Publications

Displaying 501 - 600 of 646
  • Schmitt, B. M. (1997). Lexical access in the production of ellipsis and pronouns. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057702.
  • Schoenmakers, G.-J. (2020). Freedom in the Dutch middle-field: Deriving discourse structure at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 5(1): 114. doi:10.5334/gjgl.1307.

    Abstract

    This paper experimentally explores the optionality of Dutch scrambling structures with a definite object and an adverb. Most researchers argue that such structures are not freely interchangeable, but are subject to a strict discourse template. Existing analyses are based primarily on intuitions of the researchers, while experimental support is scarce. This paper reports on two experiments to gauge the existence of a strict discourse template. The discourse status of definite objects in scrambling clauses is first probed in a fill-in-the-blanks experiment and subsequently manipulated in a speeded judgment experiment. The results of these experiments indicate that scrambling is not as restricted as is commonly claimed. Although mismatches between surface order and pragmatic interpretation lead to a penalty in judgment rates and a rise in reaction times, they nonetheless occur in production and yield fully acceptable structures. Crucially, the penalties and delays emerge only in scrambling clauses with an adverb that is sensitive to focus placement. This paper argues that scrambling does not map onto discourse structure in the strict way proposed in most literature. Instead, a more complex syntax of deriving discourse relations is proposed which submits that the Dutch scrambling pattern results from two familiar processes which apply at the syntax-pragmatics interface: reconstruction and covert raising.
  • Seidlmayer, E., Voß, J., Melnychuk, T., Galke, L., Tochtermann, K., Schultz, C., & Förstner, K. U. (2020). ORCID for Wikidata. Data enrichment for scientometric applications. In L.-A. Kaffee, O. Tifrea-Marciuska, E. Simperl, & D. Vrandečić (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Wikidata Workshop (Wikidata 2020). Aachen, Germany: CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

    Abstract

    Due to its numerous bibliometric entries of scholarly articles and connected information Wikidata can serve as an open and rich
    source for deep scientometrical analyses. However, there are currently certain limitations: While 31.5% of all Wikidata entries represent scientific articles, only 8.9% are entries describing a person and the number
    of entries researcher is accordingly even lower. Another issue is the frequent absence of established relations between the scholarly article item and the author item although the author is already listed in Wikidata.
    To fill this gap and to improve the content of Wikidata in general, we established a workflow for matching authors and scholarly publications by integrating data from the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) database. By this approach we were able to extend Wikidata by more than 12k author-publication relations and the method can be
    transferred to other enrichments based on ORCID data. This is extension is beneficial for Wikidata users performing bibliometrical analyses or using such metadata for other purposes.
  • Seijdel, N., Tsakmakidis, N., De Haan, E. H. F., Bohte, S. M., & Scholte, H. S. (2020). Depth in convolutional neural networks solves scene segmentation. PLOS Computational Biology, 16: e1008022. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008022.

    Abstract

    Feed-forward deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are, under specific conditions, matching and even surpassing human performance in object recognition in natural scenes. This performance suggests that the analysis of a loose collection of image features could support the recognition of natural object categories, without dedicated systems to solve specific visual subtasks. Research in humans however suggests that while feedforward activity may suffice for sparse scenes with isolated objects, additional visual operations ('routines') that aid the recognition process (e.g. segmentation or grouping) are needed for more complex scenes. Linking human visual processing to performance of DCNNs with increasing depth, we here explored if, how, and when object information is differentiated from the backgrounds they appear on. To this end, we controlled the information in both objects and backgrounds, as well as the relationship between them by adding noise, manipulating background congruence and systematically occluding parts of the image. Results indicate that with an increase in network depth, there is an increase in the distinction between object- and background information. For more shallow networks, results indicated a benefit of training on segmented objects. Overall, these results indicate that, de facto, scene segmentation can be performed by a network of sufficient depth. We conclude that the human brain could perform scene segmentation in the context of object identification without an explicit mechanism, by selecting or “binding” features that belong to the object and ignoring other features, in a manner similar to a very deep convolutional neural network.
  • Seijdel, N., Jahfari, S., Groen, I. I. A., & Scholte, H. S. (2020). Low-level image statistics in natural scenes influence perceptual decision-making. Scientific Reports, 10: 10573. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-67661-8.

    Abstract

    A fundamental component of interacting with our environment is gathering and interpretation of sensory information. When investigating how perceptual information influences decision-making, most researchers have relied on manipulated or unnatural information as perceptual input, resulting in findings that may not generalize to real-world scenes. Unlike simplified, artificial stimuli, real-world scenes contain low-level regularities that are informative about the structural complexity, which the brain could exploit. In this study, participants performed an animal detection task on low, medium or high complexity scenes as determined by two biologically plausible natural scene statistics, contrast energy (CE) or spatial coherence (SC). In experiment 1, stimuli were sampled such that CE and SC both influenced scene complexity. Diffusion modelling showed that the speed of information processing was affected by low-level scene complexity. Experiment 2a/b refined these observations by showing how isolated manipulation of SC resulted in weaker but comparable effects, with an additional change in response boundary, whereas manipulation of only CE had no effect. Overall, performance was best for scenes with intermediate complexity. Our systematic definition quantifies how natural scene complexity interacts with decision-making. We speculate that CE and SC serve as an indication to adjust perceptual decision-making based on the complexity of the input.

    Additional information

    supplementary materials data code and data
  • Sekine, K., Schoechl, C., Mulder, K., Holler, J., Kelly, S., Furman, R., & Ozyurek, A. (2020). Evidence for children's online integration of simultaneous information from speech and iconic gestures: An ERP study. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35(10), 1283-1294. doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1737719.

    Abstract

    Children perceive iconic gestures, along with speech they hear. Previous studies have shown
    that children integrate information from both modalities. Yet it is not known whether children
    can integrate both types of information simultaneously as soon as they are available as adults
    do or processes them separately initially and integrate them later. Using electrophysiological
    measures, we examined the online neurocognitive processing of gesture-speech integration in
    6- to 7-year-old children. We focused on the N400 event-related potentials component which
    is modulated by semantic integration load. Children watched video clips of matching or
    mismatching gesture-speech combinations, which varied the semantic integration load. The
    ERPs showed that the amplitude of the N400 was larger in the mismatching condition than in
    the matching condition. This finding provides the first neural evidence that by the ages of 6
    or 7, children integrate multimodal semantic information in an online fashion comparable to
    that of adults.
  • Senft, G. (2020). “.. to grasp the native's point of view..” — A plea for a holistic documentation of the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture and cognition. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 24(1), 7-30. doi:10.22363/2687-0088-2020-24-1-7-30.

    Abstract

    In his famous introduction to his monograph “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” Bronislaw
    Malinowski (1922: 24f.) points out that a “collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic
    narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus
    inscriptionum, as documents of native mentality”. This is one of the prerequisites to “grasp the
    native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”. Malinowski managed
    to document a “Corpus Inscriptionum Agriculturae Quriviniensis” in his second volume of “Coral
    Gardens and their Magic” (1935 Vol II: 79-342). But he himself did not manage to come up with a
    holistic corpus inscriptionum for the Trobriand Islanders. One of the main aims I have been pursuing
    in my research on the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture, and cognition has been to fill this
    ethnolinguistic niche. In this essay, I report what I had to do to carry out this complex and ambitious
    project, what forms and kinds of linguistic and cultural competence I had to acquire, and how I
    planned my data collection during 16 long- and short-term field trips to the Trobriand Islands
    between 1982 and 2012. The paper ends with a critical assessment of my Trobriand endeavor.
  • Senft, G. (2020). Kampfschild - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, S. Schien, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch (pp. 58-59). Freiburg: Michael Imhof Verlag.
  • Senft, G. (2020). 32 Kampfschild - dance or war shield - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch. Texte zur Ausstellung, Städtische Museen Freiburg, vom 20. Juni 2020 bis 10. Januar 2021 (pp. 76-77). Freiburg: Städtische Museen.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Body and mind in the Trobriand Islands. Ethos, 26, 73-104. doi:10.1525/eth.1998.26.1.73.

    Abstract

    This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic datafit into theories about lexical universals of body-part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them as a kind of ethnopsychological theory about the body and its role for emotions, knowledge, thought, memory, and so on? Can these idioms be understood as representation of Trobriand ethnopsychological theory?
  • Senft, G. (1993). A grammaticalization hypothesis on the origin of Kilivila classificatory particles. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, 46, 100-112.
  • Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
  • Senft, G. (1998). [Review of the book Anthropological linguistics: An introduction by William A. Foley]. Linguistics, 36, 995-1001.
  • Senft, G. (1993). [Review of the book Kitava a linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual art in Melanesia by Giancarlo M. G. Scoditti]. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 281-290. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(93)90033-L.
  • Senft, G. (1993). [Review of the book Language death: Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa ed. by Matthias Brenzinger]. Linguistics, 31, 1197-1202.
  • Senft, G. (1997). [Review of the book The design of language: An introduction to descriptive linguistics by Terry Crowley, John Lynch, Jeff Siegel, and Julie Piau]. Linguistics, 35, 781-785.
  • Senft, G. (1993). [Review of the book The song of the flying fox by Jürg Wassmann]. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 149, 185-186.
  • Senft, G. (1997). Magic, missionaries, and religion - Some observations from the Trobriand Islands. In T. Otto, & A. Borsboom (Eds.), Cultural dynamics of religious change in Oceania (pp. 45-58). Leiden: KITLV press.
  • Senft, G. (1997). Magical conversation on the Trobriand Islands. Anthropos, 92, 369-391.
  • Senft, G. (1993). Mwasawa - Spiel und Spaß bei den Trobriandern. In W. Schievenhövel, J. Uher, & R. Krell (Eds.), Eibl-Eibesfeldt - Sein Schlüssel zur Verhaltensforschung (pp. 100-109). München: Langen Müller.
  • Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1993). Mwasawa - Spiel und Spass bei den Trobriandern. In W. Schiefenhövel, J. Uher, & R. Krell (Eds.), Im Spiegel der Anderen - Aus dem Lebenswerk des Verhaltenforschers Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (pp. 100-109). München: Realis.
  • Senft, G. (1997). Introduction. In G. Senft (Ed.), Referring to space - Studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages (pp. 1-38). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Senft, G. (Ed.). (1997). Referring to space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). [Review of the book Adverbial subordination; A typology and history of adverbial subordinators based on European languages by Bernd Kortmann]. Cognitive Linguistics, 9(3), 317-319. doi:10.1515/cogl.1998.9.3.315.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1997). [Review of the book Schets van de Nederlandse Taal. Grammatica, poëtica en retorica by Adriaen Verwer, Naar de editie van E. van Driel (1783) vertaald door J. Knol. Ed. Th.A.J.M. Janssen & J. Noordegraaf]. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 4, 370-374.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). [Review of the book The Dutch pendulum: Linguistics in the Netherlands 1740-1900 by Jan Noordegraaf]. Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society, 31, 46-50.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1963). Naar aanleiding van Dr. F. Balk-Smit Duyzentkunst "De Grammatische Functie". Levende Talen, 219, 179-186.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Obituary. Herman Christiaan Wekker 1943–1997. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 13(1), 159-162.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1993). Overpeinzingen bij negatie. Gramma/TTT, tijdschrift voor taalwetenschap, 2(2), 145-163.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1993). The question of predicate clefting in the Indian Ocean Creoles. In F. Byrne, & D. Winford (Eds.), Focus and grammatical relations in Creole languages (pp. 53-64). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1993). Why does mean 2 mean "2"? Grist to the anti-Grice mill. In E. Hajičová (Ed.), Proceedings on the Conference on Functional Description of Language (pp. 225-235). Prague: Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Shao, Z., & Rommers, J. (2020). How a question context aids word production: Evidence from the picture–word interference paradigm. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(2), 165-173. doi:10.1177/1747021819882911.

