Publications

Displaying 301 - 400 of 448
  • Redmann, A., FitzPatrick, I., Hellwig, F. M., & Indefrey, P. (2014). The use of conceptual components in language production: an ERP study. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 363. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00363.

    Abstract

    According to frame-theory, concepts can be represented as structured frames that contain conceptual attributes (e.g., "color") and their values (e.g., "red"). A particular color value can be seen as a core conceptual component for (high color-diagnostic; HCD) objects (e.g., bananas) which are strongly associated with a typical color, but less so for (low color-diagnostic; LCD) objects (e.g., bicycles) that exist in many different colors. To investigate whether the availability of a core conceptual component (color) affects lexical access in language production, we conducted two experiments on the naming of visually presented HCD and LCD objects. Experiment 1 showed that, when naming latencies were matched for colored HCD and LCD objects, achromatic HCD objects were named more slowly than achromatic LCD objects. In Experiment 2 we recorded ERPs while participants performed a picture-naming task, in which achromatic target pictures were either preceded by an appropriately colored box (primed condition) or a black and white checkerboard (unprimed condition). We focused on the P2 component, which has been shown to reflect difficulty of lexical access in language production. Results showed that HCD resulted in slower object-naming and a more pronounced P2. Priming also yielded a more positive P2 but did not result in an RT difference. ERP waveforms on the P1, P2 and N300 components showed a priming by color-diagnosticity interaction, the effect of color priming being stronger for HCD objects than for LCD objects. The effect of color-diagnosticity on the P2 component suggests that the slower naming of achromatic HCD objects is (at least in part) due to more difficult lexical retrieval. Hence, the color attribute seems to affect lexical retrieval in HCD words. The interaction between priming and color-diagnosticity indicates that priming with a feature hinders lexical access, especially if the feature is a core feature of the target object.
  • Rietveld, T., Van Hout, R., & Ernestus, M. (2004). Pitfalls in corpus research. Computers and the Humanities, 38(4), 343-362. doi:10.1007/s10579-004-1919-1.

    Abstract

    This paper discusses some pitfalls in corpus research and suggests solutions on the basis of examples and computer simulations. We first address reliability problems in language transcriptions, agreement between transcribers, and how disagreements can be dealt with. We then show that the frequencies of occurrence obtained from a corpus cannot always be analyzed with the traditional X2 test, as corpus data are often not sequentially independent and unit independent. Next, we stress the relevance of the power of statistical tests, and the sizes of statistically significant effects. Finally, we point out that a t-test based on log odds often provides a better alternative to a X2 analysis based on frequency counts.
  • Roberts, S. G., Dediu, D., & Moisik, S. R. (2014). How to speak Neanderthal. New Scientist, 222(2969), 40-41. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(14)60970-2.
  • Rodenas-Cuadrado, P., Ho, J., & Vernes, S. C. (2014). Shining a light on CNTNAP2: Complex functions to complex disorders. European Journal of Human Genetics, 22(2), 171-178. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2013.100.

    Abstract

    The genetic basis of complex neurological disorders involving language are poorly understood, partly due to the multiple additive genetic risk factors that are thought to be responsible. Furthermore, these conditions are often syndromic in that they have a range of endophenotypes that may be associated with the disorder and that may be present in different combinations in patients. However, the emergence of individual genes implicated across multiple disorders has suggested that they might share similar underlying genetic mechanisms. The CNTNAP2 gene is an excellent example of this, as it has recently been implicated in a broad range of phenotypes including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, intellectual disability, dyslexia and language impairment. This review considers the evidence implicating CNTNAP2 in these conditions, the genetic risk factors and mutations that have been identified in patient and population studies and how these relate to patient phenotypes. The role of CNTNAP2 is examined in the context of larger neurogenetic networks during development and disorder, given what is known regarding the regulation and function of this gene. Understanding the role of CNTNAP2 in diverse neurological disorders will further our understanding of how combinations of individual genetic risk factors can contribute to complex conditions
  • Roelofs, A. (2004). Seriality of phonological encoding in naming objects and reading their names. Memory & Cognition, 32(2), 212-222.

    Abstract

    There is a remarkable lack of research bringing together the literatures on oral reading and speaking.
    As concerns phonological encoding, both models of reading and speaking assume a process of segmental
    spellout for words, which is followed by serial prosodification in models of speaking (e.g., Levelt,
    Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Thus, a natural place to merge models of reading and speaking would be
    at the level of segmental spellout. This view predicts similar seriality effects in reading and object naming.
    Experiment 1 showed that the seriality of encoding inside a syllable revealed in previous studies
    of speaking is observed for both naming objects and reading their names. Experiment 2 showed that
    both object naming and reading exhibit the seriality of the encoding of successive syllables previously
    observed for speaking. Experiment 3 showed that the seriality is also observed when object naming and
    reading trials are mixed rather than tested separately, as in the first two experiments. These results suggest
    that a serial phonological encoding mechanism is shared between naming objects and reading
    their names.
  • Roelofs, A. (2004). Error biases in spoken word planning and monitoring by aphasic and nonaphasic speakers: Comment on Rapp and Goldrick,2000. Psychological Review, 111(2), 561-572. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.111.2.561.

    Abstract

    B. Rapp and M. Goldrick (2000) claimed that the lexical and mixed error biases in picture naming by
    aphasic and nonaphasic speakers argue against models that assume a feedforward-only relationship
    between lexical items and their sounds in spoken word production. The author contests this claim by
    showing that a feedforward-only model like WEAVER ++ (W. J. M. Levelt, A. Roelofs, & A. S. Meyer,
    1999b) exhibits the error biases in word planning and self-monitoring. Furthermore, it is argued that
    extant feedback accounts of the error biases and relevant chronometric effects are incompatible.
    WEAVER ++ simulations with self-monitoring revealed that this model accounts for the chronometric
    data, the error biases, and the influence of the impairment locus in aphasic speakers.
  • Roelofs, A. (2004). Comprehension-based versus production-internal feedback in planning spoken words: A rejoinder to Rapp and Goldrick, 2004. Psychological Review, 111(2), 579-580. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.111.2.579.

    Abstract

    WEAVER++ has no backward links in its form-production network and yet is able to explain the lexical
    and mixed error biases and the mixed distractor latency effect. This refutes the claim of B. Rapp and M.
    Goldrick (2000) that these findings specifically support production-internal feedback. Whether their restricted interaction account model can also provide a unified account of the error biases and latency effect remains to be shown.
  • Rojas-Berscia, L. M. (2014). Towards an ontological theory of language: Radical minimalism, memetic linguistics and linguistic engineering, prolegomena. Ianua: Revista Philologica Romanica, 14(2), 69-81.

    Abstract

    In contrast to what has happened in other sciences, the establishment of what is the study object of linguistics as an autonomous discipline has not been resolved yet. Ranging from external explanations of language as a system (Saussure 1916), the existence of a mental innate language capacity or UG (Chomsky 1965, 1981, 1995), the cognitive complexity of the mental language capacity and the acquisition of languages in use (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008; Croft & Cruse 2004; Evans & Levinson 2009) most, if not all, theoretical approaches have provided explanations that somehow isolated our discipline from developments in other major sciences, such as physics and evolutionary biology. In the present article I will present some of the basic issues regarding the current debate in the discipline, in order to identify some problems regarding the modern assumptions on language. Furthermore, a new proposal on how to approach linguistic phenomena will be given, regarding what I call «the main three» basic problems our discipline has to face ulteriorly. Finally, some preliminary ideas on a new paradigm of Linguistics which tries to answer these three basic problems will be presented, mainly based in the recently-born formal theory called Radical Minimalism (Krivochen 2011a, 2011b) and what I dub Memetic Linguistics and Linguistic Engineering
  • Roorda, D., Kalkman, G., Naaijer, M., & Van Cranenburgh, A. (2014). LAF-Fabric: A data analysis tool for linguistic annotation framework with an application to the Hebrew Bible. Computational linguistics in the Netherlands, 4, 105-120.

    Abstract

    The Linguistic Annotation Framework (LAF) provides a general, extensible stand-o markup system for corpora. This paper discusses LAF-Fabric, a new tool to analyse LAF resources in general with an extension to process the Hebrew Bible in particular. We rst walk through the history of the Hebrew Bible as text database in decennium-wide steps. Then we describe how LAF-Fabric may serve as an analysis tool for this corpus. Finally, we describe three analytic projects/work ows that benet from the new LAF representation: 1) the study of linguistic variation: extract cooccurrence data of common nouns between the books of the Bible (Martijn Naaijer); 2) the study of the grammar of Hebrew poetry in the Psalms: extract clause typology (Gino Kalkman); 3) construction of a parser of classical Hebrew by Data Oriented Parsing: generate tree structures from the database (Andreas van Cranenburgh).
  • Roswandowitz, C., Mathias, S. R., Hintz, F., Kreitewolf, J., Schelinski, S., & von Kriegstein, K. (2014). Two cases of selective developmental voice-recognition impairments. Current Biology, 24(19), 2348-2353. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.08.048.

    Abstract

    Recognizing other individuals is an essential skill in humans and in other species [1, 2 and 3]. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear that person-identity recognition abilities are highly variable. Roughly 2% of the population has developmental prosopagnosia, a congenital deficit in recognizing others by their faces [4]. It is currently unclear whether developmental phonagnosia, a deficit in recognizing others by their voices [5], is equally prevalent, or even whether it actually exists. Here, we aimed to identify cases of developmental phonagnosia. We collected more than 1,000 data sets from self-selected German individuals by using a web-based screening test that was designed to assess their voice-recognition abilities. We then examined potentially phonagnosic individuals by using a comprehensive laboratory test battery. We found two novel cases of phonagnosia: AS, a 32-year-old female, and SP, a 32-year-old male; both are otherwise healthy academics, have normal hearing, and show no pathological abnormalities in brain structure. The two cases have comparable patterns of impairments: both performed at least 2 SDs below the level of matched controls on tests that required learning new voices, judging the familiarity of famous voices, and discriminating pitch differences between voices. In both cases, only voice-identity processing per se was affected: face recognition, speech intelligibility, emotion recognition, and musical ability were all comparable to controls. The findings confirm the existence of developmental phonagnosia as a modality-specific impairment and allow a first rough prevalence estimate.

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  • Rowbotham, S., Wardy, A. J., Lloyd, D. M., Wearden, A., & Holler, J. (2014). Increased pain intensity is associated with greater verbal communication difficulty and increased production of speech and co-speech gestures. PLoS One, 9(10): e110779. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110779.

    Abstract

    Effective pain communication is essential if adequate treatment and support are to be provided. Pain communication is often multimodal, with sufferers utilising speech, nonverbal behaviours (such as facial expressions), and co-speech gestures (bodily movements, primarily of the hands and arms that accompany speech and can convey semantic information) to communicate their experience. Research suggests that the production of nonverbal pain behaviours is positively associated with pain intensity, but it is not known whether this is also the case for speech and co-speech gestures. The present study explored whether increased pain intensity is associated with greater speech and gesture production during face-to-face communication about acute, experimental pain. Participants (N = 26) were exposed to experimentally elicited pressure pain to the fingernail bed at high and low intensities and took part in video-recorded semi-structured interviews. Despite rating more intense pain as more difficult to communicate (t(25) = 2.21, p = .037), participants produced significantly longer verbal pain descriptions and more co-speech gestures in the high intensity pain condition (Words: t(25) = 3.57, p = .001; Gestures: t(25) = 3.66, p = .001). This suggests that spoken and gestural communication about pain is enhanced when pain is more intense. Thus, in addition to conveying detailed semantic information about pain, speech and co-speech gestures may provide a cue to pain intensity, with implications for the treatment and support received by pain sufferers. Future work should consider whether these findings are applicable within the context of clinical interactions about pain.
  • Rowbotham, S., Holler, J., Lloyd, D., & Wearden, A. (2014). Handling pain: The semantic interplay of speech and co-speech hand gestures in the description of pain sensations. Speech Communication, 57, 244-256. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2013.04.002.

