Publications

Displaying 101 - 200 of 420
  • Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Höhle, B. (2019). Thematic role assignment in the L1 acquisition of Tagalog: Use of word order and morphosyntactic markers. Language Acquisition, 26(3), 235-261. doi:10.1080/10489223.2018.1525613.

    Abstract

    It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the frequency account, the Competition Model, and the incremental processing account. Study 1 presents an analysis of Tagalog child-directed speech, which showed that the dominant argument order is agent-before-patient and that morphosyntactic markers are highly valid cues to thematic role assignment. In Study 2, we used a combined self-paced listening and picture verification task to test how Tagalog-speaking adults and 5- and 7-year-old children process reversible transitive sentences. Results showed that adults performed well in all conditions, while children’s accuracy and listening times for the first noun phrase indicated more difficulty in interpreting patient-initial sentences in the agent voice compared to the patient voice. The patient voice advantage is partly explained by both the frequency account and incremental processing account.
  • Gehrig, J., Michalareas, G., Forster, M.-T., Lei, J., Hok, P., Laufs, H., Senft, C., Seifert, V., Schoffelen, J.-M., Hanslmayr, H., & Kell, C. A. (2019). Low-frequency oscillations code speech during verbal working memory. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(33), 6498-6512. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0018-19.2019.

    Abstract

    The way the human brain represents speech in memory is still unknown. An obvious characteristic of speech is its evolvement over time.
    During speech processing, neural oscillations are modulated by the temporal properties of the acoustic speech signal, but also acquired
    knowledge on the temporal structure of language influences speech perception-related brain activity. This suggests that speech could be
    represented in the temporal domain, a form of representation that the brain also uses to encode autobiographic memories. Empirical
    evidence for such a memory code is lacking. We investigated the nature of speech memory representations using direct cortical recordings
    in the left perisylvian cortex during delayed sentence reproduction in female and male patients undergoing awake tumor surgery.
    Our results reveal that the brain endogenously represents speech in the temporal domain. Temporal pattern similarity analyses revealed
    that the phase of frontotemporal low-frequency oscillations, primarily in the beta range, represents sentence identity in working memory.
    The positive relationship between beta power during working memory and task performance suggests that working memory
    representations benefit from increased phase separation.
  • Ghatan, P. H., Hsieh, J. C., Petersson, K. M., Stone-Elander, S., & Ingvar, M. (1998). Coexistence of attention-based facilitation and inhibition in the human cortex. NeuroImage, 7, 23-29.

    Abstract

    A key function of attention is to select an appropriate subset of available information by facilitation of attended processes and/or inhibition of irrelevant processing. Functional imaging studies, using positron emission tomography, have during different experimental tasks revealed decreased neuronal activity in areas that process input from unattended sensory modalities. It has been hypothesized that these decreases reflect a selective inhibitory modulation of nonrelevant cortical processing. In this study we addressed this question using a continuous arithmetical task with and without concomitant disturbing auditory input (task-irrelevant speech). During the arithmetical task, irrelevant speech did not affect task-performance but yielded decreased activity in the auditory and midcingulate cortices and increased activity in the left posterior parietal cortex. This pattern of modulation is consistent with a top down inhibitory modulation of a nonattended input to the auditory cortex and a coexisting, attention-based facilitation of taskrelevant processing in higher order cortices. These findings suggest that task-related decreases in cortical activity may be of functional importance in the understanding of both attentional mechanisms and taskrelated information processing.
  • Gialluisi, A., Andlauer, T. F. M., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moll, K., Becker, J., Hoffmann, P., Ludwig, K. U., Czamara, D., St Pourcain, B., Brandler, W., Honbolygó, F., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Huguet, G., Morris, A. P., Hulslander, J., Willcutt, E. G., DeFries, J. C., Olson, R. K., Smith, S. D. and 25 moreGialluisi, A., Andlauer, T. F. M., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moll, K., Becker, J., Hoffmann, P., Ludwig, K. U., Czamara, D., St Pourcain, B., Brandler, W., Honbolygó, F., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Huguet, G., Morris, A. P., Hulslander, J., Willcutt, E. G., DeFries, J. C., Olson, R. K., Smith, S. D., Pennington, B. F., Vaessen, A., Maurer, U., Lyytinen, H., Peyrard-Janvid, M., Leppänen, P. H. T., Brandeis, D., Bonte, M., Stein, J. F., Talcott, J. B., Fauchereau, F., Wilcke, A., Francks, C., Bourgeron, T., Monaco, A. P., Ramus, F., Landerl, K., Kere, J., Scerri, T. S., Paracchini, S., Fisher, S. E., Schumacher, J., Nöthen, M. M., Müller-Myhsok, B., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2019). Genome-wide association scan identifies new variants associated with a cognitive predictor of dyslexia. Translational Psychiatry, 9(1): 77. doi:10.1038/s41398-019-0402-0.

    Abstract

    Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders, with high impact on school and psychosocial development and high comorbidity with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety. DD is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including word reading, spelling, rapid naming, and phonology. To investigate the genetic basis of DD, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of these skills within one of the largest studies available, including nine cohorts of reading-impaired and typically developing children of European ancestry (N = 2562–3468). We observed a genome-wide significant effect (p < 1 × 10−8) on rapid automatized naming of letters (RANlet) for variants on 18q12.2, within MIR924HG (micro-RNA 924 host gene; rs17663182 p = 4.73 × 10−9), and a suggestive association on 8q12.3 within NKAIN3 (encoding a cation transporter; rs16928927, p = 2.25 × 10−8). rs17663182 (18q12.2) also showed genome-wide significant multivariate associations with RAN measures (p = 1.15 × 10−8) and with all the cognitive traits tested (p = 3.07 × 10−8), suggesting (relational) pleiotropic effects of this variant. A polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis revealed significant genetic overlaps of some of the DD-related traits with educational attainment (EDUyears) and ADHD. Reading and spelling abilities were positively associated with EDUyears (p ~ [10−5–10−7]) and negatively associated with ADHD PRS (p ~ [10−8−10−17]). This corroborates a long-standing hypothesis on the partly shared genetic etiology of DD and ADHD, at the genome-wide level. Our findings suggest new candidate DD susceptibility genes and provide new insights into the genetics of dyslexia and its comorbities.
  • Glock, P., Raum, B., Heermann, T., Kretschmer, S., Schweizer, J., Mücksch, J., Alagöz, G., & Schwille, P. (2019). Stationary patterns in a two-protein reaction-diffusion system. ACS Synthetic Biology, 8(1), 148-157. doi:10.1021/acssynbio.8b00415.

    Abstract

    Patterns formed by reaction-diffusion mechanisms are crucial for the development or sustenance of most organisms in nature. Patterns include dynamic waves, but are more often found as static distributions, such as animal skin patterns. Yet, a simplistic biological model system to reproduce and quantitatively investigate static reaction-diffusion patterns has been missing so far. Here, we demonstrate that the Escherichia coli MM system, known for its oscillatory behavior between the cell poles, is under certain conditions capable of transitioning to quasi-stationary protein distributions on membranes closely resembling Turing patterns. We systematically titrated both proteins, MinD and MinE, and found that removing all purification tags and linkers from the N-terminus of MinE was critical for static patterns to occur. At small bulk heights, dynamic patterns dominate, such as in rod-shaped microcompartments. We see implications of this work for studying pattern formation in general, but also for creating artificial gradients as downstream cues in synthetic biology applications.
  • Goldrick, M., McClain, R., Cibelli, E., Adi, Y., Gustafson, E., Moers, C., & Keshet, J. (2019). The influence of lexical selection disruptions on articulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(6), 1107-1141. doi:10.1037/xlm0000633.

    Abstract

    Interactive models of language production predict that it should be possible to observe long-distance interactions; effects that arise at one level of processing influence multiple subsequent stages of representation and processing. We examine the hypothesis that disruptions arising in nonform-based levels of planning—specifically, lexical selection—should modulate articulatory processing. A novel automatic phonetic analysis method was used to examine productions in a paradigm yielding both general disruptions to formulation processes and, more specifically, overt errors during lexical selection. This analysis method allowed us to examine articulatory disruptions at multiple levels of analysis, from whole words to individual segments. Baseline performance by young adults was contrasted with young speakers’ performance under time pressure (which previous work has argued increases interaction between planning and articulation) and performance by older adults (who may have difficulties inhibiting nontarget representations, leading to heightened interactive effects). The results revealed the presence of interactive effects. Our new analysis techniques revealed these effects were strongest in initial portions of responses, suggesting that speech is initiated as soon as the first segment has been planned. Interactive effects did not increase under response pressure, suggesting interaction between planning and articulation is relatively fixed. Unexpectedly, lexical selection disruptions appeared to yield some degree of facilitation in articulatory processing (possibly reflecting semantic facilitation of target retrieval) and older adults showed weaker, not stronger interactive effects (possibly reflecting weakened connections between lexical and form-level representations).
  • Goncharova, M. V., & Klenova, A. V. (2019). Siberian crane chick calls reflect their thermal state. Bioacoustics, 28, 115-128. doi:10.1080/09524622.2017.1399827.

    Abstract

    Chicks can convey information about their needs with calls. But it is still unknown if there are any universal need indicators in chick vocalizations. Previous studies have shown that in some species vocal activity and/or temporal-frequency variables of calls are related to the chick state, whereas other studies did not confirm it. Here, we tested experimentally whether vocal activity and temporal-frequency variables of calls change with cooling. We studied 10 human-raised
    Siberian crane (Grus leucogeranus) chicks at 3–15 days of age. We found that the cooled chicks produced calls higher in fundamental
    frequency and power variables, longer in duration and at a higher calling rate than in the control chicks. However, we did not find
    significant changes in level of entropy and occurrence of non-linear phenomena in chick calls recorded during the experimental cooling. We suggest that the level of vocal activity is a universal indicator of need for warmth in precocial and semi-precocial birds (e.g. cranes), but not in altricial ones. We also assume that coding of needs via temporal-frequency variables of calls is typical in species whose adults could not confuse their chicks with other chicks. Siberian cranes stay on separate territories during their breeding season, so parents do not need to check individuality of their offspring in the home area. In this case, all call characteristics are available for other purposes and serve to communicate chicks’ vital needs.
  • Grey, S., Schubel, L. C., McQueen, J. M., & Van Hell, J. G. (2019). Processing foreign-accented speech in a second language: Evidence from ERPs during sentence comprehension in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(5), 912-929. doi:10.1017/S1366728918000937.