    Abstract

    Difficulties in saying the right word at the right time arise at least in part because multiple response candidates are simultaneously activated in the speaker’s mind. The word selection process has been simulated using the picture–word interference task, in which participants name pictures while ignoring a superimposed written distractor word. However, words are usually produced in context, in the service of achieving a communicative goal. Two experiments addressed the questions whether context influences word production, and if so, how. We embedded the picture–word interference task in a dialogue-like setting, in which participants heard a question and named a picture as an answer to the question while ignoring a superimposed distractor word. The conversational context was either constraining or nonconstraining towards the answer. Manipulating the relationship between the picture name and the distractor, we focused on two core processes of word production: retrieval of semantic representations (Experiment 1) and phonological encoding (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments showed that naming reaction times (RTs) were shorter when preceded by constraining contexts as compared with nonconstraining contexts. Critically, constraining contexts decreased the effect of semantically related distractors but not the effect of phonologically related distractors. This suggests that conversational contexts can help speakers with aspects of the meaning of to-be-produced words, but phonological encoding processes still need to be performed as usual.
  • Sharoh, D. (2020). Advances in layer specific fMRI for the study of language, cognition and directed brain networks. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Sharpe, V., Weber, K., & Kuperberg, G. R. (2020). Impairments in probabilistic prediction and Bayesian learning can explain reduced neural semantic priming in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 46(6), 1558-1566. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbaa069.

    Abstract

    It has been proposed that abnormalities in probabilistic prediction and dynamic belief updating explain the multiple features of schizophrenia. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to ask whether these abnormalities can account for the well-established reduction in semantic priming observed in schizophrenia under nonautomatic conditions. We isolated predictive contributions to the neural semantic priming effect by manipulating the prime’s predictive validity and minimizing retroactive semantic matching mechanisms. We additionally examined the link between prediction and learning using a Bayesian model that probed dynamic belief updating as participants adapted to the increase in predictive validity. We found that patients were less likely than healthy controls to use the prime to predictively facilitate semantic processing on the target, resulting in a reduced N400 effect. Moreover, the trial-by-trial output of our Bayesian computational model explained between-group differences in trial-by-trial N400 amplitudes as participants transitioned from conditions of lower to higher predictive validity. These findings suggest that, compared with healthy controls, people with schizophrenia are less able to mobilize predictive mechanisms to facilitate processing at the earliest stages of accessing the meanings of incoming words. This deficit may be linked to a failure to adapt to changes in the broader environment. This reciprocal relationship between impairments in probabilistic prediction and Bayesian learning/adaptation may drive a vicious cycle that maintains cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia.

    Additional information

    supplementary material
  • Shen, C., & Janse, E. (2020). Maximum speech performance and executive control in young adult speakers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63, 3611-3627. doi:10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00257.

    Abstract

    Purpose

    This study investigated whether maximum speech performance, more specifically, the ability to rapidly alternate between similar syllables during speech production, is associated with executive control abilities in a nonclinical young adult population.
    Method

    Seventy-eight young adult participants completed two speech tasks, both operationalized as maximum performance tasks, to index their articulatory control: a diadochokinetic (DDK) task with nonword and real-word syllable sequences and a tongue-twister task. Additionally, participants completed three cognitive tasks, each covering one element of executive control (a Flanker interference task to index inhibitory control, a letter–number switching task to index cognitive switching, and an operation span task to index updating of working memory). Linear mixed-effects models were fitted to investigate how well maximum speech performance measures can be predicted by elements of executive control.
    Results

    Participants' cognitive switching ability was associated with their accuracy in both the DDK and tongue-twister speech tasks. Additionally, nonword DDK accuracy was more strongly associated with executive control than real-word DDK accuracy (which has to be interpreted with caution). None of the executive control abilities related to the maximum rates at which participants performed the two speech tasks.
    Conclusion

    These results underscore the association between maximum speech performance and executive control (cognitive switching in particular).
  • Shin, J., Ma, S., Hofer, E., Patel, Y., Vosberg, D. E., Tilley, S., Roshchupkin, G. V., Sousa, A. M. M., Jian, X., Gottesman, R., Mosley, T. H., Fornage, M., Saba, Y., Pirpamer, L., Schmidt, R., Schmidt, H., Carrion Castillo, A., Crivello, F., Mazoyer, B., Bis, J. C. and 49 moreShin, J., Ma, S., Hofer, E., Patel, Y., Vosberg, D. E., Tilley, S., Roshchupkin, G. V., Sousa, A. M. M., Jian, X., Gottesman, R., Mosley, T. H., Fornage, M., Saba, Y., Pirpamer, L., Schmidt, R., Schmidt, H., Carrion Castillo, A., Crivello, F., Mazoyer, B., Bis, J. C., Li, S., Yang, Q., Luciano, M., Karama, S., Lewis, L., Bastin, M. E., Harris, M. A., Wardlaw, J. M., Deary, I. E., Scholz, M., Loeffler, M., Witte, A. V., Beyer, F., Villringer, A., Armstrong, N. F., Mather, K. A., Ames, D., Jiang, J., Kwok, J. B., Schofield, P. R., Thalamuthu, A., Trollor, J. N., Wright, M. J., Brodaty, H., Wen, W., Sachdev, P. S., Terzikhan, N., Evans, T. E., Adams, H. H. H. H., Ikram, M. A., Frenzel, S., Van der Auwera-Palitschka, S., Wittfeld, K., Bülow, R., Grabe, H. J., Tzourio, C., Mishra, A., Maingault, S., Debette, S., Gillespie, N. A., Franz, C. E., Kremen, W. S., Ding, L., Jahanshad, N., the ENIGMA Consortium, Sestan, N., Pausova, Z., Seshadri, S., Paus, T., & the neuroCHARGE Working Group (2020). Global and regional development of the human cerebral cortex: Molecular acrchitecture and occupational aptitudes. Cerebral Cortex, 30(7), 4121-4139. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhaa035.

    Abstract

    We have carried out meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) (n = 23 784) of the first two principal components (PCs) that group together cortical regions with shared variance in their surface area. PC1 (global) captured variations of most regions, whereas PC2 (visual) was specific to the primary and secondary visual cortices. We identified a total of 18 (PC1) and 17 (PC2) independent loci, which were replicated in another 25 746 individuals. The loci of the global PC1 included those associated previously with intracranial volume and/or general cognitive function, such as MAPT and IGF2BP1. The loci of the visual PC2 included DAAM1, a key player in the planar-cell-polarity pathway. We then tested associations with occupational aptitudes and, as predicted, found that the global PC1 was associated with General Learning Ability, and the visual PC2 was associated with the Form Perception aptitude. These results suggest that interindividual variations in global and regional development of the human cerebral cortex (and its molecular architecture) cascade—albeit in a very limited manner—to behaviors as complex as the choice of one’s occupation.
  • Shopen, T., Reid, N., Shopen, G., & Wilkins, D. G. (1997). Ensuring the survival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander languages into the 21st century. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 143-157.

    Abstract

    Aboriginal languages threatened by speakers poor economic and social conditions; some may survive through support for community development, language maintenance, bilingual education and training of Aboriginal teachers and linguists, and nonAboriginal teachers of Aboriginal and Islander students.
  • Sjerps, M. J., Decuyper, C., & Meyer, A. S. (2020). Initiation of utterance planning in response to pre-recorded and “live” utterances. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(3), 357-374. doi:10.1177/1747021819881265.

    Abstract

    In everyday conversation, interlocutors often plan their utterances while listening to their conversational partners, thereby achieving short gaps between their turns. Important issues for current psycholinguistics are how interlocutors distribute their attention between listening and speech planning and how speech planning is timed relative to listening. Laboratory studies addressing these issues have used a variety of paradigms, some of which have involved using recorded speech to which participants responded, whereas others have involved interactions with confederates. This study investigated how this variation in the speech input affected the participants’ timing of speech planning. In Experiment 1, participants responded to utterances produced by a confederate, who sat next to them and looked at the same screen. In Experiment 2, they responded to recorded utterances of the same confederate. Analyses of the participants’ speech, their eye movements, and their performance in a concurrent tapping task showed that, compared with recorded speech, the presence of the confederate increased the processing load for the participants, but did not alter their global sentence planning strategy. These results have implications for the design of psycholinguistic experiments and theories of listening and speaking in dyadic settings.
  • Skiba, R. (1998). Fachsprachenforschung in wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
  • Skiba, R. (1993). Funktionale Analyse des Spracherwerbs einer polnischen Deutschlernerin. In A. Katny (Ed.), Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Psycho- und Soziolinguistik: Probleme des Deutschen als Mutter-, Fremd- und Zweitsprache (pp. 201-225). Rzeszów: WSP.
  • Skiba, R. (1993). Modal verbs and their syntactical characteristics in elementary learner varieties. In N. Dittmar, & A. Reich (Eds.), Modality in language acquisition (pp. 247-260). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Slonimska, A., Ozyurek, A., & Capirci, O. (2020). The role of iconicity and simultaneity for efficient communication: The case of Italian Sign Language (LIS). Cognition, 200: 104246. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104246.

