Publications

Displaying 101 - 200 of 532
  • Dempsey, J., & Brehm, L. (2020). Can propositional biases modulate syntactic repair processes? Insights from preceding comprehension questions. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 32(5-6), 543-552. doi:10.1080/20445911.2020.1803884.

    Abstract

    There is an ongoing debate about whether discourse biases can constrain sentence
    processing. Previous work has shown comprehension question accuracy to decrease
    for temporarily ambiguous sentences preceded by a context biasing towards an initial
    misinterpretation, suggesting a role of context for modulating comprehension.
    However, this creates limited modulation of reading times at the disambiguating word,
    suggesting initial syntactic processing may be unaffected by context [Christianson &
    Luke, 2011. Context strengthens initial misinterpretations of text. Scientific Studies of
    Reading, 15(2), 136–166]. The current experiments examine whether propositional and
    structural content from preceding comprehension questions can cue readers to expect
    certain structures in temporarily ambiguous garden-path sentences. The central finding
    is that syntactic repair processes remain unaffected while reading times in other
    regions are modulated by preceding questions. This suggests that reading strategies
    can be superficially influenced by preceding comprehension questions without
    impacting the fidelity of ultimate (mis)representations.

    Additional information

    pecp_a_1803884_sm1217.zip
  • Den Hoed, J., & Fisher, S. E. (2020). Genetic pathways involved in human speech disorders. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 65, 103-111. doi:10.1016/j.gde.2020.05.012.
  • Dimroth, C. (1998). Indiquer la portée en allemand L2: Une étude longitudinale de l'acquisition des particules de portée. AILE (Acquisition et Interaction en Langue étrangère), 11, 11-34.
  • Dingemanse, M., Perlman, M., & Perniss, P. (2020). Construals of iconicity: Experimental approaches to form-meaning resemblances in language. Language and Cognition, 12(1), 1-14. doi:10.1017/langcog.2019.48.

    Abstract

    While speculations on form–meaning resemblances in language go back millennia, the experimental study of iconicity is only about a century old. Here we take stock of experimental work on iconicity and present a double special issue with a diverse set of new contributions. We contextualise the work by introducing a typology of approaches to iconicity in language. Some approaches construe iconicity as a discrete property that is either present or absent; others treat it as involving semiotic relationships that come in kinds; and yet others see it as a gradient substance that comes in degrees. We show the benefits and limitations that come with each of these construals and stress the importance of developing accounts that can fluently switch between them. With operationalisations of iconicity that are well defined yet flexible enough to deal with differences in tasks, modalities, and levels of analysis, experimental research on iconicity is well equipped to contribute to a comprehensive science of language.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Resource-rationality beyond individual minds: The case of interactive language use. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, 23-24. doi:10.1017/S0140525X19001638.

    Abstract

    Resource-rational approaches offer much promise for understanding human cognition, especially if they can reach beyond the confines of individual minds. Language allows people to transcend individual resource limitations by augmenting computation and enabling distributed cognition. Interactive language use, an environment where social rational agents routinely deal with resource constraints together, offers a natural laboratory to test resource-rationality in the wild.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Between sound and speech: Liminal signs in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(1), 188-196. doi:10.1080/08351813.2020.1712967.

    Abstract

    When people talk, they recruit a wide range of expressive devices for interactional work, from sighs, sniffs, clicks, and whistles to other conduct that borders on the linguistic. These resources represent some of the more elusive yet no less powerful aspects of the interactional machinery as they are used in the management of turn and sequence and the marking of stance and affect. Phenomena long assumed to be beyond the purview of linguistic inquiry emerge as systematically deployed practices whose ambiguous degree of control and convention allows participants to carry out subtle interactional work without committing to specific words. While these resources have been characterised as non-lexical, non-verbal, or non-conventional, I propose they are unified in their liminality: they work well precisely because they equivocate between sound and speech. The empirical study of liminal signs shows the promise of sequential analysis for building a science of language on interactional foundations.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Der Raum zwischen unseren Köpfen. Technology Review, 2020(13), 10-15.

    Abstract

    Aktuelle Vorstellungen von Gehirn-zu-Gehirn-Schnittstellen versprechen, die Sprache zu umgehen. Aber wenn wir sie verfeinern, um ihr kollaboratives Potenzial voll auszuschöpfen, sehen wir Sprache — oder zumindest ein sprachähnliches Infrastruktur für Kommunika­tion und Koordination — durch die Hintertür wieder hereinkommen. Es wäre nicht das erste Mal, dass sich die Sprache neu erfindet.

    Current conceptions of brain-to-brain interfaces attempt to bypass language. But when we refine them to more fully realise their collaborative potential we find language —or at least a language-like infrastructure for communication and coordination— slipping through the back door. It wouldn't be the first time that language reinvented itself.
  • Dingemanse, M., & Thompson, B. (2020). Playful iconicity: Structural markedness underlies the relation between funniness and iconicity. Language and Cognition, 12(1), 203-224. doi:10.1017/langcog.2019.49.

    Abstract

    Words like ‘waddle’, ‘flop’ and ‘zigzag’ combine playful connotations with iconic form-meaning resemblances. Here we propose that structural markedness may be a common factor underlying perceptions of playfulness and iconicity. Using collected and estimated lexical ratings covering a total of over 70,000 English words, we assess the robustness of this assocation. We identify cues of phonotactic complexity that covary with funniness and iconicity ratings and that, we propose, serve as metacommunicative signals to draw attention to words as playful and performative. To assess the generalisability of the findings we develop a method to estimate lexical ratings from distributional semantics and apply it to a dataset 20 times the size of the original set of human ratings. The method can be used more generally to extend coverage of lexical ratings. We find that it reliably reproduces correlations between funniness and iconicity as well as cues of structural markedness, though it also amplifies biases present in the human ratings. Our study shows that the playful and the poetic are part of the very texture of the lexicon.
  • Dolscheid, S., Çelik, S., Erkan, H., Küntay, A., & Majid, A. (2020). Space-pitch associations differ in their susceptibility to language. Cognition, 196: 104073. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104073.

    Abstract

    To what extent are links between musical pitch and space universal, and to what extent are they shaped by
    language? There is contradictory evidence in support of both universality and linguistic relativity presently,
    leaving the question open. To address this, speakers of Dutch who talk about pitch in terms of spatial height and
    speakers of Turkish who use a thickness metaphor were tested in simple nonlinguistic space-pitch association
    tasks. Both groups showed evidence of a thickness-pitch association, but differed significantly in their heightpitch
    associations, suggesting the latter may be more susceptible to language. When participants had to match
    pitches to spatial stimuli where height and thickness were opposed (i.e., a thick line high in space vs. a thin line
    low in space), Dutch and Turkish differed in their relative preferences. Whereas Turkish participants predominantly
    opted for a thickness-pitch interpretation—even if this meant a reversal of height-pitch
    mappings—Dutch participants favored a height-pitch interpretation more often. These findings provide new
    evidence that speakers of different languages vary in their space-pitch associations, while at the same time
    showing such associations are not equally susceptible to linguistic influences. Some space-pitch (i.e., heightpitch)
    associations are more malleable than others (i.e., thickness-pitch).
  • Donnelly, S., & Kidd, E. (2020). Individual differences in lexical processing efficiency and vocabulary in toddlers: A longitudinal investigation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 192: 104781. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104781.

    Abstract

    Research on infants’ online lexical processing by Fernald, Perfors, and Marchman (2006) revealed substantial individual differences that are related to vocabulary development, such that infants with better lexical processing efficiency show greater vocabulary growth across time. Although it is clear that individual differences in lexical processing efficiency exist and are meaningful, the theoretical nature of lexical processing efficiency and its relation to vocabulary size is less clear. In the current study, we asked two questions: (a) Is lexical processing efficiency better conceptualized as a central processing capacity or as an emergent capacity reflecting a collection of word-specific capacities? and (b) Is there evidence for a causal role for lexical processing efficiency in early vocabulary development? In the study, 120 infants were tested on a measure of lexical processing at 18, 21, and 24 months, and their vocabulary was measured via parent report. Structural equation modeling of the 18-month time point data revealed that both theoretical constructs represented in the first question above (a) fit the data. A set of regression analyses on the longitudinal data revealed little evidence for a causal effect of lexical processing on vocabulary but revealed a significant effect of vocabulary size on lexical processing efficiency early in development. Overall, the results suggest that lexical processing efficiency is a stable construct in infancy that may reflect the structure of the developing lexicon.
  • Doust, C., Gordon, S. D., Garden, N., Fisher, S. E., Martin, N. G., Bates, T. C., & Luciano, M. (2020). The association of dyslexia and developmental speech and language disorder candidate genes with reading and language abilities in adults. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 23(1), 22-32. doi:10.1017/thg.2020.7.

    Abstract

    Reading and language abilities are critical for educational achievement and success in adulthood. Variation in these traits is highly heritable, but the underlying genetic architecture is largely undiscovered. Genetic studies of reading and language skills traditionally focus on children with developmental disorders; however, much larger unselected adult samples are available, increasing power to identify associations with specific genetic variants of small effect size. We introduce an Australian adult population cohort (41.7–73.2 years of age, N = 1505) in which we obtained data using validated measures of several aspects of reading and language abilities. We performed genetic association analysis for a reading and spelling composite score, nonword reading (assessing phonological processing: a core component in learning to read), phonetic spelling, self-reported reading impairment and nonword repetition (a marker of language ability). Given the limited power in a sample of this size (~80% power to find a minimum effect size of 0.005), we focused on analyzing candidate genes that have been associated with dyslexia and developmental speech and language disorders in prior studies. In gene-based tests, FOXP2, a gene implicated in speech/language disorders, was associated with nonword repetition (p < .001), phonetic spelling (p = .002) and the reading and spelling composite score (p < .001). Gene-set analyses of candidate dyslexia and speech/language disorder genes were not significant. These findings contribute to the assessment of genetic associations in reading and language disorders, crucial for understanding their etiology and informing intervention strategies, and validate the approach of using unselected adult samples for gene discovery in language and reading.

    Additional information

    Supplementary materials
  • Dowell, C., Hajnal, A., Pouw, W., & Wagman, J. B. (2020). Visual and haptic perception of affordances of feelies. Perception, 49(9), 905-925. doi:10.1177/0301006620946532.

    Abstract

    Most objects have well-defined affordances. Investigating perception of affordances of objects that were not created for a specific purpose would provide insight into how affordances are perceived. In addition, comparison of perception of affordances for such objects across different exploratory modalities (visual vs. haptic) would offer a strong test of the lawfulness of information about affordances (i.e., the invariance of such information over transformation). Along these lines, “feelies”— objects created by Gibson with no obvious function and unlike any common object—could shed light on the processes underlying affordance perception. This study showed that when observers reported potential uses for feelies, modality significantly influenced what kind of affordances were perceived. Specifically, visual exploration resulted in more noun labels (e.g., “toy”) than haptic exploration which resulted in more verb labels (i.e., “throw”). These results suggested that overlapping, but distinct classes of action possibilities are perceivable using vision and haptics. Semantic network analyses revealed that visual exploration resulted in object-oriented responses focused on object identification, whereas haptic exploration resulted in action-oriented responses. Cluster analyses confirmed these results. Affordance labels produced in the visual condition were more consistent, used fewer descriptors, were less diverse, but more novel than in the haptic condition.
  • Drijvers, L., & Ozyurek, A. (2020). Non-native listeners benefit less from gestures and visible speech than native listeners during degraded speech comprehension. Language and Speech, 63(2), 209-220. doi:10.1177/0023830919831311.

    Abstract

    Native listeners benefit from both visible speech and iconic gestures to enhance degraded speech comprehension (Drijvers & Ozyürek, 2017). We tested how highly proficient non-native listeners benefit from these visual articulators compared to native listeners. We presented videos of an actress uttering a verb in clear, moderately, or severely degraded speech, while her lips were blurred, visible, or visible and accompanied by a gesture. Our results revealed that unlike native listeners, non-native listeners were less likely to benefit from the combined enhancement of visible speech and gestures, especially since the benefit from visible speech was minimal when the signal quality was not sufficient.
  • Dronkers, N. F., Wilkins, D. P., Van Valin Jr., R. D., Redfern, B. B., & Jaeger, J. J. (2004). Lesion analysis of the brain areas involved in language comprehension. Cognition, 92, 145-177. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.11.002.

    Abstract

    The cortical regions of the brain traditionally associated with the comprehension of language are Wernicke's area and Broca's area. However, recent evidence suggests that other brain regions might also be involved in this complex process. This paper describes the opportunity to evaluate a large number of brain-injured patients to determine which lesioned brain areas might affect language comprehension. Sixty-four chronic left hemisphere stroke patients were evaluated on 11 subtests of the Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation – Receptive (CYCLE-R; Curtiss, S., & Yamada, J. (1988). Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation. Unpublished test, UCLA). Eight right hemisphere stroke patients and 15 neurologically normal older controls also participated. Patients were required to select a single line drawing from an array of three or four choices that best depicted the content of an auditorily-presented sentence. Patients' lesions obtained from structural neuroimaging were reconstructed onto templates and entered into a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM; Bates, E., Wilson, S., Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R. T., & Dronkers, N. F. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6(5), 448–450.) analysis along with the behavioral data. VLSM is a brain–behavior mapping technique that evaluates the relationships between areas of injury and behavioral performance in all patients on a voxel-by-voxel basis, similar to the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. Results indicated that lesions to five left hemisphere brain regions affected performance on the CYCLE-R, including the posterior middle temporal gyrus and underlying white matter, the anterior superior temporal gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus and angular gyrus, mid-frontal cortex in Brodmann's area 46, and Brodmann's area 47 of the inferior frontal gyrus. Lesions to Broca's and Wernicke's areas were not found to significantly alter language comprehension on this particular measure. Further analysis suggested that the middle temporal gyrus may be more important for comprehension at the word level, while the other regions may play a greater role at the level of the sentence. These results are consistent with those seen in recent functional neuroimaging studies and offer complementary data in the effort to understand the brain areas underlying language comprehension.
  • Drozd, K. F. (1995). Child English pre-sentential negation as metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. Journal of Child Language, 22(3), 583-610. doi:10.1017/S030500090000996X.

