Publications

Abstract

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

Abstract

Music exhibits some cross-cultural similarities, despite its variety across the world. Evidence from a broad range of human cultures suggests the existence of musical universals1, here defined as strong regularities emerging across cultures above chance. In particular, humans demonstrate a general proclivity for rhythm2, although little is known about why music is particularly rhythmic and why the same structural regularities are present in rhythms around the world. We empirically investigate the mechanisms underlying musical universals for rhythm, showing how music can evolve culturally from randomness. Human participants were asked to imitate sets of randomly generated drumming sequences and their imitation attempts became the training set for the next participants in independent transmission chains. By perceiving and imitating drumming sequences from each other, participants turned initially random sequences into rhythmically structured patterns. Drumming patterns developed into rhythms that are more structured, easier to learn, distinctive for each experimental cultural tradition and characterized by all six statistical universals found among world music1; the patterns appear to be adapted to human learning, memory and cognition. We conclude that musical rhythm partially arises from the influence of human cognitive and biological biases on the process of cultural evolution.

Abstract

Recently psychologists have taken up the question of whether dance is reliant on unique human adaptations, or whether it is rooted in neural and cognitive mechanisms shared with other species 1, 2. In its full cultural complexity, human dance clearly has no direct analog in animal behavior. Most definitions of dance include the consistent production of movement sequences timed to an external rhythm. While not sufficient for dance, modes of auditory-motor timing, such as synchronization and entrainment, are experimentally tractable constructs that may be analyzed and compared between species. In an effort to assess the evolutionary precursors to entrainment and social features of human dance, Laland and colleagues [2] have suggested that dance may be an incidental byproduct of adaptations supporting vocal or motor imitation — referred to here as the ‘imitation and sequencing’ hypothesis. In support of this hypothesis, Laland and colleagues rely on four convergent lines of evidence drawn from behavioral and neurobiological research on dance behavior in humans and rhythmic behavior in other animals. Here, we propose a less cognitive, more parsimonious account for the evolution of dance. Our ‘timing and interaction’ hypothesis suggests that dance is scaffolded off of broadly conserved timing mechanisms allowing both cooperative and antagonistic social coordination.

Abstract

Research on the evolution of human speech and music benefits from hypotheses and data generated in a number of disciplines. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the high relevance of pinniped research for the study of speech, musical rhythm, and their origins, bridging and complementing current research on primates and birds. We briefly discuss speech, vocal learning, and rhythm from an evolutionary and comparative perspective. We review the current state of the art on pinniped communication and behavior relevant to the evolution of human speech and music, showing interesting parallels to hypotheses on rhythmic behavior in early hominids. We suggest future research directions in terms of species to test and empirical data needed.

Abstract

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

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

The objectives of this article are to characterize the performance and to discuss the performance differences between literate and illiterate participants in a well-defined study population.We describe the participant-selection procedure used to investigate this population. Three groups with similar sociocultural backgrounds living in a relatively homogeneous fishing community in southern Portugal were characterized in terms of socioeconomic and sociocultural background variables and compared on a simple neuropsychological test battery; specifically, a literate group with more than 4 years of education (n = 9), a literate group with 4 years of education (n = 26), and an illiterate group (n = 31) were included in this study.We compare and discuss our results with other similar studies on the effects of literacy and illiteracy. The results indicate that naming and identification of real objects, verbal fluency using ecologically relevant semantic criteria, verbal memory, and orientation are not affected by literacy or level of formal education. In contrast, verbal working memory assessed with digit span, verbal abstraction, long-term semantic memory, and calculation (i.e., multiplication) are significantly affected by the level of literacy. We indicate that it is possible, with proper participant-selection procedures, to exclude general cognitive impairment and to control important sociocultural factors that potentially could introduce bias when studying the specific effects of literacy and level of formal education on cognitive brain function.

Abstract

Is there a relation between socioeconomic factors and aphasia severity and recovery? Connor, Obler, Tocco, Fitzpatrick, and Albert (2001) describe correlations between the educational level and socioeconomic status of aphasic subjects with aphasia severity and subsequent recovery. As stated in the introduction by Connor et al. (2001), studies of the influence of educational level and literacy (or illiteracy) on aphasia severity have yielded conflicting results, while no significant link between socioeconomic status and aphasia severity and recovery has been established. In this brief note, we will comment on their findings and conclusions, beginning first with a brief review of literacy and aphasia research, and complexities encountered in these fields of investigation. This serves as a general background to our specific comments on Connor et al. (2001), which will be focusing on methodological issues and the importance of taking normative values in consideration when subjects with different socio-cultural or socio-economic backgrounds are assessed.

Abstract

Adults prefer to interact with others that are similar to themselves. Even slight facial self-resemblance can elicit trust towards strangers. Here we investigate if preschoolers at the age of 5 years already use facial self-resemblance when they make social judgments about others. We found that, in the absence of any additional knowledge about prospective peers, children preferred those who look subtly like themselves over complete strangers. Thus, subtle morphological similarities trigger social preferences well before adulthood.

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 impact of introducing double-blind reviewing in the most recent Evolution of Language conference is assessed. The ranking of papers is compared between EvoLang 11 (double-blind review) and EvoLang 9 and 10 (single-blind review). Main effects were found for first author gender by conference. The results mirror some findings in the literature on the effects of double-blind review, suggesting that it helps reduce a bias against female authors.

Abstract

Almost all genetic risk factors for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) can be found in the general population, but the effects of this risk are unclear in people not ascertained for neuropsychiatric symptoms. Using several large ASD consortium and population-based resources (total n > 38,000), we find genome-wide genetic links between ASDs and typical variation in social behavior and adaptive functioning. This finding is evidenced through both LD score correlation and de novo variant analysis, indicating that multiple types of genetic risk for ASDs influence a continuum of behavioral and developmental traits, the severe tail of which can result in diagnosis with an ASD or other neuropsychiatric disorder. A continuum model should inform the design and interpretation of studies of neuropsychiatric disease biology.

Abstract

Background Heterozygous mutations in CNTNAP2 have been identified in patients with a range of complex phenotypes including intellectual disability, autism and schizophrenia. However heterozygous CNTNAP2 mutations are also found in the normal population. Conversely, homozygous mutations are rare in patient populations and have not been found in any unaffected individuals. Case presentation We describe a consanguineous family carrying a deletion in CNTNAP2 predicted to abolish function of its protein product, CASPR2. Homozygous family members display epilepsy, facial dysmorphisms, severe intellectual disability and impaired language. We compared these patients with previously reported individuals carrying homozygous mutations in CNTNAP2 and identified a highly recognisable phenotype. Conclusions We propose that CASPR2 loss produces a syndrome involving early-onset refractory epilepsy, intellectual disability, language impairment and autistic features that can be recognized as CASPR2 deficiency disorder. Further screening for homozygous patients meeting these criteria, together with detailed phenotypic and molecular investigations will be crucial for understanding the contribution of CNTNAP2 to normal and disrupted development.

