 2,740, drawn randomly from the same populations as the extremes, representing ∼212,000 individuals). We followed up novel (at the time of the study) association signals (p<}0.001) from the discovery cohort in a genome-wide study of 5,846 Europeans, before attempting to replicate the most strongly associated 28 SNPs in an independent sample of Danish individuals (n = 20,917) and a population-based cohort of 15-year-old British adolescents (n = 2,418). Our discovery analysis identified SNPs at three loci known to be associated with BMI with genome-wide confidence (P{<}5×10−8; FTO, MC4R and FAIM2). We also found strong evidence of association at the known TMEM18, GNPDA2, SEC16B, TFAP2B, SH2B1 and KCTD15 loci (p{<}0.001), and nominal association (p{<0.05) at a further 8 loci known to be associated with BMI. However, meta-analyses of our discovery and replication cohorts identified no novel associations. Significance Our results indicate that the detectable genetic variation associated with extreme overweight is very similar to that previously found for general BMI. This suggests that population-based study designs with enriched sampling of individuals with the extreme phenotype may be an efficient method for identifying common variants that influence quantitative traits and a valid alternative to genotyping all individuals in large population-based studies, which may require tens of thousands of subjects to achieve similar power.

Abstract

We report an investigation of aging and individual differences in binding information during sentence understanding. An age-continuous sample of adults (N=91), ranging from 18 to 81 years of age, read sentences in which a relative clause could be attached high to a head noun NP1, attached low to its modifying prepositional phrase NP2 (e.g., The son of the princess who scratched himself/herself in public was humiliated), or in which the attachment site of the relative clause was ultimately indeterminate (e.g., The maid of the princess who scratched herself in public was humiliated). Word-by-word reading times and comprehension (e.g., who scratched?) were measured. A series of mixed-effects models were fit to the data, revealing: (1) that, on average, NP1-attached sentences were harder to process and comprehend than NP2-attached sentences; (2) that these average effects were independently moderated by verbal working memory capacity and reading experience, with effects that were most pronounced in the oldest participants and; (3) that readers on average did not allocate extra time to resolve global ambiguities, though older adults with higher working memory span did. Findings are discussed in relation to current models of lifespan cognitive development, working memory, language experience, and the role of prosodic segmentation strategies in reading. Collectively, these data suggest that aging brings differences in sentence understanding, and these differences may depend on independent influences of verbal working memory capacity and reading experience.

Abstract

We examined language-switching effects in French–English bilinguals using a paradigm where pictures are always named in the same language (either French or English) within a block of trials, and on each trial, the picture is preceded by a printed word from the same language or from the other language. Participants had to either make a language decision on the word or categorize it as an animal name or not. Picture-naming latencies in French (Language 1 [L1]) were slower when pictures were preceded by an English word than by a French word, independently of the task performed on the word. There were no language-switching effects when pictures were named in English (L2). This pattern replicates asymmetrical switch costs found with the cued picture-naming paradigm and shows that the asymmetrical pattern can be obtained (a) in the absence of artificial (nonlinguistic) language cues, (b) when the switch involves a shift from comprehension in 1 language to production in another, and (c) when the naming language is blocked (univalent response). We concluded that language switch costs in bilinguals cannot be reduced to effects driven by task control or response-selection mechanisms.

Abstract

Did one of your parents, siblings, or friends ever tell you that you were talking in your sleep? Nothing to be ashamed of! A recent study found that more than half of all people have had the experience of speaking out loud while being asleep [1]. This might even be underestimated, because often people do not notice that they are sleep-talking, unless somebody wakes them up or tells them the next day. Most neuroscientists, linguists, and psychologists studying language are interested in our language production and language comprehension skills during the day. In the present article, we will explore what is known about the production of overt speech during the night. We suggest that the study of sleep-talking may be just as interesting and informative as the study of wakeful speech.

Abstract

Maximum margin clustering (MMC) is a relatively new and promising kernel method. In this paper, we apply MMC to the task of unsupervised speech segmentation. We present three automatic speech segmentation methods based on MMC, which are tested on TIMIT and evaluated on the level of phoneme boundary detection. The results show that MMC is highly competitive with existing unsupervised methods for the automatic detection of phoneme boundaries. Furthermore, initial analyses show that MMC is a promising method for the automatic detection of sub-phonetic information in the speech signal.

Abstract

Scholars have often reasoned that vocalizations are extremely limited in their potential for iconic expression, especially in comparison to manual gestures (e.g., Armstrong & Wilcox, 2007; Tomasello, 2008). As evidence for an alternative view, we first review the growing body of research related to iconicity in vocalizations, including experimental work on sound symbolism, cross-linguistic studies documenting iconicity in the grammars and lexicons of languages, and experimental studies that examine iconicity in the production of speech and vocalizations. We then report an experiment in which participants created vocalizations to communicate 60 different meanings, including 30 antonymic pairs. The vocalizations were measured along several acoustic properties, and these properties were compared between antonyms. Participants were highly consistent in the kinds of sounds they produced for the majority of meanings, supporting the hypothesis that vocalization has considerable potential for iconicity. In light of these findings, we present a comparison between vocalization and manual gesture, and examine the detailed ways in which each modality can function in the iconic expression of particular kinds of meanings. We further discuss the role of iconic vocalizations and gesture in the evolution of language since our divergence from the great apes. In conclusion, we suggest that human communication is best understood as an ensemble of kinesis and vocalization, not just speech, in which expression in both modalities spans the range from arbitrary to iconic.