    Abstract

    This paper presents a study of the spontaneous pre-sentential negations
    of ten English-speaking children between the ages of 1; 6 and 3; 4 which
    supports the hypothesis that child English nonanaphoric pre-sentential
    negation is a form of metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. A
    detailed discourse analysis reveals that children's pre-sentential negatives
    like No Nathaniel a king (i) are characteristically echoic, and (it)
    typically express objection and rectification, two characteristic functions
    of exclamatory negation in adult discourse, e.g. Don't say 'Nathaniel's a
    king'! A comparison of children's pre-sentential negations with their
    internal predicate negations using not and don't reveals that the two
    negative constructions are formally and functionally distinct. I argue
    that children's nonanaphoric pre-sentential negatives constitute an
    independent, well-formed class of discourse negation. They are not
    'primitive' constructions derived from the miscategorization of emphatic
    no in adult speech or children's 'inventions'. Nor are they an
    early derivational variant of internal sentence negation. Rather, these
    negatives reflect young children's competence in using grammatical
    negative constructions appropriately in discourse.
  • Eekhof, L. S., Van Krieken, K., & Sanders, J. (2020). VPIP: A lexical identification procedure for perceptual, cognitive, and emotional viewpoint in narrative discourse. Open Library of Humanities, 6(1): 18. doi:10.16995/olh.483.

    Abstract

    Although previous work on viewpoint techniques has shown that viewpoint is ubiquitous in narrative discourse, approaches to identify and analyze the linguistic manifestations of viewpoint are currently scattered over different disciplines and dominated by qualitative methods. This article presents the ViewPoint Identification Procedure (VPIP), the first systematic method for the lexical identification of markers of perceptual, cognitive and emotional viewpoint in narrative discourse. Use of this step-wise procedure is facilitated by a large appendix of Dutch viewpoint markers. After the introduction of the procedure and discussion of some special cases, we demonstrate its application by discussing three types of narrative excerpts: a literary narrative, a news narrative, and an oral narrative. Applying the identification procedure to the full news narrative, we show that the VPIP can be reliably used to detect viewpoint markers in long stretches of narrative discourse. As such, the systematic identification of viewpoint has the potential to benefit both established viewpoint scholars and researchers from other fields interested in the analytical and experimental study of narrative and viewpoint. Such experimental studies could complement qualitative studies, ultimately advancing our theoretical understanding of the relation between the linguistic presentation and cognitive processing of viewpoint. Suggestions for elaboration of the VPIP, particularly in the realm of pragmatic viewpoint marking, are formulated in the final part of the paper.

    Additional information

    appendix
  • Egger, J., Rowland, C. F., & Bergmann, C. (2020). Improving the robustness of infant lexical processing speed measures. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 2188-2201. doi:10.3758/s13428-020-01385-5.

    Abstract

    Visual reaction times to target pictures after naming events are an informative measurement in language acquisition research, because gaze shifts measured in looking-while-listening paradigms are an indicator of infants’ lexical speed of processing. This measure is very useful, as it can be applied from a young age onwards and has been linked to later language development. However, to obtain valid reaction times, the infant is required to switch the fixation of their eyes from a distractor to a target object. This means that usually at least half the trials have to be discarded—those where the participant is already fixating the target at the onset of the target word—so that no reaction time can be measured. With few trials, reliability suffers, which is especially problematic when studying individual differences. In order to solve this problem, we developed a gaze-triggered looking-while-listening paradigm. The trials do not differ from the original paradigm apart from the fact that the target object is chosen depending on the infant’s eye fixation before naming. The object the infant is looking at becomes the distractor and the other object is used as the target, requiring a fixation switch, and thus providing a reaction time. We tested our paradigm with forty-three 18-month-old infants, comparing the results to those from the original paradigm. The Gaze-triggered paradigm yielded more valid reaction time trials, as anticipated. The results of a ranked correlation between the conditions confirmed that the manipulated paradigm measures the same concept as the original paradigm.
  • Eielts, C., Pouw, W., Ouwehand, K., Van Gog, T., Zwaan, R. A., & Paas, F. (2020). Co-thought gesturing supports more complex problem solving in subjects with lower visual working-memory capacity. Psychological Research, 84, 502-513. doi:10.1007/s00426-018-1065-9.

    Abstract

    During silent problem solving, hand gestures arise that have no communicative intent. The role of such co-thought gestures in
    cognition has been understudied in cognitive research as compared to co-speech gestures. We investigated whether gesticulation
    during silent problem solving supported subsequent performance in a Tower of Hanoi problem-solving task, in relation
    to visual working-memory capacity and task complexity. Seventy-six participants were assigned to either an instructed gesture
    condition or a condition that allowed them to gesture, but without explicit instructions to do so. This resulted in three
    gesture groups: (1) non-gesturing; (2) spontaneous gesturing; (3) instructed gesturing. In line with the embedded/extended
    cognition perspective on gesture, gesturing benefited complex problem-solving performance for participants with a lower
    visual working-memory capacity, but not for participants with a lower spatial working-memory capacity.
  • Eijk, L., Fletcher, A., McAuliffe, M., & Janse, E. (2020). The effects of word frequency and word probability on speech rhythm in dysarthria. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63, 2833-2845. doi:10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00389.

    Abstract

    Purpose

    In healthy speakers, the more frequent and probable a word is in its context, the shorter the word tends to be. This study investigated whether these probabilistic effects were similarly sized for speakers with dysarthria of different severities.
    Method

    Fifty-six speakers of New Zealand English (42 speakers with dysarthria and 14 healthy speakers) were recorded reading the Grandfather Passage. Measurements of word duration, frequency, and transitional word probability were taken.
    Results

    As hypothesized, words with a higher frequency and probability tended to be shorter in duration. There was also a significant interaction between word frequency and speech severity. This indicated that the more severe the dysarthria, the smaller the effects of word frequency on speakers' word durations. Transitional word probability also interacted with speech severity, but did not account for significant unique variance in the full model.
    Conclusions

    These results suggest that, as the severity of dysarthria increases, the duration of words is less affected by probabilistic variables. These findings may be due to reductions in the control and execution of muscle movement exhibited by speakers with dysarthria.
  • Emmendorfer, A. K., Correia, J. M., Jansma, B. M., Kotz, S. A., & Bonte, M. (2020). ERP mismatch response to phonological and temporal regularities in speech. Scientific Reports, 10: 9917. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-66824-x.

    Abstract

    Predictions of our sensory environment facilitate perception across domains. During speech perception, formal and temporal predictions may be made for phonotactic probability and syllable stress patterns, respectively, contributing to the efficient processing of speech input. The current experiment employed a passive EEG oddball paradigm to probe the neurophysiological processes underlying temporal and formal predictions simultaneously. The component of interest, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is considered a marker for experience-dependent change detection, where its timing and amplitude are indicative of the perceptual system’s sensitivity to presented stimuli. We hypothesized that more predictable stimuli (i.e. high phonotactic probability and first syllable stress) would facilitate change detection, indexed by shorter peak latencies or greater peak amplitudes of the MMN. This hypothesis was confirmed for phonotactic probability: high phonotactic probability deviants elicited an earlier MMN than low phonotactic probability deviants. We do not observe a significant modulation of the MMN to variations in syllable stress. Our findings confirm that speech perception is shaped by formal and temporal predictability. This paradigm may be useful to investigate the contribution of implicit processing of statistical regularities during (a)typical language development.

    Additional information

    supplementary information
  • Enfield, N. J. (2004). On linear segmentation and combinatorics in co-speech gesture: A symmetry-dominance construction in Lao fish trap descriptions. Semiotica, 149(1/4), 57-123. doi:10.1515/semi.2004.038.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2004). Nominal classification in Lao: A sketch. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, 57(2/3), 117-143.
  • Ernestus, M., & Mak, W. M. (2004). Distinctive phonological features differ in relevance for both spoken and written word recognition. Brain and Language, 90(1-3), 378-392. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00449-8.

    Abstract

    This paper discusses four experiments on Dutch which show that distinctive phonological features differ in their relevance for word recognition. The relevance of a feature for word recognition depends on its phonological stability, that is, the extent to which that feature is generally realized in accordance with its lexical specification in the relevant word position. If one feature value is uninformative, all values of that feature are less relevant for word recognition, with the least informative feature being the least relevant. Features differ in their relevance both in spoken and written word recognition, though the differences are more pronounced in auditory lexical decision than in self-paced reading.
  • Ernestus, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2004). Analogical effects in regular past tense production in Dutch. Linguistics, 42(5), 873-903. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.031.

    Abstract

    This study addresses the question to what extent the production of regular past tense forms in Dutch is a¤ected by analogical processes. We report an experiment in which native speakers of Dutch listened to existing regular verbs over headphones, and had to indicate which of the past tense allomorphs, te or de, was appropriate for these verbs. According to generative analyses, the choice between the two su‰xes is completely regular and governed by the underlying [voice]-specification of the stem-final segment. In this approach, no analogical e¤ects are expected. In connectionist and analogical approaches, by contrast, the phonological similarity structure in the lexicon is expected to a¤ect lexical processing. Our experimental results support the latter approach: all participants created more nonstandard past tense forms, produced more inconsistency errors, and responded more slowly for verbs with stronger analogical support for the nonstandard form.
  • Ernestus, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2004). Kuchde, tobte, en turfte: Lekkage in 't kofschip. Onze Taal, 73(12), 360-361.
  • Faber, M., Mak, M., & Willems, R. M. (2020). Word skipping as an indicator of individual reading style during literary reading. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(3): 2. doi:10.16910/jemr.13.3.2.

    Abstract

    Decades of research have established that the content of language (e.g. lexical characteristics of words) predicts eye movements during reading. Here we investigate whether there exist individual differences in ‘stable’ eye movement patterns during narrative reading. We computed Euclidean distances from correlations between gaze durations time courses (word level) across 102 participants who each read three literary narratives in Dutch. The resulting distance matrices were compared between narratives using a Mantel test. The results show that correlations between the scaling matrices of different narratives are relatively weak (r ≤ .11) when missing data points are ignored. However, when including these data points as zero durations (i.e. skipped words), we found significant correlations between stories (r > .51). Word skipping was significantly positively associated with print exposure but not with self-rated attention and story-world absorption, suggesting that more experienced readers are more likely to skip words, and do so in a comparable fashion. We interpret this finding as suggesting that word skipping might be a stable individual eye movement pattern.
  • Fazekas, J., Jessop, A., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. F. (2020). Do children learn from their prediction mistakes? A registered report evaluating error-based theories of language acquisition. Royal Society Open Science, 7(11): 180877. doi:10.1098/rsos.180877.

    Abstract

    Error-based theories of language acquisition suggest that children, like adults, continuously make and evaluate predictions in order to reach an adult-like state of language use. However, while these theories have become extremely influential, their central claim - that unpredictable
    input leads to higher rates of lasting change in linguistic representations – has scarcely been
    tested. We designed a prime surprisal-based intervention study to assess this claim.
    As predicted, both 5- to 6-year-old children (n=72) and adults (n=72) showed a pre- to post-test shift towards producing the dative syntactic structure they were exposed to in surprising sentences. The effect was significant in both age groups together, and in the child group separately when participants with ceiling performance in the pre-test were excluded. Secondary
    predictions were not upheld: we found no verb-based learning effects and there was only reliable evidence for immediate prime surprisal effects in the adult, but not in the child group. To our knowledge this is the first published study demonstrating enhanced learning rates for the same syntactic structure when it appeared in surprising as opposed to predictable contexts, thus
    providing crucial support for error-based theories of language acquisition.
  • Fear, B. D., Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1995). The strong/weak syllable distinction in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1893-1904. doi:10.1121/1.412063.

    Abstract

    Strong and weak syllables in English can be distinguished on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. Critical for deciding between these factors are syllables containing unstressed unreduced vowels, such as the first syllable of automata. In this study 12 speakers produced sentences containing matched sets of words with initial vowels ranging from stressed to reduced, at normal and at fast speech rates. Measurements of the duration, intensity, F0, and spectral characteristics of the word-initial vowels showed that unstressed unreduced vowels differed significantly from both stressed and reduced vowels. This result held true across speaker sex and dialect. The vowels produced by one speaker were then cross-spliced across the words within each set, and the resulting words' acceptability was rated by listeners. In general, cross-spliced words were only rated significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when reduced vowels interchanged with any other vowel. Correlations between rated acceptability and acoustic characteristics of the cross-spliced words demonstrated that listeners were attending to duration, intensity, and spectral characteristics. Together these results suggest that unstressed unreduced vowels in English pattern differently from both stressed and reduced vowels, so that no acoustic support for a binary categorical distinction exists; nevertheless, listeners make such a distinction, grouping unstressed unreduced vowels by preference with stressed vowels
  • Ferraro, S., Nigri, A., D'incerti, L., Rosazza, C., Sattin, D., Sebastiano, D. R., Visani, E., Duran, D., Marotta, G., De Michelis, G., Catricalà, E., Kotz, S. A., Verga, L., Leonardi, M., Cappa, S. F., & Bruzzone, M. G. (2020). Preservation of language processing and auditory performance in patients with disorders of consciousness: a multimodal assessment. Frontiers in Neurology, 11: 526465. doi:10.3389/fneur.2020.526465.

    Abstract

    The impact of language impairment on the clinical assessment of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DOC) is unknown or underestimated, and may mask the presence of conscious behavior. In a group of DOC patients (n=11; time post-injury range:5-252 months), we investigated the main neural functional and structural underpinnings of linguistic processing, and their relationship with the behavioral measures of the auditory function, using the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R). We assessed the integrity of the brainstem auditory pathways, of the left superior temporal gyrus and arcuate fasciculus, the neural activity elicited by passive listening of an auditory language task and the mean hemispheric glucose metabolism.
    Our results support the hypothesis of a relationship between the level of preservation of the investigated structures/functions and the CRS-R auditory subscale scores.
    Moreover, our findings indicate that patients in minimally conscious state minus (MCS-): 1) when presenting the \emph{auditory startle} (at the CRS-R auditory subscale) might be aphasic in the receptive domain, being severely impaired in the core language structures/functions; 2) when presenting the \emph{localization to sound} might retain language processing, being almost intact or intact in the core language structures/functions. Despite the small group of investigated patients, our findings provide a grounding of the clinical measures of the CRS-R auditory subscale in the integrity of the underlying auditory structures/functions. Future studies are needed to confirm our results that might have important consequences for the clinical practice.
  • Fisher, S. E., Hatchwell, E., Chand, A., Ockenden, N., Monaco, A. P., & Craig, I. W. (1995). Construction of two YAC contigs in human Xp11.23-p11.22, one encompassing the loci OATL1, GATA, TFE3, and SYP, the other linking DXS255 to DXS146. Genomics, 29(2), 496-502. doi:10.1006/geno.1995.9976.

