Publications

Abstract

Drozd's critique of Crain & Thornton's (C&T) (1998) book Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG) raises many issues concerning theory and experimental design within generative approaches to language acquisition. I focus here on one of the strongest theoretical claims of the Modularity Matching Model (MMM): continuity of processing. For reasons different to Drozd, I argue that the assumption is tenuous. Furthermore, I argue that the focus of the MMM and the methodological prescriptions contained in IUG are too narrow to capture language acquisition.

Abstract

Pauses during continuous speech, particularly those that occur within clauses, are thought to reflect the planning of forthcoming verbal output. We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine their neural correlates. Six volunteers were scanned while describing seven Rorschach inkblots, producing 3 min of speech per inkblot. In an event-related design, the level of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast during brief speech pauses (mean duration 1.3 s, SD 0.3 s) during overt speech was contrasted with that during intervening periods of articulation. We then examined activity associated with pauses that occurred within clauses and pauses that occurred between grammatical junctions. Relative to articulation during speech, pauses were associated with activation in the banks of the left superior temporal sulcus (BA 39/22), at the temporoparietal junction. Continuous speech was associated with greater activation bilaterally in the inferior frontal (BA 44/45), middle frontal (BA 8) and anterior cingulate (BA 24) gyri, the middle temporal sulcus (BA 21/22), the occipital cortex and the cerebellum. Left temporal activation was evident during pauses that occurred within clauses but not during pauses at grammatical junctions. In summary, articulation during continuous speech involved frontal, temporal and cerebellar areas, while pausing was associated with activity in the left temporal cortex, especially when this occurred within a clause. The latter finding is consistent with evidence that within-clause pauses are a correlate of speech planning and in particular lexical retrieval.

Abstract

Infant pointing has long been identified as an important precursor and predictor of language development. Infants typically begin to produce index finger pointing around the time of their first birthday and previous research has shown that both the onset and the frequency of pointing can predict aspects of productive and receptive language. The current study used a multivariate meta-analytic approach to estimate the strength of the relationship between infant pointing and language. We identified 30 papers published between 1984 and 2019 that met our stringent inclusion criteria, and 25 studies (comprising 77 effect sizes) with samples ≥10 were analysed. Methodological quality of the studies was assessed to identify potential sources of bias. We found a significant but small overall effect size of r = 0.20. Our findings indicate that the unique contribution of pointing to language development may be less robust than has been previously understood, however our stringent inclusion criteria (as well as our publication bias corrections), means that our data represent a more conservative estimate of the relationship between pointing and language. Moderator analysis showed significant group differences in favour of effect sizes related to language comprehension, non-vocabulary measures of language, pointing assessed after 18 months of age and pointing measured independent of speech. A significant strength of this study is the use of multivariate meta-analysis, which allowed us to utilise all available data to provide a more accurate estimate. We consider the findings in the context of the existing research and discuss the general limitations in this field, including the lack of cultural diversity.

Abstract

Sentence-final particles (SFPs) as bound morphemes in Japanese have no obvious effect on the truth conditions of a sentence. However, they encompass a diverse range of usages, from typical to atypical, according to the context and the interpersonal relationships in the specific situation. The most frequent particle,-ne, is typically used after addressee-oriented propositions for information sharing, while another frequent particle,-yo, is typically used after addresser-oriented propositions to elicit a sense of strength. This study sheds light on individual differences among native speakers in flexibly understanding such linguistic markers based on their mentalizing ability (i.e., the ability to infer the mental states of others). Two experiments employing electroencephalography (EEG) consistently showed enhanced early posterior negativities (EPN) for atypical SFP usage compared to typical usage, especially when understanding-ne compared to -yo, in both an SFP appropriateness judgment task and a content comprehension task. Importantly, the amplitude of the EPN for atypical usages of-ne was significantly higher in participants with lower mentalizing ability than in those with a higher mentalizing ability. This effect plausibly reflects low-ability mentalizers' stronger sense of strangeness toward atypical-ne usage. While high-ability mentalizers may aptly perceive others' attitudes via their various usages of-ne, low-ability mentalizers seem to adopt a more stereotypical understanding. These results attest to the greater degree of difficulty low-ability mentalizers have in establishing a smooth regulation of interpersonal distance during social encounters.

Abstract

In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.

Abstract

The German Perfekt has two quite different temporal readings, as illustrated by the two possible continuations of the sentence Peter hat gearbeitet in i, ii, respectively: (i) Peter hat gearbeitet und ist müde. Peter has worked and is tired. (ii) Peter hat gearbeitet und wollte nicht gestört werden. Peter has worked and wanted not to be disturbed. The first reading essentially corresponds to the English present perfect; the second can take a temporal adverbial with past time reference ('yesterday at five', 'when the phone rang', and so on), and an English translation would require a past tense ('Peter worked/was working'). This article shows that the Perfekt has a uniform temporal meaning that results systematically from the interaction of its three components-finiteness marking, auxiliary and past participle-and that the two readings are the consequence of a structural ambiguity. This analysis also predicts the properties of other participle constructions, in particular the passive in German.

Abstract

Chinese has a number of particles such as le, guo, zai and zhe that add a particular aspectual value to the verb to which they are attached. There have been many characterisations of this value in the literature. In this paper, we review several existing influential accounts of these particles, including those in Li and Thompson (1981), Smith (1991), and Mangione and Li (1993). We argue that all these characterisations are intuitively plausible, but none of them is precise.We propose that these particles serve to mark which part of the sentence''s descriptive content is asserted, and that their aspectual value is a consequence of this function. We provide a simple and precise definition of the meanings of le, guo, zai and zhe in terms of the relationship between topic time and time of situation, and show the consequences of their interaction with different verb expressions within thisnew framework of interpretation.

Abstract

Zwaan et al. mention that young researchers should conduct replications as a
small part of their portfolio. We extend this proposal and suggest that conducting and
reporting replications should become an integral part of PhD projects and be taken into
account in their assessment. We discuss how this would help not only scientific
advancement, but also PhD candidates’ careers.

Abstract

The Dravidian language family consists of about 80 varieties (Hammarström H. 2016 Glottolog 2.7) spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries (Steever SB. 1998 In The Dravidian languages (ed. SB Steever), pp. 1–39: 1). Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. The history of these languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, because despite their current restricted range, these languages played a significant role in influencing other language groups including Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) and Munda (Austroasiatic) speakers. Here, we report the results of a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of cognate-coded lexical data, elicited first hand from native speakers, to investigate the subgrouping of the Dravidian language family, and provide dates for the major points of diversification. Our results indicate that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4500 years old, a finding that corresponds well with earlier linguistic and archaeological studies. The main branches of the Dravidian language family (North, Central, South I, South II) are recovered, although the placement of languages within these main branches diverges from previous classifications. We find considerable uncertainty with regard to the relationships between the main branches.

