Publications

Displaying 301 - 353 of 353
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Internal variability in competence. Linguistische Berichte, 77, 1-31.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1989). Neue Entwicklungen im Wahrheitsbegriff. Studia Leibnitiana, 21(2), 155-173.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Obituary. Herman Christiaan Wekker 1943–1997. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 13(1), 159-162.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1980). The delimitation between semantics and pragmatics. Quaderni di Semantica, 1, 108-113; 126-134.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1980). Wat is taal? Cahiers Bio-Wetenschappen en Maatschappij, 6(4), 23-29.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1973). Zero-output rules. Foundations of Language, 10(2), 317-328.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1999). Vertakkingsrichting als parameter in de grammatica. Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 109(2-3), 149-166.
  • Slobin, D. I., & Bowerman, M. (2007). Interfaces between linguistic typology and child language research. Linguistic Typology, 11(1), 213-226. doi:10.1515/LINGTY.2007.015.
  • Smith, M. R., Cutler, A., Butterfield, S., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1989). The perception of rhythm and word boundaries in noise-masked speech. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 32, 912-920.

    Abstract

    The present experiment tested the suggestion that human listeners may exploit durational information in speech to parse continuous utterances into words. Listeners were presented with six-syllable unpredictable utterances under noise-masking, and were required to judge between alternative word strings as to which best matched the rhythm of the masked utterances. For each utterance there were four alternative strings: (a) an exact rhythmic and word boundary match, (b) a rhythmic mismatch, and (c) two utterances with the same rhythm as the masked utterance, but different word boundary locations. Listeners were clearly able to perceive the rhythm of the masked utterances: The rhythmic mismatch was chosen significantly less often than any other alternative. Within the three rhythmically matched alternatives, the exact match was chosen significantly more often than either word boundary mismatch. Thus, listeners both perceived speech rhythm and used durational cues effectively to locate the position of word boundaries.
  • Smits, R. (1998). A model for dependencies in phonetic categorization. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress on Acoustics and the 135th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005-2006.

    Abstract

    A quantitative model of human categorization behavior is proposed, which can be applied to 4-alternative forced-choice categorization data involving two binary classifications. A number of processing dependencies between the two classifications are explicitly formulated, such as the dependence of the location, orientation, and steepness of the class boundary for one classification on the outcome of the other classification. The significance of various types of dependencies can be tested statistically. Analyses of a data set from the literature shows that interesting dependencies in human speech recognition can be uncovered using the model.
  • Snijders, T. M., Kooijman, V., Cutler, A., & Hagoort, P. (2007). Neurophysiological evidence of delayed segmentation in a foreign language. Brain Research, 1178, 106-113. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.07.080.

    Abstract

    Previous studies have shown that segmentation skills are language-specific, making it difficult to segment continuous speech in an unfamiliar language into its component words. Here we present the first study capturing the delay in segmentation and recognition in the foreign listener using ERPs. We compared the ability of Dutch adults and of English adults without knowledge of Dutch (‘foreign listeners’) to segment familiarized words from continuous Dutch speech. We used the known effect of repetition on the event-related potential (ERP) as an index of recognition of words in continuous speech. Our results show that word repetitions in isolation are recognized with equivalent facility by native and foreign listeners, but word repetitions in continuous speech are not. First, words familiarized in isolation are recognized faster by native than by foreign listeners when they are repeated in continuous speech. Second, when words that have previously been heard only in a continuous-speech context re-occur in continuous speech, the repetition is detected by native listeners, but is not detected by foreign listeners. A preceding speech context facilitates word recognition for native listeners, but delays or even inhibits word recognition for foreign listeners. We propose that the apparent difference in segmentation rate between native and foreign listeners is grounded in the difference in language-specific skills available to the listeners.
  • Snowdon, C. T., & Cronin, K. A. (2007). Cooperative breeders do cooperate. Behavioural Processes, 76, 138-141. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2007.01.016.

    Abstract

    Bergmuller et al. (2007) make an important contribution to studies of cooperative breeding and provide a theoretical basis for linking the evolution of cooperative breeding with cooperative behavior.We have long been involved in empirical research on the only family of nonhuman primates to exhibit cooperative breeding, the Callitrichidae, which includes marmosets and tamarins, with studies in both field and captive contexts. In this paper we expand on three themes from Bergm¨uller et al. (2007) with empirical data. First we provide data in support of the importance of helpers and the specific benefits that helpers can gain in terms of fitness. Second, we suggest that mechanisms of rewarding helpers are more common and more effective in maintaining cooperative breeding than punishments. Third, we present a summary of our own research on cooperative behavior in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) where we find greater success in cooperative problem solving than has been reported for non-cooperatively breeding species.
  • Sonnenstuhl, I., Eisenbeiss, S., & Clahsen, H. (1999). Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon. Cognition, 72(3), 203-236. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00033-5.

