Publications

Abstract

Many studies have shown that sentences implying an object to have a certain shape produce a robust reaction time advantage for shape-matching pictures in the sentence-picture verification task. Typically, this finding has been interpreted as evidence for perceptual simulation, i.e., that access to implicit shape information involves the activation of modality-specific visual processes. It follows from this proposal that disrupting visual processing during sentence comprehension should interfere with perceptual simulation and obliterate the match effect. Here we directly test this hypothesis. Participants listened to sentences while seeing either visual noise that was previously shown to strongly interfere with basic visual processing or a blank screen. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated the match effect but crucially visual noise did not modulate it. When an interference technique was used that targeted high-level semantic processing (Experiment 3) however the match effect vanished. Visual noise specifically targeting high-level visual processes (Experiment 4) only had a minimal effect on the match effect. We conclude that the shape match effect in the sentence-picture verification paradigm is unlikely to rely on perceptual simulation.

Abstract

20 years after Barsalou's seminal perceptual symbols paper (Barsalou, 1999), embodied cognition, the notion that cognition involves simulations of sensory, motor, or affective states, has moved in status from an outlandish proposal advanced by a fringe movement in psychology to a mainstream position adopted by large numbers of researchers in the psychological and cognitive (neuro)sciences. While it has generated highly productive work in the cognitive sciences as a whole, it had a particularly strong impact on research into language comprehension. The view of a mental lexicon based on symbolic word representations, which are arbitrarily linked to sensory aspects of their referents, for example, was generally accepted since the cognitive revolution in the 1950s. This has radically changed. Given the current status of embodiment as a main theory of cognition, it is somewhat surprising that a close look at the state of the affairs in the literature reveals that the debate about the nature of the processes involved in language comprehension is far from settled and key questions remain unanswered. We present several suggestions for a productive way forward.

Abstract

Language is an intrinsically open-ended system. This fact has led to the widely shared assumption that readers and listeners do not predict upcoming words, at least not in a way that goes beyond simple priming between words. Recent evidence, however, suggests that readers and listeners do anticipate upcoming words “on the fly” as a text unfolds. In 2 event-related potentials experiments, this study examined whether these predictions are based on the exact message conveyed by the prior discourse or on simpler word-based priming mechanisms. Participants read texts that strongly supported the prediction of a specific word, mixed with non-predictive control texts that contained the same prime words. In Experiment 1A, anomalous words that replaced a highly predictable (as opposed to a non-predictable but coherent) word elicited a long-lasting positive shift, suggesting that the prior discourse had indeed led people to predict specific words. In Experiment 1B, adjectives whose suffix mismatched the predictable noun's syntactic gender elicited a short-lived late negativity in predictive stories but not in prime control stories. Taken together, these findings reveal that the conceptual basis for predicting specific upcoming words during reading is the exact message conveyed by the discourse and not the mere presence of prime words.

Abstract

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking children’s gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Languages typically express semantic components of motion events such as manner (roll) and path (down) in separate lexical items. We explore how these combinatorial possibilities of language arise by focusing on (i) gestures produced by deaf children who lack access to input from a conventional language (homesign); (ii) gestures produced by hearing adults and children while speaking; and (iii) gestures used by hearing adults without speech when asked to do so in elicited descriptions of motion events with simultaneous manner and path. Homesigners tended to conflate manner and path in one gesture, but also used a mixed form, adding a manner and/or path gesture to the conflated form sequentially. Hearing speakers, with or without speech, used the conflated form, gestured manner, or path, but rarely used the mixed form. Mixed form may serve as an intermediate structure on the way to the discrete and sequenced forms found in natural languages.

Abstract

Background: Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non-brain-damaged individuals leads to the question of whether aphasic individuals with grammatical comprehension problems in language also have problems processing structural relations in music.

Aims: The current study sought to test musical syntactic processing in individuals with Broca's aphasia and grammatical comprehension deficits, using both explicit and implicit tasks.

Methods & Procedures: Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment 12 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 14 matched controls) were tested for their sensitivity to grammatical and semantic relations in sentences, and for their sensitivity to musical syntactic (harmonic) relations in chord sequences. An explicit task (acceptability judgement of novel sequences) was used. The second experiment, with 9 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 12 matched controls), probed musical syntactic processing using an implicit task (harmonic priming).

Outcomes & Results: In both experiments the aphasic group showed impaired processing of musical syntactic relations. Control experiments indicated that this could not be attributed to low-level problems with the perception of pitch patterns or with auditory short-term memory for tones.

Conclusions: The results suggest that musical syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia deserves systematic investigation, and that such studies could help probe the nature of the processing deficits underlying linguistic agrammatism. Methodological suggestions are offered for future work in this little-explored area.

Abstract

Research into bilingual language production has identified a language control network that subserves control operations when bilinguals produce speech. Here we explore which brain areas are recruited for control purposes in bilingual language comprehension. In two experimental fMRI sessions, Dutch-English unbalanced bilinguals read words that differed in cross-linguistic form and meaning overlap across their two languages. The need for control operations was further manipulated by varying stimulus list composition across the two experimental sessions. We observed activation of the language control network in bilingual language comprehension as a function of both cross-linguistic form and meaning overlap and stimulus list composition. These findings suggest that the language control network is shared across bilingual language production and comprehension. We argue that activation of the language control network in language comprehension allows bilinguals to quickly and efficiently grasp the context-relevant meaning of words.

Abstract

In everyday human communication, we often express our communicative intentions by manually pointing out referents in the material world around us to an addressee, often in tight synchronization with referential speech. This study investigated whether and how the kinematic form of index finger pointing gestures is shaped by the gesturer's communicative intentions and how this is modulated by the presence of concurrently produced speech. Furthermore, we explored the neural mechanisms underpinning the planning of communicative pointing gestures and speech. Two experiments were carried out in which participants pointed at referents for an addressee while the informativeness of their gestures and speech was varied. Kinematic and electrophysiological data were recorded online. It was found that participants prolonged the duration of the stroke and poststroke hold phase of their gesture to be more communicative, in particular when the gesture was carrying the main informational burden in their multimodal utterance. Frontal and P300 effects in the ERPs suggested the importance of intentional and modality-independent attentional mechanisms during the planning phase of informative pointing gestures. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex interplay between action, attention, intention, and language in the production of pointing gestures, a communicative act core to human interaction.

Abstract

A fundamental property of language is that it can be used to refer to entities in the extra-linguistic physical context of a conversation in order to establish a joint focus of attention on a referent. Typological and psycholinguistic work across a wide range of languages has put forward at least two different theoretical views on demonstrative reference. Here we contrasted and tested these two accounts by investigating the electrophysiological brain activity underlying the construction of indexical meaning in comprehension. In two EEG experiments, participants watched pictures of a speaker who referred to one of two objects using speech and an index-finger pointing gesture. In contrast with separately collected native speakers’ linguistic intuitions, N400 effects showed a preference for a proximal demonstrative when speaker and addressee were in a face-to-face orientation and all possible referents were located in the shared space between them, irrespective of the physical proximity of the referent to the speaker. These findings reject egocentric proximity-based accounts of demonstrative reference, support a sociocentric approach to deixis, suggest that interlocutors construe a shared space during conversation, and imply that the psychological proximity of a referent may be more important than its physical proximity.

Abstract

This paper introduces virtual reality as an experimental method for the language sciences and provides a review of recent studies using the method to answer fundamental, psycholinguistic research questions. It is argued that virtual reality demonstrates that ecological validity and
experimental control should not be conceived of as two extremes on a continuum, but rather as two orthogonal factors. Benefits of using virtual reality as an experimental method include that in a virtual environment, as in the real world, there is no artificial spatial divide between participant and stimulus. Moreover, virtual reality experiments do not necessarily have to include a repetitive trial structure or an unnatural experimental task. Virtual agents outperform experimental confederates in terms of the consistency and replicability of their behaviour, allowing for reproducible science across participants and research labs. The main promise of virtual reality as a tool for the experimental language sciences, however, is that it shifts theoretical focus towards the interplay between different modalities (e.g., speech, gesture, eye gaze, facial expressions) in dynamic and communicative real-world environments, complementing studies that focus on one modality (e.g. speech) in isolation.

Abstract

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance (e.g., Shintel et al., 2006). This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed (e.g., a fast drive, slow career progress) and size (e.g., a small grasshopper, an important contract). Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech.

Abstract

Studies of gestural communication systems find that they originate from spontaneously created iconic gestures. Yet, we know little about how people create vocal communication systems, and many have suggested that vocalizations do not afford iconicity beyond trivial instances of onomatopoeia. It is unknown whether people can generate vocal communication systems through a process of iconic creation similar to gestural systems. Here, we examine the creation and development of a rudimentary vocal symbol system in a laboratory setting. Pairs of participants generated novel vocalizations for 18 different meanings in an iterative ‘vocal’ charades communication game. The communicators quickly converged on stable vocalizations, and naive listeners could correctly infer their meanings in subsequent playback experiments. People's ability to guess the meanings of these novel vocalizations was predicted by how close the vocalization was to an iconic ‘meaning template’ we derived from the production data. These results strongly suggest that the meaningfulness of these vocalizations derived from iconicity. Our findings illuminate a mechanism by which iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols, analogous to the function of iconicity in gestural communication systems.