    Abstract

    We have constructed two YAC contigs in the Xp11.23-p11.22 interval of the human X chromosome, a region that was previously poorly characterized. One contig, of at least 1.4 Mb, links the pseudogene OATL1 to the genes GATA1, TFE3, and SYP and also contains loci implicated in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and synovial sarcoma. A second contig, mapping proximal to the first, is estimated to be over 2.1 Mb and links the hypervariable locus DXS255 to DXS146, and also contains a chloride channel gene that is responsible for hereditary nephrolithiasis. We have used plasmid rescue, inverse PCR, and Alu-PCR to generate 20 novel markers from this region, 1 of which is polymorphic, and have positioned these relative to one another on the basis of YAC analysis. The order of previously known markers within our contigs, Xpter-OATL1-GATA-TFE3-SYP-DXS255146- Xcen, agrees with genomic pulsed-field maps of the region. In addition, we have constructed a rare-cutter restriction map for a 710-kb region of the DXS255-DXS146 contig and have identified three CPG islands. These contigs and new markers will provide a useful resource for more detailed analysis of Xp11.23-p11.22, a region implicated in several genetic diseases.
  • Fisher, S. E., Van Bakel, I., Lloyd, S. E., Pearce, S. H. S., Thakker, R. V., & Craig, I. W. (1995). Cloning and characterization of CLCN5, the human kidney chloride channel gene implicated in Dent disease (an X-linked hereditary nephrolithiasis). Genomics, 29, 598-606. doi:10.1006/geno.1995.9960.

    Abstract

    Dent disease, an X-linked familial renal tubular disorder, is a form of Fanconi syndrome associated with proteinuria, hypercalciuria, nephrocalcinosis, kidney stones, and eventual renal failure. We have previously used positional cloning to identify the 3' part of a novel kidney-specific gene (initially termed hClC-K2, but now referred to as CLCN5), which is deleted in patients from one pedigree segregating Dent disease. Mutations that disrupt this gene have been identified in other patients with this disorder. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of the complete open reading frame of the human CLCN5 gene, which is predicted to encode a protein of 746 amino acids, with significant homology to all known members of the ClC family of voltage-gated chloride channels. CLCN5 belongs to a distinct branch of this family, which also includes the recently identified genes CLCN3 and CLCN4. We have shown that the coding region of CLCN5 is organized into 12 exons, spanning 25-30 kb of genomic DNA, and have determined the sequence of each exon-intron boundary. The elucidation of the coding sequence and exon-intron organization of CLCN5 will both expedite the evaluation of structure/function relationships of these ion channels and facilitate the screening of other patients with renal tubular dysfunction for mutations at this locus.
  • Fisher, S. E., Vargha-Khadem, F., Watkins, K. E., Monaco, A. P., & Pembrey, M. E. (1998). Localisation of a gene implicated in a severe speech and language disorder. Nature Genetics, 18, 168 -170. doi:10.1038/ng0298-168.

    Abstract

    Between 2 and 5% of children who are otherwise unimpaired have significant difficulties in acquiring expressive and/or receptive language, despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. While twin studies indicate a significant role for genetic factors in developmental disorders of speech and language, the majority of families segregating such disorders show complex patterns of inheritance, and are thus not amenable for conventional linkage analysis. A rare exception is the KE family, a large three-generation pedigree in which approximately half of the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder which appears to be transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. This family has been widely publicised as suffering primarily from a defect in the use of grammatical suffixation rules, thus supposedly supporting the existence of genes specific to grammar. The phenotype, however, is broader in nature, with virtually every aspect of grammar and of language affected. In addition, affected members have a severe orofacial dyspraxia, and their speech is largely incomprehensible to the naive listener. We initiated a genome-wide search for linkage in the KE family and have identified a region on chromosome 7 which co-segregates with the speech and language disorder (maximum lod score = 6.62 at theta = 0.0), confirming autosomal dominant inheritance with full penetrance. Further analysis of microsatellites from within the region enabled us to fine map the locus responsible (designated SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM interval in 7q31, thus providing an important step towards its identification. Isolation of SPCH1 may offer the first insight into the molecular genetics of the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.
  • Fitz, H., Uhlmann, M., Van den Broek, D., Duarte, R., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2020). Neuronal spike-rate adaptation supports working memory in language processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(34), 20881-20889. doi:10.1073/pnas.2000222117.

    Abstract

    Language processing involves the ability to store and integrate pieces of
    information in working memory over short periods of time. According to
    the dominant view, information is maintained through sustained, elevated
    neural activity. Other work has argued that short-term synaptic facilitation
    can serve as a substrate of memory. Here, we propose an account where
    memory is supported by intrinsic plasticity that downregulates neuronal
    firing rates. Single neuron responses are dependent on experience and we
    show through simulations that these adaptive changes in excitability pro-
    vide memory on timescales ranging from milliseconds to seconds. On this
    account, spiking activity writes information into coupled dynamic variables
    that control adaptation and move at slower timescales than the membrane
    potential. From these variables, information is continuously read back into
    the active membrane state for processing. This neuronal memory mech-
    anism does not rely on persistent activity, excitatory feedback, or synap-
    tic plasticity for storage. Instead, information is maintained in adaptive
    conductances that reduce firing rates and can be accessed directly with-
    out cued retrieval. Memory span is systematically related to both the time
    constant of adaptation and baseline levels of neuronal excitability. Inter-
    ference effects within memory arise when adaptation is long-lasting. We
    demonstrate that this mechanism is sensitive to context and serial order
    which makes it suitable for temporal integration in sequence processing
    within the language domain. We also show that it enables the binding of
    linguistic features over time within dynamic memory registers. This work
    provides a step towards a computational neurobiology of language.
  • Flecken, M., & Van Bergen, G. (2020). Can the English stand the bottle like the Dutch? Effects of relational categories on object perception. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 37(5-6), 271-287. doi:10.1080/02643294.2019.1607272.

    Abstract

    Does language influence how we perceive the world? This study examines how linguistic encoding of relational information by means of verbs implicitly affects visual processing, by measuring perceptual judgements behaviourally, and visual perception and attention in EEG. Verbal systems can vary cross-linguistically: Dutch uses posture verbs to describe inanimate object configurations (the bottle stands/lies on the table). In English, however, such use of posture verbs is rare (the bottle is on the table). Using this test case, we ask (1) whether previously attested language-perception interactions extend to more complex domains, and (2) whether differences in linguistic usage probabilities affect perception. We report three nonverbal experiments in which Dutch and English participants performed a picture-matching task. Prime and target pictures contained object configurations (e.g., a bottle on a table); in the critical condition, prime and target showed a mismatch in object position (standing/lying). In both language groups, we found similar responses, suggesting that probabilistic differences in linguistic encoding of relational information do not affect perception.
  • Fleur, D. S., Flecken, M., Rommers, J., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2020). Definitely saw it coming? The dual nature of the pre-nominal prediction effect. Cognition, 204: 104335. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104335.

    Abstract

    In well-known demonstrations of lexical prediction during language comprehension, pre-nominal articles that mismatch a likely upcoming noun's gender elicit different neural activity than matching articles. However, theories differ on what this pre-nominal prediction effect means and on what is being predicted. Does it reflect mismatch with a predicted article, or ‘merely’ revision of the noun prediction? We contrasted the ‘article prediction mismatch’ hypothesis and the ‘noun prediction revision’ hypothesis in two ERP experiments on Dutch mini-story comprehension, with pre-registered data collection and analyses. We capitalized on the Dutch gender system, which marks gender on definite articles (‘de/het’) but not on indefinite articles (‘een’). If articles themselves are predicted, mismatching gender should have little effect when readers expected an indefinite article without gender marking. Participants read contexts that strongly suggested either a definite or indefinite noun phrase as its best continuation, followed by a definite noun phrase with the expected noun or an unexpected, different gender noun phrase (‘het boek/de roman’, the book/the novel). Experiment 1 (N = 48) showed a pre-nominal prediction effect, but evidence for the article prediction mismatch hypothesis was inconclusive. Informed by exploratory analyses and power analyses, direct replication Experiment 2 (N = 80) yielded evidence for article prediction mismatch at a newly pre-registered occipital region-of-interest. However, at frontal and posterior channels, unexpectedly definite articles also elicited a gender-mismatch effect, and this support for the noun prediction revision hypothesis was further strengthened by exploratory analyses: ERPs elicited by gender-mismatching articles correlated with incurred constraint towards a new noun (next-word entropy), and N400s for initially unpredictable nouns decreased when articles made them more predictable. By demonstrating its dual nature, our results reconcile two prevalent explanations of the pre-nominal prediction effect.
  • Forkel, S. J., Rogalski, E., Drossinos Sancho, N., D'Anna, L., Luque Laguna, P., Sridhar, J., Dell'Acqua, F., Weintraub, S., Thompson, C., Mesulam, M.-M., & Catani, M. (2020). Anatomical evidence of an indirect pathway for word repetition. Neurology, 94, e594-e606. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000008746.

    Abstract



    Objective: To combine MRI-based cortical morphometry and diffusion white matter tractography to describe the anatomical correlates of repetition deficits in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA).

    Methods: The traditional anatomical model of language identifies a network for word repetition that includes Wernicke and Broca regions directly connected via the arcuate fasciculus. Recent tractography findings of an indirect pathway between Wernicke and Broca regions suggest a critical role of the inferior parietal lobe for repetition. To test whether repetition deficits are associated with damage to the direct or indirect pathway between both regions, tractography analysis was performed in 30 patients with PPA (64.27 ± 8.51 years) and 22 healthy controls. Cortical volume measurements were also extracted from 8 perisylvian language areas connected by the direct and indirect pathways.

    Results: Compared to healthy controls, patients with PPA presented with reduced performance in repetition tasks and increased damage to most of the perisylvian cortical regions and their connections through the indirect pathway. Repetition deficits were prominent in patients with cortical atrophy of the temporo-parietal region with volumetric reductions of the indirect pathway.

    Conclusions: The results suggest that in PPA, deficits in repetition are due to damage to the temporo-parietal cortex and its connections to Wernicke and Broca regions. We therefore propose a revised language model that also includes an indirect pathway for repetition, which has important clinical implications for the functional mapping and treatment of neurologic patients.
  • Forkel, S. J., & Thiebaut de Schotten, M. (2020). Towards metabolic disconnection – symptom mapping. Brain, 143(3), 718-721. doi:10.1093/brain/awaa060.

    Abstract

    This scientific commentary refers to ‘Metabolic lesion-deficit mapping of human cognition’ by Jha etal.
  • Fox, N. P., Leonard, M., Sjerps, M. J., & Chang, E. F. (2020). Transformation of a temporal speech cue to a spatial neural code in human auditory cortex. eLife, 9: e53051. doi:10.7554/eLife.53051.

    Abstract

    In speech, listeners extract continuously-varying spectrotemporal cues from the acoustic signal to perceive discrete phonetic categories. Spectral cues are spatially encoded in the amplitude of responses in phonetically-tuned neural populations in auditory cortex. It remains unknown whether similar neurophysiological mechanisms encode temporal cues like voice-onset time (VOT), which distinguishes sounds like /b/ and/p/. We used direct brain recordings in humans to investigate the neural encoding of temporal speech cues with a VOT continuum from /ba/ to /pa/. We found that distinct neural populations respond preferentially to VOTs from one phonetic category, and are also sensitive to sub-phonetic VOT differences within a population’s preferred category. In a simple neural network model, simulated populations tuned to detect either temporal gaps or coincidences between spectral cues captured encoding patterns observed in real neural data. These results demonstrate that a spatial/amplitude neural code underlies the cortical representation of both spectral and temporal speech cues.

    Additional information

    Data and code
  • Frances, C., De Bruin, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2020). The influence of emotional and foreign language context in content learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(4), 891-903.
  • Frances, C., Martin, C. D., & Andoni, D. J. (2020). The effects of contextual diversity on incidental vocabulary learning in the native and a foreign language. Scientific Reports, 10: 13967. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-70922-1.

    Abstract

    Vocabulary learning occurs throughout the lifespan, often implicitly. For foreign language learners,
    this is particularly challenging as they must acquire a large number of new words with little exposure.
    In the present study, we explore the effects of contextual diversity—namely, the number of texts a
    word appears in—on native and foreign language word learning. Participants read several texts that
    had novel pseudowords replacing high-frequency words. The total number of encounters with the
    novel words was held constant, but they appeared in 1, 2, 4, or 8 texts. In addition, some participants
    read the texts in Spanish (their native language) and others in English (their foreign language). We
    found that increasing contextual diversity improved recall and recognition of the word, as well as the
    ability to match the word with its meaning while keeping comprehension unimpaired. Using a foreign
    language only affected performance in the matching task, where participants had to quickly identify
    the meaning of the word. Results are discussed in the greater context of the word learning and foreign
    language literature as well as their importance as a teaching tool.
  • Frances, C., Pueyo, S., Anaya, V., & Dunabeitia Landaburu, J. A. (2020). Interpreting foreign smiles: language context and type of scale in the assessment of perceived happiness and sadness. Psicológica, 41, 21-38. doi:10.2478/psicolj-2020-0002.

    Abstract

    The current study focuses on how different scales with varying demands can
    affect our subjective assessments. We carried out 2 experiments in which we
    asked participants to rate how happy or sad morphed images of faces looked.
    The two extremes were the original happy and original sad faces with 4
    morphs in between. We manipulated language of the task—namely, half of
    the participants carried it out in their native language, Spanish, and the other
    half in their foreign language, English—and type of scale. Within type of
    scale, we compared verbal and brightness scales. We found that, while
    language did not have an effect on the assessment, type of scale did. The
    brightness scale led to overall higher ratings, i.e., assessing all faces as
    somewhat happier. This provides a limitation on the foreign language effect,
    as well as evidence for the influence of the cognitive demands of a scale on
    emotionality assessments.
  • Frances, C., De Bruin, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2020). The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning. PLoS One, 15(10): e0240252. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240252.

    Abstract

    Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet,
    there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not
    native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality—operationally
    defined as positive valence and high arousal—to improve memory. In two experiments, the
    present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of
    objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them
    in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in
    Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects—either positive
    or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied
    with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by
    language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could
    potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning.

    Additional information

    Supporting information
  • Francks, C., Paracchini, S., Smith, S. D., Richardson, A. J., Scerri, T. S., Cardon, L. R., Marlow, A. J., MacPhie, I. L., Walter, J., Pennington, B. F., Fisher, S. E., Olson, R. K., DeFries, J. C., Stein, J. F., & Monaco, A. P. (2004). A 77-kilobase region of chromosome 6p22.2 is associated with dyslexia in families from the United Kingdom and from the United States. American Journal of Human Genetics, 75(6), 1046-1058. doi:10.1086/426404.