    Abstract

    This study examined electrophysiological correlates of sentence comprehension of native-accented and foreign-accented
    speech in a second language (L2), for sentences produced in a foreign accent different from that associated with the listeners’
    L1. Bilingual speaker-listeners process different accents in their L2 conversations, but the effects on real-time L2 sentence
    comprehension are unknown. Dutch–English bilinguals listened to native American-English accented sentences and foreign
    (and for them unfamiliarly-accented) Chinese-English accented sentences while EEG was recorded. Behavioral sentence
    comprehension was highly accurate for both native-accented and foreign-accented sentences. ERPs showed different patterns
    for L2 grammar and semantic processing of native- and foreign-accented speech. For grammar, only native-accented speech
    elicited an Nref. For semantics, both native- and foreign-accented speech elicited an N400 effect, but with a delayed onset
    across both accent conditions. These findings suggest that the way listeners comprehend native- and foreign-accented
    sentences in their L2 depends on their familiarity with the accent.
  • Grove, J., Ripke, S., Als, T. D., Mattheisen, M., Walters, R., Won, H., Pallesen, J., Agerbo, E., Andreassen, O. A., Anney, R., Belliveau, R., Bettella, F., Buxbaum, J. D., Bybjerg-Grauholm, J., Bækved-Hansen, M., Cerrato, F., Chambert, K., Christensen, J. H., Churchhouse, C., Dellenvall, K. and 55 moreGrove, J., Ripke, S., Als, T. D., Mattheisen, M., Walters, R., Won, H., Pallesen, J., Agerbo, E., Andreassen, O. A., Anney, R., Belliveau, R., Bettella, F., Buxbaum, J. D., Bybjerg-Grauholm, J., Bækved-Hansen, M., Cerrato, F., Chambert, K., Christensen, J. H., Churchhouse, C., Dellenvall, K., Demontis, D., De Rubeis, S., Devlin, B., Djurovic, S., Dumont, A., Goldstein, J., Hansen, C. S., Hauberg, M. E., Hollegaard, M. V., Hope, S., Howrigan, D. P., Huang, H., Hultman, C., Klei, L., Maller, J., Martin, J., Martin, A. R., Moran, J., Nyegaard, M., Nærland, T., Palmer, D. S., Palotie, A., Pedersen, C. B., Pedersen, M. G., Poterba, T., Poulsen, J. B., St Pourcain, B., Qvist, P., Rehnström, K., Reichenberg, A., Reichert, J., Robinson, E. B., Roeder, K., Roussos, P., Saemundsen, E., Sandin, S., Satterstrom, F. K., Smith, G. D., Stefansson, H., Stefansson, K., Steinberg, S., Stevens, C., Sullivan, P. F., Turley, P., Walters, G. B., Xu, X., Autism Spectrum Disorders Working Group of The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, BUPGEN, Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Me Research Team, Geschwind, D., Nordentoft, M., Hougaard, D. M., Werge, T., Mors, O., Mortensen, P. B., Neale, B. M., Daly, M. J., & Børglum, A. D. (2019). Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder. Nature Genetics, 51, 431-444. doi:10.1038/s41588-019-0344-8.

    Abstract

    Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable and heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental phenotypes diagnosed in more than 1% of children. Common genetic variants contribute substantially to ASD susceptibility, but to date no individual variants have been robustly associated with ASD. With a marked sample-size increase from a unique Danish population resource, we report a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 18,381 individuals with ASD and 27,969 controls that identified five genome-wide-significant loci. Leveraging GWAS results from three phenotypes with significantly overlapping genetic architectures (schizophrenia, major depression, and educational attainment), we identified seven additional loci shared with other traits at equally strict significance levels. Dissecting the polygenic architecture, we found both quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes. These results highlight biological insights, particularly relating to neuronal function and corticogenesis, and establish that GWAS performed at scale will be much more productive in the near term in ASD.

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    Supplementary Text and Figures
  • Guest, O., Kanayet, F. J., & Love, B. C. (2019). Gerrymandering and computational redistricting. Journal of Computational Social Science, 2, 119-131. doi:10.1007/s42001-019-00053-9.

    Abstract

    Partisan gerrymandering poses a threat to democracy. Moreover, the complexity of the districting task may exceed human capacities. One potential solution is using computational models to automate the districting process by optimizing objective and open criteria, such as how spatially compact districts are. We formulated one such model that minimised pairwise distance between voters within a district. Using US Census Bureau data, we confirmed our prediction that the difference in compactness between the computed and actual districts would be greatest for states that are large and, therefore, difficult for humans to properly district given their limited capacities. The computed solutions highlighted differences in how humans and machines solve this task with machine solutions more fully optimised and displaying emergent properties not evident in human solutions. These results suggest a division of labour in which humans debate and formulate districting criteria whereas machines optimise the criteria to draw the district boundaries. We discuss how criteria can be expanded beyond notions of compactness to include other factors, such as respecting municipal boundaries, historic communities, and relevant legislation.
  • Gumperz, J. J., & Levinson, S. C. (1991). Rethinking linguistic relativity. Current Anthropology, 32(5), 613-623. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743696.
  • Gunz, P., Tilot, A. K., Wittfeld, K., Teumer, A., Shapland, C. Y., Van Erp, T. G. M., Dannemann, M., Vernot, B., Neubauer, S., Guadalupe, T., Fernandez, G., Brunner, H., Enard, W., Fallon, J., Hosten, N., Völker, U., Profico, A., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Kelso, J. and 7 moreGunz, P., Tilot, A. K., Wittfeld, K., Teumer, A., Shapland, C. Y., Van Erp, T. G. M., Dannemann, M., Vernot, B., Neubauer, S., Guadalupe, T., Fernandez, G., Brunner, H., Enard, W., Fallon, J., Hosten, N., Völker, U., Profico, A., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Kelso, J., St Pourcain, B., Hublin, J.-J., Franke, B., Pääbo, S., Macciardi, F., Grabe, H. J., & Fisher, S. E. (2019). Neandertal introgression sheds light on modern human endocranial globularity. Current Biology, 29(1), 120-127. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.065.

    Abstract

    One of the features that distinguishes modern humans from our extinct relatives
    and ancestors is a globular shape of the braincase [1-4]. As the endocranium
    closely mirrors the outer shape of the brain, these differences might reflect
    altered neural architecture [4,5]. However, in the absence of fossil brain tissue the
    underlying neuroanatomical changes as well as their genetic bases remain
    elusive. To better understand the biological foundations of modern human
    endocranial shape, we turn to our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals.
    Interbreeding between modern humans and Neandertals has resulted in
    introgressed fragments of Neandertal DNA in the genomes of present-day non-
    Africans [6,7]. Based on shape analyses of fossil skull endocasts, we derive a
    measure of endocranial globularity from structural magnetic resonance imaging
    (MRI) scans of thousands of modern humans, and study the effects of
    introgressed fragments of Neandertal DNA on this phenotype. We find that
    Neandertal alleles on chromosomes 1 and 18 are associated with reduced
    endocranial globularity. These alleles influence expression of two nearby genes,
    UBR4 and PHLPP1, which are involved in neurogenesis and myelination,
    respectively. Our findings show how integration of fossil skull data with archaic
    genomics and neuroimaging can suggest developmental mechanisms that may
    contribute to the unique modern human endocranial shape.

    Additional information

    mmc1.pdf mmc2.xlsx
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). De electrofysiologie van taal: Wat hersenpotentialen vertellen over het menselijk taalvermogen. Neuropraxis, 2, 223-229.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). De spreker als sprinter. Psychologie, 17, 48-49.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). Hersenen en taal in onderzoek en praktijk. Neuropraxis, 6, 204-205.
  • Hagoort, P. (1989). Processing of lexical ambiguities: a comment on Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987). Brain and Language, 36, 335-348. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(89)90070-9.

    Abstract

    In a study by Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987), normal control subjects and Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics performed a lexical decision task on the third element of auditorily presented triplets of words with either a word or a nonword as target. In three of the four types of word triplets, the first and the third words were related to one or both meanings of the second word, which was semantically ambiguous. The fourth type of word triplet consisted of three unrelated, unambiguous words, functioning as baseline. Milberg et al. (1987) claim that the results for their control subjects are similar to those reported by Schvaneveldt, Meyer, and Becker's original study (1976) with the same prime types, and so interpret these as evidence for a selective lexical access of the different meanings of ambiguous words. It is argued here that Milberg et al. only partially replicate the Schvaneveldt et al. results. Moreover, the results of Milberg et al. are not fully in line with the selective access hypothesis adopted. Replication of the Milberg et al. (1987) study with Dutch materials, using both a design without and a design with repetition of the same target words for the same subjects led to the original pattern as reported by Schvaneveldt et al. (1976). In the design with four separate presentations of the same target word, a strong repetition effect was found. It is therefore argued that the discrepancy between the Milberg et al. results on the one hand, and the Schvaneveldt et al. results on the other, might be due to the absence of a control for repetition effects in the within-subject design used by Milberg et al. It is concluded that this makes the results for both normal and aphasic subjects in the latter study difficult to interpret in terms of a selective access model for normal processing.
  • Hagoort, P. (2019). The meaning making mechanism(s) behind the eyes and between the ears. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 375: 20190301. doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0301.

    Abstract

    In this contribution, the following four questions are discussed: (i) where is meaning?; (ii) what is meaning?; (iii) what is the meaning of mechanism?; (iv) what are the mechanisms of meaning? I will argue that meanings are in the head. Meanings have multiple facets, but minimally one needs to make a distinction between single word meanings (lexical meaning) and the meanings of multi-word utterances. The latter ones cannot be retrieved from memory, but need to be constructed on the fly. A mechanistic account of the meaning-making mind requires an analysis at both a functional and a neural level, the reason being that these levels are causally interdependent. I will show that an analysis exclusively focusing on patterns of brain activation lacks explanatory power. Finally, I shall present an initial sketch of how the dynamic interaction between temporo-parietal areas and inferior frontal cortex might instantiate the interpretation of linguistic utterances in the context of a multimodal setting and ongoing discourse information.
  • Hagoort, P. (2019). The neurobiology of language beyond single word processing. Science, 366(6461), 55-58. doi:10.1126/science.aax0289.