Abstract

We describe the repertoire of learned vocal and breathing-related behaviors (VBBs) performed by the enculturated gorilla Koko. We examined a large video corpus of Koko and observed 439 VBBs spread across 161 bouts. Our analysis shows that Koko exercises voluntary control over the performance of nine distinctive VBBs, which involve variable coordination of her breathing, larynx, and supralaryngeal articulators like the tongue and lips. Each of these behaviors is performed in the context of particular manual action routines and gestures. Based on these and other findings, we suggest that vocal learning and the ability to exercise volitional control over vocalization, particularly in a multimodal context, might have figured relatively early into the evolution of language, with some rudimentary capacity in place at the time of our last common ancestor with great apes.

Abstract

The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we compare locative expression in two unrelated sign languages, Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili, TİD) and German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS), focusing on the expression of figure-ground (e.g. cup on table) and figure-figure (e.g. cup next to cup) relationships in a discourse context. In addition to similarities, we report qualitative and quantitative differences between the sign languages in the formal devices used (i.e. unimanual vs. bimanual; simultaneous vs. sequential) and in the degree of iconicity of the spatial devices. Our results suggest that sign languages may display more diversity in the spatial domain than has been previously assumed, and in a way more comparable with the diversity found in spoken languages. The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how space gets encoded in language

Abstract

For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. The main examples of this are sign languages and (co-speech) gestures. Sign languages, the natural languages of Deaf communities, use systematic and conventionalized movements of the hands, face, and body for linguistic expression. Co-speech gestures, though non-linguistic, are produced in tight semantic and temporal integration with speech and constitute an integral part of language together with speech. The articles in this issue explore and document how gestures and sign languages are similar or different and how communicative expression in the visual modality can change from being gestural to grammatical in nature through processes of conventionalization. As such, this issue contributes to our understanding of how the visual modality shapes language and the emergence of linguistic structure in newly developing systems. Studying the relationship between signs and gestures provides a new window onto the human ability to recruit multiple levels of representation (e.g., categorical, gradient, iconic, abstract) in the service of using or creating conventionalized communicative systems.

Abstract

Establishing and maintaining reference is a crucial part of discourse. In spoken languages, differential linguistic devices mark referents occurring in different referential contexts, that is, introduction, maintenance, and re-introduction contexts. Speakers using gestures as well as users of sign languages have also been shown to mark referents differentially depending on the referential context. This article investigates the modality-specific contribution of the visual modality in marking referential context by providing a direct comparison between sign language (German Sign Language; DGS) and co-speech gesture with speech (German) in elicited narratives. Across all forms of expression, we find that referents in subject position are referred to with more marking material in re-introduction contexts compared to maintenance contexts. Furthermore, we find that spatial modification is used as a modality-specific strategy in both DGS and German co-speech gesture, and that the configuration of referent locations in sign space and gesture space corresponds in an iconic and consistent way to the locations of referents in the narrated event. However, we find that spatial modification is used in different ways for marking re-introduction and maintenance contexts in DGS and German co-speech gesture. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique contribution of the visual modality to reference tracking in discourse when it is used in a unimodal system with full linguistic structure (i.e., as in sign) versus in a bimodal system that is a composite of speech and gesture

Abstract

Signed languages exhibit iconicity (resemblance between form and meaning) across their vocabulary, and many non-Indo-European spoken languages feature sizable classes of iconic words known as ideophones. In comparison, Indo-European languages like English and Spanish are believed to be arbitrary outside of a small number of onomatopoeic words. In three experiments with English and two with Spanish, we asked native speakers to rate the iconicity of ~600 words from the English and Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories. We found that iconicity in the words of both languages varied in a theoretically meaningful way with lexical category. In both languages, adjectives were rated as more iconic than nouns and function words, and corresponding to typological differences between English and Spanish in verb semantics, English verbs were rated as relatively iconic compared to Spanish verbs. We also found that both languages exhibited a negative relationship between iconicity ratings and age of acquisition. Words learned earlier tended to be more iconic, suggesting that iconicity in early vocabulary may aid word learning. Altogether these findings show that iconicity is a graded quality that pervades vocabularies of even the most “arbitrary” spoken languages. The findings provide compelling evidence that iconicity is an important property of all languages, signed and spoken, including Indo-European languages.

Abstract

A long‐standing question in child language research concerns how children achieve mature syntactic knowledge in the face of a complex linguistic environment. A widely accepted view is that this process involves extracting distributional regularities from the environment in a manner that is incidental and happens, for the most part, without the learner's awareness. In this way, the debate speaks to two associated but separate literatures in language acquisition: statistical learning and implicit learning. Both fields have explored this issue in some depth but, at present, neither the results from the infant studies used by the statistical learning literature nor the artificial grammar learning tasks studies from the implicit learning literature can be used to fully explain how children's syntax becomes adult‐like. In this work, we consider an alternative explanation—that children use error‐based learning to become mature syntax users. We discuss this proposal in the light of the behavioral findings from structural priming studies and the computational findings from Chang, Dell, and Bock's (2006) dual‐path model, which incorporates properties from both statistical and implicit learning, and offers an explanation for syntax learning and structural priming using a common error‐based learning mechanism. We then turn our attention to future directions for the field, here suggesting how structural priming might inform the statistical learning and implicit learning literature on the nature of the learning mechanism.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly clear that the way that children acquire cognitive representations
depends critically on how their processing system is developing. In particular, recent studies
suggest that individual differences in language processing speed play an important role in explaining
the speed with which children acquire language. Inconsistencies across studies, however,
mean that it is not clear whether this relationship is causal or correlational, whether it is
present right across development, or whether it extends beyond word learning to affect other
aspects of language learning, like syntax acquisition. To address these issues, the current study
used the looking-while-listening paradigm devised by Fernald, Swingley, and Pinto (2001) to test
the speed with which a large longitudinal cohort of children (the Language 0–5 Project) processed
language at 19, 25, and 31 months of age, and took multiple measures of vocabulary (UKCDI,
Lincoln CDI, CDI-III) and syntax (Lincoln CDI) between 8 and 37 months of age. Processing
speed correlated with vocabulary size - though this relationship changed over time, and was
observed only when there was variation in how well the items used in the looking-while-listening
task were known. Fast processing speed was a positive predictor of subsequent vocabulary
growth, but only for children with smaller vocabularies. Faster processing speed did, however,
predict faster syntactic growth across the whole sample, even when controlling for concurrent
vocabulary. The results indicate a relatively direct relationship between processing speed and
syntactic development, but point to a more complex interaction between processing speed, vocabulary
size and subsequent vocabulary growth.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated when children develop adult-like verb–structure links, and examined two mechanisms, associative and error-based learning, that might explain how these verb–structure links are learned. Using structural priming, we tested children’s and adults’ ability to use verb–structure links in production in three ways; by manipulating: (1) verb overlap between prime and target, (2) target verb bias, and (3) prime verb bias. Children (aged 3–4 and 5–6 years old) and adults heard and produced double object dative (DOD) and prepositional object dative (PD) primes with DOD- and PD-biased verbs. Although all age groups showed significant evidence of structural priming, only adults showed increased priming when there was verb overlap between prime and target sentences (the lexical boost). The effect of target verb bias also grew with development. Critically, however, the effect of prime verb bias on the size of the priming effect (prime surprisal) was larger in children than in adults, suggesting that verb–structure links are present at the earliest age tested. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that children begin to acquire knowledge about verb-argument structure preferences early in acquisition, but that the ability to use adult-like verb bias in production gradually improves over development. We also argue that this pattern of results is best explained by a learning model that uses an error-based learning mechanism.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Coarse-to-fine theories of vision propose that the coarse information carried by the low spatial frequencies (LSF) of visual input guides the integration of finer, high spatial frequency (HSF) detail. Whether and how LSF modulates HSF processing in naturalistic broad-band stimuli is still unclear. Here we used multivariate decoding of EEG signals to separate the respective contribution of LSF and HSF to the neural response evoked by broad-band images. Participants viewed images of human faces, monkey faces and phase-scrambled versions that were either broad-band or filtered to contain LSF or HSF. We trained classifiers on EEG scalp-patterns evoked by filtered scrambled stimuli and evaluated the derived models on broad-band scrambled and intact trials. We found reduced HSF contribution when LSF was informative towards image content, indicating that coarse information does guide the processing of fine detail, in line with coarse-to-fine theories. We discuss the potential cortical mechanisms underlying such coarse-to-fine feedback.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Twin studies indicate that dyscalculia (or mathematical disability) is caused partly by a genetic component, which is yet to be understood at the molecular level. Recently, a coding variant (rs133885) in the myosin-18B gene was shown to be associated with mathematical abilities with a specific effect among children with dyslexia. This association represents one of the most significant genetic associations reported to date for mathematical abilities and the only one reaching genome-wide statistical significance.

