Publications

Abstract

With the aim to clarify the definition of humans as “linguistic animals”, in the present paper I functionally distinguish three types of language competences: i) language as a general biological tool for communication, ii) “perceptual syntax”, iii) propositional language. Following this terminological distinction, I review pivotal findings on animals' communication systems, which constitute useful evidence for the investigation of the nature of three core components of humans' faculty of language: semantics, syntax, and theory of mind. In fact, despite the capacity to process and share utterances with an open-ended structure is uniquely human, some isolated components of our linguistic competence are in common with nonhuman animals. Therefore, as I argue in the present paper, the investigation of animals' communicative competence provide crucial insights into the range of cognitive constraints underlying humans' ability of language, enabling at the same time the analysis of its phylogenetic path as well as of the selective pressures that have led to its emergence.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the word-learning phenomenon utilizing a new model that integrates three processes: a) extracting a word out of a continuous sounds sequence, b) inducing referential meanings, c) mapping a word onto its intended referent, with the possibility to extend the acquired word over a potentially infinite sets of objects of the same semantic category, and over not-previously-heard utterances. Previous work has examined the role of statistical learning and/or of prosody in each of these processes separately. In order to examine the multilayered word-learning task, we integrate these two strands of investigation into a single approach. We have conducted the study on adults and included six different experimental conditions, each including specific perceptual manipulations of the signal. In condition 1, the only cue to word-meaning mapping was the co-occurrence between words and referents (“statistical cue”). This cue was present in all the conditions. In condition 2, we added infant-directed-speech (IDS) typical pitch enhancement as a marker of the target word and of the statistical cue. In condition 3 we placed IDS typical pitch enhancement on random words of the utterances, i.e. inconsistently matching the statistical cue. In conditions 4, 5 and 6 we manipulated respectively duration, a non-prosodic acoustic cue and a visual cue as markers of the target word and of the statistical cue. Systematic comparisons between learning performance in condition 1 with the other conditions revealed that the word-learning process is facilitated only when pitch prominence consistently marks the target word and the statistical cue…

Abstract

What is the key cognitive ability that makes humans unique among all the other animals? Our work aims at contributing to this research question adopting a comparative and philosophical approach to the origins of verbal language. In particular, we adopt three strands of analysis that are relevant in the context of comparative investigation on the the origins of verbal language: a) research on the evolutionary ‘homologies’, which provides information on the phylogenetic traits that humans and other primates share with their common ancestor; b) investigations on “analogous” traits, aimed at finding the evolutionary pressures that guided the emergence of the same biological traits that evolved independently in phylogenetically distant species; the ontogenetic development of the ability to produce and understand verbal language in human infants. Within this comparative approach, we focus on three key apsects that we addressed bridging recent empiric evidence on language processing with philosophical investigations on verbal language: (i) pattern processing as a biologocal precursor of syntax and algebraic rule acquisition, (ii) sound modulation as a guide to pattern comprehension in speech, animal vocalization and music, (iii) social strategies for mutual understanding, survival and group cohesion. We conclude emphasizing the interplay between these three sets of cognitive processes as a fundamental dimension grounding the emergence of the human ability for propositional language.

Abstract

This study investigates word-learning using a new experimental paradigm that integrates three processes: (a) extracting a word out of a continuous sound sequence, (b) inferring its referential meanings in context, (c) mapping the segmented word onto its broader intended referent, such as other objects of the same semantic category, and to novel utterances. Previous work has examined the role of statistical learning and/or of prosody in each of these processes separately. Here, we combine these strands of investigation into a single experimental approach, in which participants viewed a photograph belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing a complex, five-word utterance containing a target word. Six between-subjects conditions were tested with 20 adult participants each. In condition 1, the only cue to word-meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of word and referents. This statistical cue was present in all conditions. In condition 2, the target word was sounded at a higher pitch. In condition 3, random words were sounded at a higher pitch, creating an inconsistent cue. In condition 4, the duration of the target word was lengthened. In conditions 5 and 6, an extraneous acoustic cue and a visual cue were associated with the target word, respectively. Performance in this word-learning task was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence only when pitch prominence consistently marked the target word. We discuss implications for the pragmatic value of pitch marking as well as the relevance of our findings to language acquisition and language evolution.

Abstract

Research on pattern perception and rule learning, grounded in formal language theory (FLT) and using artificial grammar learning paradigms, has exploded in the last decade. This approach marries empirical research conducted by neuroscientists, psychologists and ethologists with the theory of computation and FLT, developed by mathematicians, linguists and computer scientists over the last century. Of particular current interest are comparative extensions of this work to non-human animals, and neuroscientific investigations using brain imaging techniques. We provide a short introduction to the history of these fields, and to some of the dominant hypotheses, to help contextualize these ongoing research programmes, and finally briefly introduce the papers in the current issue.

Abstract

Relative clauses are a syntactic device to create complex sentences and they make language structurally productive. Despite a considerable number of experimental studies, it is still largely unclear how children learn relative clauses and how these are processed in the language system. Researchers at the MPI for Psycholinguistics used a computational learning model to gain novel insights into these issues. The model explains the differential development of relative clauses in English as well as cross-linguistic differences

Abstract

In this study we investigated the availability of non-target language semantic features in bilingual speech processing. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to spoken sentences in their L2 (English) or L1 (Dutch). In Experiments 1 and 3 the sentences contained an interlingual homophone. The sentence context was either biased towards the target language meaning of the homophone (target biased), the non-target language meaning (non-target biased), or neither meaning of the homophone (fully incongruent). These conditions were each compared to a semantically congruent control condition. In L2 sentences we observed an N400 in the non-target biased condition that had an earlier offset than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In the target biased condition, a negativity emerged that was later than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In L1 contexts, neither target biased nor non-target biased homophones yielded significant N400 effects (compared to the control condition). In Experiments 2 and 4 the sentences contained a language switch to a non-target language word that could be semantically congruent or incongruent. Semantically incongruent words (switched, and non-switched) elicited an N400 effect. The N400 to semantically congruent language-switched words had an earlier offset than the N400 to incongruent words. Both congruent and incongruent language switches elicited a Late Positive Component (LPC). These findings show that bilinguals activate both meanings of interlingual homophones irrespective of their contextual fit. In L2 contexts, the target-language meaning of the homophone has a head start over the non-target language meaning. The target-language head start is also evident for language switches from both L2-to-L1 and L1-to-L2

Abstract

Using eye-tracking as a window on cognitive processing, this study investigates language effects on attention to motion events in a non-verbal task. We compare gaze allocation patterns by native speakers of German and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), two languages that differ with regard to the grammaticalization of temporal concepts. Findings of the non-verbal task, in which speakers watch dynamic event scenes while performing an auditory distracter task, are compared to gaze allocation patterns which were obtained in an event description task, using the same stimuli. We investigate whether differences in the grammatical aspectual systems of German and MSA affect the extent to which endpoints of motion events are linguistically encoded and visually processed in the two tasks. In the linguistic task, we find clear language differences in endpoint encoding and in the eye-tracking data (attention to event endpoints) as well: German speakers attend to and linguistically encode endpoints more frequently than speakers of MSA. The fixation data in the non-verbal task show similar language effects, providing relevant insights with regard to the language-and-thought debate. The present study is one of the few studies that focus explicitly on language effects related to grammatical concepts, as opposed to lexical concepts.

Abstract

No abstract is available for this article

Abstract

This chapter connects the grammar of the first person collective pronoun in the Cha’palaa language of Ecuador with its use in interaction for collective reference and social category membership attribution, addressing the problem posed by the fact that non-singular pronouns do not have distributional semantics (“speakers”) but are rather associational (“speaker and relevant associates”). It advocates a cross-disciplinary approach that jointly considers elements of linguistic form, situated usages of those forms in instances of interaction, and the broader ethnographic context of those instances. Focusing on large-scale and relatively stable categories such as racial and ethnic groups, it argues that looking at how speakers categorize themselves and others in the speech situation by using pronouns provides empirical data on the status of macro-social categories for members of a society

Abstract

In this event-related FMRI study we investigated the effect of five days of implicit acquisition on preference classification by means of an artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm based on the structural mere-exposure effect and preference classification using a simple right-linear unification grammar. This allowed us to investigate implicit AGL in a proper learning design by including baseline measurements prior to grammar exposure. After 5 days of implicit acquisition, the FMRI results showed activations in a network of brain regions including the inferior frontal (centered on BA 44/45) and the medial prefrontal regions (centered on BA 8/32). Importantly, and central to this study, the inclusion of a naive preference FMRI baseline measurement allowed us to conclude that these FMRI findings were the intrinsic outcomes of the learning process itself and not a reflection of a preexisting functionality recruited during classification, independent of acquisition. Support for the implicit nature of the knowledge utilized during preference classification on day 5 come from the fact that the basal ganglia, associated with implicit procedural learning, were activated during classification, while the medial temporal lobe system, associated with explicit declarative memory, was consistently deactivated. Thus, preference classification in combination with structural mere-exposure can be used to investigate structural sequence processing (syntax) in unsupervised AGL paradigms with proper learning designs.