Abstract

The genetic basis of complex neurological disorders involving language are poorly understood, partly due to the multiple additive genetic risk factors that are thought to be responsible. Furthermore, these conditions are often syndromic in that they have a range of endophenotypes that may be associated with the disorder and that may be present in different combinations in patients. However, the emergence of individual genes implicated across multiple disorders has suggested that they might share similar underlying genetic mechanisms. The CNTNAP2 gene is an excellent example of this, as it has recently been implicated in a broad range of phenotypes including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, intellectual disability, dyslexia and language impairment. This review considers the evidence implicating CNTNAP2 in these conditions, the genetic risk factors and mutations that have been identified in patient and population studies and how these relate to patient phenotypes. The role of CNTNAP2 is examined in the context of larger neurogenetic networks during development and disorder, given what is known regarding the regulation and function of this gene. Understanding the role of CNTNAP2 in diverse neurological disorders will further our understanding of how combinations of individual genetic risk factors can contribute to complex conditions

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

Four form-preparation experiments investigated whether aspects of phonological encoding processes and representations are shared between languages in bilingual speakers. The participants were Dutch--English bilinguals. Experiment 1 showed that the basic rightward incrementality revealed in studies for the first language is also observed for second-language words. In Experiments 2 and 3, speakers were given words to produce that did or did not share onset segments, and that came or did not come from different languages. It was found that when onsets were shared among the response words, those onsets were prepared, even when the words came from different languages. Experiment 4 showed that preparation requires prior knowledge of the segments and that knowledge about their phonological features yields no effect. These results suggest that both first- and second-language words are phonologically planned through the same serial order mechanism and that the representations of segments common to the languages are shared.

Abstract

Disagreement exists about how bilingual speakers select words, in particular, whether words in another language compete, or competition is restricted to a target language, or no competition occurs. Evidence that competition occurs but is restricted to a target language comes from response time (RT) effects obtained when speakers name pictures in one language while trying to ignore distractor words in another language. Compared to unrelated distractor words, RT is longer when the picture name and distractor are semantically related, but RT is shorter when the distractor is the translation of the name of the picture in the other language. These effects suggest that distractor words from another language do not compete themselves but activate their counterparts in the target language, thereby yielding the semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Here, we report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study testing the prediction that priming underlies both of these effects. The RTs showed semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Moreover, the picture-word stimuli yielded an N400 response, whose amplitude was smaller on semantic and translation trials than on unrelated trials, providing evidence that interference and facilitation priming underlie the RT effects. We present the results of computer simulations showing the utility of a within-language competition account of our findings.

Abstract

In a recent series of papers, Caramazza and Miozzo [Caramazza, A., 1997. How many levels of processing are there in lexical access? Cognitive Neuropsychology 14, 177-208; Caramazza, A., Miozzo, M., 1997. The relation between syntactic and phonological knowledge in lexical access: evidence from the 'tip-of-the-tongue' phenomenon. Cognition 64, 309-343; Miozzo, M., Caramazza, A., 1997. On knowing the auxiliary of a verb that cannot be named: evidence for the independence of grammatical and phonological aspects of lexical knowledge. Journal of Cognitive Neuropsychology 9, 160-166] argued against the lemma/lexeme distinction made in many models of lexical access in speaking, including our network model [Roelofs, A., 1992. A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition 42, 107-142; Levelt, W.J.M., Roelofs, A., Meyer, A.S., 1998. A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (in press)]. Their case was based on the observations that grammatical class deficits of brain-damaged patients and semantic errors may be restricted to either spoken or written forms and that the grammatical gender of a word and information about its form can be independently available in tip-of-the-tongue stales (TOTs). In this paper, we argue that though our model is about speaking, not taking position on writing, extensions to writing are possible that are compatible with the evidence from aphasia and speech errors. Furthermore, our model does not predict a dependency between gender and form retrieval in TOTs. Finally, we argue that Caramazza and Miozzo have not accounted for important parts of the evidence motivating the lemma/lexeme distinction, such as word frequency effects in homophone production, the strict ordering of gender and pho neme access in LRP data, and the chronometric and speech error evidence for the production of complex morphology.

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

This article presents a new account of the color-word Stroop phenomenon ( J. R. Stroop, 1935) based on an implemented model of word production, WEAVER++ ( W. J. M. Levelt, A. Roelofs, & A. S. Meyer, 1999b; A. Roelofs, 1992, 1997c). Stroop effects are claimed to arise from processing interactions within the language-production architecture and explicit goal-referenced control. WEAVER++ successfully simulates 16 classic data sets, mostly taken from the review by C. M. MacLeod (1991), including incongruency, congruency, reverse-Stroop, response-set, semantic-gradient, time-course, stimulus, spatial, multiple-task, manual, bilingual, training, age, and pathological effects. Three new experiments tested the account against alternative explanations. It is shown that WEAVER++ offers a more satisfactory account of the data than other models.

Abstract

According to most models of speech production, the planning of spoken words involves the independent retrieval of segments and metrical frames followed by segment-to-frame association. In some models, the metrical frame includes a specification of the number and ordering of consonants and vowels, but in the word-form encoding by activation and verification (WEAVER) model (A. Roelofs, 1997), the frame specifies only the stress pattern across syllables. In 6 implicit priming experiments, on each trial, participants produced 1 word out of a small set as quickly as possible. In homogeneous sets, the response words shared word-initial segments, whereas in heterogeneous sets, they did not. Priming effects from shared segments depended on all response words having the same number of syllables and stress pattern, but not on their having the same number of consonants and vowels. No priming occurred when the response words had only the same metrical frame but shared no segments. Computer simulations demonstrated that WEAVER accounts for the findings.

Abstract

This article reports 7 experiments investigating whether utterances are planned in a parallel or rightward incremental fashion during language production. The experiments examined the role of linear order, length, frequency, and repetition in producing Dutch verb–particle combinations. On each trial, participants produced 1 utterance out of a set of 3 as quickly as possible. The responses shared part of their form or not. For particle-initial infinitives, facilitation was obtained when the responses shared the particle but not when they shared the verb. For verb-initial imperatives, however, facilitation was obtained for the verbs but not for the particles. The facilitation increased with length, decreased with frequency, and was independent of repetition. A simple rightward incremental model accounts quantitatively for the results.