We conducted a replication study in different cohorts to assess the effect of rs133885 maths-related measures. The study was conducted primarily using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), (N = 3819). We tested additional cohorts including the York Cohort, the Specific Language Impairment Consortium (SLIC) cohort and the Raine Cohort, and stratified them for a definition of dyslexia whenever possible.

We did not observe any associations between rs133885 in myosin-18B and mathematical abilities among individuals with dyslexia or in the general population. Our results suggest that the myosin-18B variant is unlikely to be a main factor contributing to mathematical abilities.

Abstract

Two major components form the basis of spoken word production: the access of conceptual and lexical/phonological information in long-term memory, and motor preparation and execution of an articulatory program. Whereas the motor aspects of word production have been well characterized as reflected in alpha-beta desynchronization, the memory aspects have remained poorly understood. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neurophysiological signature of not only motor but also memory aspects of spoken-word production. Participants named or judged pictures after reading sentences. To probe the involvement of the memory component, we manipulated sentence context. Sentence contexts were either constraining or nonconstraining toward the final word, presented as a picture. In the judgment task, participants indicated with a left-hand button press whether the picture was expected given the sentence. In the naming task, they named the picture. Naming and judgment were faster with constraining than nonconstraining contexts. Alpha-beta desynchronization was found for constraining relative to nonconstraining contexts pre-picture presentation. For the judgment task, beta desynchronization was observed in left posterior brain areas associated with conceptual processing and in right motor cortex. For the naming task, in addition to the same left posterior brain areas, beta desynchronization was found in left anterior and posterior temporal cortex (associated with memory aspects), left inferior frontal cortex, and bilateral ventral premotor cortex (associated with motor aspects). These results suggest that memory and motor components of spoken word production are reflected in overlapping brain oscillations in the beta band.

Abstract

Previous dual-task studies examining the locus of semantic interference of distractor words in picture naming have obtained diverging results. In these studies, participants manually responded to tones and named pictures while ignoring distractor words (picture-word interference, PWI) with varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between tone and PWI stimulus. Whereas some studies observed no semantic interference at short SOAs, other studies observed effects of similar magnitude at short and long SOAs. The absence of semantic interference in some studies may perhaps be due to better reading skill of participants in these than in the other studies. According to such a reading-ability account, participants' reading skill should be predictive of the magnitude of their interference effect at short SOAs. To test this account, we conducted a dual-task study with tone discrimination and PWI tasks and measured participants' reading ability. The semantic interference effect was of similar magnitude at both short and long SOAs. Participants' reading ability was predictive of their naming speed but not of their semantic interference effect, contrary to the reading ability account. We conclude that the magnitude of semantic interference in picture naming during dual-task performance does not depend on reading skill.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Visual stimuli quickly activate a broad network of brain areas that often show reciprocal structural connections between them. Activity at short latencies (<100 ms) is thought to represent a feed-forward activation of widespread cortical areas, but fast activation combined with reciprocal connectivity between areas in principle allows for two-way, recurrent interactions to occur at short latencies after stimulus onset. Here we combined EEG source-imaging and Granger-causal modeling with high temporal resolution to investigate whether recurrent and top-down interactions between visual and attentional brain areas can be identified and distinguished at short latencies in humans. We investigated the directed interactions between widespread occipital, parietal and frontal areas that we localized within participants using fMRI. The connectivity results showed two-way interactions between area MT and V1 already at short latencies. In addition, the results suggested a large role for lateral parietal cortex in coordinating visual activity that may be understood as an ongoing top-down allocation of attentional resources. Our results support the notion that indirect pathways allow early, evoked driving from MT to V1 to highlight spatial locations of motion transients, while influence from parietal areas is continuously exerted around stimulus onset, presumably reflecting task-related attentional processes.

Abstract

To investigate the structure of the bilingual mental lexicon, researchers in the field of bilingualism often use words that exist in multiple languages: cognates (which have the same meaning) and interlingual homographs (which have a different meaning). A high proportion of these studies have investigated language processing in Dutch–English bilinguals. Despite the abundance of research using such materials, few studies exist that have validated such materials. We conducted two rating experiments in which Dutch–English bilinguals rated the meaning, spelling and pronunciation similarity of pairs of Dutch and English words. On the basis of these results, we present a new database of Dutch–English identical cognates (e.g. “wolf”–“wolf”; n = 58), non-identical cognates (e.g. “kat”–“cat”; n = 74), interlingual homographs (e.g. “angel”–“angel”; n = 72) and translation equivalents (e.g. “wortel”–“carrot”; n = 78). The database can be accessed at http://osf.io/tcdxb/.

Abstract

Background

Current models of how bilinguals process cognates (e.g., “wolf”, which has the same meaning in Dutch and English) and interlingual homographs (e.g., “angel”, meaning “insect’s sting” in Dutch) are based primarily on data from lexical decision tasks. A major drawback of such tasks is that it is difficult—if not impossible—to separate processes that occur during decision making (e.g., response competition) from processes that take place in the lexicon (e.g., lateral inhibition). Instead, we conducted two English semantic relatedness judgement experiments.
Methods

In Experiment 1, highly proficient Dutch–English bilinguals (N = 29) and English monolinguals (N = 30) judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs that included a cognate (e.g., “wolf”–“howl”; n = 50), an interlingual homograph (e.g., “angel”–“heaven”; n = 50) or an English control word (e.g., “carrot”–“vegetable”; n = 50). In Experiment 2, another group of highly proficient Dutch–English bilinguals (N = 101) read sentences in Dutch that contained one of those cognates, interlingual homographs or the Dutch translation of one of the English control words (e.g., “wortel” for “carrot”) approximately 15 minutes prior to completing the English semantic relatedness task.
Results

In Experiment 1, there was an interlingual homograph inhibition effect of 39 ms only for the bilinguals, but no evidence for a cognate facilitation effect. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and also revealed that cross-lingual long-term priming had an opposite effect on the cognates and interlingual homographs: recent experience with a cognate in Dutch speeded processing of those items 15 minutes later in English but slowed processing of interlingual homographs. However, these priming effects were smaller than previously observed using a lexical decision task.
Conclusion

After comparing our results to studies in both the bilingual and monolingual domain, we argue that bilinguals appear to process cognates and interlingual homographs as monolinguals process polysemes and homonyms, respectively. In the monolingual domain, processing of such words is best modelled using distributed connectionist frameworks. We conclude that it is necessary to explore the viability of such a model for the bilingual case.

Abstract

Objective

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is promising for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aimed to examine short-term reliability of the default-mode network (DMN), one of the main haemodynamic patterns of the brain.
Materials and methods

Using a 1.5 T Philips Achieva scanner, two consecutive resting-state fMRI runs were acquired on 69 healthy adults, 62 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD, and 28 patients with AD dementia. The anterior and posterior DMN and, as control, the visual-processing network (VPN) were computed using two different methodologies: connectivity of predetermined seeds (theory-driven) and dual regression (data-driven). Divergence and convergence in network strength and topography were calculated with paired t tests, global correlation coefficients, voxel-based correlation maps, and indices of reliability.
Results

No topographical differences were found in any of the networks. High correlations and reliability were found in the posterior DMN of healthy adults and MCI patients. Lower reliability was found in the anterior DMN and in the VPN, and in the posterior DMN of dementia patients.
Discussion

Strength and topography of the posterior DMN appear relatively stable and reliable over a short-term period of acquisition but with some degree of variability across clinical samples.

Abstract

Peer behaviour plays an important role in the development of social adjustment, though little is known about its genetic architecture. We conducted a twin study combined with a genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) and a genome-wide screen to characterise genetic influences on problematic peer behaviour during childhood and adolescence. This included a series of longitudinal measures (parent-reported Strengths-and-Difficulties Questionnaire) from a UK population-based birth-cohort (ALSPAC, 4–17 years), and a UK twin sample (TEDS, 4–11 years). Longitudinal twin analysis (TEDS; N ≤ 7,366 twin pairs) showed that peer problems in childhood are heritable (4–11 years, 0.60 < twin-h 2 ≤ 0.71) but genetically heterogeneous from age to age (4–11 years, twin-r g = 0.30). GCTA (ALSPAC: N ≤ 5,608, TEDS: N ≤ 2,691) provided furthermore little support for the contribution of measured common genetic variants during childhood (4–12 years, 0.02 < GCTA-h 2(Meta) ≤ 0.11) though these influences become stronger in adolescence (13–17 years, 0.14 < GCTA-h 2(ALSPAC) ≤ 0.27). A subsequent cross-sectional genome-wide screen in ALSPAC (N ≤ 6,000) focussed on peer problems with the highest GCTA-heritability (10, 13 and 17 years, 0.0002 < GCTA-P ≤ 0.03). Single variant signals (P ≤ 10−5) were followed up in TEDS (N ≤ 2835, 9 and 11 years) and, in search for autism quantitative trait loci, explored within two autism samples (AGRE: N Pedigrees = 793; ACC: N Cases = 1,453/N Controls = 7,070). There was, however, no evidence for association in TEDS and little evidence for an overlap with the autistic continuum. In summary, our findings suggest that problematic peer relationships are heritable but genetically complex and heterogeneous from age to age, with an increase in common measurable genetic variation during adolescence.