Abstract

Understanding the progression of neurological diseases is vital for accurate and early diagnosis and treatment planning. We introduce a new characterization of disease progression, which describes the disease as a series of events, each comprising a significant change in patient state. We provide novel algorithms to learn the event ordering from heterogeneous measurements over a whole patient cohort and demonstrate using combined imaging and clinical data from familial-Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease cohorts. Results provide new detail in the progression pattern of these diseases, while confirming known features, and give unique insight into the variability of progression over the cohort. The key advantage of the new model and algorithms over previous progression models is that they do not require a priori division of the patients into clinical stages. The model and its formulation extend naturally to a wide range of other diseases and developmental processes and accommodate cross-sectional and longitudinal input data.

Abstract

Stroke-induced aphasia is associated with adverse effects on quality of life and the ability to return to work. For patients and clinicians the possibility of relying on valid predictors of recovery is an important asset in the clinical management of stroke-related impairment. Age, level of education, type and severity of initial symptoms are established predictors of recovery. However, anatomical predictors are still poorly understood. In this prospective longitudinal study, we intended to assess anatomical predictors of recovery derived from diffusion tractography of the perisylvian language networks. Our study focused on the arcuate fasciculus, a language pathway composed of three segments connecting Wernicke’s to Broca’s region (i.e. long segment), Wernicke’s to Geschwind’s region (i.e. posterior segment) and Broca’s to Geschwind’s region (i.e. anterior segment). In our study we were particularly interested in understanding how lateralization of the arcuate fasciculus impacts on severity of symptoms and their recovery. Sixteen patients (10 males; mean age 60 ± 17 years, range 28–87 years) underwent post stroke language assessment with the Revised Western Aphasia Battery and neuroimaging scanning within a fortnight from symptoms onset. Language assessment was repeated at 6 months. Backward elimination analysis identified a subset of predictor variables (age, sex, lesion size) to be introduced to further regression analyses. A hierarchical regression was conducted with the longitudinal aphasia severity as the dependent variable. The first model included the subset of variables as previously defined. The second model additionally introduced the left and right arcuate fasciculus (separate analysis for each segment). Lesion size was identified as the only independent predictor of longitudinal aphasia severity in the left hemisphere [beta = −0.630, t(−3.129), P = 0.011]. For the right hemisphere, age [beta = −0.678, t(–3.087), P = 0.010] and volume of the long segment of the arcuate fasciculus [beta = 0.730, t(2.732), P = 0.020] were predictors of longitudinal aphasia severity. Adding the volume of the right long segment to the first-level model increased the overall predictive power of the model from 28% to 57% [F(1,11) = 7.46, P = 0.02]. These findings suggest that different predictors of recovery are at play in the left and right hemisphere. The right hemisphere language network seems to be important in aphasia recovery after left hemispheric stroke.

Abstract

Background Stroke-induced aphasia is associated with adverse effects on quality of life and the ability to return to work. However, the predictors of recovery are still poorly understood. Anatomical variability of the arcuate fasciculus, connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, has been reported in the healthy population using diffusion tensor imaging tractography. In about 40% of the population the arcuate fasciculus is bilateral and this pattern is advantageous for certain language related functions, such as auditory verbal learning (Catani et al. 2007). Methods In this prospective longitudinal study, anatomical predictors of post-stroke aphasia recovery were investigated using diffusion tractography and arterial spin labelling. Patients An 18-subject strong aphasia cohort with first-ever unilateral left hemispheric middle cerebral artery infarcts underwent post stroke language (mean 5±5 days) and neuroimaging (mean 10±6 days) assessments and neuropsychological follow-up at six months. Ten of these patients were available for reassessment one year after symptom onset. Aphasia was assessed with the Western Aphasia Battery, which provides a global measure of severity (Aphasia Quotient, AQ). Results Better recover from aphasia was observed in patients with a right arcuate fasciculus [beta=.730, t(2.732), p=.020] (tractography) and increased fractional anisotropy in the right hemisphere (p<0.05) (Tract-based spatial statistics). Further, an increase in left hemisphere perfusion was observed after one year (p<0.01) (perfusion). Lesion analysis identified maximal overlay in the periinsular white matter (WM). Lesion-symptom mapping identified damage to periinsular structure as predictive for overall aphasia severity and damage to frontal lobe white matter as predictive of repetition deficits. Conclusion These findings suggest an important role for the right hemisphere language network in recovery from aphasia after left hemispheric stroke.

Abstract

The occipital and frontal lobes are anatomically distant yet functionally highly integrated to generate some of the most complex behaviour. A series of long associative fibres, such as the fronto-occipital networks, mediate this integration via rapid feed-forward propagation of visual input to anterior frontal regions and direct top–down modulation of early visual processing.

Despite the vast number of anatomical investigations a general consensus on the anatomy of fronto-occipital connections is not forthcoming. For example, in the monkey the existence of a human equivalent of the ‘inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus’ (iFOF) has not been demonstrated. Conversely, a ‘superior fronto-occipital fasciculus’ (sFOF), also referred to as ‘subcallosal bundle’ by some authors, is reported in monkey axonal tracing studies but not in human dissections.

In this study our aim is twofold. First, we use diffusion tractography to delineate the in vivo anatomy of the sFOF and the iFOF in 30 healthy subjects and three acallosal brains. Second, we provide a comprehensive review of the post-mortem and neuroimaging studies of the fronto-occipital connections published over the last two centuries, together with the first integral translation of Onufrowicz's original description of a human fronto-occipital fasciculus (1887) and Muratoff's report of the ‘subcallosal bundle’ in animals (1893).

Our tractography dissections suggest that in the human brain (i) the iFOF is a bilateral association pathway connecting ventro-medial occipital cortex to orbital and polar frontal cortex, (ii) the sFOF overlaps with branches of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and probably represents an ‘occipital extension’ of the SLF, (iii) the subcallosal bundle of Muratoff is probably a complex tract encompassing ascending thalamo-frontal and descending fronto-caudate connections and is therefore a projection rather than an associative tract.

In conclusion, our experimental findings and review of the literature suggest that a ventral pathway in humans, namely the iFOF, mediates a direct communication between occipital and frontal lobes. Whether the iFOF represents a unique human pathway awaits further ad hoc investigations in animals.

Abstract

Reading is an audiovisual process that requires the learning of systematic links between graphemes and phonemes. It is thus possible that reading impairments reflect an audiovisual processing deficit. In this study, we compared audiovisual processing in adults with developmental dyslexia and adults without reading difficulties. We focused on differences in cross-modal temporal sensitivity both for speech and for non-speech events. When compared to adults without reading difficulties, adults with developmental dyslexia presented a wider temporal window in which unsynchronized speech events were perceived as synchronized. No differences were found between groups for the non-speech events. These results suggests a deficit in dyslexia in the perception of cross-modal temporal synchrony for speech events.

Abstract

A spelling disorder that received much attention recently is the so-called graphemic buffer impairment. Caramazza et al. (1987) presented the first systematic case study of a patient with this disorder. Miceli & Capasso (2006) provide an extensive overview of the relevant literature. This article adds to the literature by describing a Dutch case, i.e. patient BM. We demonstrate how specific features of Dutch and Dutch orthography interact with the graphemic buffer impairment. In addition, we paid special attention to the influence of grapheme position on the patient’s spelling accuracy. For this we used, in contrast with most of the previous literature, the proportional accountability method described in Machtynger & Shallice (2009). We show that by using this method the underlying error distribution can be more optimally captured than with classical methods. The result of this analysis replicates two distributions that have been previously reported in the literature. Finally, attention will be paid to the role of phonology in the described disorder.