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

Not long after the premiere of Loxoro in 2011, a short-film by Claudia Llosa which presents the problems the transgender community faces in the capital of Peru, a new language variety became visible for the first time to the Lima society. Lóxoro [‘lok.so.ɾo] or Húngaro [‘uŋ.ga.ɾo], as its speakers call it, is a language spoken by transsexuals and the gay community of Peru. The first clues about its existence were given by a comedian, Fernando Armas, in the mid 90’s, however it is said to have appeared not before the 60’s. Following some previous work on gay languages by Baker (2002) and languages and society (cf. Halliday 1978), the main aim of the present article is to provide a primary sketch of this language in its phonological, morphological, lexical and sociological aspects, based on a small corpus extracted from the film of Llosa and natural dialogues from Peruvian TV-journals, in order to classify this variety within modern sociolinguistic models (cf. Muysken 2010) and argue for the “anti-language” (cf. Halliday 1978) nature of it

Abstract

In contrast to what has happened in other sciences, the establishment of what is the study object of linguistics as an autonomous discipline has not been resolved yet. Ranging from external explanations of language as a system (Saussure 1916), the existence of a mental innate language capacity or UG (Chomsky 1965, 1981, 1995), the cognitive complexity of the mental language capacity and the acquisition of languages in use (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008; Croft & Cruse 2004; Evans & Levinson 2009) most, if not all, theoretical approaches have provided explanations that somehow isolated our discipline from developments in other major sciences, such as physics and evolutionary biology. In the present article I will present some of the basic issues regarding the current debate in the discipline, in order to identify some problems regarding the modern assumptions on language. Furthermore, a new proposal on how to approach linguistic phenomena will be given, regarding what I call «the main three» basic problems our discipline has to face ulteriorly. Finally, some preliminary ideas on a new paradigm of Linguistics which tries to answer these three basic problems will be presented, mainly based in the recently-born formal theory called Radical Minimalism (Krivochen 2011a, 2011b) and what I dub Memetic Linguistics and Linguistic Engineering

Abstract

The Linguistic Annotation Framework (LAF) provides a general, extensible stand-o markup system for corpora. This paper discusses LAF-Fabric, a new tool to analyse LAF resources in general with an extension to process the Hebrew Bible in particular. We rst walk through the history of the Hebrew Bible as text database in decennium-wide steps. Then we describe how LAF-Fabric may serve as an analysis tool for this corpus. Finally, we describe three analytic projects/work ows that benet from the new LAF representation: 1) the study of linguistic variation: extract cooccurrence data of common nouns between the books of the Bible (Martijn Naaijer); 2) the study of the grammar of Hebrew poetry in the Psalms: extract clause typology (Gino Kalkman); 3) construction of a parser of classical Hebrew by Data Oriented Parsing: generate tree structures from the database (Andreas van Cranenburgh).

Abstract

Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even justifying the speaker’s behavior while simultaneously getting another person to help. How is an impersonal deontic declarative fit for these different functions? And how do people know which function it has in a given context? We address these questions using video recordings of everyday interactions among speakers of Italian and Polish. Our analysis results in two findings. The first is that the pragmatics of impersonal deontic declaratives is systematically shaped by (i) the relative responsibility of participants for the necessary task and (ii) the speaker’s nonverbal conduct at the time of the statement. These two factors influence whether the task in question will be dealt with by another person or by the speaker, often giving the statement the force of a request or, alternatively, of an account of the speaker’s behavior. The second finding is that, although these factors systematically influence their function, impersonal deontic declaratives maintain the potential to generate more complex interactions that go beyond a simple opposition between requests and accounts, where participation in the necessary task may be shared, negotiated, or avoided. This versatility of impersonal deontic declaratives derives from their grammatical makeup: by being deontic and impersonal, they can both mobilize or legitimize an act by different participants in the speech event, while their declarative form does not constrain how they should be responded to. These features make impersonal deontic declaratives a special tool for the management of social agency.

Abstract

Recognizing other individuals is an essential skill in humans and in other species [1, 2 and 3]. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear that person-identity recognition abilities are highly variable. Roughly 2% of the population has developmental prosopagnosia, a congenital deficit in recognizing others by their faces [4]. It is currently unclear whether developmental phonagnosia, a deficit in recognizing others by their voices [5], is equally prevalent, or even whether it actually exists. Here, we aimed to identify cases of developmental phonagnosia. We collected more than 1,000 data sets from self-selected German individuals by using a web-based screening test that was designed to assess their voice-recognition abilities. We then examined potentially phonagnosic individuals by using a comprehensive laboratory test battery. We found two novel cases of phonagnosia: AS, a 32-year-old female, and SP, a 32-year-old male; both are otherwise healthy academics, have normal hearing, and show no pathological abnormalities in brain structure. The two cases have comparable patterns of impairments: both performed at least 2 SDs below the level of matched controls on tests that required learning new voices, judging the familiarity of famous voices, and discriminating pitch differences between voices. In both cases, only voice-identity processing per se was affected: face recognition, speech intelligibility, emotion recognition, and musical ability were all comparable to controls. The findings confirm the existence of developmental phonagnosia as a modality-specific impairment and allow a first rough prevalence estimate.

Abstract

Objective

Despite the need for effective pain communication, pain is difficult to verbalise. Co-speech gestures frequently add information about pain that is not contained in the accompanying speech. We explored whether recipients can obtain additional information from gestures about the pain that is being described.
Methods

Participants (n = 135) viewed clips of pain descriptions under one of four conditions: 1) Speech Only; 2) Speech and Gesture; 3) Speech, Gesture and Face; and 4) Speech, Gesture and Face plus Instruction (short presentation explaining the pain information that gestures can depict). Participants provided free-text descriptions of the pain that had been described. Responses were scored for the amount of information obtained from the original clips.
Findings

Participants in the Instruction condition obtained the most information, while those in the Speech Only condition obtained the least (all comparisons p<.001).
Conclusions

Gestures produced during pain descriptions provide additional information about pain that recipients are able to pick up without detriment to their uptake of spoken information.
Practice implications

Healthcare professionals may benefit from instruction in gestures to enhance uptake of information about patients’ pain experiences.

Abstract

Effective pain communication is essential if adequate treatment and support are to be provided. Pain communication is often multimodal, with sufferers utilising speech, nonverbal behaviours (such as facial expressions), and co-speech gestures (bodily movements, primarily of the hands and arms that accompany speech and can convey semantic information) to communicate their experience. Research suggests that the production of nonverbal pain behaviours is positively associated with pain intensity, but it is not known whether this is also the case for speech and co-speech gestures. The present study explored whether increased pain intensity is associated with greater speech and gesture production during face-to-face communication about acute, experimental pain. Participants (N = 26) were exposed to experimentally elicited pressure pain to the fingernail bed at high and low intensities and took part in video-recorded semi-structured interviews. Despite rating more intense pain as more difficult to communicate (t(25) = 2.21, p = .037), participants produced significantly longer verbal pain descriptions and more co-speech gestures in the high intensity pain condition (Words: t(25) = 3.57, p = .001; Gestures: t(25) = 3.66, p = .001). This suggests that spoken and gestural communication about pain is enhanced when pain is more intense. Thus, in addition to conveying detailed semantic information about pain, speech and co-speech gestures may provide a cue to pain intensity, with implications for the treatment and support received by pain sufferers. Future work should consider whether these findings are applicable within the context of clinical interactions about pain.

