Publications

Abstract

In the emerging field of cross-linguistic studies on language production, one particularly interesting line of inquiry is possible differences between English and Japanese in ordering words and phrases. Previous research gives rise to the idea that there is a difference in accessing meaning versus form during linearization between these two languages. This assumption is based on observations of language-specific effects of the length factor on the order of phrases (short-before-long in English, long-before-short in Japanese). We contribute to the cross-linguistic exploration of such differences by investigating the variables underlying the internal order of NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese. Our quantitative analysis shows that similar influences underlie the ordering process across the two languages. Thus we do not find evidence for the aforementioned difference in accessing meaning versus form with this syntactic phenomenon. With regard to length, Japanese also exhibits a short-before-long preference. However, this tendency is significantly weaker in Japanese than in English, which we explain through an attenuating influence of the typical Japanese phrase structure pattern on the universal effect of short phrases being more accessible. We propose that a similar interaction between entrenched long-before-short schemas and universal accessibility effects is responsible for the varying effects of length in Japanese.

Abstract

The posterior medial parietal cortex and the left prefrontal cortex have both been implicated in the recollection of past episodes. In order to clarify their functional significance, we performed this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, which employed event-related source memory and item recognition retrieval of words paired with corresponding imagined or viewed pictures. Our results suggest that episodic source memory is related to a functional network including the posterior precuneus and the left lateral prefrontal cortex. This network is activated during explicit retrieval of imagined pictures and results from the retrieval of item-context associations. This suggests that previously imagined pictures provide a context with which encoded words can be more strongly associated.

Abstract

Purpose The brain is a highly interconnected neuronal assembly in which network analyses can greatly enlarge our knowledge on seizure generation. The cortico-thalamo-cortical network is the brain-network of interest in absence epilepsy. Here, network synchronization is assessed in a genetic absence model during 5 second long pre-ictal- > ictal transition periods. Method 16 male WAG/Rij rats were equipped with multiple electrodes targeting layer 4 to 6 of the somatosensory-cortex, rostral and caudal RTN, VPM, anterior-(ATN) and posterior (Po) thalamic nucleus. Local Field Potentials measured during pre-ictal- > ictal transition and during control periods were subjected to time-frequency and pairwise phase consistency analysis. Results Pre-ictally, all channels showed Spike-Wave Discharge (SWD) precursor activity (increases in spectral power), which were earliest and most pronounced in the somatosensory cortex. The caudal RTN decoupled from VPM, Po and cortical layer 4. Strong increases in synchrony were found between cortex and thalamus during SWD. Although increases between cortex and VPM were seen in SWD frequencies and its harmonics, boarder spectral increases (6-48 Hz) were seen between cortex and Po. All thalamic nuclei showed increased phase synchronization with Po but not with VPM. Conclusion Absence seizures are not sudden and unpredictable phenomena: the somatosensory cortex shows highest and earliest precursor activity. The pre-ictal decoupling of the caudal RTN might be a prerequisite of SWD generation. Po nucleus might be the primary thalamic counterpart to the somatosensory-cortex in the generation of the cortico-thalamic-cortical oscillations referred to as SWD.

Abstract

Purpose While decades of research were devoted to study generation mechanisms of spontaneous spike and wave discharges (SWD), little attention has been paid to network mechanisms associated with the spontaneous termination of SWD. In the current study coupling-dynamics at the onset and termination of SWD were studied in an extended part of the cortico-thalamo-cortical system of freely moving, genetic absence epileptic WAG/Rij rats. Methods Local-field potential recordings of 16 male WAG/Rij rats, equipped with multiple electrodes targeting layer 4 to 6 of the somatosensory-cortex (ctx4, ctx5, ctx6), rostral and caudal reticular thalamic nucleus (rRTN & cRTN), Ventral Postero Medial (VPM), anterior- (ATN) and posterior (Po) thalamic nucleus, were obtained. Six seconds lasting pre-SWD->SWD, SWD->post SWD and control periods were analyzed with time-frequency methods and between-region interactions were quantified with frequencyresolved Granger Causality (GC) analysis. Results Most channel-pairs showed increases in GC lasting from onset to offset of the SWD. While for most thalamo-thalamic pairs a dominant coupling direction was found during the complete SWD, most cortico-thalamic pairs only showed a dominant directional drive (always from cortex to thalamus) during the first 500ms of SWD. Channel-pair ctx4-rRTN showed a longer lasting dominant cortical drive, which stopped 1.5 sec prior to SWD offset. This early decrease in directional coupling was followed by an increase in directional coupling from cRTN to rRTN 1 sec prior to SWD offset. For channel pairs ctx5-Po and ctx6-Po the heightened cortex->thalamus coupling remained until 1.5 sec following SWD offset, while the thalamus->cortex coupling for these pairs stopped at SWD offset. Conclusion The high directional coupling from somatosensory cortex to the thalamus at SWD onset is in good agreement with the idea of a cortical epileptic focus that initiates and entrains other brain structures into seizure activity. The decrease of cortex to rRTN coupling as well as the increased coupling from cRTN to rRTN preceding SWD termination demonstrate that SWD termination is a gradual process that involves both cortico-thalamic as well as intrathalamic processes. The rostral RTN seems to be an important resonator for SWD and relevant for maintenance, while the cRTN might inhibit this oscillation. The somatosensory cortex seems to attempt to reinitiate SWD following its offset via its strong coupling to the posterior thalamus.

Abstract

Physiological data from a range of human populations living in different environments can provide valuable information for testing evolutionary hypotheses about human adaptation. By taking into account the effects of population history, phylogenetic comparative methods can help us determine whether variation results from selection due to particular environmental variables. These selective forces could even be due to cultural traits-which means that gene-culture co-evolution may be occurring. In this paper, we outline two examples of the use of these approaches to test adaptive hypotheses that explain global variation in two physiological traits: the first is lactose digestion capacity in adults, and the second is population sex-ratio at birth. We show that lower than average sex ratio at birth is associated with high fertility, and argue that global variation in sex ratio at birth has evolved as a response to the high physiological costs of producing boys in high fertility populations.

Abstract

Motivation: Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are sizable chromosomal stretches of homozygous genotypes, ranging in length from tens of kilobases to megabases. ROHs can be relevant for population and medical genetics, playing a role in predisposition to both rare and common disorders. ROHs are commonly detected by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays, but attempts have been made to use whole-exome sequencing (WES) data. Currently available methods developed for the analysis of uniformly spaced SNP-array maps do not fit easily to the analysis of the sparse and non-uniform distribution of the WES target design. Results: To meet the need of an approach specifically tailored to WES data, we developed (HM2)-M-3, an original algorithm based on heterogeneous hidden Markov model that incorporates inter-marker distances to detect ROH from WES data. We evaluated the performance of H-3 M-2 to correctly identify ROHs on synthetic chromosomes and examined its accuracy in detecting ROHs of different length (short, medium and long) from real 1000 genomes project data. H3M2 turned out to be more accurate than GERMLINE and PLINK, two state-of-the-art algorithms, especially in the detection of short and medium ROHs

Abstract

The time course of spoken word recognition depends largely on the frequencies of a word and its competitors, or neighbors (similar-sounding words). However, variability in natural lexicons makes systematic analysis of frequency and neighbor similarity difficult. Artificial lexicons were used to achieve precise control over word frequency and phonological similarity. Eye tracking provided time course measures of lexical activation and competition (during spoken instructions to perform visually guided tasks) both during and after word learning, as a function of word frequency, neighbor type, and neighbor frequency. Apparent shifts from holistic to incremental competitor effects were observed in adults and neural network simulations, suggesting such shifts reflect general properties of learning rather than changes in the nature of lexical representations.

Abstract

RTs in conversation, with average gaps of 200 msec and often less, beat standard RTs, despite the complexity of response and the lag in speech production (600 msec or more). This can only be achieved by anticipation of timing and content of turns in conversation, about which little is known. Using EEG and an experimental task with conversational stimuli, we show that estimation of turn durations are based on anticipating the way the turn would be completed. We found a neuronal correlate of turn-end anticipation localized in ACC and inferior parietal lobule, namely a beta-frequency desynchronization as early as 1250 msec, before the end of the turn. We suggest that anticipation of the other's utterance leads to accurately timed transitions in everyday conversations.

Abstract

From Plato to Pinker there has been the common belief that the experience of a smell is impossible to put into words. Decades of studies have confirmed this observation. But the studies to date have focused on participants from urbanized Western societies. Cross-cultural research suggests that there may be other cultures where odors play a larger role. The Jahai of the Malay Peninsula are one such group. We tested whether Jahai speakers could name smells as easily as colors in comparison to a matched English group. Using a free naming task we show on three different measures that Jahai speakers find it as easy to name odors as colors, whereas English speakers struggle with odor naming. Our findings show that the long-held assumption that people are bad at naming smells is not universally true. Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language.