    Abstract

    We present results from cross-modal priming experiments on German participles and noun plurals. The experiments produced parallel results for both inflectional systems. Regular inflection exhibits full priming whereas irregularly inflected word forms show only partial priming: after hearing regularly inflected words (-t participles and -s plurals), lexical decision times on morphologically related word forms (presented visually) were similar to reaction times for a base-line condition in which prime and target were identical, but significantly shorter than in a control condition where prime and target were unrelated. In contrast, prior presentation of irregular words (-n participles and -er plurals) led to significantly longer response times on morphologically related word forms than the prior presentation of the target itself. Hence, there are clear priming differences between regularly and irregularly inflected German words. We compare the findings on German with experimental results on regular and irregular inflection in English and Italian, and discuss theoretical implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of inflection.
  • Spiteri, E., Konopka, G., Coppola, G., Bomar, J., Oldham, M., Ou, J., Vernes, S. C., Fisher, S. E., Ren, B., & Geschwind, D. (2007). Identification of the transcriptional targets of FOXP2, a gene linked to speech and language, in developing human brain. American Journal of Human Genetics, 81(6), 1144-1157. doi:10.1086/522237.

    Abstract

    Mutations in FOXP2, a member of the forkhead family of transcription factor genes, are the only known cause of developmental speech and language disorders in humans. To date, there are no known targets of human FOXP2 in the nervous system. The identification of FOXP2 targets in the developing human brain, therefore, provides a unique tool with which to explore the development of human language and speech. Here, we define FOXP2 targets in human basal ganglia (BG) and inferior frontal cortex (IFC) by use of chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by microarray analysis (ChIP-chip) and validate the functional regulation of targets in vitro. ChIP-chip identified 285 FOXP2 targets in fetal human brain; statistically significant overlap of targets in BG and IFC indicates a core set of 34 transcriptional targets of FOXP2. We identified targets specific to IFC or BG that were not observed in lung, suggesting important regional and tissue differences in FOXP2 activity. Many target genes are known to play critical roles in specific aspects of central nervous system patterning or development, such as neurite outgrowth, as well as plasticity. Subsets of the FOXP2 transcriptional targets are either under positive selection in humans or differentially expressed between human and chimpanzee brain. This is the first ChIP-chip study to use human brain tissue, making the FOXP2-target genes identified in these studies important to understanding the pathways regulating speech and language in the developing human brain. These data provide the first insight into the functional network of genes directly regulated by FOXP2 in human brain and by evolutionary comparisons, highlighting genes likely to be involved in the development of human higher-order cognitive processes.
  • Stewart, A., Holler, J., & Kidd, E. (2007). Shallow processing of ambiguous pronouns: Evidence for delay. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 1680-1696. doi:10.1080/17470210601160807.
  • Stivers, T., & Majid, A. (2007). Questioning children: Interactional evidence of implicit bias in medical interviews. Social Psychology Quarterly, 70(4), 424-441.

    Abstract

    Social psychologists have shown experimentally that implicit race bias can influence an individual's behavior. Implicit bias has been suggested to be more subtle and less subject to cognitive control than more explicit forms of racial prejudice. Little is known about how implicit bias is manifest in naturally occurring social interaction. This study examines the factors associated with physicians selecting children rather than parents to answer questions in pediatric interviews about routine childhood illnesses. Analysis of the data using a Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Model demonstrates a significant effect of parent race and education on whether physicians select children to answer questions. Black children and Latino children of low-education parents are less likely to be selected to answer questions than their same aged white peers irrespective of education. One way that implicit bias manifests itself in naturally occurring interaction may be through the process of speaker selection during questioning.
  • Stivers, T. (1998). Prediagnostic commentary in veterinarian-client interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(2), 241-277. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi3102_4.
  • Swaab, T. Y., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1998). Understanding ambiguous words in sentence contexts: Electrophysiological evidence for delayed contextual selection in Broca's aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 36(8), 737-761. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00174-7.

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether spoken sentence comprehension deficits in Broca's aphasics results from their inability to access the subordinate meaning of ambiguous words (e.g. bank), or alternatively, from a delay in their selection of the contextually appropriate meaning. Twelve Broca's aphasics and twelve elderly controls were presented with lexical ambiguities in three context conditions, each followed by the same target words. In the concordant condition, the sentence context biased the meaning of the sentence final ambiguous word that was related to the target. In the discordant condition, the sentence context biased the meaning of the sentence final ambiguous word that was incompatible with the target.In the unrelated condition, the sentence-final word was unambiguous and unrelated to the target. The task of the subjects was to listen attentively to the stimuli The activational status of the ambiguous sentence-final words was inferred from the amplitude of the N399 to the targets at two inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs) (100 ms and 1250 ms). At the short ISI, the Broca's aphasics showed clear evidence of activation of the subordinate meaning. In contrast to elderly controls, however, the Broca's aphasics were not successful at selecting the appropriate meaning of the ambiguity in the short ISI version of the experiment. But at the long ISI, in accordance with the performance of the elderly controls, the patients were able to successfully complete the contextual selection process. These results indicate that Broca's aphasics are delayed in the process of contextual selection. It is argued that this finding of delayed selection is compatible with the idea that comprehension deficits in Broca's aphasia result from a delay in the process of integrating lexical information.
  • Swift, M. (1998). [Book review of LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS, La parole inuit: Langue, culture et société dans l'Arctique nord-américain]. Language in Society, 27, 273-276. doi:10.1017/S0047404598282042.

    Abstract

    This volume on Inuit speech follows the evolution of a native language of the North American Arctic, from its historical roots to its present-day linguistic structure and patterns of use from Alaska to Greenland. Drawing on a wide range of research from the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and sociology, Dorais integrates these diverse perspectives in a comprehensive view of native language development, maintenance, and use under conditions of marginalization due to social transition.
  • Swingley, D., & Aslin, R. N. (2007). Lexical competition in young children's word learning. Cognitive Psychology, 54(2), 99-132.