Abstract

Pain is a private and subjective experience about which effective communication is vital, particularly in medical settings. Speakers often represent information about pain sensation in both speech and co-speech hand gestures simultaneously, but it is not known whether gestures merely replicate spoken information or complement it in some way. We examined the representational contribution
of gestures in a range of consecutive analyses. Firstly, we found that 78% of speech units containing pain sensation were accompanied by gestures, with 53% of these gestures representing pain sensation. Secondly, in 43% of these instances, gestures represented pain sensation information that was not contained in speech, contributing additional, complementary information to the pain sensation message.
Finally, when applying a specificity analysis, we found that in contrast with research in different domains of talk, gestures did not make the pain sensation information in speech more specific. Rather, they complemented the verbal pain message by representing different
aspects of pain sensation, contributing to a fuller representation of pain sensation than speech alone. These findings highlight the importance of gestures in communicating about pain sensation and suggest that this modality provides additional information to supplement and clarify the often ambiguous verbal pain message

Abstract

Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One explanation of wh-question acquisition in particular suggests that the order in which English speaking children acquire wh-questions is determined by two interlocking linguistic factors; the syntactic function of the wh-word that heads the question and the semantic generality (or ‘lightness’) of the main verb (Bloom, Merkin & Wootten, 1982; Bloom, 1991). Another more recent view, however, is that acquisition is influenced by the relative frequency with which children hear particular wh-words and verbs in their input (e.g. Rowland & Pine, 2000). In the present study over 300 hours of naturalistic data from twelve two- to three-year-old children and their mothers were analysed in order to assess the relative contribution of complexity and input frequency to wh-question acquisition. The analyses revealed, first, that the acquisition order of wh-questions could be predicted successfully from the frequency with which particular wh-words and verbs occurred in the children's input and, second, that syntactic and semantic complexity did not reliably predict acquisition once input frequency was taken into account. These results suggest that the relationship between acquisition and complexity may be a by-product of the high correlation between complexity and the frequency with which mothers use particular wh-words and verbs. We interpret the results in terms of a constructivist view of language acquisition.

Abstract

Van Valin (Journal of Child Language29, 2002, 161–75) presents a critique of Rowland & Pine (Journal of Child Language27, 2000, 157–81) and argues that the wh-question data from Adam (in Brown, A first language, Cambridge, MA, 1973) cannot be explained in terms of input frequencies as we suggest. Instead, he suggests that the data can be more successfully accounted for in terms of Role and Reference Grammar. In this note we re-examine the pattern of inversion and uninversion in Adam's wh-questions and argue that the RRG explanation cannot account for some of the developmental facts it was designed to explain.

Abstract

Carston (2010) proposes that metaphors can be processed via two different routes. In line with the standard Relevance-Theoretic account of loose use, single metaphors are interpreted by a local pragmatic process of meaning adjustment, resulting in the construction of an ad hoc concept. In extended metaphorical passages, by contrast, the reader switches to a second processing mode because the various semantic associates in the passage are mutually reinforcing, which makes the literal meaning highly activated relative to possible meaning adjustments. In the second processing mode the literal meaning of the whole passage is metarepresented and entertained as an ‘imaginary world’ and the intended figurative implications are derived later in processing. The results of three experiments comparing the interpretation of the same target expressions across literal, single-metaphorical and extended-metaphorical contexts, using self-paced reading (Experiment 1), eye-tracking during natural reading (Experiment 2) and cued recall (Experiment 3), offered initial support to Carston's distinction between the processing of single and extended metaphors. We end with a comparison between extended metaphors and allegories, and make a call for further theoretical and experimental work to increase our understanding of the similarities and differences between the interpretation and processing of different figurative uses, single and extended.

Abstract

Color adjectives tend to be used redundantly in referential communication. I propose that redundant color adjectives (RCAs) are often intended to exploit a color contrast in the visual context and hence facilitate object identification, despite not being necessary to establish unique reference. Two language-production experiments investigated two types of factors that may affect the use of RCAs: factors related to the efficiency of color in the visual context and factors related to the semantic category of the noun. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed that people produce RCAs when color may facilitate object recognition; e.g., they do so more often in polychrome displays than in monochrome displays, and more often in English (pre-nominal position) than in Spanish (post-nominal position). RCAs are also used when color is a central property of the object category; e.g., people referred to the color of clothes more often than to the color of geometrical figures (Experiment 1), and they overspecified atypical colors more often than variable and stereotypical colors (Experiment 2). These results are relevant for pragmatic models of referential communication based on Gricean pragmatics and informativeness. An alternative analysis is proposed, which focuses on the efficiency and pertinence of color in a given referential situation.

Abstract

This study investigates the development of two cognitive abilities that are involved in metaphor comprehension: implicit analogical reasoning and assigning an unconventional label to a familiar entity (as in Romeo’s ‘Juliet is the sun’). We presented 3- and 4-year-old children with literal object-requests in a pretense setting (e.g., ‘Give me the train with the hat’). Both age-groups succeeded in a baseline condition that used building blocks as props (e.g., placed either on the front or the rear of a train engine) and only required spatial analogical reasoning to interpret the referential expression. Both age-groups performed significantly worse in the critical condition, which used familiar objects as props (e.g., small dogs as pretend hats) and required both implicit analogical reasoning and assigning second labels. Only the 4-year olds succeeded in this condition. These results offer a new perspective on young children’s difficulties with metaphor comprehension in the preschool years.

Abstract

In this article, we present the spatial logistics task (SLOT) platform for investigating multimodal communication between 2 human participants. Presented are the SLOT communication task and the software and hardware that has been developed to run SLOT experiments and record the participants’ multimodal behavior. SLOT offers a high level of flexibility in varying the context of the communication and is particularly useful in studies of the relationship between pen gestures and speech. We illustrate the use of the SLOT platform by discussing the results of some early experiments. The first is an experiment on negotiation with a one-way mirror between the participants, and the second is an exploratory study of automatic recognition of spontaneous pen gestures. The results of these studies demonstrate the usefulness of the SLOT platform for conducting multimodal communication research in both human– human and human–computer interactions.

Abstract

Psycholinguistic theories propose different models of inflectional processing of regular and irregular verbs: dual mechanism models assume separate modules with lexical frequency sensitivity for irregular verbs. In contradistinction, connectionist models propose a unified process in a single module.We conducted a PET study using a 2 x 2 design with verb regularity and frequency.We found significantly shorter voice onset times for regular verbs and high frequency verbs irrespective of regularity. The PET data showed activations in inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45), nucleus lentiformis, thalamus, and superior medial cerebellum for both regular and irregular verbs but no dissociation for verb regularity.Our results support common processing components for regular and irregular verb inflection.

Abstract

Although the high-variability training method can enhance learning of non-native speech categories, this can depend on individuals’ aptitude. The current study asked how general the effects of perceptual aptitude are by testing whether they occur with training materials spoken by native speakers and whether they depend on the nature of the to-be-learned material. Forty-five native Dutch listeners took part in a five-day training procedure in which they identified bisyllabic Mandarin pseudowords (e.g., asa) pronounced with different lexical tone combinations. The training materials were presented to different groups of listeners at three levels of variability: low (many repetitions of a limited set of words recorded by a single speaker), medium (fewer repetitions of a more variable set of words recorded by 3 speakers) and high (similar to medium but with 5 speakers). Overall, variability did not influence learning performance, but this was due to an interaction with individuals’ perceptual aptitude: increasing variability hindered improvements in performance for low-aptitude perceivers while it helped improvements in performance for high-aptitude perceivers. These results show that the previously observed interaction between individuals’ aptitude and effects of degree of variability extends to natural tokens of Mandarin speech. This interaction was not found, however, in a closely-matched study in which native Dutch listeners were trained on the Japanese geminate/singleton consonant contrast. This may indicate that the effectiveness of high-variability training depends not only on individuals’ aptitude in speech perception but also on the nature of the categories being acquired.