    Abstract

    Several quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that influence developmental dyslexia (reading disability [RD]) have been mapped to chromosome regions by linkage analysis. The most consistently replicated area of linkage is on chromosome 6p23-21.3. We used association analysis in 223 siblings from the United Kingdom to identify an underlying QTL on 6p22.2. Our association study implicates a 77-kb region spanning the gene TTRAP and the first four exons of the neighboring uncharacterized gene KIAA0319. The region of association is also directly upstream of a third gene, THEM2. We found evidence of these associations in a second sample of siblings from the United Kingdom, as well as in an independent sample of twin-based sibships from Colorado. One main RD risk haplotype that has a frequency of ∼12% was found in both the U.K. and U.S. samples. The haplotype is not distinguished by any protein-coding polymorphisms, and, therefore, the functional variation may relate to gene expression. The QTL influences a broad range of reading-related cognitive abilities but has no significant impact on general cognitive performance in these samples. In addition, the QTL effect may be largely limited to the severe range of reading disability.
  • Friedrich, P., Thiebaut de Schotten, M., Forkel, S. J., Stacho, M., & Howells, H. (2020). An ancestral anatomical and spatial bias for visually guided behavior. PNAS, 117(5), 2251-2252. doi:10.1073/pnas.1918402117.

    Abstract

    Human behavioral asymmetries are commonly studied in the context of structural cortical and connectional asymmetries. Within this framework, Sreenivasan and Sridharan (1) provide intriguing evidence of a relationship between visual asymmetries and the lateralization of superior colliculi connections—a phylogenetically older mesencephalic structure. Specifically, response facilitation for cued locations (i.e., choice bias) in the contralateral hemifield was associated with differences in the connectivity of the superior colliculus. Given that the superior colliculus has a structural homolog—the optic tectum—which can be traced across all Vertebrata, these results may have meaningful evolutionary ramifications.
  • Friedrich, P., Forkel, S. J., & Thiebaut de Schotten, M. (2020). Mapping the principal gradient onto the corpus callosum. NeuroImage, 223: 117317. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117317.

    Abstract

    Gradients capture some of the variance of the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) signal. Amongst these, the principal gradient depicts a functional processing hierarchy that spans from sensory-motor cortices to regions of the default-mode network. While the cortex has been well characterised in terms of gradients little is known about its underlying white matter. For instance, comprehensive mapping of the principal gradient on the largest white matter tract, the corpus callosum, is still missing. Here, we mapped the principal gradient onto the midsection of the corpus callosum using the 7T human connectome project dataset. We further explored how quantitative measures and variability in callosal midsection connectivity relate to the principal gradient values. In so doing, we demonstrated that the extreme values of the principal gradient are located within the callosal genu and the posterior body, have lower connectivity variability but a larger spatial extent along the midsection of the corpus callosum than mid-range values. Our results shed light on the relationship between the brain's functional hierarchy and the corpus callosum. We further speculate about how these results may bridge the gap between functional hierarchy, brain asymmetries, and evolution.

    Additional information

    supplementary file
  • Frost, R. L. A., Dunn, K., Christiansen, M. H., Gómez, R. L., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Exploring the "anchor word" effect in infants: Segmentation and categorisation of speech with and without high frequency words. PLoS One, 15(12): e0243436. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0243436.

    Abstract

    High frequency words play a key role in language acquisition, with recent work suggesting they may serve both speech segmentation and lexical categorisation. However, it is not yet known whether infants can detect novel high frequency words in continuous speech, nor whether they can use them to help learning for segmentation and categorisation at the same time. For instance, when hearing “you eat the biscuit”, can children use the high-frequency words “you” and “the” to segment out “eat” and “biscuit”, and determine their respective lexical categories? We tested this in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we familiarised 12-month-old infants with continuous artificial speech comprising repetitions of target words, which were preceded by high-frequency marker words that distinguished the targets into two distributional categories. In Experiment 2, we repeated the task using the same language but with additional phonological cues to word and category structure. In both studies, we measured learning with head-turn preference tests of segmentation and categorisation, and compared performance against a control group that heard the artificial speech without the marker words (i.e., just the targets). There was no evidence that high frequency words helped either speech segmentation or grammatical categorisation. However, segmentation was seen to improve when the distributional information was supplemented with phonological cues (Experiment 2). In both experiments, exploratory analysis indicated that infants’ looking behaviour was related to their linguistic maturity (indexed by infants’ vocabulary scores) with infants with high versus low vocabulary scores displaying novelty and familiarity preferences, respectively. We propose that high-frequency words must reach a critical threshold of familiarity before they can be of significant benefit to learning.

    Additional information

    data
  • Frost, R. L. A., Jessop, A., Durrant, S., Peter, M. S., Bidgood, A., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Non-adjacent dependency learning in infancy, and its link to language development. Cognitive Psychology, 120: 101291. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101291.

    Abstract

    To acquire language, infants must learn how to identify words and linguistic structure in speech. Statistical learning has been suggested to assist both of these tasks. However, infants’ capacity to use statistics to discover words and structure together remains unclear. Further, it is not yet known how infants’ statistical learning ability relates to their language development. We trained 17-month-old infants on an artificial language comprising non-adjacent dependencies, and examined their looking times on tasks assessing sensitivity to words and structure using an eye-tracked head-turn-preference paradigm. We measured infants’ vocabulary size using a Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) concurrently and at 19, 21, 24, 25, 27, and 30 months to relate performance to language development. Infants could segment the words from speech, demonstrated by a significant difference in looking times to words versus part-words. Infants’ segmentation performance was significantly related to their vocabulary size (receptive and expressive) both currently, and over time (receptive until 24 months, expressive until 30 months), but was not related to the rate of vocabulary growth. The data also suggest infants may have developed sensitivity to generalised structure, indicating similar statistical learning mechanisms may contribute to the discovery of words and structure in speech, but this was not related to vocabulary size.

    Additional information

    Supplementary data
  • Gaby, A. R. (2004). Extended functions of Thaayorre body part terms. Papers in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 24-34.
  • Galbiati, A., Sforza, M., Poletti, M., Verga, L., Zucconi, M., Ferini-Strambi, L., & Castronovo, V. (2020). Insomnia patients with subjective short total sleep time have a boosted response to cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia despite residual symptoms. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 18(1), 58-67. doi:10.1080/15402002.2018.1545650.

    Abstract

    Background: Two distinct insomnia disorder (ID) phenotypes have been proposed, distinguished on the basis of an objective total sleep time less or more than 6 hr. In particular, it has been recently reported that patients with objective short sleep duration have a blunted response to cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). The aim of this study was to investigate the differences of CBT-I response in two groups of ID patients subdivided according to total sleep time. Methods: Two hundred forty-six ID patients were subdivided into two groups, depending on their reported total sleep time (TST) assessed by sleep diaries. Patients with a TST greater than 6 hr were classified as “normal sleepers” (NS), while those with a total sleep time less than 6 hr were classified as “short sleepers” (SS). Results: The delta between Insomnia Severity Index scores and sleep efficiency at the beginning as compared to the end of the treatment was significantly higher for SS in comparison to NS, even if they still exhibit more insomnia symptoms. No difference was found between groups in terms of remitters; however, more responders were observed in the SS group in comparison to the NS group. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that ID patients with reported short total sleep time had a beneficial response to CBT-I of greater magnitude in comparison to NS. However, these patients may still experience the presence of residual insomnia symptoms after treatment.
  • Gallotto, S., Duecker, F., Ten Oever, S., Schuhmann, T., De Graaf, T. A., & Sack, A. T. (2020). Relating alpha power modulations to competing visuospatial attention theories. NeuroImage, 207: 116429. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116429.

    Abstract

    Visuospatial attention theories often propose hemispheric asymmetries underlying the control of attention. In general support of these theories, previous EEG/MEG studies have shown that spatial attention is associated with hemispheric modulation of posterior alpha power (gating by inhibition). However, since measures of alpha power are typically expressed as lateralization scores, or collapsed across left and right attention shifts, the individual hemispheric contribution to the attentional control mechanism remains unclear. This is, however, the most crucial and decisive aspect in which the currently competing attention theories continue to disagree. To resolve this long-standing conflict, we derived predictions regarding alpha power modulations from Heilman's hemispatial theory and Kinsbourne's interhemispheric competition theory and tested them empirically in an EEG experiment. We used an attention paradigm capable of isolating alpha power modulation in two attentional states, namely attentional bias in a neutral cue condition and spatial orienting following directional cues. Differential alpha modulations were found for both hemispheres across conditions. When anticipating peripheral visual targets without preceding directional cues (neutral condition), posterior alpha power in the left hemisphere was generally lower and more strongly modulated than in the right hemisphere, in line with the interhemispheric competition theory. Intriguingly, however, while alpha power in the right hemisphere was modulated by both, cue-directed leftward and rightward attention shifts, the left hemisphere only showed modulations by rightward shifts of spatial attention, in line with the hemispatial theory. This suggests that the two theories may not be mutually exclusive, but rather apply to different attentional states.
  • Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Höhle, B. (2020). Children’s online use of word order and morphosyntactic markers in Tagalog thematic role assignment: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Child Language, 47(3), 533-555. doi:10.1017/S0305000919000618.

    Abstract

    We investigated whether Tagalog-speaking children incrementally interpret the first noun
    as the agent, even if verbal and nominal markers for assigning thematic roles are given
    early in Tagalog sentences. We asked five- and seven-year-old children and adult
    controls to select which of two pictures of reversible actions matched the sentence they
    heard, while their looks to the pictures were tracked. Accuracy and eye-tracking data
    showed that agent-initial sentences were easier to comprehend than patient-initial
    sentences, but the effect of word order was modulated by voice. Moreover, our eyetracking
    data provided evidence that, by the first noun phrase, seven-year-old children
    looked more to the target in the agent-initial compared to the patient-initial conditions,
    but this word order advantage was no longer observed by the second noun phrase. The
    findings support language processing and acquisition models which emphasize the role
    of frequency in developing heuristic strategies (e.g., Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006).
  • Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2020). The acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system: Evidence from structural priming. Language Learning and Development, 16(4), 399-425. doi:10.1080/15475441.2020.1814780.

    Abstract

    We report on two experiments that investigated the acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system, a typologically rare feature of Western Austronesian languages in which there are more than one basic transitive construction and no preference for agents to be syntactic subjects. In the experiments, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children and adults completed a structural priming task that manipulated voice and word order, with the uniqueness of Tagalog allowing us to tease apart priming of thematic role order from that of syntactic roles. Participants heard a description of a picture showing a transitive action, and were then asked to complete a sentence of an unrelated picture using a voice-marked verb provided by the experimenter. Our results show that children gradually acquire an agent-before-patient preference, instead of having a default mapping of the agent to the first noun position. We also found an earlier mastery of the patient voice verbal and nominal marker configuration (patient is the subject), suggesting that children do not initially map the agent to the subject. Children were primed by thematic role but not syntactic role order, suggesting that they prioritize mapping of the thematic roles to sentence positions.
  • Garcia, M., & Ravignani, A. (2020). Acoustic allometry and vocal learning in mammals. Biology Letters, 16: 20200081. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2020.0081.

    Abstract

    Acoustic allometry is the study of how animal vocalisations reflect their body size. A key aim of this research is to identify outliers to acoustic allometry principles and pinpoint the evolutionary origins of such outliers. A parallel strand of research investigates species capable of vocal learning, the experience-driven ability to produce novel vocal signals through imitation or modification of existing vocalisations. Modification of vocalizations is a common feature found when studying both acoustic allometry and vocal learning. Yet, these two fields have only been investigated separately to date. Here, we review and connect acoustic allometry and vocal learning across mammalian clades, combining perspectives from bioacoustics, anatomy and evolutionary biology. Based on this, we hypothesize that, as a precursor to vocal learning, some species might have evolved the capacity for volitional vocal modulation via sexual selection for ‘dishonest’ signalling. We provide preliminary support for our hypothesis by showing significant associations between allometric deviation and vocal learning in a dataset of 164 mammals. Our work offers a testable framework for future empirical research linking allometric principles with the evolution of vocal learning.
  • Garcia, M., Theunissen, F., Sèbe, F., Clavel, J., Ravignani, A., Marin-Cudraz, T., Fuchs, J., & Mathevon, N. (2020). Evolution of communication signals and information during species radiation. Nature Communications, 11: 4970. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18772-3.

    Abstract

    Communicating species identity is a key component of many animal signals. However, whether selection for species recognition systematically increases signal diversity during clade radiation remains debated. Here we show that in woodpecker drumming, a rhythmic signal used during mating and territorial defense, the amount of species identity information encoded remained stable during woodpeckers’ radiation. Acoustic analyses and evolutionary reconstructions show interchange among six main drumming types despite strong phylogenetic contingencies, suggesting evolutionary tinkering of drumming structure within a constrained acoustic space. Playback experiments and quantification of species discriminability demonstrate sufficient signal differentiation to support species recognition in local communities. Finally, we only find character displacement in the rare cases where sympatric species are also closely related. Overall, our results illustrate how historical contingencies and ecological interactions can promote conservatism in signals during a clade radiation without impairing the effectiveness of information transfer relevant to inter-specific discrimination.
  • Geambasu, A., Toron, L., Ravignani, A., & Levelt, C. C. (2020). Rhythmic recursion? Human sensitivity to a Lindenmayer grammar with self-similar structure in a musical task. Music & Science. doi:10.1177%2F2059204320946615.

    Abstract

    Processing of recursion has been proposed as the foundation of human linguistic ability. Yet this ability may be shared with other domains, such as the musical or rhythmic domain. Lindenmayer grammars (L-systems) have been proposed as a recursive grammar for use in artificial grammar experiments to test recursive processing abilities, and previous work had shown that participants are able to learn such a grammar using linguistic stimuli (syllables). In the present work, we used two experimental paradigms (a yes/no task and a two-alternative forced choice) to test whether adult participants are able to learn a recursive Lindenmayer grammar composed of drum sounds. After a brief exposure phase, we found that participants at the group level were sensitive to the exposure grammar and capable of distinguishing the grammatical and ungrammatical test strings above chance level in both tasks. While we found evidence of participants’ sensitivity to a very complex L-system grammar in a non-linguistic, potentially musical domain, the results were not robust. We discuss the discrepancy within our results and with the previous literature using L-systems in the linguistic domain. Furthermore, we propose directions for future music cognition research using L-system grammars.
  • Ghatan, P. H., Hsieh, J. C., Petersson, K. M., Stone-Elander, S., & Ingvar, M. (1998). Coexistence of attention-based facilitation and inhibition in the human cortex. NeuroImage, 7, 23-29.