    Abstract

    Pain is a private and subjective experience about which effective communication is vital, particularly in medical settings. Speakers often represent information about pain sensation in both speech and co-speech hand gestures simultaneously, but it is not known whether gestures merely replicate spoken information or complement it in some way. We examined the representational contribution
    of gestures in a range of consecutive analyses. Firstly, we found that 78% of speech units containing pain sensation were accompanied by gestures, with 53% of these gestures representing pain sensation. Secondly, in 43% of these instances, gestures represented pain sensation information that was not contained in speech, contributing additional, complementary information to the pain sensation message.
    Finally, when applying a specificity analysis, we found that in contrast with research in different domains of talk, gestures did not make the pain sensation information in speech more specific. Rather, they complemented the verbal pain message by representing different
    aspects of pain sensation, contributing to a fuller representation of pain sensation than speech alone. These findings highlight the importance of gestures in communicating about pain sensation and suggest that this modality provides additional information to supplement and clarify the often ambiguous verbal pain message

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  • Russel, A., & Trilsbeek, P. (2004). ELAN Audio Playback. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(4), 12-13.
  • Russel, A., & Wittenburg, P. (2004). ELAN Native Media Handling. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 12-12.
  • Sach, M., Seitz, R. J., & Indefrey, P. (2004). Unified inflectional processing of regular and irregular verbs: A PET study. NeuroReport, 15(3), 533-537. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000113529.32218.92.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguistic theories propose different models of inflectional processing of regular and irregular verbs: dual mechanism models assume separate modules with lexical frequency sensitivity for irregular verbs. In contradistinction, connectionist models propose a unified process in a single module.We conducted a PET study using a 2 x 2 design with verb regularity and frequency.We found significantly shorter voice onset times for regular verbs and high frequency verbs irrespective of regularity. The PET data showed activations in inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45), nucleus lentiformis, thalamus, and superior medial cerebellum for both regular and irregular verbs but no dissociation for verb regularity.Our results support common processing components for regular and irregular verb inflection.
  • Sadakata, M., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Individual aptitude in Mandarin lexical tone perception predicts effectiveness of high-variability training. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 1318. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01318.

    Abstract

    Although the high-variability training method can enhance learning of non-native speech categories, this can depend on individuals’ aptitude. The current study asked how general the effects of perceptual aptitude are by testing whether they occur with training materials spoken by native speakers and whether they depend on the nature of the to-be-learned material. Forty-five native Dutch listeners took part in a five-day training procedure in which they identified bisyllabic Mandarin pseudowords (e.g., asa) pronounced with different lexical tone combinations. The training materials were presented to different groups of listeners at three levels of variability: low (many repetitions of a limited set of words recorded by a single speaker), medium (fewer repetitions of a more variable set of words recorded by 3 speakers) and high (similar to medium but with 5 speakers). Overall, variability did not influence learning performance, but this was due to an interaction with individuals’ perceptual aptitude: increasing variability hindered improvements in performance for low-aptitude perceivers while it helped improvements in performance for high-aptitude perceivers. These results show that the previously observed interaction between individuals’ aptitude and effects of degree of variability extends to natural tokens of Mandarin speech. This interaction was not found, however, in a closely-matched study in which native Dutch listeners were trained on the Japanese geminate/singleton consonant contrast. This may indicate that the effectiveness of high-variability training depends not only on individuals’ aptitude in speech perception but also on the nature of the categories being acquired.
  • Sanchis-Trilles, G., Alabau, V., Buck, C., Carl, M., Casacuberta, F., García Martínez, M., Germann, U., González Rubio, J., Hill, R. L., Koehn, P., Leiva, L. A., Mesa-Lao, B., Ortiz Martínez, D., Saint-Amand, H., Tsoukala, C., & Vidal, E. (2014). Interactive translation prediction versus conventional post-editing in practice: a study with the CasMaCat workbench. Machine Translation, 28(3-4), 217-235. doi:10.1007/s10590-014-9157-9.

    Abstract

    We conducted a field trial in computer-assisted professional translation to compare interactive translation prediction (ITP) against conventional post-editing (PE) of machine translation (MT) output. In contrast to the conventional PE set-up, where an MT system first produces a static translation hypothesis that is then edited by a professional (hence “post-editing”), ITP constantly updates the translation hypothesis in real time in response to user edits. Our study involved nine professional translators and four reviewers working with the web-based CasMaCat workbench. Various new interactive features aiming to assist the post-editor/translator were also tested in this trial. Our results show that even with little training, ITP can be as productive as conventional PE in terms of the total time required to produce the final translation. Moreover, translation editors working with ITP require fewer key strokes to arrive at the final version of their translation.

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  • Sankoff, G., & Brown, P. (1976). The origins of syntax in discourse: A case study of Tok Pisin relatives. Language, 52(3), 631-666.

    Abstract

    The structure of relative clauses has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and a number of authors have carried out analyses of the syntax of relativization. In our investigation of syntactic structure and change in New Guinea Tok Pisin, we find that the basic processes involved in relativization have much broader discourse functions, and that relativization is only a special instance of the application of general ‘bracketing’ devices used in the organization of information. Syntactic structure, in this case, can be understood as a component of, and derivative from, discourse structure.
  • Scerri, T. S., Fisher, S. E., Francks, C., MacPhie, I. L., Paracchini, S., Richardson, A. J., Stein, J. F., & Monaco, A. P. (2004). Putative functional alleles of DYX1C1 are not associated with dyslexia susceptibility in a large sample of sibling pairs from the UK [Letter to JMG]. Journal of Medical Genetics, 41(11), 853-857. doi:10.1136/jmg.2004.018341.
  • Schertz, J., & Ernestus, M. (2014). Variability in the pronunciation of non-native English the: Effects of frequency and disfluencies. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 10, 329-345. doi:10.1515/cllt-2014-0024.

    Abstract

    This study examines how lexical frequency and planning problems can predict phonetic variability in the function word ‘the’ in conversational speech produced by non-native speakers of English. We examined 3180 tokens of ‘the’ drawn from English conversations between native speakers of Czech or Norwegian. Using regression models, we investigated the effect of following word frequency and disfluencies on three phonetic parameters: vowel duration, vowel quality, and consonant quality. Overall, the non-native speakers showed variation that is very similar to the variation displayed by native speakers of English. Like native speakers, Czech speakers showed an effect of frequency on vowel durations, which were shorter in more frequent word sequences. Both groups of speakers showed an effect of frequency on consonant quality: the substitution of another consonant for /ð/ occurred more often in the context of more frequent words. The speakers in this study also showed a native-like allophonic distinction in vowel quality, in which /ði/ occurs more often before vowels and /ðə/ before consonants. Vowel durations were longer in the presence of following disfluencies, again mirroring patterns in native speakers, and the consonant quality was more likely to be the target /ð/ before disfluencies, as opposed to a different consonant. The fact that non-native speakers show native-like sensitivity to lexical frequency and disfluencies suggests that these effects are consequences of a general, non-language-specific production mechanism governing language planning. On the other hand, the non-native speakers in this study did not show native-like patterns of vowel quality in the presence of disfluencies, suggesting that the pattern attested in native speakers of English may result from language-specific processes separate from the general production mechanisms
  • Schijven, D., Sousa, V. C., Roelofs, J., Olivier, B., & Olivier, J. D. A. (2014). Serotonin 1A receptors and sexual behavior in a genetic model of depression. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 121, 82-87. doi:10.1016/j.pbb.2013.12.012.

    Abstract

    The Flinder Sensitive Line (FSL) is a rat strain that displays distinct behavioral and neurochemical features of major depression. Chronic selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are able to reverse these symptoms in FSL rats. It is well known that several abnormalities in the serotonergic system have been found in FSL rats, including increased 5-HT brain tissue levels and reduced 5-HT synthesis. SSRIs are known to exert (part of) their effects by desensitization of the 5-HT1A receptor and FSL rats appear to have lower 5-HT1A receptor densities compared with Flinder Resistant Line (FRL) rats. We therefore studied the sensitivity of this receptor on the sexual behavior performance in both FRL and FSL rats. First, basal sexual performance was studied after saline treatment followed by treatment of two different doses of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist ±8-OH-DPAT. Finally we measured the effect of a 5-HT1A receptor antagonist to check for specificity of the 5-HT1A receptor activation. Our results show that FSL rats have higher ejaculation frequencies compared with FRL rats which do not fit with a more depressive-like phenotype. Moreover FRL rats are more sensitive to effects of ±8-OH-DPAT upon EL and IF than FSL rats. The blunted response of FSL rats to the effects of ±8-OH-DPAT may be due to lower densities of 5-HT1A receptors.
  • Schiller, N. O., Fikkert, P., & Levelt, C. C. (2004). Stress priming in picture naming: An SOA study. Brain and Language, 90(1-3), 231-240. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00436-X.

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel–MOtor vs. koSTUUM–MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime–target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.
  • Schiller, N. O., & De Ruiter, J. P. (2004). Some notes on priming, alignment, and self-monitoring [Commentary]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(2), 208-209. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0441005X.

    Abstract

    Any complete theory of speaking must take the dialogical function of language use into account. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) make some progress on this point. However, we question whether their interactive alignment model is the optimal approach. In this commentary, we specifically criticize (1) their notion of alignment being implemented through priming, and (2) their claim that self-monitoring can occur at all levels of linguistic representation.
  • Schiller, N. O. (2004). The onset effect in word naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 50(4), 477-490. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.02.004.

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether or not masked form priming effects in the naming task depend on the number of shared segments between prime and target. Dutch participants named bisyllabic words, which were preceded by visual masked primes. When primes shared the initial segment(s) with the target, naming latencies were shorter than in a control condition (string of percent signs). Onset complexity (singleton vs. complex word onset) did not modulate this priming effect in Dutch. Furthermore, significant priming due to shared final segments was only found when the prime did not contain a mismatching onset, suggesting an interfering role of initial non-target segments. It is concluded that (a) degree of overlap (segmental match vs. mismatch), and (b) position of overlap (initial vs. final) influence the magnitude of the form priming effect in the naming task. A modification of the segmental overlap hypothesis (Schiller, 1998) is proposed to account for the data.
  • Schoot, L., Menenti, L., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2014). A little more conversation - The influence of communicative context on syntactic priming in brain and behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 208. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00208.

    Abstract

    We report on an fMRI syntactic priming experiment in which we measure brain activity for participants who communicate with another participant outside the scanner. We investigated whether syntactic processing during overt language production and comprehension is influenced by having a (shared) goal to communicate. Although theory suggests this is true, the nature of this influence remains unclear. Two hypotheses are tested: i. syntactic priming effects (fMRI and RT) are stronger for participants in the communicative context than for participants doing the same experiment in a non-communicative context, and ii. syntactic priming magnitude (RT) is correlated with the syntactic priming magnitude of the speaker’s communicative partner. Results showed that across conditions, participants were faster to produce sentences with repeated syntax, relative to novel syntax. This behavioral result converged with the fMRI data: we found repetition suppression effects in the left insula extending into left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47/45), left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21), left inferior parietal cortex (BA 40), left precentral gyrus (BA 6), bilateral precuneus (BA 7), bilateral supplementary motor cortex (BA 32/8) and right insula (BA 47). We did not find support for the first hypothesis: having a communicative intention does not increase the magnitude of syntactic priming effects (either in the brain or in behavior) per se. We did find support for the second hypothesis: if speaker A is strongly/weakly primed by speaker B, then speaker B is primed by speaker A to a similar extent. We conclude that syntactic processing is influenced by being in a communicative context, and that the nature of this influence is bi-directional: speakers are influenced by each other.
  • Schreiweis, C., Bornschein, U., Burguière, E., Kerimoglu, C., Schreiter, S., Dannemann, M., Goyal, S., Rea, E., French, C. A., Puliyadi, R., Groszer, M., Fisher, S. E., Mundry, R., Winter, C., Hevers, W., Pääbo, S., Enard, W., & Graybiel, A. M. (2014). Humanized Foxp2 accelerates learning by enhancing transitions from declarative to procedural performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 14253-14258. doi:10.1073/pnas.1414542111.

    Abstract

    The acquisition of language and speech is uniquely human, but how genetic changes might have adapted the nervous system to this capacity is not well understood. Two human-specific amino acid substitutions in the transcription factor forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) are outstanding mechanistic candidates, as they could have been positively selected during human evolution and as FOXP2 is the sole gene to date firmly linked to speech and language development. When these two substitutions are introduced into the endogenous Foxp2 gene of mice (Foxp2hum), cortico-basal ganglia circuits are specifically affected. Here we demonstrate marked effects of this humanization of Foxp2 on learning and striatal neuroplasticity. Foxp2hum/hum mice learn stimulus–response associations faster than their WT littermates in situations in which declarative (i.e., place-based) and procedural (i.e., response-based) forms of learning could compete during transitions toward proceduralization of action sequences. Striatal districts known to be differently related to these two modes of learning are affected differently in the Foxp2hum/hum mice, as judged by measures of dopamine levels, gene expression patterns, and synaptic plasticity, including an NMDA receptor-dependent form of long-term depression. These findings raise the possibility that the humanized Foxp2 phenotype reflects a different tuning of corticostriatal systems involved in declarative and procedural learning, a capacity potentially contributing to adapting the human brain for speech and language acquisition.

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  • Schwichtenberg, B., & Schiller, N. O. (2004). Semantic gender assignment regularities in German. Brain and Language, 90(1-3), 326-337. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00445-0.