Abstract

The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p‐hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left–right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta‐analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an “ideal publishing environment,” that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically‐used sample sizes.

Abstract

Left-right asymmetry of the human brain is one of its cardinal features, and also a complex, multivariate trait. Decades of research have suggested that brain asymmetry may be altered in psychiatric disorders. However, findings have been inconsistent and often based on small sample sizes. There are also open questions surrounding which structures are asymmetrical on average in the healthy population, and how variability in brain asymmetry relates to basic biological variables such as age and sex. Over the last four years, the ENIGMA-Laterality Working Group has published six studies of grey matter morphological asymmetry based on total sample sizes from roughly 3,500 to 17,000 individuals, which were between one and two orders of magnitude larger than those published in previous decades. A population-level mapping of average asymmetry was achieved, including an
intriguing fronto-occipital gradient of cortical thickness asymmetry in healthy brains. ENIGMA’s multidataset approach also supported an empirical illustration of reproducibility of hemispheric differences across datasets. Effect sizes were estimated for grey matter asymmetry based on large, international,
samples in relation to age, sex, handedness, and brain volume, as well as for three psychiatric disorders:Autism Spectrum Disorder was associated with subtly reduced asymmetry of cortical thickness at regions spread widely over the cortex; Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder was associated with altered subcortical asymmetry; Major Depressive Disorder was not significantly associated with changes
of asymmetry. Ongoing studies are examining brain asymmetry in other disorders. Moreover, a groundwork has been laid for possibly identifying shared genetic contributions to brain asymmetry and disorders.

Abstract

Hemispheric asymmetry is a cardinal feature of human brain organization. Altered brain asymmetry has also been linked to some cognitive and neuropsychiatric disorders. Here the ENIGMA consortium presents the largest ever analysis of cerebral cortical asymmetry and its variability across individuals. Cortical thickness and surface area were assessed in MRI scans of 17,141 healthy individuals from 99 datasets worldwide. Results revealed widespread asymmetries at both hemispheric and regional levels, with a generally thicker cortex but smaller surface area in the left hemisphere relative to the right. Regionally, asymmetries of cortical thickness and/or surface area were found in the inferior frontal gyrus, transverse temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and entorhinal cortex. These regions are involved in lateralized functions, including language and visuospatial processing. In addition to population-level asymmetries, variability in brain asymmetry was related to sex, age, and intracranial volume. Interestingly, we did not find significant associations between asymmetries and handedness. Finally, with two independent pedigree datasets (N = 1,443 and 1,113, respectively), we found several asymmetries showing significant, replicable heritability. The structural asymmetries identified, and their variabilities and heritability provide a reference resource for future studies on the genetic basis of brain asymmetry and altered laterality in cognitive, neurological, and psychiatric disorders.

Abstract

Statistical inference plays a critical role in modern scientific research, however, the dominant method for statistical inference in science, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST), is often misunderstood and misused, which leads to unreproducible findings. To address this issue, researchers propose to adopt the Bayes factor as an alternative to NHST. The Bayes factor is a principled Bayesian tool for model selection and hypothesis testing, and can be interpreted as the strength for both the null hypothesis H0 and the alternative hypothesis H1 based on the current data. Compared to NHST, the Bayes factor has the following advantages: it quantifies the evidence that the data provide for both the H0 and the H1, it is not “violently biased” against H0, it allows one to monitor the evidence as the data accumulate, and it does not depend on sampling plans. Importantly, the recently developed open software JASP makes the calculation of Bayes factor accessible for most researchers in psychology, as we demonstrated for the t-test. Given these advantages, adopting the Bayes factor will improve psychological researchers’ statistical inferences. Nevertheless, to make the analysis more reproducible, researchers should keep their data analysis transparent and open.

Abstract

The leading theories of sentence planning – Hierarchical Incrementality and Linear Incrementality – differ in their assumptions about the coordination of processes that map preverbal information onto language. Previous studies showed that, in native (L1) speakers, this coordination can vary with the ease of executing the message-level and sentence-level processes necessary to plan and produce an utterance. We report the first series of experiments to systematically examine how linguistic experience influences sentence planning in native (L1) speakers (i.e., speakers with life-long experience using the target language) and non-native (L2) speakers (i.e., speakers with less experience using the target language). In all experiments, speakers spontaneously generated one-sentence descriptions of simple events in Dutch (L1) and English (L2). Analyses of eye-movements across early and late time windows (pre- and post-400 ms) compared the extent of early message-level encoding and the onset of linguistic encoding. In Experiment 1, speakers were more likely to engage in extensive message-level encoding and to delay sentence-level encoding when using their L2. Experiments 2–4 selectively facilitated encoding of the preverbal message, encoding of the agent character (i.e., the first content word in active sentences), and encoding of the sentence verb (i.e., the second content word in active sentences) respectively. Experiment 2 showed that there is no delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding when speakers are familiar with the events. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding is not due to speakers delaying encoding of the agent, but due to a preference to encode information needed to select a suitable verb early in the formulation process. Overall, speakers prefer to temporally separate message-level from sentence-level encoding and to prioritize encoding of relational information when planning L2 sentences, consistent with Hierarchical Incrementality

Abstract

Low-frequency neural entrainment to rhythmic input
has been hypothesized as a canonical mechanism
that shapes sensory perception in time. Neural
entrainment is deemed particularly relevant for
speech analysis, as it would contribute to the extraction
of discrete linguistic elements from continuous
acoustic signals. However, its causal influence in
speech perception has been difficult to establish.
Here, we provide evidence that oscillations build temporal
predictions about the duration of speech tokens
that affect perception. Using magnetoencephalography
(MEG), we studied neural dynamics during
listening to sentences that changed in speech rate.
Weobserved neural entrainment to preceding speech
rhythms persisting for several cycles after the change
in rate. The sustained entrainment was associated
with changes in the perceived duration of the last
word’s vowel, resulting in the perception of words
with different meanings. These findings support oscillatory
models of speech processing, suggesting that
neural oscillations actively shape speech perception.