    Abstract

    A fundamental assumption about language is that, regardless of language modality, it faces the linearization problem, i.e., an event that occurs simultaneously in the world has to be split in language to be organized on a temporal scale. However, the visual modality of signed languages allows its users not only to express meaning in a linear manner but also to use iconicity and multiple articulators together to encode information simultaneously. Accordingly, in cases when it is necessary to encode informatively rich events, signers can take advantage of simultaneous encoding in order to represent information about different referents and their actions simultaneously. This in turn would lead to more iconic and direct representation. Up to now, there has been no experimental study focusing on simultaneous encoding of information in signed languages and its possible advantage for efficient communication. In the present study, we assessed how many information units can be encoded simultaneously in Italian Sign Language (LIS) and whether the amount of simultaneously encoded information varies based on the amount of information that is required to be expressed. Twenty-three deaf adults participated in a director-matcher game in which they described 30 images of events that varied in amount of information they contained. Results revealed that as the information that had to be encoded increased, signers also increased use of multiple articulators to encode different information (i.e., kinematic simultaneity) and density of simultaneously encoded information in their production. Present findings show how the fundamental properties of signed languages, i.e., iconicity and simultaneity, are used for the purpose of efficient information encoding in Italian Sign Language (LIS).

    Additional information

    Supplementary data
  • Smits, R. (1998). A model for dependencies in phonetic categorization. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress on Acoustics and the 135th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005-2006.

    Abstract

    A quantitative model of human categorization behavior is proposed, which can be applied to 4-alternative forced-choice categorization data involving two binary classifications. A number of processing dependencies between the two classifications are explicitly formulated, such as the dependence of the location, orientation, and steepness of the class boundary for one classification on the outcome of the other classification. The significance of various types of dependencies can be tested statistically. Analyses of a data set from the literature shows that interesting dependencies in human speech recognition can be uncovered using the model.
  • Snijders, T. M., Benders, T., & Fikkert, P. (2020). Infants segment words from songs - an EEG study. Brain Sciences, 10( 1): 39. doi:10.3390/brainsci10010039.

    Abstract

    Children’s songs are omnipresent and highly attractive stimuli in infants’ input. Previous work suggests that infants process linguistic–phonetic information from simplified sung melodies. The present study investigated whether infants learn words from ecologically valid children’s songs. Testing 40 Dutch-learning 10-month-olds in a familiarization-then-test electroencephalography (EEG) paradigm, this study asked whether infants can segment repeated target words embedded in songs during familiarization and subsequently recognize those words in continuous speech in the test phase. To replicate previous speech work and compare segmentation across modalities, infants participated in both song and speech sessions. Results showed a positive event-related potential (ERP) familiarity effect to the final compared to the first target occurrences during both song and speech familiarization. No evidence was found for word recognition in the test phase following either song or speech. Comparisons across the stimuli of the present and a comparable previous study suggested that acoustic prominence and speech rate may have contributed to the polarity of the ERP familiarity effect and its absence in the test phase. Overall, the present study provides evidence that 10-month-old infants can segment words embedded in songs, and it raises questions about the acoustic and other factors that enable or hinder infant word segmentation from songs and speech.
  • Sønderby, I. E., Gústafsson, Ó., Doan, N. T., Hibar, D. P., Martin-Brevet, S., Abdellaoui, A., Ames, D., Amunts, K., Andersson, M., Armstrong, N. J., Bernard, M., Blackburn, N., Blangero, J., Boomsma, D. I., Bralten, J., Brattbak, H.-R., Brodaty, H., Brouwer, R. M., Bülow, R., Calhoun, V. and 133 moreSønderby, I. E., Gústafsson, Ó., Doan, N. T., Hibar, D. P., Martin-Brevet, S., Abdellaoui, A., Ames, D., Amunts, K., Andersson, M., Armstrong, N. J., Bernard, M., Blackburn, N., Blangero, J., Boomsma, D. I., Bralten, J., Brattbak, H.-R., Brodaty, H., Brouwer, R. M., Bülow, R., Calhoun, V., Caspers, S., Cavalleri, G., Chen, C.-H., Cichon, S., Ciufolini, S., Corvin, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Curran, J. E., Dale, A. M., Dalvie, S., Dazzan, P., De Geus, E. J. C., De Zubicaray, G. I., De Zwarte, S. M. C., Delanty, N., Den Braber, A., Desrivières, S., Donohoe, G., Draganski, B., Ehrlich, S., Espeseth, T., Fisher, S. E., Franke, B., Frouin, V., Fukunaga, M., Gareau, T., Glahn, D. C., Grabe, H., Groenewold, N. A., Haavik, J., Håberg, A., Hashimoto, R., Hehir-Kwa, J. Y., Heinz, A., Hillegers, M. H. J., Hoffmann, P., Holleran, L., Hottenga, J.-J., Hulshoff, H. E., Ikeda, M., Jahanshad, N., Jernigan, T., Jockwitz, C., Johansson, S., Jonsdottir, G. A., Jönsson, E. G., Kahn, R., Kaufmann, T., Kelly, S., Kikuchi, M., Knowles, E. E. M., Kolskår, K. K., Kwok, J. B., Le Hellard, S., Leu, C., Liu, J., Lundervold, A. J., Lundervold, A., Martin, N. G., Mather, K., Mathias, S. R., McCormack, M., McMahon, K. L., McRae, A., Milaneschi, Y., Moreau, C., Morris, D., Mothersill, D., Mühleisen, T. W., Murray, R., Nordvik, J. E., Nyberg, L., Olde Loohuis, L. M., Ophoff, R., Paus, T., Pausova, Z., Penninx, B., Peralta, J. M., Pike, B., Prieto, C., Pudas, S., Quinlan, E., Quintana, D. S., Reinbold, C. S., Reis Marques, T., Reymond, A., Richard, G., Rodriguez-Herreros, B., Roiz-Santiañez, R., Rokicki, J., Rucker, J., Sachdev, P., Sanders, A.-M., Sando, S. B., Schmaal, L., Schofield, P. R., Schork, A. J., Schumann, G., Shin, J., Shumskaya, E., Sisodiya, S., Steen, V. M., Stein, D. J., Steinberg, S., Strike, L., Teumer, A., Thalamuthu, A., Tordesillas-Gutierrez, D., Turner, J., Ueland, T., Uhlmann, A., Ulfarsson, M. O., Van 't Ent, D., Van der Meer, D., Van Haren, N. E. M., Vaskinn, A., Vassos, E., Walters, G. B., Wang, Y., Wen, W., Whelan, C. D., Wittfeld, K., Wright, M., Yamamori, H., Zayats, T., Agartz, I., Westlye, L. T., Jacquemont, S., Djurovic, S., Stefansson, H., Stefansson, K., Thompson, P., & Andreassen, O. A. (2020). Dose response of the 16p11.2 distal copy number variant on intracranial volume and basal ganglia. Molecular Psychiatry, 25, 584-602. doi:10.1038/s41380-018-0118-1.

    Abstract

    Carriers of large recurrent copy number variants (CNVs) have a higher risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders. The 16p11.2 distal CNV predisposes carriers to e.g., autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. We compared subcortical brain volumes of 12 16p11.2 distal deletion and 12 duplication carriers to 6882 non-carriers from the large-scale brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging collaboration, ENIGMA-CNV. After stringent CNV calling procedures, and standardized FreeSurfer image analysis, we found negative dose-response associations with copy number on intracranial volume and on regional caudate, pallidum and putamen volumes (β = −0.71 to −1.37; P < 0.0005). In an independent sample, consistent results were obtained, with significant effects in the pallidum (β = −0.95, P = 0.0042). The two data sets combined showed significant negative dose-response for the accumbens, caudate, pallidum, putamen and ICV (P = 0.0032, 8.9 × 10−6, 1.7 × 10−9, 3.5 × 10−12 and 1.0 × 10−4, respectively). Full scale IQ was lower in both deletion and duplication carriers compared to non-carriers. This is the first brain MRI study of the impact of the 16p11.2 distal CNV, and we demonstrate a specific effect on subcortical brain structures, suggesting a neuropathological pattern underlying the neurodevelopmental syndromes
  • Sotaro, K., & Dickey, L. W. (Eds.). (1998). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual report 1998. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Speed, L. J., & Majid, A. (2020). Grounding language in the neglected senses of touch, taste, and smell. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 37(5-6), 363-392. doi:10.1080/02643294.2019.1623188.

    Abstract

    Grounded theories hold sensorimotor activation is critical to language processing. Such theories have focused predominantly on the dominant senses of sight and hearing. Relatively fewer studies have assessed mental simulation within touch, taste, and smell, even though they are critically implicated in communication for important domains, such as health and wellbeing. We review work that sheds light on whether perceptual activation from lesser studied modalities contribute to meaning in language. We critically evaluate data from behavioural, imaging, and cross-cultural studies. We conclude that evidence for sensorimotor simulation in touch, taste, and smell is weak. Comprehending language related to these senses may instead rely on simulation of emotion, as well as crossmodal simulation of the “higher” senses of vision and audition. Overall, the data suggest the need for a refinement of embodiment theories, as not all sensory modalities provide equally strong evidence for mental simulation.
  • Stivers, T. (1998). Prediagnostic commentary in veterinarian-client interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(2), 241-277. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi3102_4.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • Sumer, B., & Ozyurek, A. (2020). No effects of modality in development of locative expressions of space in signing and speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 47(6), 1101-1131. doi:10.1017/S0305000919000928.

    Abstract

    Linguistic expressions of locative spatial relations in sign languages are mostly visually- motivated representations of space involving mapping of entities and spatial relations between them onto the hands and the signing space. These are also morphologically complex forms. It is debated whether modality-specific aspects of spatial expressions modulate spatial language development differently in signing compared to speaking children. In a picture description task, we compared the use of locative expressions for containment, support and occlusion relations by deaf children acquiring Turkish Sign Language and hearing children acquiring Turkish (3;5-9;11 years). Unlike previous reports suggesting a boosting effect of iconicity, and / or a hindering effect of morphological complexity of the locative forms in sign languages, our results show similar developmental patterns for signing and speaking children's acquisition of these forms. Our results suggest the primacy of cognitive development guiding the acquisition of locative expressions by speaking and signing children.
  • Suomi, K., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1997). Vowel harmony and speech segmentation in Finnish. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 422-444. doi:10.1006/jmla.1996.2495.

    Abstract

    Finnish vowel harmony rules require that if the vowel in the first syllable of a word belongs to one of two vowel sets, then all subsequent vowels in that word must belong either to the same set or to a neutral set. A harmony mismatch between two syllables containing vowels from the opposing sets thus signals a likely word boundary. We report five experiments showing that Finnish listeners can exploit this information in an on-line speech segmentation task. Listeners found it easier to detect words likehymyat the end of the nonsense stringpuhymy(where there is a harmony mismatch between the first two syllables) than in the stringpyhymy(where there is no mismatch). There was no such effect, however, when the target words appeared at the beginning of the nonsense string (e.g.,hymypuvshymypy). Stronger harmony effects were found for targets containing front harmony vowels (e.g.,hymy) than for targets containing back harmony vowels (e.g.,paloinkypaloandkupalo). The same pattern of results appeared whether target position within the string was predictable or unpredictable. Harmony mismatch thus appears to provide a useful segmentation cue for the detection of word onsets in Finnish speech.
  • Suppes, P., Böttner, M., & Liang, L. (1998). Machine Learning of Physics Word Problems: A Preliminary Report. In A. Aliseda, R. van Glabbeek, & D. Westerståhl (Eds.), Computing Natural Language (pp. 141-154). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Swaab, T. Y., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1997). Spoken sentence comprehension in aphasia: Event-related potential evidence for a lexical integration deficit. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(1), 39-66.