Abstract

People engage in simulation when reading literary narratives. In this study, we tried to pinpoint how different kinds of simulation (perceptual and motor simulation, mentalising) affect reading behaviour. Eye-tracking (gaze durations, regression probability) and questionnaire data were collected from 102 participants, who read three literary short stories. In a pre-test, 90 additional participants indicated which parts of the stories were high in one of the three kinds of simulation-eliciting content. The results show that motor simulation reduces gaze duration (faster reading), whereas perceptual simulation and mentalising increase gaze duration (slower reading). Individual differences in the effect of simulation on gaze duration were found, which were related to individual differences in aspects of story world absorption and story appreciation. These findings suggest fundamental differences between different kinds of simulation and confirm the role of simulation in absorption and appreciation.

Abstract

To English speakers, the distinctions between blue and green, cup and glass, or cut and break seem self-evident. The intuition is that these words label categories that have an existence independent of language, and language merely captures the pre-existing categories. But cross-linguistic work shows that the named distinctions are not nearly as self-evident as they may feel. There is diversity in how languages divide up domains including color, number, plants and animals, drinking vessels and household containers, body parts, spatial relations, locomotion, acts of cutting and breaking, acts of carrying and holding, and more. Still, studies documenting variability across languages also uncover striking commonalities. Such commonalities indicate that there are sources of constraint on the variation. Both the commonalities and divergences carry important lessons for Cognitive Science. They speak to the causal relations among language, thought, and culture; the possibility of cross-culturally shared aspects of perception and cognition; the methods needed for studying general-purpose, nonlinguistic concepts; and how languages are learned

Abstract

The distinctions between red and yellow or arm and hand may seem self-evident to English speakers, but they are not: Languages differ in the named distinctions they make. To help understand what constrains word meaning and how variation arises, we examined name choices in English, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese for 36 instances of human locomotion. Naming patterns showed commonalities largely interpretable in terms of perceived physical similarities among the instances. There was no evidence for languages jointly ignoring salient physical distinctions to build meaning on other bases, nor for a shift in the basis of word meanings between parts of the domain of more vs. less importance to everyday life. Overall, the languages differed most notably in how many named distinctions they made, a form of variation that may be linked to linguistic typology. These findings, considered along with naming patterns from other domains, suggest recurring principles of constraint and variation across domains.

Abstract

Objectives Oppositional behavior in childhood is a probabilistic risk factor for the subsequent development of more serious conduct problems characteristic of conduct disorder (CD). The capacity to understand the subjective states of others (socioemotional competence) helps regulate antisocial behavior in typical development. We hypothesized that socioemotional competence moderates the developmental relationship between oppositionality and CD symptoms, such that oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms pose the greatest risk for subsequent CD symptoms in children with poor socioemotional competence. Method Parent-report data were collected for 6,218 children at 7 and 10 years of age. Bootstrap multiple regression predicting CD symptoms at age 10 was used to test for an interaction between socioemotional competence and ODD symptoms, while also accounting for direct effects and controlling for sex, maternal education, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, and CD symptoms at 7 years. We further tested whether the interaction applied to both males and females, and to both aggressive and rule-breaking CD symptoms. Results A significant interaction was found between ODD and socioemotional competence: the association between oppositionality at 7 years and CD traits at 10 years was strongest for children with poor socioemotional capacities. As predicted, this moderation effect was significant in a model predicting aggression, but it was not significant for rule-breaking CD symptoms. Conclusion Socioemotional competence moderates the developmental relationship between mid-childhood oppositionality and more serious conduct problems in later childhood. A capacity to understand the subjective states of others may buffer the risk posed by oppositionality for later CD symptoms, including aggression.

Abstract

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing.

Abstract

Despite the efficiency with which language users typically process spoken language, a growing body of research finds substantial individual differences in both the speed and accuracy of spoken language processing potentially attributable to participants’ literacy skills. Against this background, the current study takes a look at the role of word reading skill in listener’s anticipation of upcoming spoken language input in children at the cusp of learning to read: if reading skills impact predictive language processing, then children at this stage of literacy acquisition should be most susceptible to the effects of reading skills on spoken language processing. We tested 8-year-old children on their prediction of upcoming spoken language input in an eye-tracking task. While children, like in previous studies to-date, were successfully able to anticipate upcoming spoken language input, there was a strong positive correlation between children’s word reading (but not their pseudo-word reading and meta-phonological awareness or their spoken word recognition) skills and their prediction skills. We suggest that these findings are most compatible with the notion that the process of learning orthographic representations during reading acquisition sharpens pre-existing lexical representations which in turn also supports anticipation of upcoming spoken words.

Abstract

What is the relative salience of different aspects of word meaning in the developing lexicon? The current study examines the time-course of retrieval of semantic and color knowledge associated with words during toddler word recognition: at what point do toddlers orient towards an image of a yellow cup upon hearing color-matching words such as “banana” (typically yellow) relative to unrelated words (e.g., “house”)? Do children orient faster to semantic matching images relative to color matching images, e.g., orient faster to an image of a cookie relative to a yellow cup upon hearing the word “banana”? The results strongly suggest a prioritization of semantic information over color information in children’s word-referent mappings. This indicates that, even for natural objects (e.g., food, animals that are more likely to have a prototypical color), semantic knowledge is a more salient aspect of toddler's word meaning than color knowledge. For 24-month-old Dutch toddlers, bananas are thus more edible than they are yellow.

Abstract

Prediction of upcoming input is thought to be a main characteristic of language processing (e.g. Altmann & Mirkovic, 2009; Dell & Chang, 2014; Federmeier, 2007; Ferreira & Chantavarin, 2018; Pickering & Gambi, 2018; Hale, 2001; Hickok, 2012; Huettig 2015; Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016; Levy, 2008; Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2016; Pickering & Garrod, 2013; Van Petten & Luka, 2012). One of the main pillars of experimental support for this notion comes from studies that have attempted to measure electrophysiological markers of prediction when participants read or listened to sentences ending in highly predictable words. The N400, a negative-going and centro-parietally distributed component of the ERP occurring approximately 400ms after (target) word onset, has been frequently interpreted as indexing prediction of the word (or the semantic representations and/or the phonological form of the predicted word, see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; Nieuwland, 2019; Van Petten & Luka, 2012; for review). A major difficulty for interpreting N400 effects in language processing however is that it has been difficult to establish whether N400 target word modulations conclusively reflect prediction rather than (at least partly) ease of integration. In the present exploratory study, we attempted to distinguish lexical prediction (i.e. ‘top-down’ activation) from lexical integration (i.e. ‘bottom-up’ activation) accounts of ERP N400 modulations in language processing.

Abstract

The human capacity for acquiring speech and language must derive, at least in part, from the genome. In 2001, a study described the first case of a gene, FOXP2, which is thought to be implicated in our ability to acquire spoken language. In the present article, we discuss how this gene was discovered, what it might do, how it relates to other genes, and what it could tell us about the nature of speech and language development. We explain how FOXP2 could, without being specific to the brain or to our own species, still provide an invaluable entry-point into understanding the genetic cascades and neural pathways that contribute to our capacity for speech and language.

Abstract

Replication of linkage results for complex traits has been exceedingly difficult, owing in part to the inability to measure the precise underlying phenotype, small sample sizes, genetic heterogeneity, and statistical methods employed in analysis. Often, in any particular study, multiple correlated traits have been collected, yet these have been analyzed independently or, at most, in bivariate analyses. Theoretical arguments suggest that full multivariate analysis of all available traits should offer more power to detect linkage; however, this has not yet been evaluated on a genomewide scale. Here, we conduct multivariate genomewide analyses of quantitative-trait loci that influence reading- and language-related measures in families affected with developmental dyslexia. The results of these analyses are substantially clearer than those of previous univariate analyses of the same data set, helping to resolve a number of key issues. These outcomes highlight the relevance of multivariate analysis for complex disorders for dissection of linkage results in correlated traits. The approach employed here may aid positional cloning of susceptibility genes in a wide spectrum of complex traits.

Abstract

Successful dependency resolution during language comprehension relies on accessing certain representations in memory, and not others. We recently reported event-related potential (ERP) evidence that syntactically unavailable, intervening attractor-nouns interfered during comprehension of Spanish noun-phrase ellipsis (the determiner otra/otro): grammatically correct determiners that mismatched the gender of attractor-nouns elicited a sustained negativity as also observed for incorrect determiners (Martin, Nieuwland, & Carreiras, 2012). The current study sought to extend this novel finding in sentences containing object-extracted relative clauses, where the antecedent may be less prominent. Whereas correct determiners that matched the gender of attractor-nouns now elicited an early anterior negativity as also observed for mismatching determiners, the previously reported interaction pattern was replicated in P600 responses to subsequent words. Our results suggest that structural and gender information is simultaneously taken into account, providing further evidence for retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences.