Abstract

Visual episodic memory encoding was investigated using echoplanar magnetic resonance imaging at 2.0 x 2.0 mm2 resolution and 1.0 mm section thickness, which allows for functional mapping of hippocampal, parahippocampal, and ventral occipital regions with reduced magnetic susceptibility artifact. The memory task was based on 54 image pairs each consisting of a complex visual scene and the face of one of six different photographers. A second group of subjects viewed the same set of images without memory instruction as well as a reversing checkerboard. Apart from visual activation in occipital cortical areas, episodic memory encoding revealed consistent activation in the parahippocampal gyrus but not in the hippocampus proper. This ®nding was most prominently evidenced in sagittal maps covering the right hippocampal formation. Mean activated volumes were 432±293 µl and 259±179 µl for intentional memory encoding and non-instructed viewing, respectively. In contrast, the checkerboard paradigm elicited pure visual activation without parahippocampal involvement.

Abstract

Mutations in the human FOXP2 gene cause impaired speech development and linguistic deficits, which have been best characterised in a large pedigree called the KE family. The encoded protein is highly conserved in many vertebrates and is expressed in homologous brain regions required for sensorimotor integration and motor-skill learning, in particular corticostriatal circuits. Independent studies in multiple species suggest that the striatum is a key site of FOXP2 action. Here, we used in vivo recordings in awake-behaving mice to investigate the effects of the KE-family mutation on the function of striatal circuits during motor-skill learning. We uncovered abnormally high ongoing striatal activity in mice carrying an identical mutation to that of the KE family. Furthermore, there were dramatic alterations in striatal plasticity during the acquisition of a motor skill, with most neurons in mutants showing negative modulation of firing rate, starkly contrasting with the predominantly positive modulation seen in control animals. We also observed striking changes in the temporal coordination of striatal firing during motor-skill learning in mutants. Our results indicate that FOXP2 is critical for the function of striatal circuits in vivo, which are important not only for speech but also for other striatal-dependent skills.

Abstract

Disruptions of the FOXP2 gene cause a rare speech and language disorder, a discovery that has opened up novel avenues for investigating the relevant neural pathways. FOXP2 shows remarkably high conservation of sequence and neural expression in diverse vertebrates, suggesting that studies in other species are useful in elucidating its functions. Here we describe how investigations of mice that carry disruptions of Foxp2 provide insights at multiple levels: molecules, cells, circuits and behaviour. Work thus far has implicated the gene in key processes including neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity, sensorimotor integration and motor-skill learning.

Abstract

Sleep plays an important role in neural reorganisation which underpins memory consolidation. The gradual replacement of
hippocampal binding of new memories with intracortical connections helps to link new memories to existing knowledge. This process appears to be faster for memories which fit more easily into existing schemas. Here we seek to investigate whether this more rapid consolidation of schema-conformant information is facilitated by
sleep, and the neural basis of this process.

Abstract

In many languages the future is in front and the past behind, but in some cultures (like Aymara) the past is in front. Is it possible to find this mapping as an alternative conceptualization of time in other cultures? If so, what are the factors that affect its choice out of the set of available alternatives? In a paper and pencil task, participants placed future or past events either in front or behind a character (a schematic head viewed from above). A sample of 24 Islamic participants (whose language also places the future in front and the past behind) tended to locate the past event in the front box more often than Spanish participants. This result might be due to the greater cultural value assigned to tradition in Islamic culture. The same pattern was found in a sample of Spanish elders (N = 58), what may support that conclusion. Alternatively, the crucial factor may be the amount of attention paid to the past. In a final study, young Spanish adults (N = 200) who had just answered a set of questions about their past showed the past-in-front pattern, whereas questions about their future exacerbated the future-in-front pattern. Thus, the attentional explanation was supported: attended events are mapped to front space in agreement with the experiential connection between attending and seeing. When attention is paid to the past, it tends to occupy the front location in spite of available alternative mappings in the language-culture.

Abstract

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function.

Abstract

Caused motion events (e.g. a boy pulls a box into a room) are basic events where an Agent (the boy) performs an Action (pulling) that causes a Figure (box) to move in a spatial Path (into) to a Goal (the room). These semantic elements are mapped onto lexical and syntactic structures differently across languages This dissertation investigates the encoding of caused motion events in Turkish, and the development of this encoding in speech and gesture. First, a linguistic analysis shows that Turkish does not fully fit into the expected typological patterns, and that the encoding of caused motion is determined by the fine-grained lexical semantics of a verb as well as the syntactic construction the verb is integrated into. A grammaticality judgment study conducted with adult Turkish speakers further establishes the fundamentals of the encoding patterns. An event description study compares adults’ verbal and gestural representations of caused motion to those of children aged 3 to 5. The findings indicate that although language-specificity is evident in children’s speech and gestures, the development of adult patterns takes time and occurs after the age of 5. A final study investigates a longitudinal video corpus of the spontaneous speech of Turkish-speaking children aged 1 to 3, and finds that language-specificity is evident from the start in both children’s speech and gesture. Apart from contributing to the literature on the development of Turkish, this dissertation furthers our understanding of the interaction between language-specificity and the multimodal expression of semantic information in event descriptions.

Abstract

Previous research on language development shows that children are tuned early on to the language-specific semantic and syntactic encoding of events in their native language. Here we ask whether language-specificity is also evident in children's early representations in gesture accompanying speech. In a longitudinal study, we examined the spontaneous speech and cospeech gestures of eight Turkish-speaking children aged one to three and focused on their caused motion event expressions. In Turkish, unlike in English, the main semantic elements of caused motion such as Action and Path can be encoded in the verb (e.g. sok- ‘put in’) and the arguments of a verb can be easily omitted. We found that Turkish-speaking children's speech indeed displayed these language-specific features and focused on verbs to encode caused motion. More interestingly, we found that their early gestures also manifested specificity. Children used iconic cospeech gestures (from 19 months onwards) as often as pointing gestures and represented semantic elements such as Action with Figure and/or Path that reinforced or supplemented speech in language-specific ways until the age of three. In the light of previous reports on the scarcity of iconic gestures in English-speaking children's early productions, we argue that the language children learn shapes gestures and how they get integrated with speech in the first three years of life.

Abstract

This paper investigates the lexical semantics and relative distributions of verbs describing putting and taking events in Kuuk Thaayorre, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York (Australia). Thaayorre put/take verbs can be subcategorised according to whether they may combine with an NP encoding a goal, an NP encoding a source, or both. Goal NPs are far more frequent in natural discourse: initial analysis shows 85% of goal-oriented verb tokens to be accompanied by a goal NP, while only 31% of source-oriented verb tokens were accompanied by a source. This finding adds weight to Ikegami’s (1987) assertion of the conceptual primacy of goals over sources, reflected in a cross-linguistic dissymmetry whereby goal-marking is less marked and more widely used than source-marking.

Abstract

Many contemporary texts include shortcuts, such as cu or phones4u. The aim of this study was to investigate how the meanings of shortcuts are retrieved. A primed lexical decision paradigm was used with shortcuts and the corresponding words as primes. The target word was associatively related to the meaning of the whole prime (cu/see you – goodbye), to a component of the prime (cu/see you – look), or unrelated to the prime. In Experiment 1, primes were presented for 57 ms. For both word and shortcut primes, responses were faster to targets preceded by whole-related than by unrelated primes. No priming from component-related primes was found. In Experiment 2, the prime duration was 1000 ms. The priming effect seen in Experiment 1 was replicated. Additionally, there was priming from component-related word primes, but not from component-related shortcut primes. These results indicate that the meanings of shortcuts can be retrieved without translating them first into corresponding words.

Abstract

This study investigated how sentence formulation is influenced by a preceding discourse context. In two eye-tracking experiments, participants described pictures of two-character transitive events in Dutch (Experiment 1) and Chinese (Experiment 2). Focus was manipulated by presenting questions before each picture. In the Neutral condition, participants first heard ‘What is happening here?’ In the Object or Subject Focus conditions, the questions asked about the Object or Subject character (What is the policeman stopping? Who is stopping the truck?). The target response was the same in all conditions (The policeman is stopping the truck). In both experiments, sentence formulation in the Neutral condition showed the expected pattern of speakers fixating the subject character (policeman) before the object character (truck). In contrast, in the focus conditions speakers rapidly directed their gaze preferentially only to the character they needed to encode to answer the question (the new, or focused, character). The timing of gaze shifts to the new character varied by language group (Dutch vs. Chinese): shifts to the new character occurred earlier when information in the question can be repeated in the response with the same syntactic structure (in Chinese but not in Dutch). The results show that discourse affects the timecourse of linguistic formulation in simple sentences and that these effects can be modulated by language-specific linguistic structures such as parallels in the syntax of questions and declarative sentences.