    Abstract

    In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line integration of lexical information. Subjects listened to sentences spoken at a normal rate. In half of these sentences, the meaning of the final word of the sentence matched the semantic specifications of the preceding sentence context. In the other half of the sentences, the sentence-final word was anomalous with respect to the preceding sentence context. The N400 was measured to the sentence-final words in both conditions. The results for the aphasic patients (n = 14) were analyzed according to the severity of their comprehension deficit and compared to a group of 12 neurologically unimpaired age-matched controls, as well as a group of 6 nonaphasic patients with a lesion in the right hemisphere. The nonaphasic brain damaged patients and the aphasic patients with a light comprehension deficit (high comprehenders, n = 7) showed an N400 effect that was comparable to that of the neurologically unimpaired subjects. In the aphasic patients with a moderate to severe comprehension deficit (low comprehenders, n = 7), a reduction and delay of the N400 effect was obtained. In addition, the P300 component was measured in a classical oddball paradigm, in which subjects were asked to count infrequent low tones in a random series of high and low tones. No correlation was found between the occurrence of N400 and P300 effects, indicating that changes in the N400 results were related to the patients' language deficit. Overall, the pattern of results was compatible with the idea that aphasic patients with moderate to severe comprehension problems are impaired in the integration of lexical information into a higher order representation of the preceding sentence context.
  • Swaab, T. Y., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1998). Understanding ambiguous words in sentence contexts: Electrophysiological evidence for delayed contextual selection in Broca's aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 36(8), 737-761. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00174-7.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

    This volume on Inuit speech follows the evolution of a native language of the North American Arctic, from its historical roots to its present-day linguistic structure and patterns of use from Alaska to Greenland. Drawing on a wide range of research from the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and sociology, Dorais integrates these diverse perspectives in a comprehensive view of native language development, maintenance, and use under conditions of marginalization due to social transition.
  • Takashima, A., Konopka, A. E., Meyer, A. S., Hagoort, P., & Weber, K. (2020). Speaking in the brain: The interaction between words and syntax in sentence production. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32(8), 1466-1483. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01563.

    Abstract

    This neuroimaging study investigated the neural infrastructure of sentence-level language production. We compared brain activation patterns, as measured with BOLD-fMRI, during production of sentences that differed in verb argument structures (intransitives, transitives, ditransitives) and the lexical status of the verb (known verbs or pseudoverbs). The experiment consisted of 30 mini-blocks of six sentences each. Each mini-block started with an example for the type of sentence to be produced in that block. On each trial in the mini-blocks, participants were first given the (pseudo-)verb followed by three geometric shapes to serve as verb arguments in the sentences. Production of sentences with known verbs yielded greater activation compared to sentences with pseudoverbs in the core language network of the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left posterior middle temporalgyrus, and a more posterior middle temporal region extending into the angular gyrus, analogous to effects observed in language comprehension. Increasing the number of verb arguments led to greater activation in an overlapping left posterior middle temporal gyrus/angular gyrus area, particularly for known verbs, as well as in the bilateral precuneus. Thus, producing sentences with more complex structures using existing verbs leads to increased activation in the language network, suggesting some reliance on memory retrieval of stored lexical–syntactic information during sentence production. This study thus provides evidence from sentence-level language production in line with functional models of the language network that have so far been mainly based on single-word production, comprehension, and language processing in aphasia.
  • Tan, Y., & Hagoort, P. (2020). Catecholaminergic modulation of semantic processing in sentence comprehension. Cerebral Cortex, 30(12), 6426-6443. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhaa204.

    Abstract

    Catecholamine (CA) function has been widely implicated in cognitive functions that are tied to the prefrontal cortex and striatal areas. The present study investigated the effects of methylphenidate, which is a CA agonist, on the electroencephalogram (EEG) response related to semantic processing using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, crossover, within-subject design. Forty-eight healthy participants read semantically congruent or incongruent sentences after receiving 20-mg methylphenidate or a placebo while their brain activity was monitored with EEG. To probe whether the catecholaminergic modulation is task-dependent, in one condition participants had to focus on comprehending the sentences, while in the other condition, they only had to attend to the font size of the sentence. The results demonstrate that methylphenidate has a task-dependent effect on semantic processing. Compared to placebo, when semantic processing was task-irrelevant, methylphenidate enhanced the detection of semantic incongruence as indexed by a larger N400 amplitude in the incongruent sentences; when semantic processing was task-relevant, methylphenidate induced a larger N400 amplitude in the semantically congruent condition, which was followed by a larger late positive complex effect. These results suggest that CA-related neurotransmitters influence language processing, possibly through the projections between the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, which contain many CA receptors.
  • Ten Oever, S., Meierdierks, T., Duecker, F., De Graaf, T., & Sack, A. (2020). Phase-coded oscillatory ordering promotes the separation of closely matched representations to optimize perceptual discrimination. iScience, 23(7): 101282. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.101282.

    Abstract

    Low-frequency oscillations are proposed to be involved in separating neuronal representations belonging to different items. Although item-specific neuronal activity was found to cluster on different oscillatory phases, the influence of this mechanism on perception is unknown. Here, we investigated the perceptual consequences of neuronal item separation through oscillatory clustering. In an electroencephalographic experiment, participants categorized sounds parametrically varying in pitch, relative to an arbitrary pitch boundary. Pre-stimulus theta and alpha phase biased near-boundary sound categorization to one category or the other. Phase also modulated whether evoked neuronal responses contributed stronger to the fit of the sound envelope of one or another category. Intriguingly, participants with stronger oscillatory clustering (phase strongly biasing sound categorization) in the theta, but not alpha, range had steeper perceptual psychometric slopes (sharper sound category discrimination). These results indicate that neuronal sorting by phase directly influences subsequent perception and has a positive impact on discrimination performance

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  • Ten Oever, S., De Weerd, P., & Sack, A. T. (2020). Phase-dependent amplification of working memory content and performance. Nature Communications, 11: 1832. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-15629-7.

    Abstract

    Successful working memory performance has been related to oscillatory mechanisms operating in low-frequency ranges. Yet, their mechanistic interaction with the distributed neural activity patterns representing the content of the memorized information remains unclear. Here, we record EEG during a working memory retention interval, while a task-irrelevant, high-intensity visual impulse stimulus is presented to boost the read-out of distributed neural activity related to the content held in working memory. Decoding of this activity with a linear classifier reveals significant modulations of classification accuracy by oscillatory phase in the theta/alpha ranges at the moment of impulse presentation. Additionally, behavioral accuracy is highest at the phases showing maximized decoding accuracy. At those phases, behavioral accuracy is higher in trials with the impulse compared to no-impulse trials. This constitutes the first evidence in humans that working memory information is maximized within limited phase ranges, and that phase-selective, sensory impulse stimulation can improve working memory.
  • Teng, X., Ma, M., Yang, J., Blohm, S., Cai, Q., & Tian, X. (2020). Constrained structure of ancient Chinese poetry facilitates speech content grouping. Current Biology, 30, 1299-1305. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.059.

    Abstract

    Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage [1, 2]; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements [3]. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and statistical cues [5, 9] are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentation—the neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language.

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  • Ter Bekke, M., Drijvers, L., & Holler, J. (2020). The predictive potential of hand gestures during conversation: An investigation of the timing of gestures in relation to speech. In Proceedings of the 7th GESPIN - Gesture and Speech in Interaction Conference. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

    Abstract

    In face-to-face conversation, recipients might use the bodily movements of the speaker (e.g. gestures) to facilitate language processing. It has been suggested that one way through which this facilitation may happen is prediction. However, for this to be possible, gestures would need to precede speech, and it is unclear whether this is true during natural conversation.
    In a corpus of Dutch conversations, we annotated hand gestures that represent semantic information and occurred during questions, and the word(s) which corresponded most closely to the gesturally depicted meaning. Thus, we tested whether representational gestures temporally precede their lexical affiliates. Further, to see whether preceding gestures may indeed facilitate language processing, we asked whether the gesture-speech asynchrony predicts the response time to the question the gesture is part of.
    Gestures and their strokes (most meaningful movement component) indeed preceded the corresponding lexical information, thus demonstrating their predictive potential. However, while questions with gestures got faster responses than questions without, there was no evidence that questions with larger gesture-speech asynchronies get faster responses. These results suggest that gestures indeed have the potential to facilitate predictive language processing, but further analyses on larger datasets are needed to test for links between asynchrony and processing advantages.
  • Ter Hark, S. E., Jamain, S., Schijven, D., Lin, B. D., Bakker, M. K., Boland-Auge, A., Deleuze, J.-F., Troudet, R., Malhotra, A. K., Gülöksüz, S., Vinkers, C. H., Ebdrup, B. H., Kahn, R. S., Leboyer, M., & Luykx, J. J. (2020). A new genetic locus for antipsychotic-induced weight gain: A genome-wide study of first-episode psychosis patients using amisulpride (from the OPTiMiSE cohort). Journal of Psychopharmacology, 34(5), 524-531. doi:10.1177/0269881120907972.

    Abstract

    Background:Antipsychotic-induced weight gain is a common and debilitating side effect of antipsychotics. Although genome-wide association studies of antipsychotic-induced weight gain have been performed, few genome-wide loci have been discovered. Moreover, these genome-wide association studies have included a wide variety of antipsychotic compounds.Aims:We aim to gain more insight in the genomic loci affecting antipsychotic-induced weight gain. Given the variable pharmacological properties of antipsychotics, we hypothesized that targeting a single antipsychotic compound would provide new clues about genomic loci affecting antipsychotic-induced weight gain.Methods:All subjects included for this genome-wide association study (n=339) were first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorder patients treated with amisulpride and were minimally medicated (defined as antipsychotic use <2?weeks in the previous year and/or <6?weeks lifetime). Weight gain was defined as the increase in body mass index from before until approximately 1 month after amisulpride treatment.Results:Our genome-wide association analyses for antipsychotic-induced weight gain yielded one genome-wide significant hit (rs78310016; ?=1.05; p=3.66 ? 10?08; n=206) in a locus not previously associated with antipsychotic-induced weight gain or body mass index. Minor allele carriers had an odds ratio of 3.98 (p=1.0 ? 10?03) for clinically meaningful antipsychotic-induced weight gain (?7% of baseline weight). In silico analysis elucidated a chromatin interaction with 3-Hydroxy-3-Methylglutaryl-CoA Synthase 1. In an attempt to replicate single-nucleotide polymorphisms previously associated with antipsychotic-induced weight gain, we found none were associated with amisulpride-induced weight gain.Conclusion:Our findings suggest the involvement of rs78310016 and possibly 3-Hydroxy-3-Methylglutaryl-CoA Synthase 1 in antipsychotic-induced weight gain. In line with the unique binding profile of this atypical antipsychotic, our findings furthermore hint that biological mechanisms underlying amisulpride-induced weight gain differ from antipsychotic-induced weight gain by other atypical antipsychotics.
  • Terband, H., Rodd, J., & Maas, E. (2020). Testing hypotheses about the underlying deficit of Apraxia of Speech (AOS) through computational neural modelling with the DIVA model. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(4), 475-486. doi:10.1080/17549507.2019.1669711.