    Abstract

    In this Review, I propose a multiple-network view for the neurobiological basis of distinctly human language skills. A much more complex picture of interacting brain areas emerges than in the classical neurobiological model of language. This is because using language is more than single-word processing, and much goes on beyond the information given in the acoustic or orthographic tokens that enter primary sensory cortices. This requires the involvement of multiple networks with functionally nonoverlapping contributions

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  • Han, J.-I., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2019). Spoken-word production in Korean: A non-word masked priming and phonological Stroop task investigation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(4), 901-912. doi:10.1177/1747021818770989.

    Abstract

    Speech production studies have shown that phonological unit initially used to fill the metrical frame during phonological encoding is language specific, that is, a phoneme for English and Dutch, an atonal syllable for Mandarin Chinese, and a mora for Japanese. However, only a few studies chronometrically investigated speech production in Korean, and they obtained mixed results. Korean is particularly interesting as there might be both phonemic and syllabic influences during phonological encoding. The purpose of this study is to further examine the initial phonological preparation unit in Korean, employing a masked priming task (Experiment 1) and a phonological Stroop task (Experiment 2). The results showed that significant onset (and onset-plus, that is, consonant-vowel [CV]) effects were found in both experiments, but there was no compelling evidence for a prominent role for the syllable. When the prime words were presented in three different forms related to the targets, namely, without any change, with re-syllabified codas, and with nasalised codas, there were no significant differences in facilitation among the three forms. Alternatively, it is also possible that participants may not have had sufficient time to process the primes up to the point that re-syllabification or nasalisation could have been carried out. In addition, the results of a Stroop task demonstrated that the onset phoneme effect was not driven by any orthographic influence. These findings suggest that the onset segment and not the syllable is the initial (or proximate) phonological unit used in the segment-to-frame encoding process during speech planning in Korean.

    Additional information

    stimuli for experiment 1 and 2
  • Harmon, Z., Idemaru, K., & Kapatsinski, V. (2019). Learning mechanisms in cue reweighting. Cognition, 189, 76-88. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.03.011.

    Abstract

    Feedback has been shown to be effective in shifting attention across perceptual cues to a phonological contrast in speech perception (Francis, Baldwin & Nusbaum, 2000). However, the learning mechanisms behind this process remain obscure. We compare the predictions of supervised error-driven learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) and reinforcement learning (Sutton & Barto, 1998) using computational simulations. Supervised learning predicts downweighting of an informative cue when the learner receives evidence that it is no longer informative. In contrast, reinforcement learning suggests that a reduction in cue weight requires positive evidence for the informativeness of an alternative cue. Experimental evidence supports the latter prediction, implicating reinforcement learning as the mechanism behind the effect of feedback on cue weighting in speech perception. Native English listeners were exposed to either bimodal or unimodal VOT distributions spanning the unaspirated/aspirated boundary (bear/pear). VOT is the primary cue to initial stop voicing in English. However, lexical feedback in training indicated that VOT was no longer predictive of voicing. Reduction in the weight of VOT was observed only when participants could use an alternative cue, F0, to predict voicing. Frequency distributions had no effect on learning. Overall, the results suggest that attention shifting in learning the phonetic cues to phonological categories is accomplished using simple reinforcement learning principles that also guide the choice of actions in other domains.
  • Harneit, A., Braun, U., Geiger, L. S., Zang, Z., Hakobjan, M., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Schweiger, J. I., Schwarz, K., Gan, G., Erk, S., Heinz, A., Romanczuk‐Seiferth, N., Witt, S., Rietschel, M., Walter, H., Franke, B., Meyer‐Lindenberg, A., & Tost, H. (2019). MAOA-VNTR genotype affects structural and functional connectivity in distributed brain networks. Human Brain Mapping, 40(18), 5202-5212. doi:10.1002/hbm.24766.

    Abstract

    Previous studies have linked the low expression variant of a variable number of tandem repeat polymorphism in the monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA‐L) to the risk for impulsivity and aggression, brain developmental abnormalities, altered cortico‐limbic circuit function, and an exaggerated neural serotonergic tone. However, the neurobiological effects of this variant on human brain network architecture are incompletely understood. We studied healthy individuals and used multimodal neuroimaging (sample size range: 219–284 across modalities) and network‐based statistics (NBS) to probe the specificity of MAOA‐L‐related connectomic alterations to cortical‐limbic circuits and the emotion processing domain. We assessed the spatial distribution of affected links across several neuroimaging tasks and data modalities to identify potential alterations in network architecture. Our results revealed a distributed network of node links with a significantly increased connectivity in MAOA‐L carriers compared to the carriers of the high expression (H) variant. The hyperconnectivity phenotype primarily consisted of between‐lobe (“anisocoupled”) network links and showed a pronounced involvement of frontal‐temporal connections. Hyperconnectivity was observed across functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of implicit emotion processing (pFWE = .037), resting‐state fMRI (pFWE = .022), and diffusion tensor imaging (pFWE = .044) data, while no effects were seen in fMRI data of another cognitive domain, that is, spatial working memory (pFWE = .540). These observations are in line with prior research on the MAOA‐L variant and complement these existing data by novel insights into the specificity and spatial distribution of the neurogenetic effects. Our work highlights the value of multimodal network connectomic approaches for imaging genetics.
  • Haworth, S., Shapland, C. Y., Hayward, C., Prins, B. P., Felix, J. F., Medina-Gomez, C., Rivadeneira, F., Wang, C., Ahluwalia, T. S., Vrijheid, M., Guxens, M., Sunyer, J., Tachmazidou, I., Walter, K., Iotchkova, V., Jackson, A., Cleal, L., Huffmann, J., Min, J. L., Sass, L. and 15 moreHaworth, S., Shapland, C. Y., Hayward, C., Prins, B. P., Felix, J. F., Medina-Gomez, C., Rivadeneira, F., Wang, C., Ahluwalia, T. S., Vrijheid, M., Guxens, M., Sunyer, J., Tachmazidou, I., Walter, K., Iotchkova, V., Jackson, A., Cleal, L., Huffmann, J., Min, J. L., Sass, L., Timmers, P. R. H. J., UK10K consortium, Davey Smith, G., Fisher, S. E., Wilson, J. F., Cole, T. J., Fernandez-Orth, D., Bønnelykke, K., Bisgaard, H., Pennell, C. E., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Dedoussis, G., Timpson, N. J., Zeggini, E., Vitart, V., & St Pourcain, B. (2019). Low-frequency variation in TP53 has large effects on head circumference and intracranial volume. Nature Communications, 10: 357. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07863-x.

    Abstract

    Cranial growth and development is a complex process which affects the closely related traits of head circumference (HC) and intracranial volume (ICV). The underlying genetic influences affecting these traits during the transition from childhood to adulthood are little understood, but might include both age-specific genetic influences and low-frequency genetic variation. To understand these influences, we model the developmental genetic architecture of HC, showing this is genetically stable and correlated with genetic determinants of ICV. Investigating up to 46,000 children and adults of European descent, we identify association with final HC and/or final ICV+HC at 9 novel common and low-frequency loci, illustrating that genetic variation from a wide allele frequency spectrum contributes to cranial growth. The largest effects are reported for low-frequency variants within TP53, with 0.5 cm wider heads in increaser-allele carriers versus non-carriers during mid-childhood, suggesting a previously unrecognized role of TP53 transcripts in human cranial development.

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  • Hervais-Adelman, A., Kumar, U., Mishra, R. K., Tripathi, V. N., Guleria, A., Singh, J. P., Eisner, F., & Huettig, F. (2019). Learning to read recycles visual cortical networks without destruction. Science Advances, 5(9): eaax0262. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax0262.

    Abstract

    Learning to read is associated with the appearance of an orthographically sensitive brain region known as the visual word form area. It has been claimed that development of this area proceeds by impinging upon territory otherwise available for the processing of culturally relevant stimuli such as faces and houses. In a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging study of a group of individuals of varying degrees of literacy (from completely illiterate to highly literate), we examined cortical responses to orthographic and nonorthographic visual stimuli. We found that literacy enhances responses to other visual input in early visual areas and enhances representational similarity between text and faces, without reducing the extent of response to nonorthographic input. Thus, acquisition of literacy in childhood recycles existing object representation mechanisms but without destructive competition.

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    aax0262_SM.pdf
  • Heyselaar, E., & Segaert, K. (2019). Memory encoding of syntactic information involves domain-general attentional resources. Evidence from dual-task studies. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(6), 1285-1296. doi:10.1177/1747021818801249.

    Abstract

    We investigate the type of attention (domain-general or language-specific) used during
    syntactic processing. We focus on syntactic priming: In this task, participants listen to a
    sentence that describes a picture (prime sentence), followed by a picture the participants need
    to describe (target sentence). We measure the proportion of times participants use the
    syntactic structure they heard in the prime sentence to describe the current target sentence as a
    measure of syntactic processing. Participants simultaneously conducted a motion-object
    tracking (MOT) task, a task commonly used to tax domain-general attentional resources. We
    manipulated the number of objects the participant had to track; we thus measured
    participants’ ability to process syntax while their attention is not-, slightly-, or overly-taxed.
    Performance in the MOT task was significantly worse when conducted as a dual-task
    compared to as a single task. We observed an inverted U-shaped curve on priming magnitude
    when conducting the MOT task concurrently with prime sentences (i.e., memory encoding),
    but no effect when conducted with target sentences (i.e., memory retrieval). Our results
    illustrate how, during the encoding of syntactic information, domain-general attention
    differentially affects syntactic processing, whereas during the retrieval of syntactic
    information domain-general attention does not influence syntactic processing
  • Hoedemaker, R. S., & Meyer, A. S. (2019). Planning and coordination of utterances in a joint naming task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(4), 732-752. doi:10.1037/xlm0000603.