Abstract

Gesture–speech synchrony re-stabilizes when hand movement or speech is disrupted by a delayed
feedback manipulation, suggesting strong bidirectional coupling between gesture and speech. Yet it
has also been argued from case studies in perceptual–motor pathology that hand gestures are a special
kind of action that does not require closed-loop re-afferent feedback to maintain synchrony with
speech. In the current pre-registered within-subject study, we used motion tracking to conceptually
replicate McNeill’s (1992) classic study on gesture–speech synchrony under normal and 150 ms
delayed auditory feedback of speech conditions (NO DAF vs. DAF). Consistent with, and extending
McNeill’s original results, we obtain evidence that (a) gesture-speech synchrony is more stable
under DAF versus NO DAF (i.e., increased coupling effect), (b) that gesture and speech variably
entrain to the external auditory delay as indicated by a consistent shift in gesture-speech synchrony
offsets (i.e., entrainment effect), and (c) that the coupling effect and the entrainment effect are codependent.
We suggest, therefore, that gesture–speech synchrony provides a way for the cognitive
system to stabilize rhythmic activity under interfering conditions.

Abstract

The split-attention effect entails that learning from spatially separated, but mutually referring information
sources (e.g., text and picture), is less effective than learning from the equivalent spatially integrated
sources. According to cognitive load theory, impaired learning is caused by the working memory load
imposed by the need to distribute attention between the information sources and mentally integrate them.
In this study, we directly tested whether the split-attention effect is caused by spatial separation per se.
Spatial distance was varied in basic cognitive tasks involving pictures (Experiment 1) and text–picture
combinations (Experiment 2; preregistered study), and in more ecologically valid learning materials
(Experiment 3). Experiment 1 showed that having to integrate two pictorial stimuli at greater distances
diminished performance on a secondary visual working memory task, but did not lead to slower
integration. When participants had to integrate a picture and written text in Experiment 2, a greater
distance led to slower integration of the stimuli, but not to diminished performance on the secondary task.
Experiment 3 showed that presenting spatially separated (compared with integrated) textual and pictorial
information yielded fewer integrative eye movements, but this was not further exacerbated when
increasing spatial distance even further. This effect on learning processes did not lead to differences in
learning outcomes between conditions. In conclusion, we provide evidence that larger distances between
spatially separated information sources influence learning processes, but that spatial separation on its
own is not likely to be the only, nor a sufficient, condition for impacting learning outcomes.

Abstract

This article aims to explore the scope of a Situated and Embodied Social Psychology (ESP). At first sight, social cognition seems embodied cognition par excellence. Social cognition is first and foremost a supra-individual, interactive, and dynamic process (Semin & Smith, 2013). Radical approaches in Situated/Embodied Cognitive Science (Enactivism) claim that social cognition consists in an emergent pattern of interaction between a continuously coupled organism and the (social) environment; it rejects representationalist accounts of cognition (Hutto & Myin, 2013). However, mainstream ESP (Barsalou, 1999, 2008) still takes a rather representation-friendly approach that construes embodiment in terms of specific bodily formatted representations used (activated) in social cognition. We argue that mainstream ESP suffers from vestiges of theoretical solipsism, which may be resolved by going beyond internalistic spirit that haunts mainstream ESP today.

Abstract

The present study investigated whether speech-related spectral information benefits from initially predominant right or left hemisphere processing. Normal hearing individuals categorized speech sounds composed of an ambiguous base (perceptually intermediate between /ga/ and /da/), presented to one ear, and a disambiguating low or high F3 chirp presented to the other ear. Shorter response times were found when the chirp was presented to the left ear than to the right ear (inducing initially right-hemisphere chirp processing), but no between-ear differences in strength of overall integration. The results are in line with the assumptions of a right hemispheric dominance for spectral processing.

Abstract

Randomization performance was studied using the "Mental Dice Task" in 20 patients with aphasia (APH) and 101 elderly normal control subjects (NC). The produced sequences were compared to 100 computer-generated pseudorandom sequences with respect to 7 measures of sequential bias. The performance of APH differed significantly from NC participants, according to all but one measure, i.e. Turning Point Index (points of change between ascending and descending sequences). NC participants differed significantly from the computer generated sequences, according to all measures of randomness. Finally, APH differed significantly from the computer simulator, according to all measures but mean Repetition Gap score (gap between a digit and its reoccurrence). Despite the heterogeneity of our APH group, there were no significant differences in randomization performance between patients with different language impairments. All the APH displayed a distinct performance profile, with more response stereotypy, counting tendencies, and inhibition problems, as hypothesised, while at the same time responding more randomly than NC by showing less of a cycling strategy and more number repetitions.

Abstract

The field of psycholinguistics is currently experiencing an explosion of interest in the analysis of neural oscillations—rhythmic brain activity synchronized at different temporal and spatial levels. Given that language comprehension relies on a myriad of processes, which are carried out in parallel in distributed brain networks, there is hope that this methodology might bring the field closer to understanding some of the more basic (spatially and temporally distributed, yet at the same time often overlapping) neural computations that support language function. In this review, we discuss existing proposals linking oscillatory dynamics in different frequency bands to basic neural computations and review relevant theories suggesting associations between band-specific oscillations and higher-level cognitive processes. More or less consistent patterns of oscillatory activity related to certain types of linguistic processing can already be derived from the evidence that has accumulated over the past few decades. The centerpiece of the current review is a synthesis of such patterns grouped by linguistic phenomenon. We restrict our review to evidence linking measures of oscillatory
power to the comprehension of sentences, as well as linguistically (and/or pragmatically) more complex structures. For each grouping, we provide a brief summary and a table of associated oscillatory signatures that a psycholinguist might expect to find when employing a particular linguistic task. Summarizing across different paradigms, we conclude that a handful of basic neural oscillatory mechanisms are likely recruited in different ways and at different times for carrying out a variety of linguistic computations.

Abstract

Symbolic play has long been considered a fertile context for communicative development (Bruner, 1983, Child's talk: Learning to use language, Oxford University Press, Oxford; Vygotsky, 1962, Thought and language, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Vygotsky, 1978, Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). In the current study, we examined caregiver–infant interaction during symbolic play and compared it to interaction in a comparable but non‐symbolic context (i.e., ‘functional’ play). Fifty‐four (N = 54) caregivers and their 18‐month‐old infants were observed engaging in 20 min of play (symbolic, functional). Play interactions were coded and compared across play conditions for joint attention (JA) and gesture use. Compared with functional play, symbolic play was characterized by greater frequency and duration of JA and greater gesture use, particularly the use of iconic gestures with an object in hand. The results suggest that symbolic play provides a rich context for the exchange and negotiation of meaning, and thus may contribute to the development of important skills underlying communicative development.

Abstract

Phosphoglucomutase 1 (PGM1) encodes the metabolic enzyme that interconverts glucose-6-P and glucose-1-P. Mutations in PGM1 cause impairment in glycogen metabolism and glycosylation, the latter manifesting as a congenital disorder of glycosylation (CDG). This unique metabolic defect leads to abnormal N-glycan synthesis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the Golgi apparatus (GA). On the basis of the decreased galactosylation in glycan chains, galactose was administered to individuals with PGM1-CDG and was shown to markedly reverse most disease-related laboratory abnormalities. The disease and treatment mechanisms, however, have remained largely elusive. Here, we confirm the clinical benefit of galactose supplementation in PGM1-CDG-affected individuals and obtain significant insights into the functional and biochemical regulation of glycosylation. We report here that, by using tracer-based metabolomics, we found that galactose treatment of PGM1-CDG fibroblasts metabolically re-wires their sugar metabolism, and as such replenishes the depleted levels of galactose-1-P, as well as the levels of UDP-glucose and UDP-galactose, the nucleotide sugars that are required for ER- and GA-linked glycosylation, respectively. To this end, we further show that the galactose in UDP-galactose is incorporated into mature, de novo glycans. Our results also allude to the potential of monosaccharide therapy for several other CDG.