    Abstract

    Purpose: A recent behavioural experiment featuring a noise masking paradigm suggests that Apraxia of Speech (AOS) reflects a disruption of feedforward control, whereas feedback control is spared and plays a more prominent role in achieving and maintaining segmental contrasts. The present study set out to validate the interpretation of AOS as a possible feedforward impairment using computational neural modelling with the DIVA (Directions Into Velocities of Articulators) model.

    Method: In a series of computational simulations with the DIVA model featuring a noise-masking paradigm mimicking the behavioural experiment, we investigated the effect of a feedforward, feedback, feedforward + feedback, and an upper motor neuron dysarthria impairment on average vowel spacing and dispersion in the production of six/bVt/speech targets.

    Result: The simulation results indicate that the output of the model with the simulated feedforward deficit resembled the group findings for the human speakers with AOS best.

    Conclusion: These results provide support to the interpretation of the human observations, corroborating the notion that AOS can be conceptualised as a deficit in feedforward control.
  • Terporten, R. (2020). The power of context: How linguistic contextual information shapes brain dynamics during sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Terrill, A. (1998). Biri. München: Lincom Europa.

    Abstract

    This work presents a salvage grammar of the Biri language of Eastern Central Queensland, a Pama-Nyungan language belonging to the large Maric subgroup. As the language is no longer used, the grammatical description is based on old written sources and on recordings made by linguists in the 1960s and 1970s. Biri is in many ways typical of the Pama-Nyungan languages of Southern Queensland. It has split case marking systems, marking nouns according to an ergative/absolutive system and pronouns according to a nominative/accusative system. Unusually for its area, Biri also has bound pronouns on its verb, cross-referencing the person, number and case of core participants. As far as it is possible, the grammatical discussion is ‘theory neutral’. The first four chapters deal with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language. The last two chapters contain a substantial discussion of Biri’s place in the Pama-Nyungan family. In chapter 6 the numerous dialects of the Biri language are discussed. In chapter 7 the close linguistic relationship between Biri and the surrounding languages is examined.
  • Thompson, B., Raviv, L., & Kirby, S. (2020). Complexity can be maintained in small populations: A model of lexical variability in emerging sign languages. In A. Ravignani, C. Barbieri, M. Flaherty, Y. Jadoul, E. Lattenkamp, H. Little, M. Martins, K. Mudd, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference (Evolang13) (pp. 440-442). Nijmegen: The Evolution of Language Conferences.
  • Thompson, P. M., Jahanshad, N., Ching, C. R. K., Salminen, L. E., Thomopoulos, S. I., Bright, J., Baune, B. T., Bertolín, S., Bralten, J., Bruin, W. B., Bülow, R., Chen, J., Chye, Y., Dannlowski, U., De Kovel, C. G. F., Donohoe, G., Eyler, L. T., Faraone, S. V., Favre, P., Filippi, C. A. and 151 moreThompson, P. M., Jahanshad, N., Ching, C. R. K., Salminen, L. E., Thomopoulos, S. I., Bright, J., Baune, B. T., Bertolín, S., Bralten, J., Bruin, W. B., Bülow, R., Chen, J., Chye, Y., Dannlowski, U., De Kovel, C. G. F., Donohoe, G., Eyler, L. T., Faraone, S. V., Favre, P., Filippi, C. A., Frodl, T., Garijo, D., Gil, Y., Grabe, H. J., Grasby, K. L., Hajek, T., Han, L. K. M., Hatton, S. N., Hilbert, K., Ho, T. C., Holleran, L., Homuth, G., Hosten, N., Houenou, J., Ivanov, I., Jia, T., Kelly, S., Klein, M., Kwon, J. S., Laansma, M. A., Leerssen, J., Lueken, U., Nunes, A., O'Neill, J., Opel, N., Piras, F., Piras, F., Postema, M., Pozzi, E., Shatokhina, N., Soriano-Mas, C., Spalletta, G., Sun, D., Teumer, A., Tilot, A. K., Tozzi, L., Van der Merwe, C., Van Someren, E. J. W., Van Wingen, G. A., Völzke, H., Walton, E., Wang, L., Winkler, A. M., Wittfeld, K., Wright, M. J., Yun, J.-Y., Zhang, G., Zhang-James, Y., Adhikari, B. M., Agartz, I., Aghajani, M., Aleman, A., Althoff, R. R., Altmann, A., Andreassen, O. A., Baron, D. A., Bartnik-Olson, B. L., Bas-Hoogendam, J. M., Baskin-Sommers, A. R., Bearden, C. E., Berner, L. A., Boedhoe, P. S. W., Brouwer, R. M., Buitelaar, J. K., Caeyenberghs, K., Cecil, C. A. M., Cohen, R. A., Cole, J. H., Conrod, P. J., De Brito, S. A., De Zwarte, S. M. C., Dennis, E. L., Desrivieres, S., Dima, D., Ehrlich, S., Esopenko, C., Fairchild, G., Fisher, S. E., Fouche, J.-P., Francks, C., Frangou, S., Franke, B., Garavan, H. P., Glahn, D. C., Groenewold, N. A., Gurholt, T. P., Gutman, B. A., Hahn, T., Harding, I. H., Hernaus, D., Hibar, D. P., Hillary, F. G., Hoogman, M., Hulshoff Pol, H. E., Jalbrzikowski, M., Karkashadze, G. A., Klapwijk, E. T., Knickmeyer, R. C., Kochunov, P., Koerte, I. K., Kong, X., Liew, S.-L., Lin, A. P., Logue, M. W., Luders, E., Macciardi, F., Mackey, S., Mayer, A. R., McDonald, C. R., McMahon, A. B., Medland, S. E., Modinos, G., Morey, R. A., Mueller, S. C., Mukherjee, P., Namazova-Baranova, L., Nir, T. M., Olsen, A., Paschou, P., Pine, D. S., Pizzagalli, F., Rentería, M. E., Rohrer, J. D., Sämann, P. G., Schmaal, L., Schumann, G., Shiroishi, M. S., Sisodiya, S. M., Smit, D. J. A., Sønderby, I. E., Stein, D. J., Stein, J. L., Tahmasian, M., Tate, D. F., Turner, J. A., Van den Heuvel, O. A., Van der Wee, N. J. A., Van der Werf, Y. D., Van Erp, T. G. M., Van Haren, N. E. M., Van Rooij, D., Van Velzen, L. S., Veer, I. M., Veltman, D. J., Villalon-Reina, J. E., Walter, H., Whelan, C. D., Wilde, E. A., Zarei, M., Zelman, V., & Enigma Consortium (2020). ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries. Translational Psychiatry, 10(1): 100. doi:10.1038/s41398-020-0705-1.

    Abstract

    This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of “big data” (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA’s activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors.

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    41398_2020_705_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
  • Thompson, P. A., Bishop, D. V. M., Eising, E., Fisher, S. E., & Newbury, D. F. (2020). Generalized Structured Component Analysis in candidate gene association studies: Applications and limitations [version 2; peer review: 3 approved]. Wellcome Open Research, 4: 142. doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15396.2.

    Abstract

    Background: Generalized Structured Component Analysis (GSCA) is a component-based alternative to traditional covariance-based structural equation modelling. This method has previously been applied to test for association between candidate genes and clinical phenotypes, contrasting with traditional genetic association analyses that adopt univariate testing of many individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with correction for multiple testing.
    Methods: We first evaluate the ability of the GSCA method to replicate two previous findings from a genetics association study of developmental language disorders. We then present the results of a simulation study to test the validity of the GSCA method under more restrictive data conditions, using smaller sample sizes and larger numbers of SNPs than have previously been investigated. Finally, we compare GSCA performance against univariate association analysis conducted using PLINK v1.9.
    Results: Results from simulations show that power to detect effects depends not just on sample size, but also on the ratio of SNPs with effect to number of SNPs tested within a gene. Inclusion of many SNPs in a model dilutes true effects.
    Conclusions: We propose that GSCA is a useful method for replication studies, when candidate SNPs have been identified, but should not be used for exploratory analysis.

    Additional information

    data via OSF
  • Thorin, J. (2020). Can you hear what you cannot say? The interactions of speech perception and production during non-native phoneme learning. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Todorova, L., & Neville, D. A. (2020). Associative and identity words promote the speed of visual categorization: A hierarchical drift diffusion account. Frontiers in Psychology, 11: 955. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00955.

    Abstract

    Words can either boost or hinder the processing of visual information, which can lead to facilitation or interference of the behavioral response. We investigated the stage (response execution or target processing) of verbal interference/facilitation in the response priming paradigm with a gender categorization task. Participants in our study were asked to judge whether the presented stimulus was a female or male face that was briefly preceded by a gender word either congruent (prime: “man,” target: “man”), incongruent (prime: “woman,” target: “man”) or neutral (prime: “day,” target: “man”) with respect to the face stimulus. We investigated whether related word-picture pairs resulted in faster reaction times in comparison to the neutral word-picture pairs (facilitation) and whether unrelated word-picture pairs resulted in slower reaction times in comparison to neutral word-picture pairs (interference). We further examined whether these effects (if any) map onto response conflict or aspects of target processing. In addition, identity (“man,” “woman”) and associative (“tie,” “dress”) primes were introduced to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of semantic and Stroop-like effects in response priming (introduced respectively by associations and identity words). We analyzed responses and reaction times using the drift diffusion model to examine the effect of facilitation and/or interference as a function of the prime type. We found that regardless of prime type words introduce a facilitatory effect, which maps to the processes of visual attention and response execution.
  • Todorova, L., Neville, D. A., & Piai, V. (2020). Lexical-semantic and executive deficits revealed by computational modelling: A drift diffusion model perspective. Neuropsychologia, 146: 107560. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107560.