    Abstract

    Gender assignment relates to a native speaker's knowledge of the structure of the gender system of his/her language, allowing the speaker to select the appropriate gender for each noun. Whereas categorical assignment rules and exceptional gender assignment are well investigated, assignment regularities, i.e., tendencies in the gender distribution identified within the vocabulary of a language, are still controversial. The present study is an empirical contribution trying to shed light on the gender assignment system native German speakers have at their disposal. Participants presented with a category (e.g., predator) and a pair of gender-marked pseudowords (e.g., der Trelle vs. die Stisse) preferentially selected the pseudo-word preceded by the gender-marked determiner ‘‘associated’’ with the category (e.g., masculine). This finding suggests that semantic regularities might be part of the gender assignment system of native speakers.
  • Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1984). Segmental phonology and the perception of syntactic structure. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 450-466. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science//journal/00225371.

    Abstract

    Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., palatalization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance.
  • Segaert, K., Weber, K., Cladder-Micus, M., & Hagoort, P. (2014). The influence of verb-bound syntactic preferences on the processing of syntactic structures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(5), 1448-1460. doi:10.1037/a0036796.

    Abstract

    Speakers sometimes repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. We investigated the influence of verb-bound syntactic preferences on syntactic priming effects in response choices and response latencies for German ditransitive sentences. In the response choices we found inverse preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the less preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. In the response latencies we found positive preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the more preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. These findings provide further support for the idea that syntactic processing is lexically guided.
  • Senft, G. (2004). [Review of the book Serial verbs in Oceanic: A descriptive typology by Terry Crowley]. Linguistics, 42(4), 855-859. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.028, 08/06/2004.
  • Senft, G. (2004). [Review of the book The Oceanic Languages by John Lynch, Malcolm Ross and Terry Crowley]. Linguistics, 42(2), 515-520. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.016.
  • Senghas, A., Kita, S., & Ozyurek, A. (2004). Children creating core properties of language: Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science, 305(5691), 1779-1782. doi:10.1126/science.1100199.

    Abstract

    A new sign language has been created by deaf Nicaraguans over the past 25 years, providing an opportunity to observe the inception of universal hallmarks of language. We found that in their initial creation of the language, children analyzed complex events into basic elements and sequenced these elements into hierarchically structured expressions according to principles not observed in gestures accompanying speech in the surrounding language. Successive cohorts of learners extended this procedure, transforming Nicaraguan signing from its early gestural form into a linguistic system. We propose that this early segmentation and recombination reflect mechanisms with which children learn, and thereby perpetuate, language. Thus, children naturally possess learning abilities capable of giving language its fundamental structure.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2004). The importance of being modular. Journal of Linguistics, 40(3), 593-635. doi:10.1017/S0022226704002786.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1976). Clitic pronoun clusters. Italian Linguistics, 2, 7-35.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2004). [Review of the book A short history of Structural linguistics by Peter Matthews]. Linguistics, 42(1), 235-236. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.005.
  • Seuren, P. A. M., & Jaspers, D. (2014). Logico-cognitive structure in the lexicon. Language, 90(3), 607-643. doi:10.1353/lan.2014.0058.

    Abstract

    This study is a prolegomenon to a formal theory of the natural growth of conceptual and lexical fields. Negation, in the various forms in which it occurs in language, is found to be a powerful indicator. Other than in standard logic, natural language negation selects its complement within universes of discourse that are, for practical and functional reasons, restricted in various ways and to different degrees. It is hypothesized that a system of cognitive principles drives recursive processes of universe restriction, which in turn affects logical relations within the restricted universes. This approach provides a new perspective in which to view the well-known clashes between standard logic and natural logical intuitions. Lexicalization in language, especially the morphological incorporation of negation, is limited to highly restricted universes, which explains, for example, why a dog can be said not to be a Catholic, but also not to be a non-Catholic. Cognition is taken to restrict the universe of discourse to contrary pairs, splitting up one or both of the contraries into further subuniverses as a result of further cognitive activity. It is shown how a logically sound square of opposition , expanded to a hexagon (Jacoby 1950, 1960, Sesmat 1951, Blanché 1952, 1953, 1966), is generated by a hierarchy of universe restrictions, defining the notion ‘natural’ for logical systems. The logical hexagon contains two additional vertices, one for ‘some but not all’ (the Y-type) and one for ‘either all or none’ (the U-type), and incorporates both the classic square and the Hamiltonian triangle of contraries . Some is thus considered semantically ambiguous, representing two distinct quantifiers. The pragmaticist claim that the language system contains only the standard logical ‘some perhaps all’ and that the ‘some but not all’ meaning is pragmatically derived from the use of the system is rejected. Four principles are proposed according to which negation selects a complement from the subuniverses at hand. On the basis of these principles and of the logico-cognitive system proposed, the well-known nonlexicalization not only of *nall and *nand but also of many other nonlogical cases found throughout the lexicons of languages is analyzed and explained
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1989). Neue Entwicklungen im Wahrheitsbegriff. Studia Leibnitiana, 21(2), 155-173.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). Operator lowering. Linguistics, 22(5), 573-627. doi:10.1515/ling.1984.22.5.573.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). The bioprogram hypothesis: Facts and fancy. A commentary on Bickerton "The language bioprogram hypothesis". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7(2), 208-209. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00044356.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2014). The cognitive ontogenesis of predicate logid. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 55, 499-532. doi:10.1215/00294527-2798718.

    Abstract

    Since Aristotle and the Stoa, there has been a clash, worsened by modern predicate logic, between logically defined operator meanings and natural intuitions. Pragmatics has tried to neutralize the clash by an appeal to the Gricean conversational maxims. The present study argues that the pragmatic attempt has been unsuccessful. The “softness” of the Gricean explanation fails to do justice to the robustness of the intuitions concerned, leaving the relation between the principles evoked and the observed facts opaque. Moreover, there are cases where the Gricean maxims fail to apply. A more adequate solution consists in the devising of a sound natural logic, part of the innate cognitive equipment of mankind. This account has proved successful in conjunction with a postulated cognitive mechanism in virtue of which the universe of discourse (Un) is stepwise and recursively restricted, so that the negation selects different complements according to the degree of restrictedness of Un. This mechanism explains not only the discrepancies between natural logical intuitions and known logical systems; it also accounts for certain systematic lexicalization gaps in the languages of the world. Finally, it is shown how stepwise restriction of Un produces the ontogenesis of natural predicate logic, while at the same time resolving the intuitive clashes with established logical systems that the Gricean maxims sought to explain
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). The comparative revisited. Journal of Semantics, 3(1), 109-141. doi:10.1093/jos/3.1-2.109.
  • Sha, L., Wu, X., Yao, Y., Wen, B., Feng, J., Sha, Z., Wang, X., Xing, X., Dou, W., Jin, L., Li, W., Wang, N., Shen, Y., Wang, J., Wu, L., & Xu, Q. (2014). Notch Signaling Activation Promotes Seizure Activity in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Molecular Neurobiology, 49(2), 633-644.

    Abstract

    Notch signaling in the nervous system is often regarded as a developmental pathway. However, recent studies have suggested that Notch is associated with neuronal discharges. Here, focusing on temporal lobe epilepsy, we found that Notch signaling was activated in the kainic acid (KA)-induced epilepsy model and in human epileptogenic tissues. Using an acute model of seizures, we showed that DAPT, an inhibitor of Notch, inhibited ictal activity. In contrast, pretreatment with exogenous Jagged1 to elevate Notch signaling before KA application had proconvulsant effects. In vivo, we demonstrated that the impacts of activated Notch signaling on seizures can in part be attributed to the regulatory role of Notch signaling on excitatory synaptic activity in CA1 pyramidal neurons. In vitro, we found that DAPT treatment impaired synaptic vesicle endocytosis in cultured hippocampal neurons. Taken together, our findings suggest a correlation between aberrant Notch signaling and epileptic seizures. Notch signaling is up-regulated in response to seizure activity, and its activation further promotes neuronal excitation of CA1 pyramidal neurons in acute seizures.
  • Shao, Z., Roelofs, A., Acheson, D. J., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Electrophysiological evidence that inhibition supports lexical selection in picture naming. Brain Research, 1586, 130-142. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2014.07.009.

    Abstract

    We investigated the neural basis of inhibitory control during lexical selection. Participants overtly named pictures while response times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The difficulty of lexical selection was manipulated by using object and action pictures with high name agreement (few response candidates) versus low name agreement (many response candidates). To assess the involvement of inhibition, we conducted delta plot analyses of naming RTs and examined the N2 component of the ERP. We found longer mean naming RTs and a larger N2 amplitude in the low relative to the high name agreement condition. For action naming we found a negative correlation between the slopes of the slowest delta segment and the difference in N2 amplitude between the low and high name agreement conditions. The converging behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests that selective inhibition is engaged to reduce competition during lexical selection in picture naming.
  • Shao, Z., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Predicting naming latencies for action pictures: Dutch norms. Behavior Research Methods, 46, 274-283. doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0358-6.

    Abstract

    The present study provides Dutch norms for age of acquisition, familiarity, imageability, image agreement, visual complexity, word frequency, and word length (in syllables) for 124 line drawings of actions. Ratings were obtained from 117 Dutch participants. Word frequency was determined on the basis of the SUBTLEX-NL corpus (Keuleers, Brysbaert, & New, Behavior Research Methods, 42, 643–650, 2010). For 104 of the pictures, naming latencies and name agreement were determined in a separate naming experiment with 74 native speakers of Dutch. The Dutch norms closely corresponded to the norms for British English. Multiple regression analysis showed that age of acquisition, imageability, image agreement, visual complexity, and name agreement were significant predictors of naming latencies, whereas word frequency and word length were not. Combined with the results of a principal-component analysis, these findings suggest that variables influencing the processes of conceptual preparation and lexical selection affect latencies more strongly than do variables influencing word-form encoding.

    Additional information

    Shao_Behav_Res_2013_Suppl_Mat.doc
  • Shao, Z., Janse, E., Visser, K., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). What do verbal fluency tasks measure? Predictors of verbal fluency performance in older adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 772. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00772.

    Abstract

    This study examined the contributions of verbal ability and executive control to verbal fluency performance in older adults (n=82). Verbal fluency was assessed in letter and category fluency tasks, and performance on these tasks was related to indicators of vocabulary size, lexical access speed, updating, and inhibition ability. In regression analyses the number of words produced in both fluency tasks was predicted by updating ability, and the speed of the first response was predicted by vocabulary size and, for category fluency only, lexical access speed. These results highlight the hybrid character of both fluency tasks, which may limit their usefulness for research and clinical purposes.
  • Shatzman, K. B., & Schiller, N. O. (2004). The word frequency effect in picture naming: Contrasting two hypotheses using homonym pictures. Brain and Language, 90(1-3), 160-169. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00429-2.

    Abstract

    Models of speech production disagree on whether or not homonyms have a shared word-form representation. To investigate this issue, a picture-naming experiment was carried out using Dutch homonyms of which both meanings could be presented as a picture. Naming latencies for the low-frequency meanings of homonyms were slower than for those of the high-frequency meanings. However, no frequency effect was found for control words, which matched the frequency of the homonyms meanings. Subsequent control experiments indicated that the difference in naming latencies for the homonyms could be attributed to processes earlier than wordform retrieval. Specifically, it appears that low name agreement slowed down the naming of the low-frequency homonym pictures.
  • Shayan, S., Ozturk, O., Bowerman, M., & Majid, A. (2014). Spatial metaphor in language can promote the development of cross-modal mappings in children. Developmental Science, 17(4), 636-643. doi:10.1111/desc.12157.

    Abstract

    Pitch is often described metaphorically: for example, Farsi and Turkish speakers use a ‘thickness’ metaphor (low sounds are ‘thick’ and high sounds are ‘thin’), while German and English speakers use a height metaphor (‘low’, ‘high’). This study examines how child and adult speakers of Farsi, Turkish, and German map pitch and thickness using a cross-modal association task. All groups, except for German children, performed significantly better than chance. German-speaking adults’ success suggests the pitch-to-thickness association can be learned by experience. But the fact that German children were at chance indicates that this learning takes time. Intriguingly, Farsi and Turkish children's performance suggests that learning cross-modal associations can be boosted through experience with consistent metaphorical mappings in the input language
  • Shkaravska, O., & Van Eekelen, M. (2014). Univariate polynomial solutions of algebraic difference equations. Journal of Symbolic Computation, 60, 15-28. doi:10.1016/j.jsc.2013.10.010.