Abstract

Spatial coherence in discourse relies on the use of devices that provide information about where referents are and where events take place. In signed language, two primary devices for achieving and maintaining spatial coherence are the use of classifier forms and signing perspective. This paper gives a unified account of the relationship between perspective and classifiers, and divides the range of possible correspondences between these two devices into prototypical and non-prototypical alignments. An analysis of German Sign Language narratives of complex events investigates the role of different classifier-perspective constructions in encoding spatial information about location, orientation, action and motion, as well as size and shape of referents. In particular, I show how non-prototypical alignments, including simultaneity of perspectives, contribute to the maintenance of spatial coherence, and provide functional explanations in terms of efficiency and informativeness constraints on discourse.

Abstract

Understanding the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in learning and memory is an important problem in cognitive neuroscience. Memory and learning processes that depend on the function of the MTL and related diencephalic structures (e.g., the anterior and mediodorsal thalamic nuclei) are defined as declarative. We have studied the MTL activity as indicated by regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography and statistical parametric mapping during recall of abstract designs in a less practiced memory state as well as in a well-practiced (well-encoded) memory state. The results showed an increased activity of the MTL bilaterally (including parahippocampal gyrus extending into hippocampus proper, as well as anterior lingual and anterior fusiform gyri) during retrieval in the less practiced memory state compared to the well-practiced memory state, indicating a dynamic role of the MTL in retrieval during the learning processes. The results also showed that the activation of the MTL decreases as the subjects learn to draw abstract designs from memory, indicating a changing role of the MTL during recall in the earlier stages of acquisition compared to the well-encoded declarative memory state.

Abstract

The current understanding of hemispheric interaction is limited. Functional hemispheric specialization is likely to depend on both genetic and environmental factors. In the present study we investigated the importance of one factor, literacy, for the functional lateralization in the inferior parietal cortex in two independent samples of literate and illiterate subjects. The results show that the illiterate group are consistently more right-lateralized than their literate controls. In contrast, the two groups showed a similar degree of left-right differences in early speech-related regions of the superior temporal cortex. These results provide evidence suggesting that a cultural factor, literacy, influences the functional hemispheric balance in reading and verbal working memory-related regions. In a third sample, we investigated grey and white matter with voxel-based morphometry. The results showed differences between literacy groups in white matter intensities related to the mid-body region of the corpus callosum and the inferior parietal and parietotemporal regions (literate > illiterate). There were no corresponding differences in the grey matter. This suggests that the influence of literacy on brain structure related to reading and verbal working memory is affecting large-scale brain connectivity more than grey matter per se.

Abstract

Background

Noncoding RNA (ncRNA) has been recognized as an important regulator of gene expression networks in Bacteria and Eucaryota. Little is known about ncRNA in thermococcal archaea except for the eukaryotic-like C/D and H/ACA modification guide RNAs.
Results

Using a combination of in silico and experimental approaches, we identified and characterized novel P. abyssi ncRNAs transcribed from 12 intergenic regions, ten of which are conserved throughout the Thermococcales. Several of them accumulate in the late-exponential phase of growth. Analysis of the genomic context and sequence conservation amongst related thermococcal species revealed two novel P. abyssi ncRNA families. The CRISPR family is comprised of crRNAs expressed from two of the four P. abyssi CRISPR cassettes. The 5'UTR derived family includes four conserved ncRNAs, two of which have features similar to known bacterial riboswitches. Several of the novel ncRNAs have sequence similarities to orphan OrfB transposase elements. Based on RNA secondary structure predictions and experimental results, we show that three of the twelve ncRNAs include Kink-turn RNA motifs, arguing for a biological role of these ncRNAs in the cell. Furthermore, our results show that several of the ncRNAs are subjected to processing events by enzymes that remain to be identified and characterized.
Conclusions

This work proposes a revised annotation of CRISPR loci in P. abyssi and expands our knowledge of ncRNAs in the Thermococcales, thus providing a starting point for studies needed to elucidate their biological function.

Abstract

According to a prominent theory of language production, concepts activate multiple associated words in memory, which enter into competition for selection. However, only a few electrophysiological studies have identified brain responses reflecting competition. Here, we report a magnetoencephalography study in which the activation of competing words was manipulated by presenting pictures (e.g., dog) with distractor words. The distractor and picture name were semantically related (cat), unrelated (pin), or identical (dog). Related distractors are stronger competitors to the picture name because they receive additional activation from the picture relative to other distractors. Picture naming times were longer with related than unrelated and identical distractors. Phase-locked and non-phase-locked activity were distinct but temporally related. Phase-locked activity in left temporal cortex, peaking at 400 ms, was larger on unrelated than related and identical trials, suggesting differential activation of alternative words by the picture-word stimuli. Non-phase-locked activity between roughly 350–650 ms (4–10 Hz) in left superior frontal gyrus was larger on related than unrelated and identical trials, suggesting differential resolution of the competition among the alternatives, as reflected in the naming times. These findings characterise distinct patterns of activity associated with lexical activation and competition, supporting the theory that words are selected by competition.

Abstract

Disagreement exists regarding the functional locus of semantic interference of distractor words in picture naming. This effect is a cornerstone of modern psycholinguistic models of word production, which assume that it arises in lexical response-selection. However, recent evidence from studies of dual-task performance suggests a locus in perceptual or conceptual processing, prior to lexical response-selection. In these studies, participants manually responded to a tone and named a picture while ignoring a written distractor word. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between tone and picture–word stimulus was manipulated. Semantic interference in naming latencies was present at long tone pre-exposure SOAs, but reduced or absent at short SOAs. Under the prevailing structural or strategic response-selection bottleneck and central capacity sharing models of dual-task performance, the underadditivity of the effects of SOA and stimulus type suggests that semantic interference emerges before lexical response-selection. However, in more recent studies, additive effects of SOA and stimulus type were obtained. Here, we examined the discrepancy in results between these studies in 6 experiments in which we systematically manipulated various dimensions on which these earlier studies differed, including tasks, materials, stimulus types, and SOAs. In all our experiments, additive effects of SOA and stimulus type on naming latencies were obtained. These results strongly suggest that the semantic interference effect arises after perceptual and conceptual processing, during lexical response-selection or later. We discuss several theoretical alternatives with respect to their potential to account for the discrepancy between the present results and other studies showing underadditivity.