    Abstract

    Dialogue requires speakers to coordinate. According to the model of dialogue as joint action, interlocutors achieve this coordination by corepresenting their own and each other’s task share in a functionally equivalent manner. In two experiments, we investigated this corepresentation account using an interactive joint naming task in which pairs of participants took turns naming sets of objects on a shared display. Speaker A named the first, or the first and third object, and Speaker B named the second object. In control conditions, Speaker A named one, two, or all three objects and Speaker B remained silent. We recorded the timing of the speakers’ utterances and Speaker A’s eye movements. Interturn pause durations indicated that the speakers effectively coordinated their utterances in time. Speaker A’s speech onset latencies depended on the number of objects they named, but were unaffected by Speaker B’s naming task. This suggests speakers were not fully incorporating their partner’s task into their own speech planning. Moreover, Speaker A’s eye movements indicated that they were much less likely to attend to objects their partner named than to objects they named themselves. When speakers did inspect their partner’s objects, viewing times were too short to suggest that speakers were retrieving these object names as if they were planning to name the objects themselves. These results indicate that speakers prioritized planning their own responses over attending to their interlocutor’s task and suggest that effective coordination can be achieved without full corepresentation of the partner’s task.
  • Holler, J., & Levinson, S. C. (2019). Multimodal language processing in human communication. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(8), 639-652. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.006.

    Abstract

    Multiple layers of visual (and vocal) signals, plus their different onsets and offsets, represent a significant semantic and temporal binding problem during face-to-face conversation.
    Despite this complex unification process, multimodal messages appear to be processed faster than unimodal messages.

    Multimodal gestalt recognition and multilevel prediction are proposed to play a crucial role in facilitating multimodal language processing.

    The basis of the processing mechanisms involved in multimodal language comprehension is hypothesized to be domain general, coopted for communication, and refined with domain-specific characteristics.
    A new, situated framework for understanding human language processing is called for that takes into consideration the multilayered, multimodal nature of language and its production and comprehension in conversational interaction requiring fast processing.
  • Hörpel, S. G., & Firzlaff, U. (2019). Processing of fast amplitude modulations in bat auditory cortex matches communication call-specific sound features. Journal of Neurophysiology, 121(4), 1501-1512. doi:10.1152/jn.00748.2018.
  • Howe, L., Lawson, D. J., Davies, N. M., St Pourcain, B., Lewis, S. J., Smith, G. D., & Hemani, G. (2019). Genetic evidence for assortative mating on alcohol consumption in the UK Biobank. Nature Communications, 10: 5039. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12424-x.

    Abstract

    Alcohol use is correlated within spouse-pairs, but it is difficult to disentangle effects of alcohol consumption on mate-selection from social factors or the shared spousal environment. We hypothesised that genetic variants related to alcohol consumption may, via their effect on alcohol behaviour, influence mate selection. Here, we find strong evidence that an individual’s self-reported alcohol consumption and their genotype at rs1229984, a missense variant in ADH1B, are associated with their partner’s self-reported alcohol use. Applying Mendelian randomization, we estimate that a unit increase in an individual’s weekly alcohol consumption increases partner’s alcohol consumption by 0.26 units (95% C.I. 0.15, 0.38; P = 8.20 × 10−6). Furthermore, we find evidence of spousal genotypic concordance for rs1229984, suggesting that spousal concordance for alcohol consumption existed prior to cohabitation. Although the SNP is strongly associated with ancestry, our results suggest some concordance independent of population stratification. Our findings suggest that alcohol behaviour directly influences mate selection.
  • Howe, L. J., Richardson, T. G., Arathimos, R., Alvizi, L., Passos-Bueno, M. R., Stanier, P., Nohr, E., Ludwig, K. U., Mangold, E., Knapp, M., Stergiakouli, E., St Pourcain, B., Smith, G. D., Sandy, J., Relton, C. L., Lewis, S. J., Hemani, G., & Sharp, G. C. (2019). Evidence for DNA methylation mediating genetic liability to non-syndromic cleft lip/palate. Epigenomics, 11(2), 133-145. doi:10.2217/epi-2018-0091.

    Abstract

    Aim: To determine if nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate (nsCL/P) genetic risk variants influence liability to nsCL/P through gene regulation pathways, such as those involving DNA methylation. Materials & methods: nsCL/P genetic summary data and methylation data from four studies were used in conjunction with Mendelian randomization and joint likelihood mapping to investigate potential mediation of nsCL/P genetic variants. Results & conclusion: Evidence was found at VAX1 (10q25.3), LOC146880 (17q23.3) and NTN1 (17p13.1), that liability to nsCL/P and variation in DNA methylation might be driven by the same genetic variant, suggesting that genetic variation at these loci may increase liability to nsCL/P by influencing DNA methylation. Follow-up analyses using different tissues and gene expression data provided further insight into possible biological mechanisms.

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  • Hubbard, R. J., Rommers, J., Jacobs, C. L., & Federmeier, K. D. (2019). Downstream behavioral and electrophysiological consequences of word prediction on recognition memory. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13: 291. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00291.

    Abstract

    When people process language, they can use context to predict upcoming information,
    influencing processing and comprehension as seen in both behavioral and neural
    measures. Although numerous studies have shown immediate facilitative effects
    of confirmed predictions, the downstream consequences of prediction have been
    less explored. In the current study, we examined those consequences by probing
    participants’ recognition memory for words after they read sets of sentences.
    Participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences with expected or
    unexpected endings (“I added my name to the list/basket”), and later were tested on
    their memory for the sentence endings while EEG was recorded. Critically, the memory
    test contained words that were predictable (“list”) but were never read (participants
    saw “basket”). Behaviorally, participants showed successful discrimination between old
    and new items, but false alarmed to the expected-item lures more often than to new
    items, showing that predicted words or concepts can linger, even when predictions
    are disconfirmed. Although false alarm rates did not differ by constraint, event-related
    potentials (ERPs) differed between false alarms to strongly and weakly predictable words.
    Additionally, previously unexpected (compared to previously expected) endings that
    appeared on the memory test elicited larger N1 and LPC amplitudes, suggesting greater
    attention and episodic recollection. In contrast, highly predictable sentence endings that
    had been read elicited reduced LPC amplitudes during the memory test. Thus, prediction
    can facilitate processing in the moment, but can also lead to false memory and reduced
    recollection for predictable information.
  • Hubers, F., Cucchiarini, C., Strik, H., & Dijkstra, T. (2019). Normative data of Dutch idiomatic expressions: Subjective judgments you can bank on. Frontiers in Psychology, 10: 1075. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01075.

    Abstract

    The processing of idiomatic expressions is a topical issue in empirical research. Various factors have been found to influence idiom processing, such as idiom familiarity and idiom transparency. Information on these variables is usually obtained through norming studies. Studies investigating the effect of various properties on idiom processing have led to ambiguous results. This may be due to the variability of operationalizations of the idiom properties across norming studies, which in turn may affect the reliability of the subjective judgements. However, not all studies that collected normative data on idiomatic expressions investigated their reliability, and studies that did address the reliability of subjective ratings used various measures and produced mixed results. In this study, we investigated the reliability of subjective judgements, the relation between subjective and objective idiom frequency, and the impact of these dimensions on the participants’ idiom knowledge by collecting normative data of five subjective idiom properties (Frequency of Exposure, Meaning Familiarity, Frequency of Usage, Transparency, and Imageability) from 390 native speakers and objective corpus frequency for 374 Dutch idiomatic expressions. For reliability, we compared measures calculated in previous studies, with the D-coefficient, a metric taken from Generalizability Theory. High reliability was found for all subjective dimensions. One reliability metric, Krippendorff’s alpha, generally produced lower values, while similar values were obtained for three other measures (Cronbach’s alpha, Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, and the D-coefficient). Advantages of the D-coefficient are that it can be applied to unbalanced research designs, and to estimate the minimum number of raters required to obtain reliable ratings. Slightly higher coefficients were observed for so-called experience-based dimensions (Frequency of Exposure, Meaning Familiarity, and Frequency of Usage) than for content-based dimensions (Transparency and Imageability). In addition, fewer raters were required to obtain reliable ratings for the experience-based dimensions. Subjective and objective frequency appeared to be poorly correlated, while all subjective idiom properties and objective frequency turned out to affect idiom knowledge. Meaning Familiarity, Subjective and Objective Frequency of Exposure, Frequency of Usage, and Transparency positively contributed to idiom knowledge, while a negative effect was found for Imageability. We discuss these relationships in more detail, and give methodological recommendations with respect to the procedures and the measure to calculate reliability.

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  • Huettig, F., & Pickering, M. (2019). Literacy advantages beyond reading: Prediction of spoken language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(6), 464-475. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.03.008.

    Abstract

    Literacy has many obvious benefits—it exposes the reader to a wealth of new information and enhances syntactic knowledge. However, we argue that literacy has an additional, often overlooked, benefit: it enhances people’s ability to predict spoken language thereby aiding comprehension. Readers are under pressure to process information more quickly than listeners, and reading provides excellent conditions, in particular a stable environment, for training the predictive system. It also leads to increased awareness of words as linguistic units, and more fine-grained phonological and additional orthographic representations, which sharpen lexical representations and facilitate predicted representations to be retrieved. Thus, reading trains core processes and representations involved in language prediction that are common to both reading and listening.
  • Huettig, F., & Guerra, E. (2019). Effects of speech rate, preview time of visual context, and participant instructions reveal strong limits on prediction in language processing. Brain Research, 1706, 196-208. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2018.11.013.