    Abstract

    Contrary to linear difference equations, there is no general theory of difference equations of the form G(P(x−τ1),…,P(x−τs))+G0(x)=0, with τi∈K, G(x1,…,xs)∈K[x1,…,xs] of total degree D⩾2 and G0(x)∈K[x], where K is a field of characteristic zero. This article is concerned with the following problem: given τi, G and G0, find an upper bound on the degree d of a polynomial solution P(x), if it exists. In the presented approach the problem is reduced to constructing a univariate polynomial for which d is a root. The authors formulate a sufficient condition under which such a polynomial exists. Using this condition, they give an effective bound on d, for instance, for all difference equations of the form G(P(x−a),P(x−a−1),P(x−a−2))+G0(x)=0 with quadratic G, and all difference equations of the form G(P(x),P(x−τ))+G0(x)=0 with G having an arbitrary degree.
  • Silva, S., Branco, P., Barbosa, F., Marques-Teixeira, J., Petersson, K. M., & Castro, S. L. (2014). Musical phrase boundaries, wrap-up and the closure positive shift. Brain Research, 1585, 99-107. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2014.08.025.

    Abstract

    We investigated global integration (wrap-up) processes at the boundaries of musical phrases by comparing the effects of well and non-well formed phrases on event-related potentials time-locked to two boundary points: the onset and the offset of the boundary pause. The Closure Positive Shift, which is elicited at the boundary offset, was not modulated by the quality of phrase structure (well vs. non-well formed). In contrast, the boundary onset potentials showed different patterns for well and non-well formed phrases. Our results contribute to specify the functional meaning of the Closure Positive Shift in music, shed light on the large-scale structural integration of musical input, and raise new hypotheses concerning shared resources between music and language.
  • Silva, S., Barbosa, F., Marques-Teixeira, J., Petersson, K. M., & Castro, S. L. (2014). You know when: Event-related potentials and theta/beat power indicate boundary prediction in music. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 13(1), 19-34. doi:10.1142/S0219635214500022.

    Abstract

    Neuroscientific and musicological approaches to music cognition indicate that listeners familiarized in the Western tonal tradition expect a musical phrase boundary at predictable time intervals. However, phrase boundary prediction processes in music remain untested. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related induced power changes at the onset and offset of a boundary pause. We made comparisons with modified melodies, where the pause was omitted and filled by tones. The offset of the pause elicited a closure positive shift (CPS), indexing phrase boundary detection. The onset of the filling tones elicited significant increases in theta and beta powers. In addition, the P2 component was larger when the filling tones started than when they ended. The responses to boundary omission suggest that listeners expected to hear a boundary pause. Therefore, boundary prediction seems to coexist with boundary detection in music segmentation.
  • Simanova, I., Hagoort, P., Oostenveld, R., & Van Gerven, M. A. J. (2014). Modality-independent decoding of semantic information from the human brain. Cerebral Cortex, 24, 426-434. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhs324.

    Abstract

    An ability to decode semantic information from fMRI spatial patterns has been demonstrated in previous studies mostly for 1 specific input modality. In this study, we aimed to decode semantic category independent of the modality in which an object was presented. Using a searchlight method, we were able to predict the stimulus category from the data while participants performed a semantic categorization task with 4 stimulus modalities (spoken and written names, photographs, and natural sounds). Significant classification performance was achieved in all 4 modalities. Modality-independent decoding was implemented by training and testing the searchlight method across modalities. This allowed the localization of those brain regions, which correctly discriminated between the categories, independent of stimulus modality. The analysis revealed large clusters of voxels in the left inferior temporal cortex and in frontal regions. These voxels also allowed category discrimination in a free recall session where subjects recalled the objects in the absence of external stimuli. The results show that semantic information can be decoded from the fMRI signal independently of the input modality and have clear implications for understanding the functional mechanisms of semantic memory.
  • Simon, E., & Sjerps, M. J. (2014). Developing non-native vowel representations: a study on child second language acquisition. COPAL: Concordia Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 5, 693-708.

    Abstract

    This study examines what stage 9‐12‐year‐old Dutch‐speaking children have reached in the development of their L2 lexicon, focusing on its phonological specificity. Two experiments were carried out with a group of Dutch‐speaking children and adults learning English. In a first task, listeners were asked to judge Dutch words which were presented with either the target Dutch vowel or with an English vowel synthetically inserted. The second experiment was a mirror of the first, i.e. with English words and English or Dutch vowels inserted. It was examined to what extent the listeners accepted substitutions of Dutch vowels by English ones, and vice versa. The results of the experiments suggest that the children have not reached the same degree of phonological specificity of L2 words as the adults. Children not only experience a strong influence of their native vowel categories when listening to L2 words, they also apply less strict criteria.
  • Simon, E., Sjerps, M. J., & Fikkert, P. (2014). Phonological representations in children’s native and non-native lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(1), 3-21. doi:10.1017/S1366728912000764.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the phonological representations of vowels in children's native and non-native lexicons. Two experiments were mispronunciation tasks (i.e., a vowel in words was substituted by another vowel from the same language). These were carried out by Dutch-speaking 9–12-year-old children and Dutch-speaking adults, in their native (Experiment 1, Dutch) and non-native (Experiment 2, English) language. A third experiment tested vowel discrimination. In Dutch, both children and adults could accurately detect mispronunciations. In English, adults, and especially children, detected substitutions of native vowels (i.e., vowels that are present in the Dutch inventory) by non-native vowels more easily than changes in the opposite direction. Experiment 3 revealed that children could accurately discriminate most of the vowels. The results indicate that children's L1 categories strongly influenced their perception of English words. However, the data also reveal a hint of the development of L2 phoneme categories.

    Additional information

    Simon_SuppMaterial.pdf
  • Simpson, N. H., Addis, L., Brandler, W. M., Slonims, V., Clark, A., Watson, J., Scerri, T. S., Hennessy, E. R., Stein, J., Talcott, J., Conti-Ramsden, G., O'Hare, A., Baird, G., Fairfax, B. P., Knight, J. C., Paracchini, S., Fisher, S. E., Newbury, D. F., & The SLI Consortium (2014). Increased prevalence of sex chromosome aneuploidies in specific language impairment and dyslexia. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 56, 346-353. doi:10.1111/dmcn.12294.

    Abstract

    Aim Sex chromosome aneuploidies increase the risk of spoken or written language disorders but individuals with specific language impairment (SLI) or dyslexia do not routinely undergo cytogenetic analysis. We assess the frequency of sex chromosome aneuploidies in individuals with language impairment or dyslexia. Method Genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping was performed in three sample sets: a clinical cohort of individuals with speech and language deficits (87 probands: 61 males, 26 females; age range 4 to 23 years), a replication cohort of individuals with SLI, from both clinical and epidemiological samples (209 probands: 139 males, 70 females; age range 4 to 17 years), and a set of individuals with dyslexia (314 probands: 224 males, 90 females; age range 7 to 18 years). Results In the clinical language-impaired cohort, three abnormal karyotypic results were identified in probands (proband yield 3.4%). In the SLI replication cohort, six abnormalities were identified providing a consistent proband yield (2.9%). In the sample of individuals with dyslexia, two sex chromosome aneuploidies were found giving a lower proband yield of 0.6%. In total, two XYY, four XXY (Klinefelter syndrome), three XXX, one XO (Turner syndrome), and one unresolved karyotype were identified. Interpretation The frequency of sex chromosome aneuploidies within each of the three cohorts was increased over the expected population frequency (approximately 0.25%) suggesting that genetic testing may prove worthwhile for individuals with language and literacy problems and normal non-verbal IQ. Early detection of these aneuploidies can provide information and direct the appropriate management for individuals.
  • Skiba, R., Wittenburg, F., & Trilsbeek, P. (2004). New DoBeS web site: Contents & functions. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(2), 4-4.
  • Slobin, D. I., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Kopecka, A., & Majid, A. (2014). Manners of human gait: A crosslinguistic event-naming study. Cognitive Linguistics, 25, 701-741. doi:10.1515/cog-2014-0061.

    Abstract

    Crosslinguistic studies of expressions of motion events have found that Talmy's binary typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages is reflected in language use. In particular, Manner of motion is relatively more elaborated in satellite-framed languages (e.g., in narrative, picture description, conversation, translation). The present research builds on previous controlled studies of the domain of human motion by eliciting descriptions of a wide range of manners of walking and running filmed in natural circumstances. Descriptions were elicited from speakers of two satellite-framed languages (English, Polish) and three verb-framed languages (French, Spanish, Basque). The sampling of events in this study resulted in four major semantic clusters for these five languages: walking, running, non-canonical gaits (divided into bounce-and-recoil and syncopated movements), and quadrupedal movement (crawling). Counts of verb types found a broad tendency for satellite-framed languages to show greater lexical diversity, along with substantial within group variation. Going beyond most earlier studies, we also examined extended descriptions of manner of movement, isolating types of manner. The following categories of manner were identified and compared: attitude of actor, rate, effort, posture, and motor patterns of legs and feet. Satellite-framed speakers tended to elaborate expressive manner verbs, whereas verb-framed speakers used modification to add manner to neutral motion verbs
  • Smeets, C. J. L. M., & Verbeek, D. (2014). Review Cerebellar ataxia and functional genomics: Identifying the routes to cerebellar neurodegeneration. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta: BBA, 1842(10), 2030-2038. doi:10.1016/j.bbadis.2014.04.004.

    Abstract

    Cerebellar ataxias are progressive neurodegenerative disorders characterized by atrophy of the cerebellum leading to motor dysfunction, balance problems, and limb and gait ataxia. These include among others, the dominantly inherited spinocerebellar ataxias, recessive cerebellar ataxias such as Friedreich's ataxia, and X-linked cerebellar ataxias. Since all cerebellar ataxias display considerable overlap in their disease phenotypes, common pathological pathways must underlie the selective cerebellar neurodegeneration. Therefore, it is important to identify the molecular mechanisms and routes to neurodegeneration that cause cerebellar ataxia. In this review, we discuss the use of functional genomic approaches including whole-exome sequencing, genome-wide gene expression profiling, miRNA profiling, epigenetic profiling, and genetic modifier screens to reveal the underlying pathogenesis of various cerebellar ataxias. These approaches have resulted in the identification of many disease genes, modifier genes, and biomarkers correlating with specific stages of the disease. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: From Genome to Function.
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). Literacy effects on language and vision: Emergent effects from an amodal shared resource (ASR) computational model. Cognitive Psychology, 75, 28-54. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2014.07.002.

    Abstract

    Learning to read and write requires an individual to connect additional orthographic representations to pre-existing mappings between phonological and semantic representations of words. Past empirical results suggest that the process of learning to read and write (at least in alphabetic languages) elicits changes in the language processing system, by either increasing the cognitive efficiency of mapping between representations associated with a word, or by changing the granularity of phonological processing of spoken language, or through a combination of both. Behavioural effects of literacy have typically been assessed in offline explicit tasks that have addressed only phonological processing. However, a recent eye tracking study compared high and low literate participants on effects of phonology and semantics in processing measured implicitly using eye movements. High literates’ eye movements were more affected by phonological overlap in online speech than low literates, with only subtle differences observed in semantics. We determined whether these effects were due to cognitive efficiency and/or granularity of speech processing in a multimodal model of speech processing – the amodal shared resource model (ASR, Smith, Monaghan, & Huettig, 2013). We found that cognitive efficiency in the model had only a marginal effect on semantic processing and did not affect performance for phonological processing, whereas fine-grained versus coarse-grained phonological representations in the model simulated the high/low literacy effects on phonological processing, suggesting that literacy has a focused effect in changing the grain-size of phonological mappings.
  • Smith, M. R., Cutler, A., Butterfield, S., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1989). The perception of rhythm and word boundaries in noise-masked speech. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 32, 912-920.

    Abstract

    The present experiment tested the suggestion that human listeners may exploit durational information in speech to parse continuous utterances into words. Listeners were presented with six-syllable unpredictable utterances under noise-masking, and were required to judge between alternative word strings as to which best matched the rhythm of the masked utterances. For each utterance there were four alternative strings: (a) an exact rhythmic and word boundary match, (b) a rhythmic mismatch, and (c) two utterances with the same rhythm as the masked utterance, but different word boundary locations. Listeners were clearly able to perceive the rhythm of the masked utterances: The rhythmic mismatch was chosen significantly less often than any other alternative. Within the three rhythmically matched alternatives, the exact match was chosen significantly more often than either word boundary mismatch. Thus, listeners both perceived speech rhythm and used durational cues effectively to locate the position of word boundaries.
  • Spada, D., Verga, L., Iadanza, A., Tettamanti, M., & Perani, D. (2014). The auditory scene: An fMRI study on melody and accompaniment in professional pianists. NeuroImage, 102(2), 764-775. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.036.