    Abstract

    In two experiments, 1.5-year-olds were taught novel words whose sound patterns were phonologically similar to familiar words (novel neighbors) or were not (novel nonneighbors). Learning was tested using a picture-fixation task. In both experiments, children learned the novel nonneighbors but not the novel neighbors. In addition, exposure to the novel neighbors impaired recognition performance on familiar neighbors. Finally, children did not spontaneously use phonological differences to infer that a novel word referred to a novel object. Thus, lexical competition—inhibitory interaction among words in speech comprehension—can prevent children from using their full phonological sensitivity in judging words as novel. These results suggest that word learning in young children, as in adults, relies not only on the discrimination and identification of phonetic categories, but also on evaluating the likelihood that an utterance conveys a new word.
  • Swingley, D. (2007). Lexical exposure and word-from encoding in 1.5-year-olds. Developmental Psychology, 43(2), 454-464. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.2.454.

    Abstract

    In this study, 1.5-year-olds were taught a novel word. Some children were familiarized with the word's phonological form before learning the word's meaning. Fidelity of phonological encoding was tested in a picture-fixation task using correctly pronounced and mispronounced stimuli. Only children with additional exposure in familiarization showed reduced recognition performance given slight mispronunciations relative to correct pronunciations; children with fewer exposures did not. Mathematical modeling of vocabulary exposure indicated that children may hear thousands of words frequently enough for accurate encoding. The results provide evidence compatible with partial failure of phonological encoding at 19 months of age, demonstrate that this limitation in learning does not always hinder word recognition, and show the value of infants' word-form encoding in early lexical development.
  • Swinney, D. A., Zurif, E. B., & Cutler, A. (1980). Effects of sentential stress and word class upon comprehension in Broca’s aphasics. Brain and Language, 10, 132-144. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(80)90044-9.

    Abstract

    The roles which word class (open/closed) and sentential stress play in the sentence comprehension processes of both agrammatic (Broca's) aphasics and normal listeners were examined with a word monitoring task. Overall, normal listeners responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed items, but showed no effect of word class. Aphasics also responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed materials, but, unlike the normals, responded faster to open than to closed class words regardless of their stress. The results are interpreted as support for the theory that Broca's aphasics lack the functional underlying open/closed class word distinction used in word recognition by normal listeners.
  • Takashima, A., Nieuwenhuis, I. L. C., Rijpkema, M., Petersson, K. M., Jensen, O., & Fernández, G. (2007). Memory trace stabilization leads to large-scale changes in the retrieval network: A functional MRI study on associative memory. Learning & Memory, 14, 472-479. doi:10.1101/lm.605607.

    Abstract

    Spaced learning with time to consolidate leads to more stabile memory traces. However, little is known about the neural correlates of trace stabilization, especially in humans. The present fMRI study contrasted retrieval activity of two well-learned sets of face-location associations, one learned in a massed style and tested on the day of learning (i.e., labile condition) and another learned in a spaced scheme over the course of one week (i.e., stabilized condition). Both sets of associations were retrieved equally well, but the retrieval of stabilized association was faster and accompanied by large-scale changes in the network supporting retrieval. Cued recall of stabilized as compared with labile associations was accompanied by increased activity in the precuneus, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the bilateral temporal pole, and left temporo–parietal junction. Conversely, memory representational areas such as the fusiform gyrus for faces and the posterior parietal cortex for locations did not change their activity with stabilization. The changes in activation in the precuneus, which also showed increased connectivity with the fusiform area, are likely to be related to the spatial nature of our task. The activation increase in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, might reflect a general function in stabilized memory retrieval. This area might succeed the hippocampus in linking distributed neocortical representations.
  • Tanaka, K., Fisher, S. E., & Craig, I. W. (1999). Characterization of novel promoter and enhancer elements of the mouse homologue of the Dent disease gene, CLCN5, implicated in X-linked hereditary nephrolithiasis. Genomics, 58, 281-292. doi:10.1006/geno.1999.5839.

    Abstract

    The murine homologue of the human chloride channel gene, CLCN5, defects in which are responsible for Dent disease, has been cloned and characterized. We isolated the entire coding region of mouse Clcn5 cDNA and approximately 45 kb of genomic sequence embracing the gene. To study its transcriptional control, the 5' upstream sequences of the mouse Clcn5 gene were cloned into a luciferase reporter vector. Deletion analysis of 1.5 kb of the 5' flanking sequence defined an active promoter region within 128 bp of the putative transcription start site, which is associated with a TATA motif but lacks a CAAT consensus. Within this sequence, there is a motif with homology to a purine-rich sequence responsible for the kidney-specific promoter activity of the rat CLC-K1 gene, another member of the chloride-channel gene family expressed in kidney. An enhancer element that confers a 10- to 20-fold increase in the promoter activity of the mouse Clcn5 gene was found within the first intron. The organization of the human CLCN5 and mouse Clcn5 gene structures is highly conserved, and the sequence of the murine protein is 98% similar to that of human, with its highest expression seen in the kidney. This study thus provides the first identification of the transcriptional control region of, and the basis for an understanding of the regulatory mechanism that controls, this kidney-specific, chloride-channel gene.
  • Tendolkar, I., Arnold, J., Petersson, K. M., Weis, S., Brockhaus-Dumke, A., Van Eijndhoven, P., Buitelaar, J., & Fernández, G. (2007). Probing the neural correlates of associative memory formation: A parametrically analyzed event-related functional MRI study. Brain Research, 1142, 159-168. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.040.