Abstract

Two fundamental factors affecting the speed of spoken word production are lexical frequency and sentential constraint, but little is known about their timing and electrophysiological basis. In the present study, we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) and oscillatory brain responses induced by these factors, using a task in which participants named pictures after reading sentences. Sentence contexts were either constraining or nonconstraining towards the final word, which was presented as a picture. Picture names varied in their frequency of occurrence in the language. Naming latencies and electrophysiological responses were examined as a function of context and lexical frequency. Lexical frequency is an index of our cumulative learning experience with words, so lexical-frequency effects most likely reflect access to memory representations for words. Pictures were named faster with constraining than nonconstraining contexts. Associated with this effect, starting around 400 ms pre-picture presentation, oscillatory power between 8 and 30 Hz was lower for constraining relative to nonconstraining contexts. Furthermore, pictures were named faster with high-frequency than low-frequency names, but only for nonconstraining contexts, suggesting differential ease of memory access as a function of sentential context. Associated with the lexical-frequency effect, starting around 500 ms pre-picture presentation, oscillatory power between 4 and 10 Hz was higher for high-frequency than for low-frequency names, but only for constraining contexts. Our results characterise electrophysiological responses associated with lexical frequency and sentential constraint in spoken word production, and point to new avenues for studying these fundamental factors in language production.

Abstract

Disagreement exists about whether lexical selection in word production is a competitive process. Competition predicts semanticinterference from distractor words in immediate but not in delayed picture naming. In contrast, Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, and Caramazza (2008) obtained semanticinterference in delayed picture naming when participants had to decide between picture naming and oral reading depending on the distractor word’s colour. We report three experiments that examined the role of such taskdecisions. In a single-task situation requiring picture naming only (Experiment 1), we obtained semanticinterference in immediate but not in delayednaming. In a task-decision situation (Experiments 2 and 3), no semantic effects were obtained in immediate and delayed picture naming and word reading using either the materials of Experiment 1 or the materials of Janssen et al. (2008). We present an attentional account in which taskdecisions may hide or reveal semanticinterference from lexical competition depending on the amount of parallelism between task-decision and picture–word processing.

Abstract

Much work in psycholinguistics and social psychology has investigated the notion of implicit causality associated with verbs. Crinean and Garnham (2006) relate implicit causality to another phenomenon, implicit consequentiality. We argue that they and other researchers have confused the meanings of events and the reasons for those events, so that particular thematic roles (e.g., Agent, Patient) are taken to be causes or consequences of those events by definition. In accord with Garvey and Caramazza (1974), we propose that implicit causality and consequentiality are probabilistic notions that are straightforwardly related to the explicit causes and consequences of events and are analogous to other biases investigated in psycholinguistics.

Abstract

Defeasible inferences are inferences that can be revised in the light of new information. Although defeasible inferences are pervasive in everyday communication, little is known about how and when they are processed by the brain. This study examined the electrophysiological signature of defeasible reasoning using a modified version of the suppression task. Participants were presented with conditional inferences (of the type “if p, then q; p, therefore q”) that were preceded by a congruent or a disabling context. The disabling context contained a possible exception or precondition that prevented people from drawing the conclusion. Acceptability of the conclusion was indeed lower in the disabling condition compared to the congruent condition. Further, we found a large sustained negativity at the conclusion of the disabling condition relative to the congruent condition, which started around 250 msec and was persistent throughout the entire epoch. Possible accounts for the observed effect are discussed.

Abstract

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

Abstract

In this study we test a number of different claims about the nature of stylistic variation at the “single-word” stage by examining the relation between variation in early vocabulary composition, variation in early language use, and variation in the structural and functional propreties of mothers' child-directed speech. Maternal-report and observational data were collected for 26 children at 10, 50, and 100 words, These were then correlated with a variety of different measures of maternal speech at 10 words, The results show substantial variation in the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's vocabularies, and singficant relations between this variation and the way in which language is used by the child. They also reveal singficant relations between the way in whch mothers use language at 10 words and the way in chich their children use language at 50 words and between certain formal properties of mothers speech at 10 words and the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's early vocabularies, However, most of these relations desappear when an attempt is made to control for ossible effects of the child on the mother at Time 1. The exception is a singficant negative correlation between mothers tendency to produce speech that illustrates word boundaries and the percentage of unanalyzed phrases at 50 and 100 words. This suggests that mothers whose sprech provides the child with information about where new words begin and end tend to have children with few unanalyzed. phrases in their early vocabularies.

Abstract

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal, segmental and suprasegmental properties of speech on the one hand, and fluency and accent as rated by native raters on the other hand. For 90 speech fragments from Turkish and English L2 learners of Dutch, several acoustic measures of fluency and accent were calculated. In Experiment 1, 20 native speakers of Dutch rated the L2 Dutch samples on fluency. In Experiment 2, 20 different untrained native speakers of Dutch judged the L2 Dutch samples on accentedness. Regression analyses revealed that acoustic measures of fluency were good predictors of fluency ratings. Secondly, segmental and suprasegmental measures of accent could predict some variance of accent ratings. Thirdly, perceived fluency and perceived accent were only weakly related. In conclusion, this study shows that fluency and perceived foreign accent can be judged as separate constructs.