    Abstract

    The auditory scene is a mental representation of individual sounds extracted from the summed sound waveform reaching the ears of the listeners. Musical contexts represent particularly complex cases of auditory scenes. In such a scenario, melody may be seen as the main object moving on a background represented by the accompaniment. Both melody and accompaniment vary in time according to harmonic rules, forming a typical texture with melody in the most prominent, salient voice. In the present sparse acquisition functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the interplay between melody and accompaniment in trained pianists, by observing the activation responses elicited by processing: (1) melody placed in the upper and lower texture voices, leading to, respectively, a higher and lower auditory salience; (2) harmonic violations occurring in either the melody, the accompaniment, or both. The results indicated that the neural activation elicited by the processing of polyphonic compositions in expert musicians depends upon the upper versus lower position of the melodic line in the texture, and showed an overall greater activation for the harmonic processing of melody over accompaniment. Both these two predominant effects were characterized by the involvement of the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, among other associative brain regions. We discuss the prominent role of the posterior medial cortex in the processing of melodic and harmonic information in the auditory stream, and propose to frame this processing in relation to the cognitive construction of complex multimodal sensory imagery scenes.
  • Stergiakouli, E., Gaillard, R., Tavaré, J. M., Balthasar, N., Loos, R. J., Taal, H. R., Evans, D. M., Rivadeneira, F., St Pourcain, B., Uitterlinden, A. G., Kemp, J. P., Hofman, A., Ring, S. M., Cole, T. J., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Davey Smith, G., & Timpson, N. J. (2014). Genome-wide association study of height-adjusted BMI in childhood identifies functional variant in ADCY3. Obesity, 22(10), 2252-2259. doi:10.1002/oby.20840.

    Abstract

    OBJECTIVE: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of BMI are mostly undertaken under the assumption that "kg/m(2) " is an index of weight fully adjusted for height, but in general this is not true. The aim here was to assess the contribution of common genetic variation to a adjusted version of that phenotype which appropriately accounts for covariation in height in children. METHODS: A GWAS of height-adjusted BMI (BMI[x] = weight/height(x) ), calculated to be uncorrelated with height, in 5809 participants (mean age 9.9 years) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) was performed. RESULTS: GWAS based on BMI[x] yielded marked differences in genomewide results profile. SNPs in ADCY3 (adenylate cyclase 3) were associated at genome-wide significance level (rs11676272 (0.28 kg/m(3.1) change per allele G (0.19, 0.38), P = 6 × 10(-9) ). In contrast, they showed marginal evidence of association with conventional BMI [rs11676272 (0.25 kg/m(2) (0.15, 0.35), P = 6 × 10(-7) )]. Results were replicated in an independent sample, the Generation R study. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of BMI[x] showed differences to that of conventional BMI. The association signal at ADCY3 appeared to be driven by a missense variant and it was strongly correlated with expression of this gene. Our work highlights the importance of well understood phenotype use (and the danger of convention) in characterising genetic contributions to complex traits.

    Additional information

    oby20840-sup-0001-suppinfo.docx
  • Stine-Morrow, E., Payne, B., Roberts, B., Kramer, A., Morrow, D., Payne, L., Hill, P., Jackson, J., Gao, X., Noh, S., Janke, M., & Parisi, J. (2014). Training versus engagement as paths to cognitive enrichment with aging. Psychology and Aging, 29, 891-906. doi:10.1037/a0038244.

    Abstract

    While a training model of cognitive intervention targets the improvement of particular skills through instruction and practice, an engagement model is based on the idea that being embedded in an intellectually and socially complex environment can impact cognition, perhaps even broadly, without explicit instruction. We contrasted these 2 models of cognitive enrichment by randomly assigning healthy older adults to a home-based inductive reasoning training program, a team-based competitive program in creative problem solving, or a wait-list control. As predicted, those in the training condition showed selective improvement in inductive reasoning. Those in the engagement condition, on the other hand, showed selective improvement in divergent thinking, a key ability exercised in creative problem solving. On average, then, both groups appeared to show ability-specific effects. However, moderators of change differed somewhat for those in the engagement and training interventions. Generally, those who started either intervention with a more positive cognitive profile showed more cognitive growth, suggesting that cognitive resources enabled individuals to take advantage of environmental enrichment. Only in the engagement condition did initial levels of openness and social network size moderate intervention effects on cognition, suggesting that comfort with novelty and an ability to manage social resources may be additional factors contributing to the capacity to take advantage of the environmental complexity associated with engagement. Collectively, these findings suggest that training and engagement models may offer alternative routes to cognitive resilience in late life

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  • Stivers, T. (2004). Potilaan vastarinta: Keino vaikuttaa lääkärin hoitopäätökseen. Sosiaalilääketieteellinen Aikakauslehti, 41, 199-213.
  • Stivers, T. (2004). "No no no" and other types of multiple sayings in social interaction. Human Communication Research, 30(2), 260-293. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2004.tb00733.x.

    Abstract

    Relying on the methodology of conversation analysis, this article examines a practice in ordinary conversation characterized by the resaying of a word, phrase, or sentence. The article shows that multiple sayings such as "No no no" or "Alright alright alright" are systematic in both their positioning relative to the interlocutor's talk and in their function. Specifically, the findings are that multiple sayings are a resource speakers have to display that their turn is addressing an in progress course of action rather than only the just prior utterance. Speakers of multiple sayings communicate their stance that the prior speaker has persisted unnecessarily in the prior course of action and should properly halt course of action.
  • Stolk, A., Noordzij, M. L., Verhagen, L., Volman, I., Schoffelen, J.-M., Oostenveld, R., Hagoort, P., & Toni, I. (2014). Cerebral coherence between communicators marks the emergence of meaning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 18183-18188. doi:10.1073/pnas.1414886111.

    Abstract

    How can we understand each other during communicative interactions? An influential suggestion holds that communicators are primed by each other’s behaviors, with associative mechanisms automatically coordinating the production of communicative signals and the comprehension of their meanings. An alternative suggestion posits that mutual understanding requires shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use, i.e., “conceptual pacts” that are abstracted away from specific experiences. Both accounts predict coherent neural dynamics across communicators, aligned either to the occurrence of a signal or to the dynamics of conceptual pacts. Using coherence spectral-density analysis of cerebral activity simultaneously measured in pairs of communicators, this study shows that establishing mutual understanding of novel signals synchronizes cerebral dynamics across communicators’ right temporal lobes. This interpersonal cerebral coherence occurred only within pairs with a shared communicative history, and at temporal scales independent from signals’ occurrences. These findings favor the notion that meaning emerges from shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use.
  • Stolk, A., Noordzij, M. L., Volman, I., Verhagen, L., Overeem, S., van Elswijk, G., Bloem, B., Hagoort, P., & Toni, I. (2014). Understanding communicative actions: A repetitive TMS study. Cortex, 51, 25-34. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2013.10.005.

    Abstract

    Despite the ambiguity inherent in human communication, people are remarkably efficient in establishing mutual understanding. Studying how people communicate in novel settings provides a window into the mechanisms supporting the human competence to rapidly generate and understand novel shared symbols, a fundamental property of human communication. Previous work indicates that the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is involved when people understand the intended meaning of novel communicative actions. Here, we set out to test whether normal functioning of this cerebral structure is required for understanding novel communicative actions using inhibitory low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). A factorial experimental design contrasted two tightly matched stimulation sites (right pSTS vs. left MT+, i.e. a contiguous homotopic task-relevant region) and tasks (a communicative task vs. a visual tracking task that used the same sequences of stimuli). Overall task performance was not affected by rTMS, whereas changes in task performance over time were disrupted according to TMS site and task combinations. Namely, rTMS over pSTS led to a diminished ability to improve action understanding on the basis of recent communicative history, while rTMS over MT+ perturbed improvement in visual tracking over trials. These findings qualify the contributions of the right pSTS to human communicative abilities, showing that this region might be necessary for incorporating previous knowledge, accumulated during interactions with a communicative partner, to constrain the inferential process that leads to action understanding.
  • Takashima, A., Wagensveld, B., Van Turennout, M., Zwitserlood, P., Hagoort, P., & Verhoeven, L. (2014). Training-induced neural plasticity in visual-word decoding and the role of syllables. Neuropsychologia, 61, 299-314. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.017.

    Abstract

    To investigate the neural underpinnings of word decoding, and how it changes as a function of repeated exposure, we trained Dutch participants repeatedly over the course of a month of training to articulate a set of novel disyllabic input strings written in Greek script to avoid the use of familiar orthographic representations. The syllables in the input were phonotactically legal combinations but non-existent in the Dutch language, allowing us to assess their role in novel word decoding. Not only trained disyllabic pseudowords were tested but also pseudowords with recombined patterns of syllables to uncover the emergence of syllabic representations. We showed that with extensive training, articulation became faster and more accurate for the trained pseudowords. On the neural level, the initial stage of decoding was reflected by increased activity in visual attention areas of occipito-temporal and occipito-parietal cortices, and in motor coordination areas of the precentral gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus. After one month of training, memory representations for holistic information (whole word unit) were established in areas encompassing the angular gyrus, the precuneus and the middle temporal gyrus. Syllabic representations also emerged through repeated training of disyllabic pseudowords, such that reading recombined syllables of the trained pseudowords showed similar brain activation to trained pseudowords and were articulated faster than novel combinations of letter strings used in the trained pseudowords.
  • Takashima, A., Bakker, I., Van Hell, J. G., Janzen, G., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Richness of information about novel words influences how episodic and semantic memory networks interact during lexicalization. NeuroImage, 84, 265-278. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.023.

    Abstract

    The complementary learning systems account of declarative memory suggests two distinct memory networks, a fast-mapping, episodic system involving the hippocampus, and a slower semantic memory system distributed across the neocortex in which new information is gradually integrated with existing representations. In this study, we investigated the extent to which these two networks are involved in the integration of novel words into the lexicon after extensive learning, and how the involvement of these networks changes after 24 hours. In particular, we explored whether having richer information at encoding influences the lexicalization trajectory. We trained participants with two sets of novel words, one where exposure was only to the words’ phonological forms (the form-only condition), and one where pictures of unfamiliar objects were associated with the words’ phonological forms (the picture-associated condition). A behavioral measure of lexical competition (indexing lexicalization) indicated stronger competition effects for the form-only words. Imaging (fMRI) results revealed greater involvement of phonological lexical processing areas immediately after training in the form-only condition, suggesting tight connections were formed between novel words and existing lexical entries already at encoding. Retrieval of picture-associated novel words involved the episodic/hippocampal memory system more extensively. Although lexicalization was weaker in the picture-associated condition, overall memory strength was greater when tested after a 24 hours’ delay, probably due to the availability of both episodic and lexical memory networks to aid retrieval. It appears that, during lexicalization of a novel word, the relative involvement of different memory networks differs according to the richness of the information about that word available at encoding.
  • Tamaoka, K., Saito, N., Kiyama, S., Timmer, K., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2014). Is pitch accent necessary for comprehension by native Japanese speakers? - An ERP investigation. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 27(1), 31-40. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.08.001.

    Abstract

    Not unlike the tonal system in Chinese, Japanese habitually attaches pitch accents to the production of words. However, in contrast to Chinese, few homophonic word-pairs are really distinguished by pitch accents (Shibata & Shibata, 1990). This predicts that pitch accent plays a small role in lexical selection for Japanese language comprehension. The present study investigated whether native Japanese speakers necessarily use pitch accent in the processing of accent-contrasted homophonic pairs (e.g., ame [LH] for 'candy' and ame [HI] for 'rain') measuring electroencephalographic (EEG) potentials. Electrophysiological evidence (i.e., N400) was obtained when a word was semantically incorrect for a given context but not for incorrectly accented homophones. This suggests that pitch accent indeed plays a minor role when understanding Japanese. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Tanner, D., Nicol, J., & Brehm, L. (2014). The time-course of feature interference in agreement comprehension: Multiple mechanisms and asymmetrical attraction. Journal of Memory and Language, 76, 195-215. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2014.07.003.

    Abstract

    Attraction interference in language comprehension and production may be as a result of common or different processes. In the present paper, we investigate attraction interference during language comprehension, focusing on the contexts in which interference arises and the time-course of these effects. Using evidence from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and sentence judgment times, we show that agreement attraction in comprehension is best explained as morphosyntactic interference during memory retrieval. This stands in contrast to attraction as a message-level process involving the representation of the subject NP's number features, which is a strong contributor to attraction in production. We thus argue that the cognitive antecedents of agreement attraction in comprehension are non-identical with those of attraction in production, and moreover, that attraction in comprehension is primarily a consequence of similarity-based interference in cue-based memory retrieval processes. We suggest that mechanisms responsible for attraction during language comprehension are a subset of those involved in language production.
  • Ten Oever, S., Schroeder, C. E., Poeppel, D., Van Atteveldt, N., & Zion-Golumbic, E. (2014). Rhythmicity and cross-modal temporal cues facilitate detection. Neuropsychologia, 63, 43-50. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.08.008.