    Abstract

    The medial temporal lobe (MTL) is crucial for declarative memory formation, but the function of its subcomponents in associative memory formation remains controversial. Most functional imaging studies on this topic are based on a stepwise approach comparing a condition with and one without associative encoding. Extending this approach we applied additionally a parametric analysis by varying the amount of associative memory formation. We found a hippocampal subsequent memory effect of almost similar magnitude regardless of the amount of associations formed. By contrast, subsequent memory effects in rhinal and parahippocampal cortices were parametrically and positively modulated by the amount of associations formed. Our results indicate that the parahippocampal region supports associative memory formation as tested here and the hippocampus adds a general mnemonic operation. This pattern of results might suggest a new interpretation. Instead of having either a fixed division of labor between the hippocampus (associative memory formation) and the rhinal cortex (non-associative memory formation) or a functionally unitary MTL system, in which all substructures are contributing to memory formation in a similar way, we propose that the location where associations are formed within the MTL depends on the kind of associations bound: If visual single-dimension associations, as used here, can already be integrated within the parahippocampal region, the hippocampus might add a general purpose mnemonic operation only. In contrast, if associations have to be formed across widely distributed neocortical representations, the hippocampus may provide a binding operation in order to establish a coherent memory.
  • Ter Keurs, M., Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., & Stegeman, D. F. (1999). Electrophysiological manifestations of open- and closed-class words in patients with Broca's aphasia with agrammatic comprehension: An event-related brain potential study. Brain, 122, 839-854. doi:10.1093/brain/122.5.839.

    Abstract

    This paper presents electrophysiological data on the on-line processing of open- and closed-class words in patients with Broca’s aphasia with agrammatic comprehension. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp when Broca patients and nonaphasic control subjects were visually presented with a story in which the words appeared one at a time on the screen. Separate waveforms were computed for open- and closed-class words. The non-aphasic control subjects showed clear differences between the processing of open- and closed-class words in an early (210-375 ms) and a late (400-700 ms) time-window.The early electrophysiological differences reflect the first manifestation of the availability of word-category information from the mental lexicon. The late differences presumably relate to post-lexical semantic and syntactic processing. In contrast to the control subjects, the Broca patients showed no early vocabulary class effect and only a limited late effect. The results suggest that an important factor in the agrammatic comprehension deficit of Broca’s aphasics is a delayed and/or incomplete availability of word-class information.
  • Terrill, A. (2007). [Review of ‘Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson, and Robin Hide, eds. 2005. Papuan pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking people]. Oceanic Linguistics, 46(1), 313-321. doi:10.1353/ol.2007.0025.
  • Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child Development, 78, 705-722. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01025.x.

    Abstract

    The current article proposes a new theory of infant pointing involving multiple layers of intentionality and shared intentionality. In the context of this theory, evidence is presented for a rich interpretation of prelinguistic communication, that is, one that posits that when 12-month-old infants point for an adult they are in some sense trying to influence her mental states. Moreover, evidence is also presented for a deeply social view in which infant pointing is best understood—on many levels and in many ways—as depending on uniquely human skills and motivations for cooperation and shared intentionality (e.g., joint intentions and attention with others). Children's early linguistic skills are built on this already existing platform of prelinguistic communication.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activitity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280, 572-574.

    Abstract

    In normal conversation, speakers translate thoughts into words at high speed. To enable this speed, the retrieval of distinct types of linguistic knowledge has to be orchestrated with millisecond precision. The nature of this orchestration is still largely unknown. This report presents dynamic measures of the real-time activation of two basic types of linguistic knowledge, syntax and phonology. Electrophysiological data demonstrate that during noun-phrase production speakers retrieve the syntactic gender of a noun before its abstract phonological properties. This two-step process operates at high speed: the data show that phonological information is already available 40 milliseconds after syntactic properties have been retrieved.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280(5363), 572-574. doi:10.1126/science.280.5363.572.
  • van Kuijk, D., & Boves, L. (1999). Acoustic characteristics of lexical stress in continuous telephone speech. Speech Communication, 27(2), 95-111. doi:10.1016/S0167-6393(98)00069-7.

    Abstract

    In this paper we investigate acoustic differences between vowels in syllables that do or do not carry lexical stress. In doing so, we concentrated on segmental acoustic phonetic features that are conventionally assumed to differ between stressed and unstressed syllables, viz. Duration, Energy and Spectral Tilt. The speech material in this study differs from the type of material used in previous research: instead of specially constructed sentences we used phonetically rich sentences from the Dutch POLYPHONE corpus. Most of the Duration, Energy and Spectral Tilt features that we used in the investigation show statistically significant differences for the population means of stressed and unstressed vowels. However, it also appears that the distributions overlap to such an extent that automatic detection of stressed and unstressed syllables yields correct classifications of 72.6% at best. It is argued that this result is due to the large variety in the ways in which the abstract linguistic feature `lexical stress' is realized in the acoustic speech signal. Our findings suggest that a lexical stress detector has little use for a single pass decoder in an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, but could still play a useful role as an additional knowledge source in a multi-pass decoder.
  • Van Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1982). De ontwikkeling van syntactische formuleervaardigheid bij kinderen van 9 tot 16 jaar. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie en haar Grensgebieden, 37(8), 491-509.