Abstract

This article takes an interdisciplinary route towards explaining the complex history of Hai//om culture and language. We begin this article with a short review of ideas relating to 'origins' and historical reconstructions as they are currently played out among Khoekhoe groups in Namibia, in particular with regard to the Hai//om. We then take a comparative look at parts of the kinship system and the tonology of ≠Âkhoe Hai//om and other variants of Khoekhoe. With regard to the kinship and naming system, we see patterns that show similarities with Nama and Damara on the one hand but also with 'San' groups on the other hand. With regard to tonology, new data from three northern Khoekoe varieties shows similarities as well as differences with Standard Namibian Khoekhoe and Ju and Tuu varieties. The historical scenarios that might explain these facts suggest different centres of innovations and opposite directions of diffusion. The anthropological and linguistic data demonstrates that only a fine-grained and multi-layered approach that goes far beyond any simplistic dichotomies can do justice to the Hai//om riddle.

Abstract

Automatic word count estimation (WCE) from audio recordings can be used to quantify the amount of verbal communication in a recording environment. One key application of WCE is to measure language input heard by infants and toddlers in their natural environments, as captured by daylong recordings from microphones worn by the infants. Although WCE is nearly trivial for high-quality signals in high-resource languages, daylong recordings are substantially more challenging due to the unconstrained acoustic environments and the presence of near- and far-field speech. Moreover, many use cases of interest involve languages for which reliable ASR systems or even well-defined lexicons are not available. A good WCE system should also perform similarly for low- and high-resource languages in order to enable unbiased comparisons across different cultures and environments. Unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art solution, the LENA system, is based on proprietary software and has only been optimized for American English, limiting its applicability. In this paper, we build on existing work on WCE and present the steps we have taken towards a freely available system for WCE that can be adapted to different languages or dialects with a limited amount of orthographically transcribed speech data. Our system is based on language-independent syllabification of speech, followed by a language-dependent mapping from syllable counts (and a number of other acoustic features) to the corresponding word count estimates. We evaluate our system on samples from daylong infant recordings from six different corpora consisting of several languages and socioeconomic environments, all manually annotated with the same protocol to allow direct comparison. We compare a number of alternative techniques for the two key components in our system: speech activity detection and automatic syllabification of speech. As a result, we show that our system can reach relatively consistent WCE accuracy across multiple corpora and languages (with some limitations). In addition, the system outperforms LENA on three of the four corpora consisting of different varieties of English. We also demonstrate how an automatic neural network-based syllabifier, when trained on multiple languages, generalizes well to novel languages beyond the training data, outperforming two previously proposed unsupervised syllabifiers as a feature extractor for WCE.

Abstract

In response to: How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals

Arguments about the nature of teaching have depended principally on naturalistic observation and some experimental work. Additional measurement tools, and physiological variations and manipulations can provide insights on the intrinsic structure and state of the participants better than verbal descriptions alone: namely, time-series analysis, and examination of the role of hormones and neuromodulators on the behaviors of teacher and pupil.

Abstract

Time is one crucial dimension conveying information in animal communication. Evolution has shaped animals’ nervous systems to produce signals with temporal properties fitting their socio-ecological niches. Many quantitative models of mechanisms underlying rhythmic behaviour exist, spanning insects, crustaceans, birds, amphibians, and mammals. However, these computational and mathematical models are often presented in isolation. Here, we provide an overview of the main mathematical models employed in the study of animal rhythmic communication among conspecifics. After presenting basic definitions and mathematical formalisms, we discuss each individual model. These computational models are then compared using simulated data to uncover similarities and key differences in the underlying mechanisms found across species. Our review of the empirical literature is admittedly limited. We stress the need of using comparative computer simulations – both before and after animal experiments – to better understand animal timing in interaction. We hope this article will serve as a potential first step towards a common computational framework to describe temporal interactions in animals, including humans.

Abstract

Comparative pattern learning experiments investigate how different species find regularities in sensory input, providing insights into cognitive processing in humans and other animals. Past research has focused either on one species’ ability to process pattern classes or different species’ performance in recognizing the same pattern, with little attention to individual and species-specific heuristics and decision strategies. We trained and tested two bird species, pigeons (Columba livia) and kea (Nestor notabilis, a parrot species), on visual patterns using touch-screen technology. Patterns were composed of several abstract elements and had varying degrees of structural complexity. We developed a model selection paradigm, based on regular expressions, that allowed us to reconstruct the specific decision strategies and cognitive heuristics adopted by a given individual in our task. Individual birds showed considerable differences in the number, type and heterogeneity of heuristic strategies adopted. Birds’ choices also exhibited consistent species-level differences. Kea adopted effective heuristic strategies, based on matching learned bigrams to stimulus edges. Individual pigeons, in contrast, adopted an idiosyncratic mix of strategies that included local transition probabilities and global string similarity. Although performance was above chance and quite high for kea, no individual of either species provided clear evidence of learning exactly the rule used to generate the training stimuli. Our results show that similar behavioral outcomes can be achieved using dramatically different strategies and highlight the dangers of combining multiple individuals in a group analysis. These findings, and our general approach, have implications for the design of future pattern learning experiments, and the interpretation of comparative cognition research more generally.

Abstract

The study of human language is progressively moving toward comparative and interactive frameworks, extending the concept of turn‐taking to animal communication. While such an endeavor will help us understand the interactive origins of language, any theoretical account for cross‐species turn‐taking should consider three key points. First, animal turn‐taking must incorporate biological studies on animal chorusing, namely how different species coordinate their signals over time. Second, while concepts employed in human communication and turn‐taking, such as intentionality, are still debated in animal behavior, lower level mechanisms with clear neurobiological bases can explain much of animal interactive behavior. Third, social behavior, interactivity, and cooperation can be orthogonal, and the alternation of animal signals need not be cooperative. Considering turn‐taking a subset of chorusing in the rhythmic dimension may avoid overinterpretation and enhance the comparability of future empirical work.

Abstract

Puppyhood is a very active social and vocal period in a harbor seal's life Phoca vitulina. An important feature of vocalizations is their temporal and rhythmic structure, and understanding vocal timing and rhythms in harbor seals is critical to a cross-species hypothesis in evolutionary neuroscience that links vocal learning, rhythm perception, and synchronization. This study utilized analytical techniques that may best capture rhythmic structure in pup vocalizations with the goal of examining whether (1) harbor seal pups show rhythmic structure in their calls and (2) rhythms evolve over time. Calls of 3 wild-born seal pups were recorded daily over the course of 1-3 weeks; 3 temporal features were analyzed using 3 complementary techniques. We identified temporal and rhythmic structure in pup calls across different time windows. The calls of harbor seal pups exhibit some degree of temporal and rhythmic organization, which evolves over puppyhood and resembles that of other species' interactive communication. We suggest next steps for investigating call structure in harbor seal pups and propose comparative hypotheses to test in other pinniped species.

Abstract

Comparative research investigating how nonhuman animals generalize patterns of auditory stimuli often uses sequences of human speech syllables and reports limited generalization abilities in animals. Here, we reverse this logic, testing humans with stimulus sequences tailored to squirrel monkeys. When test stimuli are familiar (human voices), humans succeed in two types of generalization. However, when the same structural rule is instantiated over unfamiliar but perceivable sounds within squirrel monkeys’ optimal hearing frequency range, human participants master only one type of generalization. These findings have methodological implications for the design of comparative experiments, which should be fair towards all tested species’ proclivities and limitations.

Abstract

Animal communication and motoric behavior develop over time. Often, this temporal dimension has communicative relevance and is organized according to structural patterns. In other words, time is a crucial dimension for rhythm and synchrony in animal movement and communication. Rhythm is defined as temporal structure at a second-millisecond time scale (Kotz et al. 2018). Synchrony is defined as precise co-occurrence of 2 behaviors in time (Ravignani 2017).

Rhythm, synchrony, and other forms of temporal interaction are taking center stage in animal behavior and communication. Several critical questions include, among others: what species show which rhythmic predispositions? How does a species’ sensitivity for, or proclivity towards, rhythm arise? What are the species-specific functions of rhythm and synchrony, and are there functional trends across species? How did similar or different rhythmic behaviors evolved in different species? This Special Column aims at collecting and contrasting research from different species, perceptual modalities, and empirical methods. The focus is on timing, rhythm and synchrony in the second-millisecond range.

Three main approaches are commonly adopted to study animal rhythms, with a focus on: 1) spontaneous individual rhythm production, 2) group rhythms, or 3) synchronization experiments. I concisely introduce them below (see also Kotz et al. 2018; Ravignani et al. 2018).