    Abstract

    Flexible language use requires coordinated functioning of two systems: conceptual representations and control. The interaction between the two systems can be observed when people are asked to match a word to a picture. Participants are slower and less accurate for related word-picture pairs (word: banana, picture: apple) relative to unrelated pairs (word: banjo, picture: apple). The mechanism underlying interference however is still unclear. We analyzed word-picture matching (WPM) performance of patients with stroke-induced lesions to the left-temporal (N = 5) or left-frontal cortex (N = 5) and matched controls (N = 12) using the drift diffusion model (DDM). In DDM, the process of making a decision is described as the stochastic accumulation of evidence towards a response. The parameters of the DDM model that characterize this process are decision threshold, drift rate, starting point and non-decision time, each of which bears cognitive interpretability. We compared the estimated model parameters from controls and patients to investigate the mechanisms of WPM interference. WPM performance in controls was explained by the amount of information needed to make a decision (decision threshold): a higher threshold was associated with related word-picture pairs relative to unrelated ones. No difference was found in the quality of the evidence (drift rate). This suggests an executive rather than semantic mechanism underlying WPM interference. Both patients with temporal and frontal lesions exhibited both increased drift rate and decision threshold for unrelated pairs relative to related ones. Left-frontal and temporal damage affected the computations required by WPM similarly, resulting in systematic deficits across lexical-semantic memory and executive functions. These results support a diverse but interactive role of lexical-semantic memory and semantic control mechanisms.

    Additional information

    supplementary material
  • Tourtouri, E. N. (2020). Rational redundancy in situated communication. PhD Thesis, Saarland University, Saarbrücken.

    Abstract

    Contrary to the Gricean maxims of Quantity (Grice, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over- specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present a bounded-rational account of referential redundancy, according to which any word in an utterance, even if it is redundant, can be beneficial to comprehension, to the extent that it facilitates the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent in a co-present visual scene. Information-theoretic metrics, such as Shannon’s entropy (Shannon, 1948), were employed in order to quantify this uncertainty in bits of information, and gain an estimate of the cognitive effort related to referential processing. Under this account, speakers may, therefore, utilise redundant adjectives in order to reduce the visually-determined entropy (and thereby their listeners’ cognitive effort) more uniformly across their utterances. In a series of experiments, we examined both the comprehension and the production of over-specifications in complex visual contexts. Our findings are in line with the bounded-rational account. Specifically, we present evidence that: (a) in view of complex visual scenes, listeners’ processing and identification of the target referent may be facilitated by the use of redundant adjectives, as well as by a more uniform reduction of uncertainty across the utterance, and (b) that, while both speaker-internal and addressee-oriented processes are at play in the production of over-specifications, listeners’ processing concerns may also influence the encoding of redundant adjectives, at least for some speakers, who encode redundant adjectives more frequently when these adjectives contribute to a more uniform reduction of referential entropy.
  • Trabasso, T., & Ozyurek, A. (1997). Communicating evaluation in narrative understanding. In T. Givon (Ed.), Conversation: Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives (pp. 268-302). Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins.
  • Trujillo, J. P. (2020). Movement speaks for itself: The kinematic and neural dynamics of communicative action and gesture. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Trujillo, J. P., Simanova, I., Bekkering, H., & Ozyurek, A. (2020). The communicative advantage: How kinematic signaling supports semantic comprehension. Psychological Research, 84, 1897-1911. doi:10.1007/s00426-019-01198-y.

    Abstract

    Humans are unique in their ability to communicate information through representational gestures which visually simulate an action (eg. moving hands as if opening a jar). Previous research indicates that the intention to communicate modulates the kinematics (e.g., velocity, size) of such gestures. If and how this modulation influences addressees’ comprehension of gestures have not been investigated. Here we ask whether communicative kinematic modulation enhances semantic comprehension (i.e., identification) of gestures. We additionally investigate whether any comprehension advantage is due to enhanced early identification or late identification. Participants (n = 20) watched videos of representational gestures produced in a more- (n = 60) or less-communicative (n = 60) context and performed a forced-choice recognition task. We tested the isolated role of kinematics by removing visibility of actor’s faces in Experiment I, and by reducing the stimuli to stick-light figures in Experiment II. Three video lengths were used to disentangle early identification from late identification. Accuracy and response time quantified main effects. Kinematic modulation was tested for correlations with task performance. We found higher gesture identification performance in more- compared to less-communicative gestures. However, early identification was only enhanced within a full visual context, while late identification occurred even when viewing isolated kinematics. Additionally, temporally segmented acts with more post-stroke holds were associated with higher accuracy. Our results demonstrate that communicative signaling, interacting with other visual cues, generally supports gesture identification, while kinematic modulation specifically enhances late identification in the absence of other cues. Results provide insights into mutual understanding processes as well as creating artificial communicative agents.

    Additional information

    Supplementary material
  • Trujillo, J. P., Simanova, I., Ozyurek, A., & Bekkering, H. (2020). Seeing the unexpected: How brains read communicative intent through kinematics. Cerebral Cortex, 30(3), 1056-1067. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhz148.

    Abstract

    Social interaction requires us to recognize subtle cues in behavior, such as kinematic differences in actions and gestures produced with different social intentions. Neuroscientific studies indicate that the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS) in the premotor cortex and mentalizing system (MS) in the medial prefrontal cortex support inferences about contextually unusual actions. However, little is known regarding the brain dynamics of these systems when viewing communicatively exaggerated kinematics. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, 28 participants viewed stick-light videos of pantomime gestures, recorded in a previous study, which contained varying degrees of communicative exaggeration. Participants made either social or nonsocial classifications of the videos. Using participant responses and pantomime kinematics, we modeled the probability of each video being classified as communicative. Interregion connectivity and activity were modulated by kinematic exaggeration, depending on the task. In the Social Task, communicativeness of the gesture increased activation of several pMNS and MS regions and modulated top-down coupling from the MS to the pMNS, but engagement of the pMNS and MS was not found in the nonsocial task. Our results suggest that expectation violations can be a key cue for inferring communicative intention, extending previous findings from wholly unexpected actions to more subtle social signaling.
  • Tsoukala, C., Frank, S. L., Van den Bosch, A., Kroff, J. V., & Broersma, M. (2020). Simulating Spanish-English code-switching: El modelo está generating code-switches. In E. Chersoni, C. Jacobs, Y. Oseki, L. Prévot, & E. Santus (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (pp. 20-29). Stroudsburg, PA, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).

    Abstract

    Multilingual speakers are able to switch from
    one language to the other (“code-switch”) be-
    tween or within sentences. Because the under-
    lying cognitive mechanisms are not well un-
    derstood, in this study we use computational
    cognitive modeling to shed light on the pro-
    cess of code-switching. We employed the
    Bilingual Dual-path model, a Recurrent Neu-
    ral Network of bilingual sentence production
    (Tsoukala et al., 2017) and simulated sentence
    production in simultaneous Spanish-English
    bilinguals. Our first goal was to investigate
    whether the model would code-switch with-
    out being exposed to code-switched training
    input. The model indeed produced code-
    switches even without any exposure to such
    input and the patterns of code-switches are
    in line with earlier linguistic work (Poplack,
    1980). The second goal of this study was to
    investigate an auxiliary phrase asymmetry that
    exists in Spanish-English code-switched pro-
    duction. Using this cognitive model, we ex-
    amined a possible cause for this asymmetry.
    To our knowledge, this is the first computa-
    tional cognitive model that aims to simulate
    code-switched sentence production.
  • Tsuji, S., Cristia, A., Frank, M. C., & Bergmann, C. (2020). Addressing publication bias in Meta-Analysis: Empirical findings from community-augmented meta-analyses of infant language development. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 228(1), 50-61. doi:10.1027/2151-2604/a000393.

    Abstract

    Meta-analyses are an indispensable research synthesis tool for characterizing bodies of literature and advancing theories. One important open question concerns the inclusion of unpublished data into meta-analyses. Finding such studies can be effortful, but their exclusion potentially leads to consequential biases like overestimation of a literature’s mean effect. We address two questions about unpublished data using MetaLab, a collection of community-augmented meta-analyses focused on developmental psychology. First, we assess to what extent MetaLab datasets include gray literature, and by what search strategies they are unearthed. We find that an average of 11% of datapoints are from unpublished literature; standard search strategies like database searches, complemented with individualized approaches like including authors’ own data, contribute the majority of this literature. Second, we analyze the effect of including versus excluding unpublished literature on estimates of effect size and publication bias, and find this decision does not affect outcomes. We discuss lessons learned and implications.

    Additional information

    Link to Dataset on PsychArchives
  • Tulling, M., Law, R., Cournane, A., & Pylkkänen, L. (2020). Neural correlates of modal displacement and discourse-updating under (un)certainty. eNeuro, 8(1): 0290-20.2020. doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0290-20.2020.

    Abstract

    A hallmark of human thought is the ability to think about not just the actual world, but also about alternative ways the world could be. One way to study this contrast is through language. Language has grammatical devices for expressing possibilities and necessities, such as the words might or must. With these devices, called “modal expressions,” we can study the actual vs. possible contrast in a highly controlled way. While factual utterances such as “There is a monster under my bed” update the here-and-now of a discourse model, a modal version of this sentence, “There might be a monster under my bed,” displaces from the here-and-now and merely postulates a possibility. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to test whether the processes of discourse updating and modal displacement dissociate in the brain. Factual and modal utterances were embedded in short narratives, and across two experiments, factual expressions increased the measured activity over modal expressions. However, the localization of the increase appeared to depend on perspective: signal localizing in right temporo-parietal areas increased when updating others’ beliefs, while frontal medial areas seem sensitive to updating one’s own beliefs. The presence of modal displacement did not elevate MEG signal strength in any of our analyses. In sum, this study identifies potential neural signatures of the process by which facts get added to our mental representation of the world.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.

    Additional information

    Link to Preprint on BioRxiv
  • Uhlmann, M. (2020). Neurobiological models of sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Ullas, S., Formisano, E., Eisner, F., & Cutler, A. (2020). Interleaved lexical and audiovisual information can retune phoneme boundaries. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 82, 2018-2026. doi:10.3758/s13414-019-01961-8.