Abstract

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are sizeable stretches of homozygous genotypes at consecutive polymorphic DNA marker positions, traditionally captured by means of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping. With the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, a number of methods initially devised for the analysis of SNP array data (those based on sliding-window algorithms such as PLINK or GERMLINE and graphical tools like HomozygosityMapper) or specifically conceived for NGS data have been adopted for the detection of ROH from whole exome sequencing (WES) data. In the latter group, algorithms for both graphical representation (AgileVariantMapper, HomSI) and computational detection (H3M2) of WES-derived ROH have been proposed. Here we examine these different approaches and discuss available strategies to implement ROH detection in WES analysis. Among sliding-window algorithms, PLINK appears to be well-suited for the detection of ROH, especially of the long ones. As a method specifically tailored for WES data, H3M2 outperforms existing algorithms especially on short and medium ROH. We conclude that, notwithstanding the irregular distribution of exons, WES data can be used with some approximation for unbiased genome-wide analysis of ROH features, with promising applications to homozygosity mapping of disease genes, comparative analysis of populations and epidemiological studies based on consanguinity

Abstract

This study investigates if and how listeners adapt to reductions in casual continuous speech. In a perceptual-learning variant of the visual-world paradigm, two groups of Dutch participants were exposed to either segmental (/b/ → [ʋ]) or syllabic (ver- → [fː]) reductions in spoken Dutch sentences. In the test phase, both groups heard both kinds of reductions, but now applied to different words. In one of two experiments, the segmental reduction exposure group was better than the syllabic reduction exposure group in recognizing new reduced /b/-words. In both experiments, the syllabic reduction group showed a greater target preference for new reduced ver-words. Learning about reductions was thus applied to previously unheard words. This lexical generalization suggests that mechanisms compensating for segmental and syllabic reductions take place at a prelexical level, and hence that lexical access involves an abstractionist mode of processing. Existing abstractionist models need to be revised, however, as they do not include representations of sequences of segments (corresponding e.g. to ver-) at the prelexical level.

Abstract

Three eye-tracking experiments tested whether native listeners recognized reduced Dutch words better after having heard the same reduced words, or different reduced words of the same reduction type and whether familiarization with one reduction type helps listeners to deal with another reduction type. In the exposure phase, a segmental reduction group was exposed to /b/-reductions (e.g., "minderij" instead of "binderij", 'book binder') and a syllabic reduction group was exposed to full-vowel deletions (e.g., "p'raat" instead of "paraat", 'ready'), while a control group did not hear any reductions. In the test phase, all three groups heard the same speaker producing reduced-/b/ and deleted-vowel words that were either repeated (Experiments 1 & 2) or new (Experiment 3), but that now appeared as targets in semantically neutral sentences. Word-specific learning effects were found for vowel-deletions but not for /b/-reductions. Generalization of learning to new words of the same reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically consistent reduction pattern (/b/-reductions). In contrast, generalization of learning to words of another reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically inconsistent reduction pattern (the vowel deletions; learning about them generalized to recognition of the /b/-reductions). In order to deal with reductions, listeners thus use various means. They store reduced variants (e.g., for the inconsistent vowel-deleted words) and they abstract over incoming information to build up and apply mapping rules (e.g., for the consistent /b/-reductions). Experience with inconsistent pronunciations leads to greater perceptual flexibility in dealing with other forms of reduction uttered by the same speaker than experience with consistent pronunciations.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: There is overlap between an autistic and hyperactive-inattentive symptomatology when studied cross-sectionally. This study is the first to examine the longitudinal pattern of association between social-communication deficits and hyperactive-inattentive symptoms in the general population, from childhood through adolescence. We explored the interrelationship between trajectories of co-occurring symptoms, and sought evidence for shared prenatal/perinatal risk factors. METHOD: Study participants were 5,383 singletons of white ethnicity from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Multiple measurements of hyperactive-inattentive traits (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) and autistic social-communication impairment (Social Communication Disorder Checklist) were obtained between 4 and 17 years. Both traits and their trajectories were modeled in parallel using latent class growth analysis (LCGA). Trajectory membership was subsequently investigated with respect to prenatal/perinatal risk factors. RESULTS: LCGA analysis revealed two distinct social-communication trajectories (persistently impaired versus low-risk) and four hyperactive-inattentive trait trajectories (persistently impaired, intermediate, childhood-limited and low-risk). Autistic symptoms were more stable than those of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) behaviors, which showed greater variability. Trajectories for both traits were strongly but not reciprocally interlinked, such that the majority of children with a persistent hyperactive-inattentive symptomatology also showed persistent social-communication deficits but not vice versa. Shared predictors, especially for trajectories of persistent impairment, were maternal smoking during the first trimester, which included familial effects, and a teenage pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: Our longitudinal study reveals that a complex relationship exists between social-communication and hyperactive-inattentive traits. Patterns of association change over time, with corresponding implications for removing exclusivity criteria for ASD and ADHD, as proposed for DSM-5.

Abstract

Background Social-communication abilities are heritable traits, and their impairments overlap with the autism continuum. To characterise the genetic architecture of social-communication difficulties developmentally and identify genetic links with the autistic dimension, we conducted a genome-wide screen of social-communication problems at multiple time-points during childhood and adolescence. Methods Social-communication difficulties were ascertained at ages 8, 11, 14 and 17 years in a UK population-based birth cohort (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children; N ≤ 5,628) using mother-reported Social Communication Disorder Checklist scores. Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) was conducted for all phenotypes. The time-points with the highest GCTA heritability were subsequently analysed for single SNP association genome-wide. Type I error in the presence of measurement relatedness and the likelihood of observing SNP signals near known autism susceptibility loci (co-location) were assessed via large-scale, genome-wide permutations. Association signals (P ≤ 10−5) were also followed up in Autism Genetic Resource Exchange pedigrees (N = 793) and the Autism Case Control cohort (Ncases/Ncontrols = 1,204/6,491). Results GCTA heritability was strongest in childhood (h2(8 years) = 0.24) and especially in later adolescence (h2(17 years) = 0.45), with a marked drop during early to middle adolescence (h2(11 years) = 0.16 and h2(14 years) = 0.08). Genome-wide screens at ages 8 and 17 years identified for the latter time-point evidence for association at 3p22.2 near SCN11A (rs4453791, P = 9.3 × 10−9; genome-wide empirical P = 0.011) and suggestive evidence at 20p12.3 at PLCB1 (rs3761168, P = 7.9 × 10−8; genome-wide empirical P = 0.085). None of these signals contributed to risk for autism. However, the co-location of population-based signals and autism susceptibility loci harbouring rare mutations, such as PLCB1, is unlikely to be due to chance (genome-wide empirical Pco-location = 0.007). Conclusions Our findings suggest that measurable common genetic effects for social-communication difficulties vary developmentally and that these changes may affect detectable overlaps with the autism spectrum.