Abstract

Why does human speech have rhythm? As we cannot travel back in time to witness how speech developed its rhythmic properties and why humans have the cognitive skills to process them, we rely on alternative methods to find out. One powerful tool is the comparative approach: studying the presence or absence of cognitive/behavioral traits in other species to determine which traits are shared between species and which are recent human inventions. Vocalizations of many species exhibit temporal structure, but little is known about how these rhythmic structures evolved, are perceived and produced, their biological and developmental bases, and communicative functions. We review the literature on rhythm in speech and animal vocalizations as a first step toward understanding similarities and differences across species. We extend this review to quantitative techniques that are useful for computing rhythmic structure in acoustic sequences and hence facilitate cross‐species research. We report links between vocal perception and motor coordination and the differentiation of rhythm based on hierarchical temporal structure. While still far from a complete cross‐species perspective of speech rhythm, our review puts some pieces of the puzzle together.

Abstract

Alternative mathematical models predict differences in how animals adjust the timing of their calls. Differences can be measured as the effect of the timing of a conspecific call on the rate and period of calling of a focal animal, and the lag between the two. Here, I test these alternative hypotheses by tapping into harbor seals’ (Phoca vitulina) mechanisms for spontaneous timing. Both socioecology and vocal behavior of harbor seals make them an interesting model species to study call rhythm and timing. Here, a wild-born seal pup was tested in controlled laboratory conditions. Based on previous recordings of her vocalizations and those of others, I designed playback experiments adapted to that specific animal. The call onsets of the animal were measured as a function of tempo, rhythmic regularity, and spectral properties of the playbacks. The pup adapted the timing of her calls in response to conspecifics’ calls. Rather than responding at a fixed time delay, the pup adjusted her calls’ onset to occur at a fraction of the playback tempo, showing a relative-phase antisynchrony. Experimental results were confirmed via computational modeling. This case study lends preliminary support to a classic mathematical model of animal behavior—Hamilton’s selfish herd—in the acoustic domain.

Abstract

Understanding worldwide patterns of language diversity has long been a goal for evolutionary scientists, linguists and philosophers. Research over the past decade has suggested that linguistic diversity may result from differences in the social environments in which languages evolve. Specifically, recent work found that languages spoken in larger communities typically have more systematic grammatical structures. However, in the real world, community size is confounded with other social factors such as network structure and the number of second languages learners in the community, and it is often assumed that linguistic simplification is driven by these factors instead. Here, we show that in contrast to previous assumptions, community size has a unique and important influence on linguistic structure. We experimentally examine the live formation of new languages created in the laboratory by small and larger groups, and find that larger groups of interacting participants develop more systematic languages over time, and do so faster and more consistently than small groups. Small groups also vary more in their linguistic behaviours, suggesting that small communities are more vulnerable to drift. These results show that community size predicts patterns of language diversity, and suggest that an increase in community size might have contributed to language evolution.

Abstract

Experimental work in the field of language evolution has shown that novel signal systems become more structured over time. In a recent paper, Kirby, Tamariz, Cornish, and Smith (2015) argued that compositional languages can emerge only when languages are transmitted across multiple generations. In the current paper, we show that compositional languages can emerge in a closed community within a single generation. We conducted a communication experiment in which we tested the emergence of linguistic structure in different micro-societies of four participants, who interacted in alternating dyads using an artificial language to refer to novel meanings. Importantly, the communication included two real-world aspects of language acquisition and use, which introduce compressibility pressures: (a) multiple interaction partners and (b) an expanding meaning space. Our results show that languages become significantly more structured over time, with participants converging on shared, stable, and compositional lexicons. These findings indicate that new learners are not necessary for the formation of linguistic structure within a community, and have implications for related fields such as developing sign languages and creoles.

Abstract

Recognizing that two elements within a sequence of variable length depend on each other is a key ability in understanding the structure of language and music. Perception of such interdependencies has previously been documented in chimpanzees in the visual domain and in human infants and common squirrel monkeys with auditory playback experiments, but it remains unclear whether it typifies primates in general. Here, we investigated the ability of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) to recognize and respond to such dependencies. We tested subjects in a familiarization-discrimination playback experiment using stimuli composed of pure tones that either conformed or did not conform to a grammatical rule. After familiarization to sequences with dependencies, marmosets spontaneously discriminated between sequences containing and lacking dependencies (‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’, respectively), independent of stimulus length. Marmosets looked more often to the sound source when hearing sequences consistent with the familiarization stimuli, as previously found in human infants. Crucially, looks were coded automatically by computer software, avoiding human bias. Our results support the hypothesis that the ability to perceive dependencies at variable distances was already present in the common ancestor of all anthropoid primates (Simiiformes).

Abstract

In our interactions with people and objects in the world around us, as well as in communicating our thoughts, we
rely on the use of conceptual knowledge stored in long-term memory. From a frame-theoretic point of view, a
concept is represented by a central node and recursive attribute-value structures further specifying the concept.
The present study explores whether and how the activation of an attribute within a frame might influence access
to the concept's name in language production, focussing on the colour attribute. Colour has been shown to
contribute to object recognition, naming, and memory retrieval, and there is evidence that colour plays a different
role in naming objects that have a typical colour (high colour-diagnostic objects such as tomatoes) than in
naming objects without a typical colour (low colour-diagnostic objects such as bicycles). We report two behavioural
experiments designed to reveal potential effects of the activation of an object's typical colour on naming
the object in a picture-word interference paradigm. This paradigm was used to investigate whether naming is
facilitated when typical colours are presented alongside the to-be-named picture (e.g., the word “red” superimposed
on the picture of a tomato), compared to atypical colours (such as “brown”), unrelated adjectives (such
as “fast”), or random letter strings. To further explore the time course of these potential effects, the words were
presented at different time points relative to the to-be-named picture (Exp. 1: −400 ms, Exp. 2: −200 ms, 0 ms,
and+200 ms). By including both high and low colour-diagnostic objects, it was possible to explore whether the
activation of a colour differentially affects naming of objects that have a strong association with a typical colour.
The results showed that (pre-)activation of the appropriate colour attribute facilitated naming compared to an
inappropriate colour. This was only the case for objects closely connected with a typical colour. Consequences of
these findings for frame-theoretic accounts of conceptual representation are discussed.

Abstract

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the processing of grammatical gender agreement involving gender regular and irregular forms recruit the same or distinct neurocognitive mechanisms and whether different grammatical gender agreement conditions elicit the same or diverse ERP signals. Native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese read sentences containing congruent and incongruent grammatical gender agreement between a determiner and a regular or an irregular form (condition 1) and between a regular or an irregular form and an adjective (condition 2). However, in condition 2, trials with incongruent regular forms elicited more positive ongoing waveforms than trial with incongruent irregular forms. We found a biphasic LAN/P600 effect for gender agreement violation involving regular and irregular forms in both conditions. Our findings suggest that gender agreement between determiner and nouns recruits the same neurocognitive mechanisms regardless of the nouns’ form and that, depending on the grammatical class of the words involved in gender agreement, differences in ERP signals can emerge

Abstract

This paper discusses some pitfalls in corpus research and suggests solutions on the basis of examples and computer simulations. We first address reliability problems in language transcriptions, agreement between transcribers, and how disagreements can be dealt with. We then show that the frequencies of occurrence obtained from a corpus cannot always be analyzed with the traditional X2 test, as corpus data are often not sequentially independent and unit independent. Next, we stress the relevance of the power of statistical tests, and the sizes of statistically significant effects. Finally, we point out that a t-test based on log odds often provides a better alternative to a X2 analysis based on frequency counts.

Abstract

The status of thematic roles such as Agent and Patient in cognitive science is highly controversial: To some they are universal components of core knowledge, to others they are scholarly fictions without psychological reality. We address this debate by posing two critical questions: to what extent do humans represent events in terms of abstract role categories, and to what extent are these categories shaped by universal cognitive biases? We review a range of literature that contributes answers to these questions: psycholinguistic and event cognition experiments with adults, children, and infants; typological studies grounded in cross-linguistic data; and studies of emerging sign languages. We pose these questions for a variety of roles and find that the answers depend on the role. For Agents and Patients, there is strong evidence for abstract role categories and a universal bias to distinguish the two roles. For Goals and Recipients, we find clear evidence for abstraction but mixed evidence as to whether there is a bias to encode Goals and Recipients as part of one or two distinct categories. Finally, we discuss the Instrumental role and do not find clear evidence for either abstraction or universal biases to structure instrumental categories.