    Abstract

    To adapt to situations in which speech perception is difficult, listeners can adjust boundaries between phoneme categories using perceptual learning. Such adjustments can draw on lexical information in surrounding speech, or on visual cues via speech-reading. In the present study, listeners proved they were able to flexibly adjust the boundary between two plosive/stop consonants, /p/-/t/, using both lexical and speech-reading information and given the same experimental design for both cue types. Videos of a speaker pronouncing pseudo-words and audio recordings of Dutch words were presented in alternating blocks of either stimulus type. Listeners were able to switch between cues to adjust phoneme boundaries, and resulting effects were comparable to results from listeners receiving only a single source of information. Overall, audiovisual cues (i.e., the videos) produced the stronger effects, commensurate with their applicability for adapting to noisy environments. Lexical cues were able to induce effects with fewer exposure stimuli and a changing phoneme bias, in a design unlike most prior studies of lexical retuning. While lexical retuning effects were relatively weaker compared to audiovisual recalibration, this discrepancy could reflect how lexical retuning may be more suitable for adapting to speakers than to environments. Nonetheless, the presence of the lexical retuning effects suggests that it may be invoked at a faster rate than previously seen. In general, this technique has further illuminated the robustness of adaptability in speech perception, and offers the potential to enable further comparisons across differing forms of perceptual learning.
  • Ullas, S., Formisano, E., Eisner, F., & Cutler, A. (2020). Audiovisual and lexical cues do not additively enhance perceptual adaptation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 707-715. doi:10.3758/s13423-020-01728-5.

    Abstract

    When listeners experience difficulty in understanding a speaker, lexical and audiovisual (or lipreading) information can be a helpful source of guidance. These two types of information embedded in speech can also guide perceptual adjustment, also
    known as recalibration or perceptual retuning. With retuning or recalibration, listeners can use these contextual cues to temporarily or permanently reconfigure internal representations of phoneme categories to adjust to and understand novel interlocutors more easily. These two types of perceptual learning, previously investigated in large part separately, are highly similar in allowing listeners to use speech-external information to make phoneme boundary adjustments. This study explored whether the two sources may work in conjunction to induce adaptation, thus emulating real life, in which listeners are indeed likely to encounter both types of cue together. Listeners who received combined audiovisual and lexical cues showed perceptual learning effects
    similar to listeners who only received audiovisual cues, while listeners who received only lexical cues showed weaker effects compared with the two other groups. The combination of cues did not lead to additive retuning or recalibration effects, suggesting that lexical and audiovisual cues operate differently with regard to how listeners use them for reshaping perceptual categories.
    Reaction times did not significantly differ across the three conditions, so none of the forms of adjustment were either aided or
    hindered by processing time differences. Mechanisms underlying these forms of perceptual learning may diverge in numerous ways despite similarities in experimental applications.

    Additional information

    Data and materials
  • Ullas, S., Hausfeld, L., Cutler, A., Eisner, F., & Formisano, E. (2020). Neural correlates of phonetic adaptation as induced by lexical and audiovisual context. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32(11), 2145-2158. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01608.

    Abstract

    When speech perception is difficult, one way listeners adjust is by reconfiguring phoneme category boundaries, drawing on contextual information. Both lexical knowledge and lipreading cues are used in this way, but it remains unknown whether these two differing forms of perceptual learning are similar at a neural level. This study compared phoneme boundary adjustments driven by lexical or audiovisual cues, using ultra-high-field 7-T fMRI. During imaging, participants heard exposure stimuli and test stimuli. Exposure stimuli for lexical retuning were audio recordings of words, and those for audiovisual recalibration were audio–video recordings of lip movements during utterances of pseudowords. Test stimuli were ambiguous phonetic strings presented without context, and listeners reported what phoneme they heard. Reports reflected phoneme biases in preceding exposure blocks (e.g., more reported /p/ after /p/-biased exposure). Analysis of corresponding brain responses indicated that both forms of cue use were associated with a network of activity across the temporal cortex, plus parietal, insula, and motor areas. Audiovisual recalibration also elicited significant occipital cortex activity despite the lack of visual stimuli. Activity levels in several ROIs also covaried with strength of audiovisual recalibration, with greater activity accompanying larger recalibration shifts. Similar activation patterns appeared for lexical retuning, but here, no significant ROIs were identified. Audiovisual and lexical forms of perceptual learning thus induce largely similar brain response patterns. However, audiovisual recalibration involves additional visual cortex contributions, suggesting that previously acquired visual information (on lip movements) is retrieved and deployed to disambiguate auditory perception.
  • Ünal, E., & Papafragou, A. (2020). Relations between language and cognition: Evidentiality and sources of knowledge. Topics in Cognitive Science, 12(1), 115-135. doi:10.1111/tops.12355.

    Abstract

    Understanding and acquiring language involve mapping language onto conceptual representations. Nevertheless, several issues remain unresolved with respect to (a) how such mappings are performed, and (b) whether conceptual representations are susceptible to cross‐linguistic influences. In this article, we discuss these issues focusing on the domain of evidentiality and sources of knowledge. Empirical evidence in this domain yields growing support for the proposal that linguistic categories of evidentiality are tightly linked to, build on, and reflect conceptual representations of sources of knowledge that are shared across speakers of different languages.
  • Urbanus, B. H. A., Peter, S., Fisher, S. E., & De Zeeuw, C. I. (2020). Region-specific Foxp2 deletions in cortex, striatum or cerebellum cannot explain vocalization deficits observed in spontaneous global knockouts. Scientific Reports, 10: 21631. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-78531-8.

    Abstract

    FOXP2 has been identified as a gene related to speech in humans, based on rare mutations that yield significant impairments in speech at the level of both motor performance and language comprehension. Disruptions of the murine orthologue Foxp2 in mouse pups have been shown to interfere with production of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). However, it remains unclear which structures are responsible for these deficits. Here, we show that conditional knockout mice with selective Foxp2 deletions targeting the cerebral cortex, striatum or cerebellum, three key sites of motor control with robust neural gene expression, do not recapture the profile of pup USV deficits observed in mice with global disruptions of this gene. Moreover, we observed that global Foxp2 knockout pups show substantive reductions in USV production as well as an overproduction of short broadband noise “clicks”, which was not present in the brain region-specific knockouts. These data indicate that deficits of Foxp2 expression in the cortex, striatum or cerebellum cannot solely explain the disrupted vocalization behaviours in global Foxp2 knockouts. Our findings raise the possibility that the impact of Foxp2 disruption on USV is mediated at least in part by effects of this gene on the anatomical prerequisites for vocalizing.
  • Van Turennout, M. (1997). The electrophysiology of speaking: Investigations on the time course of semantic, syntactic, and phonological processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057711.
  • Van den Heuvel, H., Oostdijk, N., Rowland, C. F., & Trilsbeek, P. (2020). The CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Atypical Communication Expertise. In N. Calzolari, F. Béchet, P. Blache, K. Choukri, C. Cieri, T. Declerck, S. Goggi, H. Isahara, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, H. Mazo, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020) (pp. 3312-3316). Marseille, France: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    This paper introduces a new CLARIN Knowledge Center which is the K-Centre for Atypical Communication Expertise (ACE for short) which has been established at the Centre for Language and Speech Technology (CLST) at Radboud University. Atypical communication is an umbrella term used here to denote language use by second language learners, people with language disorders or those suffering from language disabilities, but also more broadly by bilinguals and users of sign languages. It involves multiple modalities (text, speech, sign, gesture) and encompasses different developmental stages. ACE closely collaborates with The Language Archive (TLA) at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in order to safeguard GDPR-compliant data storage and access. We explain the mission of ACE and show its potential on a number of showcases and a use case.
  • Van Es, M. W. J. (2020). On the role of oscillatory synchrony in neural processing and behavior. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Dooren, A. (2020). The temporal perspective of epistemics in Dutch. In M. Franke, N. Kompa, M. Liu, J. L. Mueller, & J. Schwab (Eds.), Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung 24 (pp. 143-160). Osnabrück: Osnabrück University.

    Abstract

    A series of experiments is conducted on naïve native speakers of Dutch and English to study the scope relation between tense and epistemic modality. The results are consistent with the claim that epistemics scope over tense (Stowell 2004, Hacquard 2006, a.o.), and challenge recent research that states that epistemics can, or must, scope under tense (von Fintel and Gillies 2007, Rullmann & Matthewson 2018): Dutch and English participants in a Truth Value Judgment Task judge sentences to be false when the past tense forms of the modals have to and moeten 'have to' are used to make an epistemic claim that held at a time before speech time, and true when they are used to make an epistemic claim that holds at speech time. Moreover, English participants in an Acceptability Judgment Task judge sentences to be infelicitous when the same past tense form of have to is used to make an epistemic claim that held at a time before speech time. Besides these general patterns, the results show variation within and across the two languages, which leads to interesting new questions about the interaction between tense and (epistemic) modality.
  • Van der Meer, D., Sønderby, I. E., Kaufmann, T., Walters, G. B., Abdellaoui, A., Ames, D., Amunts, K., Andersson, M., Armstrong, N. J., Bernard, M., Blackburn, N. B., Blangero, J., Boomsma, D. I., Brodaty, H., Brouwer, R. M., Bülow, R., Cahn, W., Calhoun, V. D., Caspers, S., Cavalleri, G. L. and 112 moreVan der Meer, D., Sønderby, I. E., Kaufmann, T., Walters, G. B., Abdellaoui, A., Ames, D., Amunts, K., Andersson, M., Armstrong, N. J., Bernard, M., Blackburn, N. B., Blangero, J., Boomsma, D. I., Brodaty, H., Brouwer, R. M., Bülow, R., Cahn, W., Calhoun, V. D., Caspers, S., Cavalleri, G. L., Ching, C. R. K., Cichon, S., Ciufolini, S., Corvin, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Curran, J. E., Dalvie, S., Dazzan, P., De Geus, E. J. C., De Zubicaray, G. I., De Zwarte, S. M. C., Delanty, N., Den Braber, A., Desrivieres, S., Di Forti, M., Doherty, J. L., Donohoe, G., Ehrlich, S., Eising, E., Espeseth, T., Fisher, S. E., Fladby, T., Frei, O., Frouin, V., Fukunaga, M., Gareau, T., Glahn, D. C., Grabe, H. J., Groenewold, N. A., Gústafsson, Ó., Haavik, J., Haberg, A. K., Hashimoto, R., Hehir-Kwa, J. Y., Hibar, D. P., Hillegers, M. H. J., Hoffmann, P., Holleran, L., Hottenga, J.-J., Hulshoff Pol, H. E., Ikeda, M., Jacquemont, S., Jahanshad, N., Jockwitz, C., Johansson, S., Jönsson, E. G., Kikuchi, M., Knowles, E. E. M., Kwok, J. B., Le Hellard, S., Linden, D. E. J., Liu, J., Lundervold, A., Lundervold, A. J., Martin, N. G., Mather, K. A., Mathias, S. R., McMahon, K. L., McRae, A. F., Medland, S. E., Moberget, T., Moreau, C., Morris, D. W., Mühleisen, T. W., Murray, R. M., Nordvik, J. E., Nyberg, L., Olde Loohuis, L. M., Ophoff, R. A., Owen, M. J., Paus, T., Pausova, Z., Peralta, J. M., Pike, B., Prieto, C., Quinlan, E. B., Reinbold, C. S., Reis Marques, T., Rucker, J. J. H., Sachdev, P. S., Sando, S. B., Schofield, P. R., Schork, A. J., Schumann, G., Shin, J., Shumskaya, E., Silva, A. I., Sisodiya, S. M., Steen, V. M., Stein, D. J., Strike, L. T., Tamnes, C. K., Teumer, A., Thalamuthu, A., Tordesillas-Gutiérrez, D., Uhlmann, A., Úlfarsson, M. Ö., Van 't Ent, D., Van den Bree, M. B. M., Vassos, E., Wen, W., Wittfeld, K., Wright, M. J., Zayats, T., Dale, A. M., Djurovic, S., Agartz, I., Westlye, L. T., Stefánsson, H., Stefánsson, K., Thompson, P. M., & Andreassen, O. A. (2020). Association of copy number variation of the 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 region with cortical and subcortical morphology and cognition. JAMA Psychiatry, 77(4), 420-430. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.3779.