    Abstract

    A key function of attention is to select an appropriate subset of available information by facilitation of attended processes and/or inhibition of irrelevant processing. Functional imaging studies, using positron emission tomography, have during different experimental tasks revealed decreased neuronal activity in areas that process input from unattended sensory modalities. It has been hypothesized that these decreases reflect a selective inhibitory modulation of nonrelevant cortical processing. In this study we addressed this question using a continuous arithmetical task with and without concomitant disturbing auditory input (task-irrelevant speech). During the arithmetical task, irrelevant speech did not affect task-performance but yielded decreased activity in the auditory and midcingulate cortices and increased activity in the left posterior parietal cortex. This pattern of modulation is consistent with a top down inhibitory modulation of a nonattended input to the auditory cortex and a coexisting, attention-based facilitation of taskrelevant processing in higher order cortices. These findings suggest that task-related decreases in cortical activity may be of functional importance in the understanding of both attentional mechanisms and taskrelated information processing.
  • Gilbers, S., Hoeksema, N., De Bot, K., & Lowie, W. (2020). Regional variation in West and East Coast African-American English prosody and rap flows. Language and Speech, 63(4), 713-745. doi:10.1177/0023830919881479.

    Abstract

    Regional variation in African-American English (AAE) is especially salient to its speakers involved with hip-hop culture, as hip-hop assigns great importance to regional identity and regional accents are a key means of expressing regional identity. However, little is known about AAE regional variation regarding prosodic rhythm and melody. In hip-hop music, regional variation can also be observed, with different regions’ rap performances being characterized by distinct “flows” (i.e., rhythmic and melodic delivery), an observation which has not been quantitatively investigated yet. This study concerns regional variation in AAE speech and rap, specifically regarding the United States’ East and West Coasts. It investigates how East Coast and West Coast AAE prosody are distinct, how East Coast and West Coast rap flows differ, and whether the two domains follow a similar pattern: more rhythmic and melodic variation on the West Coast compared to the East Coast for both speech and rap. To this end, free speech and rap recordings of 16 prominent African-American members of the East Coast and West Coast hip-hop communities were phonetically analyzed regarding rhythm (e.g., syllable isochrony and musical timing) and melody (i.e., pitch fluctuation) using a combination of existing and novel methodological approaches. The results mostly confirm the hypotheses that East Coast AAE speech and rap are less rhythmically diverse and more monotone than West Coast AAE speech and rap, respectively. They also show that regional variation in AAE prosody and rap flows pattern in similar ways, suggesting a connection between rhythm and melody in language and music.
  • Gisselgard, J., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2004). The irrelevant speech effect and working memory load. NeuroImage, 22, 1107-1116. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.02.031.

    Abstract

    Irrelevant speech impairs the immediate serial recall of visually presented material. Previously, we have shown that the irrelevant speech effect (ISE) was associated with a relative decrease of regional blood flow in cortical regions subserving the verbal working memory, in particular the superior temporal cortex. In this extension of the previous study, the working memory load was increased and an increased activity as a response to irrelevant speech was noted in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We suggest that the two studies together provide some basic insights as to the nature of the irrelevant speech effect. Firstly, no area in the brain can be ascribed as the single locus of the irrelevant speech effect. Instead, the functional neuroanatomical substrate to the effect can be characterized in terms of changes in networks of functionally interrelated areas. Secondly, the areas that are sensitive to the irrelevant speech effect are also generically activated by the verbal working memory task itself. Finally, the impact of irrelevant speech and related brain activity depends on working memory load as indicated by the differences between the present and the previous study. From a brain perspective, the irrelevant speech effect may represent a complex phenomenon that is a composite of several underlying mechanisms, which depending on the working memory load, include top-down inhibition as well as recruitment of compensatory support and control processes. We suggest that, in the low-load condition, a selection process by an inhibitory top-down modulation is sufficient, whereas in the high-load condition, at or above working memory span, auxiliary adaptive cognitive resources are recruited as compensation
  • Goldsborough, Z., Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., Kolff, K. W. T., De Waal, F. B. M., & Webb, C. E. (2020). Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) console a bereaved mother? Primates, 61: 20190695, pp. 93-102. doi:10.1007/s10329-019-00752-x.

    Abstract

    Comparative thanatology encompasses the study of death-related responses in non-human animals and aspires to elucidate the evolutionary origins of human behavior in the context of death. Many reports have revealed that humans are not the only species affected by the death of group members. Non-human primates in particular show behaviors such as congregating around the deceased, carrying the corpse for prolonged periods of time (predominantly mothers carrying dead infants), and inspecting the corpse for signs of life. Here, we extend the focus on death-related responses in non-human animals by exploring whether chimpanzees are inclined to console the bereaved: the individual(s) most closely associated with the deceased. We report a case in which a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) mother experienced the loss of her fully developed infant (presumed stillborn). Using observational data to compare the group members’ behavior before and after the death, we found that a substantial number of group members selectively increased their affiliative expressions toward the bereaved mother. Moreover, on the day of the death, we observed heightened expressions of species-typical reassurance behaviors toward the bereaved mother. After ruling out several alternative explanations, we propose that many of the chimpanzees consoled the bereaved mother by means of affiliative and selective empathetic expressions.
  • González Alonso, J., Alemán Bañón, J., DeLuca, V., Miller, D., Pereira Soares, S. M., Puig-Mayenco, E., Slaats, S., & Rothman, J. (2020). Event related potentials at initial exposure in third language acquisition: Implications from an artificial mini-grammar study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 56: 100939. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100939.

    Abstract

    The present article examines the proposal that typology is a major factor guiding transfer selectivity in L3/Ln acquisition. We tested first exposure in L3/Ln using two artificial languages (ALs) lexically based in English and Spanish, focusing on gender agreement between determiners and nouns, and between nouns and adjectives. 50 L1 Spanish-L2 English speakers took part in the experiment. After receiving implicit training in one of the ALs (Mini-Spanish, N = 26; Mini-English, N = 24), gender violations elicited a fronto-lateral negativity in Mini-English in the earliest time window (200–500 ms), although this was not followed by any other differences in subsequent periods. This effect was highly localized, surfacing only in electrodes of the right-anterior region. In contrast, gender violations in Mini-Spanish elicited a broadly distributed positivity in the 300–600 ms time window. While we do not find typical indices of grammatical processing such as the P600 component, we believe that the between-groups differential appearance of the positivity for gender violations in the 300–600 ms time window reflects differential allocation of attentional resources as a function of the ALs’ lexical similarity to English or Spanish. We take these differences in attention to be precursors of the processes involved in transfer source selection in L3/Ln.
  • Gonzalez da Silva, C., Petersson, K. M., Faísca, L., Ingvar, M., & Reis, A. (2004). The effects of literacy and education on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of semantic verbal fluency. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 26(2), 266-277. doi:10.1076/jcen.26.2.266.28089.

    Abstract

    Semantic verbal fluency tasks are commonly used in neuropsychological assessment. Investigations of the influence of level of literacy have not yielded consistent results in the literature. This prompted us to investigate the ecological relevance of task specifics, in particular, the choice of semantic criteria used. Two groups of literate and illiterate subjects were compared on two verbal fluency tasks using different semantic criteria. The performance on a food criterion (supermarket fluency task), considered more ecologically relevant for the two literacy groups, and an animal criterion (animal fluency task) were compared. The data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The quantitative analysis indicated that the two literacy groups performed equally well on the supermarket fluency task. In contrast, results differed significantly during the animal fluency task. The qualitative analyses indicated differences between groups related to the strategies used, especially with respect to the animal fluency task. The overall results suggest that there is not a substantial difference between literate and illiterate subjects related to the fundamental workings of semantic memory. However, there is indication that the content of semantic memory reflects differences in shared cultural background - in other words, formal education –, as indicated by the significant interaction between level of literacy and semantic criterion.
  • Goodhew, S. C., & Kidd, E. (2020). Bliss is blue and bleak is grey: Abstract word-colour associations influence objective performance even when not task relevant. Acta Psychologica, 206: 103067. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103067.

    Abstract

    Humans associate abstract words with physical stimulus dimensions, such as linking upward locations with positive concepts (e.g., happy = up). These associations manifest both via subjective reports of associations and on objective performance metrics. Humans also report subjective associations between colours and abstract words (e.g., joy is linked to yellow). Here we tested whether such associations manifest on objective task performance, even when not task-relevant. Across three experiments, participants were presented with abstract words in physical colours that were either congruent with previously-reported subjective word-colour associations (e.g., victory in red and unhappy in blue), or were incongruent (e.g., victory in blue and unhappy in red). In Experiment 1, participants' task was to identify the valence of words. This congruency manipulation systematically affected objective task performance. In Experiment 2, participants completed two blocks, a valence-identification and a colour-identification task block. Both tasks produced congruency effects on performance, however, the results of the colour identification block could have reflected learning effects (i.e., associating the more common congruent colour with the word). This issue was rectified in Experiment 3, whereby participants completed the same two tasks as Experiment 2, but now matched congruent and incongruent pairs were used for both tasks. Again, both tasks produced reliable congruency effects. Item analyses in each experiment revealed that these effects demonstrated a degree of item specificity. Overall, there was clear evidence that at least some abstract word-colour pairings can systematically affect behaviour.
  • Gordon, J. K., & Clough, S. (2020). How fluent? Part B. Underlying contributors to continuous measures of fluency in aphasia. Aphasiology, 34(5), 643-663. doi:10.1080/02687038.2020.1712586.

    Abstract

    Background: While persons with aphasia (PwA) are often dichotomised as fluent or nonfluent, agreement that fluency is not an all-or-nothing construct has led to the use of continuous variables as a way to quantify fluency, such as multi-dimensional rating scales, speech rate, and utterance length. Though these measures are often used in research, they provide little information about the underlying fluency deficit.
    Aim: The aim of the study was to identify how well commonly used continuous measures of fluency capture variability in spontaneous speech variables at lexical, grammatical, and speech production levels. Methods & Procedures: Speech samples of 254 English-speaking PwA from the AphasiaBank database were analyzed to examine the distributions of four continuous measures of fluency: the WAB-R fluency scale, utterance length, retracing, and speech rate. Linear regression was used to identify spontaneous speech predictors contributing to each fluency outcome measure.
    Outcomes & Results: All the outcome measures reflected the influence of multiple underlying dimensions, although the predictors varied. The WAB-R fluency scale, speech rate, and retracing were influenced by measures of grammatical competence, lexical retrieval, and speech production, whereas utterance length was influenced only by measures of grammatical competence and lexical retrieval. The strongest predictor of WAB-R fluency was aphasia severity, whereas the strongest predictor for all other fluency proxy measures was grammatical complexity.
    Conclusions: Continuous measures allow a variety of ways to objectively quantify speech fluency; however, they reflect superficial manifestations of fluency that may be affected by multiple underlying deficits. Furthermore, the deficits underlying different measures vary, which may reduce the reliability of fluency diagnoses. Capturing these differences at the individual level is critical to accurate diagnosis and appropriately targeted therapy.
  • Goregliad Fjaellingsdal, T., Schwenke, D., Scherbaum, S., Kuhlen, A. K., Bögels, S., Meekes, J., & Bleichner, M. G. (2020). Expectancy effects in the EEG during joint and spontaneous word-by-word sentence production in German. Scientific Reports, 10: 5460. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-62155-z.

    Abstract

    Our aim in the present study is to measure neural correlates during spontaneous interactive sentence production. We present a novel approach using the word-by-word technique from improvisational theatre, in which two speakers jointly produce one sentence. This paradigm allows the assessment of behavioural aspects, such as turn-times, and electrophysiological responses, such as event-related-potentials (ERPs). Twenty-five participants constructed a cued but spontaneous four-word German sentence together with a confederate, taking turns for each word of the sentence. In 30% of the trials, the confederate uttered an unexpected gender-marked article. To complete the sentence in a meaningful way, the participant had to detect the violation and retrieve and utter a new fitting response. We found significant increases in response times after unexpected words and – despite allowing unscripted language production and naturally varying speech material – successfully detected significant N400 and P600 ERP effects for the unexpected word. The N400 EEG activity further significantly predicted the response time of the subsequent turn. Our results show that combining behavioural and neuroscientific measures of verbal interactions while retaining sufficient experimental control is possible, and that this combination provides promising insights into the mechanisms of spontaneous spoken dialogue.
  • Goriot, C., McQueen, J. M., Unsworth, S., & Van Hout, R. (2020). Perception of English phonetic contrasts by Dutch children: How bilingual are early-English learners? PLoS One, 15(3): e0229902. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0229902.

    Abstract

    The aim of this study was to investigate whether early-English education benefits the perception
    of English phonetic contrasts that are known to be perceptually confusable for Dutch
    native speakers, comparing Dutch pupils who were enrolled in an early-English programme
    at school from the age of four with pupils in a mainstream programme with English instruction
    from the age of 11, and English-Dutch early bilingual children. Children were 4-5-yearolds
    (start of primary school), 8-9-year-olds, or 11-12-year-olds (end of primary school).
    Children were tested on four contrasts that varied in difficulty: /b/-/s/ (easy), /k/-/ɡ/ (intermediate),
    /f/-/θ/ (difficult), /ε/-/æ/ (very difficult). Bilingual children outperformed the two other
    groups on all contrasts except /b/-/s/. Early-English pupils did not outperform mainstream
    pupils on any of the contrasts. This shows that early-English education as it is currently
    implemented is not beneficial for pupils’ perception of non-native contrasts.

    Additional information

    Supporting information
  • De Graaf, T. A., Thomson, A., Janssens, S. E. W., Van Bree, S., Ten Oever, S., & Sack, A. T. (2020). Does alpha phase modulate visual target detection? Three experiments with tACS-phase-based stimulus presentation. European Journal of Neuroscience, 51(11), 2299-2313. doi:10.1111/ejn.14677.

    Abstract

    In recent years, the influence of alpha (7–13 Hz) phase on visual processing has received a lot of attention. Magneto‐/encephalography (M/EEG) studies showed that alpha phase indexes visual excitability and task performance. Studies with transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) aim to modulate oscillations and causally impact task performance. Here, we applied right occipital tACS (O2 location) to assess the functional role of alpha phase in a series of experiments. We presented visual stimuli at different pre‐determined, experimentally controlled, phases of the entraining tACS signal, hypothesizing that this should result in an oscillatory pattern of visual performance in specifically left hemifield detection tasks. In experiment 1, we applied 10 Hz tACS and used separate psychophysical staircases for six equidistant tACS‐phase conditions, obtaining contrast thresholds for detection of visual gratings in left or right hemifield. In experiments 2 and 3, tACS was at EEG‐based individual peak alpha frequency. In experiment 2, we measured detection rates for gratings with (pseudo‐)fixed contrast. In experiment 3, participants detected brief luminance changes in a custom‐built LED device, at eight equidistant alpha phases. In none of the experiments did the primary outcome measure over phase conditions consistently reflect a one‐cycle sinusoid. However, post hoc analyses of reaction times (RT) suggested that tACS alpha phase did modulate RT for specifically left hemifield targets in both experiments 1 and 2 (not measured in experiment 3). This observation requires future confirmation, but is in line with the idea that alpha phase causally gates visual inputs through cortical excitability modulation.