Abstract

Research questions:

Are emergent bilinguals sensitive to register variation in their use of communication strategies? What strategies do LX speakers, in casu Spanish speakers of English, use as a function of situational context? What role do individual differences play?
Methodology:

This within-speaker study compares Spanish second-language English speakers’ communication strategy use in an informal, peer-to-peer conversation and a formal interview.
Data and analysis:

The 15 hours of informal and 9.5 hours of formal speech from the Nijmegen Corpus of Spanish English were coded for 19 different communication strategies.
Findings/conclusions:

Overall, speakers prefer self-reliant strategies, which allow them to continue communication without their interlocutor’s help. Of the self-reliant strategies, least effort strategies such as code-switching are used more often in informal speech, whereas relatively more effortful strategies (e.g. reformulations) are used more in informal speech, when the need to be unambiguously understood is felt as more important. Individual differences played a role: some speakers were more affected by a change in formality than others.
Originality:

Sensitivity to register variation has not yet been studied within communicative strategy use.
Implications:

General principles of communication govern speakers’ strategy selection, notably the protection of positive face and the least effort and cooperative principles.

Abstract

English serves as a lingua franca in situations with varying degrees of
formality. How formality affects non-native speech has rarely been studied. We
investigated register variation by Spanish users of English by comparing formal
and informal speech from the Nijmegen Corpus of Spanish English that we
created. This corpus comprises speech from thirty-four Spanish speakers of
English in interaction with Dutch confederates in two speech situations.
Formality affected the amount of laughter and overlapping speech and the
number of Spanish words. Moreover, formal speech had a more informational
character than informal speech. We discuss how our findings relate to register
variation in Spanish

Abstract

Left-right laterality is an important aspect of human –and in fact all vertebrate– brain organization for which the genetic basis is poorly understood. Using RNA sequencing data we contrasted gene expression in left- and right-sided samples from several structures of the anterior central nervous systems of post mortem human embryos and foetuses. While few individual genes stood out as significantly lateralized, most structures showed evidence of laterality of their overall transcriptomic profiles. These left-right differences showed overlap with age-dependent changes in expression, indicating lateralized maturation rates, but not consistently in left-right orientation over all structures. Brain asymmetry may therefore originate in multiple locations, or if there is a single origin, it is earlier than 5 weeks post conception, with structure-specific lateralized processes already underway by this age. This pattern is broadly consistent with the weak correlations reported between various aspects of adult brain laterality, such as language dominance and handedness.

Abstract

Left-right asymmetry is subtle but pervasive in the human central nervous system. This asymmetry is initiated early during development, but its mechanisms are poorly known. Forebrains and midbrains were dissected from six human embryos at Carnegie stages 15 or 16, one of which was female. The structures were divided into left and right sides, and RNA was isolated. RNA was sequenced with 100 base-pair paired ends using Illumina Hiseq 4000. After quality control, five paired brain sides were available for midbrain and forebrain. A paired analysis between left- and right sides of a given brain structure across the embryos identified left-right differences. The dataset, consisting of Fastq files and a read count table, can be further used to study early development of the human brain

Abstract

This study addresses the supralexical inferential processes underlying wellformedness judgements and latencies for a specic sublexical unit that appears in Dutch compounds, the interfix. Production studies have shown that the selection of interfixes in novel Dutch compounds and the speed of
this selection is primarily determined by the distribution of interfixes in existing compounds that share the left constituent with the target compound, i.e. the ‘‘left constituent family’’. In this paper, we consider the question whether constituent families also affect wellformedness decisions of novel as well as existing Dutch compounds in comprehension. We visually presented compounds containing interfixes that were either in line with the bias of the left constituent family or not. In the case of existing compounds, we also presented variants with replaced interfixes. As in production, the bias of the left constituent family emerged as a crucial predictor for both acceptance rates and response latencies. This result supports the hypothesis that, as in production, constituent families are (co-)activated in comprehension. We argue that this co-activation is part of a supralexical inferential process, and we discuss how our data might be interpreted within sublexical and supralexical theories of morphological processing.

Abstract

This study addresses the possibility that interfixes in multiconstituent nominal compounds in German and Dutch are functional as markers of immediate constituent structure.We report a lexical statistical survey of interfixation in the lexicons of German and Dutch which shows that all interfixes of German and one interfix of Dutch are significantly more likely to appear at the major constituent boundary than expected under chance conditions. A series of experiments provides evidence that speakers of German and Dutch are sensitive to the probabilistic cues to constituent structure provided by the interfixes. Thus, our data provide evidence that probability is part and parcel of grammatical competence.

Abstract

The intercalated cells (ITCs) of the amygdala have been shown to be critical regulatory components of amygdalar circuits, which control appropriate fear responses. Despite this, the molecular processes guiding ITC development remain poorly understood. Here we establish the zinc finger transcription factor Tshz1 as a marker of ITCs during their migration from the dorsal lateral ganglionic eminence through maturity. Using germline and conditional knock-out (cKO) mouse models, we show that Tshz1 is required for the proper migration and differentiation of ITCs. In the absence of Tshz1, migrating ITC precursors fail to settle in their stereotypical locations encapsulating the lateral amygdala and BLA. Furthermore, they display reductions in the ITC marker Foxp2 and ectopic persistence of the dorsal lateral ganglionic eminence marker Sp8. Tshz1 mutant ITCs show increased cell death at postnatal time points, leading to a dramatic reduction by 3 weeks of age. In line with this, Foxp2-null mutants also show a loss of ITCs at postnatal time points, suggesting that Foxp2 may function downstream of Tshz1 in the maintenance of ITCs. Behavioral analysis of male Tshz1 cKOs revealed defects in fear extinction as well as an increase in floating during the forced swim test, indicative of a depression-like phenotype. Moreover, Tshz1 cKOs display significantly impaired social interaction (i.e., increased passivity) regardless of partner genetics. Together, these results suggest that Tshz1 plays a critical role in the development of ITCs and that fear, depression-like and social behavioral deficits arise in their absence. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We show here that the zinc finger transcription factor Tshz1 is expressed during development of the intercalated cells (ITCs) within the mouse amygdala. These neurons have previously been shown to play a crucial role in fear extinction. Tshz1 mouse mutants exhibit severely reduced numbers of ITCs as a result of abnormal migration, differentiation, and survival of these neurons. Furthermore, the loss of ITCs in mouse Tshz1 mutants correlates well with defects in fear extinction as well as the appearance of depression-like and abnormal social interaction behaviors reminiscent of depressive disorders observed in human patients with distal 18q deletions, including the Tshz1 locus.