Abstract

Researchers have long avoided neurophysiological experiments of overt speech production due to the suspicion that artifacts caused by muscle activity may lead to a bad signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements. However, the need to actually produce speech may influence earlier processing and qualitatively change speech production processes and what we can infer from neurophysiological measures thereof. Recently, however, overt speech has been successfully investigated using EEG, MEG, and fMRI. The aim of this Research Topic is to draw together recent research on the neurophysiological basis of language production, with the aim of developing and extending theoretical accounts of the language production process. In this Research Topic of Frontiers in Language Sciences, we invite both experimental and review papers, as well as those about the latest methods in acquisition and analysis of overt language production data. All aspects of language production are welcome: i.e., from conceptualization to articulation during native as well as multilingual language production. Focus should be placed on using the neurophysiological data to inform questions about the processing stages of language production. In addition, emphasis should be placed on the extent to which the identified components of the electrophysiological signal (e.g., ERP/ERF, neuronal oscillations, etc.), brain areas or networks are related to language comprehension and other cognitive domains. By bringing together electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence on language production mechanisms, a more complete picture of the locus of language production processes and their temporal and neurophysiological signatures will emerge.

Abstract

The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers' online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.

Abstract

The constraints that govern acceptable phoneme combinations in speech perception and production have considerable plasticity. We addressed whether sleep influences the acquisition of new constraints and their integration into the speech-production system. Participants repeated sequences of syllables in which two phonemes were artificially restricted to syllable onset or syllable coda, depending on the vowel in that sequence. After 48 sequences, participants either had a 90-min nap or remained awake. Participants then repeated 96 sequences so implicit constraint learning could be examined, and then were tested for constraint generalization in a forced-choice task. The sleep group, but not the wake group, produced speech errors at test that were consistent with restrictions on the placement of phonemes in training. Furthermore, only the sleep group generalized their learning to new materials. Polysomnography data showed that implicit constraint learning was associated with slow-wave sleep. These results show that sleep facilitates the integration of new linguistic knowledge with existing production constraints. These data have relevance for systems-consolidation models of sleep.

Abstract

Print Friendly XML Gebre, Binyam Gebrekidan, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, binyamgebrekidan.gebre [at] mpi.nl Wittenburg, Peter, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, peter.wittenburg [at] mpi.nl Introduction Many gesture and sign language researchers manually annotate video recordings to systematically categorize, analyze and explain their observations. The number and kinds of annotations are so diverse and unpredictable that any attempt at developing non-adaptive automatic annotation systems is usually less effective. The trend in the literature has been to develop models that work for average users and for average scenarios. This approach has three main disadvantages. First, it is impossible to know beforehand all the patterns that could be of interest to all researchers. Second, it is practically impossible to find enough training examples for all patterns. Third, it is currently impossible to learn a model that is robustly applicable across all video quality-recording variations.

Abstract

We present a solution to the problem of online speaker/signer diarization - the task of determining "who spoke/signed when?". Our solution is based on the idea that gestural activity (hands and body movement) is highly correlated with uttering activity. This correlation is necessarily true for sign languages and mostly true for spoken languages. The novel part of our solution is the use of motion history images (MHI) as a likelihood measure for probabilistically detecting uttering activities. MHI is an efficient representation of where and how motion occurred for a fixed period of time. We conducted experiments on 4.9 hours of a publicly available dataset (the AMI meeting data) and 1.4 hours of sign language dataset (Kata Kolok data). The best performance obtained is 15.70% for sign language and 31.90% for spoken language (measurements are in DER). These results show that our solution is applicable in real-world applications like video conferences.

Abstract

We demonstrate how the problem of speaker diarization can be solved using both gesture and speaker parametric models. The novelty of our solution is that we approach the speaker diarization problem as a speaker recognition problem after learning speaker models from speech samples corresponding to gestures (the occurrence of gestures indicates the presence of speech and the location of gestures indicates the identity of the speaker). This new approach offers many advantages: comparable state-of-the-art performance, faster computation and more adaptability. In our implementation, parametric models are used to model speakers' voice and their gestures: more specifically, Gaussian mixture models are used to model the voice characteristics of each person and all persons, and gamma distributions are used to model gestural activity based on features extracted from Motion History Images. Tests on 4.24 hours of the AMI meeting data show that our solution makes DER score improvements of 19% on speech-only segments and 4% on all segments including silence (the comparison is with the AMI system).

Abstract

Automatic annotation of gesture strokes is important for many gesture and sign language researchers. The unpredictable diversity of human gestures and video recording conditions require that we adopt a more adaptive case-by-case annotation model. In this paper, we present a work-in progress annotation model that allows a user to a) track hands/face b) extract features c) distinguish strokes from non-strokes. The hands/face tracking is done with color matching algorithms and is initialized by the user. The initialization process is supported with immediate visual feedback. Sliders are also provided to support a user-friendly adjustment of skin color ranges. After successful initialization, features related to positions, orientations and speeds of tracked hands/face are extracted using unique identifiable features (corners) from a window of frames and are used for training a learning algorithm. Our preliminary results for stroke detection under non-ideal video conditions are promising and show the potential applicability of our methodology.

Abstract

Prior research on language identification focused primarily on text and speech. In this paper, we focus on the visual modality and present a method for identifying sign languages solely from short video samples. The method is trained on unlabelled video data (unsupervised feature learning) and using these features, it is trained to discriminate between six sign languages (supervised learning). We ran experiments on video samples involving 30 signers (running for a total of 6 hours). Using leave-one-signer-out cross-validation, our evaluation on short video samples shows an average best accuracy of 84%. Given that sign languages are under-resourced, unsupervised feature learning techniques are the right tools and our results indicate that this is realistic for sign language identification.

Abstract

In principle mutational records make it possible to estimate frequencies of disease alleles (q) for autosomal recessive disorders using a novel approach based on the calculation of the Homozygosity Index (HI), i.e., the proportion of homozygous patients, which is complementary to the proportion of compound heterozygous patients P(CH). In other words, the rarer the disorder, the higher will be the HI and the lower will be the P(CH). To test this hypothesis we used mutational records of individuals affected with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) and Phenylketonuria (PKU), born to either consanguineous or apparently unrelated parents from six population samples of the Mediterranean region. Despite the unavailability of precise values of the inbreeding coefficient for the general population, which are needed in the case of apparently unrelated parents, our estimates of q are very similar to those of previous descriptive epidemiological studies. Finally, we inferred from simulation studies that the minimum sample size needed to use this approach is 25 patients either with unrelated or first cousin parents. These results show that the HI can be used to produce a ranking order of allele frequencies of autosomal recessive disorders, especially in populations with high rates of consanguineous marriages.

Abstract

Reading and language abilities are heritable traits that are likely to share some genetic influences with each other. To identify pleiotropic genetic variants affecting these traits, we first performed a Genome-wide Association Scan (GWAS) meta-analysis using three richly characterised datasets comprising individuals with histories of reading or language problems, and their siblings. GWAS was performed in a total of 1862 participants using the first principal component computed from several quantitative measures of reading- and language-related abilities, both before and after adjustment for performance IQ. We identified novel suggestive associations at the SNPs rs59197085 and rs5995177 (uncorrected p≈10−7 for each SNP), located respectively at the CCDC136/FLNC and RBFOX2 genes. Each of these SNPs then showed evidence for effects across multiple reading and language traits in univariate association testing against the individual traits. FLNC encodes a structural protein involved in cytoskeleton remodelling, while RBFOX2 is an important regulator of alternative splicing in neurons. The CCDC136/FLNC locus showed association with a comparable reading/language measure in an independent sample of 6434 participants from the general population, although involving distinct alleles of the associated SNP. Our datasets will form an important part of on-going international efforts to identify genes contributing to reading and language skills.

