Publications

Abstract

The role of attentional control in lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in two patients with damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and one control patient with non-LIFG damage. Experiment 1 confirmed that the LIFG patients had attentional control deficits compared to normal controls while the non-LIFG patient was relatively unimpaired. Experiment 2 showed that all three patients did as well as normal controls in using biasing sentence context to resolve lexical ambiguities involving balanced ambiguous words, but only the LIFG patients took an abnormally long time on lexical ambiguities that resolved toward a subordinate meaning of biased ambiguous words. Taken together, the results suggest that attentional control plays an important role in the resolution of certain lexical ambiguities – those that induce strong interference from context-inappropriate meanings (i.e., dominant meanings of biased ambiguous words).

Abstract

Studies have shown that prereaders find globally similar non-rhyming pairs (i.e., bell–ball) difficult to judge. Although this effect has been explained as a result of ill-defined lexical representations, others have suggested that it is part of an innate tendency to respond to phonological overlap. In the present study we examined this effect over time. Beginning, intermediate and advanced readers were presented with a rhyme judgment task containing rhyming, phonologically similar, and unrelated non-rhyming pairs. To examine the role of lexical representations, participants were presented with both words and pseudowords. Outcomes showed that pseudoword processing was difficult for children but not for adults. The global similarity effect was present in both children and adults. The findings imply that holistic representations cannot explain the incapacity to ignore similarity relations during rhyming. Instead, the data provide more evidence for the idea that global similarity processing is part of a more fundamental innate phonological processing capacity.

Abstract

Objective Most rhyme awareness assessments do not encompass measures of the global similarity effect (i.e., children who are able to perform simple rhyme judgments get confused when presented with globally similar non-rhyming pairs). The present study examines the neural nature of this effect by studying the N450 rhyme effect. Methods Behavioral and electrophysiological responses of Dutch pre-literate kindergartners and literate second graders were recorded while they made rhyme judgments of word pairs in three conditions; phonologically rhyming (e.g., wijn-pijn), overlapping non-rhyming (e.g., pen-pijn) and unrelated non-rhyming pairs (e.g., boom-pijn). Results Behaviorally, both groups had difficulty judging overlapping but not rhyming and unrelated pairs. The neural data of second graders showed overlapping pairs were processed in a similar fashion as unrelated pairs; both showed a more negative deflection of the N450 component than rhyming items. Kindergartners did not show a typical N450 rhyme effect. However, some other interesting ERP differences were observed, indicating preliterates are sensitive to rhyme at a certain level. Significance Rhyme judgments of globally similar items rely on the same process as rhyme judgments of rhyming and unrelated items. Therefore, incorporating a globally similar condition in rhyme assessments may lead to a more in-depth measure of early phonological awareness skills. Highlights Behavioral and electrophysiological responses were recorded while (pre)literate children made rhyme judgments of rhyming, overlapping and unrelated words. Behaviorally both groups had difficulty judging overlapping pairs as non-rhyming while overlapping and unrelated neural patterns were similar in literates. Preliterates show a different pattern indicating a developing phonological system.

Abstract

Cross-language differences in the use of coarticulatory cues for the identification of fricatives have been demonstrated in a phoneme detection task: Listeners with perceptually similar fricative pairs in their native phoneme inventories (English, Polish, Spanish) relied more on cues from vowels than listeners with perceptually more distinct fricative contrasts (Dutch and German). The present gating study further investigated these cross-language differences and addressed three questions. (1) Are there cross-language differences in informativeness of parts of the speech signal regarding place of articulation for fricative identification? (2) Are such cross-language differences fricative-specific, or do they extend to the perception of place of articulation for plosives? (3) Is such language-specific uptake of information based on cues preceding or following the consonantal constriction? Dutch, Italian, Polish, and Spanish listeners identified fricatives and plosives in gated CV and VC syllables. The results showed cross-language differences in the informativeness of coarticulatory cues for fricative identification: Spanish and Polish listeners extracted place of articulation information from shorter portions of VC syllables. No language-specific differences were found for plosives, suggesting that greater reliance on coarticulatory cues did not generalize to other phoneme types. The language-specific differences for fricatives were based on coarticulatory cues into the consonant.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that inertial cues resulting from passive transport through a large environment do not necessarily facilitate acquiring knowledge about its layout. Here we examine whether the additional body-based cues that result from active movement facilitate the acquisition of spatial knowledge. Three groups of participants learned locations along an 840-m route. One group walked the route during learning, allowing access to body-based cues (i.e., vestibular, proprioceptive, and efferent information). Another group learned by sitting in the laboratory, watching videos made from the first group. A third group watched a specially made video that minimized potentially confusing head-on-trunk rotations of the viewpoint. All groups were tested on their knowledge of directions in the environment as well as on its configural properties. Having access to body-based information reduced pointing error by a small but significant amount. Regardless of the sensory information available during learning, participants exhibited strikingly common biases.