Abstract

Recent literature on learning with instructional manipulatives seems to call for a moderate view on the effects of perceptual and interactive richness of instructional manipulatives on learning. This “moderate view” holds that manipulatives’ perceptual and interactive richness may compromise learning in two ways: (1) by imposing a very high cognitive load on the learner, and (2) by hindering drawing of symbolic inferences that are supposed to play a key role in transfer (i.e., application of knowledge to new situations in the absence of instructional manipulatives). This paper presents a contrasting view. Drawing on recent insights from Embedded Embodied perspectives on cognition, it is argued that (1) perceptual and interactive richness may provide opportunities for alleviating cognitive load (Embedded Cognition), and (2) transfer of learning is not reliant on decontextualized knowledge but may draw on previous sensorimotor experiences of the kind afforded by perceptual and interactive richness of manipulatives (Embodied Cognition). By negotiating the Embedded Embodied Cognition view with the moderate view, implications for research are derived.

Abstract

Gestures are often considered to be demonstrative of the embodied nature of the mind (Hostetter and Alibali, 2008). In this article, we review current theories and research targeted at the intra-cognitive role of gestures. We ask the question how can gestures support internal cognitive processes of the gesturer? We suggest that extant theories are in a sense disembodied, because they focus solely on embodiment in terms of the sensorimotor neural precursors of gestures. As a result, current theories on the intra-cognitive role of gestures are lacking in explanatory scope to address how gestures-as-bodily-acts fulfill a cognitive function. On the basis of recent theoretical appeals that focus on the possibly embedded/extended cognitive role of gestures (Clark, 2013), we suggest that gestures are external physical tools of the cognitive system that replace and support otherwise solely internal cognitive processes. That is gestures provide the cognitive system with a stable external physical and visual presence that can provide means to think with. We show that there is a considerable amount of overlap between the way the human cognitive system has been found to use its environment, and how gestures are used during cognitive processes. Lastly, we provide several suggestions of how to investigate the embedded/extended perspective of the cognitive function of gestures.

Abstract

Objective—The vascular competence of human-derived hematopoietic progenitors for postnatal vascularization is still poorly characterized. It is unclear whether, in the absence of ischemia, hematopoietic progenitors participate in neovascularization and whether they play a role in new blood vessel formation by incorporating into developing vessels or by a paracrine action. Methods and Results—In the present study, human cord blood–derived CD34+ (hCD34+) cells were transplanted into pre- and postgastrulation zebrafish embryos and in an adult vascular regeneration model induced by caudal fin amputation. When injected before gastrulation, hCD34+ cells cosegregated with the presumptive zebrafish hemangioblasts, characterized by Scl and Gata2 expression, in the anterior and posterior lateral mesoderm and were involved in early development of the embryonic vasculature. These morphogenetic events occurred without apparent lineage reprogramming, as shown by CD45 expression. When transplanted postgastrulation, hCD34+ cells were recruited into developing vessels, where they exhibited a potent paracrine proangiogenic action. Finally, hCD34+ cells rescued vascular defects induced by Vegf-c in vivo targeting and enhanced vascular repair in the zebrafish fin amputation model. Conclusion—These results indicate an unexpected developmental ability of human-derived hematopoietic progenitors and support the hypothesis of an evolutionary conservation of molecular pathways involved in endothelial progenitor differentiation in vivo.

Abstract

A patient who already had Wernick's aphasia due to a left temporal lobe lesion suffered a severe deterioration specifically of auditory language comprehension, subsequent to right temporal lobe infarction. A detailed comparison of his new condition with his language status before the second stroke revealed that the newly acquired deficit was limited to tasks related to auditory input. Further investigations demonstrated a speech perceptual disorder, which we analysed as due to deficits both at the level of general auditory processes and at the level of phonetic analysis. We discuss some arguments related to hemisphere specialization of phonetic processing and to the disconnection explanation of word deafness that support the hypothesis of word deafness being generally caused by mixed deficits.

Abstract

Higher brain dopamine content depending on lower activity of Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) in subjects with high hypnotizability scores (highs) has been considered responsible for their attentional characteristics. However, the results of the previous genetic studies on association between hypnotizability and the COMT single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4680 (Val158Met) were inconsistent. Here, we used a selective genotyping approach to re-evaluate the association between hypnotizability and COMT in the context of a two-SNP haplotype analysis, considering not only the Val158Met polymorphism, but also the closely located rs4818 SNP. An Italian sample of 53 highs, 49 low hypnotizable subjects (lows), and 57 controls, were genotyped for a segment of 805 bp of the COMT gene, including Val158Met and the closely located rs4818 SNP. Our selective genotyping approach had 97.1% power to detect the previously reported strongest association at the significance level of 5%. We found no evidence of association at the SNP, haplotype, and diplotype levels. Thus, our results challenge the dopamine-based theory of hypnosis and indirectly support recent neuropsychological and neurophysiological findings reporting the lack of any association between hypnotizability and focused attention abilities.