    Abstract

    An essential phenomenon in the development towards syntactic maturity after early childhood is the increasing use of so-called sentence-combining transformations. Especially by using subordination, complex sentences are produced. The research reported here is an attempt to arrive at a more adequate characterization and explanation. Our starting point was an analysis of 280 texts written by Dutch-speaking pupils of the two highest grades of the primary school and the four lowest grades of three different types of secondary education. It was examined whether systematic shifts in the use of certain groups of so-called function words could be traced. We concluded that the development of the syntactic formulating ability can be characterized as an increase in connectivity: the use of all kinds of function words which explicitly mark logico-semantic relations between propositions. This development starts by inserting special adverbs and coordinating conjunctions resulting in various types of coordination. In a later stage, the syntactic patterning of the sentence is affected as well (various types of subordination). The increase in sentence complexity is only one aspect of the entire development. An explanation for the increase in connectivity is offered based upon a distinction between narrative and expository language use. The latter, but not the former, is characterized by frequent occurrence of connectives. The development in syntactic formulating ability includes a high level of skill in expository language use. Speed of development is determined by intensity of training, e.g. in scholastic and occupational settings.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1999). Early referential context effects in sentence processing: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Memory and Language, 41(2), 147-182. doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2641.

    Abstract

    An event-related brain potentials experiment was carried out to examine the interplay of referential and structural factors during sentence processing in discourse. Subjects read (Dutch) sentences beginning like “David told the girl that … ” in short story contexts that had introduced either one or two referents for a critical singular noun phrase (“the girl”). The waveforms showed that within 280 ms after onset of the critical noun the reader had already determined whether the noun phrase had a unique referent in earlier discourse. Furthermore, this referential information was immediately used in parsing the rest of the sentence, which was briefly ambiguous between a complement clause (“ … that there would be some visitors”) and a relative clause (“ … that had been on the phone to hang up”). A consistent pattern of P600/SPS effects elicited by various subsequent disambiguations revealed that a two-referent discourse context had led the parser to initially pursue the relative-clause alternative to a larger extent than a one-referent context. Together, the results suggest that during the processing of sentences in discourse, structural and referential sources of information interact on a word-by-word basis.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1963). Detection of visual patterns disturbed by noise: An exploratory study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15, 192-204. doi:10.1080/17470216308416324.

    Abstract

    An introductory study of the perception of stochastically specified events is reported. The initial problem was to determine whether the perceiver can split visual input data of this kind into random and determined components. The inability of subjects to do so with the stimulus material used (a filmlike sequence of dot patterns), led to the more general question of how subjects code this kind of visual material. To meet the difficulty of defining the subjects' responses, two experiments were designed. In both, patterns were presented as a rapid sequence of dots on a screen. The patterns were more or less disturbed by “noise,” i.e. the dots did not appear exactly at their proper places. In the first experiment the response was a rating on a semantic scale, in the second an identification from among a set of alternative patterns. The results of these experiments give some insight in the coding systems adopted by the subjects. First, noise appears to be detrimental to pattern recognition, especially to patterns with little spread. Second, this shows connections with the factors obtained from analysis of the semantic ratings, e.g. easily disturbed patterns show a large drop in the semantic regularity factor, when only a little noise is added.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Koornneef, A. W., Otten, M., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2007). Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective. Brain Research, 1146, 158-171. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.06.091.

    Abstract

    The electrophysiology of language comprehension has long been dominated by research on syntactic and semantic integration. However, to understand expressions like "he did it" or "the little girl", combining word meanings in accordance with semantic and syntactic constraints is not enough--readers and listeners also need to work out what or who is being referred to. We review our event-related brain potential research on the processes involved in establishing reference, and present a new experiment in which we examine when and how the implicit causality associated with specific interpersonal verbs affects the interpretation of a referentially ambiguous pronoun. The evidence suggests that upon encountering a singular noun or pronoun, readers and listeners immediately inspect their situation model for a suitable discourse entity, such that they can discriminate between having too many, too few, or exactly the right number of referents within at most half a second. Furthermore, our implicit causality findings indicate that a fragment like "David praised Linda because..." can immediately foreground a particular referent, to the extent that a subsequent "he" is at least initially construed as a syntactic error. In all, our brain potential findings suggest that referential processing is highly incremental, and not necessarily contingent upon the syntax. In addition, they demonstrate that we can use ERPs to relatively selectively keep track of how readers and listeners establish reference.
  • Van Donselaar, W., Kuijpers, C. T., & Cutler, A. (1999). Facilitatory effects of vowel epenthesis on word processing in Dutch. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 59-77. doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2635.

    Abstract

    We report a series of experiments examining the effects on word processing of insertion of an optional epenthetic vowel in word-final consonant clusters in Dutch. Such epenthesis turns film, for instance, into film. In a word-reversal task listeners treated words with and without epenthesis alike, as monosyllables, suggesting that the variant forms both activate the same canonical representation, that of a monosyllabic word without epenthesis. In both lexical decision and word spotting, response times to recognize words were significantly faster when epenthesis was present than when the word was presented in its canonical form without epenthesis. It is argued that addition of the epenthetic vowel makes the liquid consonants constituting the first member of a cluster more perceptible; a final phoneme-detection experiment confirmed that this was the case. These findings show that a transformed variant of a word, although it contacts the lexicon via the representation of the canonical form, can be more easily perceptible than that canonical form.
  • Van Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1980). Functiewoorden: Een inventarisatie voor het Nederlands. ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics, 53-68.
  • Van Wingen, G., Van Broekhoven, F., Verkes, R. J., Petersson, K. M., Bäckström, T., Buitelaar, J., & Fernández, G. (2007). How progesterone impairs memory for biologically salient stimuli in healthy young women. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(42), 11416-11423. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1715-07.2007.