Abstract

The article considers the pragmatics of silence image in English poetry. Silence being a communicative unit is
associated with verbal and non-verbal communication. The purpose of the article is to study the discursive and
communicative-pragmatic nature of poetical images of silence in the English-language literary discourse. The universal
and cultural functions of this notion were analysed and the main approaches to the poetical silence study were
determined. It became clear that the phenomenon of Nature Silence can be actualised with the help of Nature and other
landscape images in the field of English literary discourse. Such images must belong to the paradigm of English
landscape images represented by Earthy, Aerial and Celestial substantial nature symbols. In terms of
discourse-communicative approach to the study of communicative silence, these elements play an important role of the
main producers of Nature Silence. This work proposes the new pragmatic and communicative approach of
understanding the Nature silence in English literary discourse. The main verbal units that can actualise the poetical
image of silence are characterised by the permanent correlation with the different symbols of nature, showing the
dominant and peripheral characteristics. Being the pragmatic realisation of silence image, motives of Nature Silence
may be considered both as dominant and background.

Abstract

Theories of language acquisition vary significantly in their assumptions regarding the content of children’s early syntactic representations and how they subsequently develop towards the adult state. An important methodological tool in tapping syntactic knowledge is priming. In the current paper, we report the first longitudinal investigation of syntactic priming in children, to test the competing predictions of three different theoretical accounts. A sample of 106 children completed a syntactic priming task testing the English active/passive alternation every six months from 36 months to 54 months of age. We tracked both the emergence and development of the abstract priming effect and lexical boost effect. The lexical boost effect emerged late and increased in magnitude over development, whilst the abstract priming effect emerged early and, in a subsample of participants who produced at least one passive at 36 months, decreased in magnitude over time. In addition, there was substantial variation in the emergence of abstract priming amongst our sample, which was significantly predicted by language proficiency measured six months prior. We conclude that children’s representation of the passive is abstracted early, with lexically dependent priming coming online only later in development. The results are best explained by an implicit learning account of acquisition (Chang, F., Dell, G., S., & Bock, K. 2006. Becoming Syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–272), which induces dynamic syntactic representations from the input that continue to change across developmental time.

Abstract

Introduction: Mood is a constant in our daily life and can permeate all levels of cognition. We examined whether and how mood influences the processing of discourse content that is relatively neutral and not loaded with emotion. During discourse processing, readers have to constantly strike a balance between what they know in long term memory and what the current discourse is about. Our general hypothesis is that mood states would affect this balance. We hypothesized that readers in a positive mood would rely more on default world knowledge, whereas readers in a negative mood would be more inclined to analyze the details in the current discourse.

Methods: Participants were put in a positive and a negative mood via film clips, one week apart. In each session, after mood manipulation, they were presented with sentences in discourse materials. We created sentences such as “With the lights on you can see...” that end with critical words (CWs) “more” or “less”, where general knowledge supports “more”, not “less”. We then embedded each of these sentences in a wider discourse that does/does not support the CWs (a story about driving in the night vs. stargazing). EEG was recorded throughout.

Results: The results showed that first, mood manipulation was successful in that there was a significant mood difference between sessions. Second, mood did not modulate the N400 effects. Participants in both moods detected outright semantic violations and allowed world knowledge to be overridden by discourse context. Third, mood modulated the LPC (Late Positive Component) effects, distributed in the frontal region. In negative moods, the LPC was sensitive to one-level violation. That is, CWs that were supported by only world knowledge, only discourse, and neither, elicited larger frontal LPCs, in comparison to the condition where CWs were supported by both world knowledge and discourse.

Discussion: These results suggest that mood does not influence all processes involved in discourse processing. Specifically, mood does not influence lexical-semantic retrieval (N400), but it does influence elaborative processes for sensemaking (P600) during discourse processing. These results advance our understanding of the impact and time course of mood on discourse.

Abstract

The KE family is a large three-generation pedigree in which half the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder that is transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. In previously published work, we localized the gene responsible (SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM region of 7q31 between D7S2459 and D7S643. In the present study, we have employed bioinformatic analyses to assemble a detailed BAC-/PAC-based sequence map of this interval, containing 152 sequence tagged sites (STSs), 20 known genes, and >7.75 Mb of completed genomic sequence. We screened the affected chromosome 7 from the KE family with 120 of these STSs (average spacing <100 kb), but we did not detect any evidence of a microdeletion. Novel polymorphic markers were generated from the sequence and were used to further localize critical recombination breakpoints in the KE family. This allowed refinement of the SPCH1 interval to a region between new markers 013A and 330B, containing ∼6.1 Mb of completed sequence. In addition, we have studied two unrelated patients with a similar speech and language disorder, who have de novo translocations involving 7q31. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analyses with BACs/PACs from the sequence map localized the t(5;7)(q22;q31.2) breakpoint in the first patient (CS) to a single clone within the newly refined SPCH1 interval. This clone contains the CAGH44 gene, which encodes a brain-expressed protein containing a large polyglutamine stretch. However, we found that the t(2;7)(p23;q31.3) breakpoint in the second patient (BRD) resides within a BAC clone mapping >3.7 Mb distal to this, outside the current SPCH1 critical interval. Finally, we investigated the CAGH44 gene in affected individuals of the KE family, but we found no mutations in the currently known coding sequence. These studies represent further steps toward the isolation of the first gene to be implicated in the development of speech and language.

Abstract

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.

Abstract

Neural oscillations may be instrumental for the tracking and segmentation of continuous speech. Earlier work has suggested that delta, theta and gamma oscillations entrain to the speech rhythm. We used magnetoencephalography and a large sample of 102 participants to investigate oscillatory entrainment to speech, and observed robust entrainment of delta and theta activity, and weak group-level gamma entrainment. We show that the peak frequency and the hemispheric lateralisation of the entrainment are subject to considerable individual variability. The first finding may support the involvement of intrinsic oscillations in entrainment, and the second finding suggests that there is no systematic default right-hemispheric bias for processing acoustic signals on a slow time scale. Although low frequency entrainment to speech is a robust phenomenon, the characteristics of entrainment vary across individuals, and this variation is important for understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of entrainment, as well as its functional significance.

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterized by a debilitating fatigue of unknown aetiology. Patients who suffer from CFS report a variety of physical complaints as well as neuropsychological complaints. Therefore, it is conceivable that the CNS plays a role in the pathophysiology of CFS. The purpose of this study was to investigate neural correlates of CFS, and specifically whether there exists a linkage between disturbances in the motor system and CFS. We measured behavioural performance and cerebral activity using rapid event-related functional MRI in 16 CFS patients and 16 matched healthy controls while they were engaged in a motor imagery task and a control visual imagery task. CFS patients were considerably slower on performance of both tasks, but the increase in reaction time with increasing task load was similar between the groups. Both groups used largely overlapping neural resources. However, during the motor imagery task, CFS patients evoked stronger responses in visually related structures. Furthermore, there was a marked between-groups difference during erroneous performance. In both groups, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was specifically activated during error trials. Conversely, ventral anterior cingulate cortex was active when healthy controls made an error, but remained inactive when CFS patients made an error. Our results support the notion that CFS may be associated with dysfunctional motor planning. Furthermore, the between-groups differences observed during erroneous performance point to motivational disturbances as a crucial component of CFS.