    Abstract

    There is a consensus among language researchers that people can predict upcoming language. But do people always predict when comprehending language? Notions that “brains … are essentially prediction machines” certainly suggest so. In three eye-tracking experiments we tested this view. Participants listened to simple Dutch sentences (‘Look at the displayed bicycle’) while viewing four objects (a target, e.g. a bicycle, and three unrelated distractors). We used the identical visual stimuli and the same spoken sentences but varied speech rates, preview time, and participant instructions. Target nouns were preceded by definite gender-marked determiners, which allowed participants to predict the target object because only the targets but not the distractors agreed in gender with the determiner. In Experiment 1, participants had four seconds preview and sentences were presented either in a slow or a normal speech rate. Participants predicted the targets as soon as they heard the determiner in both conditions. Experiment 2 was identical except that participants were given only a one second preview. Participants predicted the targets only in the slow speech condition. Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2 except that participants were explicitly told to predict. This led only to a small prediction effect in the normal speech condition. Thus, a normal speech rate only afforded prediction if participants had an extensive preview. Even the explicit instruction to predict the target resulted in only a small anticipation effect with a normal speech rate and a short preview. These findings are problematic for theoretical proposals that assume that prediction pervades cognition.
  • Huisman, J. L. A., Majid, A., & Van Hout, R. (2019). The geographical configuration of a language area influences linguistic diversity. PLoS One, 14(6): e0217363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217363.

    Abstract

    Like the transfer of genetic variation through gene flow, language changes constantly as a result of its use in human interaction. Contact between speakers is most likely to happen when they are close in space, time, and social setting. Here, we investigated the role of geographical configuration in this process by studying linguistic diversity in Japan, which comprises a large connected mainland (less isolation, more potential contact) and smaller island clusters of the Ryukyuan archipelago (more isolation, less potential contact). We quantified linguistic diversity using dialectometric methods, and performed regression analyses to assess the extent to which distance in space and time predict contemporary linguistic diversity. We found that language diversity in general increases as geographic distance increases and as time passes—as with biodiversity. Moreover, we found that (I) for mainland languages, linguistic diversity is most strongly related to geographic distance—a so-called isolation-by-distance pattern, and that (II) for island languages, linguistic diversity reflects the time since varieties separated and diverged—an isolation-by-colonisation pattern. Together, these results confirm previous findings that (linguistic) diversity is shaped by distance, but also goes beyond this by demonstrating the critical role of geographic configuration.
  • Hulten, A., Schoffelen, J.-M., Udden, J., Lam, N. H. L., & Hagoort, P. (2019). How the brain makes sense beyond the processing of single words – An MEG study. NeuroImage, 186, 586-594. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.11.035.

    Abstract

    Human language processing involves combinatorial operations that make human communication stand out in the animal kingdom. These operations rely on a dynamic interplay between the inferior frontal and the posterior temporal cortices. Using source reconstructed magnetoencephalography, we tracked language processing in the brain, in order to investigate how individual words are interpreted when part of sentence context. The large sample size in this study (n = 68) allowed us to assess how event-related activity is associated across distinct cortical areas, by means of inter-areal co-modulation within an individual. We showed that, within 500 ms of seeing a word, the word's lexical information has been retrieved and unified with the sentence context. This does not happen in a strictly feed-forward manner, but by means of co-modulation between the left posterior temporal cortex (LPTC) and left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC), for each individual word. The co-modulation of LIFC and LPTC occurs around 400 ms after the onset of each word, across the progression of a sentence. Moreover, these core language areas are supported early on by the attentional network. The results provide a detailed description of the temporal orchestration related to single word processing in the context of ongoing language.

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    1-s2.0-S1053811918321165-mmc1.pdf
  • Hustá, C., Dalmaijer, E., Belopolsky, A., & Mathôt, S. (2019). The pupillary light response reflects visual working memory content. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(11), 1522-1528. doi:10.1037/xhp0000689.

    Abstract

    Recent studies have shown that the pupillary light response (PLR) is modulated by higher cognitive functions, presumably through activity in visual sensory brain areas. Here we use the PLR to test the involvement of sensory areas in visual working memory (VWM). In two experiments, participants memorized either bright or dark stimuli. We found that pupils were smaller when a prestimulus cue indicated that a bright stimulus should be memorized; this reflects a covert shift of attention during encoding of items into VWM. Crucially, we obtained the same result with a poststimulus cue, which shows that internal shifts of attention within VWM affect pupil size as well. Strikingly, the effect of VWM content on pupil size was most pronounced immediately after the poststimulus cue, and then dissipated. This suggests that a shift of attention within VWM momentarily activates an "active" memory representation, but that this representation quickly transforms into a "hidden" state that does not rely on sensory areas.

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    Supplementary_xhp0000689.docx
  • Iacozza, S., Meyer, A. S., & Lev-Ari, S. (2019). How in-group bias influences source memory for words learned from in-group and out-group speakers. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13: 308. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00308.

    Abstract

    Individuals rapidly extract information about others’ social identity, including whether or not they belong to their in-group. Group membership status has been shown to affect how attentively people encode information conveyed by those others. These findings are highly relevant for the field of psycholinguistics where there exists an open debate on how words are represented in the mental lexicon and how abstract or context-specific these representations are. Here, we used a novel word learning paradigm to test our proposal that the group membership status of speakers also affects how speaker-specific representations of novel words are. Participants learned new words from speakers who either attended their own university (in-group speakers) or did not (out-group speakers) and performed a task to measure their individual in-group bias. Then, their source memory of the new words was tested in a recognition test to probe the speaker-specific content of the novel lexical representations and assess how it related to individual in-group biases. We found that speaker group membership and participants’ in-group bias affected participants’ decision biases. The stronger the in-group bias, the more cautious participants were in their decisions. This was particularly applied to in-group related decisions. These findings indicate that social biases can influence recognition threshold. Taking a broader scope, defining how information is represented is a topic of great overlap between the fields of memory and psycholinguistics. Nevertheless, researchers from these fields tend to stay within the theoretical and methodological borders of their own field, missing the chance to deepen their understanding of phenomena that are of common interest. Here we show how methodologies developed in the memory field can be implemented in language research to shed light on an important theoretical issue that relates to the composition of lexical representations.

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  • Indefrey, P. (1998). De neurale architectuur van taal: Welke hersengebieden zijn betrokken bij het spreken. Neuropraxis, 2(6), 230-237.
  • Indefrey, P., Gruber, O., Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., Posse, S., & Kleinschmidt, A. (1998). Lexicality and not syllable frequency determine lateralized premotor activation during the pronunciation of word-like stimuli: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 7, S4.
  • Ioumpa, K., Graham, S. A., Clausner, T., Fisher, S. E., Van Lier, R., & Van Leeuwen, T. M. (2019). Enhanced self-reported affect and prosocial behaviour without differential physiological responses in mirror-sensory synaesthesia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 374: 20190395. doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0395.

    Abstract

    Mirror-sensory synaesthetes mirror the pain or touch that they observe in other people on their own bodies. This type of synaesthesia has been associated with enhanced empathy. We investigated whether the enhanced empathy of people with mirror-sensory synesthesia influences the experience of situations involving touch or pain and whether it affects their prosocial decision making. Mirror-sensory synaesthetes (N = 18, all female), verified with a touch-interference paradigm, were compared with a similar number of age-matched control individuals (all female). Participants viewed arousing images depicting pain or touch; we recorded subjective valence and arousal ratings, and physiological responses, hypothesizing more extreme reactions in synaesthetes. The subjective impact of positive and negative images was stronger in synaesthetes than in control participants; the stronger the reported synaesthesia, the more extreme the picture ratings. However, there was no evidence for differential physiological or hormonal responses to arousing pictures. Prosocial decision making was assessed with an economic game assessing altruism, in which participants had to divide money between themselves and a second player. Mirror-sensory synaesthetes donated more money than non-synaesthetes, showing enhanced prosocial behaviour, and also scored higher on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index as a measure of empathy. Our study demonstrates the subjective impact of mirror-sensory synaesthesia and its stimulating influence on prosocial behaviour.

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  • Iyer, S., Sam, F. S., DiPrimio, N., Preston, G., Verheijen, J., Murthy, K., Parton, Z., Tsang, H., Lao, J., Morava, E., & Perlstein, E. O. (2019). Repurposing the aldose reductase inhibitor and diabetic neuropathy drug epalrestat for the congenital disorder of glycosylation PMM2-CDG. Disease models & mechanisms, 12(11): UNSP dmm040584. doi:10.1242/dmm.040584.

    Abstract

    Phosphomannomutase 2 deficiency, or PMM2-CDG, is the most common congenital disorder of glycosylation and affects over 1000 patients globally. There are no approved drugs that treat the symptoms or root cause of PMM2-CDG. To identify clinically actionable compounds that boost human PMM2 enzyme function, we performed a multispecies drug repurposing screen using a novel worm model of PMM2-CDG, followed by PMM2 enzyme functional studies in PMM2-CDG patient fibroblasts. Drug repurposing candidates from this study, and drug repurposing candidates from a previously published study using yeast models of PMM2-CDG, were tested for their effect on human PMM2 enzyme activity in PMM2-CDG fibroblasts. Of the 20 repurposing candidates discovered in the worm-based phenotypic screen, 12 were plant-based polyphenols. Insights from structure-activity relationships revealed epalrestat, the only antidiabetic aldose reductase inhibitor approved for use in humans, as a first-in-class PMM2 enzyme activator. Epalrestat increased PMM2 enzymatic activity in four PMM2-CDG patient fibroblast lines with genotypes R141H/F119L, R141H/E139K, R141H/N216I and R141H/F183S. PMM2 enzyme activity gains ranged from 30% to 400% over baseline, depending on genotype. Pharmacological inhibition of aldose reductase by epalrestat may shunt glucose from the polyol pathway to glucose-1,6-bisphosphate, which is an endogenous stabilizer and coactivator of PMM2 homodimerization. Epalrestat is a safe, oral and brain penetrant drug that was approved 27 years ago in Japan to treat diabetic neuropathy in geriatric populations. We demonstrate that epalrestat is the first small molecule activator ofPMM2 enzyme activity with the potential to treat peripheral neuropathy and correct the underlying enzyme deficiency in a majority of pediatric and adult PMM2-CDG patients.

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    DMM040584supp.pdf
  • Janssen, C., Segers, E., McQueen, J. M., & Verhoeven, L. (2019). Comparing effects of instruction on word meaning and word form on early literacy abilities in kindergarten. Early Education and Development, 30(3), 375-399. doi:10.1080/10409289.2018.1547563.