Abstract

Human thought and language have extraordinary expressive power because meaningful parts can be assembled into more complex semantic structures. This partly underlies our ability to compose meanings into endlessly novel configurations, and sets us apart from other species and current computing devices. Crucially, human behaviour, including language use and linguistic data, indicates that composing parts into complex structures does not threaten the existence of constituent parts as independent units in the system: parts and wholes exist simultaneously yet independently from one another in the mind and brain. This independence is evident in human behaviour, but it seems at odds with what is known about the brain's exquisite sensitivity to statistical patterns: everyday language use is productive and expressive precisely because it can go beyond statistical regularities. Formal theories in philosophy and linguistics explain this fact by assuming that language and thought are compositional: systems of representations that separate a variable (or role) from its values (fillers), such that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the values assigned to the variables. The debate on whether and how compositional systems could be implemented in minds, brains and machines remains vigorous. However, it has not yet resulted in mechanistic models of semantic composition: how, then, are the constituents of thoughts and sentences put and held together? We review and discuss current efforts at understanding this problem, and we chart possible routes for future research.

Abstract

Neither neurobiological nor process models of meaning composition specify the operator through which constituent parts are bound together into compositional structures. In this paper, we argue that a neurophysiological computation system cannot achieve the compositionality exhibited in human thought and language if it were to rely on a multiplicative operator to perform binding, as the tensor product (TP)-based systems that have been widely adopted in cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence do. We show via simulation and two behavioural experiments that TPs violate variable-value independence, but human behaviour does not. Specifically, TPs fail to capture that in the statements fuzzy cactus and fuzzy penguin, both cactus and penguin are predicated by fuzzy(x) and belong to the set of fuzzy things, rendering these arguments similar to each other. Consistent with that thesis, people judged arguments that shared the same role to be similar, even when those arguments themselves (e.g., cacti and penguins) were judged to be dissimilar when in isolation. By contrast, the similarity of the TPs representing fuzzy(cactus) and fuzzy(penguin) was determined by the similarity of the arguments, which in this case approaches zero. Based on these results, we argue that neural systems that use TPs for binding cannot approximate how the human mind and brain represent compositional information during processing. We describe a contrasting binding mechanism that any physiological or artificial neural system could use to maintain independence between a role and its argument, a prerequisite for compositionality and, thus, for instantiating the expressive power of human thought and language in a neural system.

Abstract

Humans learn to represent complex structures (e.g. natural language, music, mathematics) from experience with their environments. Often such structures are latent, hidden, or not encoded in statistics about sensory representations alone. Accounts of human cognition have long emphasized the importance of structured representations, yet the majority of contemporary neural networks do not learn structure from experience. Here, we describe one way that structured, functionally symbolic representations can be instantiated in an artificial neural network. Then, we describe how such latent structures (viz. predicates) can be learned from experience with unstructured data. Our approach exploits two principles from psychology and neuroscience: comparison of representations, and the naturally occurring dynamic properties of distributed computing across neuronal assemblies (viz. neural oscillations). We discuss how the ability to learn predicates from experience, to represent information compositionally, and to extrapolate knowledge to unseen data is core to understanding and modeling the most complex human behaviors (e.g. relational reasoning, analogy, language processing, game play).

Abstract

Active communication between researchers and society is necessary for the scientific community’s involvement in developing sciencebased
policies. This need is recognized by governmental and funding agencies that compel scientists to increase their public engagement
and disseminate research findings in an accessible fashion. Storytelling techniques can help convey science by engaging people’s imagination
and emotions. Yet, many researchers are uncertain about how to approach scientific storytelling, or feel they lack the tools to
undertake it. Here we explore some of the techniques intrinsic to crafting scientific narratives, as well as the reasons why scientific
storytellingmaybe an optimal way of communicating research to nonspecialists.Wealso point out current communication gaps between
science and society, particularly in the context of neurodiverse audiences and those that include neurological and psychiatric patients.
Present shortcomings may turn into areas of synergy with the potential to link neuroscience education, research, and advocacy

Abstract

Listeners are known to track statistical regularities in speech. Yet, which temporal cues
are encoded is unclear. This study tested effects of talker-specific habitual speech rate
and talker-independent average speech rate (heard over a longer period of time) on
the perception of the temporal Dutch vowel contrast /A/-/a:/. First, Experiment 1
replicated that slow local (surrounding) speech contexts induce fewer long /a:/
responses than faster contexts. Experiment 2 tested effects of long-term habitual
speech rate. One high-rate group listened to ambiguous vowels embedded in `neutral'
speech from talker A, intermixed with speech from fast talker B. Another low-rate group
listened to the same `neutral' speech from talker A, but to talker B being slow.
Between-group comparison of the `neutral' trials showed that the high-rate group
demonstrated a lower proportion of /a:/ responses, indicating that talker A's habitual
speech rate sounded slower when B was faster. In Experiment 3, both talkers
produced speech at both rates, removing the different habitual speech rates of talker A
and B, while maintaining the average rate differing between groups. This time no
global rate effect was observed. Taken together, the present experiments show that a
talker's habitual rate is encoded relative to the habitual rate of another talker, carrying
implications for episodic and constraint-based models of speech perception.

Abstract

Speech can be produced at different rates. Listeners take this rate variation into account by normalizing vowel duration for contextual speech rate: An ambiguous Dutch word /m?t/ is perceived as short /mAt/ when embedded in a slow context, but long /ma:t/ in a fast context. Whilst some have argued that this rate normalization involves low-level automatic perceptual processing, there is also evidence that it arises at higher-level cognitive processing stages, such as decision making. Prior research on rate-dependent speech perception has only used explicit recognition tasks to investigate the phenomenon, involving both perceptual processing and decision making. This study tested whether speech rate normalization can be observed without explicit decision making, using a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm. Results show that a fast precursor sentence makes an embedded ambiguous prime (/m?t/) sound (implicitly) more /a:/-like, facilitating lexical access to the long target word "maat" in a (explicit) lexical decision task. This result suggests that rate normalization is automatic, taking place even in the absence of an explicit recognition task. Thus, rate normalization is placed within the realm of everyday spoken conversation, where explicit categorization of ambiguous sounds is rare.

Abstract

The use of generic verbs of speech in functions not related to their primary meaning, such as to introduce complements or adjuncts, is cross-linguistically widespread; it is also characteristic of some languages of Siberia. However, the distribution of non-canonical functions of generic verbs of speech among the languages of Siberia is very uneven, with striking differences even between dialects of one language. In this paper we attempt to elucidate whether shared inheritance, parallel independent developments, or areal convergence are the factors determining this distribution, using fine-scaled investigations of narrative data from a large number of Siberian languages and dialects. This enables us to uncover a wide range of non-canonical functions that the generic verb of speech has acquired in some of the languages investigated, as well as to highlight the very complex historical processes at play.

Abstract

The nature and the typological validity of the categories ‘realis’ and ‘irrealis’ has been a matter of intensive debate. In this paper we analyse the realis/irrealis dichotomy in Tundra Yukaghir (isolate, north-eastern Siberia), and show that in this language realis is associated with a meaningful contribution, namely, existential quantification over events. This contribution must be expressed overtly by a combination of syntactic and prosodic means. Irrealis is the default category: the clause is interpreted as irrealis in the absence of the marker of realis. This implies that the relevant typological question may turn out to be the semantics of realis, rather than irrealis. We further argue that the Tundra Yukaghir realis is a hybrid category composed of elements from different domains (information structure, lexical semantics, and quantification) unified at the level of interpretation via pragmatic enrichment. The concept of notional mood must therefore be expanded to include moods which come about in interpretation and do not constitute a discrete denotation.

Abstract

Focus is regularly treated as a cross-linguistically stable category that is merely manifested by different structural means in different languages, such that a common focus feature may be realised through, for example, a morpheme in one language and syntactic movement in another. We demonstrate this conception of focus to be unsustainable on both theoretical and empirical grounds, invoking fundamental argumentation regarding the notions of focus and linguistic category, alongside data from a wide range of languages. Attempts to salvage a cross-linguistic notion of focus through parameterisation, the introduction of additional information-structural primitives such as contrast, or reduction to a single common factor are shown to be equally problematic. We identify the causes of repeated misconceptions about the nature of focus in a number of interrelated theoretical and methodological tendencies in linguistic analysis. We propose to see focus as a heuristic tool and to employ it as a means of identifying structural patterns that languages use to generate a certain number of related pragmatic effects, potentially through quite diverse mechanisms.

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which age-related language processing difficulties are due to a decline in sensory processes or to a deterioration of cognitive factors, specifically, attentional control. Two facets of attentional control were examined: inhibition of irrelevant information and divided attention. Younger and older adults were asked to categorize the initial phoneme of spoken syllables (“Was it m or n?”), trying to ignore the lexical status of the syllables. The phonemes were manipulated to range in eight steps from m to n. Participants also did a discrimination task on syllable pairs (“Were the initial sounds the same or different?”). Categorization and discrimination were performed under either divided attention (concurrent visual-search task) or focused attention (no visual task). The results showed that even when the younger and older adults were matched on their discrimination scores: (1) the older adults had more difficulty inhibiting lexical knowledge than did younger adults, (2) divided attention weakened lexical inhibition in both younger and older adults, and (3) divided attention impaired sound discrimination more in older than younger listeners. The results confirm the independent and combined contribution of sensory decline and deficit in attentional control to language processing difficulties associated with aging. The relative weight of these variables and their mechanisms of action are discussed in the context of theories of aging and language.