Abstract

Objective The authors investigated the effects of recently identified genome-wide significant schizophrenia genetic risk variants on cognition and brain structure. Method A panel of six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was selected to represent genome-wide significant loci from three recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for schizophrenia and was tested for association with cognitive measures in 346 patients with schizophrenia and 2,342 healthy comparison subjects. Nominally significant results were evaluated for replication in an independent case-control sample. For SNPs showing evidence of association with cognition, associations with brain structural volumes were investigated in a large independent healthy comparison sample. Results Five of the six SNPs showed no significant association with any cognitive measure. One marker in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region, rs6904071, showed independent, replicated evidence of association with delayed episodic memory and was significant when both samples were combined. In the combined sample of up to 3,100 individuals, this SNP was associated with widespread effects across cognitive domains, although these additional associations were no longer significant after adjusting for delayed episodic memory. In the large independent structural imaging sample, the same SNP was also associated with decreased hippocampal volume. Conclusions The authors identified a SNP in the MHC region that was associated with cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects. This SNP, rs6904071, showed a replicated association with episodic memory and hippocampal volume. These findings implicate the MHC region in hippocampal structure and functioning, consistent with the role of MHC proteins in synaptic development and function. Follow-up of these results has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and cognition.

Abstract

Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question–answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90–200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention–emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.

Abstract

Unlike common nouns, person names refer to unique entities and generally have a referring function. We used event-related potentials to investigate the time course of identifying the emotional meaning of nouns and names. The emotional valence of names and nouns were manipulated separately. The results show early N1 effects in response to emotional valence only for nouns. This might reflect automatic attention directed towards emotional stimuli. The absence of such an effect for names supports the notion that the emotional meaning carried by names is accessed after word recognition and person identification. In addition, both names with negative valence and emotional nouns elicited late positive effects, which have been associated with evaluation of emotional significance. This positive effect started earlier for nouns than for names, but with similar durations. Our results suggest that distinct neural systems are involved in the retrieval of names’ and nouns’ emotional meaning.

Abstract

The present study investigated whether and how beat gesture (small baton-like hand movements used to emphasize information in speech) influences semantic processing as well as its interaction with pitch accent during speech comprehension. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants watched videos of a person gesturing and speaking simultaneously. The critical words in the spoken sentences were accompanied by a beat gesture, a control hand movement, or no hand movement, and were expressed either with or without pitch accent. We found that both beat gesture and control hand movement induced smaller negativities in the N400 time window than when no hand movement was presented. The reduced N400s indicate that both beat gesture and control movement facilitated the semantic integration of the critical word into the sentence context. In addition, the words accompanied by beat gesture elicited smaller negativities in the N400 time window than those accompanied by control hand movement over right posterior electrodes, suggesting that beat gesture has a unique role for enhancing semantic processing during speech comprehension. Finally, no interaction was observed between beat gesture and pitch accent, indicating that they affect semantic processing independently.

Abstract

To highlight relevant information in dialogues, both wh-question context and pitch accent in answers can be used, such that focused information gains more attention and is processed more elaborately. To evaluate the relative influence of context and pitch accent on the depth of semantic processing, we measured Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to auditorily presented wh-question-answer pairs. A semantically incongruent word in the answer occurred either in focus or non-focus position as determined by the context, and this word was either accented or unaccented. Semantic incongruency elicited different N400 effects in different conditions. The largest N400 effect was found when the question-marked focus was accented, while the other three conditions elicited smaller N400 effects. The results suggest that context and accentuation interact. Thus accented focused words were processed more deeply compared to conditions where focus and accentuation mismatched, or when the new information had no marking. In addition, there seems to be sex differences in the depth of semantic processing. For males, a significant N400 effect was observed only when the question-marked focus was accented, reduced N400 effects were found in the other dialogues. In contrast, females produced similar N400 effects in all the conditions. These results suggest that regardless of external cues, females tend to engage in more elaborate semantic processing compared to males.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that lie detection can be improved by asking the interviewee unexpected questions. The present experiment investigates the effect of two types of unexpected questions: background questions and detail questions, on detecting lies about topics with which the interviewee is (a) familiar or (b) unfamiliar. In this experiment, 66 participants read interviews in which interviewees answered background or detail questions, either truthfully or deceptively. Those who answered deceptively could be lying about a topic they were familiar with or about a topic they were unfamiliar with. The participants were asked to judge whether the interviewees were lying. The results revealed that background questions distinguished truths from both types of lies, while the detail questions distinguished truths from unfamiliar lies, but not from familiar lies. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Abstract