    Abstract

    Research Findings: The present study compared effects of explicit instruction on and practice with the phonological form of words (form-focused instruction) versus explicit instruction on and practice with the meaning of words (meaning-focused instruction). Instruction was given via interactive storybook reading in the kindergarten classroom of children learning Dutch. We asked whether the 2 types of instruction had different effects on vocabulary development and 2 precursors of reading ability—phonological awareness and letter knowledge—and we examined effects on these measures of the ability to learn new words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences. Learners showed similar receptive target-word vocabulary gain after both types of instruction, but learners who received form-focused vocabulary instruction showed more gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge than learners who received meaning-focused vocabulary instruction. Level of ability to learn pairs of words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences predicted gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary and in letter knowledge in the form-focused instruction group only. Practice or Policy: A focus on the form of words during instruction appears to have benefits for young children learning vocabulary.
  • Janssen, R., Moisik, S. R., & Dediu, D. (2019). The effects of larynx height on vowel production are mitigated by the active control of articulators. Journal of Phonetics, 74, 1-17. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2019.02.002.

    Abstract

    The influence of larynx position on vowel articulation is an important topic in understanding speech production, the present-day distribution of linguistic diversity and the evolution of speech and language in our lineage. We introduce here a realistic computer model of the vocal tract, constructed from actual human MRI data, which can learn, using machine learning techniques, to control the articulators in such a way as to produce speech sounds matching as closely as possible to a given set of target vowels. We systematically control the vertical position of the larynx and we quantify the differences between the target and produced vowels for each such position across multiple replications. We report that, indeed, larynx height does affect the accuracy of reproducing the target vowels and the distinctness of the produced vowel system, that there is a “sweet spot” of larynx positions that are optimal for vowel production, but that nevertheless, even extreme larynx positions do not result in a collapsed or heavily distorted vowel space that would make speech unintelligible. Together with other lines of evidence, our results support the view that the vowel space of human languages is influenced by our larynx position, but that other positions of the larynx may also be fully compatible with speech.

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    Research Data via Github
  • Kakimoto, N., Shimamoto, H., Kitisubkanchana, J., Tsujimoto, T., Senda, Y., Iwamoto, Y., Verdonschot, R. G., Hasegawa, Y., & Murakami, S. (2019). T2 relaxation times of the retrodiscal tissue in patients with temporomandibular joint disorders and in healthy volunteers: A comparative study. Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology, 128(3), 311-318. doi:10.1016/j.oooo.2019.02.005.

    Abstract

    Objective. The aims of this study were to compare the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times between patients with temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) and asymptomatic volunteers and to assess the diagnostic potential of this approach.
    Study Design. Patients with TMD (n = 173) and asymptomatic volunteers (n = 17) were examined by using a 1.5-T magnetic resonance scanner. The imaging protocol consisted of oblique sagittal, T2-weighted, 8-echo fast spin echo sequences in the closed mouth position. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were obtained. Additionally, disc location and reduction, disc configuration, joint effusion, osteoarthritis, and bone edema or osteonecrosis were classified using MRI scans. The T2 relaxation times of each group were statistically compared.
    Results. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were significantly longer in patient groups than in asymptomatic volunteers (P < .01). T2 relaxation times were significantly longer in all of the morphologic categories. The most important variables affecting retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times were disc configuration, joint effusion, and osteoarthritis.
    Conclusion. Retrodiscal tissue T2 relaxation times of patients with TMD were significantly longer than those of healthy volunteers. This finding may lead to the development of a diagnostic marker to aid in the early detection of TMDs.
  • Kamermans, K. L., Pouw, W., Mast, F. W., & Paas, F. (2019). Reinterpretation in visual imagery is possible without visual cues: A validation of previous research. Psychological Research, 83(6), 1237-1250. doi:10.1007/s00426-017-0956-5.

    Abstract

    Is visual reinterpretation of bistable figures (e.g., duck/rabbit figure) in visual imagery possible? Current consensus suggests that it is in principle possible because of converging evidence of quasi-pictorial functioning of visual imagery. Yet, studies that have directly tested and found evidence for reinterpretation in visual imagery, allow for the possibility that reinterpretation was already achieved during memorization of the figure(s). One study resolved this issue, providing evidence for reinterpretation in visual imagery (Mast and Kosslyn, Cognition 86:57-70, 2002). However, participants in that study performed reinterpretations with aid of visual cues. Hence, reinterpretation was not performed with mental imagery alone. Therefore, in this study we assessed the possibility of reinterpretation without visual support. We further explored the possible role of haptic cues to assess the multimodal nature of mental imagery. Fifty-three participants were consecutively presented three to be remembered bistable 2-D figures (reinterpretable when rotated 180 degrees), two of which were visually inspected and one was explored hapticly. After memorization of the figures, a visually bistable exemplar figure was presented to ensure understanding of the concept of visual bistability. During recall, 11 participants (out of 36; 30.6%) who did not spot bistability during memorization successfully performed reinterpretations when instructed to mentally rotate their visual image, but additional haptic cues during mental imagery did not inflate reinterpretation ability. This study validates previous findings that reinterpretation in visual imagery is possible.
  • Kamermans, K. L., Pouw, W., Fassi, L., Aslanidou, A., Paas, F., & Hostetter, A. B. (2019). The role of gesture as simulated action in reinterpretation of mental imagery. Acta Psychologica, 197, 131-142. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.05.004.

    Abstract

    In two experiments, we examined the role of gesture in reinterpreting a mental image. In Experiment 1, we found that participants gestured more about a figure they had learned through manual exploration than about a figure they had learned through vision. This supports claims that gestures emerge from the activation of perception-relevant actions during mental imagery. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether such gestures have a causal role in affecting the quality of mental imagery. Participants were randomly assigned to gesture, not gesture, or engage in a manual interference task as they attempted to reinterpret a figure they had learned through manual exploration. We found that manual interference significantly impaired participants' success on the task. Taken together, these results suggest that gestures reflect mental imaginings of interactions with a mental image and that these imaginings are critically important for mental manipulation and reinterpretation of that image. However, our results suggest that enacting the imagined movements in gesture is not critically important on this particular task.
  • Kaufhold, S. P., & Van Leeuwen, E. J. C. (2019). Why intergroup variation matters for understanding behaviour. Biology Letters, 15(11): 20190695. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2019.0695.

    Abstract

    Intergroup variation (IGV) refers to variation between different groups of the same species. While its existence in the behavioural realm has been expected and evidenced, the potential effects of IGV are rarely considered in studies that aim to shed light on the evolutionary origins of human socio-cognition, especially in our closest living relatives—the great apes. Here, by taking chimpanzees as a point of reference, we argue that (i) IGV could plausibly explain inconsistent research findings across numerous topics of inquiry (experimental/behavioural studies on chimpanzees), (ii) understanding the evolutionary origins of behaviour requires an accurate assessment of species' modes of behaving across different socio-ecological contexts, which necessitates a reliable estimation of variation across intraspecific groups, and (iii) IGV in the behavioural realm is increasingly likely to be expected owing to the progressive identification of non-human animal cultures. With these points, and by extrapolating from chimpanzees to generic guidelines, we aim to encourage researchers to explicitly consider IGV as an explanatory variable in future studies attempting to understand the socio-cognitive and evolutionary determinants of behaviour in group-living animals.
  • Kempen, G. (1991). Conjunction reduction and gapping in clause-level coordination: An inheritance-based approach. Computational Intelligence, 7, 357-360. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8640.1991.tb00406.x.
  • Kempen, G. (1998). Comparing and explaining the trajectories of first and second language acquisition: In search of the right mix of psychological and linguistic factors [Commentory]. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 29-30. doi:10.1017/S1366728998000066.

    Abstract

    When you compare the behavior of two different age groups which are trying to master the same sensori-motor or cognitive skill, you are likely to discover varying learning routes: different stages, different intervals between stages, or even different orderings of stages. Such heterogeneous learning trajectories may be caused by at least six different types of factors: (1) Initial state: the kinds and levels of skills the learners have available at the onset of the learning episode. (2) Learning mechanisms: rule-based, inductive, connectionist, parameter setting, and so on. (3) Input and feedback characteristics: learning stimuli, information about success and failure. (4) Information processing mechanisms: capacity limitations, attentional biases, response preferences. (5) Energetic variables: motivation, emotional reactions. (6) Final state: the fine-structure of kinds and levels of subskills at the end of the learning episode. This applies to language acquisition as well. First and second language learners probably differ on all six factors. Nevertheless, the debate between advocates and opponents of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis concerning L1 and L2 acquisition have looked almost exclusively at the first two factors. Those who believe that L1 learners have access to Universal Grammar whereas L2 learners rely on language processing strategies, postulate different learning mechanisms (UG parameter setting in L1, more general inductive strategies in L2 learning). Pienemann opposes this view and, based on his Processability Theory, argues that L1 and L2 learners start out from different initial states: they come to the grammar learning task with different structural hypotheses (SOV versus SVO as basic word order of German).
  • Kempen, G., Schotel, H., & Hoenkamp, E. (1982). Analyse-door-synthese van Nederlandse zinnen [Abstract]. De Psycholoog, 17, 509.
  • Kempen, G., & Kolk, H. (1980). Apentaal, een kwestie van intelligentie, niet van taalaanleg. Cahiers Biowetenschappen en Maatschappij, 6, 31-36.
  • Kempen, G., & Vosse, T. (1989). Incremental syntactic tree formation in human sentence processing: A cognitive architecture based on activation decay and simulated annealing. Connection Science, 1(3), 273-290. doi:10.1080/09540098908915642.

    Abstract

    A new cognitive architecture is proposed for the syntactic aspects of human sentence processing. The architecture, called Unification Space, is biologically inspired but not based on neural nets. Instead it relies on biosynthesis as a basic metaphor. We use simulated annealing as an optimization technique which searches for the best configuration of isolated syntactic segments or subtrees in the final parse tree. The gradually decaying activation of individual syntactic nodes determines the ‘global excitation level’ of the system. This parameter serves the function of ‘computational temperature’ in simulated annealing. We have built a computer implementation of the architecture which simulates well-known sentence understanding phenomena. We report successful simulations of the psycholinguistic effects of clause embedding, minimal attachment, right association and lexical ambiguity. In addition, we simulated impaired sentence understanding as observable in agrammatic patients. Since the Unification Space allows for contextual (semantic and pragmatic) influences on the syntactic tree formation process, it belongs to the class of interactive sentence processing models.
  • Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2019). Mutual attraction between high-frequency verbs and clause types with finite verbs in early positions: Corpus evidence from spoken English, Dutch, and German. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(9), 1140-1151. doi:10.1080/23273798.2019.1642498.