    Abstract

    Temporal structure in the environment often has predictive value for anticipating the occurrence of forthcoming events. In this study we investigated the influence of two types of predictive temporal information on the perception of near-threshold auditory stimuli: 1) intrinsic temporal rhythmicity within an auditory stimulus stream and 2) temporally-predictive visual cues. We hypothesized that combining predictive temporal information within- and across-modality should decrease the threshold at which sounds are detected, beyond the advantage provided by each information source alone. Two experiments were conducted in which participants had to detect tones in noise. Tones were presented in either rhythmic or random sequences and were preceded by a temporally predictive visual signal in half of the trials. We show that detection intensities are lower for rhythmic (vs. random) and audiovisual (vs. auditory-only) presentation, independent from response bias, and that this effect is even greater for rhythmic audiovisual presentation. These results suggest that both types of temporal information are used to optimally process sounds that occur at expected points in time (resulting in enhanced detection), and that multiple temporal cues are combined to improve temporal estimates. Our findings underscore the flexibility and proactivity of the perceptual system which uses within- and across-modality temporal cues to anticipate upcoming events and process them optimally. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A. F., Bakker, S. C., Van Haren, N. E., Boos, H. B., Schnack, H. G., Cahn, W., Hoogman, M., Zwiers, M. P., Fernandez, G., Franke, B., Hulshoff Pol, H. E., & Kahn, R. S. (2014). Association study of fibroblast growth factor genes and brain volumes in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Psychiatric Genetics, 24, 283-284. doi:10.1097/YPG.0000000000000057.
  • Theakston, A., Coates, A., & Holler, J. (2014). Handling agents and patients: Representational cospeech gestures help children comprehend complex syntactic constructions. Developmental Psychology, 50(7), 1973-1984. doi:10.1037/a0036694.

    Abstract

    Gesture is an important precursor of children’s early language development, for example, in the transition to multiword speech and as a predictor of later language abilities. However, it is unclear whether gestural input can influence children’s comprehension of complex grammatical constructions. In Study 1, 3- (M = 3 years 5 months) and 4-year-old (M = 4 years 6 months) children witnessed 2-participant actions described using the infrequent object-cleft-construction (OCC; It was the dog that the cat chased). Half saw an experimenter accompanying her descriptions with gestures representing the 2 participants and indicating the direction of action; the remaining children did not witness gesture. Children who witnessed gestures showed better comprehension of the OCC than those who did not witness gestures, both in and beyond the immediate physical context, but this benefit was restricted to the oldest 4-year-olds. In Study 2, a further group of older 4-year-old children (M = 4 years 7 months) witnessed the same 2-participant actions described by an experimenter and accompanied by gestures, but the gesture represented only the 2 participants and not the direction of the action. Again, a benefit of gesture was observed on subsequent comprehension of the OCC. We interpret these findings as demonstrating that representational cospeech gestures can help children comprehend complex linguistic structures by highlighting the roles played by the participants in the event.

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  • Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V., Pine, J. M., & Rowland, C. F. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language, 31(1), 61-99. doi:10.1017/S0305000903005956.

    Abstract

    In many areas of language acquisition, researchers have suggested that semantic generality plays an important role in determining the order of acquisition of particular lexical forms. However, generality is typically confounded with the effects of input frequency and it is therefore unclear to what extent semantic generality or input frequency determines the early acquisition of particular lexical items. The present study evaluates the relative influence of semantic status and properties of the input on the acquisition of verbs and their argument structures in the early speech of 9 English-speaking children from 2;0 to 3;0. The children's early verb utterances are examined with respect to (1) the order of acquisition of particular verbs in three different constructions, (2) the syntactic diversity of use of individual verbs, (3) the relative proportional use of semantically general verbs as a function of total verb use, and (4) their grammatical accuracy. The data suggest that although measures of semantic generality correlate with various measures of early verb use, once the effects of verb use in the input are removed, semantic generality is not a significant predictor of early verb use. The implications of these results for semantic-based theories of verb argument structure acquisition are discussed.
  • Thompson, P. M., Stein, J. L., Medland, S. E., Hibar, D. P., Vasquez, A. A., Renteria, M. E., Toro, R., Jahanshad, N., Schumann, G., Franke, B., Wright, M. J., Martin, N. G., Agartz, I., Alda, M., Alhusaini, S., Almasy, L., Almeida, J., Alpert, K., Andreasen, N. C., Andreassen, O. A. and 269 moreThompson, P. M., Stein, J. L., Medland, S. E., Hibar, D. P., Vasquez, A. A., Renteria, M. E., Toro, R., Jahanshad, N., Schumann, G., Franke, B., Wright, M. J., Martin, N. G., Agartz, I., Alda, M., Alhusaini, S., Almasy, L., Almeida, J., Alpert, K., Andreasen, N. C., Andreassen, O. A., Apostolova, L. G., Appel, K., Armstrong, N. J., Aribisala, B., Bastin, M. E., Bauer, M., Bearden, C. E., Bergmann, Ø., Binder, E. B., Blangero, J., Bockholt, H. J., Bøen, E., Bois, C., Boomsma, D. I., Booth, T., Bowman, I. J., Bralten, J., Brouwer, R. M., Brunner, H. G., Brohawn, D. G., Buckner, R. L., Buitelaar, J., Bulayeva, K., Bustillo, J. R., Calhoun, V. D., Cannon, D. M., Cantor, R. M., Carless, M. A., Caseras, X., Cavalleri, G. L., Chakravarty, M. M., Chang, K. D., Ching, C. R. K., Christoforou, A., Cichon, S., Clark, V. P., Conrod, P., Coppola, G., Crespo-Facorro, B., Curran, J. E., Czisch, M., Deary, I. J., de Geus, E. J. C., den Braber, A., Delvecchio, G., Depondt, C., de Haan, L., de Zubicaray, G. I., Dima, D., Dimitrova, R., Djurovic, S., Dong, H., Donohoe, G., Duggirala, R., Dyer, T. D., Ehrlich, S., Ekman, C. J., Elvsåshagen, T., Emsell, L., Erk, S., Espeseth, T., Fagerness, J., Fears, S., Fedko, I., Fernández, G., Fisher, S. E., Foroud, T., Fox, P. T., Francks, C., Frangou, S., Frey, E. M., Frodl, T., Frouin, V., Garavan, H., Giddaluru, S., Glahn, D. C., Godlewska, B., Goldstein, R. Z., Gollub, R. L., Grabe, H. J., Grimm, O., Gruber, O., Guadalupe, T., Gur, R. E., Gur, R. C., Göring, H. H. H., Hagenaars, S., Hajek, T., Hall, G. B., Hall, J., Hardy, J., Hartman, C. A., Hass, J., Hatton, S. N., Haukvik, U. K., Hegenscheid, K., Heinz, A., Hickie, I. B., Ho, B.-C., Hoehn, D., Hoekstra, P. J., Hollinshead, M., Holmes, A. J., Homuth, G., Hoogman, M., Hong, L. E., Hosten, N., Hottenga, J.-J., Pol, H. E. H., Hwang, K. S., Jr, C. R. J., Jenkinson, M., Johnston, C., Jönsson, E. G., Kahn, R. S., Kasperaviciute, D., Kelly, S., Kim, S., Kochunov, P., Koenders, L., Krämer, B., Kwok, J. B. J., Lagopoulos, J., Laje, G., Landen, M., Landman, B. A., Lauriello, J., Lawrie, S. M., Lee, P. H., Le Hellard, S., Lemaître, H., Leonardo, C. D., Li, C.-s., Liberg, B., Liewald, D. C., Liu, X., Lopez, L. M., Loth, E., Lourdusamy, A., Luciano, M., Macciardi, F., Machielsen, M. W. J., MacQueen, G. M., Malt, U. F., Mandl, R., Manoach, D. S., Martinot, J.-L., Matarin, M., Mather, K. A., Mattheisen, M., Mattingsdal, M., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., McDonald, C., McIntosh, A. M., McMahon, F. J., McMahon, K. L., Meisenzahl, E., Melle, I., Milaneschi, Y., Mohnke, S., Montgomery, G. W., Morris, D. W., Moses, E. K., Mueller, B. A., Maniega, S. M., Mühleisen, T. W., Müller-Myhsok, B., Mwangi, B., Nauck, M., Nho, K., Nichols, T. E., Nilsson, L.-G., Nugent, A. C., Nyberg, L., Olvera, R. L., Oosterlaan, J., Ophoff, R. A., Pandolfo, M., Papalampropoulou-Tsiridou, M., Papmeyer, M., Paus, T., Pausova, Z., Pearlson, G. D., Penninx, B. W., Peterson, C. P., Pfennig, A., Phillips, M., Pike, G. B., Poline, J.-B., Potkin, S. G., Pütz, B., Ramasamy, A., Rasmussen, J., Rietschel, M., Rijpkema, M., Risacher, S. L., Roffman, J. L., Roiz-Santiañez, R., Romanczuk-Seiferth, N., Rose, E. J., Royle, N. A., Rujescu, D., Ryten, M., Sachdev, P. S., Salami, A., Satterthwaite, T. D., Savitz, J., Saykin, A. J., Scanlon, C., Schmaal, L., Schnack, H. G., Schork, A. J., Schulz, S. C., Schür, R., Seidman, L., Shen, L., Shoemaker, J. M., Simmons, A., Sisodiya, S. M., Smith, C., Smoller, J. W., Soares, J. C., Sponheim, S. R., Sprooten, E., Starr, J. M., Steen, V. M., Strakowski, S., Strike, L., Sussmann, J., Sämann, P. G., Teumer, A., Toga, A. W., Tordesillas-Gutierrez, D., Trabzuni, D., Trost, S., Turner, J., Van den Heuvel, M., van der Wee, N. J., van Eijk, K., van Erp, T. G. M., van Haren, N. E. M., van Ent, D. ‘., van Tol, M.-J., Hernández, M. C. V., Veltman, D. J., Versace, A., Völzke, H., Walker, R., Walter, H., Wang, L., Wardlaw, J. M., Weale, M. E., Weiner, M. W., Wen, W., Westlye, L. T., Whalley, H. C., Whelan, C. D., White, T., Winkler, A. M., Wittfeld, K., Woldehawariat, G., Wolf, C., Zilles, D., Zwiers, M. P., Thalamuthu, A., Schofield, P. R., Freimer, N. B., Lawrence, N. S., & Drevets, W. (2014). The ENIGMA Consortium: Large-scale collaborative analyses of neuroimaging and genetic data. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 8(2), 153-182. doi:10.1007/s11682-013-9269-5.

    Abstract

    The Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium is a collaborative network of researchers working together on a range of large-scale studies that integrate data from 70 institutions worldwide. Organized into Working Groups that tackle questions in neuroscience, genetics, and medicine, ENIGMA studies have analyzed neuroimaging data from over 12,826 subjects. In addition, data from 12,171 individuals were provided by the CHARGE consortium for replication of findings, in a total of 24,997 subjects. By meta-analyzing results from many sites, ENIGMA has detected factors that affect the brain that no individual site could detect on its own, and that require larger numbers of subjects than any individual neuroimaging study has currently collected. ENIGMA’s first project was a genome-wide association study identifying common variants in the genome associated with hippocampal volume or intracranial volume. Continuing work is exploring genetic associations with subcortical volumes (ENIGMA2) and white matter microstructure (ENIGMA-DTI). Working groups also focus on understanding how schizophrenia, bipolar illness, major depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affect the brain. We review the current progress of the ENIGMA Consortium, along with challenges and unexpected discoveries made on the way
  • Thorgrimsson, G., Fawcett, C., & Liszkowski, U. (2014). Infants’ expectations about gestures and actions in third-party interactions. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 321. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00321.

    Abstract

    We investigated 14-month-old infants’ expectations toward a third party addressee of communicative gestures and an instrumental action. Infants’ eye movements were tracked as they observed a person (the Gesturer) point, direct a palm-up request gesture, or reach toward an object, and another person (the Addressee) respond by grasping it. Infants’ looking patterns indicate that when the Gesturer pointed or used the palm-up request, infants anticipated that the Addressee would give the object to the Gesturer, suggesting that they ascribed a motive of request to the gestures. In contrast, when the Gesturer reached for the object, and in a control condition where no action took place, the infants did not anticipate the Addressee’s response. The results demonstrate that infants’ recognition of communicative gestures extends to others’ interactions, and that infants can anticipate how third-party addressees will respond to others’ gestures.
  • Tilot, A. K., Gaugler, M. K., Yu, Q., Romigh, T., Yu, W., Miller, R. H., Frazier, T. W., & Eng, C. (2014). Germline disruption of Pten localization causes enhanced sex-dependent social motivation and increased glial production. Human Molecular Genetics, 23(12), 3212-3227. doi:10.1093/hmg/ddu031.