Abstract

This paper addresses the validity of the segmental anchoring hypothesis for tonal landmarks (henceforth, SAH) as described in recent work by (among others) Ladd, Faulkner, D., Faulkner, H., & Schepman [1999. Constant ‘segmental’ anchoring of f0 movements under changes in speech rate. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106, 1543–1554], Ladd [2003. Phonological conditioning of f0 target alignment. In: M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (Eds.), Proceedings of the XVth international congress of phonetic sciences, Vol. 1, (pp. 249–252). Barcelona: Causal Productions; in press. Segmental anchoring of pitch movements: Autosegmental association or gestural coordination? Italian Journal of Linguistics, 18 (1)]. The alignment of LH* prenuclear peaks with segmental landmarks in controlled speech materials in Peninsular Spanish is analyzed as a function of syllable structure type (open, closed) of the accented syllable, segmental composition, and speaking rate. Contrary to the predictions of the SAH, alignment was affected by syllable structure and speech rate in significant and consistent ways. In: CV syllables the peak was located around the end of the accented vowel, and in CVC syllables around the beginning-mid part of the sonorant coda, but still far from the syllable boundary. With respect to the effects of rate, peaks were located earlier in the syllable as speech rate decreased. The results suggest that the accent gestures under study are synchronized with the syllable unit. In general, the longer the syllable, the longer the rise time. Thus the fundamental idea of the anchoring hypothesis can be taken as still valid. On the other hand, the tonal alignment patterns reported here can be interpreted as the outcome of distinct modes of gestural coordination in syllable-initial vs. syllable-final position: gestures at syllable onsets appear to be more tightly coordinated than gestures at the end of syllables [Browman, C. P., & Goldstein, L.M. (1986). Towards an articulatory phonology. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 219–252; Browman, C. P., & Goldstein, L. (1988). Some notes on syllable structure in articulatory phonology. Phonetica, 45, 140–155; (1992). Articulatory Phonology: An overview. Phonetica, 49, 155–180; Krakow (1999). Physiological organization of syllables: A review. Journal of Phonetics, 27, 23–54; among others]. Intergestural timing can thus provide a unifying explanation for (1) the contrasting behavior between the precise synchronization of L valleys with the onset of the syllable and the more variable timing of the end of the f0 rise, and, more specifically, for (2) the right-hand tonal pressure effects and ‘undershoot’ patterns displayed by peaks at the ends of syllables and other prosodic domains.

Abstract

To assign lexical stress when reading, the Greek reader can potentially rely on lexical information (knowledge of the word), visual–orthographic information (processing of the written diacritic), or a default metrical strategy (penultimate stress pattern). Previous studies with secondary education children have shown strong lexical effects on stress assignment and have provided evidence for a default pattern. Here we report two experiments with adult readers, in which we disentangle and quantify the effects of these three potential sources using nonword materials. Stimuli either resembled or did not resemble real words, to manipulate availability of lexical information; and they were presented with or without a diacritic, in a word-congruent or word-incongruent position, to contrast the relative importance of the three sources. Dual-task conditions, in which cognitive load during nonword reading was increased with phonological retention carrying a metrical pattern different from the default, did not support the hypothesis that the default arises from cumulative lexical activation in working memory.

Abstract

Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we identified brain regions involved in storing associations of events discontinuous in time into long-term memory. Participants were scanned while memorizing item-triplets including simultaneous and discontinuous associations. Subsequent memory tests showed that participants remembered both types of associations equally well. First, by constructing the contrast between the subsequent memory effects for discontinuous associations and simultaneous associations, we identified the left posterior parahippocampal region, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the basal ganglia, posterior midline structures, and the middle temporal gyrus as being specifically involved in transforming discontinuous associations into episodic memory. Second, we replicated that the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe (MTL) especially the hippocampus are involved in associative memory formation in general. Our findings provide evidence for distinct neural operation(s) that supports the binding and storing discontinuous associations in memory. We suggest that top-down signals from the prefrontal cortex and MTL may trigger reactivation of internal representation in posterior midline structures of the first event, thus allowing it to be associated with the second event. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex together with basal ganglia may support this encoding operation by executive and binding processes within working memory, and the posterior parahippocampal region may play a role in binding and memory formation.

Abstract

The current study examined the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) in Persian-speaking children. Persian is a relatively unique data point in crosslinguistic research in acquisition because it is a head-final language with post-nominal RCs. Children (N = 51) aged 2 to 7 years completed a picture-selection task that tested their comprehension of subject-, object-, and genitive-RCs. The results showed that the children experienced greater difficulty processing object and genitive RCs when compared to subject RCs, suggesting that the children have particular difficulty processing sentences with non-canonical word order. The results are discussed with reference to a number of theoretical accounts proposed to account for sentence difficulty.

Abstract

The authors determined the effects of changes in task demands on interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination. Participants performed a joint task in which one participant held a stick to which a circle was attached at the top (holding role), while the other held a pointer through the circle without touching its borders (pointing role). Experiment 1 investigated whether interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination varied depending on task difficulty. Results showed that interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination increased in degree and stability with increments in task difficulty. Experiment 2 explored the effects of individual constraints by increasing the balance demands of the task (one or both members of the pair stood in a less stable tandem stance). Results showed that interpersonal coordination increased in degree and stability as joint task demands increased and that coupling strength varied depending on joint and individual task constraints. In all, results suggest that interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination are affected by the nature of the task performed and the constraints it places on joint and individual performance.

Abstract

Fetal akinesia refers to a broad spectrum of disorders in which the unifying feature is a reduction or lack of fetal movement. Fetal akinesias may be caused by defects at any point along the motor system pathway including the central and peripheral nervous system, the neuromuscular junction and the muscle, as well as by restrictive dermopathy or external restriction of the fetus in utero. The fetal akinesias are clinically and genetically heterogeneous, with causative mutations identified to date in a large number of genes encoding disparate parts of the motor system. However, for most patients, the molecular cause remains unidentified. One reason for this is because the tools are only now becoming available to efficiently and affordably identify mutations in a large panel of disease genes. Next-generation sequencing offers the promise, if sufficient cohorts of patients can be assembled, to identify the majority of the remaining genes on a research basis and facilitate efficient clinical molecular diagnosis. The benefits of identifying the causative mutation(s) for each individual patient or family include accurate genetic counselling and the options of prenatal diagnosis or preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

In this review, we summarise known single-gene disorders affecting the spinal cord, peripheral nerves, neuromuscular junction or skeletal muscles that result in fetal akinesia. This audit of these known molecular and pathophysiological mechanisms involved in fetal akinesia provides a basis for improved molecular diagnosis and completing disease gene discovery.