Abstract

Participants' eye movements were monitored as they heard sentences and saw four pictured objects on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to click on the object mentioned in the sentence. There were more transitory fixations to pictures representing monosyllabic words (e.g. ham) when the first syllable of the target word (e.g. hamster) had been replaced by a recording of the monosyllabic word than when it came from a different recording of the target word. This demonstrates that a phonemically identical sequence can contain cues that modulate its lexical interpretation. This effect was governed by the duration of the sequence, rather than by its origin (i.e. which type of word it came from). The longer the sequence, the more monosyllabic-word interpretations it generated. We argue that cues to lexical-embedding disambiguation, such as segmental lengthening, result from the realization of a prosodic boundary that often but not always follows monosyllabic words, and that lexical candidates whose word boundaries are aligned with prosodic boundaries are favored in the word-recognition process.

Abstract

Despite their central role in question formation, content interrogatives in spontaneous conversation remain relatively under-explored cross-linguistically. This paper outlines the structure of ‘where’ expressions in Duna, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, and examines where-questions in a small Duna data set in terms of their frequency, function, and the responses they elicit. Questions that ask ‘where?’ have been identified as a useful tool in studying the language of space and place, and, in the Duna case and elsewhere, show high frequency and functional flexibility. Although where-questions formulate place as an information gap, they are not always answered through direct reference to canonical places. While some question types may be especially “socially costly” (Levinson 2012), asking ‘where’ perhaps provides a relatively innocuous way of bringing a particular event or situation into focus.

Abstract

In the last few decades little to nothing has been said about the sociolinguistic situation of Yumanan languages in Mexico. In order to cope with this lack of studies, we present a first study on linguistic vitality in Paipai, as it is spoken in Santa Catarina, Baja California, Mexico. Since languages such as Mexican Spanish and Ko’ahl coexist with this language in the same ecology, both are part of the study as well. This first approach hoists from two axes: on one hand, providing a theoretical framework that explains the sociolinguistic dynamics in the ecology of the language (Mufwene 2001), and, on the other hand, bringing over a quantitative study based on MSF (Maximum Shared Facility) (Terborg & Garcìa 2011), which explains the state of linguistic vitality of paipai, enriched by qualitative information collected in situ

Abstract

We conducted a field trial in computer-assisted professional translation to compare interactive translation prediction (ITP) against conventional post-editing (PE) of machine translation (MT) output. In contrast to the conventional PE set-up, where an MT system first produces a static translation hypothesis that is then edited by a professional (hence “post-editing”), ITP constantly updates the translation hypothesis in real time in response to user edits. Our study involved nine professional translators and four reviewers working with the web-based CasMaCat workbench. Various new interactive features aiming to assist the post-editor/translator were also tested in this trial. Our results show that even with little training, ITP can be as productive as conventional PE in terms of the total time required to produce the final translation. Moreover, translation editors working with ITP require fewer key strokes to arrive at the final version of their translation.

Abstract

Experimental research on behavior and cognition frequently rests on stimulus or subject selection where not all characteristics can be fully controlled, even when attempting strict matching. For example, when contrasting patients to controls, variables such as intelligence or socioeconomic status are often correlated with patient status. Similarly, when presenting word stimuli, variables such as word frequency are often correlated with primary variables of interest. One procedure very commonly employed to control for such nuisance effects is conducting inferential tests on confounding stimulus or subject characteristics. For example, if word length is not significantly different for two stimulus sets, they are considered as matched for word length. Such a test has high error rates and is conceptually misguided. It reflects a common misunderstanding of statistical tests: interpreting significance not to refer to inference about a particular population parameter, but about 1. the sample in question, 2. the practical relevance of a sample difference (so that a nonsignificant test is taken to indicate evidence for the absence of relevant differences). We show inferential testing for assessing nuisance effects to be inappropriate both pragmatically and philosophically, present a survey showing its high prevalence, and briefly discuss an alternative in the form of regression including nuisance variables.

Abstract

Studies on anticipatory processes during sentence comprehension often focus on the prediction of postverbal direct objects. In subject-initial languages (the target of most studies so far), however, the position in the sentence, the syntactic function, and the semantic role of arguments are often conflated. For example, in the sentence “The frog will eat the fly” the syntactic object (“fly”) is at the same time also the last word and the patient argument of the verb. It is therefore not apparent which kind of information listeners orient to for predictive processing during sentence comprehension. A visual world eye tracking study on the verb-initial language Tagalog (Austronesian) tested what kind of information listeners use to anticipate upcoming postverbal linguistic input. The grammatical structure of Tagalog allows to test whether listeners' anticipatory gaze behavior is guided by predictions of the linear order of words, by syntactic functions (e.g., subject/object), or by semantic roles (agent/patient). Participants heard sentences of the type “Eat frog fly” or “Eat fly frog” (both meaning “The frog will eat the fly”) while looking at displays containing an agent referent (“frog”), a patient referent (“fly”) and a distractor. The verb carried morphological marking that allowed the order and syntactic function of agent and patient to be inferred. After having heard the verb, listeners fixated on the agent irrespective of its syntactic function or position in the sentence. While hearing the first-mentioned argument, listeners fixated on the corresponding referent in the display accordingly and then initiated saccades to the last-mentioned referent before it was encountered. The results indicate that listeners used verbal semantics to identify referents and their semantic roles early; information about word order or syntactic functions did not influence anticipatory gaze behavior directly after the verb was heard. In this verb-initial language, event semantics takes early precedence during the comprehension of sentences, while arguments are anticipated temporally more local to when they are encountered. The current experiment thus helps to better understand anticipation during language processing by employing linguistic structures not available in previously studied subject-initial languages.

Abstract

This letter evaluates potential benefits of combining human speech recognition ~HSR! and automatic speech recognition by building a joint model of an automatic phone recognizer ~APR! and a computational model of HSR, viz., Shortlist @Norris, Cognition 52, 189–234 ~1994!#. Experiments based on ‘‘real-life’’ speech highlight critical limitations posed by some of the simplifying assumptions made in models of human speech recognition. These limitations could be overcome by avoiding hard phone decisions at the output side of the APR, and by using a match between the input and the internal lexicon that flexibly copes with deviations from canonical phonemic representations.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system based on the combination of an automatic phone recogniser and a computational model of human speech recognition – SpeM – that is capable of computing ‘word activations’ during the recognition process, in addition to doing normal speech recognition, a task in which conventional ASR architectures only provide output after the end of an utterance. We explain the notion of word activation and show that it can be used for ‘early recognition’, i.e. recognising a word before the end of the word is available. Our ASR system was tested on 992 continuous speech utterances, each containing at least one target word: a city name of at least two syllables. The results show that early recognition was obtained for 72.8% of the target words that were recognised correctly. Also, it is shown that word activation can be used as an effective confidence measure.