    Abstract

    We report a hitherto unknown statistical relationship between the corpus frequency of finite verbs and their fixed linear positions (early vs. late) in finite clauses of English, Dutch, and German. Compared to the overall frequency distribution of verb lemmas in the corpora, high-frequency finite verbs are overused in main clauses, at the expense of nonfinite verbs. This finite versus nonfinite split of high-frequency verbs is basically absent from subordinate clauses. Furthermore, this “main-clause bias” (MCB) of high-frequency verbs is more prominent in German and Dutch (SOV languages) than in English (an SVO language). We attribute the MCB and its varying effect sizes to faster accessibility of high-frequency finite verbs, which (1) increases the probability for these verbs to land in clauses mandating early verb placement, and (2) boosts the activation of clause plans that assign verbs to early linear positions (in casu: clauses with SVO as opposed to SOV order).

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  • Kempen, G., & Van Wijk, C. (1980). Leren formuleren: Hoe uit opstellen een objektieve index voor formuleervaardigheid afgeleid kan worden. De Psycholoog, 15, 609-621.
  • Kempen, G., & Kolk, H. (1986). Het voortbrengen van normale en agrammatische taal. Van Horen Zeggen, 27(2), 36-40.
  • Kempen, G. (1986). RIKS: Kennistechnologisch centrum voor bedrijfsleven en wetenschap. Informatie, 28, 122-125.
  • Wu, Q., Kidd, E., & Goodhew, S. C. (2019). The spatial mapping of concepts in English and Mandarin. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 31(7), 703-724. doi:10.1080/20445911.2019.1663354.

    Abstract

    English speakers have been shown to map abstract concepts in space, which occurs on both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. For example, words such as God are associated with up and right spatial locations, and words such as Satan with down and left. If the tendency to map concepts in space is a universal property of human cognition, then it is likely that such mappings may be at least partly culturally-specific, since many concepts are themselves language-specific and therefore cultural conventions. Here we investigated whether Mandarin speakers report spatial mapping of concepts, and how these mappings compare with English speakers (i.e. are words with the same meaning associated with the same spatial locations). Across two studies, results showed that both native English and Mandarin speakers reported spatial mapping of concepts, and that the distribution of mappings was highly similar for the two groups. Theoretical implications are discussed.
  • Kim, N., Brehm, L., & Yoshida, M. (2019). The online processing of noun phrase ellipsis and mechanisms of antecedent retrieval. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(2), 190-213. doi:10.1080/23273798.2018.1513542.

    Abstract

    We investigate whether grammatical information is accessed in processing noun phrase ellipsis (NPE) and other anaphoric constructions. The first experiment used an agreement attraction paradigm to reveal that ungrammatical plural verbs following NPE with an antecedent containing a plural modifier (e.g. Derek’s key to the boxes … and Mary’s_ probably *are safe in the drawer) show similar facilitation to non-elided NPs. The second experiment used the same paradigm to examine a coordination construction without anaphoric elements, and the third examined anaphoric one. Agreement attraction was not observed in either experiment, suggesting that processing NPE is different from processing non-anaphoric coordination constructions or anaphoric one. Taken together, the results indicate that the parser is sensitive to grammatical distinctions at the ellipsis site where it prioritises and retrieves the head at the initial stage of processing and retrieves the local noun within the modifier phrase only when it is necessary in parsing NPE.

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  • Kinoshita, S., Schubert, T., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2019). Allograph priming is based on abstract letter identities: Evidence from Japanese kana. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(1), 183-190. doi:10.1037/xlm0000563.

    Abstract

    It is well-established that allographs like the uppercase and lowercase forms of the Roman alphabet (e.g., a and A) map onto the same "abstract letter identity," orthographic representations that are independent of the visual form. Consistent with this, in the allograph match task ("Are 'a' and 'A' the same letter?"), priming by a masked letter prime is equally robust for visually dissimilar prime-target pairs (e.g., d and D) and similar pairs (e.g., c and C). However, in principle this pattern of priming is also consistent with the possibility that allograph priming is purely phonological, based on the letter name. Because different allographic forms of the same letter, by definition, share a letter name, it is impossible to rule out this possibility a priori. In the present study, we investigated the influence of shared letter names by taking advantage of the fact that Japanese is written in two distinct writing systems, syllabic kana-that has two parallel forms, hiragana and katakana-and logographic kanji. Using the allograph match task, we tested whether a kanji prime with the same pronunciation as the target kana (e.g., both pronounced /i/) produces the same amount of priming as a kana prime in the opposite kana form (e.g.,). We found that the kana primes produced substantially greater priming than the phonologically identical kanji prime. which we take as evidence that allograph priming is based on abstract kana identity, not purely phonology.
  • Kinoshita, S., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2019). On recognizing Japanese katakana words: Explaining the reduced priming with hiragana and mixed-kana identity primes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(11), 1513-1521. doi:10.1037/xhp0000692.

    Abstract

    The Japanese kana syllabary has 2 allographic forms, hiragana and katakana. As with other allographic variants like the uppercase and lowercase letters of the Roman alphabet, they show robust formindependent priming effects in the allograph match task (e.g., Kinoshita. Schubert. & Verdonschot, 2019). suggesting that they share abstract character-level representations. In direct contradiction, Perea. Nakayama, and Lupker (2017) argued that hiragana and katakana do not share character-level representations. based on their finding of reduced priming with identity prime containing a mix of hiragana and katakana (the mixed-kana prime) relative to the all-katakana identity prime in a lexical-decision task with loanword targets written in katakana. Here we sought to reconcile these seemingly contradictory claims, using mixed-kana. hiragana, and katakana primes in lexical decision. The mixed-kana prime and hiragana prime produced priming effects that are indistinguishable, and both were reduced in size relative to the priming effect produced by the katakana identity prime. Furthermore, this pattern was unchanged when the target was presented in hiragana. The findings are interpreted in terms of the assumption that the katakana format is specified in the orthographic representation of loanwords in Japanese readers. Implications of the account for the universality across writing systems is discussed.
  • De Kleijn, R., Wijnen, M., & Poletiek, F. H. (2019). The effect of context-dependent information and sentence constructions on perceived humanness of an agent in a Turing test. Knowledge-Based Systems, 163, 794-799. doi:10.1016/j.knosys.2018.10.006.

    Abstract

    In a Turing test, a judge decides whether their conversation partner is either a machine or human. What cues does the judge use to determine this? In particular, are presumably unique features of human language actually perceived as humanlike? Participants rated the humanness of a set of sentences that were manipulated for grammatical construction: linear right-branching or hierarchical center-embedded and their plausibility with regard to world knowledge.

    We found that center-embedded sentences are perceived as less humanlike than right-branching sentences and more plausible sentences are regarded as more humanlike. However, the effect of plausibility of the sentence on perceived humanness is smaller for center-embedded sentences than for right-branching sentences.

    Participants also rated a conversation with either correct or incorrect use of the context by the agent. No effect of context use was found. Also, participants rated a full transcript of either a real human or a real chatbot, and we found that chatbots were reliably perceived as less humanlike than real humans, in line with our expectation. We did, however, find individual differences between chatbots and humans.
  • Klein, W., & Rieck, B.-O. (1982). Der Erwerb der Personalpronomina im ungesteuerten Spracherwerb. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 45, 35-71.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Der stand der Forschung zur deutschen Satzintonation. Linguistische Berichte, 68/80, 3-33.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Der Wahn vom Sprachverfall und andere Mythen. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 62, 11-28.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einige Bemerkungen zur Frageintonation. Deutsche Sprache, 4, 289-310.

    Abstract

    In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 12, 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 16(62), 9-10.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1980). Argumentation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (38/39).
  • Klein, W. (1980). Argumentation und Argument. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 38/39, 9-57.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Der Stand der Forschung zur deutschen Satzintonation. Linguistische Berichte, (68/80), 3-33.
  • Klein, W. (1991). Geile Binsenbüschel, sehr intime Gespielen: Ein paar Anmerkungen über Arno Schmidt als Übersetzer. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 84, 124-129.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W. (1989). Introspection into what? Review of C. Faerch & G. Kaspar (Eds.) Introspection in second language research 1987. Contemporary Psychology, 34(12), 1119-1120.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1998). Kaleidoskop [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (112).
  • Klein, W. (1982). Pronoms personnels et formes d'acquisition. Encrages, 8/9, 42-46.
  • Klein, W. (1991). Raumausdrücke. Linguistische Berichte, 132, 77-114.
  • Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1991). Text structure and referential movement. Arbeitsberichte des Forschungsprogramms S&P: Sprache und Pragmatik, 22.
  • Klein, W. (1998). The contribution of second language acquisition research. Language Learning, 48, 527-550. doi:10.1111/0023-8333.00057.

    Abstract

    During the last 25 years, second language acquisition (SLA) research hasmade considerable progress, but is still far from proving a solid basis for foreign language teaching, or from a general theory of SLA. In addition, its status within the linguistic disciplines is still very low. I argue this has not much to do with low empirical or theoretical standards in the field—in this regard, SLA research is fully competitive—but with a particular perspective on the acquisition process: SLA researches learners' utterances as deviations from a certain target, instead of genuine manifestations of underlying language capacity; it analyses them in terms of what they are not rather than what they are. For some purposes such a "target deviation perspective" makes sense, but it will not help SLA researchers to substantially and independently contribute to a deeper understanding of the structure and function of the human language faculty. Therefore, these findings will remain of limited interest to other scientists until SLA researchers consider learner varieties a normal, in fact typical, manifestation of this unique human capacity.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Some remarks on Sanders' typology of elliptical coordinations. Linguistics, 18, 871-876.