Words which are expected to contain the same surface string of segments may, under identical prosodic circumstances, sometimes be realized with slight differences in duration. Some researchers have attributed such effects to differences in the words’ underlying forms (incomplete neutralization), while others have suggested orthographic influence and extremely careful speech as the cause. In this paper, we demonstrate such sub-phonemic durational differences in Dutch, a language which some past research has found not to have such effects. Past literature has also shown that listeners can often make use of incomplete neutralization to distinguish apparent homophones. We extend perceptual investigations of this topic, and show that listeners can perceive even durational differences which are not consistently observed in production. We further show that a difference which is primarily orthographic rather than underlying can also create such durational differences. We conclude that a wide variety of factors, in addition to underlying form, can induce speakers to produce slight durational differences which listeners can also use in perception.

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.

Abstract

This article presents electrophysiological data on on-line syntactic processing during auditory sentence comprehension in patients with Broca's aphasia. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp while subjects listened to sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of subject-verb agreement. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (n = 10), nonaphasic patients with a right-hemisphere (RH) lesion (n = 5), and healthy agedmatched controls (n = 12). The healthy, control subjects showed a P600/SPS effect as response to the agreement violations. The nonaphasic patients with an RH lesion showed essentially the same pattern. The overall group of Broca patients did not show this sensitivity. However, the sensitivity was modulated by the severity of the syntactic comprehension impairment. The largest deviation from the standard P600/SPS effect was found in the patients with the relatively more severe syntactic comprehension impairment. In addition, ERPs to tones in a classical tone oddball paradigm were also recorded. Similar to the normal control subjects and RH patients, the group of Broca patients showed a P300 effect in the tone oddball condition. This indicates that aphasia in itself does not lead to a general reduction in all cognitive ERP effects. It was concluded that deviations from the standard P600/SPS effect in the Broca patients reflected difficulties with on-line maintaining of number information across clausal boundaries for establishing subject-verb agreement.

Abstract

Four eye-tracking experiments examined lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Dutch listeners hearing English fixated longer on distractor pictures with names containing vowels that Dutch listeners are likely to confuse with vowels in a target picture name (pencil, given target panda) than on less confusable distractors (beetle, given target bottle). English listeners showed no such viewing time difference. The confusability was asymmetric: given pencil as target, panda did not distract more than distinct competitors. Distractors with Dutch names phonologically related to English target names (deksel, ‘lid,’ given target desk) also received longer fixations than distractors with phonologically unrelated names. Again, English listeners showed no differential effect. With the materials translated into Dutch, Dutch listeners showed no activation of the English words (desk, given target deksel). The results motivate two conclusions: native phonemic categories capture second-language input even when stored representations maintain a second-language distinction; and lexical competition is greater for non-native than for native listeners.

Abstract

Two cross-modal priming studies investigated the recognition of English words spoken with a foreign accent. Auditory English primes were either typical of a Dutch accent or typical of a Japanese accent in English and were presented to both Dutch and Japanese L2 listeners. Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words revealed that foreign-accented words can facilitate word recognition for L2 listeners if at least one of two requirements is met: the foreign-accented production is in accordance with the language background of the L2 listener, or the foreign accent is perceptually confusable with the standard pronunciation for the L2 listener. If neither one of the requirements is met, no facilitatory effect of foreign accents on L2 word recognition is found. Taken together, these findings suggest that linguistic experience with a foreign accent affects the ability to recognize words carrying this accent, and there is furthermore a general benefit for L2 listeners for recognizing foreign-accented words that are perceptually confusable with the standard pronunciation.

Abstract

Early language development is known to be under genetic influence, but the genes affecting normal variation in the general population remain largely elusive. Recent studies of disorder reported that variants of the CNTNAP2 gene are associated both with language deficits in specific language impairment (SLI) and with language delays in autism. We tested the hypothesis that these CNTNAP2 variants affect communicative behavior, measured at 2 years of age in a large epidemiological sample, the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Singlepoint analyses of 1149 children (606 males, 543 emales) revealed patterns of association which were strikingly reminiscent of those observed in previous investigations of impaired language, centered on the same genetic markers, and with a consistent direction of effect (rs2710102, p = .0239; rs759178, p = .0248). Based on these findings we performed analyses of four-marker haplotypes of rs2710102- s759178-rs17236239-rs2538976, and identified significant association (haplotype TTAA, p = .049; haplotype GCAG, p = .0014). Our study suggests that common variants in the exon 13-15 region of CNTNAP2 influence early language acquisition, as assessed at age 2, in the general population. We propose that these CNTNAP2 variants increase susceptibility to SLI or autism when they occur together with other risk factors.