    Abstract

    PTEN Hamartoma Tumor Syndrome (PHTS) is an autosomal-dominant genetic condition underlying a subset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with macrocephaly. Caused by germline mutations in PTEN, PHTS also causes increased risks of multiple cancers via dysregulation of the PI3K and MAPK signaling pathways. Conditional knockout models have shown that neural Pten regulates social behavior, proliferation and cell size. Although much is known about how the intracellular localization of PTEN regulates signaling in cancer cell lines, we know little of how PTEN localization influences normal brain physiology and behavior. To address this, we generated a germline knock-in mouse model of cytoplasm-predominant Pten and characterized its behavioral and cellular phenotypes. The homozygous Ptenm3m4 mice have decreased total Pten levels including a specific drop in nuclear Pten and exhibit region-specific increases in brain weight. The Ptenm3m4 model displays sex-specific increases in social motivation, poor balance and normal recognition memory—a profile reminiscent of some individuals with high functioning ASD. The cytoplasm-predominant protein caused cellular hypertrophy limited to the soma and led to increased NG2 cell proliferation and accumulation of glia. The animals also exhibit significant astrogliosis and microglial activation, indicating a neuroinflammatory phenotype. At the signaling level, Ptenm3m4 mice show brain region-specific differences in Akt activation. These results demonstrate that differing alterations to the same autism-linked gene can cause distinct behavioral profiles. The Ptenm3m4 model is the first murine model of inappropriately elevated social motivation in the context of normal cognition and may expand the range of autism-related behaviors replicated in animal models.
  • Tooley, K., Konopka, A. E., & Watson, D. (2014). Can intonational phrase structure be primed (like syntactic structure)? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(2), 348-363. doi:10.1037/a0034900.

    Abstract

    In 3 experiments, we investigated whether intonational phrase structure can be primed. In all experiments, participants listened to sentences in which the presence and location of intonational phrase boundaries were manipulated such that the recording included either no intonational phrase boundaries, a boundary in a structurally dispreferred location, a boundary in a preferred location, or boundaries in both locations. In Experiment 1, participants repeated the sentences to test whether they would reproduce the prosodic structure they had just heard. Experiments 2 and 3 used a prime–target paradigm to evaluate whether the intonational phrase structure heard in the prime sentence might influence that of a novel target sentence. Experiment 1 showed that participants did repeat back sentences that they had just heard with the original intonational phrase structure, yet Experiments 2 and 3 found that exposure to intonational phrase boundaries on prime trials did not influence how a novel target sentence was prosodically phrased. These results suggest that speakers may retain the intonational phrasing of a sentence, but this effect is not long-lived and does not generalize across unrelated sentences. Furthermore, these findings provide no evidence that intonational phrase structure is formulated during a planning stage that is separate from other sources of linguistic information.
  • Tosato, S., Zanoni, M., Bonetto, C., Tozzi, F., Francks, C., Ira, E., Tomassi, S., Bertani, M., Rujescu, D., Giegling, I., St Clair, D., Tansella, M., Ruggeri, M., & Muglia, P. (2014). No association between NRG1 and ErbB4 genes and psychopathological symptoms of Schizophrenia. Neuromolecular Medicine, 16, 742-751. doi:10.1007/s12017-014-8323-9.

    Abstract

    Neuregulin 1 (NRG1) and v-erb-a erythroblastic leukemia viral oncogene homolog 4 (ErbB4) have been extensively studied in schizophrenia susceptibility because of their pivotal role in key neurodevelopmental processes. One of the reasons for the inconsistencies in results could be the fact that the phenotype investigated has mostly the diagnosis of schizophrenia per se, which is widely heterogeneous, both clinically and biologically. In the present study we tested, in a large cohort of 461 schizophrenia patients recruited in Scotland, whether several SNPs in NRG1 and/or ErbB4 are associated with schizophrenia symptom dimensions as evaluated by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). We then followed up nominally significant results in a second cohort of 439 schizophrenia subjects recruited in Germany. Using linear regression, we observed two different groups of polymorphisms in NRG1 gene: one showing a nominal association with higher scores of the PANSS positive dimension and the other one with higher scores of the PANSS negative dimension. Regarding ErbB4, a small cluster located in the 5' end of the gene was detected, showing nominal association mainly with negative, general and total dimensions of the PANSS. These findings suggest that some regions of NRG1 and ErbB4 are functionally involved in biological processes that underlie some of the phenotypic manifestations of schizophrenia. Because of the lack of significant association after correction for multiple testing, our analyses should be considered as exploratory and hypothesis generating for future studies.
  • Trilsbeek, P. (2004). Report from DoBeS training week. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 12-12.
  • Trilsbeek, P. (2004). DoBeS Training Course. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(2), 6-6.
  • Tsuji, S., Bergmann, C., & Cristia, A. (2014). Community-Augmented Meta-Analyses: Toward Cumulative Data Assessment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(6), 661-665. doi:10.1177/1745691614552498.

    Abstract

    We present the concept of a community-augmented meta-analysis (CAMA), a simple yet novel tool that significantly facilitates the accumulation and evaluation of previous studies within a specific scientific field. A CAMA is a combination of a meta-analysis and an open repository. Like a meta-analysis, it is centered around a psychologically relevant topic and includes methodological details and standardized effect sizes. As in a repository, data do not remain undisclosed and static after publication but can be used and extended by the research community, as anyone can download all information and can add new data via simple forms. Based on our experiences with building three CAMAs, we illustrate the concept and explain how CAMAs can facilitate improving our research practices via the integration of past research, the accumulation of knowledge, and the documentation of file-drawer studies
  • Tsuji, S., & Cristia, A. (2014). Perceptual attunement in vowels: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychobiology, 56(2), 179-191. doi:10.1002/dev.21179.

    Abstract

    Although the majority of evidence on perceptual narrowing in speech sounds is based on consonants, most models of infant speech perception generalize these findings to vowels, assuming that vowel perception improves for vowel sounds that are present in the infant's native language within the first year of life, and deteriorates for non-native vowel sounds over the same period of time. The present meta-analysis contributes to assessing to what extent these descriptions are accurate in the first comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis of perceptual narrowing in infant vowel discrimination, including results from behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods applied to infants 0–14 months of age. An analysis of effect sizes for native and non-native vowel discrimination over the first year of life revealed that they changed with age in opposite directions, being significant by about 6 months of age
  • Tsuji, S., Nishikawa, K., & Mazuka, R. (2014). Segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns in Japanese infant- and adult-directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 41, 1276-1304. doi:10.1017/S0305000913000469.

    Abstract

    Japanese infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared on their segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns. Consistent with findings in other languages, a higher ratio of segments that are generally produced early was found in IDS compared to ADS: more labial consonants and low-central vowels, but fewer fricatives. Consonant-vowel associations also favored the early-produced labial-central, coronal-front, coronal-central, and dorsal-back patterns. On the other hand, clear language-specific patterns included a higher frequency of dorsals, affricates, geminates and moraic nasals in IDS. These segments are frequent in adult Japanese, but not in the early productions or the IDS of other studied languages. In combination with previous results, the current study suggests that both fine-tuning (an increased use of early-produced segments) and highlighting (an increased use of language-specifically relevant segments) might modify IDS on segmental level.
  • Tuinman, A., Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2014). Use of syntax in perceptual compensation for phonological reduction. Language and Speech, 57, 68-85. doi:10.1177/0023830913479106.

    Abstract

    Listeners resolve ambiguity in speech by consulting context. Extensive research on this issue has largely relied on continua of sounds constructed to vary incrementally between two phonemic endpoints. In this study we presented listeners instead with phonetic ambiguity of a kind with which they have natural experience: varying degrees of word-final /t/-reduction. In two experiments, Dutch listeners decided whether or not the verb in a sentence such as Maar zij ren(t) soms ‘But she sometimes run(s)’ ended in /t/. In Dutch, presence versus absence of final /t/ distinguishes third- from first-person singular present-tense verbs. Acoustic evidence for /t/ varied from clear to absent, and immediately preceding phonetic context was consistent with more versus less likely deletion of /t/. In both experiments, listeners reported more /t/s in sentences in which /t/ would be syntactically correct. In Experiment 1, the disambiguating syntactic information preceded the target verb, as above, while in Experiment 2, it followed the verb. The syntactic bias was greater for fast than for slow responses in Experiment 1, but no such difference appeared in Experiment 2. We conclude that syntactic information does not directly influence pre-lexical processing, but is called upon in making phoneme decisions.
  • Turco, G., Braun, B., & Dimroth, C. (2014). When contrasting polarity, the Dutch use particles, Germans intonation. Journal of Pragmatics, 62, 94-106. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2013.09.020.

    Abstract

    This study compares how Dutch and German, two closely related languages, signal a shift from a negative to a positive polarity in two contexts, when contrasting the polarity relative to a different topic situation (In my picture the man washes the car following after In my picture the man does not wash the car, henceforth polarity contrast) and when correcting the polarity of a proposition (The man washes the car following after The man does not wash the car, henceforth polarity correction). Production data show that in both contexts German speakers produced Verum focus (i.e., a high-falling pitch accent on the finite verb), while Dutch speakers mostly used the accented affirmative particle wel. This shows that even lexically and syntactically close languages behave differently when it comes to signalling certain pragmatic functions. Furthermore, we found that in polarity correction contexts, both affirmative particles and Verum focus were realized with stronger prosodic prominence. This difference was found in both languages and might be due to a secondary (syntagmatic) effect of the information structure of the utterance (absence or presence of a contrastive topic).
  • Tzekov, R., Quezada, A., Gautier, M., Biggins, D., Frances, C., Mouzon, B., Jamison, J., Mullan, M., & Crawford, F. (2014). Repetitive mild traumatic brain injury causes optic nerve and retinal damage in a mouse model. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 73(4), 345-361. doi:10.1097/NEN.0000000000000059.

    Abstract

    There is increasing evidence that long-lasting morphologic and
    functional consequences can be present in the human visual system
    after repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (r-mTBI). The exact lo-
    cation and extent of the damage in this condition are not well un-
    derstood. Using a recently developed mouse model of r-mTBI, we
    assessed the effects on the retina and optic nerve using histology and
    immunohistochemistry, electroretinography (ERG), and spectral-
    domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) at 10 and 13 weeks
    after injury. Control mice received repetitive anesthesia alone (r-sham).
    We observed decreased optic nerve diameters and increased cellularity
    and areas of demyelination in optic nerves in r-mTBI versus r-sham
    mice. There were concomitant areas of decreased cellularity in the
    retinal ganglion cell layer and approximately 67% decrease in brain-
    specific homeobox/POU domain protein 3AYpositive retinal ganglion
    cells in retinal flat mounts. Furthermore, SD-OCT demonstrated a de-
    tectable thinning of the inner retina; ERG demonstrated a decrease in
    the amplitude of the photopic negative response without any change in
    a- or b-wave amplitude or timing. Thus, the ERG and SD-OCT data
    correlated well with changes detected by morphometric, histologic,
    and immunohistochemical methods, thereby supporting the use of
    these noninvasive methods in the assessment of visual function and
    morphology in clinical cases of mTBI.
  • Van den Brink, D., & Hagoort, P. (2004). The influence of semantic and syntactic context constraints on lexical selection and integration in spoken-word comprehension as revealed by ERPs. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(6), 1068-1084. doi:10.1162/0898929041502670.

    Abstract

    An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of semantic and syntactic context constraints on lexical selection and integration in spoken-word comprehension. Subjects were presented with constraining spoken sentences that contained a critical word that was either (a) congruent, (b) semantically and syntactically incongruent, but beginning with the same initial phonemes as the congruent critical word, or (c) semantically and syntactically incongruent, beginning with phonemes that differed from the congruent critical word. Relative to the congruent condition, an N200 effect reflecting difficulty in the lexical selection process was obtained in the semantically and syntactically incongruent condition where word onset differed from that of the congruent critical word. Both incongruent conditions elicited a large N400 followed by a left anterior negativity (LAN) time-locked to the moment of word category violation and a P600 effect. These results would best fit within a cascaded model of spoken-word processing, proclaiming an optimal use of contextual information during spokenword identification by allowing for semantic and syntactic processing to take place in parallel after bottom-up activation of a set of candidates, and lexical integration to proceed with a limited number of candidates that still match the acoustic input.
  • Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., Cronin, K. A., & Haun, D. B. M. (2014). A group-specific arbitrary tradition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition, 17, 1421-1425. doi:10.1007/s10071-014-0766-8.