Abstract

Many people speak more than two languages. How do languages acquired earlier affect the learnability of additional languages? We show that linguistic distances between speakers' first (L1) and second (L2) languages and their third (L3) language play a role. Larger distances from the L1 to the L3 and from the L2 to the L3 correlate with lower degrees of L3 learnability. The evidence comes from L3 Dutch speaking proficiency test scores obtained by candidates who speak a diverse set of L1s and L2s. Lexical and morphological distances between the L1s of the learners and Dutch explained 47.7% of the variation in proficiency scores. Lexical and morphological distances between the L2s of the learners and Dutch explained 32.4% of the variation in proficiency scores in multilingual learners. Cross-linguistic differences require language learners to bridge varying linguistic gaps between their L1 and L2 competences and the target language.

Abstract

This study examines how lexical frequency and planning problems can predict phonetic variability in the function word ‘the’ in conversational speech produced by non-native speakers of English. We examined 3180 tokens of ‘the’ drawn from English conversations between native speakers of Czech or Norwegian. Using regression models, we investigated the effect of following word frequency and disfluencies on three phonetic parameters: vowel duration, vowel quality, and consonant quality. Overall, the non-native speakers showed variation that is very similar to the variation displayed by native speakers of English. Like native speakers, Czech speakers showed an effect of frequency on vowel durations, which were shorter in more frequent word sequences. Both groups of speakers showed an effect of frequency on consonant quality: the substitution of another consonant for /ð/ occurred more often in the context of more frequent words. The speakers in this study also showed a native-like allophonic distinction in vowel quality, in which /ði/ occurs more often before vowels and /ðə/ before consonants. Vowel durations were longer in the presence of following disfluencies, again mirroring patterns in native speakers, and the consonant quality was more likely to be the target /ð/ before disfluencies, as opposed to a different consonant. The fact that non-native speakers show native-like sensitivity to lexical frequency and disfluencies suggests that these effects are consequences of a general, non-language-specific production mechanism governing language planning. On the other hand, the non-native speakers in this study did not show native-like patterns of vowel quality in the presence of disfluencies, suggesting that the pattern attested in native speakers of English may result from language-specific processes separate from the general production mechanisms

Abstract

The Flinder Sensitive Line (FSL) is a rat strain that displays distinct behavioral and neurochemical features of major depression. Chronic selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are able to reverse these symptoms in FSL rats. It is well known that several abnormalities in the serotonergic system have been found in FSL rats, including increased 5-HT brain tissue levels and reduced 5-HT synthesis. SSRIs are known to exert (part of) their effects by desensitization of the 5-HT1A receptor and FSL rats appear to have lower 5-HT1A receptor densities compared with Flinder Resistant Line (FRL) rats. We therefore studied the sensitivity of this receptor on the sexual behavior performance in both FRL and FSL rats. First, basal sexual performance was studied after saline treatment followed by treatment of two different doses of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist ±8-OH-DPAT. Finally we measured the effect of a 5-HT1A receptor antagonist to check for specificity of the 5-HT1A receptor activation. Our results show that FSL rats have higher ejaculation frequencies compared with FRL rats which do not fit with a more depressive-like phenotype. Moreover FRL rats are more sensitive to effects of ±8-OH-DPAT upon EL and IF than FSL rats. The blunted response of FSL rats to the effects of ±8-OH-DPAT may be due to lower densities of 5-HT1A receptors.

Abstract

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel–MOtor vs. koSTUUM–MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime–target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.

Abstract

Any complete theory of speaking must take the dialogical function of language use into account. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) make some progress on this point. However, we question whether their interactive alignment model is the optimal approach. In this commentary, we specifically criticize (1) their notion of alignment being implemented through priming, and (2) their claim that self-monitoring can occur at all levels of linguistic representation.

Abstract

This study investigates whether or not masked form priming effects in the naming task depend on the number of shared segments between prime and target. Dutch participants named bisyllabic words, which were preceded by visual masked primes. When primes shared the initial segment(s) with the target, naming latencies were shorter than in a control condition (string of percent signs). Onset complexity (singleton vs. complex word onset) did not modulate this priming effect in Dutch. Furthermore, significant priming due to shared final segments was only found when the prime did not contain a mismatching onset, suggesting an interfering role of initial non-target segments. It is concluded that (a) degree of overlap (segmental match vs. mismatch), and (b) position of overlap (initial vs. final) influence the magnitude of the form priming effect in the naming task. A modification of the segmental overlap hypothesis (Schiller, 1998) is proposed to account for the data.

Abstract

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors.

Abstract

This study investigated the time course of phonological encoding during speech production planning. Previous research has shown that conceptual/semantic information precedes syntactic information in the planning of speech production and that syntactic information is available earlier than phonological information. Here, we studied the relative time courses of the two different processes within phonological encoding, i.e. metrical encoding and syllabification. According to one prominent theory of language production, metrical encoding involves the retrieval of the stress pattern of a word, while syllabification is carried out to construct the syllabic structure of a word. However, the relative timing of these two processes is underspecified in the theory. We employed an implicit picture naming task and recorded event-related brain potentials to obtain fine-grained temporal information about metrical encoding and syllabification. Results revealed that both tasks generated effects that fall within the time window of phonological encoding. However, there was no timing difference between the two effects, suggesting that they occur approximately at the same time.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated grammatical feature selection during noun phrase production in German and Dutch. More specifically, we studied the conditions under which different grammatical genders select either the same or different determiners or suffixes. Pictures of one or two objects paired with a gender-congruent or a gender-incongruent distractor word were presented. Participants named the pictures using a singular or plural noun phrase with the appropriate determiner and/or adjective in German or Dutch. Significant effects of gender congruency were only obtained in the singular condition where the selection of determiners is governed by the target’s gender, but not in the plural condition where the determiner is identical for all genders. When different suffixes were to be selected in the gender-incongruent condition, no gender congruency effect was obtained. The results suggest that the so-called gender congruency effect is really a determiner congruency effect. The overall pattern of results is interpreted as indicating that grammatical feature selection is an automatic consequence of lexical node selection and therefore not subject to interference from other grammatical features. This implies that lexical node and grammatical feature selection operate with distinct principles.