Abstract

he present study tested Japanese 4.5- and 10-month old infants' ability to discriminate three German vowel pairs, none of which are contrastive in Japanese, using a visual habituation–dishabituation paradigm. Japanese adults' discrimination of the same pairs was also tested. The results revealed that Japanese 4.5-month old infants discriminated the German /bu:k/-/by:k/ contrast, but they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bi:k/-/be:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese 10-month old infants, on the other hand, discriminated the German /bi:k/-/be:k/ contrast, while they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bu:k/-/by:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese adults, in contrast, were highly accurate in their discrimination of all of the pairs. The results indicate that discrimination of non-native contrasts is not always easy even for young infants, and that their ability to discriminate non-native contrasts can improve with age even when they receive no exposure to a language in which the given contrast is phonemic. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 192–209, 2014.

Abstract

Is human behavior, and more specifically linguistic behavior, intentional? Some scholars have proposed that action is driven in a top-down manner by one single intention—i.e.,one single conscious goal. Others have argued that actions are mostly non-intentional,insofar as often the single goal driving an action is not consciously represented. We intend to claim that both alternatives are unsatisfactory; more specifically, we claim that actions are intentional, but intentionality is distributed across complex goal-directed representations of action, rather than concentrated in single intentions driving action in a top-down manner. These complex representations encompass a multiplicity of goals, together with other components which are not goals themselves, and are the result of a largely automatic dynamic of activation; such an automatic processing, however, does not preclude the involvement of conscious attention, shifting from one component to the other of the overall goal-directed representation.

Abstract

Historically, the study of human identity perception has focused on faces, but the voice is also central to our expressions and experiences of identity [Belin, P., Fecteau, S., & Bedard, C. Thinking the voice: Neural correlates of voice perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 129–135, 2004]. Our voices are highly flexible and dynamic; talkers speak differently, depending on their health, emotional state, and the social setting, as well as extrinsic factors such as background noise. However, to date, there have been no studies of the neural correlates of identity modulation in speech production. In the current fMRI experiment, we measured the neural activity supporting controlled voice change in adult participants performing spoken impressions. We reveal that deliberate modulation of vocal identity recruits the left anterior insula and inferior frontal gyrus, supporting the planning of novel articulations. Bilateral sites in posterior superior temporal/inferior parietal cortex and a region in right middle/anterior STS showed greater responses during the emulation of specific vocal identities than for impressions of generic accents. Using functional connectivity analyses, we describe roles for these three sites in their interactions with the brain regions supporting speech planning and production. Our findings mark a significant step toward understanding the neural control of vocal identity, with wider implications for the cognitive control of voluntary motor acts.

Abstract

Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. taking advantage of
unusual demographics allowing dissociation of childhood from adult contact, results show sufficient childhood contact eliminated poor other-race recognition altogether (confirming inter-country adoption
studies). Critically, however, the developmental window for easy acquisition of other-race faces closed by approximately 12 years of age and social contact as an adult — even over several years and involving many other-race friends — produced no improvement. Theoretically, this pattern of developmental change in plasticity mirrors that found in language, suggesting a shared origin grounded in the
functional importance of both skills to social communication. Practically, results imply that, where parents wish to ensure their offspring develop the perceptual skills needed to recognise other-race people easily, childhood experience should be encouraged: just as an English-speaking person who moves to France as a child (but not an adult) can easily become a native speaker of French, we can easily
become “native recognisers” of other-race faces via natural social exposure obtained in childhood, but not later

Abstract

Magnuson, McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin [Cogn. Sci. 27 (2003) 285] suggest that they have evidence of lexical feedback in speech perception, and that this evidence thus challenges the purely feedforward Merge model [Behav. Brain Sci. 23 (2000) 299]. This evidence is open to an alternative explanation, however, one which preserves the assumption in Merge that there is no lexical-prelexical feedback during on-line speech processing. This explanation invokes the distinction between perceptual processing that occurs in the short term, as an utterance is heard, and processing that occurs over the longer term, for perceptual learning.

Abstract

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of pre-exposure to
pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for
auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in
isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory
stimuli were preceded by primes which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures’ printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onsetrelated (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijlzwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological
interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming
magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words, and did not vary with picture
viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects
arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision-making. This suggests
that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how
quickly we recognize related spoken words.

Abstract

Spoken word recognition consists of two major component processes. First, at the prelexical stage, an abstract description of the utterance is generated from the information in the speech signal. Second, at the lexical stage, this description is used to activate all the words stored in the mental lexicon which match the input. These multiple candidate words then compete with each other. We review evidence which suggests that positive (match) and negative (mismatch) information of both a segmental and a suprasegmental nature is used to constrain this activation and competition process. We then ask whether, in addition to the necessary influence of the prelexical stage on the lexical stage, there is also feedback from the lexicon to the prelexical level. In two phonetic categorization experiments, Dutch listeners were asked to label both syllable-initial and syllable-final ambiguous fricatives (e.g., sounds ranging from [f] to [s]) in the word–nonword series maf–mas, and the nonword–word series jaf–jas. They tended to label the sounds in a lexically consistent manner (i.e., consistent with the word endpoints of the series). These lexical effects became smaller in listeners’ slower responses, even when the listeners were put under pressure to respond as fast as possible. Our results challenge models of spoken word recognition in which feedback modulates the prelexical analysis of the component sounds of a word whenever that word is heard

Abstract

On the basis of evidence from studies of the naming and reading of numerals, Ferrand (1999) argued that the naming of objects is slower than reading their names, due to a greater response uncertainty in naming than in reading, rather than to an obligatory conceptual preparation for naming, but not for reading. We manipulated the need for conceptual preparation, while keeping response uncertainty constant in the naming and reading of complex numerals. In Experiment 1, participants named three-digit Arabic numerals either as house numbers or clock times. House number naming latencies were determined mostly by morphophonological factors, such as morpheme frequency and the number of phonemes, whereas clock time naming latencies revealed an additional conceptual involvement. In Experiment 2, the numerals were presented in alphabetic format and had to be read aloud. Reading latencies were determined mostly by morphophonological factors in both modes. These results suggest that conceptual preparation, rather than response uncertainty, is responsible for the difference between naming and reading latencies.

Abstract

Current approaches to learning semantic representations of sentences often use prior word-level knowledge. The current study aims to leverage visual information in order to capture sentence level semantics without the need for word embeddings. We use a multimodal sentence encoder trained on a corpus of images with matching text captions to produce visually grounded sentence embeddings. Deep Neural Networks are trained to map the two modalities to a common embedding space such that for an image the corresponding caption can be retrieved and vice versa. We show that our model achieves results comparable to the current state of the art on two popular image-caption retrieval benchmark datasets: Microsoft Common Objects in Context (MSCOCO) and Flickr8k. We evaluate the semantic content of the resulting sentence embeddings using the data from the Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) benchmark task and show that the multimodal embeddings correlate well with human semantic similarity judgements. The system achieves state-of-the-art results on several of these benchmarks, which shows that a system trained solely on multimodal data, without assuming any word representations, is able to capture sentence level semantics. Importantly, this result shows that we do not need prior knowledge of lexical level semantics in order to model sentence level semantics. These findings demonstrate the importance of visual information in semantics.

Abstract

According to Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) speakers generate the phonological and phonetic representations of successive syllables of a word in sequence and only begin to speak after having fully planned at least one complete phonological word. Therefore, speech onset latencies should be longer for long than for short words. We tested this prediction in four experiments in which Dutch participants named or categorized objects with monosyllabic or disyllabic names. Experiment 1 yielded a length effect on production latencies when objects with long and short names were tested in separate blocks, but not when they were mixed. Experiment 2 showed that the length effect was not due to a difference in the ease of object recognition. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 1 using a within-participants design. In Experiment 4, the long and short target words appeared in a phrasal context. In addition to the speech onset latencies, we obtained the viewing times for the target objects, which have been shown to depend on the time necessary to plan the form of the target names. We found word length effects for both dependent variables, but only when objects with short and long names were presented in separate blocks. We argue that in pure and mixed blocks speakers used different response deadlines, which they tried to meet by either generating the motor programs for one syllable or for all syllables of the word before speech onset. Computer simulations using WEAVER++ support this view.

Abstract

In deze bijdrage wordt een modulair model van zinsproductie besproken. De planningsprocessen, die aan de productie van een zin voorafgaan, kunnen in twee hoofdcomponenten onderverdeeld worden: deconceptualisering (het bedenken van de inhoud van de uiting) en de formulering (het vastleggen van de linguïstische vorm). Het formuleringsproces bestaat weer uit twee componenten, te weten de grammatische en fonologische codering. Ook deze componenten bestaan elk weer uit een aantal subcomponenten. Dit artikel beschrijft wat de specifieke taak van iedere component is, hoe deze uitgevoerd wordt en hoe de componenten samenwerken. Tevens worden enkele belangrijke methoden van taalproductie-onderzoek besproken.