Abstract

Cadherin-13 (CDH13), a unique glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored member of the cadherin family of cell adhesion molecules, has been identified as a risk gene for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and various comorbid neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including depression, substance abuse, autism spectrum disorder and violent behavior, while the mechanism whereby CDH13 dysfunction influences pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders remains elusive. Here we explored the potential role of CDH13 in the inhibitory modulation of brain activity by investigating synaptic function of GABAergic interneurons. Cellular and subcellular distribution of CDH13 was analyzed in the murine hippocampus and a mouse model with a targeted inactivation of Cdh13 was generated to evaluate how CDH13 modulates synaptic activity of hippocampal interneurons and behavioral domains related to psychopathologic (endo)phenotypes. We show that CDH13 expression in the cornu ammonis (CA) region of the hippocampus is confined to distinct classes of interneurons. Specifically, CDH13 is expressed by numerous parvalbumin and somatostatin-expressing interneurons located in the stratum oriens, where it localizes to both the soma and the presynaptic compartment. Cdh13−/− mice show an increase in basal inhibitory, but not excitatory, synaptic transmission in CA1 pyramidal neurons. Associated with these alterations in hippocampal function, Cdh13−/− mice display deficits in learning and memory. Taken together, our results indicate that CDH13 is a negative regulator of inhibitory synapses in the hippocampus, and provide insights into how CDH13 dysfunction may contribute to the excitatory/inhibitory imbalance observed in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as ADHD and autism.

Abstract

This study investigates whether advanced second language (L2) learners of a nonnull subject language (Dutch) are influenced by their null subject first language (L1) (Turkish) in their offline and online resolution of subject pronouns in L2 discourse. To tease apart potential L1 effects from possible general L2 processing effects, we also tested a group of German L2 learners of Dutch who were predicted to perform like the native Dutch speakers. The two L2 groups differed in their offline interpretations of subject pronouns. The Turkish L2 learners exhibited a L1 influence, because approximately half the time they interpreted Dutch subject pronouns as they would overt pronouns in Turkish, whereas the German L2 learners performed like the Dutch controls, interpreting pronouns as coreferential with the current discourse topic. This L1 effect was not in evidence in eye-tracking data, however. Instead, the L2 learners patterned together, showing an online processing disadvantage when two potential antecedents for the pronoun were grammatically available in the discourse. This processing disadvantage was in evidence irrespective of the properties of the learners' L1 or their final interpretation of the pronoun. Therefore, the results of this study indicate both an effect of the L1 on the L2 in offline resolution and a general L2 processing effect in online subject pronoun resolution.

Abstract

Talhelm et al. (2014) test the hypothesis that activities which require more intensive collaboration foster more collectivist cultures. They demonstrate that a measure of collectivism correlates with the proportion of cultivated land devoted to rice paddies, which require more work to grow and maintain than other grains. The data come from individual measures of provinces in China. While the data is analyzed carefully, one aspect that is not directly controlled for is the historical relations between these provinces. Spurious correlations can occur between cultural traits that are inherited from ancestor cultures or borrowed through contact, what is commonly known as Galton's problem (Roberts and Winters, 2013). Effectively, Talhelm et al. treat the measures of each province as independent samples, while in reality both farming practices (e.g., Renfrew, 1997; Diamond and Bellwood, 2003; Lee and Hasegawa, 2011) and cultural values (e.g., Currie et al., 2010; Bulbulia et al., 2013) can be inherited or borrowed. This means that the data may be composed of non-independent points, inflating the apparent correlation between rice growing and collectivism. The correlation between farming practices and collectivism may be robust, but this cannot be known without an empirical control for the relatedness of the samples. Talhelm et al. do discuss this problem in the supplementary materials of their paper. They acknowledge that a phylogenetic analysis could be used to control for relatedness, but that at the time of publication there were no genetic or linguistic trees of descent which are detailed enough to suit this purpose. In this commentary I would like to make two points. First, since the original publication, researchers have created new linguistic trees that can provide the needed resolution. For example, the Glottolog phylogeny (Hammarström et al., 2015) has at least three levels of classification for the relevant varieties, though this does not have branch lengths (see also “reference” trees produced in List et al., 2014). Another recently published phylogeny uses lexical data to construct a phylogenetic tree for many language varieties within China (List et al., 2014). In this commentary I use these lexical data to estimate cultural contact between different provinces, and test whether these measures explain variation in rice farming pracices. However, the second point is that Talhelm et al. focus on descent (vertical transmission), while it may be relevant to control for both descent and borrowing (horizontal transmission). In this case, all that is needed is some measure of cultural contact between groups, not necessarily a unified tree of descent. I use a second source of linguistic data to calculate simple distances between languages based directly on the lexicon. These distances reflect borrowing as well as descent.

Abstract

A previous study by Chen demonstrates a correlation between languages that grammatically mark future events and their speakers' propensity to save, even after controlling for numerous economic and demographic factors. The implication is that languages which grammatically distinguish the present and the future may bias their speakers to distinguish them psychologically, leading to less future-oriented decision making. However, Chen's original analysis assumed languages are independent. This neglects the fact that languages are related, causing correlations to appear stronger than is warranted (Galton's problem). In this paper, we test the robustness of Chen's correlations to corrections for the geographic and historical relatedness of languages. While the question seems simple, the answer is complex. In general, the statistical correlation between the two variables is weaker when controlling for relatedness. When applying the strictest tests for relatedness, and when data is not aggregated across individuals, the correlation is not significant. However, the correlation did remain reasonably robust under a number of tests. We argue that any claims of synchronic patterns between cultural variables should be tested for spurious correlations, with the kinds of approaches used in this paper. However, experiments or case-studies would be more fruitful avenues for future research on this specific topic, rather than further large-scale cross-cultural correlational studies.

Abstract

The timing of turn taking in conversation is extremely rapid given the cognitive demands on speakers to comprehend, plan and execute turns in real time. Findings from psycholinguistics predict that the timing of turn taking is influenced by demands on processing, such as word frequency or syntactic complexity. An alternative view comes from the field of conversation analysis, which predicts that the rules of turn-taking and sequence organization may dictate the variation in gap durations (e.g. the functional role of each turn in communication). In this paper, we estimate the role of these two different kinds of factors in determining the speed of turn-taking in conversation. We use the Switchboard corpus of English telephone conversation, already richly annotated for syntactic structure speech act sequences, and segmental alignment. To this we add further information including Floor Transfer Offset (the amount of time between the end of one turn and the beginning of the next), word frequency, concreteness, and surprisal values. We then apply a novel statistical framework ('random forests') to show that these two dimensions are interwoven together with indexical properties of the speakers as explanatory factors determining the speed of response. We conclude that an explanation of the of the timing of turn taking will require insights from both processing and sequence organisation.

Abstract

he present study investigated the referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions (ICs). Twenty-two children with ICs aged between 4 and 6 years were compared to 22 children without ICs (NICs). The children were matched for age, gender, birth order, number of siblings, and parental education. All children completed the Test of Referential Commu- nication (Camaioni, Ercolani & Lloyd, 1995). The results showed that the children with ICs performed better than the children without ICs on the speaker component of the task. In particular, the IC children were better able to identify a specific referen t to their interlocutor than were the NIC children. Furthermore, the IC children described less redundant features of the target picture than did the NIC children. The children did not differ in the listening comprehension component of the task. Overall, the results suggest that the IC children had a better understanding of their interlocutor’s information requirements in convers ation. The role of pretend play in the development of communicative competence is discussed in light of these results.

Abstract

Many psycholinguistic models of speech sequence planning make claims about the onset and offset times of planning units, such as words, syllables, and phonemes. These predictions typically go untested, however, since psycholinguists have assumed that the temporal dynamics of the speech signal is a poor index of the temporal dynamics of the underlying speech planning process. This article argues that this problem is tractable, and presents and validates two simple metrics that derive planning unit onset and offset times from the acoustic signal and articulatographic data.

Abstract

Background Bats are able to employ an astonishingly complex vocal repertoire for navigating their environment and conveying social information. A handful of species also show evidence for vocal learning, an extremely rare ability shared only with humans and few other animals. However, despite their potential for the study of vocal communication, bats remain severely understudied at a molecular level. To address this fundamental gap we performed the first transcriptome profiling and genetic interrogation of molecular networks in the brain of a highly vocal bat species, Phyllostomus discolor. Results Gene network analysis typically needs large sample sizes for correct clustering, this can be prohibitive where samples are limited, such as in this study. To overcome this, we developed a novel bioinformatics methodology for identifying robust co-expression gene networks using few samples (N=6). Using this approach, we identified tissue-specific functional gene networks from the bat PAG, a brain region fundamental for mammalian vocalisation. The most highly connected network identified represented a cluster of genes involved in glutamatergic synaptic transmission. Glutamatergic receptors play a significant role in vocalisation from the PAG, suggesting that this gene network may be mechanistically important for vocal-motor control in mammals. Conclusion We have developed an innovative approach to cluster co-expressing gene networks and show that it is highly effective in detecting robust functional gene networks with limited sample sizes. Moreover, this work represents the first gene network analysis performed in a bat brain and establishes bats as a novel, tractable model system for understanding the genetics of vocal mammalian communication.