    Additional information

    Supporting Information
  • Grasby, K. L., Jahanshad, N., Painter, J. N., Colodro-Conde, L., Bralten, J., Hibar, D. P., Lind, P. A., Pizzagalli, F., Ching, C. R. K., McMahon, M. A. B., Shatokhina, N., Zsembik, L. C. P., Thomopoulos, S. I., Zhu, A. H., Strike, L. T., Agartz, I., Alhusaini, S., Almeida, M. A. A., Alnæs, D., Amlien, I. K. and 341 moreGrasby, K. L., Jahanshad, N., Painter, J. N., Colodro-Conde, L., Bralten, J., Hibar, D. P., Lind, P. A., Pizzagalli, F., Ching, C. R. K., McMahon, M. A. B., Shatokhina, N., Zsembik, L. C. P., Thomopoulos, S. I., Zhu, A. H., Strike, L. T., Agartz, I., Alhusaini, S., Almeida, M. A. A., Alnæs, D., Amlien, I. K., Andersson, M., Ard, T., Armstrong, N. J., Ashley-Koch, A., Atkins, J. R., Bernard, M., Brouwer, R. M., Buimer, E. E. L., Bülow, R., Bürger, C., Cannon, D. M., Chakravarty, M., Chen, Q., Cheung, J. W., Couvy-Duchesne, B., Dale, A. M., Dalvie, S., De Araujo, T. K., De Zubicaray, G. I., De Zwarte, S. M. C., Den Braber, A., Doan, N. T., Dohm, K., Ehrlich, S., Engelbrecht, H.-R., Erk, S., Fan, C. C., Fedko, I. O., Foley, S. F., Ford, J. M., Fukunaga, M., Garrett, M. E., Ge, T., Giddaluru, S., Goldman, A. L., Green, M. J., Groenewold, N. A., Grotegerd, D., Gurholt, T. P., Gutman, B. A., Hansell, N. K., Harris, M. A., Harrison, M. B., Haswell, C. C., Hauser, M., Herms, S., Heslenfeld, D. J., Ho, N. F., Hoehn, D., Hoffmann, P., Holleran, L., Hoogman, M., Hottenga, J.-J., Ikeda, M., Janowitz, D., Jansen, I. E., Jia, T., Jockwitz, C., Kanai, R., Karama, S., Kasperaviciute, D., Kaufmann, T., Kelly, S., Kikuchi, M., Klein, M., Knapp, M., Knodt, A. R., Krämer, B., Lam, M., Lancaster, T. M., Lee, P. H., Lett, T. A., Lewis, L. B., Lopes-Cendes, I., Luciano, M., Macciardi, F., Marquand, A. F., Mathias, S. R., Melzer, T. R., Milaneschi, Y., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moreira, J. C. V., Mühleisen, T. W., Müller-Myhsok, B., Najt, P., Nakahara, S., Nho, K., Olde Loohuis, L. M., Orfanos, D. P., Pearson, J. F., Pitcher, T. L., Pütz, B., Quidé, Y., Ragothaman, A., Rashid, F. M., Reay, W. R., Redlich, R., Reinbold, C. S., Repple, J., Richard, G., Riedel, B. C., Risacher, S. L., Rocha, C. S., Mota, N. R., Salminen, L., Saremi, A., Saykin, A. J., Schlag, F., Schmaal, L., Schofield, P. R., Secolin, R., Shapland, C. Y., Shen, L., Shin, J., Shumskaya, E., Sønderby, I. E., Sprooten, E., Tansey, K. E., Teumer, A., Thalamuthu, A., Tordesillas-Gutiérrez, D., Turner, J. A., Uhlmann, A., Vallerga, C. L., Van der Meer, D., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Van Eijk, L., Van Erp, T. G. M., Van Haren, N. E. M., Van Rooij, D., Van Tol, M.-J., Veldink, J. H., Verhoef, E., Walton, E., Wang, M., Wang, Y., Wardlaw, J. M., Wen, W., Westlye, L. T., Whelan, C. D., Witt, S. H., Wittfeld, K., Wolf, C., Wolfers, T., Wu, J. Q., Yasuda, C. L., Zaremba, D., Zhang, Z., Zwiers, M. P., Artiges, E., Assareh, A. A., Ayesa-Arriola, R., Belger, A., Brandt, C. L., Brown, G. G., Cichon, S., Curran, J. E., Davies, G. E., Degenhardt, F., Dennis, M. F., Dietsche, B., Djurovic, S., Doherty, C. P., Espiritu, R., Garijo, D., Gil, Y., Gowland, P. A., Green, R. C., Häusler, A. N., Heindel, W., Ho, B.-C., Hoffmann, W. U., Holsboer, F., Homuth, G., Hosten, N., Jack Jr., C. R., Jang, M., Jansen, A., Kimbrel, N. A., Kolskår, K., Koops, S., Krug, A., Lim, K. O., Luykx, J. J., Mathalon, D. H., Mather, K. A., Mattay, V. S., Matthews, S., Mayoral Van Son, J., McEwen, S. C., Melle, I., Morris, D. W., Mueller, B. A., Nauck, M., Nordvik, J. E., Nöthen, M. M., O’Leary, D. S., Opel, N., Paillère Martinot, M.-L., Pike, G. B., Preda, A., Quinlan, E. B., Rasser, P. E., Ratnakar, V., Reppermund, S., Steen, V. M., Tooney, P. A., Torres, F. R., Veltman, D. J., Voyvodic, J. T., Whelan, R., White, T., Yamamori, H., Adams, H. H. H., Bis, J. C., Debette, S., Decarli, C., Fornage, M., Gudnason, V., Hofer, E., Ikram, M. A., Launer, L., Longstreth, W. T., Lopez, O. L., Mazoyer, B., Mosley, T. H., Roshchupkin, G. V., Satizabal, C. L., Schmidt, R., Seshadri, S., Yang, Q., Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, CHARGE Consortium, EPIGEN Consortium, IMAGEN Consortium, SYS Consortium, Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, Alvim, M. K. M., Ames, D., Anderson, T. J., Andreassen, O. A., Arias-Vasquez, A., Bastin, M. E., Baune, B. T., Beckham, J. C., Blangero, J., Boomsma, D. I., Brodaty, H., Brunner, H. G., Buckner, R. L., Buitelaar, J. K., Bustillo, J. R., Cahn, W., Cairns, M. J., Calhoun, V., Carr, V. J., Caseras, X., Caspers, S., Cavalleri, G. L., Cendes, F., Corvin, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Dalrymple-Alford, J. C., Dannlowski, U., De Geus, E. J. C., Deary, I. J., Delanty, N., Depondt, C., Desrivières, S., Donohoe, G., Espeseth, T., Fernández, G., Fisher, S. E., Flor, H., Forstner, A. J., Francks, C., Franke, B., Glahn, D. C., Gollub, R. L., Grabe, H. J., Gruber, O., Håberg, A. K., Hariri, A. R., Hartman, C. A., Hashimoto, R., Heinz, A., Henskens, F. A., Hillegers, M. H. J., Hoekstra, P. J., Holmes, A. J., Hong, L. E., Hopkins, W. D., Hulshoff Pol, H. E., Jernigan, T. L., Jönsson, E. G., Kahn, R. S., Kennedy, M. A., Kircher, T. T. J., Kochunov, P., Kwok, J. B. J., Le Hellard, S., Loughland, C. M., Martin, N. G., Martinot, J.-L., McDonald, C., McMahon, K. L., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Michie, P. T., Morey, R. A., Mowry, B., Nyberg, L., Oosterlaan, J., Ophoff, R. A., Pantelis, C., Paus, T., Pausova, Z., Penninx, B. W. J. H., Polderman, T. J. C., Posthuma, D., Rietschel, M., Roffman, J. L., Rowland, L. M., Sachdev, P. S., Sämann, P. G., Schall, U., Schumann, G., Scott, R. J., Sim, K., Sisodiya, S. M., Smoller, J. W., Sommer, I. E., St Pourcain, B., Stein, D. J., Toga, A. W., Trollor, J. N., Van der Wee, N. J. A., van 't Ent, D., Völzke, H., Walter, H., Weber, B., Weinberger, D. R., Wright, M. J., Zhou, J., Stein, J. L., Thompson, P. M., & Medland, S. E. (2020). The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex. Science, 367(6484): eaay6690. doi:10.1126/science.aay6690.

    Abstract

    The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson’s disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
  • Gretsch, P. (2004). What does finiteness mean to children? A cross-linguistic perspective onroot infinitives. Linguistics, 42(2), 419-468. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.014.

    Abstract

    The discussion on root infinitives has mainly centered around their supposed modal usage. This article aims at modelling the form-function relation of the root infinitive phenomenon by taking into account the full range of interpretational facets encountered cross-linguistically and interindividually. Following the idea of a subsequent ‘‘cell partitioning’’ in the emergence of form-function correlations, I claim that it is the major fission between [+-finite] which is central to express temporal reference different from the default here&now in tense-oriented languages. In aspectual-oriented languages, a similar opposition is mastered with the marking of early aspectual forms. It is observed that in tense-oriented languages like Dutch and German, the progression of functions associated with the infinitival form proceeds from nonmodal to modal, whereas the reverse progression holds for the Russian infinitive. Based on this crucial observation, a model of acquisition is proposed which allows for a flexible and systematic relationship between morphological forms and their respective interpretational biases dependent on their developmental context. As for early child language, I argue that children entertain only two temporal parameters: one parameter is fixed to the here&now point in time, and a second parameter relates to the time talked about, the topic time; this latter time overlaps the situation time as long as no empirical evidence exists to support the emergence of a proper distinction between tense and aspect.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Guerrero, L., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2004). Yaqui and the analysis of primary object languages. International Journal of American Linguistics, 70(3), 290-319. doi:10.1086/425603.

    Abstract

    The central topic of this study is to investigate three- and four-place predicate in Yaqui, which are characterized by having multiple object arguments. As with other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages, it has been said that Yaqui follows the Primary/Secondary Object pattern (Dryer 1986). Actually, Yaqui presents three patterns: verbs like nenka ‘sell’ follow the direct–indirect object pattern, verbs like miika ‘give’ follow the primary object pattern, and verbs like chijakta ‘sprinkle’ follow the locative alternation pattern; the primary object pattern is the exclusive one found with derived verbs. This paper shows that the contrast between direct object and primary object languages is not absolute but rather one of degree, and hence two “object” selection principles are needed to explain this mixed system. The two principles are not limited to Yaqui but are found in other languages as well, including English.
  • Guest, O., Caso, A., & Cooper, R. P. (2020). On simulating neural damage in connectionist networks. Computational Brain & Behavior, 3, 289-321. doi:10.1007/s42113-020-00081-z.

    Abstract

    A key strength of connectionist modelling is its ability to simulate both intact cognition and the behavioural effects of neural damage. We survey the literature, showing that models have been damaged in a variety of ways, e.g. by removing connections, by adding noise to connection weights, by scaling weights, by removing units and by adding noise to unit activations. While these different implementations of damage have often been assumed to be behaviourally equivalent, some theorists have made aetiological claims that rest on nonequivalence. They suggest that related deficits with different aetiologies might be accounted for by different forms of damage within a single model. We present two case studies that explore the effects of different forms of damage in two influential connectionist models, each of which has been applied to explain neuropsychological deficits. Our results indicate that the effect of simulated damage can indeed be sensitive to the way in which damage is implemented, particularly when the environment comprises subsets of items that differ in their statistical properties, but such effects are sensitive to relatively subtle aspects of the model’s training environment. We argue that, as a consequence, substantial methodological care is required if aetiological claims about simulated neural damage are to be justified, and conclude more generally that implementation assumptions, including those concerning simulated damage, must be fully explored when evaluating models of neurological deficits, both to avoid over-extending the explanatory power of specific implementations and to ensure that reported results are replicable.
  • Gullberg, M. (2004). [Review of the book Pointing: Where language, culture and cognition meet ed. by Sotaro Kita]. Gesture, 4(2), 235-248. doi:10.1075/gest.4.2.08gul.
  • Gullberg, M. (1995). Giving language a hand: gesture as a cue based communicative strategy. Working Papers, Lund University, Dept. of Linguistics, 44, 41-60.

    Abstract

    All accounts of communicative behaviour in general, and communicative strategies in particular, mention gesture1 in relation to language acquisition (cf. Faerch & Kasper 1983 for an overview). However, few attempts have been made to investigate how spoken language and spontaneous gesture combine to determine discourse referents. Referential gesture and referential discourse will be of particular interest, since communicative strategies in second language discourse often involve labelling problems.

    This paper will focus on two issues:

    1) Within a cognitive account of communicative strategies, gesture will be seen to be part of conceptual or analysis-based strategies, in that relational features in the referents are exploited;

    2) It will be argued that communication strategies can be seen in terms of cue manipulation in the same sense as sentence processing has been analysed in terms of competing cues. Strategic behaviour, and indeed the process of referring in general, are seen in terms of cues, combining or competing to determine discourse referents. Gesture can then be regarded as being such a cue at the discourse level, and as a cue-based communicative strategy, in that gesture functions by exploiting physically based cues which can be recognised as being part of the referent. The question of iconicity and motivation vs. the arbitrary qualities of gesture as a strategic cue will be addressed in connection with this.
  • Haan, E. H. F., Seijdel, N., Kentridge, R. W., & Heywood, C. A. (2020). Plasticity versus chronicity: Stable performance on category fluency 40 years post‐onset. Journal of Neuropsychology, 14(1), 20-27. doi:10.1111/jnp.12180.

    Abstract

    What is the long‐term trajectory of semantic memory deficits in patients who have suffered structural brain damage? Memory is, per definition, a changing faculty. The traditional view is that after an initial recovery period, the mature human brain has little capacity to repair or reorganize. More recently, it has been suggested that the central nervous system may be more plastic with the ability to change in neural structure, connectivity, and function. The latter observations are, however, largely based on normal learning in healthy subjects. Here, we report a patient who suffered bilateral ventro‐medial damage after presumed herpes encephalitis in 1971. He was seen regularly in the eighties, and we recently had the opportunity to re‐assess his semantic memory deficits. On semantic category fluency, he showed a very clear category‐specific deficit performing better that control data on non‐living categories and significantly worse on living items. Recent testing showed that his impairments have remained unchanged for more than 40 years. We suggest cautiousness when extrapolating the concept of brain plasticity, as observed during normal learning, to plasticity in the context of structural brain damage.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). De electrofysiologie van taal: Wat hersenpotentialen vertellen over het menselijk taalvermogen. Neuropraxis, 2, 223-229.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). De spreker als sprinter. Psychologie, 17, 48-49.
  • Hagoort, P., Hald, L. A., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., & Petersson, K. M. (2004). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304(5669), 438-441. doi:10.1126/science.1095455.