Abstract

Four experiments investigated the span of advance planning for phrases and short sentences. Dutch subjects were presented with pairs of objects, which they named using noun-phrase conjunctions (e.g., the translation equivalent of ''the arrow and the bag'') or sentences (''the arrow is next to the bag''). Each display was accompanied by an auditory distracter, which was related in form or meaning to the first or second noun of the utterance or unrelated to both. For sentences and phrases, the mean speech onset time was longer when the distracter was semantically related to the first or second noun and shorter when it was phonologically related to the first noun than when it was unrelated. No phonological facilitation was found for the second noun. This suggests that before utterance onset both target lemmas and the first target form were selected.

Abstract

Many authors have recently highlighted the importance of prediction for language comprehension. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) are the first to propose a central role for prediction in language production. This is an intriguing idea, but it is not clear what it means for speakers to predict their own utterances, and how prediction during production can be empirically distinguished from production proper.

Abstract

Thirty years ago, Pim Levelt published Speaking. During the 10th International Workshop on Language Production held at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in July 2018, researchers reflected on the impact of the book in the field, developments since its publication, and current research trends. The contributions in this Special Issue are closely related to the presentations given at the workshop. In this editorial, we sketch the research agenda set by Speaking, review how different aspects of this agenda are taken up in the papers in this volume and outline directions for further research.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Homeostatic regulation of serotonin (5-HT) concentration is critical for “normal” topographical organization and development of thalamocortical (TC) afferent circuits. Down-regulation of the serotonin transporter (SERT) and the consequent impaired reuptake of 5-HT at the synapse, results in a reduced terminal branching of developing TC afferents within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Despite the presence of multiple genetic models, the effect of high extracellular 5-HT levels on the structure and function of developing intracortical neural networks is far from being understood. Here, using juvenile SERT knockout (SERT−/−) rats we investigated, in vitro, the effect of increased 5-HT levels on the structural organization of (i) the TC projections of the ventroposteromedial thalamic nucleus toward S1, (ii) the general barrel-field pattern, and (iii) the electrophysiological and morphological properties of the excitatory cell population in layer IV of S1 [spiny stellate (SpSt) and pyramidal cells]. Our results confirmed previous findings that high levels of 5-HT during development lead to a reduction of the topographical precision of TCA projections toward the barrel cortex. Also, the barrel pattern was altered but not abolished in SERT−/− rats. In layer IV, both excitatory SpSt and pyramidal cells showed a significantly reduced intracolumnar organization of their axonal projections. In addition, the layer IV SpSt cells gave rise to a prominent projection toward the infragranular layer Vb. Our findings point to a structural and functional reorganization of TCAs, as well as early stage intracortical microcircuitry, following the disruption of 5-HT reuptake during critical developmental periods. The increased projection pattern of the layer IV neurons suggests that the intracortical network changes are not limited to the main entry layer IV but may also affect the subsequent stages of the canonical circuits of the barrel cortex.

Abstract

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) is by nature of its subject a highly interdisciplinary area of research. Learning a (foreign) language, for example, involves encoding new words, consolidating and committing them to long-term memory, and later retrieving them. All of these processes have direct parallels in the domain of human memory and have been thoroughly studied by researchers in that field. Yet, despite these clear links, the two fields have largely developed in parallel and in isolation from one another. The present paper aims to promote more cross-talk between SLA and memory science. We focus on foreign language (FL) attrition as an example of a research topic in SLA where the parallels with memory science are especially apparent. We discuss evidence that suggests that competition between languages is one of the mechanisms of FL attrition, paralleling the interference process thought to underlie forgetting in other domains of human memory. Backed up by concrete suggestions, we advocate the use of paradigms from the memory literature to study these interference effects in the language domain. In doing so, we hope to facilitate future cross-talk between the two fields, and to further our understanding of FL attrition as a memory phenomenon.

Abstract

The impact of many unfavorable childhood traits or diseases, such as low birth weight and mental disorders, is not limited to childhood and adolescence, as they are also associated with poor outcomes in adulthood, such as cardiovascular disease. Insight into the genetic etiology of childhood and adolescent traits and disorders may therefore provide new perspectives, not only on how to improve wellbeing during childhood, but also how to prevent later adverse outcomes. To achieve the sample sizes required for genetic research, the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) and EArly Genetics and Lifecourse Epidemiology (EAGLE) consortia were established. The majority of the participating cohorts are longitudinal population-based samples, but other cohorts with data on early childhood phenotypes are also involved. Cohorts often have a broad focus and collect(ed) data on various somatic and psychiatric traits as well as environmental factors. Genetic variants have been successfully identified for multiple traits, for example, birth weight, atopic dermatitis, childhood BMI, allergic sensitization, and pubertal growth. Furthermore, the results have shown that genetic factors also partly underlie the association with adult traits. As sample sizes are still increasing, it is expected that future analyses will identify additional variants. This, in combination with the development of innovative statistical methods, will provide detailed insight on the mechanisms underlying the transition from childhood to adult disorders. Both consortia welcome new collaborations. Policies and contact details are available from the corresponding authors of this manuscript and/or the consortium websites.

Abstract

Each language has a unique set of phonemic categories and phonotactic rules which determine permissible sound sequences in that language. Behavioral research demonstrates that one’s native language shapes the perception of both sound categories and sound sequences in adults, and neuroimaging results further indicate that the processing of native phonemes and phonotactics involves a left-dominant perisylvian brain network. Recent work using a novel technique, functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS), has suggested that a left-dominant network becomes evident toward the end of the first year of life as infants process phonemic contrasts. The present research project attempted to assess whether the same pattern would be seen for native phonotactics. We measured brain responses in Japanese- and French-learning infants to two contrasts: Abuna vs. Abna (a phonotactic contrast that is native in French, but not in Japanese) and Abuna vs. Abuuna (a vowel length contrast that is native in Japanese, but not in French). Results did not show a significant response to either contrast in either group, unlike both previous behavioral research on phonotactic processing and NIRS work on phonemic processing. To understand these null results, we performed similar NIRS experiments with Japanese adult participants. These data suggest that the infant null results arise from an interaction of multiple factors, involving the suitability of the experimental paradigm for NIRS measurements and stimulus perceptibility. We discuss the challenges facing this novel technique, particularly focusing on the optimal stimulus presentation which could yield strong enough hemodynamic responses when using the change detection paradigm.

Abstract

Grammatically masculine role-nouns (e.g., Studenten-masc.‘students’) can refer to men and women, but may favor an interpretation where only men are considered the referent. If true, this has implications for a society aiming to achieve equal representation in the workplace since, for example, job adverts use such role descriptions. To investigate the interpretation of role-nouns, the present ERP study assessed grammatical gender processing in German. Twenty participants read sentences where a role-noun (masculine or feminine) introduced a group of people, followed by a congruent (masculine–men, feminine–women) or incongruent (masculine–women, feminine–men) continuation. Both for feminine-men and masculine-women continuations a P600 (500 to 800 ms) was observed; another positivity was already present from 300 to 500 ms for feminine-men continuations, but critically not for masculine-women continuations. The results imply a male-biased rather than gender-neutral interpretation of the masculine—despite widespread usage of the masculine as a gender-neutral form—suggesting masculine forms are inadequate for representing genders equally.

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

In connected speech, phonological assimilation to neighboring words can lead to pronunciation variants (e.g., 'garden bench'→ "gardem bench"). A large body of literature suggests that listeners use the phonetic context to reconstruct the intended word for assimilation types that often lead to incomplete assimilations (e.g., a pronunciation of "garden" that carries cues for both a labial [m] and an alveolar [n]). In the current paper, we show that a similar context effect is observed for an assimilation that is often complete, Korean labial-to-velar place assimilation. In contrast to the context effects for partial assimilations, however, the context effects seem to rely completely on listeners' experience with the assimilation pattern in their native language.

Abstract

In speech production, high-frequency words are more likely than low-frequency words to be phonologically reduced. We tested in an eye-tracking experiment whether listeners can make use of this correlation between lexical frequency and phonological realization of words. Participants heard prefixed verbs in which the prefix was either fully produced or reduced. Simultaneously, they saw a high-frequency verb and a low-frequency verb with this prefix-plus 2 distractors-on a computer screen. Participants were more likely to look at the high-frequency verb when they heard a reduced prefix than when they heard a fully produced prefix. Listeners hence exploit the correlation of lexical frequency and phonological reduction and assume that a reduced prefix is more likely to belong to a high-frequency word. This shows that reductions do not necessarily burden the listener but may in fact have a communicative function, in line with functional theories of phonology.