Abstract

Sensory systems experience a trade-off between maximizing the
detail and amount of sampled information. Thistrade-off is particularly
pronounced in sensorysystemsthat are highlyspecialised fora single
task and thus experience limitations in other tasks. We hypothesised
that combining sensory input from multiple streams of information
may resolve this trade-off and improve detection and sensing
reliability. Specifically, we predicted that perceptive limitations
experienced by animals reliant on specialised active echolocation
can be compensated for by the phylogenetically older and less
specialised process of passive hearing. We tested this hypothesis in
greater horseshoe bats, which possess morphological and neural
specialisations allowing them to identify fluttering prey in dense
vegetation using echolocation only. At the same time, their
echolocation system is both spatially and temporally severely
limited. Here, we show that greater horseshoe bats employ passive
hearing to initially detect and localise prey-generated and other
environmental sounds, and then raise vocalisation level and
concentrate the scanning movements of their sonar beam on the
sound source for further investigation with echolocation. These
specialised echolocators thus supplement echo-acoustic information
with environmental acoustic cues, enlarging perceived space beyond
their biosonar range. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find
consistent preferences for prey-related acoustic stimuli, indicating the
use of passive acoustic cues also for detection of non-prey objects.
Our findings suggest that even specialised echolocators exploit a
wide range of environmental information, and that phylogenetically
older sensory systems can support the evolution of sensory
specialisations by compensating for their limitations.

Abstract

Although humans are unmatched in their capacity to produce
speech and learn language, comparative approaches in diverse
animalmodelsareabletoshedlightonthebiologicalunderpinnings
of language-relevant traits. In the study of vocal learning, a trait
crucial for spoken language, passerine birds have been the
dominant models, driving invaluable progress in understanding the
neurobiology and genetics of vocal learning despite being only
distantly related to humans. To date, there is sparse evidence that
our closest relatives, nonhuman primates have the capability to
learn new vocalisations. However, a number of other mammals
have shown the capacity for vocal learning, such as some
cetaceans, pinnipeds, elephants, and bats, and we anticipate that
with further study more species will gain membership to this
(currently) select club. A broad, cross-species comparison of vocal
learning, coupled with careful consideration of the components
underlying this trait, is crucial to determine how human speech and
spoken language is biologically encoded and how it evolved. We
emphasise the need to draw on the pool of promising species that
havethusfarbeenunderstudiedorneglected.Thisisbynomeansa
call for fewer studies in songbirds, or an unfocused treasure-hunt,
but rather an appeal for structured comparisons across a range of
species, considering phylogenetic relationships, ecological and
morphological constrains, developmental and social factors, and
neurogenetic underpinnings. Herein, we promote a comparative
approachhighlightingtheimportanceofstudyingvocallearningina
broad range of model species, and describe a common framework
for targeted cross-taxon studies to shed light on the biology and
evolution of vocal learning.

Abstract

Bats are gregarious, highly vocal animals that possess a broad repertoire of social vocalisations. For in-depth studies of their vocal behaviours, including vocal flexibility and vocal learning, it is necessary to gather repeatable evidence from controlled laboratory experiments on isolated individuals. However, such studies are rare for one simple reason: eliciting social calls in isolation and under operant control is challenging and has rarely been achieved. To overcome this limitation, we designed an automated setup that allows conditioning of social vocalisations in a new context, and tracks spectro-temporal changes in the recorded calls over time. Using this setup, we were able to reliably evoke social calls from temporarily isolated lesser spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus discolor). When we adjusted the call criteria that could result in food reward, bats responded by adjusting temporal and spectral call parameters. This was achieved without the help of an auditory template or social context to direct the bats. Our results demonstrate vocal flexibility and vocal usage learning in bats. Our setup provides a new paradigm that allows the controlled study of the production and learning of social vocalisations in isolated bats, overcoming limitations that have, until now, prevented in-depth studies of these behaviours.

Abstract

Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components.

Abstract

Using real-time eye-movement measures, we asked how a fantastical discourse context competes with stored representations of real-world events to influence the moment-by-moment interpretation of a story by 7-year-old children and adults. Seven-year-olds were less effective at bypassing stored real-world knowledge during real-time interpretation than adults. Our results suggest that children privilege stored semantic knowledge over situation-specific information presented in a fictional story context. We suggest that 7-year-olds’ canonical semantic and conceptual relations are sufficiently strongly rooted in statistical patterns in language that have consolidated over time that they overwhelm new and unexpected information even when the latter is fantastical and highly salient.

Abstract

Here we conducted a large-scale genetic association analysis of educational attainment in a sample of approximately 1.1 million individuals and identify 1,271 independent genome-wide-significant SNPs. For the SNPs taken together, we found evidence of heterogeneous effects across environments. The SNPs implicate genes involved in brain-development processes and neuron-to-neuron communication. In a separate analysis of the X chromosome, we identify 10 independent genome-wide-significant SNPs and estimate a SNP heritability of around 0.3% in both men and women, consistent with partial dosage compensation. A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11–13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7–10% of the variance in cognitive performance. This prediction accuracy substantially increases the utility of polygenic scores as tools in research.

Abstract

A still unresolved issue is in how far native language (L1) processing in bilinguals is influenced by the second language (L2). We investigated this in two word recognition experiments in L1, using homophonic near-cognates that are spelled in L2. In a German lexical decision task (Experiment 1), German-Dutch bilinguals had more difficulties to reject these Dutch-spelled near-cognates than other misspellings, while this was not the case for non-Dutch speaking Germans. In Experiment 2, the same materials were embedded in German sentences. Analyses of eye movements during reading showed that only non-Dutch speaking Germans, but not Dutch-speaking participants were slowed down by the Dutch cognate misspellings. Additionally, in both experiments, bilinguals with larger vocabulary sizes in Dutch tended to show larger near-cognate effects. Thus, Dutch word knowledge influenced word recognition in L1 German in both task contexts, suggesting that L1 word recognition in bilinguals is non-selective with respect to L2.