    Abstract

    Although the sentences that we hear or read have meaning, this does not necessarily mean that they are also true. Relatively little is known about the critical brain structures for, and the relative time course of, establishing the meaning and truth of linguistic expressions. We present electroencephalogram data that show the rapid parallel integration of both semantic and world
    knowledge during the interpretation of a sentence. Data from functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that the left inferior prefrontal cortex is involved in the integration of both meaning and world knowledge. Finally, oscillatory brain responses indicate that the brain keeps a record of what makes a sentence hard to interpret.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). Hersenen en taal in onderzoek en praktijk. Neuropraxis, 6, 204-205.
  • Hagoort, P., Brown, C. M., & Swaab, T. Y. (1995). Semantic deficits in right hemisphere patients. Brain and Language, 51, 161-163. doi:10.1006/brln.1995.1058.
  • Hahn, L. E., Ten Buuren, M., Snijders, T. M., & Fikkert, P. (2020). Learning words in a second language while cycling and listening to children’s songs: The Noplica Energy Center. International Journal of Music in Early Childhood, 15(1), 95-108. doi:10.1386/ijmec_00014_1.

    Abstract

    Children’s songs are a great source for linguistic learning. Here we explore whether children can acquire novel words in a second language by playing a game featuring children’s songs in a playhouse. The playhouse is designed by the Noplica foundation (www.noplica.nl) to advance language learning through unsupervised play. We present data from three experiments that serve to scientifically proof the functionality of one game of the playhouse: the Energy Center. For this game, children move three hand-bikes mounted on a panel within the playhouse. Once the children cycle, a song starts playing that is accompanied by musical instruments. In our experiments, children executed a picture-selection task to evaluate whether they acquired new vocabulary from the songs presented during the game. Two of our experiments were run in the field, one at a Dutch and one at an Indian pre-school. The third experiment features data from a more controlled laboratory setting. Our results partly confirm that the Energy Center is a successful means to support vocabulary acquisition in a second language. More research with larger sample sizes and longer access to the Energy Center is needed to evaluate the overall functionality of the game. Based on informal observations at our test sites, however, we are certain that children do pick up linguistic content from the songs during play, as many of the children repeat words and phrases from the songs they heard. We will pick up upon these promising observations during future studies.
  • Hahn, L. E., Benders, T., Snijders, T. M., & Fikkert, P. (2020). Six-month-old infants recognize phrases in song and speech. Infancy, 25(5), 699-718. doi:10.1111/infa.12357.

    Abstract

    Infants exploit acoustic boundaries to perceptually organize phrases in speech. This prosodic parsing ability is well‐attested and is a cornerstone to the development of speech perception and grammar. However, infants also receive linguistic input in child songs. This study provides evidence that infants parse songs into meaningful phrasal units and replicates previous research for speech. Six‐month‐old Dutch infants (n = 80) were tested in the song or speech modality in the head‐turn preference procedure. First, infants were familiarized to two versions of the same word sequence: One version represented a well‐formed unit, and the other contained a phrase boundary halfway through. At test, infants were presented two passages, each containing one version of the familiarized sequence. The results for speech replicated the previously observed preference for the passage containing the well‐formed sequence, but only in a more fine‐grained analysis. The preference for well‐formed phrases was also observed in the song modality, indicating that infants recognize phrase structure in song. There were acoustic differences between stimuli of the current and previous studies, suggesting that infants are flexible in their processing of boundary cues while also providing a possible explanation for differences in effect sizes.

    Additional information

    infa12357-sup-0001-supinfo.zip
  • Havron, N., Bergmann, C., & Tsuji, S. (2020). Preregistration in infant research - A primer. Infancy, 25(5), 734-754. doi:10.1111/infa.12353.

    Abstract

    Preregistration, the act of specifying a research plan in advance, is becoming more common in scientific research. Infant researchers contend with unique problems that might make preregistration particularly challenging. Infants are a hard‐to‐reach population, usually yielding small sample sizes, they can only complete a limited number of trials, and they can be excluded based on hard‐to‐predict complications (e.g., parental interference, fussiness). In addition, as effects themselves potentially change with age and population, it is hard to calculate an a priori effect size. At the same time, these very factors make preregistration in infant studies a valuable tool. A priori examination of the planned study, including the hypotheses, sample size, and resulting statistical power, increases the credibility of single studies and adds value to the field. Preregistration might also improve explicit decision making to create better studies. We present an in‐depth discussion of the issues uniquely relevant to infant researchers, and ways to contend with them in preregistration and study planning. We provide recommendations to researchers interested in following current best practices.

    Additional information

    Preprint version on OSF
  • Hayano, K. (2004). Kaiwa ni okeru ninshikiteki ken’i no koushou: Shuujoshi yo, ne, odoroki hyouji no bunpu to kinou [Negotiation of Epistemic Authority in Conversation: on the use of final particles yo, ne and surprise markers]. Studies in Pragmatics, 6, 17-28.
  • Heeschen, C., Ryalls, J., & Hagoort, P. (1988). Psychological stress in Broca's versus Wernicke's aphasia. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2, 309-316. doi:10.3109/02699208808985262.

    Abstract

    We advance the hypothesis here that the higher-than-average vocal pitch (FO) found for speech of Broca's aphasics in experimental settings is due, in part, to increased psychological stress. Two experiments were conducted which manipulated conversational constraints and the sentence forms to be produced by aphasic patients. Our study revealed significant differences between changes in vocal pitch of agrammatic Broca's aphasics versus those of Wernicke's aphasics and normal controls. It is suggested that the greater psychological stress experienced by the Broca's aphasics, but not by the Wernicke's aphasics, accounts for these observed differences.
  • Heidlmayr, K., Kihlstedt, M., & Isel, F. (2020). A review on the electroencephalography markers of Stroop executive control processes. Brain and Cognition, 146: 105637. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105637.

    Abstract

    The present article on executive control addresses the issue of the locus of the Stroop effect by examining neurophysiological components marking conflict monitoring, interference suppression, and conflict resolution. Our goal was to provide an overview of a series of determining neurophysiological findings including neural source reconstruction data on distinct executive control processes and sub-processes involved in the Stroop task. Consistently, a fronto-central N2 component is found to reflect conflict monitoring processes, with its main neural generator being the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Then, for cognitive control tasks that involve a linguistic component like the Stroop task, the N2 is followed by a centro-posterior N400 and subsequently a late sustained potential (LSP). The N400 is mainly generated by the ACC and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is thought to reflect interference suppression, whereas the LSP plausibly reflects conflict resolution processes. The present overview shows that ERP constitute a reliable methodological tool for tracing with precision the time course of different executive processes and sub-processes involved in experimental tasks involving a cognitive conflict. Future research should shed light on the fine-grained mechanisms of control respectively involved in linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.
  • Heidlmayr, K., Weber, K., Takashima, A., & Hagoort, P. (2020). No title, no theme: The joined neural space between speakers and listeners during production and comprehension of multi-sentence discourse. Cortex, 130, 111-126. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.035.

    Abstract

    Speakers and listeners usually interact in larger discourses than single words or even single sentences. The goal of the present study was to identify the neural bases reflecting how the mental representation of the situation denoted in a multi-sentence discourse (situation model) is constructed and shared between speakers and listeners. An fMRI study using a variant of the ambiguous text paradigm was designed. Speakers (n=15) produced ambiguous texts in the scanner and listeners (n=27) subsequently listened to these texts in different states of ambiguity: preceded by a highly informative, intermediately informative or no title at all. Conventional BOLD activation analyses in listeners, as well as inter-subject correlation analyses between the speakers’ and the listeners’ hemodynamic time courses were performed. Critically, only the processing of disambiguated, coherent discourse with an intelligible situation model representation involved (shared) activation in bilateral lateral parietal and medial prefrontal regions. This shared spatiotemporal pattern of brain activation between the speaker and the listener suggests that the process of memory retrieval in medial prefrontal regions and the binding of retrieved information in the lateral parietal cortex constitutes a core mechanism underlying the communication of complex conceptual representations.

    Additional information

    supplementary data
  • Heilbron, M., Richter, D., Ekman, M., Hagoort, P., & De Lange, F. P. (2020). Word contexts enhance the neural representation of individual letters in early visual cortex. Nature Communications, 11: 321. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13996-4.

    Abstract

    Visual context facilitates perception, but how this is neurally implemented remains unclear. One example of contextual facilitation is found in reading, where letters are more easily identified when embedded in a word. Bottom-up models explain this word advantage as a post-perceptual decision bias, while top-down models propose that word contexts enhance perception itself. Here, we arbitrate between these accounts by presenting words and nonwords and probing the representational fidelity of individual letters using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In line with top-down models, we find that word contexts enhance letter representations in early visual cortex. Moreover, we observe increased coupling between letter information in visual cortex and brain activity in key areas of the reading network, suggesting these areas may be the source of the enhancement. Our results provide evidence for top-down representational enhancement in word recognition, demonstrating that word contexts can modulate perceptual processing already at the earliest visual regions.

    Additional information

    Supplementary information
  • Heinrich, T., Ravignani, A., & Hanke, F. H. (2020). Visual timing abilities of a harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) and a South African fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) for sub- and supra-second time intervals. Animal Cognition, 23(5), 851-859. doi:10.1007/s10071-020-01390-3.

    Abstract

    Timing is an essential parameter influencing many behaviours. A previous study demonstrated a high sensitivity of a phocid, the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), in discriminating time intervals. In the present study, we compared the harbour seal’s timing abilities with the timing abilities of an otariid, the South African fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus). This comparison seemed essential as phocids and otariids differ in many respects and might, thus, also differ regarding their timing abilities. We determined time difference thresholds for sub- and suprasecond time intervals marked by a white circle on a black background displayed for a specific time interval on a monitor using a staircase method. Contrary to our expectation, the timing abilities of the fur seal and the harbour seal were comparable. Over a broad range of time intervals, 0.8–7 s in the fur seal and 0.8–30 s in the harbour seal, the difference thresholds followed Weber’s law. In this range, both animals could discriminate time intervals differing only by 12 % and 14 % on average. Timing might, thus be a fundamental cue for pinnipeds in general to be used in various contexts, thereby complementing information provided by classical sensory systems. Future studies will help to clarify if timing is indeed involved in foraging decisions or the estimation of travel speed or distance.

    Additional information

    supplementary material
  • Henderson, L., Coltheart, M., Cutler, A., & Vincent, N. (1988). Preface. Linguistics, 26(4), 519-520. doi:10.1515/ling.1988.26.4.519.
  • Henson, R. N., Suri, S., Knights, E., Rowe, J. B., Kievit, R. A., Lyall, D. M., Chan, D., Eising, E., & Fisher, S. E. (2020). Effect of apolipoprotein E polymorphism on cognition and brain in the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort. Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 4: 2398212820961704. doi:10.1177/2398212820961704.

    Abstract

    Polymorphisms in the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene have been associated with individual differences in cognition, brain structure and brain function. For example, the ε4 allele has been associated with cognitive and brain impairment in old age and increased risk of dementia, while the ε2 allele has been claimed to be neuroprotective. According to the ‘antagonistic pleiotropy’ hypothesis, these polymorphisms have different effects across the lifespan, with ε4, for example, postulated to confer benefits on cognitive and brain functions earlier in life. In this stage 2 of the Registered Report – https://osf.io/bufc4, we report the results from the cognitive and brain measures in the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort (www.cam-can.org). We investigated the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis by testing for allele-by-age interactions in approximately 600 people across the adult lifespan (18–88 years), on six outcome variables related to cognition, brain structure and brain function (namely, fluid intelligence, verbal memory, hippocampal grey-matter volume, mean diffusion within white matter and resting-state connectivity measured by both functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography). We found no evidence to support the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis. Indeed, Bayes factors supported the null hypothesis in all cases, except for the (linear) interaction between age and possession of the ε4 allele on fluid intelligence, for which the evidence for faster decline in older ages was ambiguous. Overall, these pre-registered analyses question the antagonistic pleiotropy of APOE polymorphisms, at least in healthy adults.

    Additional information

    supplementary material
  • Hestvik, A., Shinohara, Y., Durvasula, K., Verdonschot, R. G., & Sakai, H. (2020). Abstractness of human speech sound representations. Brain Research, 1732: 146664. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2020.146664.

    Abstract

    We argue, based on a study of brain responses to speech sound differences in Japanese, that memory encoding of functional speech sounds-phonemes-are highly abstract. As an example, we provide evidence for a theory where the consonants/p t k b d g/ are not only made up of symbolic features but are underspecified with respect to voicing or laryngeal features, and that languages differ with respect to which feature value is underspecified. In a previous study we showed that voiced stops are underspecified in English [Hestvik, A., & Durvasula, K. (2016). Neurobiological evidence for voicing underspecification in English. Brain and Language], as shown by asymmetries in Mismatch Negativity responses to /t/ and /d/. In the current study, we test the prediction that the opposite asymmetry should be observed in Japanese, if voiceless stops are underspecified in that language. Our results confirm this prediction. This matches a linguistic architecture where phonemes are highly abstract and do not encode actual physical characteristics of the corresponding speech sounds, but rather different subsets of abstract distinctive features.
  • Hildebrand, M. S., Jackson, V. E., Scerri, T. S., Van Reyk, O., Coleman, M., Braden, R., Turner, S., Rigbye, K. A., Boys, A., Barton, S., Webster, R., Fahey, M., Saunders, K., Parry-Fielder, B., Paxton, G., Hayman, M., Coman, D., Goel, H., Baxter, A., Ma, A. and 11 moreHildebrand, M. S., Jackson, V. E., Scerri, T. S., Van Reyk, O., Coleman, M., Braden, R., Turner, S., Rigbye, K. A., Boys, A., Barton, S., Webster, R., Fahey, M., Saunders, K., Parry-Fielder, B., Paxton, G., Hayman, M., Coman, D., Goel, H., Baxter, A., Ma, A., Davis, N., Reilly, S., Delatycki, M., Liégeois, F. J., Connelly, A., Gecz, J., Fisher, S. E., Amor, D. J., Scheffer, I. E., Bahlo, M., & Morgan, A. T. (2020). Severe childhood speech disorder: Gene discovery highlights transcriptional dysregulation. Neurology, 94(20), e2148-e2167. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000009441.