Abstract

Three eye-tracking experiments tested at what processing stage lexically-guided retuning of a fricative contrast affects perception. One group of participants heard an ambiguous fricative between /s/ and /f/ replace /s/ in s-final words, the other group heard the same ambiguous fricative replacing /f/ in f-final words. In a test phase, both groups of participants heard a range of ambiguous fricatives at the end of Dutch minimal pairs (e.g., roos-roof, ‘rose’-‘robbery’). Participants who heard the ambiguous fricative replacing /f/ during exposure chose at test the f-final words more often than the other participants. During this test-phase, eye-tracking data showed that the effect of exposure exerted itself as soon as it could possibly have occurred, 200 ms after the onset of the fricative. This was at the same time as the onset of the effect of the fricative itself, showing that the perception of the fricative is changed by perceptual learning at an early level. Results converged in a time-window analysis and a Jackknife procedure testing the time at which effects reached a given proportion of their maxima. This indicates that perceptual learning affects early stages of speech processing, and supports the conclusion that perceptual learning is indeed perceptual rather than post-perceptual.

Abstract

Recent evidence shows that listeners use abstract prelexical units in speech perception. Using the phenomenon of lexical retuning in speech processing, we ask whether those units are necessarily phonemic. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Dutch speaker producing ambiguous phones between the Dutch syllable-final allophones approximant [r] and dark [l]. These ambiguous phones replaced either final /r/ or final /l/ in words in a lexical-decision task. This differential exposure affected perception of ambiguous stimuli on the same allophone continuum in a subsequent phonetic-categorization test: Listeners exposed to ambiguous phones in /r/-final words were more likely to perceive test stimuli as /r/ than listeners with exposure in /l/-final words. This effect was not found for test stimuli on continua using other allophones of /r/ and /l/. These results confirm that listeners use phonological abstraction in speech perception. They also show that context-sensitive allophones can play a role in this process, and hence that context-insensitive phonemes are not necessary. We suggest there may be no one unit of perception

Abstract

We investigated the relation between action and perception in speech processing, using the shadowing task, in which participants repeat words they hear. In support of a tight perception–action link, previous work has shown that phonetic details in the stimulus influence the shadowing response. On the other hand, latencies do not seem to suffer if stimulus and response differ in their articulatory properties. The present investigation tested how perception influences production when participants are confronted with regional variation. Results showed that participants often imitate a regional variation if it occurs in the stimulus set but tend to stick to their variant if the stimuli are consistent. Participants were forced or induced to correct by the experimental instructions. Articulatory stimulus–response differences do not lead to latency costs. These data indicate that speech perception does not necessarily recruit the production system.

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

Performers use various laryngeal settings to create voices for characters and personas they portray. Although some research demonstrates the sociophonetic associations of laryngeal voice quality, few studies have documented or examined the role of harsh voice quality, particularly with vibration of the epilaryngeal structures (growling). This article qualitatively examines phonetic properties of vocal performances in a corpus of popular American media and evaluates the association of voice qualities in these performances with representations of social identity and stereotype. In several cases, contrasting laryngeal states create sociophonetic contrast, and harsh voice quality is paired with the portrayal of racial stereotypes of black people. These cases indicate exaggerated emotional states and are associated with yelling/shouting modes of expression. Overall, however, the functioning of harsh voice quality as it occurs in the data is broader and may involve aggressive posturing, comedic inversion of aggressiveness, vocal pathology, and vocal homage

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

The sound of words has been shown to relate to the meaning that the words denote, an effect that extends beyond morphological properties of the word. Studies of these sound-symbolic relations have described this iconicity in terms of individual phonemes, or alternatively due to acoustic properties (expressed in phonological features) relating to meaning. In this study, we investigated whether individual phonemes or phoneme features best accounted for iconicity effects. We tested 92 participants’ judgements about the appropriateness of 320 nonwords presented in written form, relating to 8 different semantic attributes. For all 8 attributes, individual phonemes fitted participants’ responses better than general phoneme features. These results challenge claims that sound-symbolic effects for visually presented words can access broad, cross-modal associations between sound and meaning, instead the results indicate the operation of individual phoneme to meaning relations. Whether similar effects are found for nonwords presented auditorially remains an open question.

Abstract

Languages change due to social, cultural, and cognitive influences. In this paper, we provide an assessment of these cognitive influences on diachronic change in the vocabulary. Previously, tests of stability and change of vocabulary items have been conducted on small sets of words where diachronic change is imputed from cladistics studies. Here, we show for a substantially larger set of words that stability and change in terms of documented borrowings of words into English and into Dutch can be predicted by psycholinguistic properties of words that reflect their representational fidelity. We found that grammatical category, word length, age of acquisition, and frequency predict borrowing rates, but frequency has a non-linear relationship. Frequency correlates negatively with probability of borrowing for high-frequency words, but positively for low-frequency words. This borrowing evidence documents recent, observable diachronic change in the vocabulary enabling us to distinguish between change associated with transmission during language acquisition and change due to innovations by proficient speakers.

Abstract

How does the human brain combine a finite number of words to form an infinite variety of sentences? According to the Memory, Unification and Control (MUC) model, sentence processing requires long-range feedback from the left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC) to left posterior temporal cortex (LPTC). Single word processing however may only require feedforward propagation of semantic information from sensory regions to LPTC. Here we tested the claim that long-range feedback is required for sentence processing by reducing visual awareness of words using a masking technique. Masking disrupts feedback processing while leaving feedforward processing relatively intact. Previous studies have shown that masked single words still elicit an N400 ERP effect, a neural signature of semantic incongruency. However, whether multiple words can be combined to form a sentence under reduced levels of awareness is controversial. To investigate this issue, we performed two experiments in which we measured electroencephalography (EEG) while 40 subjects performed a masked priming task. Words were presented either successively or simultaneously, thereby forming a short sentence that could be congruent or incongruent with a target picture. This sentence condition was compared with a typical single word condition. In the masked condition we only found an N400 effect for single words, whereas in the unmasked condition we observed an N400 effect for both unmasked sentences and single words. Our findings suggest that long-range feedback processing is required for sentence processing, but not for single word processing.

Abstract

Cultural evolution is the product of the psychological mechanisms that underlie individual decision making. One commonly studied learning mechanism is a disproportionate preference for majority opinions, known as conformist transmission. While most theoretical and experimental work approaches the majority in terms of the number of individuals that perform a behaviour or hold a belief, some recent experimental studies approach the majority in terms of the number of instances a behaviour is performed. Here, we use a mathematical model to show that disagreement between these two notions of the majority can arise when behavioural variants are performed at different rates, with different salience or in different contexts (variant overrepresentation) and when a subset of the population act as demonstrators to the whole population (model biases). We also show that because conformist transmission changes the distribution of behaviours in a population, how observers approach the majority can cause populations to diverge, and that this can happen even when the two approaches to the majority agree with regards to which behaviour is in the majority. We discuss these results in light of existing findings, ranging from political extremism on twitter to studies of animal foraging behaviour. We conclude that the factors we considered (variant overrepresentation and model biases) are plausibly widespread. As such, it is important to understand how individuals approach the majority in order to understand the effects of majority influence in cultural evolution.

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

The present study examined Morphological Family Size effects in first and second language processing. Items with a high or low Dutch (L1) Family Size were contrasted in four experiments involving Dutch–English bilinguals. In two experiments, reaction times (RTs) were collected in English (L2) and Dutch (L1) lexical decision tasks; in two other experiments, an L1 and L2 go/no-go lexical decision task were performed while Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two questions were addressed. First, is the ERP signal sensitive to the morphological productivity of words? Second, does nontarget language activation in L2 processing spread beyond the item itself, to the morphological family of the activated nontarget word? The two behavioural experiments both showed a facilitatory effect of Dutch Family Size, indicating that the morphological family in the L1 is activated regardless of language context. In the two ERP experiments, Family Size effects were found to modulate the N400 component. Less negative waveforms were observed for words with a high L1 Family Size compared to words with a low L1 Family Size in the N400 time window, in both the L1 and L2 task. In addition, these Family Size effects persisted in later time windows. The data are discussed in light of the Morphological Family Resonance Model (MFRM) model of morphological processing and the BIA + model.

Abstract

The common carotid artery (CCA) usually runs along the long axis of the neck, although it is occasionally found in an abnormal position or is displaced. We report a case of an 86-year-old woman in whom the CCA was identified in the submandibular area. The patient visited our clinic and reported soft tissue swelling in the right submandibular area. It resembled a tumor mass or a swollen lymph node. Computed tomography showed that it was the right CCA that had been bent forward and was running along the submandibular subcutaneous area. Ultrasonography verified the diagnosis. No other lesions were found on the diagnostic images. Consequently, the patient was diagnosed as having abnormal CCA positioning. Although this condition generally requires no treatment, it is important to follow-up the abnormality with diagnostic imaging because of the risk of cerebrovascular disorders.