    Abstract

    Progesterone, or rather its neuroactive metabolite allopregnanolone, modulates amygdala activity and thereby influences anxiety. Cognition and, in particular, memory are also altered by allopregnanolone. In the present study, we investigated whether allopregnanolone modulates memory for biologically salient stimuli by influencing amygdala activity, which in turn may affect neural processes in other brain regions. A single progesterone dose was administered orally to healthy young women in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, and participants were asked to memorize and recognize faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Progesterone decreased recognition accuracy without affecting reaction times. The imaging results show that the amygdala, hippocampus, and fusiform gyrus supported memory formation. Importantly, progesterone decreased responses to faces in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus duringmemoryencoding, whereas it increased hippocampal responses. The progesterone-induced decrease in neural activity in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus predicted the decrease in memory performance across subjects. However, progesterone did not modulate the differential activation between subsequently remembered and subsequently forgotten faces in these areas. A similar pattern of results was observed in the fusiform gyrus and prefrontal cortex during memory retrieval. These results suggest that allopregnanolone impairs memory by reducing the recruitment of those brain regions that support memory formation and retrieval. Given the important role of the amygdala in the modulation of memory, these results suggest that allopregnanolone alters memory by influencing amygdala activity, which in turn may affect memory processes in other brain regions
  • Van de Geer, J. P., Levelt, W. J. M., & Plomp, R. (1962). The connotation of musical consonance. Acta Psychologica, 20, 308-319.

    Abstract

    As a preliminary to further research on musical consonance an explanatory investigation was made on the different modes of judgment of musical intervals. This was done by way of a semantic differential. Subjects rated 23 intervals against 10 scales. In a factor analysis three factors appeared: pitch, evaluation and fusion. The relation between these factors and some physical characteristics has been investigated. The scale consonant-dissonant showed to be purely evaluative (in opposition to Stumpf's theory). This evaluative connotation is not in accordance with the musicological meaning of consonance. Suggestions to account for this difference have been given.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2007). Some thoughts on the reason for the lesser status of typology in the USA as opposed to Europe. Linguistic Typology, 11(1), 253-257. doi:10.1515/LINGTY.2007.019.

    Abstract

    This article addresses the issue of the different status that typology has in American linguistics as opposed to European linguistics. The historical roots of the difference lie in both structural and generative linguistics, in the contrasts between post-Bloomfieldian structuralism in the US vs. Praguean structuralism in Europe, and in the extent of the influence of generative grammar on the two continents.
  • Van Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1982). Syntactische formuleervaardigheid en het schrijven van opstellen. Pedagogische Studiën, 59, 126-136.

    Abstract

    Meermalen is getracht om syntactische formuleenuuirdigheid direct en objectief te meten aan de hand van gesproken of geschreven teksten. Uitgangspunt hierbij vormde in de regel de syntactische complexiteit van de geproduceerde taaluitingen. Dit heeft echter niet geleid tot een plausibele, duidelijk omschreven en praktisch bruikbare index. N.a.v. een kritische bespreking van de notie complexiteit wordt in dit artikel als nieuw criterium voorgesteld de connectiviteit van de taaluitingen; de expliciete aanduiding van logiscli-scmantische relaties tussen proposities. Connectiviteit is gemakkelijk scoorbaar aan de hand van functiewoorden die verschillende vormen van nevenschikkend en onderschikkend zinsverband markeren. Deze nieuwe index ondetrangt de kritiek die op complexiteit gegeven kon worden, blijkt duidelijk te discrimineren tussen groepen leerlingen die van elkaar verschillen naar leeftijd en opleidingsniveau, en sluit aan bij recente taalpsychologische en sociolinguïstische theorie. Tot besluit worden enige onderwijskundige implicaties aangegeven.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). Semantic integration in sentences and discourse: Evidence from the N400. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(6), 657-671. doi:10.1162/089892999563724.

    Abstract

    In two ERP experiments we investigated how and when the language comprehension system relates an incoming word to semantic representations of an unfolding local sentence and a wider discourse. In experiment 1, subjects were presented with short stories. The last sentence of these stories occasionally contained a critical word that, although acceptable in the local sentence context, was semantically anomalous with respect to the wider discourse (e.g., "Jane told the brother that he was exceptionally slow" in a discourse context where he had in fact been very quick). Relative to coherent control words (e.g., "quick"), these discourse-dependent semantic anomalies elicited a large N400 effect that began at about 200-250 ms after word onset. In experiment 2, the same sentences were presented without their original story context. Although the words that had previously been anomalous in discourse still elicited a slightly larger average N400 than the coherent words, the resulting N400 effect was much reduced, showing that the large effect observed in stories was related to the wider discourse. In the same experiment, single sentences that contained a clear local semantic anomaly elicited a standard sentence-dependent N400 effect (e.g., Kutas & Hillyard, 1980). The N400 effects elicited in discourse and in single sentences had the same time course, overall morphology, and scalp distribution. We argue that these findings are most compatible with models of language processing in which there is no fundamental distinction between the integration of a word in its local (sentence-level) and its global (discourse-level) semantic context.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1999). When does gender constrain parsing? Evidence from ERPs. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(5), 555-566. doi:10.1023/A:1023224628266.