Abstract

To investigate the role of the syllable in Dutch speech production, five experiments were carried out to examine the effect of visually masked syllable primes on the naming latencies for written words and pictures. Targets had clear syllable boundaries and began with a CV syllable (e.g., ka.no) or a CVC syllable (e.g., kak.tus), or had ambiguous syllable boundaries and began with a CV[C] syllable (e.g., ka[pp]er). In the syllable match condition, bisyllabic Dutch nouns or verbs were preceded by primes that were identical to the target’s first syllable. In the syllable mismatch condition, the prime was either shorter or longer than the target’s first syllable. A neutral condition was also included. None of the experiments showed a syllable priming effect. Instead, all related primes facilitated the naming of the targets. It is concluded that the syllable does not play a role in the process of phonological encoding in Dutch. Because the amount of facilitation increased with increasing overlap between prime and target, the priming effect is accounted for by a segmental overlap hypothesis.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Normal-hearing listeners use acoustic cues in speech to interpret a speaker's emotional state. This study investigates the effect of hearing aids on the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (aroused/calm) and valence (positive/negative attitude) in older adults with hearing loss. More specifically, we investigate whether wearing a hearing aid improves the correlation between affect ratings and affect-related acoustic parameters. To that end, affect ratings by 23 hearing-aid users were compared for aided and unaided listening. Moreover, these ratings were compared to the ratings by an age-matched group of 22 participants with age-normal hearing.For arousal, hearing-aid users rated utterances as generally more aroused in the aided than in the unaided condition. Intensity differences were the strongest indictor of degree of arousal. Among the hearing-aid users, those with poorer hearing used additional prosodic cues (i.e., tempo and pitch) for their arousal ratings, compared to those with relatively good hearing. For valence, pitch was the only acoustic cue that was associated with valence. Neither listening condition nor hearing loss severity (differences among the hearing-aid users) influenced affect ratings or the use of affect-related acoustic parameters. Compared to the normal-hearing reference group, ratings of hearing-aid users in the aided condition did not generally differ in both emotion dimensions. However, hearing-aid users were more sensitive to intensity differences in their arousal ratings than the normal-hearing participants.We conclude that the use of hearing aids is important for the rehabilitation of affect perception and particularly influences the interpretation of arousal

Abstract

This study investigated whether age and/or differences in hearing sensitivity influence the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (calm vs. aroused) and valence (positive vs. negative attitude) in conversational speech. To that end, this study specifically focused on the relationship between participants' ratings of short affective utterances and the utterances' acoustic parameters (pitch, intensity, and articulation rate) known to be associated with the emotion dimensions arousal and valence. Stimuli consisted of short utterances taken from a corpus of conversational speech. In two rating tasks, younger and older adults either rated arousal or valence using a 5-point scale. Mean intensity was found to be the main cue participants used in the arousal task (i.e., higher mean intensity cueing higher levels of arousal) while mean F-0 was the main cue in the valence task (i.e., higher mean F-0 being interpreted as more negative). Even though there were no overall age group differences in arousal or valence ratings, compared to younger adults, older adults responded less strongly to mean intensity differences cueing arousal and responded more strongly to differences in mean F-0 cueing valence. Individual hearing sensitivity among the older adults did not modify the use of mean intensity as an arousal cue. However, individual hearing sensitivity generally affected valence ratings and modified the use of mean F-0. We conclude that age differences in the interpretation of mean F-0 as a cue for valence are likely due to age-related hearing loss, whereas age differences in rating arousal do not seem to be driven by hearing sensitivity differences between age groups (as measured by pure-tone audiometry).

Abstract

Speakers can use pronouns when their conceptual referents are accessible from the preceding discourse, as in 'The flower is red. It turns blue'. Theories of language production agree that in order to produce a noun semantic, syntactic, and phonological information must be accessed. However, little is known about lexical access to pronouns. In this paper, we propose a model of pronoun access in German. Since the forms of German pronouns depend on the grammatical gender of the nouns they replace, the model claims that speakers must access the syntactic representation of the replaced noun (its lemma) to select a pronoun. In two experiments using the lexical decision during naming paradigm [Levelt, W.J.M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A.S., Pechmann, T., Havinga, J., 1991a. The time course of lexical access in speech production: a study of picture naming. Psychological Review 98, 122-142], we investigated whether lemma access automatically entails the activation of the corresponding word form or whether a word form is only activated when the noun itself is produced, but not when it is replaced by a pronoun. Experiment 1 showed that during pronoun production the phonological form of the replaced noun is activated. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this phonological activation was not a residual of the use of the noun in the preceding sentence. Thus, when a pronoun is produced, the lemma and the phonological form of the replaced noun become reactivated.

Abstract

We report on an fMRI syntactic priming experiment in which we measure brain activity for participants who communicate with another participant outside the scanner. We investigated whether syntactic processing during overt language production and comprehension is influenced by having a (shared) goal to communicate. Although theory suggests this is true, the nature of this influence remains unclear. Two hypotheses are tested: i. syntactic priming effects (fMRI and RT) are stronger for participants in the communicative context than for participants doing the same experiment in a non-communicative context, and ii. syntactic priming magnitude (RT) is correlated with the syntactic priming magnitude of the speaker’s communicative partner. Results showed that across conditions, participants were faster to produce sentences with repeated syntax, relative to novel syntax. This behavioral result converged with the fMRI data: we found repetition suppression effects in the left insula extending into left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47/45), left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21), left inferior parietal cortex (BA 40), left precentral gyrus (BA 6), bilateral precuneus (BA 7), bilateral supplementary motor cortex (BA 32/8) and right insula (BA 47). We did not find support for the first hypothesis: having a communicative intention does not increase the magnitude of syntactic priming effects (either in the brain or in behavior) per se. We did find support for the second hypothesis: if speaker A is strongly/weakly primed by speaker B, then speaker B is primed by speaker A to a similar extent. We conclude that syntactic processing is influenced by being in a communicative context, and that the nature of this influence is bi-directional: speakers are influenced by each other.

Abstract

The way we talk can influence how we are perceived by others. Whereas previous studies have started to explore the influence of social goals on syntactic alignment, in the current study, we additionally investigated whether syntactic alignment effectively influences conversation partners’ perception of the speaker. To this end, we developed a novel paradigm in which we can measure the effect of social goals on the strength of syntactic alignment for one participant (primed participant), while simultaneously obtaining usable social opinions about them from their conversation partner (the evaluator). In Study 1, participants’ desire to be rated favorably by their partner was manipulated by assigning pairs to a Control (i.e., primed participants did not know they were being evaluated) or Evaluation context (i.e., primed participants knew they were being evaluated). Surprisingly, results showed no significant difference in the strength with which primed participants aligned their syntactic choices with their partners’ choices. In a follow-up study, we used a Directed Evaluation context (i.e., primed participants knew they were being evaluated and were explicitly instructed to make a positive impression). However, again, there was no evidence supporting the hypothesis that participants’ desire to impress their partner influences syntactic alignment. With respect to the influence of syntactic alignment on perceived likeability by the evaluator, a negative relationship was reported in Study 1: the more primed participants aligned their syntactic choices with their partner, the more that partner decreased their likeability rating after the experiment. However, this effect was not replicated in the Directed Evaluation context of Study 2. In other words, our results do not support the conclusion that speakers’ desire to be liked affects how much they align their syntactic choices with their partner, nor is there convincing evidence that there is a reliable relationship between syntactic alignment and perceived likeability.