Abstract

The way we process language is influenced by our experience. We are more likely to attend to features that proved to be useful in the past. Importantly, the size of individuals’ social network can influence their experience, and consequently, how they process language. In the case of voice recognition, having a larger social network might provide more variable input and thus enhance the ability to recognise new voices. On the other hand, learning to recognise voices is more demanding and less beneficial for people with a larger social network as they have more speakers to learn yet spend less time with each. This paper tests whether social network size influences voice recognition, and if so, in which direction. Native Dutch speakers listed their social network and performed a voice recognition task. Results showed that people with larger social networks were poorer at learning to recognise voices. Experiment 2 replicated the results with a British sample and English stimuli. Experiment 3 showed that the effect does not generalise to voice recognition in an unfamiliar language suggesting that social network size influences attention to the linguistic rather than non-linguistic markers that differentiate speakers. The studies thus show that our social network size influences our inclination to learn speaker-specific patterns in our environment, and consequently, the development of skills that rely on such learned patterns, such as voice recognition.

Abstract

We learn language from our social environment, but the more sources we have, the less informative each source is, and therefore, the less weight we ascribe its input. According to this principle, people with larger social networks should give less weight to new incoming information, and should therefore be less susceptible to the influence of new speakers. This paper tests this prediction, and shows that speakers with smaller social networks indeed have more malleable linguistic representations. In particular, they are more likely to adjust their lexical boundary following exposure to a new speaker. Experiment 2 uses computational simulations to test whether this greater malleability could lead people with smaller social networks to be important for the propagation of linguistic change despite the fact that they interact with fewer people. The results indicate that when innovators were connected with people with smaller rather than larger social networks, the population exhibited greater and faster diffusion. Together these experiments show that the properties of people’s social networks can influence individuals’ learning and use as well as linguistic phenomena at the community level.

Abstract

Infants and adults learn new phonological varieties better when exposed to multiple rather than a single speaker. This
article tests whether having a larger social network similarly facilitates phonological performance. Experiment 1 shows
that people with larger social networks are better at vowel perception in noise, indicating that the benefit of laboratory
exposure to multiple speakers extends to real life experience and to adults tested in their native language. Furthermore,
the experiment shows that this association is not due to differences in amount of input or to cognitive differences
between people with different social network sizes. Follow-up computational simulations reveal that the benefit of
larger social networks is mostly due to increased input variability. Additionally, the simulations show that the boost
that larger social networks provide is independent of the amount of input received but is larger if the population is
more heterogeneous. Finally, a comparison of “adult” and “child” simulations reconciles previous conflicting findings
by suggesting that input variability along the relevant dimension might be less useful at the earliest stages of learning.
Together, this article shows when and how the size of our social network influences our speech perception. It thus
shows how aspects of our lifestyle can influence our linguistic performance.

Abstract

Sociolinguistic research shows that listeners' expectations of speakers influence their interpretation of the speech, yet this is often ignored in cognitive models of language comprehension. Here, we focus on the case of interactions between native and non-native speakers. Previous literature shows that listeners process the language of non-native speakers in less detail, because they expect them to have lower linguistic competence. We show that processing the language of non-native speakers increases lexical competition and access in general, not only of the non-native speaker's speech, and that this leads to poorer memory of one's own speech during the interaction. We further find that the degree to which people adjust their processing to non-native speakers is related to the degree to which they adjust their speech to them. We discuss implications for cognitive models of language processing and sociolinguistic research on attitudes.

Abstract

How can one conceive of the neuronal implementation of the processing model we proposed in our target article? In his commentary (Pulvermüller 1999, reprinted here in this issue), Pulvermüller makes various proposals concerning the underlying neural mechanisms and their potential localizations in the brain. These proposals demonstrate the compatibility of our processing model and current neuroscience. We add further evidence on details of localization based on a recent meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of word production (Indefrey & Levelt 2000). We also express some minor disagreements with respect to Pulvermüller’s interpretation of the “lemma” notion, and concerning his neural modeling of phonological code retrieval. Branigan & Pickering discuss important aspects of syntactic encoding, which was not the topic of the target article. We discuss their well-taken proposal that multiple syntactic frames for a single verb lemma are represented as independent nodes, which can be shared with other verbs, such as accounting for syntactic priming in speech production. We also discuss how, in principle, the alternative multiple-frame-multiplelemma account can be tested empirically. The available evidence does not seem to support that account.

Abstract

During the second half of the 19th century, the psychology of language was invented as a discipline for the sole purpose of explaining the evolution of spoken language. These efforts culminated in Wilhelm Wundt’s monumental Die Sprache of 1900, which outlined the psychological mechanisms involved in producing utterances and considered how these mechanisms could have evolved. Wundt assumes that articulatory movements were originally rather arbitrary concomitants of larger, meaningful expressive bodily gestures. The sounds such articulations happened to produce slowly acquired the meaning of the gesture as a whole, ultimately making the gesture superfluous. Over a century later, gestural theories of language origins still abound. I argue that such theories are unlikely and wasteful, given the biological, neurological and genetic evidence.

Abstract

Since the Enlightenment period, natural theories of speech and language evolution have florished in the language sciences. Four ever returning core issues are highlighted in this paper: Firstly, Is language natural to man or just an invention? Secondly, Is language a specific human ability (a ‘language instinct’) or does it arise from general cognitive capacities we share with other animals? Thirdly, Has the evolution of language been a gradual process or did it rather suddenly arise, due to some ‘evolutionary twist’? Lastly, Is the child's language acquisition an appropriate model for language evolution?

Abstract

In this article, we present an account of developmental data regarding the acquisition of syllable types. The data come from a longitudinal corpus of phonetically transcribed speech of 12 children acquiring Dutch as their first language. A developmental order of acquisition of syllable types was deduced by aligning the syllabified data on a Guttman scale. This order could be analyzed as following from an initial ranking and subsequent rerankings in the grammar of the structural constraints ONSET, NO-CODA, *COMPLEX-O, and *COMPLEX-C; some local conjunctions of these constraints; and a faithfulness constraint FAITH. The syllable type frequencies in the speech surrounding the language learner are also considered. An interesting correlation is found between the frequencies and the order of development of the different syllable types.

Abstract

Speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk. This tendency is experimentally established and manipulated in various question-answering situations. It is shown that a question's surface form can affect the format of the answer given, even if this form has little semantic or conversational consequence, as in the pair Q: (At) what time do you close. A: “(At)five o'clock.” Answerers tend to match the utterance to the prepositional (nonprepositional) form of the question. This “correspondence effect” may diminish or disappear when, following the question, additional verbal material is presented to the answerer. The experiments show that neither the articulatory buffer nor long-term memory is normally involved in this retention of recent speech. Retaining recent speech in working memory may fulfill a variety of functions for speaker and listener, among them the correct production and interpretation of surface anaphora. Reusing recent materials may, moreover, be more economical than regenerating speech anew from a semantic base, and thus contribute to fluency. But the realization of this strategy requires a production system in which linguistic formulation can take place relatively independent of, and parallel to, conceptual planning.