    Abstract

    We review the implications of recent ERP evidence for when and how grammatical gender agreement constrains sentence parsing. In some theories of parsing, gender is assumed to immediately and categorically block gender-incongruent phrase structure alternatives from being pursued. In other theories, the parser initially ignores gender altogether. The ERP evidence we discuss suggests an intermediate position, in which grammatical gender does not immediately block gender-incongruent phrase structures from being considered, but is used to dispose of them shortly thereafter.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). The time course of grammatical and phonological processing during speaking: evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(6), 649-676. doi:10.1023/A:1023221028150.

    Abstract

    Motor-related brain potentials were used to examine the time course of grammatical and phonological processes during noun phrase production in Dutch. In the experiments, participants named colored pictures using a no-determiner noun phrase. On half of the trials a syntactic-phonological classification task had to be performed before naming. Depending on the outcome of the classifications, a left or a right push-button response was given (go trials), or no push-button response was given (no-go trials). Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether syntactic and phonological information affected the motor system at separate moments in time. The results showed that when syntactic information determined the response-hand decision, an LRP developed on no-go trials. However, no such effect was observed when phonological information determined response hand. On the basis of the data, it can be estimated that an additional period of at least 40 ms is needed to retrieve a word's initial phoneme once its lemma has been retrieved. These results provide evidence for the view that during speaking, grammatical processing precedes phonological processing in time.
  • Van Uytvanck, D., Dukers, A., Ringersma, J., & Wittenburg, P. (2007). Using Google Earth to access language resources. Language Archive Newsletter, (9), 4-7.

    Abstract

    Over the past ten years Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have evolved from a highly specialised niche technology to one that is used daily by a wide range of people. This article describes geographic browsing of language archives, which provides intuitive exploration of resources and permits integration and correlation of information from different archives, even across different research disciplines. In order to facilitate both exploration and management of resources, digital language archives are organised according to criteria such as language name, research topic, project information, researchers, countries, or genres. A set of such criteria can form a tree-like classification scheme, such as in the MPI-IMDI archive, which in turn forms the main method of searching and querying the archive resources. Searching for information can be difficult for occasional users because effective use of these search-fields typically requires specialised knowledge. We assume that many non-specialist users of language resources will search by language name, language family, or geographic area, so that geographic navigation would offer a very powerful search method. We also assume that such users are familiar with maps, and that geographic browsing is more intuitive than browsing classification trees, so these users would prefer to start with a large scale map and then zoom in to find the data that interests them. Therefore, classification trees and geographic maps provide complementary methods for accessing language resources to meet the needs of different user groups. We selected Google Earth (GE) as a geographic browsing system and overlaid it with linguistic information. GE was chosen because it is available via the web, it has good navigation controls, it is familiar to many web users, and because the overlaid linguistic information can be formulated in XML, making it comparatively easy to interchange with other geographic systems.
  • Vernes, S. C., Spiteri, E., Nicod, J., Groszer, M., Taylor, J. M., Davies, K. E., Geschwind, D., & Fisher, S. E. (2007). High-throughput analysis of promoter occupancy reveals direct neural targets of FOXP2, a gene mutated in speech and language disorders. American Journal of Human Genetics, 81(6), 1232-1250. doi:10.1086/522238.

    Abstract

    We previously discovered that mutations of the human FOXP2 gene cause a monogenic communication disorder, primarily characterized by difficulties in learning to make coordinated sequences of articulatory gestures that underlie speech. Affected people have deficits in expressive and receptive linguistic processing and display structural and/or functional abnormalities in cortical and subcortical brain regions. FOXP2 provides a unique window into neural processes involved in speech and language. In particular, its role as a transcription factor gene offers powerful functional genomic routes for dissecting critical neurogenetic mechanisms. Here, we employ chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with promoter microarrays (ChIP-chip) to successfully identify genomic sites that are directly bound by FOXP2 protein in native chromatin of human neuron-like cells. We focus on a subset of downstream targets identified by this approach, showing that altered FOXP2 levels yield significant changes in expression in our cell-based models and that FOXP2 binds in a specific manner to consensus sites within the relevant promoters. Moreover, we demonstrate significant quantitative differences in target expression in embryonic brains of mutant mice, mediated by specific in vivo Foxp2-chromatin interactions. This work represents the first identification and in vivo verification of neural targets regulated by FOXP2. Our data indicate that FOXP2 has dual functionality, acting to either repress or activate gene expression at occupied promoters. The identified targets suggest roles in modulating synaptic plasticity, neurodevelopment, neurotransmission, and axon guidance and represent novel entry points into in vivo pathways that may be disturbed in speech and language disorders.
  • Vonk, W., & Cozijn, R. (2007). Psycholinguïstiek: Een kwantitatieve wetenschap. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 123, 55-69.
  • Wassenaar, M., & Hagoort, P. (2007). Thematic role assignment in patients with Broca's aphasia: Sentence-picture matching electrified. Neuropsychologia, 45(4), 716-740. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.08.016.