Abstract

A central goal of biomusicology is to understand the biological basis of human musicality. One approach to this problem has been to compare core components of human musicality (relative pitch perception, entrainment, etc.) with similar capacities in other animal species. Here we extend and clarify this comparative approach with respect to rhythm. First, whereas most comparisons between human music and animal acoustic behavior have focused on spectral properties (melody and harmony), we argue for the central importance of temporal properties, and propose that this domain is ripe for further comparative research. Second, whereas most rhythm research in non-human animals has examined animal timing in isolation, we consider how chorusing dynamics can shape individual timing, as in human music and dance, arguing that group behavior is key to understanding the adaptive functions of rhythm. To illustrate the interdependence between individual and chorusing dynamics, we present a computational model of chorusing agents relating individual call timing with synchronous group behavior. Third, we distinguish and clarify mechanistic and functional explanations of rhythmic phenomena, often conflated in the literature, arguing that this distinction is key for understanding the evolution of musicality. Fourth, we expand biomusicological discussions beyond the species typically considered, providing an overview of chorusing and rhythmic behavior across a broad range of taxa (orthopterans, fireflies, frogs, birds, and primates). Finally, we propose an “Evolving Signal Timing” hypothesis, suggesting that similarities between timing abilities in biological species will be based on comparable chorusing behaviors. We conclude that the comparative study of chorusing species can provide important insights into the adaptive function(s) of rhythmic behavior in our “proto-musical” primate ancestors, and thus inform our understanding of the biology and evolution of rhythm in human music and language.

Abstract

In response to: Brain mechanisms of acoustic communication in humans and nonhuman primates: An evolutionary perspective

Abstract:
Ackermann et al.'s arguments in the target article need sharpening and rethinking at both mechanistic and evolutionary levels. First, the authors' evolutionary arguments are inconsistent with recent evidence concerning nonhuman animal rhythmic abilities. Second, prosodic intonation conveys much more complex linguistic information than mere emotional expression. Finally, human adults' basal ganglia have a considerably wider role in speech modulation than Ackermann et al. surmise.

Abstract

According to frame-theory, concepts can be represented as structured frames that contain conceptual attributes (e.g., "color") and their values (e.g., "red"). A particular color value can be seen as a core conceptual component for (high color-diagnostic; HCD) objects (e.g., bananas) which are strongly associated with a typical color, but less so for (low color-diagnostic; LCD) objects (e.g., bicycles) that exist in many different colors. To investigate whether the availability of a core conceptual component (color) affects lexical access in language production, we conducted two experiments on the naming of visually presented HCD and LCD objects. Experiment 1 showed that, when naming latencies were matched for colored HCD and LCD objects, achromatic HCD objects were named more slowly than achromatic LCD objects. In Experiment 2 we recorded ERPs while participants performed a picture-naming task, in which achromatic target pictures were either preceded by an appropriately colored box (primed condition) or a black and white checkerboard (unprimed condition). We focused on the P2 component, which has been shown to reflect difficulty of lexical access in language production. Results showed that HCD resulted in slower object-naming and a more pronounced P2. Priming also yielded a more positive P2 but did not result in an RT difference. ERP waveforms on the P1, P2 and N300 components showed a priming by color-diagnosticity interaction, the effect of color priming being stronger for HCD objects than for LCD objects. The effect of color-diagnosticity on the P2 component suggests that the slower naming of achromatic HCD objects is (at least in part) due to more difficult lexical retrieval. Hence, the color attribute seems to affect lexical retrieval in HCD words. The interaction between priming and color-diagnosticity indicates that priming with a feature hinders lexical access, especially if the feature is a core feature of the target object.

Abstract

Several linkage analyses implicated the chromosome 9q22 region in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a neurodevelopmental disease with remarkable persistence into adulthood. This locus contains the brain-expressed GTP-binding RAS-like 2 gene (DIRAS2) thought to regulate neurogenesis. As DIRAS2 is a positional and functional ADHD candidate gene, we conducted an association study in 600 patients suffering from adult ADHD (aADHD) and 420 controls. Replication samples consisted of 1035 aADHD patients and 1381 controls, as well as 166 families with a child affected from childhood ADHD. Given the high degree of co-morbidity with ADHD, we also investigated patients suffering from bipolar disorder (BD) (n=336) or personality disorders (PDs) (n=622). Twelve single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) covering the structural gene and the transcriptional control region of DIRAS2 were analyzed. Four SNPs and two haplotype blocks showed evidence of association with ADHD, with nominal p-values ranging from p=0.006 to p=0.05. In the adult replication samples, we obtained a consistent effect of rs1412005 and of a risk haplotype containing the promoter region (p=0.026). Meta-analysis resulted in a significant common OR of 1.12 (p=0.04) for rs1412005 and confirmed association with the promoter risk haplotype (OR=1.45, p=0.0003). Subsequent analysis in nuclear families with childhood ADHD again showed an association of the promoter haplotype block (p=0.02). rs1412005 also increased risk toward BD (p=0.026) and cluster B PD (p=0.031). Additional SNPs showed association with personality scores (p=0.008–0.048). Converging lines of evidence implicate genetic variance in the promoter region of DIRAS2 in the etiology of ADHD and co-morbid impulsive disorders.