Abstract

It is quite normal for us to produce one or two million word tokens every year. Speaking is a dear occupation and producing words is at the core of it. Still, producing even a single word is a highly complex affair. Recently, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) reviewed their theory of lexical access in speech production, which dissects the word-producing mechanism as a staged application of various dedicated operations. The present paper begins by presenting a bird eye's view of this mechanism. We then square the complexity by asking how speakers control multiple access in generating simple utterances such as a table and a chair. In particular, we address two issues. The first one concerns dependency: Do temporally contiguous access procedures interact in any way, or do they run in modular fashion? The second issue concerns temporal alignment: How much temporal overlap of processing does the system tolerate in accessing multiple content words, such as table and chair? Results from picture-word interference and eye tracking experiments provide evidence for restricted cases of dependency as well as for constraints on the temporal alignment of access procedures.

Abstract

The deep structural diversity of languages suggests that our language capacities are not based on
any single template but rather on an underlying ability and motivation for infants to acquire a
culturally transmitted system. The hypothesis is that this ability has an interactional base that has
discernable precursors in other primates. In this paper I explore a specific evolutionary route for the
most puzzling aspect of this interactional base in humans, namely the development of an empathetic
intentional stance. The route involves a generalization of mother-infant interaction patterns to all
adults via a process (‘ cuteness selection’ ) analogous to, but distinct from, RA Fisher’s runaway
sexual selection. This provides a cornerstone for the carrying capacity for language.

Abstract

The evolution of language and spatial cognition may have been deeply interconnected. The argument
goes as follows: 1. Human native spatial abilities are poor, but we make up for it with linguistic
and cultural prostheses; 2. The explanation for the loss of native spatial abilities may be
that language has cannibalized the hippocampus, the mammalian mental ‘GPS’; 3. Consequently,
language may have borrowed conceptual primitives from spatial cognition (in line with ‘localism’),
these being differentially combined in different languages; 4. The hippocampus may have
been colonized because: (a) space was prime subject matter for communication, (b) gesture uses
space to represent space, and was likely precursor to language. In order to explain why the other
great apes haven’t gone in the same direction, we need to invoke other factors, notably the ‘interaction
engine’, the ensemble of interactional abilities that make cooperative communication possible
and provide the matrix for the evolution and learning of language.

Abstract

The theory of basic color terms was a crucial factor in the demise of linguistic relativity. The theory is now once again under scrutiny and fundamental revision. This article details a case study that undermines one of the central claims of the classical theory, namely that languages universally treat color as a unitary domain, to be exhaustively named. Taken together with other cases, the study suggests that a number of languages have only an incipient color terminology, raising doubts about the linguistic universality of such terminology.

Abstract

Zipf’s law of abbreviation, which posits a negative correlation between word frequency and length, is one of the most famous and robust cross-linguistic generalizations. At the same time, it has been shown that contextual informativity (average surprisal given previous context) is more strongly correlated with word length, although this tendency is not observed consistently, depending on several methodological choices. The present study examines a more diverse sample of languages than the previous studies (Arabic, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish). I use large web-based corpora from the Leipzig Corpora Collection to estimate word lengths in UTF-8 characters and in phonemes (for some of the languages), as well as word frequency, informativity given previous word and informativity given next word, applying different methods of bigrams processing. The results show different correlations between word length and the corpus-based measure for different languages. I argue that these differences can be explained by the properties of noun phrases in a language, most importantly, by the order of heads and modifiers and their relative morphological complexity, as well as by orthographic conventions

Abstract

We investigate the correlations between A- and P-lability for verbal arguments with other typological parameters using large, syntactically annotated corpora of online news in 28 languages. To estimate how much lability is observed in a language, we measure associations between Verbs or Verb + Noun combinations and the alternating constructions in which they occur. Our correlational analyses show that high P-lability scores correlate strongly with the following parameters: little or no case marking; weaker associations between lexemes and the grammatical roles A and P; rigid order of Subject and Object; and a high proportion of verb-medial clauses (SVO). Low P-lability correlates with the presence of case marking, stronger associations between nouns and grammatical roles, relatively flexible ordering of Subject and Object, and verb-final order. As for A-lability, it is not correlated with any other parameters. A possible reason is that A-lability is a result of more universal discourse processes, such as deprofiling of the object, and also exhibits numerous lexical and semantic idiosyncrasies. The fact that P-lability is strongly correlated with other parameters can be interpreted as evidence for a more general typology of languages, in which some tend to have highly informative morphosyntactic and lexical cues, whereas others rely predominantly on contextual environment, which is possibly due to fixed word order. We also find that P-lability is more strongly correlated with the other parameters than any of these parameters are with each other, which means that it can be a very useful typological variable.

Abstract

There is ample psycholinguistic evidence that speakers behave efficiently, using shorter and less effortful constructions when the meaning is more predictable, and longer and more effortful ones when it is less predictable. However, the Principle of No Synonymy requires that all formally distinct variants should also be functionally different. The question is how much two related constructions should overlap semantically and pragmatically in order to be used for the purposes of efficient communication. The case study focuses on want to + Infinitive and its reduced variant with wanna, which have different stylistic and sociolinguistic connotations. Bayesian mixed-effects regression modelling based on the spoken part of the British National Corpus reveals a very limited effect of efficiency: predictability increases the chances of the reduced variant only in fast speech. We conclude that efficient use of more and less effortful variants is restricted when two variants are associated with different registers or styles. This paper also pursues a methodological goal regarding missing values in speech corpora. We impute missing data based on the existing values. A comparison of regression models with and without imputed values reveals similar tendencies. This means that imputation is useful for dealing with missing values in corpora.

Abstract

The present paper discusses connectivity and proximity maps of causative constructions and combines them with different types of typological data. In the first case study, I show how one can create a connectivity map based on a parallel corpus. This allows us to solve many problems, such as incomplete descriptions, inconsistent terminology and the problem of determining the semantic nodes. The second part focuses on proximity maps based on Multidimensional Scaling and compares the most important semantic distinctions, which are inferred from a parallel corpus of film subtitles and from grammar descriptions. The results suggest that corpus-based maps of tokens are more sensitive to cultural and genre-related differences in the prominence of specific causation scenarios than maps based on constructional types, which are described in reference grammars. The grammar-based maps also reveal a less clear structure, which can be due to incomplete semantic descriptions in grammars. Therefore, each approach has its shortcomings, which researchers need to be aware of.