    Abstract

    Objective
    Determining the genetic basis of speech disorders provides insight into the neurobiology of
    human communication. Despite intensive investigation over the past 2 decades, the etiology of
    most speech disorders in children remains unexplained. To test the hypothesis that speech
    disorders have a genetic etiology, we performed genetic analysis of children with severe speech
    disorder, specifically childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).
    Methods
    Precise phenotyping together with research genome or exome analysis were performed on
    children referred with a primary diagnosis of CAS. Gene coexpression and gene set enrichment
    analyses were conducted on high-confidence gene candidates.
    Results
    Thirty-four probands ascertained for CAS were studied. In 11/34 (32%) probands, we identified
    highly plausible pathogenic single nucleotide (n = 10; CDK13, EBF3, GNAO1, GNB1,
    DDX3X, MEIS2, POGZ, SETBP1, UPF2, ZNF142) or copy number (n = 1; 5q14.3q21.1 locus)
    variants in novel genes or loci for CAS. Testing of parental DNA was available for 9 probands
    and confirmed that the variants had arisen de novo. Eight genes encode proteins critical for
    regulation of gene transcription, and analyses of transcriptomic data found CAS-implicated
    genes were highly coexpressed in the developing human brain.
    Conclusion
    We identify the likely genetic etiology in 11 patients with CAS and implicate 9 genes for the first
    time. We find that CAS is often a sporadic monogenic disorder, and highly genetically heterogeneous.
    Highly penetrant variants implicate shared pathways in broad transcriptional
    regulation, highlighting the key role of transcriptional regulation in normal speech development.
    CAS is a distinctive, socially debilitating clinical disorder, and understanding its
    molecular basis is the first step towards identifying precision medicine approaches.
  • Hintz, F., Meyer, A. S., & Huettig, F. (2020). Visual context constrains language-mediated anticipatory eye movements. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(3), 458-467. doi:10.1177/1747021819881615.

    Abstract

    Contemporary accounts of anticipatory language processing assume that individuals predict upcoming information at multiple levels of representation. Research investigating language-mediated anticipatory eye gaze typically assumes that linguistic input restricts the domain of subsequent reference (visual target objects). Here, we explored the converse case: Can visual input restrict the dynamics of anticipatory language processing? To this end, we recorded participants’ eye movements as they listened to sentences in which an object was predictable based on the verb’s selectional restrictions (“The man peels a banana”). While listening, participants looked at different types of displays: The target object (banana) was either present or it was absent. On target-absent trials, the displays featured objects that had a similar visual shape as the target object (canoe) or objects that were semantically related to the concepts invoked by the target (monkey). Each trial was presented in a long preview version, where participants saw the displays for approximately 1.78 seconds before the verb was heard (pre-verb condition), and a short preview version, where participants saw the display approximately 1 second after the verb had been heard (post-verb condition), 750 ms prior to the spoken target onset. Participants anticipated the target objects in both conditions. Importantly, robust evidence for predictive looks to objects related to the (absent) target objects in visual shape and semantics was found in the post-verb but not in the pre-verb condition. These results suggest that visual information can restrict language-mediated anticipatory gaze and delineate theoretical accounts of predictive processing in the visual world.

    Additional information

    Supplemental Material
  • Hintz, F., Meyer, A. S., & Huettig, F. (2020). Activating words beyond the unfolding sentence: Contributions of event simulation and word associations to discourse reading. Neuropsychologia, 141: 107409. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107409.

    Abstract

    Previous studies have shown that during comprehension readers activate words beyond the unfolding sentence. An open question concerns the mechanisms underlying this behavior. One proposal is that readers mentally simulate the described event and activate related words that might be referred to as the discourse further unfolds. Another proposal is that activation between words spreads in an automatic, associative fashion. The empirical support for these proposals is mixed. Therefore, theoretical accounts differ with regard to how much weight they place on the contributions of these sources to sentence comprehension. In the present study, we attempted to assess the contributions of event simulation and lexical associations to discourse reading, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants read target words, which were preceded by associatively related words either appearing in a coherent discourse event (Experiment 1) or in sentences that did not form a coherent discourse event (Experiment 2). Contextually unexpected target words that were associatively related to the described events elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to contextually unexpected target words that were unrelated to the events (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a similar but reduced effect was observed. These findings support the notion that during discourse reading event simulation and simple word associations jointly contribute to language comprehension by activating words that are beyond contextually congruent sentence continuations.
  • Hintz*, F., Jongman*, S. R., Dijkhuis, M., Van 't Hoff, V., McQueen, J. M., & Meyer, A. S. (2020). Shared lexical access processes in speaking and listening? An individual differences study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(6), 1048-1063. doi:10.1037/xlm0000768.

    Abstract

    - * indicates joint first authorship - Lexical access is a core component of word processing. In order to produce or comprehend a word, language users must access word forms in their mental lexicon. However, despite its involvement in both tasks, previous research has often studied lexical access in either production or comprehension alone. Therefore, it is unknown to which extent lexical access processes are shared across both tasks. Picture naming and auditory lexical decision are considered good tools for studying lexical access. Both of them are speeded tasks. Given these commonalities, another open question concerns the involvement of general cognitive abilities (e.g., processing speed) in both linguistic tasks. In the present study, we addressed these questions. We tested a large group of young adults enrolled in academic and vocational courses. Participants completed picture naming and auditory lexical decision tasks as well as a battery of tests assessing non-verbal processing speed, vocabulary, and non-verbal intelligence. Our results suggest that the lexical access processes involved in picture naming and lexical decision are related but less closely than one might have thought. Moreover, reaction times in picture naming and lexical decision depended as least as much on general processing speed as on domain-specific linguistic processes (i.e., lexical access processes).
  • Hintz, F., Dijkhuis, M., Van 't Hoff, V., McQueen, J. M., & Meyer, A. S. (2020). A behavioural dataset for studying individual differences in language skills. Scientific Data, 7: 429. doi:10.1038/s41597-020-00758-x.

    Abstract

    This resource contains data from 112 Dutch adults (18–29 years of age) who completed the Individual Differences in Language Skills test battery that included 33 behavioural tests assessing language skills and domain-general cognitive skills likely involved in language tasks. The battery included tests measuring linguistic experience (e.g. vocabulary size, prescriptive grammar knowledge), general cognitive skills (e.g. working memory, non-verbal intelligence) and linguistic processing skills (word production/comprehension, sentence production/comprehension). Testing was done in a lab-based setting resulting in high quality data due to tight monitoring of the experimental protocol and to the use of software and hardware that were optimized for behavioural testing. Each participant completed the battery twice (i.e., two test days of four hours each). We provide the raw data from all tests on both days as well as pre-processed data that were used to calculate various reliability measures (including internal consistency and test-retest reliability). We encourage other researchers to use this resource for conducting exploratory and/or targeted analyses of individual differences in language and general cognitive skills.
  • Hofer, E., Roshchupkin, G. V., Adams, H. H. H., Knol, M. J., Lin, H., Li, S., Zare, H., Ahmad, S., Armstrong, N. J., Satizabal, C. L., Bernard, M., Bis, J. C., Gillespie, N. A., Luciano, M., Mishra, A., Scholz, M., Teumer, A., Xia, R., Jian, X., Mosley, T. H. and 79 moreHofer, E., Roshchupkin, G. V., Adams, H. H. H., Knol, M. J., Lin, H., Li, S., Zare, H., Ahmad, S., Armstrong, N. J., Satizabal, C. L., Bernard, M., Bis, J. C., Gillespie, N. A., Luciano, M., Mishra, A., Scholz, M., Teumer, A., Xia, R., Jian, X., Mosley, T. H., Saba, Y., Pirpamer, L., Seiler, S., Becker, J. T., Carmichael, O., Rotter, J. I., Psaty, B. M., Lopez, O. L., Amin, N., Van der Lee, S. J., Yang, Q., Himali, J. J., Maillard, P., Beiser, A. S., DeCarli, C., Karama, S., Lewis, L., Harris, M., Bastin, M. E., Deary, I. J., Witte, A. V., Beyer, F., Loeffler, M., Mather, K. A., Schofield, P. R., Thalamuthu, A., Kwok, J. B., Wright, M. J., Ames, D., Trollor, J., Jiang, J., Brodaty, H., Wen, W., Vernooij, M. W., Hofman, A., Uitterlinden, A. G., Niessen, W. J., Wittfeld, K., Bülow, R., Völker, U., Pausova, Z., Pike, G. B., Maingault, S., Crivello, F., Tzourio, C., Amouyel, P., Mazoyer, B., Neale, M. C., Franz, C. E., Lyons, M. J., Panizzon, M. S., Andreassen, O. A., Dale, A. M., Logue, M., Grasby, K. L., Jahanshad, N., Painter, J. N., Colodro-Conde, L., Bralten, J., Hibar, D. P., Lind, P. A., Pizzagalli, F., Stein, J. L., Thompson, P. M., Medland, S. E., ENIGMA-consortium, Sachdev, P. S., Kremen, W. S., Wardlaw, J. M., Villringer, A., Van Duijn, C. M., Grabe, H. J., Longstreth, W. T., Fornage, M., Paus, T., Debette, S., Ikram, M. A., Schmidt, H., Schmidt, R., & Seshadri, S. (2020). Genetic correlations and genome-wide associations of cortical structure in general population samples of 22,824 adults. Nature Communications, 11: 4796. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18367-y.
  • Horemans, I., & Schiller, N. O. (2004). Form-priming effects in nonword naming. Brain and Language, 90(1-3), 465-469. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00457-7.

    Abstract

    Form-priming effects from sublexical (syllabic or segmental) primes in masked priming can be accounted for in two ways. One is the sublexical pre-activation view according to which segments are pre-activated by the prime, and at the time the form-related target is to be produced, retrieval/assembly of those pre-activated segments is faster compared to an unrelated situation. However, it has also been argued that form-priming effects from sublexical primes might be due to lexical pre-activation. When the sublexical prime is presented, it activates all form-related words (i.e., cohorts) in the lexicon, necessarily including the form-related target, which—as a consequence—is produced faster than in the unrelated case. Note, however, that this lexical pre-activation account makes previous pre-lexical activation of segments necessary. This study reports a nonword naming experiment to investigate whether or not sublexical pre-activation is involved in masked form priming with sublexical primes. The results demonstrated a priming effect suggesting a nonlexical effect. However, this does not exclude an additional lexical component in form priming.
  • Hörpel, S. G., & Firzlaff, U. (2020). Post-natal development of the envelope following response to amplitude modulated sounds in the bat Phyllostomus discolor. Hearing Research, 388: 107904. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2020.107904.

    Abstract

    Bats use a large repertoire of calls for social communication, which are often characterized by temporal amplitude and frequency modulations. As bats are considered to be among the few mammalian species capable of vocal learning, the perception of temporal sound modulations should be crucial for juvenile bats to develop social communication abilities. However, the post-natal development of auditory processing of temporal modulations has not been investigated in bats, so far. Here we use the minimally invasive technique of recording auditory brainstem responses to measure the envelope following response (EFR) to sinusoidally amplitude modulated noise (range of modulation frequencies: 11–130 Hz) in three juveniles (p8-p72) of the bat, Phyllostomus discolor. In two out of three animals, we show that although amplitude modulation processing is basically developed at p8, EFRs maturated further over a period of about two weeks until p33. Maturation of the EFR generally took longer for higher modulation frequencies (87–130 Hz) than for lower modulation frequencies (11–58 Hz).
  • Hostetter, A. B., Pouw, W., & Wakefield, E. M. (2020). Learning from gesture and action: An investigation of memory for where objects went and how they got there. Cognitive Science, 44(9): e12889. doi:10.1111/cogs.12889.

    Abstract

    Speakers often use gesture to demonstrate how to perform actions—for example, they might show how to open the top of a jar by making a twisting motion above the jar. Yet it is unclear whether listeners learn as much from seeing such gestures as they learn from seeing actions that physically change the position of objects (i.e., actually opening the jar). Here, we examined participants' implicit and explicit understanding about a series of movements that demonstrated how to move a set of objects. The movements were either shown with actions that physically relocated each object or with gestures that represented the relocation without touching the objects. Further, the end location that was indicated for each object covaried with whether the object was grasped with one or two hands. We found that memory for the end location of each object was better after seeing the physical relocation of the objects, that is, after seeing action, than after seeing gesture, regardless of whether speech was absent (Experiment 1) or present (Experiment 2). However, gesture and action built similar implicit understanding of how a particular handgrasp corresponded with a particular end location. Although gestures miss the benefit of showing the end state of objects that have been acted upon, the data show that gestures are as good as action in building knowledge of how to perform an action.

    Additional information

    additional analyses Open Data OSF
  • Houwing, D. J., Schuttel, K., Struik, E. L., Arling, C., Ramsteijn, A. S., Heinla, I., & Olivier, J. D. (2020). Perinatal fluoxetine treatment and dams’ early life stress history alter affective behavior in rat offspring depending on serotonin transporter genotype and sex. Behavioural Brain Research, 392: 112657. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112657.

    Abstract

    Many women diagnosed with a major depression continue or initiate antidepressant treatment during pregnancy. Both maternal stress and selective serotonin inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant treatment during pregnancy have been associated with changes in offspring behavior, including increased anxiety and depressive-like behavior. Our aim was to investigate the effects of the SSRI fluoxetine (FLX), with and without the presence of a maternal depression, on affective behavior in male and female rat offspring. As reduced serotonin transporter (SERT) availability has been associated with altered behavioral outcome, both offspring with normal (SERT+/+) and reduced (SERT+/−) SERT expression were included. For our animal model of maternal depression, SERT+/− dams exposed to early life stress were used. Perinatal FLX treatment and early life stress in dams (ELSD) had sex- and genotype-specific effects on affective behavior in the offspring. In female offspring, perinatal FLX exposure interacted with SERT genotype to increase anxiety and depressive-like behavior in SERT+/+, but not SERT+/−, females. In male offspring, ELSD reduced anxiety and interacted with SERT genotype to decrease depressive-like behavior in SERT+/−, but not SERT+/+, males. Altogether, SERT+/+ female offspring appear to be more sensitive than SERT+/− females to the effects of perinatal FLX exposure, while SERT+/− male offspring appear more sensitive than SERT+/+ males to the effects of ELSD on affective behavior. Our data suggest a role for offspring SERT genotype and sex in FLX and ELSD-induced effects on affective behavior, thereby contributing to our understanding of the effects of perinatal SSRI treatment on offspring behavior later in life.

Share this page