Abstract

Verbal interaction is one of the most frequent social interactions humans encounter on a daily basis. In the current paper, we zoom in on what the multi-brain approach has contributed, and can contribute in the future, to our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting verbal interaction. Indeed, since verbal interaction can only exist between individuals, it seems intuitive to focus analyses on inter-individual neural markers, i.e. between-brain neural coupling. To date, however, there is a severe lack of theoretically-driven, testable hypotheses about what between-brain neural coupling actually reflects. In this paper, we develop a testable hypothesis in which between-pair variation in between-brain neural coupling is of key importance. Based on theoretical frameworks and empirical data, we argue that the level of between-brain neural coupling reflects speaker-listener alignment at different levels of linguistic and extra-linguistic representation. We discuss the possibility that between-brain neural coupling could inform us about the highest level of inter-speaker alignment: mutual understanding

Abstract

The acquisition of language and speech is uniquely human, but how genetic changes might have adapted the nervous system to this capacity is not well understood. Two human-specific amino acid substitutions in the transcription factor forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) are outstanding mechanistic candidates, as they could have been positively selected during human evolution and as FOXP2 is the sole gene to date firmly linked to speech and language development. When these two substitutions are introduced into the endogenous Foxp2 gene of mice (Foxp2hum), cortico-basal ganglia circuits are specifically affected. Here we demonstrate marked effects of this humanization of Foxp2 on learning and striatal neuroplasticity. Foxp2hum/hum mice learn stimulus–response associations faster than their WT littermates in situations in which declarative (i.e., place-based) and procedural (i.e., response-based) forms of learning could compete during transitions toward proceduralization of action sequences. Striatal districts known to be differently related to these two modes of learning are affected differently in the Foxp2hum/hum mice, as judged by measures of dopamine levels, gene expression patterns, and synaptic plasticity, including an NMDA receptor-dependent form of long-term depression. These findings raise the possibility that the humanized Foxp2 phenotype reflects a different tuning of corticostriatal systems involved in declarative and procedural learning, a capacity potentially contributing to adapting the human brain for speech and language acquisition.

Abstract

Gender assignment relates to a native speaker's knowledge of the structure of the gender system of his/her language, allowing the speaker to select the appropriate gender for each noun. Whereas categorical assignment rules and exceptional gender assignment are well investigated, assignment regularities, i.e., tendencies in the gender distribution identified within the vocabulary of a language, are still controversial. The present study is an empirical contribution trying to shed light on the gender assignment system native German speakers have at their disposal. Participants presented with a category (e.g., predator) and a pair of gender-marked pseudowords (e.g., der Trelle vs. die Stisse) preferentially selected the pseudo-word preceded by the gender-marked determiner ‘‘associated’’ with the category (e.g., masculine). This finding suggests that semantic regularities might be part of the gender assignment system of native speakers.

Abstract

Speakers sometimes repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. We investigated the influence of verb-bound syntactic preferences on syntactic priming effects in response choices and response latencies for German ditransitive sentences. In the response choices we found inverse preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the less preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. In the response latencies we found positive preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the more preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. These findings provide further support for the idea that syntactic processing is lexically guided.

Abstract

We investigated whether structural priming of production latencies is sensitive to the same factors known to influence persistence of structural choices: structure preference, cumulativity and verb repetition. In two experiments, we found structural persistence only for passives (inverse preference effect) while priming effects on latencies were stronger for the actives (positive preference effect). We found structural persistence for passives to be influenced by immediate primes and long lasting cumulativity (all preceding primes) (Experiment 1), and to be boosted by verb repetition (Experiment 2). In latencies we found effects for actives were sensitive to long lasting cumulativity (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, in latencies we found priming for actives overall, while for passives the priming effects emerged as the cumulative exposure increased but only when also aided by verb repetition. These findings are consistent with the Two-stage Competition model, an integrated model of structural priming effects for sentence choice and latency

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that affects cognitive function and has been linked, both in patients and animal models, to dysfunction of the GABAergic system. However, the pathophysiological consequences of this dysfunction are not well understood. Here, we examined the GABAergic system in an animal model displaying schizophrenia-relevant features, the apomorphine-susceptible (APO-SUS) rat and its phenotypic counterpart, the apomorphine-unsusceptible (APO-UNSUS) rat at postnatal day 20-22. We found changes in the expression of the GABA-synthesizing enzyme GAD67 specifically in the prelimbic-but not the infralimbic region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), indicative of reduced inhibitory function in this region in APO-SUS rats. While we did not observe changes in basal synaptic transmission onto LII/III pyramidal cells in the mPFC of APO-SUS compared to APO-UNSUS rats, we report reduced paired-pulse ratios at longer inter-stimulus intervals. The GABA(B) receptor antagonist CGP 55845 abolished this reduction, indicating that the decreased paired-pulse ratio was caused by increased GABA(B) signaling. Consistently, we find an increased expression of the GABA(B1) receptor subunit in APO-SUS rats. Our data provide physiological evidence for increased presynaptic GABAB signaling in the mPFC of APO-SUS rats, further supporting an important role for the GABAergic system in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Abstract

This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic datafit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them as a kind of ethnopsychological theory about the body and its role for emotions, knowledge, thought, memory, and so on? Can these idioms be understood as representation of Trobriand ethnopsychological theory?

Abstract

Visiting the Trobriand Islands is advertised as being the highlight of a trip for tourists to Papua New Guinea who want, and can afford, to experience this 'ultimate adventure' with 'expeditionary cruises aboard the luxurious Melanesian Discoverer. The advertisements also promise that the tourists can 'meet the friendly people' and 'observe their unique culture, dances, and art'. During my research in Kaibola and Nuwebila, two neighbouring villages on the northern tip of Kiriwina Island, I studied and analysed the encounters of tourists with Trobriand Islanders, who sing and dance for the Europeans. The analyses of the islanders' tourist performances are based on Erving Goffman's now classic study The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which was first published in 1959. In this study Goffmann analyses the structures of social encounters from the perspective of the dramatic performance. The situational context within which the encounter between tourists and Trobriand Islanders takes place frames the tourists as the audience and the Trobriand Islanders as a team of performers. The inherent structure of the parts of the overall performance presented in the two villages can be summarized - within the framework of Goffman's approach - in analogy with the structure of drama. We find parts that constitute the 'exposition', the 'complication', and the 'resolution' of a drama; we even observe an equivalent to the importance of the 'Second Act Curtain' in modern drama theory. Deeper analyses of this encounter show that the motives of the performers and their 'art of impression management' are to control the impression their audience receives in this encounter situation. This analysis reveals that the Trobriand Islanders sell their customers the expected images of what Malinowski (1929) once termed the '...Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia' in a staged 'illusion'. With the conscious realization of the part they as performers play in this encounter, the Trobriand Islanders are in a position that is superior to that of their audience. Their merchandise or commodity is 'not real', as it is sold 'out of its true cultural context'. It is staged - and thus cannot be taken by any customer whatsoever because it (re)presents just an 'illusion'. The Trobriand Islanders know that neither they nor the core aspects of their culture will suffer any damage within a tourist encounter that is defined by the structure and the kind of their performance. Their pride and self-confidence enable them to bring their superior position into play in their dealings with tourists. With their indigenous humour, they even use this encounter for ridiculing their visitors. It turns out that the encounter is another manifestation of the Trobriand Islanders' self-consciousness, self-confidence, and pride with which they manage to protect core aspects of their cultural identity, while at the same time using and 'selling' parts of their culture as a kind of commodity to tourists.