Abstract

Recognizing the speech acts in our interlocutors’ utterances is a crucial prerequisite for conversation. However, it is not a trivial task given that the form and content of utterances is frequently underspecified for this level of meaning. In the present study we investigate participants’ competence in categorizing speech acts in such action-underspecific sentences and explore the time-course of speech act inferencing using a self-paced reading paradigm. The results demonstrate that participants are able to categorize the speech acts with very high accuracy, based on limited context and without any prosodic information. Furthermore, the results show that the exact same sentence is processed differently depending on the speech act it performs, with reading times starting to differ already at the first word. These results indicate that participants are very good at “getting” the speech acts, opening up a new arena for experimental research on action recognition in conversation.

Abstract

Previous studies have described the existence of a phonotactic bias called the Labial–Coronal (LC) bias, corresponding to a tendency to produce more words beginning with a labial consonant followed by a coronal consonant (i.e. “bat”) than the opposite CL pattern (i.e. “tap”). This bias has initially been interpreted in terms of articulatory constraints of the human speech production system. However, more recently, it has been suggested that this presumably language-general LC bias in production might be accompanied by LC and CL biases in perception, acquired in infancy on the basis of the properties of the linguistic input. The present study investigates the origins of these perceptual biases, testing infants learning Japanese, a language that has been claimed to possess more CL than LC sequences, and comparing them with infants learning French, a language showing a clear LC bias in its lexicon. First, a corpus analysis of Japanese IDS and ADS revealed the existence of an overall LC bias, except for plosive sequences in ADS, which show a CL bias across counts. Second, speech preference experiments showed a perceptual preference for CL over LC plosive sequences (all recorded by a Japanese speaker) in 13- but not in 7- and 10-month-old Japanese-learning infants (Experiment 1), while revealing the emergence of an LC preference between 7 and 10 months in French-learning infants, using the exact same stimuli. These crosslinguistic behavioral differences, obtained with the same stimuli, thus reflect differences in processing in two populations of infants, which can be linked to differences in the properties of the lexicons of their respective native languages. These findings establish that the emergence of a CL/LC bias is related to exposure to a linguistic input.

Abstract

Humans appear to rely on spatial mappings to represent and describe concepts. The conceptual cuing effect describes the tendency for participants to orient attention to a spatial location following the presentation of an unrelated cue word (e.g., orienting attention upward after reading the word sky). To date, such effects have predominately been explained within the embodied cognition framework, according to which people’s attention is oriented on the basis of prior experience (e.g., sky → up via perceptual simulation). However, this does not provide a compelling explanation for how abstract words have the same ability to orient attention. Why, for example, does dream also orient attention upward? We report on an experiment that investigated the role of language use (specifically, collocation between concept words and spatial words for up and down dimensions) and found that it predicted the cuing effect. The results suggest that language usage patterns may be instrumental in explaining conceptual cuing.

Abstract

Our recent studies suggest that congenitally blind adults have severely impaired thresholds in an auditory spatial bisection task, pointing to the importance of vision in constructing complex auditory spatial maps (Gon etal., 2014). To explore strategies that may improve the auditory spatial sense in visually impaired people, we investigated the impact of tactile feedback on spatial auditory localization in 48 blindfolded sighted subjects. We measured auditory spatial bisection thresholds before and after training, either with tactile feedback, verbal feedback, or no feedback. Audio thresholds were first measured with a spatial bisection task: subjects judged whether the second sound of a three sound sequence was spatially closer to the first or the third sound. The tactile feedback group underwent two audio-tactile feedback sessions of 100 trials, where each auditory trial was followed by the same spatial sequence played on the subject's forearm; auditory spatial bisection thresholds were evaluated after each session. In the verbal feedback condition, the positions of the sounds were verbally reported to the subject after each feedback trial.The no feedback group did the same sequence of trials, with no feedback. Performance improved significantly only after audio-tactile feedback. The results suggest that direct tactile feedback interacts with the auditory spatial localization system, possibly by a process of cross-sensory recalibration. Control tests with the subject rotated suggested that this effect occurs only when the tactile and acoustic sequences are spatially congruent. Our results suggest that the tactile system can be used to recalibrate the auditory sense of space. These results encourage the possibility of designing rehabilitation programs to help blind persons establish a robust auditory sense of space, through training with the tactile modality.

Abstract

The involvement of neural motor and sensory systems in the processing of language has so far mainly been studied in native (L1) speakers. In an fMRI experiment, we investigated whether non-native (L2) semantic representations are rich enough to allow for activation in motor and somatosensory brain areas. German learners of Dutch and a control group of Dutch native speakers made lexical decisions about visually presented Dutch motor and non-motor verbs. Region-of-interest (ROI) and whole-brain analyses indicated that L2 speakers, like L1 speakers, showed significantly increased activation for simple motor compared to non-motor verbs in motor and somatosensory regions. This effect was not restricted to Dutch-German cognate verbs, but was also present for non-cognate verbs. These results indicate that L2 semantic representations are rich enough for motor-related activations to develop in motor and somatosensory areas.

Abstract

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) long-lag priming study, we investigated the processing of Dutch semantically transparent, derived prefix verbs. In such words, the meaning of the word as a whole can be deduced from the meanings of its parts, e.g., wegleggen “put aside.” Many behavioral and some fMRI studies suggest that native (L1) speakers decompose transparent derived words. The brain region usually implicated in morphological decomposition is the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). In non-native (L2) speakers, the processing of transparent derived words has hardly been investigated, especially in fMRI studies, and results are contradictory: some studies find more reliance on holistic (i.e., non-decompositional) processing by L2 speakers; some find no difference between L1 and L2 speakers. In this study, we wanted to find out whether Dutch transparent derived prefix verbs are decomposed or processed holistically by German L2 speakers of Dutch. Half of the derived verbs (e.g., omvallen “fall down”) were preceded by their stem (e.g., vallen “fall”) with a lag of 4–6 words (“primed”); the other half (e.g., inslapen “fall asleep”) were not (“unprimed”). L1 and L2 speakers of Dutch made lexical decisions on these visually presented verbs. Both region of interest analyses and whole-brain analyses showed that there was a significant repetition suppression effect for primed compared to unprimed derived verbs in the LIFG. This was true both for the analyses over L2 speakers only and for the analyses over the two language groups together. The latter did not reveal any interaction with language group (L1 vs. L2) in the LIFG. Thus, L2 speakers show a clear priming effect in the LIFG, an area that has been associated with morphological decomposition. Our findings are consistent with the idea that L2 speakers engage in decomposition of transparent derived verbs rather than processing them holistically

Abstract

Adopting the paradigm of a study conducted with chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes (Melis et al. 2006, Journal of Comparative Psychology, 120, 154–162), we investigated orang-utans', Pongo pygmaeus, understanding of others' visual perspectives. More specifically, we examined whether orang-utans would adjust their behaviour in a way that prevents a human competitor from seeing them steal a piece of food. In the task, subjects had to reach through one of two opposing Plexiglas tunnels in order to retrieve a food reward. Both rewards were also physically accessible to a human competitor sitting opposite the subject. Subjects always had the possibility of reaching one piece of food that was outside the human's line of sight. This was because either the human was oriented to one, but not the other, reward or because one tunnel was covered by an opaque barrier and the other remained transparent. In the situation in which the human was oriented towards one reward, the orang-utans successfully avoided the tunnel that the competitor was facing. If one tunnel was covered, they marginally preferred to reach through the opaque versus the transparent tunnel. However, they did so frequently after initially inspecting the transparent tunnel (then switching to the opaque one). Considering only the subjects' initial inspections, they chose randomly between the opaque and transparent tunnel, indicating that their final decision to reach was probably driven by a more egocentric behavioural rule. Overall the results suggest that orang-utans have a limited understanding of others' perspectives, relying mainly on cues from facial and bodily orientation and egocentric rules when making such judgements.