Abstract

Participants were unknowingly exposed to complex regularities in a working memory task. The existence of implicit knowledge was subsequently inferred from a preference for stimuli with similar grammatical regularities. Several affective traits have been shown to influence
AGL performance positively, many of which are related to a tendency for automatic responding. We therefore tested whether the mindfulness trait predicted a reduction of grammatically congruent preferences, and used emotional primes to explore the influence of affect. Mindfulness was shown to correlate negatively with grammatically congruent responses. Negative primes were shown to result in faster and more negative evaluations.
We conclude that grammatically congruent preference ratings rely on habitual responses, and that our findings provide empirical evidence for the non-reactive disposition of the mindfulness trait.

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.

Abstract

Does language comprehension depend, in part, on neural systems for action? In previous studies, motor areas of the brain were activated when people read or listened to action verbs, but it remains unclear whether such activation is functionally relevant for comprehension. In the experiments reported here, we used off-line theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate whether a causal relationship exists between activity in premotor cortex and action-language understanding. Right-handed participants completed a lexical decision task, in which they read verbs describing manual actions typically performed with the dominant hand (e.g., “to throw,” “to write”) and verbs describing nonmanual actions (e.g., “to earn,” “to wander”). Responses to manual-action verbs (but not to nonmanual-action verbs) were faster after stimulation of the hand area in left premotor cortex than after stimulation of the hand area in right premotor cortex. These results suggest that premotor cortex has a functional role in action-language understanding.

Abstract

We investigated how visual and linguistic information interact in the perception of emotion. We borrowed a phenomenon from film theory which states that presentation of an as such neutral visual scene intensifies the percept of fear or suspense induced by a different channel of information, such as language. Our main aim was to investigate how neutral visual scenes can enhance responses to fearful language content in parts of the brain involved in the perception of emotion. Healthy participants’ brain activity was measured (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) while they read fearful and less fearful sentences presented with or without a neutral visual scene. The main idea is that the visual scenes intensify the fearful content of the language by subtly implying and concretizing what is described in the sentence. Activation levels in the right anterior temporal pole were selectively increased when a neutral visual scene was paired with a fearful sentence, compared to reading the sentence alone, as well as to reading of non-fearful sentences presented with the same neutral scene. We conclude that the right anterior temporal pole serves a binding function of emotional information across domains such as visual and linguistic information.

Abstract

A debated issue in the relationship between language and thought is how our linguistic abilities are involved in understanding the intentions of others (‘mentalizing’). The results of both theoretical and empirical work have been used to argue that linguistic, and more specifically, grammatical, abilities are crucial in representing the mental states of others. Here we contribute to this debate by investigating how damage to the language system influences the generation and understanding of intentional communicative behaviors. Four patients with pervasive language difficulties (severe global or agrammatic aphasia) engaged in an experimentally controlled non-verbal communication paradigm, which required signaling and understanding a communicative message. Despite their profound language problems they were able to engage in recipient design as well as intention recognition, showing similar indicators of mentalizing as have been observed in the neurologically healthy population. Our results show that aspects of the ability to communicate remain present even when core capacities of the language system are dysfunctional

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.

Abstract

Do people use sensori-motor cortices to understand language? Here we review neurocognitive studies of language comprehension in healthy adults and evaluate their possible contributions to theories of language in the brain. We start by sketching the minimal predictions that an embodied theory of language understanding makes for empirical research, and then survey studies that have been offered as evidence for embodied semantic representations. We explore four debated issues: first, does activation of sensori-motor cortices during action language understanding imply that action semantics relies on mirror neurons? Second, what is the evidence that activity in sensori-motor cortices plays a functional role in understanding language? Third, to what extent do responses in perceptual and motor areas depend on the linguistic and extra-linguistic context? And finally, can embodied theories accommodate language about abstract concepts? Based on the available evidence, we conclude that sensori-motor cortices are activated during a variety of language comprehension tasks, for both concrete and abstract language. Yet, this activity depends on the context in which perception and action words are encountered. Although modality-specific cortical activity is not a sine qua non of language processing even for language about perception and action, sensori-motor regions of the brain appear to make functional contributions to the construction of meaning, and should therefore be incorporated into models of the neurocognitive architecture of language.