    Abstract

    An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line thematic role assignment during sentence–picture matching in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were presented with a picture that was followed by an auditory sentence. The sentence either matched the picture or mismatched the visual information depicted. Sentences differed in complexity, and ranged from simple active semantically irreversible sentences to passive semantically reversible sentences. ERPs were recorded while subjects were engaged in sentence–picture matching. In addition, reaction time and accuracy were measured. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N = 10), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N = 8), and healthy aged-matched controls (N = 15). The results of this study showed that, in neurologically unimpaired individuals, thematic role assignment in the context of visual information was an immediate process. This in contrast to patients with Broca's aphasia who demonstrated no signs of on-line sensitivity to the picture–sentence mismatches. The syntactic contribution to the thematic role assignment process seemed to be diminished given the reduction and even absence of P600 effects. Nevertheless, Broca patients showed some off-line behavioral sensitivity to the sentence–picture mismatches. The long response latencies of Broca's aphasics make it likely that off-line response strategies were used.
  • Willems, R. M., Ozyurek, A., & Hagoort, P. (2007). When language meets action: The neural integration of gesture and speech. Cerebral Cortex, 17(10), 2322-2333. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl141.

    Abstract

    Although generally studied in isolation, language and action often co-occur in everyday life. Here we investigated one particular form of simultaneous language and action, namely speech and gestures that speakers use in everyday communication. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we identified the neural networks involved in the integration of semantic information from speech and gestures. Verbal and/or gestural content could be integrated easily or less easily with the content of the preceding part of speech. Premotor areas involved in action observation (Brodmann area [BA] 6) were found to be specifically modulated by action information "mismatching" to a language context. Importantly, an increase in integration load of both verbal and gestural information into prior speech context activated Broca's area and adjacent cortex (BA 45/47). A classical language area, Broca's area, is not only recruited for language-internal processing but also when action observation is integrated with speech. These findings provide direct evidence that action and language processing share a high-level neural integration system.
  • Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2007). Neural evidence for the interplay between language, gesture, and action: A review. Brain and Language, 101(3), 278-289. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.03.004.

    Abstract

    Co-speech gestures embody a form of manual action that is tightly coupled to the language system. As such, the co-occurrence of speech and co-speech gestures is an excellent example of the interplay between language and action. There are, however, other ways in which language and action can be thought of as closely related. In this paper we will give an overview of studies in cognitive neuroscience that examine the neural underpinnings of links between language and action. Topics include neurocognitive studies of motor representations of speech sounds, action-related language, sign language and co-speech gestures. It will be concluded that there is strong evidence on the interaction between speech and gestures in the brain. This interaction however shares general properties with other domains in which there is interplay between language and action.
  • Willems, R. M. (2007). The neural construction of a Tinkertoy [‘Journal club’ review]. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 1509-1510. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0005-07.2007.
  • Womelsdorf, T., Schoffelen, J.-M., Oostenveld, R., Singer, W., Desimone, R., Engel, A. K., & Fries, P. (2007). Modulation of neuronal interactions through neuronal synchronization. Science, 316, 1609-1612. doi:10.1126/science.1139597.

    Abstract

    Brain processing depends on the interactions between neuronal groups. Those interactions are governed by the pattern of anatomical connections and by yet unknown mechanisms that modulate the effective strength of a given connection. We found that the mutual influence among neuronal groups depends on the phase relation between rhythmic activities within the groups. Phase relations supporting interactions between the groups preceded those interactions by a few milliseconds, consistent with a mechanistic role. These effects were specific in time, frequency, and space, and we therefore propose that the pattern of synchronization flexibly determines the pattern of neuronal interactions.
  • Ziegler, A., DeStefano, A. L., König, I. R., Bardel, C., Brinza, D., Bull, S., Cai, Z., Glaser, B., Jiang, W., Lee, K. E., Li, C. X., Li, J., Li, X., Majoram, P., Meng, Y., Nicodemus, K. K., Platt, A., Schwarz, D. F., Shi, W., Shugart, Y. Y. and 7 moreZiegler, A., DeStefano, A. L., König, I. R., Bardel, C., Brinza, D., Bull, S., Cai, Z., Glaser, B., Jiang, W., Lee, K. E., Li, C. X., Li, J., Li, X., Majoram, P., Meng, Y., Nicodemus, K. K., Platt, A., Schwarz, D. F., Shi, W., Shugart, Y. Y., Stassen, H. H., Sun, Y. V., Won, S., Wang, W., Wahba, G., Zagaar, U. A., & Zhao, Z. (2007). Data mining, neural nets, trees–problems 2 and 3 of Genetic Analysis Workshop 15. Genetic Epidemiology, 31(Suppl 1), S51-S60. doi:10.1002/gepi.20280.

    Abstract

    Genome-wide association studies using thousands to hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and region-wide association studies using a dense panel of SNPs are already in use to identify disease susceptibility genes and to predict disease risk in individuals. Because these tasks become increasingly important, three different data sets were provided for the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15, thus allowing examination of various novel and existing data mining methods for both classification and identification of disease susceptibility genes, gene by gene or gene by environment interaction. The approach most often applied in this presentation group was random forests because of its simplicity, elegance, and robustness. It was used for prediction and for screening for interesting SNPs in a first step. The logistic tree with unbiased selection approach appeared to be an interesting alternative to efficiently select interesting SNPs. Machine learning, specifically ensemble methods, might be useful as pre-screening tools for large-scale association studies because they can be less prone to overfitting, can be less computer processor time intensive, can easily include pair-wise and higher-order interactions compared with standard statistical approaches and can also have a high capability for classification. However, improved implementations that are able to deal with hundreds of thousands of SNPs at a time are required.

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