Abstract

The left and right sides of the human brain are specialized for different kinds of information processing, and much of our cognition is lateralized to an extent towards one side or the other. Handedness is a reflection of nervous system lateralization. Roughly ten percent of people are mixed- or left-handed, and they show an elevated rate of reductions or reversals of some cerebral functional asymmetries compared to right-handers. Brain anatomical correlates of left-handedness have also been suggested. However, the relationships of left-handedness to brain structure and function remain far from clear. We carried out a comprehensive analysis of cortical surface area differences between 106 left-handed subjects and 1960 right-handed subjects, measured using an automated method of regional parcellation (FreeSurfer, Destrieux atlas). This is the largest study sample that has so far been used in relation to this issue. No individual cortical region showed an association with left-handedness that survived statistical correction for multiple testing, although there was a nominally significant association with the surface area of a previously implicated region: the left precentral sulcus. Identifying brain structural correlates of handedness may prove useful for genetic studies of cerebral asymmetries, as well as providing new avenues for the study of relations between handedness, cerebral lateralization and cognition.

Abstract

Functional and anatomical asymmetries are prevalent features of the human brain, linked to gender, handedness, and cognition. However, little is known about the neurodevelopmental processes involved. In zebrafish, asymmetries arise in the diencephalon before extending within the central nervous system. We aimed to identify genes involved in the development of subtle, left-right volumetric asymmetries of human subcortical structures using large datasets. We first tested the feasibility of measuring left-right volume differences in such large-scale samples, as assessed by two automated methods of subcortical segmentation (FSL|FIRST and FreeSurfer), using data from 235 subjects who had undergone MRI twice. We tested the agreement between the first and second scan, and the agreement between the segmentation methods, for measures of bilateral volumes of six subcortical structures and the hippocampus, and their volumetric asymmetries. We also tested whether there were biases introduced by left-right differences in the regional atlases used by the methods, by analyzing left-right flipped images. While many bilateral volumes were measured well (scan-rescan r = 0.6-0.8), most asymmetries, with the exception of the caudate nucleus, showed lower repeatabilites. We meta-analyzed genome-wide association scan results for caudate nucleus asymmetry in a combined sample of 3,028 adult subjects but did not detect associations at genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10-8). There was no enrichment of genetic association in genes involved in left-right patterning of the viscera. Our results provide important information for researchers who are currently aiming to carry out large-scale genome-wide studies of subcortical and hippocampal volumes, and their asymmetries

Abstract

A large body of evidence has shown that visual context information can rapidly modulate language comprehension for concrete sentences and when it is mediated by a referential or a lexical-semantic link. What has not yet been examined is whether visual context can also modulate comprehension of abstract sentences incrementally when it is neither referenced by, nor lexically associated with, the sentence. Three eye-tracking reading experiments examined the effects of spatial distance between words (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2 and 3) on participants’ reading times for sentences that convey similarity or difference between two abstract nouns (e.g., ‘Peace and war are certainly different...’). Before reading the sentence, participants inspected a visual context with two playing cards that moved either far apart or close together. In Experiment 1, the cards turned and showed the first two nouns of the sentence (e.g., ‘peace’, ‘war’). In Experiments 2 and 3, they turned but remained blank. Participants’ reading times at the adjective (Experiment 1: first-pass reading time; Experiment 2: total times) and at the second noun phrase (Experiment 3: first-pass times) were faster for sentences that expressed similarity when the preceding words/objects were close together (vs. far apart) and for sentences that expressed dissimilarity when the preceding words/objects were far apart (vs. close together). Thus, spatial distance between words or entirely unrelated objects can rapidly and incrementally modulate the semantic interpretation of abstract sentences.

Abstract

What does semantic similarity between two concepts mean? How could we measure it? The way in which semantic similarity is calculated might differ depending on the theoretical notion of semantic representation. In an eye-tracking reading experiment, we investigated whether two widely used semantic similarity measures (based on featural or distributional representations) have distinctive effects on sentence reading times. In other words, we explored whether these measures of semantic similarity differ qualitatively. In addition, we examined whether visually perceived spatial distance interacts with either or both of these measures. Our results showed that the effect of featural and distributional representations on reading times can differ both in direction and in its time course. Moreover, both featural and distributional information interacted with spatial distance, yet in different sentence regions and reading measures. We conclude that featural and distributional representations are distinct components of semantic representation.

Abstract

Recent evidence from eye tracking during reading showed that non-referential spatial distance presented in a visual context can modulate semantic interpretation of similarity relations rapidly and incrementally. In two eye-tracking reading experiments we extended these findings in two important ways; first, we examined whether other semantic domains (social relations) could also be rapidly influenced by spatial distance during sentence comprehension. Second, we aimed to further specify how abstract language is co-indexed with spatial information by varying the syntactic structure of sentences between experiments. Spatial distance rapidly modulated reading times as a function of the social relation expressed by a sentence. Moreover, our findings suggest that abstract language can be co-indexed as soon as critical information becomes available for the reader.

Abstract

PURPOSE: Time spent in "sports/outdoor activity" has shown a negative association with incident myopia during childhood. We investigated the association of incident myopia with time spent outdoors and physical activity separately. METHODS: Participants in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were assessed by noncycloplegic autorefraction at ages 7, 10, 11, 12, and 15 years, and classified as myopic (≤-1 diopters) or as emmetropic/hyperopic (≥-0.25 diopters) at each visit (N = 4,837-7,747). Physical activity at age 11 years was measured objectively using an accelerometer, worn for 1 week. Time spent outdoors was assessed via a parental questionnaire administered when children were aged 8-9 years. Variables associated with incident myopia were examined using Cox regression. RESULTS: In analyses using all available data, both time spent outdoors and physical activity were associated with incident myopia, with time outdoors having the larger effect. The results were similar for analyses restricted to children classified as either nonmyopic or emmetropic/hyperopic at age 11 years. Thus, for children nonmyopic at age 11, the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval, CI) for incident myopia was 0.66 (0.47-0.93) for a high versus low amount of time spent outdoors, and 0.87 (0.76-0.99) per unit standard deviation above average increase in moderate/vigorous physical activity. CONCLUSION: Time spent outdoors was predictive of incident myopia independently of physical activity level. The greater association observed for time outdoors suggests that the previously reported link between "sports/outdoor activity" and incident myopia is due mainly to its capture of information relating to time outdoors rather than physical activity.

Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Swedish. Drawing on elicited spoken data, it provides a unified approach to caused motion descriptions. The results show uniform syntactic behaviour of placement and removal descriptions and a consistent asymmetry between placement and removal in the semantic specificity of verbs. The results also reveal three further semantic patterns, pertaining to the nature of the relationship between Figure and Ground, that appear to account for how these event types are characterised, viz. whether the Ground is represented by a body part of the Agent; whether the Figure is contained within the Ground; or whether it is supported by the Ground.

Abstract

Discussions about the adult L2 learning capacity often take as their starting point stages where considerable L2 knowledge has already been accumulated. This paper probes the absolute earliest stages of learning and investigates what lexical knowledge adult learners can extract from complex, continuous speech in an unknown language after minimal exposure and without any help. Dutch participants were exposed to naturalistic but controlled audiovisual input in Mandarin Chinese, in which item frequency and gestural highlighting were manipulated. The results from a word recognition task showed that adults are able to draw on frequency to recognize disyllabic words appearing only eight times in continuous speech. The findings from a sound-to-picture matching task revealed that the mapping of meaning to word form requires a combination of cues: disyllabic words accompanied by a gesture were correctly assigned meaning after eight encounters. Overall, the study suggests that the adult learning mechanism is a considerably more powerful than typically assumed in the SLA literature drawing on frequency, gestural cues and syllable structure. Even in the absence of pre-existing knowledge about cognates and sound system to bootstrap and boost learning, it deals efficiently with very little, very complex input.

Abstract

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” (Weiser 1991, S. 94). – Die Behauptung stammt aus einem vielzitierten Text von Mark Weiser, ehemals Chief Technology Officer am berühmten Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), wo nicht nur einige bedeutende computertechnische Innovationen ihren Ursprung hatten, sondern auch grundlegende anthropologische Einsichten zum Umgang mit technischen Artefakten gewonnen wurden.1 In einem populärwissenschaftlichen Artikel mit dem Titel „The Computer for the 21st Century” entwarf Weiser 1991 die Vision einer Zukunft, in der wir nicht mehr mit einem einzelnen PC an unserem Arbeitsplatz umgehen – vielmehr seien wir in jedem Raum umgeben von hunderten elektronischer Vorrichtungen, die untrennbar in Alltagsgegenstände eingebettet und daher in unserer materiellen Umwelt gleichsam „verschwunden“ sind. Dabei ging es Weiser nicht allein um das ubiquitäre Phänomen, das in der Medientheorie als „Transparenz der Medien“ bekannt ist2 oder in allgemeineren Theorien der Alltagserfahrung als eine selbstverständliche Verwobenheit des Menschen mit den Dingen, die uns in ihrem Sinn vertraut und praktisch „zuhanden“ sind.3 Darüber hinaus zielte Weisers Vision darauf, unsere bereits existierende Umwelt durch computerlesbare Daten zu erweitern und in die Operationen eines solchen allgegenwärtigen Netzwerks alltägliche Praktiken gleichsam lückenlos zu integrieren: In der Welt, die Weiser entwirft, öffnen sich Türen für denjenigen, der ein bestimmtes elektronisches Abzeichen trägt, begrüßen Räume Personen, die sie betreten, mit Namen, passen sich Computerterminals an die Präferenzen individueller Nutzer an usw. (Weiser 1991, S. 99).