Abstract

Three categorization experiments investigated whether the speaking rate of a preceding sentence influences durational cues to the perception of suprasegmental lexical-stress patterns. Dutch two-syllable word fragments had to be judged as coming from one of two longer words that matched the fragment segmentally but differed in lexical stress placement. Word pairs contrasted primary stress on either the first versus the second syllable or the first versus the third syllable. Duration of the initial or the second syllable of the fragments and rate of the preceding context (fast vs. slow) were manipulated. Listeners used speaking rate to decide about the degree of stress on initial syllables whether the syllables' absolute durations were informative about stress (Experiment 1a) or not (Experiment 1b). Rate effects on the second syllable were visible only when the initial syllable was ambiguous in duration with respect to the preceding rate context (Experiment 2). Absolute second syllable durations contributed little to stress perception (Experiment 3). These results suggest that speaking rate is used to disambiguate words and that rate-modulated stress cues are more important on initial than non-initial syllables. Speaking rate affects perception of suprasegmental information.

Abstract

A series of eye-tracking and categorization experiments investigated the use of speaking-rate information in the segmentation of Dutch ambiguous-word sequences. Juncture phonemes with ambiguous durations (e.g., [s] in 'eens (s)peer,' “once (s)pear,” [t] in 'nooit (t)rap,' “never staircase/quick”) were perceived as longer and hence more often as word-initial when following a fast than a slow context sentence. Listeners used speaking-rate information as soon as it became available. Rate information from a context proximal to the juncture phoneme and from a more distal context was used during on-line word recognition, as reflected in listeners' eye movements. Stronger effects of distal context, however, were observed in the categorization task, which measures the off-line results of the word-recognition process. In categorization, the amount of rate context had the greatest influence on the use of rate information, but in eye tracking, the rate information's proximal location was the most important. These findings constrain accounts of how speaking rate modulates the interpretation of durational cues during word recognition by suggesting that rate estimates are used to evaluate upcoming phonetic information continuously during prelexical speech processing.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that learning an alphabetic written language influences aspects of the auditory-verbal language system. In this study, we examined whether literacy influences the notion of words as phonological units independent of lexical semantics in literate and illiterate subjects. Subjects had to decide which item in a word- or pseudoword pair was phonologically longest. By manipulating the relationship between referent size and phonological length in three word conditions (congruent, neutral, and incongruent) we could examine to what extent subjects focused on form rather than meaning of the stimulus material. Moreover, the pseudoword condition allowed us to examine global phonological awareness independent of lexical semantics. The results showed that literate performed significantly better than illiterate subjects in the neutral and incongruent word conditions as well as in the pseudoword condition. The illiterate group performed least well in the incongruent condition and significantly better in the pseudoword condition compared to the neutral and incongruent word conditions and suggest that performance on phonological word length comparisons is dependent on literacy. In addition, the results show that the illiterate participants are able to perceive and process phonological length, albeit less well than the literate subjects, when no semantic interference is present. In conclusion, the present results confirm and extend the finding that illiterate subjects are biased towards semantic-conceptual-pragmatic types of cognitive processing.

Abstract

Human societies are built on collaborative activities. Already from early childhood, human children are skillful and proficient collaborators. They recognize when they need help in solving a problem and actively recruit collaborators [ [1] and 2 F. Warneken, F. Chen and M. Tomasello, Cooperative activities in young children and chimpanzees. Child Dev., 77 (2006), pp. 640–663. | View Record in Scopus | [MPG-SFX] | | Full Text via CrossRef | Cited By in Scopus (56) [2] ]. The societies of other primates are also to some degree cooperative. Chimpanzees, for example, engage in a variety of cooperative activities such as border patrols, group hunting, and intra- and intergroup coalitionary behavior [ [3] , [4] and [5] ]. Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees possess many of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for human-like collaboration. Chimpanzees have been shown to recognize when they need help in solving a problem and to actively recruit good over bad collaborators [ [6] and [7] ]. However, cognitive abilities might not be all that differs between chimpanzees and humans when it comes to cooperation. Another factor might be the motivation to engage in a cooperative activity. Here, we hypothesized that a key difference between human and chimpanzee collaboration—and so potentially a key mechanism in the evolution of human cooperation—is a simple preference for collaborating (versus acting alone) to obtain food. Our results supported this hypothesis, finding that whereas children strongly prefer to work together with another to obtain food, chimpanzees show no such preference.

Abstract

Aim and method: A comparison study of four six-year-old children attending a school with a play-based curriculum and a school with a traditionally structured classroom from low socioeconomic areas was conducted in Victoria, Australia. Children’s play, language and social skills were measured in February and again in August. At baseline assessment there was a combined sample of 31 children (mean age 5.5 years, SD 0.35 years; 13 females and 18 males). At follow-up there was a combined sample of 26 children (mean age 5.9 years, SD 0.35 years; 10 females, 16 males). Results: There was no significant difference between the school groups in play, language, social skills, age and sex at baseline assessment. Compared to norms on a standardised assessment, all the children were beginning school with delayed play ability. At follow-up assessment, children at the play-based curriculum school had made significant gains in all areas assessed (p values ranged from 0.000 to 0.05). Children at the school with the traditional structured classroom had made significant positive gains in use of symbols in play (p < 0.05) and semantic language (p < 0.05). At follow-up, there were significant differences between schools in elaborate play (p < 0.000), semantic language (p < 0.000), narrative language (p < 0.01) and social connection (p < 0.01), with children in the play-based curriculum school having significantly higher scores in play, narrative language and language and lower scores in social disconnection. Implications: Children from low SES areas begin school at risk of failure as skills in play, language and social skills are delayed. The school experience increases children’s skills, with children in the play-based curriculum showing significant improvements in all areas assessed. It is argued that a play-based curriculum meets children’s developmental and learning needs more effectively. More research is needed to replicate these results.