Abstract

There is a remarkable lack of research bringing together the literatures on oral reading and speaking.
As concerns phonological encoding, both models of reading and speaking assume a process of segmental
spellout for words, which is followed by serial prosodification in models of speaking (e.g., Levelt,
Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Thus, a natural place to merge models of reading and speaking would be
at the level of segmental spellout. This view predicts similar seriality effects in reading and object naming.
Experiment 1 showed that the seriality of encoding inside a syllable revealed in previous studies
of speaking is observed for both naming objects and reading their names. Experiment 2 showed that
both object naming and reading exhibit the seriality of the encoding of successive syllables previously
observed for speaking. Experiment 3 showed that the seriality is also observed when object naming and
reading trials are mixed rather than tested separately, as in the first two experiments. These results suggest
that a serial phonological encoding mechanism is shared between naming objects and reading
their names.

Abstract

B. Rapp and M. Goldrick (2000) claimed that the lexical and mixed error biases in picture naming by
aphasic and nonaphasic speakers argue against models that assume a feedforward-only relationship
between lexical items and their sounds in spoken word production. The author contests this claim by
showing that a feedforward-only model like WEAVER ++ (W. J. M. Levelt, A. Roelofs, & A. S. Meyer,
1999b) exhibits the error biases in word planning and self-monitoring. Furthermore, it is argued that
extant feedback accounts of the error biases and relevant chronometric effects are incompatible.
WEAVER ++ simulations with self-monitoring revealed that this model accounts for the chronometric
data, the error biases, and the influence of the impairment locus in aphasic speakers.

Abstract

WEAVER++ has no backward links in its form-production network and yet is able to explain the lexical
and mixed error biases and the mixed distractor latency effect. This refutes the claim of B. Rapp and M.
Goldrick (2000) that these findings specifically support production-internal feedback. Whether their restricted interaction account model can also provide a unified account of the error biases and latency effect remains to be shown.

Abstract

Lexical access in speaking consists of two major steps: lemma retrieval and word-form encoding. In Roelofs (Roelofs, A. 1992a. Cognition 42. 107-142; Roelofs. A. 1993. Cognition 47, 59-87.), I described a model of lemma retrieval. The present paper extends this work by presenting a comprehensive model of the second access step, word-form encoding. The model is called WEAVER (Word-form Encoding by Activation and VERification). Unlike other models of word-form generation, WEAVER is able to provide accounts of response time data, particularly from the picture-word interference paradigm and the implicit priming paradigm. Its key features are (1) retrieval by spreading activation, (2) verification of activated information by a production rule, (3) a rightward incremental construction of phonological representations using a principle of active syllabification, syllables are constructed on the fly rather than stored with lexical items, (4) active competitive selection of syllabic motor programs using a mathematical formalism that generates response times and (5) the association of phonological speech errors with the selection of syllabic motor programs due to the failure of verification.

Abstract

The origins of the Mayna language, formerly spoken in northwest Peruvian Amazonia, remain a mystery for most scholars. Several discussions on it took place in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th; however, none arrived at a consensus. Apart from an article written by Taylor & Descola (1981), suggesting a relationship with the Jivaroan language family, little to nothing has been said about it for the last half of the 20th century and the last decades. In the present article, a summary of the principal accounts on the language and its people between the 19th and the 20th century will be given, followed by a corpus analysis in which the materials available in Mayna and Kawapanan, mainly prayers collected by Hervás (1787) and Teza (1868), will be analysed and compared for the first time in light of recent analyses in the new-born field called Kawapanan linguistics (Barraza de García 2005a,b; Valenzuela-Bismarck 2011a,b , Valenzuela 2013; Rojas-Berscia 2013, 2014; Madalengoitia-Barúa 2013; Farfán-Reto 2012), in order to test its affiliation to the Kawapanan language family, as claimed by Beuchat & Rivet (1909) and account for its place in the dialectology of this language family.

Abstract

During language comprehension, listeners often anticipate upcoming information. This can draw listeners’ overt attention to visually presented objects before the objects are referred to. We investigated to what extent the anticipatory mechanisms involved in such language-mediated attention rely on specific verbal factors and on processes shared with other domains of cognition. Participants listened to sentences ending in a highly predictable word (e.g., “In 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon”) while viewing displays containing three unrelated distractor objects and a critical object, which was either the target object (e.g., a moon), or an object with a similar shape (e.g., a tomato), or an unrelated control object (e.g., rice). Language-mediated anticipatory eye movements to targets and shape competitors were observed. Importantly, looks to the shape competitor were systematically related to individual differences in anticipatory attention, as indexed by a spatial cueing task: Participants whose responses were most strongly facilitated by predictive arrow cues also showed the strongest effects of predictive language input on their eye movements. By contrast, looks to the target were related to individual differences in vocabulary size and verbal fluency. The results suggest that verbal and nonverbal factors contribute to different types of language-mediated eye movement. The findings are consistent with multiple-mechanism accounts of predictive language processing.

Abstract

In a number of languages, prosody is used to highlight new information (or focus). In Dutch, focus is marked by accentuation, whereby focal constituents are accented and post-focal constituents are de-accented. Even if pausing is not traditionally seen as a cue to focus in Dutch, several previous studies have pointed to a possible relationship between pausing and information structure. Considering that Dutch-speaking 4 to 5 year olds are not yet completely proficient in using accentuation for focus and that children generally pause more than adults, we asked whether pausing might be an available parameter for children to manipulate for focus. Sentences with varying focus structure were elicited from 10 Dutch-speaking 4 to 5 year olds and 9 Dutch-speaking adults by means of a picture-matching game. Comparing pause durations before focal and non-focal targets showed pre-target pauses to be significantly longer when the targets were focal than when they were not. Notably, the use of pausing was more robust in the children than in the adults, suggesting that children exploit pausing to mark focus more generally than adults do, at a stage where their mastery of the canonical cues to focus is still developing. © The Author(s) 2015

Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video recorded conversation in the Italian language (Romance). The article reports findings specific to the Italian language from the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. While giving an overview of all the major practices for other-initiation of repair found in this language, special attention is given to (i) the functional distinctions between different open strategies (interjection, question words, formulaic), and (ii) the role of intonation in discriminating alternative restricted strategies, with a focus on different contour types used to produce repetitions.

Abstract

Among the strategies used by people to request others to do things, there is a particular family defined as pre-requests. The typical function of a pre-request is to check whether some precondition obtains for a request to be successfully made. A form like the Italian interrogative hai x ‘do you have x’, for example, is used to ask if an object is available — a requirement for the object to be transferred or manipulated. But what does it mean exactly to make a pre-request? What difference does it make compared to issuing a request proper? In this article, I address these questions by examining the use of hai x ‘do you have x’ interrogatives in a corpus of informal Italian interaction. Drawing on methods from conversation analysis and linguistics, I show that the status of hai x as a pre-request is reflected in particular properties in the domains of preference and sequence organisation, specifically in the design of blocking responses to the pre-request, and in the use of go-ahead responses, which lead to the expansion of the request sequence. This study contributes to current research on requesting as well as on sequence organisation by demonstrating the response affordances of pre-requests and by furthering our understanding of the processes of sequence expansion.

Abstract

Remembering complex, multidimensional information typically requires strategic memory retrieval, during which information is structured, for instance by spatial- or temporal associations. Although brain regions involved in strategic memory retrieval in general have been identified, differences in retrieval operations related to distinct retrieval strategies are not well-understood. Thus, our aim was to identify brain regions whose activity is differentially involved in spatial-associative and temporal-associative retrieval. First, we showed that our behavioral paradigm probing memory for a set of object-location associations promoted the use of a spatial-associative structure following an encoding condition that provided multiple associations to neighboring objects (spatial-associative condition) and the use of a temporal- associative structure following another study condition that provided predominantly temporal associations between sequentially presented items (temporal-associative condition). Next, we used an adapted version of this paradigm for functional MRI, where we contrasted brain activity related to the recall of object-location associations that were either encoded in the spatial- or the temporal-associative condition. In addition to brain regions generally involved in recall, we found that activity in higher-order visual regions, including the fusiform gyrus, the lingual gyrus, and the cuneus, was relatively enhanced when subjects used a spatial-associative structure for retrieval. In contrast, activity in the globus pallidus and the thalamus was relatively enhanced when subjects used a temporal-associative structure for retrieval. In conclusion, we provide evidence for differential involvement of these brain regions related to different types of strategic memory retrieval and the neural structures described play a role in either spatial-associative or temporal-associative memory retrieval.

Abstract

Despite the importance of effective pain communication, talking about pain represents a major challenge for patients and clinicians because pain is a private and subjective experience. Focusing primarily on acute pain, this article considers the limitations of current methods of obtaining information about the sensory characteristics of pain and suggests that spontaneously produced “co-speech hand gestures” may constitute an important source of information here. Although this is a relatively new area of research, we present recent empirical evidence that reveals that co-speech gestures contain important information about pain that can both add to and clarify speech. Following this, we discuss how these findings might eventually lead to a greater understanding of the sensory characteristics of pain, and to improvements in treatment and support for pain sufferers. We hope that this article will stimulate further research and discussion of this previously overlooked dimension of pain communication