Abstract

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” (Weiser 1991, S. 94). – Die Behauptung stammt aus einem vielzitierten Text von Mark Weiser, ehemals Chief Technology Officer am berühmten Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), wo nicht nur einige bedeutende computertechnische Innovationen ihren Ursprung hatten, sondern auch grundlegende anthropologische Einsichten zum Umgang mit technischen Artefakten gewonnen wurden.1 In einem populärwissenschaftlichen Artikel mit dem Titel „The Computer for the 21st Century” entwarf Weiser 1991 die Vision einer Zukunft, in der wir nicht mehr mit einem einzelnen PC an unserem Arbeitsplatz umgehen – vielmehr seien wir in jedem Raum umgeben von hunderten elektronischer Vorrichtungen, die untrennbar in Alltagsgegenstände eingebettet und daher in unserer materiellen Umwelt gleichsam „verschwunden“ sind. Dabei ging es Weiser nicht allein um das ubiquitäre Phänomen, das in der Medientheorie als „Transparenz der Medien“ bekannt ist2 oder in allgemeineren Theorien der Alltagserfahrung als eine selbstverständliche Verwobenheit des Menschen mit den Dingen, die uns in ihrem Sinn vertraut und praktisch „zuhanden“ sind.3 Darüber hinaus zielte Weisers Vision darauf, unsere bereits existierende Umwelt durch computerlesbare Daten zu erweitern und in die Operationen eines solchen allgegenwärtigen Netzwerks alltägliche Praktiken gleichsam lückenlos zu integrieren: In der Welt, die Weiser entwirft, öffnen sich Türen für denjenigen, der ein bestimmtes elektronisches Abzeichen trägt, begrüßen Räume Personen, die sie betreten, mit Namen, passen sich Computerterminals an die Präferenzen individueller Nutzer an usw. (Weiser 1991, S. 99).

Abstract

The standard for the analysis of distorted voices is perceptual rating of read-out texts or spontaneous speech. Automatic voice evaluation, however, is usually done on stable sections of sustained vowels. In this paper, text-based and established vowel-based analysis are compared with respect to their ability to measure hoarseness and its subclasses. 73 hoarse patients (48.3±16.8 years) uttered the vowel /e/ and read the German version of the text “The North Wind and the Sun”. Five speech therapists and physicians rated roughness, breathiness, and hoarseness according to the German RBH evaluation scheme. The best human-machine correlations were obtained for measures based on the Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP; up to |r | = 0.73). Support Vector Regression (SVR) on CPP-based measures and prosodic features improved the results further to r ≈0.8 and confirmed that automatic voice evaluation should be performed on a text recording.

Abstract

Geen andere soort dan homo sapiens heeft in de loop van zijn evolutionaire geschiedenis een communicatiesysteem ontwikkeld waarin een eindig aantal symbolen samen met een reeks van regels voor het combineren daarvan een oneindig aantal uitdrukkingen mogelijk maakt. Dit natuurlijke taalsysteem stelt leden van onze soort in staat gedachten een uiterlijke vorm te geven en uit te wisselen met de sociale groep en, door de uitvinding van schriftsystemen, met de gehele samenleving. Spraak en taal zijn effectieve middelen voor het behoud van sociale cohesie in samenlevingen waarvan de groepsgrootte en de complexe sociale organisatie van dien aard is dat dit niet langer kan door middel van ‘vlooien’, de wijze waarop onze genetische buren, de primaten van de oude wereld, sociale cohesie bevorderen [1,2].

Abstract

Current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of language are discussed that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke–Lichtheim–Geschwind model. More areas than Broca's and Wernicke's region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Three different accounts of the role of Broca's area in language are discussed. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication.

Abstract

A hallmark of human language is that we combine lexical building blocks retrieved from memory in endless new ways. This combinatorial aspect of language is referred to as unification. Here we focus on the neurobiological infrastructure for syntactic and semantic unification. Unification is characterized by a high-speed temporal profile including both prediction and integration of retrieved lexical elements. A meta-analysis of numerous neuroimaging studies reveals a clear dorsal/ventral gradient in both left inferior frontal cortex and left posterior temporal cortex, with dorsal foci for syntactic processing and ventral foci for semantic processing. In addition to core areas for unification, further networks need to be recruited to realize language-driven communication to its full extent. One example is the theory of mind network, which allows listeners and readers to infer the intended message (speaker meaning) from the coded meaning of the linguistic utterance. This indicates that sensorimotor simulation cannot handle all of language processing.

Abstract

We review data and hypotheses dealing with the mental representations for perceived and produced speech that infants build and use over the course of learning a language. In the early stages of speech perception and vocal production, before the emergence of a receptive or a productive lexicon, the dominant picture emerging from the literature suggests rather non-analytic representations based on units of the size of the syllable: Young children seem to parse speech into syllable-sized units in spite of their ability to detect sound equivalence based on shared phonetic features. Once a productive lexicon has emerged, word form representations are initially rather underspecified phonetically but gradually become more specified with lexical growth, up to the phoneme level. The situation is different for the receptive lexicon, in which phonetic specification for consonants and vowels seem to follow different developmental paths. Consonants in stressed syllables are somewhat well specified already at the first signs of a receptive lexicon, and become even better specified with lexical growth. Vowels seem to follow a different developmental path, with increasing flexibility throughout lexical development. Thus, children come to exhibit a consonant vowel asymmetry in lexical representations, which is clear in adult representations.

Abstract

In the recent past the work on large-scale linguistic distributions across the globe has intensified considerably. Work on macro-areal relationships in Africa (Güldemann, 2010) suggests that the shape of convergence areas may be determined by climatic factors and geophysical features such as mountains, water bodies, coastlines, etc. Worldwide data is now available for geophysical features as well as linguistic features, including numeral systems and basic constituent order. We explore the possibility that the shape of areal aggregations of individual features in these two linguistic domains correlates with Köppen-Geiger climate zones. Furthermore, we test the hypothesis that the shape of such areal feature aggregations is determined by the contour of adjacent geophysical features like mountain ranges or coastlines. In these first basic tests, we do not find clear evidence that either Köppen-Geiger climate zones or the contours of geophysical features are major predictors for the linguistic data at hand

Abstract

While the notion of the ‘area’ or ‘Sprachbund’ has a long history in linguistics, with geographically-defined regions frequently cited as a useful means to explain typological distributions, the problem of delimiting areas has not been well addressed. Lists of general-purpose, largely independent ‘macro-areas’ (typically continent size) have been proposed as a step to rule out contact as an explanation for various large-scale linguistic phenomena. This squib points out some problems in some of the currently widely-used predetermined areas, those found in the World Atlas of Language Structures (Haspelmath et al., 2005). Instead, we propose a principled division of the world’s landmasses into six macro-areas that arguably have better geographical independence properties

Abstract

Originally published in Diachronica 27:2 (2010) One attempt at explaining why some language families are large (while others are small) is the hypothesis that the families that are now large became large because their ancestral speakers had a technological advantage, most often agriculture. Variants of this idea are referred to as the Language Farming Dispersal Hypothesis. Previously, detailed language family studies have uncovered various supporting examples and counterexamples to this idea. In the present paper I weigh the evidence from ALL attested language families. For each family, I use the number of member languages as a measure of cardinal size, member language coordinates to measure geospatial size and ethnographic evidence to assess subsistence status. This data shows that, although agricultural families tend to be larger in cardinal size, their size is hardly due to the simple presence of farming. If farming were responsible for language family expansions, we would expect a greater east-west geospatial spread of large families than is actually observed. The data, however, is compatible with weaker versions of the farming dispersal hypothesis as well with models where large families acquire farming because of their size, rather than the other way around.