    Abstract

    Importance Recurrent microdeletions and duplications in the genomic region 15q11.2 between breakpoints 1 (BP1) and 2 (BP2) are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. These structural variants are present in 0.5% to 1.0% of the population, making 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 the site of the most prevalent known pathogenic copy number variation (CNV). It is unknown to what extent this CNV influences brain structure and affects cognitive abilities.

    Objective To determine the association of the 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 deletion and duplication CNVs with cortical and subcortical brain morphology and cognitive task performance.

    Design, Setting, and Participants In this genetic association study, T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging were combined with genetic data from the ENIGMA-CNV consortium and the UK Biobank, with a replication cohort from Iceland. In total, 203 deletion carriers, 45 247 noncarriers, and 306 duplication carriers were included. Data were collected from August 2015 to April 2019, and data were analyzed from September 2018 to September 2019.

    Main Outcomes and Measures The associations of the CNV with global and regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness as well as subcortical volumes were investigated, correcting for age, age2, sex, scanner, and intracranial volume. Additionally, measures of cognitive ability were analyzed in the full UK Biobank cohort.

    Results Of 45 756 included individuals, the mean (SD) age was 55.8 (18.3) years, and 23 754 (51.9%) were female. Compared with noncarriers, deletion carriers had a lower surface area (Cohen d = −0.41; SE, 0.08; P = 4.9 × 10−8), thicker cortex (Cohen d = 0.36; SE, 0.07; P = 1.3 × 10−7), and a smaller nucleus accumbens (Cohen d = −0.27; SE, 0.07; P = 7.3 × 10−5). There was also a significant negative dose response on cortical thickness (β = −0.24; SE, 0.05; P = 6.8 × 10−7). Regional cortical analyses showed a localization of the effects to the frontal, cingulate, and parietal lobes. Further, cognitive ability was lower for deletion carriers compared with noncarriers on 5 of 7 tasks.

    Conclusions and Relevance These findings, from the largest CNV neuroimaging study to date, provide evidence that 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 structural variation is associated with brain morphology and cognition, with deletion carriers being particularly affected. The pattern of results fits with known molecular functions of genes in the 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 region and suggests involvement of these genes in neuronal plasticity. These neurobiological effects likely contribute to the association of this CNV with neurodevelopmental disorders.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activitity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280, 572-574.

    Abstract

    In normal conversation, speakers translate thoughts into words at high speed. To enable this speed, the retrieval of distinct types of linguistic knowledge has to be orchestrated with millisecond precision. The nature of this orchestration is still largely unknown. This report presents dynamic measures of the real-time activation of two basic types of linguistic knowledge, syntax and phonology. Electrophysiological data demonstrate that during noun-phrase production speakers retrieve the syntactic gender of a noun before its abstract phonological properties. This two-step process operates at high speed: the data show that phonological information is already available 40 milliseconds after syntactic properties have been retrieved.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280(5363), 572-574. doi:10.1126/science.280.5363.572.
  • Van der Meer, D., Rokicki, J., Kaufmann, T., Córdova-Palomera, A., Moberget, T., Alnæs, D., Bettella, F., Frei, O., Trung Doan, N., Sønderby, I. E., Smeland, O. B., Agartz, I., Bertolino, A., Bralten, J., Brandt, C. L., Buitelaar, J. K., Djurovic, S., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Dørum, E. S., Espeseth, T. and 34 moreVan der Meer, D., Rokicki, J., Kaufmann, T., Córdova-Palomera, A., Moberget, T., Alnæs, D., Bettella, F., Frei, O., Trung Doan, N., Sønderby, I. E., Smeland, O. B., Agartz, I., Bertolino, A., Bralten, J., Brandt, C. L., Buitelaar, J. K., Djurovic, S., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Dørum, E. S., Espeseth, T., Faraone, S. V., Fernandez, G., Fisher, S. E., Franke, B., Haatveit, B., Hartman, C., Hoekstra, P. J., Haberg, A. K., Jönsson, E. G., Kolskår, K. K., Le Hellard, S., Lund, M. J., Lundervold, A. J., Lundervold, A., Melle, I., Monereo Sánchez, J., Norbom, L. C., Nordvik, J. E., Nyberg, L., Oosterlaan, J., Papalino, M., Papassotiropoulos, A., Pergola, G., De Quervain, D. J. F., Richard, G., Sanders, A.-M., Selvaggi, P., Shumskaya, E., Steen, V. M., Tønnesen, S., Ulrichsen, K. M., Zwiers, M., Andreassen, O. A., & Westlye, L. T. (2020). Brain scans from 21297 individuals reveal the genetic architecture of hippocampal subfield volumes. Molecular Psychiatry, 25, 3053-3065. doi:10.1038/s41380-018-0262-7.

    Abstract

    The hippocampus is a heterogeneous structure, comprising histologically distinguishable subfields. These subfields are differentially involved in memory consolidation, spatial navigation and pattern separation, complex functions often impaired in individuals with brain disorders characterized by reduced hippocampal volume, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and schizophrenia. Given the structural and functional heterogeneity of the hippocampal formation, we sought to characterize the subfields’ genetic architecture. T1-weighted brain scans (n = 21,297, 16 cohorts) were processed with the hippocampal subfields algorithm in FreeSurfer v6.0. We ran a genome-wide association analysis on each subfield, co-varying for whole hippocampal volume. We further calculated the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based heritability of 12 subfields, as well as their genetic correlation with each other, with other structural brain features and with AD and schizophrenia. All outcome measures were corrected for age, sex and intracranial volume. We found 15 unique genome-wide significant loci across six subfields, of which eight had not been previously linked to the hippocampus. Top SNPs were mapped to genes associated with neuronal differentiation, locomotor behaviour, schizophrenia and AD. The volumes of all the subfields were estimated to be heritable (h2 from 0.14 to 0.27, all p < 1 × 10–16) and clustered together based on their genetic correlations compared with other structural brain features. There was also evidence of genetic overlap of subicular subfield volumes with schizophrenia. We conclude that hippocampal subfields have partly distinct genetic determinants associated with specific biological processes and traits. Taking into account this specificity may increase our understanding of hippocampal neurobiology and associated pathologies.

    Additional information

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  • Van Arkel, J., Woensdregt, M., Dingemanse, M., & Blokpoel, M. (2020). A simple repair mechanism can alleviate computational demands of pragmatic reasoning: simulations and complexity analysis. In R. Fernández, & T. Linzen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL 2020) (pp. 177-194). Stroudsburg, PA, USA: The Association for Computational Linguistics. doi:10.18653/v1/2020.conll-1.14.

    Abstract

    How can people communicate successfully while keeping resource costs low in the face of ambiguity? We present a principled theoretical analysis comparing two strategies for disambiguation in communication: (i) pragmatic reasoning, where communicators reason about each other, and (ii) other-initiated repair, where communicators signal and resolve trouble interactively. Using agent-based simulations and computational complexity analyses, we compare the efficiency of these strategies in terms of communicative success, computation cost and interaction cost. We show that agents with a simple repair mechanism can increase efficiency, compared to pragmatic agents, by reducing their computational burden at the cost of longer interactions. We also find that efficiency is highly contingent on the mechanism, highlighting the importance of explicit formalisation and computational rigour.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1997). Electrophysiological evidence on the time course of semantic and phonological processes in speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23(4), 787-806.

    Abstract

    The temporal properties of semantic and phonological processes in speech production were investigated in a new experimental paradigm using movement-related brain potentials. The main experimental task was picture naming. In addition, a 2-choice reaction go/no-go procedure was included, involving a semantic and a phonological categorization of the picture name. Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether semantic and phonological information activated motor processes at separate moments in time. An LRP was only observed on no-go trials when the semantic (not the phonological) decision determined the response hand. Varying the position of the critical phoneme in the picture name did not affect the onset of the LRP but rather influenced when the LRP began to differ on go and no-go trials and allowed the duration of phonological encoding of a word to be estimated. These results provide electrophysiological evidence for early semantic activation and later phonological encoding.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1963). Detection of visual patterns disturbed by noise: An exploratory study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15, 192-204. doi:10.1080/17470216308416324.

    Abstract

    An introductory study of the perception of stochastically specified events is reported. The initial problem was to determine whether the perceiver can split visual input data of this kind into random and determined components. The inability of subjects to do so with the stimulus material used (a filmlike sequence of dot patterns), led to the more general question of how subjects code this kind of visual material. To meet the difficulty of defining the subjects' responses, two experiments were designed. In both, patterns were presented as a rapid sequence of dots on a screen. The patterns were more or less disturbed by “noise,” i.e. the dots did not appear exactly at their proper places. In the first experiment the response was a rating on a semantic scale, in the second an identification from among a set of alternative patterns. The results of these experiments give some insight in the coding systems adopted by the subjects. First, noise appears to be detrimental to pattern recognition, especially to patterns with little spread. Second, this shows connections with the factors obtained from analysis of the semantic ratings, e.g. easily disturbed patterns show a large drop in the semantic regularity factor, when only a little noise is added.
  • Van Ooijen, B., Cutler, A., & Berinetto, P. M. (1993). Click detection in Italian and English. In Eurospeech 93: Vol. 1 (pp. 681-684). Berlin: ESCA.

    Abstract

    We report four experiments in which English and Italian monolinguals detected clicks in continous speech in their native language. Two of the experiments used an off-line location task, and two used an on-line reaction time task. Despite there being large differences between English and Italian with respect to rhythmic characteristics, very similar response patterns were found for the two language groups. It is concluded that the process of click detection operates independently from language-specific differences in perceptual processing at the sublexical level.

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