Abstract

Over the last few years, the number of corpora that can be used for language comparison has dramatically increased. The corpora are so diverse in their structure, size and annotation style, that a novice might not know where to start. The present paper charts this new and changing territory, providing a few landmarks, warning signs and safe paths. Although no corpora corpus at present can replace the traditional type of typological data based on language description in reference grammars, they corpora can help with diverse tasks, being particularly well suited for investigating probabilistic and gradient properties of languages and for discovering and interpreting cross-linguistic generalizations based on processing and communicative mechanisms. At the same time, the use of corpora for typological purposes has not only advantages and opportunities, but also numerous challenges. This paper also contains an empirical case study addressing two pertinent problems: the role of text types in language comparison and the problem of the word as a comparative concept.

Abstract

The present study investigates the construction with help followed by the bare or to-infinitive in seven varieties of web-based English from Australia, Ghana, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica and the USA. In addition to various factors known from the literature, such as register, minimization of cognitive complexity and avoidance of identity (horror aequi), it studies the effect of predictability of the infinitive given help and the other way round on the language user’s choice between the constructional variants. These probabilistic constraints are tested in a series of Bayesian generalized additive mixed-effects regression models. The results demonstrate that the to-infinitive is particularly frequent in contexts with low predictability, or, in information-theoretic terms, with high information content. This tendency is interpreted as communicatively efficient behaviour, when more predictable units of discourse get less formal marking, and less predictable ones get more formal marking. However, the strength, shape and directionality of predictability effects exhibit variation across the countries, which demonstrates the importance of the cross-lectal perspective in research on communicative efficiency and other universal functional principles.

Abstract

Reinstatement of memory-related neural activity measured with high temporal precision potentially provides a useful index for real-time monitoring of the timing of activation of memory content during cognitive processing. The utility of such an index extends to any situation where one is interested in the (relative) timing of activation of different sources of information in memory, a paradigm case of which is tracking lexical activation during language processing. Essential for this approach is that memory reinstatement effects are robust, so that their absence (in the average) definitively indicates that no lexical activation is present. We used electroencephalography to test the robustness of a reported subsequent memory finding involving reinstatement of frequency-specific entrained oscillatory brain activity during subsequent recognition. Participants learned lists of words presented on a background flickering at either 6 or 15 Hz to entrain a steady-state brain response. Target words subsequently presented on a non-flickering background that were correctly identified as previously seen exhibited reinstatement effects at both entrainment frequencies. Reliability of these statistical inferences was however critically dependent on the approach used for multiple comparisons correction. We conclude that effects are not robust enough to be used as a reliable index of lexical activation during language processing.

Abstract

Neurocognitive deficits are frequently observed in patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (MDD). The relations between cognitive features may be represented by neurocognitive graphs based on cognitive features, modeled as Gaussian Markov random fields. However, it is unclear whether it is possible to differentiate between phenotypic patterns associated with the differential diagnosis of schizophrenia and depression using this neurocognitive graph approach. In this study, we enrolled 215 first-episode patients with schizophrenia (FES), 125 with MDD, and 237 demographically-matched healthy controls (HCs). The cognitive performance of all participants was evaluated using a battery of neurocognitive tests. The graphical LASSO model was trained with a one-vs-one scenario to learn the conditional independent structure of neurocognitive features of each group. Participants in the holdout dataset were classified into different groups with the highest likelihood. A partial correlation matrix was transformed from the graphical model to further explore the neurocognitive graph for each group. The classification approach identified the diagnostic class for individuals with an average accuracy of 73.41% for FES vs HC, 67.07% for MDD vs HC, and 59.48% for FES vs MDD. Both of the neurocognitive graphs for FES and MDD had more connections and higher node centrality than those for HC. The neurocognitive graph for FES was less sparse and had more connections than that for MDD. Thus, neurocognitive graphs based on cognitive features are promising for describing endophenotypes that may discriminate schizophrenia from depression.

Abstract

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a sensitive biomarker of chronic low-grade inflammation and is associated with multiple complex diseases. The genetic determinants of chronic inflammation remain largely unknown, and the causal role of CRP in several clinical outcomes is debated. We performed two genome-wide association studies (GWASs), on HapMap and 1000 Genomes imputed data, of circulating amounts of CRP by using data from 88 studies comprising 204,402 European individuals. Additionally, we performed in silico functional analyses and Mendelian randomization analyses with several clinical outcomes. The GWAS meta-analyses of CRP revealed 58 distinct genetic loci (p < 5 × 10−8). After adjustment for body mass index in the regression analysis, the associations at all except three loci remained. The lead variants at the distinct loci explained up to 7.0% of the variance in circulating amounts of CRP. We identified 66 gene sets that were organized in two substantially correlated clusters, one mainly composed of immune pathways and the other characterized by metabolic pathways in the liver. Mendelian randomization analyses revealed a causal protective effect of CRP on schizophrenia and a risk-increasing effect on bipolar disorder. Our findings provide further insights into the biology of inflammation and could lead to interventions for treating inflammation and its clinical consequences.

Abstract

Infants point for various motives. Classically, one such motive is declarative, to share attention and interest with adults to events. Recently, some researchers have questioned whether infants have this motivation. In the current study, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds' pointing in different ways, and infants' responses were observed. Results showed that when the adult shared attention and interest (i.e. alternated gaze and emoted), infants pointed more frequently across trials and tended to prolong each point – presumably to prolong the satisfying interaction. However, when the adult emoted to the infant alone or looked only to the event, infants pointed less across trials and repeated points more within trials – presumably in an attempt to establish joint attention. Results suggest that 12-month-olds point declaratively and understand that others have psychological states that can be directed and shared.

Abstract

Prediction is an important part of language processing. An open question is to what extent people predict language in challenging circumstances. Here we tested the limits of prediction by asking bilingual Dutch native speakers to interpret Dutch sentences into their English counterparts. In two visual world experiments, we recorded participants’ eye movements to co-present visual objects while they engaged in interpreting tasks (consecutive and simultaneous interpreting). Most participants showed anticipatory eye movements to semantically-related upcoming target words in their L1 source language during both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. A quarter of participants during simultaneous interpretation however did not move their eyes, an extremely unusual participant behaviour in visual world studies. Overall, the findings suggest that most people predict in the source language under challenging interpreting situations. Further work is required to understand the causes of the absence of (anticipatory) eye movements during simultaneous interpretation in a substantial subset of individuals.