Abstract

A series of articles by Ross (1995, 2001, 2005) use pronoun sim- ilarities to gauge relatedness between various Papuan microgroups, arguing that the similarities could not be the result of chance or bor- rowing. I argue that a more appropriate manner of calculating chance gives a signicantly dierent result: when cross-comparing a pool of languages the prospects for chance matches of rst and second person pronouns are very good. Using pronoun form data from over 3000 lan- guages and over 300 language families inside and outside New Guinea, I show that there is, nevertheless, a tendency for Papuan pronouns to use certain consonants more often in 1P and 2P SG forms than in the rest of the world. This could reect an underlying family. An alter- native explanation is the established Papuan areal feature of having a small consonant inventory, which results in a higher functional load on the remaining consonants, which is, in turn, reected in the enhanced popularity of certain consonants in pronouns of those languages. A test of surface forms (i.e., non-reconstructed forms) favours the latter explanation.

Abstract

Whitesands is an Oceanic language of the southern Vanuatu subgroup. Like the related languages of southern Vanuatu, Whitesands has developed a clause-linkage system which monitors referent continuity on new clauses – typically contrasting with the previous clause. In this chapter I address how the construction interacts with topic continuity in discourse. I outline the morphosyntactic form of this anaphoric co-reference device. From a functionalist perspective, I show how the system is used in natural discourse and discuss its restrictions with respect to relative and complement clauses. I conclude with a discussion on its interactions with theoretical notions of information structure – in particular the nature of presupposed versus asserted clauses, information back- and foregrounding and how these affect the use of the switch-reference system

Abstract

This study investigated whether a shadowing task can provide insights in the nature of reduction processes that are typical of casual speech. We focused on the shortening and presence versus absence of schwa and /t/ in Dutch past participles. Results showed that the absence of these segments was affected by the same variables as their shortening, suggesting that absence mostly resulted from extreme gradient shortening. This contrasts with results based on recordings of spontaneous conversations. We hypothesize that this difference is due to non-casual fast speech elicited by a shadowing task.

Abstract

This paper examines the role of morphological structure in the reduced pronunciation of morphologically complex words by discussing and re-analyzing data from the literature. Acoustic reduction refers to the phenomenon that, in spontaneous speech, phonemes may be shorter or absent. We review studies investigating effects of the repetition of a morpheme, of whether a segment plays a crucial role in the identification of its morpheme, and of a word's morphological decomposability. We conclude that these studies report either no effects of morphological structure or effects that are open to alternative interpretations. Our analysis also reveals the need for a uniform definition of morphological decomposability. Furthermore, we examine whether the reduction of segments in morphologically complex words correlates with these segments' contribution to the identification of the whole word, and discuss previous studies and new analyses supporting this hypothesis. We conclude that the data show no convincing evidence that morphological structure conditions reduction, which contrasts with the expectations of several models of speech production and of morphological processing (e.g., weaver++ and dual-route models). The data collected so far support psycholinguistic models which assume that all morphologically complex words are processed as complete units.

Abstract

Many learners of a foreign language (L2) struggle to correctly pronounce newly-learned speech sounds, yet many others achieve this with apparent ease. Here we explored how a training study of learning complex consonant clusters at the very onset of the L2 acquisition can inform us about L2 learning in general and individual differences in particular. To this end, adult Dutch native speakers were trained on Slovak words with complex consonant clusters (e.g., pstruh /pstrux/‘trout’, štvrť /ʃtvrc/ ‘quarter’) using auditory and orthographic input. In the same session following training, participants were tested on a battery of L2 perception and production tasks. The battery of L2 tests was repeated twice more with one week between each session. In the first session, an additional battery of control tests was used to test participants’ native language (L1) skills. Overall, in line with some previous research, participants showed only weak learning effects across the L2 perception tasks. However, there were considerable individual differences across all L2 tasks, which remained stable across sessions. Only two participants showed overall high L2 production performance that fell within 2 standard deviations of the mean ratings obtained for an L1 speaker. The mispronunciation detection task was the only perception task which significantly predicted production performance in the final session. We conclude by discussing several recommendations for future L2 learning studies.

Abstract

We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irrespective of whether the speaker was Dutch or German, looking preferences for target words with /θ/ matched the preferences for producing /s/ variants in German speakers and /t/ variants in Dutch speakers (as determined via the production task), while a control group of English participants showed no such preferences. The perceptually most similar and most confusable /f/ variant (as determined via the discrimination task) was never preferred as a match for /θ/. These results suggest that linguistic experience with L2 pronunciations facilitates recognition of variants in an L2, with effects of frequency outweighing effects of perceptual similarity.

Abstract

How do native listeners process grammatical errors that are frequent in non-native speech? We investigated whether the neural correlates of syntactic processing are modulated by speaker identity. ERPs to gender agreement errors in sentences spoken by a native speaker were compared with the same errors spoken by a non-native speaker. In line with previous research, gender violations in native speech resulted in a P600 effect (larger P600 for violations in comparison with correct sentences), but when the same violations were produced by the non-native speaker with a foreign accent, no P600 effect was observed. Control sentences with semantic violations elicited comparable N400 effects for both the native and the non-native speaker, confirming no general integration problem in foreign-accented speech. The results demonstrate that the P600 is modulated by speaker identity, extending our knowledge about the role of speaker's characteristics on neural correlates of speech processing.

Abstract

CONTEXT Recent studies have shown an association between cigarettes per day (CPD) and a nonsynonymous single-nucleotide polymorphism in CHRNA5, rs16969968. OBJECTIVE To determine whether the association between rs16969968 and smoking is modified by age at onset of regular smoking. DATA SOURCES Primary data. STUDY SELECTION Available genetic studies containing measures of CPD and the genotype of rs16969968 or its proxy. DATA EXTRACTION Uniform statistical analysis scripts were run locally. Starting with 94 050 ever-smokers from 43 studies, we extracted the heavy smokers (CPD >20) and light smokers (CPD ≤10) with age-at-onset information, reducing the sample size to 33 348. Each study was stratified into early-onset smokers (age at onset ≤16 years) and late-onset smokers (age at onset >16 years), and a logistic regression of heavy vs light smoking with the rs16969968 genotype was computed for each stratum. Meta-analysis was performed within each age-at-onset stratum. DATA SYNTHESIS Individuals with 1 risk allele at rs16969968 who were early-onset smokers were significantly more likely to be heavy smokers in adulthood (odds ratio [OR] = 1.45; 95% CI, 1.36-1.55; n = 13 843) than were carriers of the risk allele who were late-onset smokers (OR = 1.27; 95% CI, 1.21-1.33, n = 19 505) (P = .01). CONCLUSION These results highlight an increased genetic vulnerability to smoking in early-onset smokers.

Abstract

All primates learn things from conspecifics socially, but it is not clear whether they conform to the behavior of these conspecifics—if conformity is defined as overriding individually acquired behavioral tendencies in order to copy peers’ behavior. In the current study, chimpanzees, orangutans, and 2-year-old human children individually acquired a problem-solving strategy. They then watched several conspecific peers demonstrate an alternative strategy. The children switched to this new, socially demonstrated strategy in roughly half of all instances, whereas the other two great-ape species almost never adjusted their behavior to the majority’s. In a follow-up study, children switched much more when the peer demonstrators were still present than when they were absent, which suggests that their conformity arose at least in part from social motivations. These results demonstrate an important difference between the social learning of humans and great apes, a difference that might help to account for differences in human and nonhuman cultures

Abstract

Cultural transmission is a key component of human evolution. Two of humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, have also been argued to transmit behavioral traditions across generations culturally [ [1], [2] and [3]], but how much the process might resemble the human process is still in large part unknown. One key phenomenon of human cultural transmission is majority-biased transmission: the increased likelihood for learners to end up not with the most frequent behavior but rather with the behavior demonstrated by most individuals. Here we show that chimpanzees and human children as young as 2 years of age, but not orangutans, are more likely to copy an action performed by three individuals, once each, than an action performed by one individual three times. The tendency to acquire the behaviors of the majority has been posited as key to the transmission of relatively safe, reliable, and productive behavioral strategies [ [4], [5], [6] and [7]] but has not previously been demonstrated in primates.