Abstract

ObjectivesPatients undergoing osteoporosis treatment benefit greatly from early detection. We previously developed a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to identify osteoporosis using panoramic radiographs. However, the region of interest (ROI) was relatively small, and the method to select suitable ROIs was labor-intensive. This study aimed to expand the ROI and perform semi-automatized extraction of ROIs. The diagnostic performance and operating time were also assessed.MethodsWe used panoramic radiographs and skeletal bone mineral density data of 200 postmenopausal women. Using the reference point that we defined by averaging 100 panoramic images as the lower mandibular border under the mental foramen, a 400x100-pixel ROI was automatically extracted and divided into four 100x100-pixel blocks. Valid blocks were analyzed using program 1, which examined each block separately, and program 2, which divided the blocks into smaller segments and performed scans/analyses across blocks. Diagnostic performance was evaluated using another set of 100 panoramic images.ResultsMost ROIs (97.0%) were correctly extracted. The operation time decreased to 51.4% for program 1 and to 69.3% for program 2. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for identifying osteoporosis were 84.0, 68.0, and 72.0% for program 1 and 92.0, 62.7, and 70.0% for program 2, respectively. Compared with the previous conventional system, program 2 recorded a slightly higher sensitivity, although it occasionally also elicited false positives.ConclusionsPatients at risk for osteoporosis can be identified more rapidly using this new CAD system, which may contribute to earlier detection and intervention and improved medical care.

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

English, and a variety of Germanic languages, allow constructions such as the bottle floated into the cave , whereas languages such as Spanish, French, and Hindi are highly restricted in allowing manner of motion verbs to occur with path phrases. This typological observation has been accounted for in terms of the conflation of complex meaning in basic or derived verbs [Talmy, L., 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 57–149; Levin, B., Rappaport-Hovav, M., 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Semantics Interface. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA], or the presence of path “satellites” with special grammatical properties in the lexicon of languages such as English, which allow such phrasal combinations [cf. Talmy, L., 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 57–149; Talmy, L., 1991. Path to realisation: via aspect and result. In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, pp. 480–520]. I use data from Hindi to show that there is little empirical support for the claim that the constraint on the phrasal combination is correlated with differences in verb meaning or the presence of satellites in the lexicon of a language. However, proposals which eschew lexicalization accounts for more general aspectual constraints on the manner verb + path phrase combination in Spanish-type languages (Aske, J., 1989. Path Predicates in English and Spanish: A Closer look. In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, pp. 1–14) cannot account for the full range of data in Hindi either. On the basis of these facts, I argue that an empirically adequate account can be formulated in terms of a general mapping constraint, formulated in terms of whether the lexical requirements of the verb strictly or weakly constrain its syntactic privileges of occurrence. In Hindi, path phrases can combine with manner of motion verbs only to the degree that they are compatible with the semantic profile of the verb. Path phrases in English, on the other hand, can extend the verb's “semantic profile” subject to certain constraints. I suggest that path phrases are licensed in English by the semantic requirements of the “construction” in which they appear rather than by the selectional requirements of the verb (Fillmore, C., Kay, P., O'Connor, M.C., 1988, Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions. Language 64, 501–538; Jackendoff, 1990, Semantic Structures. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Goldberg, 1995, Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London).

Abstract

This study investigated whether the phonological representation of a word is modulated by its orthographic representation in case of a mismatch between the two representations. Such a mismatch is found in Persian, where short vowels are represented phonemically but not orthographically. Persian adult literates, Persian adult illiterates, and German adult literates were presented with two auditory tasks, an AX-discrimination task and a reversal task. We assumed that if orthographic representations influence phonological representations, Persian literates should perform worse than Persian illiterates or German literates on items with short vowels in these tasks. The results of the discrimination tasks showed that Persian literates and illiterates as well as German literates were approximately equally competent in discriminating short vowels in Persian words and pseudowords. Persian literates did not well discriminate German words containing phonemes that differed only in vowel length. German literates performed relatively poorly in discriminating German homographic words that differed only in vowel length. Persian illiterates were unable to perform the reversal task in Persian. The results of the other two participant groups in the reversal task showed the predicted poorer performance of Persian literates on Persian items containing short vowels compared to items containing long vowels only. German literates did not show this effect in German. Our results suggest two distinct effects of orthography on phonemic representations: whereas the lack of orthographic representations seems to affect phonemic awareness, homography seems to affect the discriminability of phonemic representations.

Abstract

All languages instantiate a consonant/vowel contrast. This contrast has processing consequences at different levels of spoken-language recognition throughout the lifespan. In adulthood, lexical processing is more strongly associated with consonant than with vowel processing; this has been demonstrated across 13 languages from seven language families and in a variety of auditory lexical-level tasks (deciding whether a spoken input is a word, spotting a real word embedded in a minimal context, reconstructing a word minimally altered into a pseudoword, learning new words or the “words” of a made-up language), as well as in written-word tasks involving phonological processing. In infancy, a consonant advantage in word learning and recognition is found to emerge during development in some languages, though possibly not in others, revealing that the stronger lexicon–consonant association found in adulthood is learned. Current research is evaluating the relative contribution of the early acquisition of the acoustic/phonetic and lexical properties of the native language in the emergence of this association

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

Recent evidence has shown that humans are remarkably sensitive to artificial cues of conspecific observation when making decisions with potential social consequences. Whether similar effects are found in other great apes has not yet been investigated. We carried out two experiments in which individual chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, took items of food from an array in the presence of either an image of a large conspecific face or a scrambled control image. In experiment 1 we compared three versions of the face image varying in size and the amount of the face displayed. In experiment 2 we compared a fourth variant of the image with more prominent coloured eyes displayed closer to the focal chimpanzee. The chimpanzees did not look at the face images significantly more than at the control images in either experiment. Although there were trends for some individuals in each experiment to be slower to take high-value food items in the face conditions, these were not consistent or robust. We suggest that the extreme human sensitivity to cues of potential conspecific observation may not be shared with chimpanzees.

Abstract

In this issue, Raca et al1 present two cases of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) arising from microdeletions of chromosome 16p11.2. They propose that comprehensive phenotypic profiling may assist in the delineation and classification of such cases. To complement this study, we would like to report on a third, unrelated, child who presents with CAS and a chromosome 16p11.2 heterozygous deletion. We use genetic data from this child and his family to illustrate how comprehensive genetic profiling may also assist in the characterisation of 16p11.2 microdeletion syndrome.

Abstract

Given the long-lasting detrimental effects of internalizing symptoms, there is great need for detecting early risk markers. One promising marker is freezing behavior. Whereas initial freezing reactions are essential for coping with threat, prolonged freezing has been associated with internalizing psychopathology. However, it remains unknown whether early life alterations in freezing reactions predict changes in internalizing symptoms during adolescent development. In a longitudinal study (N = 116), we tested prospectively whether observed freezing in infancy predicted the development of internalizing symptoms from childhood through late adolescence (until age 17). Both longer and absent infant freezing behavior during a standard challenge (robot-confrontation task) were associated with internalizing symptoms in adolescence. Specifically, absent infant freezing predicted a relative increase in internalizing symptoms consistently across development from relatively low symptom levels in childhood to relatively high levels in late adolescence. Longer infant freezing also predicted a relative increase in internalizing symptoms, but only up until early adolescence. This latter effect was moderated by peer stress and was followed by a later decrease in internalizing symptoms. The findings suggest that early deviations in defensive freezing responses signal risk for internalizing symptoms and may constitute important markers in future stress vulnerability and resilience studies.

Abstract

Grammar acquisition is a high level cognitive function that requires the extraction of complex rules. While it has been proposed that offline time might benefit this type of rule extraction, this remains to be tested. Here, we addressed this question using an artificial grammar learning paradigm. During a short-term memory cover task, eighty-one human participants were exposed to letter sequences generated according to an unknown artificial grammar. Following a time delay of 15 min, 12 h (wake or sleep) or 24 h, participants classified novel test sequences as Grammatical or Non-Grammatical. Previous behavioral and functional neuroimaging work has shown that classification can be guided by two distinct underlying processes: (1) the holistic abstraction of the underlying grammar rules and (2) the detection of sequence chunks that appear at varying frequencies during exposure. Here, we show that classification performance improved after sleep. Moreover, this improvement was due to an enhancement of rule abstraction, while the effect of chunk frequency was unaltered by sleep. These findings suggest that sleep plays a critical role in extracting complex structure from separate but related items during integrative memory processing. Our findings stress the importance of alternating periods of learning with sleep in settings in which complex information must be acquired.

Abstract

In this EEG study, we used pre-registered and exploratory ERP and time-frequency analyses to investigate the resolution of anaphoric and non-anaphoric noun phrases during discourse comprehension. Participants listened to story contexts that described two antecedents, and subsequently read a target sentence with a critical noun phrase that lexically matched one antecedent (‘old’), matched two antecedents (‘ambiguous’), partially matched one antecedent in terms of semantic features (‘partial-match’), or introduced another referent (non-anaphoric, ‘new’). After each target sentence, participants judged whether the noun referred back to an antecedent (i.e., an ‘old/new’ judgment), which was easiest for ambiguous nouns and hardest for partially matching nouns. The noun-elicited N400 ERP component demonstrated initial sensitivity to repetition and semantic overlap, corresponding to repetition and semantic priming effects, respectively. New and partially matching nouns both elicited a subsequent frontal positivity, which suggested that partially matching anaphors may have been processed as new nouns temporarily. ERPs in an even later time window and ERPs time-locked to sentence-final words suggested that new and partially matching nouns had different effects on comprehension, with partially matching nouns incurring additional processing costs up to the end of the sentence. In contrast to the ERP results, the time-frequency results primarily demonstrated sensitivity to noun repetition, and did not differentiate partially matching anaphors from new nouns. In sum, our results show the ERP and time-frequency effects of referent repetition during discourse comprehension, and demonstrate the potentially demanding nature of establishing the anaphoric meaning of a novel noun.