Abstract

Marr and Poggio’s levels of description are one of the most well-known theoretical constructs of twentieth century cognitive science. It entails that behavior can and should be considered at three different levels: computation, algorithm, and implementation. In this contribution focus is on the computational level of description, the level that describes the “why” of cognition. I argue that the computational level should be taken as a starting point in devising experiments in cognitive (neuro)science. Instead, the starting point in empirical practice often is a focus on the stimulus or on some capacity of the cognitive system. The “why” of cognition tends to be ignored when designing research, and is not considered in subsequent inference from experimental results. The overall aim of this manuscript is to show how re-appreciation of the computational level of description as a starting point for experiments can lead to more informative experimentation.

Abstract

We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreign-accented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment’s second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different German-accented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment’s second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.

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.

Abstract

Im ISOcat-Datenkategorie-Register (Data Category Registry, www.isocat.org) des Technischen Komitees ISO/TC 37 (Terminology and other language and content resources) werden Feldnamen und Werte für Sprachressourcen beschrieben. Empfohlene Feldnamen und zuverlässige Definitionen sollen dazu beitragen, dass Sprachdaten unabhängig von Anwendungen, Plattformen und Communities of Practice (CoP) wiederverwendet werden können. Datenkategorie-Gruppen (Data Category Selections) können eingesehen, ausgedruckt, exportiert und nach kostenloser Registrierung auch neu erstellt werden.

Abstract

This article presents data on cardinal numerals in three sign languages from small-scale communities with hereditary deafness. The unusual features found in these data considerably extend the known range of typological variety across sign languages. Some features, such as non-decimal numeral bases, are unattested in sign languages, but familiar from spoken languages, while others, such as subtractive sub-systems, are rare in sign and speech. We conclude that for a complete typological appraisal of a domain, an approach to cross-modal typology, which includes a typologically diverse range of sign languages in addition to spoken languages, is both instructive and feasible.

Abstract

This article reports on results from a broad crosslinguistic study based on data from thirty-five signed languages around the world. The study is the first of its kind, and the typological generalizations presented here cover the domain of interrogative structures as they appear across a wide range of geographically and genetically distinct signed languages. Manual and nonmanual ways of marking basic types of questions in signed languages are investigated. As a result, it becomes clear that the range of crosslinguistic variation is extensive for some subparameters, such as the structure of question-word paradigms, while other parameters, such as the use of nonmanual expressions in questions, show more similarities across signed languages. Finally, it is instructive to compare the findings from signed language typology to relevant data from spoken languages at a more abstract, crossmodality level.

Abstract

This article presents a typology of negative constructions across a substantial number of sign languages from around the globe. After situating the topic within the wider context of linguistic typology, the main negation strategies found across sign languages are described. Nonmanual negation includes the use of head movements and facial expressions for negation and is of great importance in sign languages as well as particularly interesting from a typological point of view. As far as manual signs are concerned, independent negative particles represent the dominant strategy, but there are also instances of irregular negation in most sign languages. Irregular negatives may take the form of suppletion, cliticisation, affixing, or internal modification of a sign. The results of the study lead to interesting generalisations about similarities and differences between negatives in signed and spoken languages.

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.

Abstract

Psycholinguistic research has typically portrayed speech production as a relatively automatic process. This is because when errors are made, they occur as seldom as one in every thousand words we utter. However, it has long been recognised that we need some form of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. This capacity to both monitor our inner speech and self-correct our speech output has often been assumed to be a property of the language comprehension system. More recently, it has been demonstrated that speech production benefits from interfacing with more general cognitive processes such as selective attention, short-term memory (STM) and online response monitoring to resolve potential conflict and successfully produce the output of a verbal plan. The conditions and levels of representation according to which these more general planning, monitoring and control processes are engaged during speech production remain poorly understood. Moreover, there remains a paucity of information about their neural substrates, despite some of the first evidence of more general monitoring having come from electrophysiological studies of error related negativities (ERNs). While aphasic speech errors continue to be a rich source of information, there has been comparatively little research focus on instances of speech repair. The purpose of this Frontiers Research Topic is to provide a forum for researchers to contribute investigations employing behavioural, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and virtual lesioning techniques. In addition, while the focus of the research topic is on novel findings, we welcome submission of computational simulations, review articles and methods papers.

Abstract

Review: User friendliness of the first dictionary of Sign Language of the Netherlands can be improved

Abstract

(Needed: staff for residential care home with good eye-hand coordination. Measuring NGT-skills.)

Abstract

(The Corpus NGT and the daily practice of language teaching)

Abstract

(The Corpus NGT and teacher NGT/interpreter NGT training)