    Abstract

    Social learning in chimpanzees has been studied extensively and it is now widely accepted that chimpanzees have the capacity to learn from conspecifics through a multitude of mechanisms. Very few studies, however, have documented the existence of spontaneously emerged 'traditions' in chimpanzee communities. While the rigor of experimental studies is helpful to investigate social learning mechanisms, documentation of naturally occurring traditions is necessary to understand the relevance of social learning in the real lives of animals. In this study, we report on chimpanzees spontaneously copying a seemingly non-adaptive behaviour ("grass-in- ear behaviour"). The behaviour entailed chimpanzees selecting a stiff, straw-like blade of grass, inserting the grass into one of their own ears, adjusting the position, and then leaving it in their ear during subsequent activities. Using a daily focal follow procedure, over the course of one year, we observed 8 (out of 12) group members engaging in this peculiar behaviour. Importantly, in the 3 neighbouring groups of chimpanzees (n=82), this behaviour was only observed once, indicating that ecological factors were not determiners of the prevalence of this behaviour. These observations show that chimpanzees have a tendency to copy each other's behaviour, even when the adaptive value of the behaviour is presumably absent.
  • Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., & Haun, D. B. M. (2014). Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences. Animal Behaviour, 96, 187-194. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.08.004.

    Abstract

    In this review, we explore the extent to which the recent evidence for conformity in nonhuman animals may alternatively be explained by the animals' preference for social information regardless of the number of individuals demonstrating the respective behaviour. Conformity as a research topic originated in human psychology and has been described as the phenomenon in which individuals change their behaviour to match the behaviour displayed by the majority of group members. Recent studies have aimed to investigate the same process in nonhuman animals; however, most of the adopted designs have not been able to control for social influences independent of any majority influence and some studies have not even incorporated a majority in their designs. This begs the question to what extent the ‘conformity interpretation’ is preliminary and should be revisited in light of animals' general susceptibility to social influences. Similarly, demarcating social from majority influences sheds new light on the original findings in human psychology and motivates reinterpretation of the reported behavioural patterns in terms of social instead of majority influences. Conformity can have profound ramifications for individual fitness and group dynamics; identifying the exact source responsible for animals' behavioural adjustments is essential for understanding animals' learning biases and interpreting cross-species data in terms of evolutionary processes.
  • Van der Zande, P., Jesse, A., & Cutler, A. (2014). Cross-speaker generalisation in two phoneme-level perceptual adaptation processes. Journal of Phonetics, 43, 38-46. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2014.01.003.

    Abstract

    Speech perception is shaped by listeners' prior experience with speakers. Listeners retune their phonetic category boundaries after encountering ambiguous sounds in order to deal with variations between speakers. Repeated exposure to an unambiguous sound, on the other hand, leads to a decrease in sensitivity to the features of that particular sound. This study investigated whether these changes in the listeners' perceptual systems can generalise to the perception of speech from a novel speaker. Specifically, the experiments looked at whether visual information about the identity of the speaker could prevent generalisation from occurring. In Experiment 1, listeners retuned auditory category boundaries using audiovisual speech input. This shift in the category boundaries affected perception of speech from both the exposure speaker and a novel speaker. In Experiment 2, listeners were repeatedly exposed to unambiguous speech either auditorily or audiovisually, leading to a decrease in sensitivity to the features of the exposure sound. Here, too, the changes affected the perception of both the exposure speaker and the novel speaker. Together, these results indicate that changes in the perceptual system can affect the perception of speech from a novel speaker and that visual speaker identity information did not prevent this generalisation.
  • Van den Heuvel, H., Sanders, E., Klatter-Folmer, J., Van Hout, R., Fikkert, P., Baker, A., De Jong, J., Wijnen, F., & Trilsbeek, P. (2014). Data curation for a VALID archive of Dutch language impairment data. Dutch journal of applied linguistics, 3(2), 127-135. doi:10.1075/dujal.3.2.02heu.

    Abstract

    The VALID Data Archive is an open multimedia data archive in which data from children and adults with language and/or communication problems are brought together. A pilot project, funded by CLARIN-NL, was carried out in which five existing data sets were curated. This pilot enabled us to build up experience in conserving different kinds of pathological language data in a searchable and persistent manner. These data sets reflect current research in language pathology rather well, both in the range of designs and the variety in pathological problems, such as Specific Language Impairment, deafness, dyslexia, and ADHD. In this paper, we present the VALID initiative, explain the curation process and discuss the materials of the data sets.

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  • Van Alphen, P. M., De Bree, E., Gerrits, E., De Jong, J., Wilsenach, C., & Wijnen, F. (2004). Early language development in children with a genetic risk of dyslexia. Dyslexia, 10, 265-288. doi:10.1002/dys.272.

    Abstract

    We report on a prospective longitudinal research programme exploring the connection between language acquisition deficits and dyslexia. The language development profile of children at-risk for dyslexia is compared to that of age-matched controls as well as of children who have been diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). The experiments described concern the perception and production of grammatical morphology, categorical perception of speech sounds, phonological processing (non-word repetition), mispronunciation detection, and rhyme detection. The results of each of these indicate that the at-risk children as a group underperform in comparison to the controls, and that, in most cases, they approach the SLI group. It can be concluded that dyslexia most likely has precursors in language development, also in domains other than those traditionally considered conditional for the acquisition of literacy skills. The dyslexia-SLI connection awaits further, particularly qualitative, analyses.
  • Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., Chitalu Mulenga, I., & Lisensky Chidester, D. (2014). Early social deprivation negatively affects social skill acquisition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition, 17(2), 407-414. doi:10.1007/s10071-013-0672-5.

    Abstract

    In a highly social species like chimpanzees, the process by which individuals become attuned to their social environment may be of vital importance to their chances of survival. Typically, this socializing process, defined by all acquisition experiences and fine-tuning efforts of social interaction patterns during ontogeny, occurs in large part through parental investment. In this study, we investigated whether maternal presence would enhance the socializing process in chimpanzees by comparing the social interactions of orphaned and mother-reared individuals at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia. As response variables, we selected social interactions during which an elaborate level of fine-tuning is assumed to be necessary for sustaining the interaction and preventing escalation: social play. Comparing orphaned (n=8) to sex- and age-matched mother-reared juvenile chimpanzees (n=9), we hypothesized that the orphaned juveniles would play less frequently than the mother-reared and would be less equipped for fine-tuning social play (which we assayed by rates of aggression) because of the lack of a safe and facilitating social environment provided by the mother. First, contrary to our hypothesis, results showed that the orphaned juveniles engaged in social play more frequently than the mother-reared juveniles, although for significantly shorter amounts of time. Second, in support of our hypothesis, results showed that social play of the orphaned juveniles more often resulted in aggression than social play of the mother-reared juveniles. In conjunction, these results may indicate that, just like in humans, chimpanzee mothers provide their offspring with adequate social skills that might be of pivotal importance for future challenges like successful group-living and securing competitive fitness advantages.
  • Van der Goot, M. H., Tomasello, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2014). Differences in the nonverbal requests of Great Apes and human infants. Child Development, 85(2), 444-455. doi:10.1111/cdev.12141.

    Abstract

    This study investigated how great apes and human infants use imperative pointing to request objects. In a series of three experiments (infants, N = 44; apes, N = 12), subjects were given the opportunity to either point to a desired object from a distance or else to approach closer and request it proximally. The apes always approached close to the object, signaling their request through instrumental actions. In contrast, the infants quite often stayed at a distance, directing the experimenters' attention to the desired object through index-finger pointing, even when the object was in the open and they could obtain it by themselves. Findings distinguish 12-month-olds' imperative pointing from ontogenetic and phylogenetic earlier forms of ritualized reaching.
  • Van Schouwenburg, M. R., Onnink, A. M. H., Ter Huurne, N., Kan, C. C., Zwiers, M. P., Hoogman, M., Franke, B., Buitelaar, J. K., & Cools, R. (2014). Cognitive flexibility depends on white matter microstructure of the basal ganglia. Neuropsychologia, 53, 171-177. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.11.015.

    Abstract

    Ample evidence shows that the basal ganglia play an important role in cognitive flexibility. However, traditionally, cognitive processes have most commonly been associated with the prefrontal cortex. Indeed, current theoretical models of basal ganglia function suggest the basal ganglia interact with the prefrontal cortex and thalamus, via anatomical fronto-striato-thalamic circuits, to implement cognitive flexibility. Here we aimed to assess this hypothesis in humans by associating individual differences in cognitive flexibility with white matter microstructure of the basal ganglia. To this end we employed an attention switching paradigm in adults with ADHD and controls, leading to a broad range in task performance. Attention switching performance could be predicted based on individual differences in white matter microstructure in/around the basal ganglia. Crucially, local white matter showing this association projected to regions in the prefrontal cortex and thalamus. Our findings highlight the crucial role of the basal ganglia and the fronto-striato-thalamic circuit for cognitive flexibility.
  • Van Alphen, P. M., & Smits, R. (2004). Acoustical and perceptual analysis of the voicing distinction in Dutch initial plosives: The role of prevoicing. Journal of Phonetics, 32(4), 455-491. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2004.05.001.

    Abstract

    Three experiments investigated the voicing distinction in Dutch initial labial and alveolar plosives. The difference between voiced and voiceless Dutch plosives is generally described in terms of the presence or absence of prevoicing (negative voice onset time). Experiment 1 showed, however, that prevoicing was absent in 25% of voiced plosive productions across 10 speakers. The production of prevoicing was influenced by place of articulation of the plosive, by whether the plosive occurred in a consonant cluster or not, and by speaker sex. Experiment 2 was a detailed acoustic analysis of the voicing distinction, which identified several acoustic correlates of voicing. Prevoicing appeared to be by far the best predictor. Perceptual classification data revealed that prevoicing was indeed the strongest cue that listeners use when classifying plosives as voiced or voiceless. In the cases where prevoicing was absent, other acoustic cues influenced classification, such that some of these tokens were still perceived as being voiced. These secondary cues were different for the two places of articulation. We discuss the paradox raised by these findings: although prevoicing is the most reliable cue to the voicing distinction for listeners, it is not reliably produced by speakers.
  • Van Goch, M., McQueen, J. M., & Verhoeven, L. (2014). Learning phonologically specific new words fosters rhyme awareness in Dutch preliterate children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(3), 155-172. doi:10.1080/10888438.2013.827199.

    Abstract

    How do children use phonological knowledge about spoken language in acquiring literacy? Phonological precursors of literacy include phonological awareness, speech decoding skill, and lexical specificity (i.e., the richness of phonological representations in the mental lexicon). An intervention study investigated whether early literacy skills can be enhanced by training lexical specificity. Forty-two prereading 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to either an experimental group that was taught pairs of new words that differed minimally or a control group that received numeracy training. The experimental group gained on a rhyme awareness task, suggesting that learning phonologically specific new words fosters phonological awareness.
  • Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., Call, J., & Haun, D. (2014). Human children rely more on social information than chimpanzees do. Biology Letters, 10(11): 20140487. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0487.

    Abstract

    Human societies are characterized by more cultural diversity than chimpanzee communities. However, it is currently unclear what mechanism might be driving this difference. Because reliance on social information is a pivotal characteristic of culture, we investigated individual and social information reliance in children and chimpanzees. We repeatedly presented subjects with a reward-retrieval task on which they had collected conflicting individual and social information of equal accuracy in counterbalanced order. While both species relied mostly on their individual information, children but not chimpanzees searched for the reward at the socially demonstrated location more than at a random location. Moreover, only children used social information adaptively when individual knowledge on the location of the reward had not yet been obtained. Social information usage determines information transmission and in conjunction with mechanisms that create cultural variants, such as innovation, it facilitates diversity. Our results may help explain why humans are more culturally diversified than chimpanzees

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  • Van de Velde, M., Meyer, A. S., & Konopka, A. E. (2014). Message formulation and structural assembly: Describing "easy" and "hard" events with preferred and dispreferred syntactic structures. Journal of Memory and Language, 71(1), 124-144. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.11.001.

    Abstract

    When formulating simple sentences to describe pictured events, speakers look at the referents they are describing in the order of mention. Accounts of incrementality in sentence production rely heavily on analyses of this gaze-speech link. To identify systematic sources of variability in message and sentence formulation, two experiments evaluated differences in formulation for sentences describing “easy” and “hard” events (more codable and less codable events) with preferred and dispreferred structures (actives and passives). Experiment 1 employed a subliminal cuing manipulation and a cumulative priming manipulation to increase production of passive sentences. Experiment 2 examined the influence of event codability on formulation without a cuing manipulation. In both experiments, speakers showed an early preference for looking at the agent of the event when constructing active sentences. This preference was attenuated by event codability, suggesting that speakers were less likely to prioritize encoding of a single character at the outset of formulation in “easy” events than in “harder” events. Accessibility of the agent influenced formulation primarily when an event was “harder” to describe. Formulation of passive sentences in Experiment 1 also began with early fixations to the agent but changed with exposure to passive syntax: speakers were more likely to consider the patient as a suitable sentential starting point after cumulative priming. The results show that the message-to-language mapping in production can vary with the ease of encoding an event structure and of generating a suitable linguistic structure.

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