Abstract

Current theories of language comprehension posit that readers and listeners routinely try to predict the meaning but also the visual or sound form of upcoming words. Whereas
most neuroimaging studies on word rediction focus on the N400 ERP or its magnetic equivalent, various studies claim that word form prediction manifests itself in ‘early’, pre
N400 brain responses (e.g., ELAN, M100, P130, N1, P2, N200/PMN, N250). Modulations of these components are often taken as evidence that word form prediction impacts early sensory processes (the sensory hypothesis) or, alternatively, the initial stages of word recognition before word meaning is integrated with sentence context (the recognition hypothesis). Here, I
comprehensively review studies on sentence- or discourse-level language comprehension that report such effects of prediction on early brain responses. I conclude that the reported evidence for the sensory hypothesis or word recognition hypothesis is weak and inconsistent,
and highlight the urgent need for replication of previous findings. I discuss the implications and challenges to current theories of linguistic prediction and suggest avenues for future research.

Abstract

People can establish whether a sentence is hypothetically true even if what it describes can never be literally true given the laws of the natural world. Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments examined electrophysiological responses to sentences about unrealistic counterfactual worlds that require people to construct novel conceptual combinations and infer their consequences as the sentence unfolds in time (e.g., “If dogs had gills…”). Experiment 1 established that without this premise, described consequences (e.g., “Dobermans would breathe under water …”) elicited larger N400 responses than real-world true sentences. Incorporation of the counterfactual premise in Experiment 2 generated similar N400 effects of propositional truth-value in counterfactual and real-world sentences, suggesting that the counterfactual context eliminated the interpretive problems posed by locally anomalous sentences. This result did not depend on cloze probability of the sentences. In contrast to earlier findings regarding online comprehension of logical operators and counterfactuals, these results show that ongoing processing can be directly impacted by propositional truth-value, even that of unrealistic counterfactuals.

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 animacy distinction is deeply rooted in the language faculty. A key example is differential object marking, the phenomenon where animate sentential objects receive specific marking. We used event-related potentials to examine the neural processing consequences of case-marking violations on animate and inanimate direct objects in Spanish. Inanimate objects with incorrect prepositional case marker ‘a’ (‘al suelo’) elicited a P600 effect compared to unmarked objects, consistent with previous literature. However, animate objects without the required prepositional case marker (‘el obispo’) only elicited an N400 effect compared to marked objects. This novel finding, an exclusive N400 modulation by a straightforward grammatical rule violation, does not follow from extant neurocognitive models of sentence processing, and mirrors unexpected “semantic P600” effects for thematically problematic sentences. These results may reflect animacy asymmetry in competition for argument prominence: following the article, thematic interpretation difficulties are elicited only by unexpectedly animate objects.

Abstract

The risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma is heritable, but robust common variants have yet to be identified. In a multi-ethnic cohort including over 30,000 PTSD cases and 170,000 controls we conduct a genome-wide association study of PTSD. We demonstrate SNP-based heritability estimates of 5–20%, varying by sex. Three genome-wide significant loci are identified, 2 in European and 1 in African-ancestry analyses. Analyses stratified by sex implicate 3 additional loci in men. Along with other novel genes and non-coding RNAs, a Parkinson’s disease gene involved in dopamine regulation, PARK2, is associated with PTSD. Finally, we demonstrate that polygenic risk for PTSD is significantly predictive of re-experiencing symptoms in the Million Veteran Program dataset, although specific loci did not replicate. These results demonstrate the role of genetic variation in the biology of risk for PTSD and highlight the necessity of conducting sex-stratified analyses and expanding GWAS beyond European ancestry populations.

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

Shared book reading is thought to have a positive impact on young children's language development, with shared reading interventions often run in an attempt to boost children's language skills. However, despite the volume of research in this area, a number of issues remain outstanding. The current meta-analysis explored whether shared reading interventions are equally effective (a) across a range of study designs; (b) across a range of different outcome variables; and (c) for children from different SES groups. It also explored the potentially moderating effects of intervention duration, child age, use of dialogic reading techniques, person delivering the intervention and mode of intervention delivery.

Our results show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses (
 = 0.194, p = .002). They also show that this effect is moderated by the type of control group used and is negligible in studies with active control groups (  = 0.028, p = .703). Finally, they show no significant effects of differences in outcome variable (ps ≥ .286), socio-economic status (p = .658), or any of our other potential moderators (ps ≥ .077), and non-significant effects for studies with follow-ups (  = 0.139, p = .200). On the basis of these results, we make a number of recommendations for researchers and educators about the design and implementation of future shared reading interventions.

Abstract

he current study examined the interaction of fearful, angry,
happy, and neutral expressions with left, straight, and
right eye gaze directions. Human participants viewed
faces consisting of various expression and eye gaze
combinations while event-related potential (ERP) data
were collected. The results showed that angry expressions
modulated the mean amplitude of the P1, whereas fearful
and happy expressions modulated the mean amplitude of
the N170. No influence of eye gaze on mean amplitudes for
the P1 and N170 emerged. Fearful, angry, and happy
expressions began to interact with eye gaze to influence
mean amplitudes in the time window of 200–400 ms.
The results suggest early processing of expression
influence ERPs independent of eye gaze, whereas
expression and gaze interact to influence later
ERPs.

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

This study demonstrates that listeners use lexical knowledge in perceptual learning of speech sounds. Dutch listeners first made lexical decisions on Dutch words and nonwords. The final fricative of 20 critical words had been replaced by an ambiguous sound, between [f] and [s]. One group of listeners heard ambiguous [f]-final words (e.g., [WI tlo?], from witlof, chicory) and unambiguous [s]-final words (e.g., naaldbos, pine forest). Another group heard the reverse (e.g., ambiguous [na:ldbo?], unambiguous witlof). Listeners who had heard [?] in [f]-final words were subsequently more likely to categorize ambiguous sounds on an [f]–[s] continuum as [f] than those who heard [?] in [s]-final words. Control conditions ruled out alternative explanations based on selective adaptation and contrast. Lexical information can thus be used to train categorization of speech. This use of lexical information differs from the on-line lexical feedback embodied in interactive models of speech perception. In contrast to on-line feedback, lexical feedback for learning is of benefit to spoken word recognition (e.g., in adapting to a newly encountered dialect).

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

There is ongoing debate on whether object meaning can be processed outside foveal vision, making semantics available for attentional guidance. Much of the debate has centred on whether objects that do not fit within an overall scene draw attention, in complex displays that are often difficult to control. Here, we revisited the question by reanalysing data from three experiments that used displays consisting of standalone objects from a carefully controlled stimulus set. Observers searched for a target object, as per auditory instruction. On the critical trials, the displays contained no target but objects that were semantically related to the target, visually related, or unrelated. Analyses using (generalized) linear mixed-effects models showed that, although visually related objects attracted most attention, semantically related objects were also fixated earlier in time than unrelated objects. Moreover, semantic matches affected the very first saccade in the display. The amplitudes of saccades that first entered semantically related objects were larger than 5° on average, confirming that object semantics is available outside foveal vision. Finally, there was no semantic capture of attention for the same objects when observers did not actively look for the target, confirming that it was not stimulus-driven. We discuss the implications for existing models of visual cognition.

Abstract

Regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are typically activated in many different cognitive functions. In most studies, the focus has been on the role of specific PFC regions in specific cognitive domains, but more recently similarities in PFC activations across cognitive domains have been stressed. Such similarities may suggest that a region mediates a common function across a variety of cognitive tasks. In this study, we compared the activation patterns associated with tests of working memory, semantic memory and episodic memory. The results converged on a general involvement of four regions across memory tests. These were located in left frontopolar cortex, left mid-ventrolateral PFC, left mid-dorsolateral PFC and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These findings provide evidence that some PFC regions are engaged during many different memory tests. The findings are discussed in relation to theories about the functional contribition of the PFC regions and the architecture of memory.

Abstract

Cognitive studies show that both younger and older adults can increase their memory performance after training in using a visuospatial mnemonic, although age-related memory deficits tend to be magnified rather than reduced after training. Little is known about the changes in functional brain activity that accompany training-induced memory enhancement, and whether age-related activity changes are associated with the size of training-related gains. Here, we demonstrate that younger adults show increased activity during memory encoding in occipito-parietal and frontal brain regions after learning the mnemonic. Older adults did not show increased frontal activity, and only those elderly persons who benefited from the mnemonic showed increased occipitoparietal activity. These findings suggest that age-related differences in cognitive reserve capacity may reflect both a frontal processing deficiency and a posterior production deficiency.