    Abstract

    Starting with Ross (1970), various proposals have been made to classify elliptical coordinations and to characterize different languages according to the types of ellipses which they admit. Sanders (1977) discusses four of these proposals, shows that they are inadequate on various grounds and proposes a fifth typology whose central claim is 'evidently correct', as he states (p. 258). In the following, I shall briefly outline this typology and then show that it is inadequate, too. Since there is only one language 1 know — German — I will take all my examples from this language. Moreover, all examples will be straightforward and easy to be judged.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1986). Sprachverfall [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (62).
  • Klein, W. (1989). Sprechen lernen - das Selbstverständlichste von der Welt: Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 73, 7-17.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 74, 116-119.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Vorwort. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 10, 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1991). Was kann sich die Übersetzungswissenschaft von der Linguistik erwarten? Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 84, 104-123.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1982). Zweitspracherwerb [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (45).
  • Klein, W. (1986). Über Ansehen und Wirkung der deutschen Sprachwissenschaft heute. Linguistische Berichte, 100, 511-520.
  • Klein, W. (1998). Von der einfältigen Wißbegierde. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 112, 6-13.
  • Klingler, E., De la Rossa, A., Fièvre, S., Devaraju, K., Abe, P., & Jabaudon, D. (2019). A translaminar genetic logic for the circuit identity of intracortically projecting neurons. Current Biology, 29(2), 332-339. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.11.071.

    Abstract

    Neurons of the neocortex are organized into six radial layers, which have appeared at different times during evolution, with the superficial layers representing a more recent acquisition. Input to the neocortex predominantly reaches superficial layers (SL, i.e., layers (L) 2-4), while output is generated in deep layers (DL, i.e., L5-6) [1]. Intracortical connections, which bridge input and output pathways, are key components of cortical circuits because they allow the propagation and processing of information within the neocortex. Two main types of intracortically projecting neurons (ICPN) can be distinguished by their axonal features: L4 spiny stellate neurons (SSN) with short axons projecting locally within cortical columns [2, 3, 4, 5], and SL and DL long-range projection neurons, including callosally projecting neurons (CPNSL and CPNDL) [5, 6]. Here, we investigate the molecular hallmarks that distinguish SSN, CPNSL, and CPNDL and relate their transcriptional signatures with their output connectivity. Specifically, taking advantage of the presence of CPN in both SL and DL, we identify lamina-independent genetic hallmarks of a constant projection motif (i.e., interhemispheric projection). By performing unbiased transcriptomic comparisons between CPNSL, CPNDL and SSN, we provide specific molecular profiles for each of these populations and show that target identity supersedes laminar position in defining ICPN transcriptional diversity. Together, these findings reveal a projection-based organization of transcriptional programs across cortical layers, which we propose reflects conserved strategy to protect canonical circuit structure (and hence function) across a diverse range of neuroanatomies.

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  • Kochari, A., & Flecken, M. (2019). Lexical prediction in language comprehension: A replication study of grammatical gender effects in Dutch. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(2), 239-253. doi:10.1080/23273798.2018.1524500.

    Abstract

    An important question in predictive language processing is the extent to which prediction effects can reliably be measured on pre-nominal material (e.g. articles before nouns). Here, we present a large sample (N = 58) close replication of a study by Otten and van Berkum (2009). They report ERP modulations in relation to the predictability of nouns in sentences, measured on gender-marked Dutch articles. We used nearly identical materials, procedures, and data analysis steps. We fail to replicate the original effect, but do observe a pattern consistent with the original data. Methodological differences between our replication and the original study that could potentially have contributed to the diverging results are discussed. In addition, we discuss the suitability of Dutch gender-marked determiners as a test-case for future studies of pre-activation of lexical items.
  • Konishi, M., Verdonschot, R. G., Shimabukuro, K., Nakamoto, T., Fujita, M., & Kakimoto, N. (2019). The effectiveness of mouthwashes in alleviating radiation-induced oral mucositis in head and neck cancer patients: A systematic review. Oral Radiology, 35(3), 207-223. doi:10.1007/s11282-018-0361-9.

    Abstract

    Objective The aim of the study was to perform a systematic literature search and meta-analysis to reveal the most effective mouthwash for head and neck cancer patients who are experiencing radiation therapy-induced mucositis. Methods Using two electronic databases, a literature search and data interpretation were systematically performed as follows: (i) problem specification, (ii) devising of a literature search plan, (iii) literature search and retrieval of publications, and (iv) meta-analysis and data interpretation. The main problem was specified as follows: what mouthwash is effective in alleviating oral mucositis for head and neck cancer patients who are undergoing radiotherapy? Results The literature search yielded 354 titles and abstracts. After reviewing the extracted literature, 25 publications met the inclusion criteria for this study and 17 of 25 were eventually evaluated in the meta-analysis. Conclusion The results of the meta-analysis indicated that the use of a mouthwash that includes anti-inflammatory properties contributes the most to alleviating oral mucositis in patients who are undergoing radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancer.
  • Koppen, K., Ernestus, M., & Van Mulken, M. (2019). The influence of social distance on speech behavior: Formality variation in casual speech. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 15(1), 139-165. doi:10.1515/cllt-2016-0056.

    Abstract

    An important dimension of linguistic variation is formality. This study investigates the role of social distance between interlocutors. Twenty-five native Dutch speakers retold eight short films to confederates, who acted either formally or informally. Speakers were familiarized with the informal confederates, whereas the formal confederates remained strangers. Results show that the two types of interlocutors elicited different versions of the same stories. Formal interlocutors (large social distance) elicited lower articulation rates, and more nouns and prepositions, both indicators of explicit information. Speakers addressing interlocutors to whom social distance was small, however, provided more explicit information with an involved character (i.e. adjectives with subjective meanings). They also used the word and more often as a gap filler or as a way to keep the floor. Furthermore, they were more likely to laugh and to use more interjections, first-person pronouns and direct speech, which are all indicators of involvement, empathy and subjectivity.

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  • Köster, O., Hess, M. M., Schiller, N. O., & Künzel, H. J. (1998). The correlation between auditory speech sensitivity and speaker recognition ability. Forensic Linguistics: The international Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 5, 22-32.

    Abstract

    In various applications of forensic phonetics the question arises as to how far aural-perceptual speaker recognition performance is reliable. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the relationship between speaker recognition results and human perception/production abilities like musicality or speech sensitivity. In this study, performance in a speaker recognition experiment and a speech sensitivity test are correlated. The results show a moderately significant positive correlation between the two tasks. Generally, performance in the speaker recognition task was better than in the speech sensitivity test. Professionals in speech and singing yielded a more homogeneous correlation than non-experts. Training in speech as well as choir-singing seems to have a positive effect on performance in speaker recognition. It may be concluded, firstly, that in cases where the reliability of voice line-up results or the credibility of a testimony have to be considered, the speech sensitivity test could be a useful indicator. Secondly, the speech sensitivity test might be integrated into the canon of possible procedures for the accreditation of forensic phoneticians. Both tests may also be used in combination.
  • De Kovel, C. G. F., Carrion Castillo, A., & Francks, C. (2019). A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness. Scientific Reports, 9: 584. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-37423-8.

    Abstract

    Hand preference is a conspicuous variation in human behaviour, with a worldwide proportion of around 90% of people preferring to use the right hand for many tasks, and 10% the left hand. We used the large cohort of the UK biobank (~500,000 participants) to study possible relations between early life factors and adult hand preference. The probability of being left-handed was affected by the year and location of birth, likely due to cultural effects. In addition, hand preference was affected by birthweight, being part of a multiple birth, season of birth, breastfeeding, and sex, with each effect remaining significant after accounting for all others. Analysis of genome-wide genotype data showed that left-handedness was very weakly heritable, but shared no genetic basis with birthweight. Although on average left-handers and right-handers differed for a number of early life factors, all together these factors had only a minimal predictive value for individual hand preference.

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  • De Kovel, C. G. F., Aftanas, L., Aleman, A., Alexander-Bloch, A. F., Baune, B. T., Brack, I., Bülow, R., Filho, G. B., Carballedo, A., Connolly, C. G., Cullen, K. R., Dannlowski, U., Davey, C. G., Dima, D., Dohm, K., Erwin-Grabner, T., Frodl, T., Fu, C. H., Hall, G. B., Glahn, D. C. and 58 moreDe Kovel, C. G. F., Aftanas, L., Aleman, A., Alexander-Bloch, A. F., Baune, B. T., Brack, I., Bülow, R., Filho, G. B., Carballedo, A., Connolly, C. G., Cullen, K. R., Dannlowski, U., Davey, C. G., Dima, D., Dohm, K., Erwin-Grabner, T., Frodl, T., Fu, C. H., Hall, G. B., Glahn, D. C., Godlewska, B., Gotlib, I. H., Goya-Maldonado, R., Grabe, H. J., Groenewold, N. A., Grotegerd, D., Gruber, O., Harris, M. A., Harrison, B. J., Hatton, S. N., Hickie, I. B., Ho, T. C., Jahanshad, N., Kircher, T., Krämer, B., Krug, A., Lagopoulos, J., Leehr, E. J., Li, M., MacMaster, F. P., MacQueen, G., McIntosh, A. M., McLellan, Q., Medland, S. E., Mueller, B. A., Nenadic, I., Osipov, E., Papmeyer, M., Portella, M. J., Reneman, L., Rosa, P. G., Sacchet, M. D., Schnell, K., Schrantee, A., Sim, K., Simulionyte, E., Sindermann, L., Singh, A., Stein, D. J., Ubani, B. N., der Wee, N. J. V., der Werff, S. J. V., Veer, I. M., Vives-Gilabert, Y., Völzke, H., Walter, H., Walter, M., Schreiner, M. W., Whalley, H., Winter, N., Wittfeld, K., Yang, T. T., Yüksel, D., Zaremba, D., Thompson, P. M., Veltman, D. J., Schmaal, L., & Francks, C. (2019). No alterations of brain structural asymmetry in major depressive disorder: An ENIGMA consortium analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 176(12), 1039-1049. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.18101144.

    Abstract

    Objective:

    Asymmetry is a subtle but pervasive aspect of the human brain, and it may be altered in several psychiatric conditions. MRI studies have shown subtle differences of brain anatomy between people with major depressive disorder and healthy control subjects, but few studies have specifically examined brain anatomical asymmetry in relation to this disorder, and results from those studies have remained inconclusive. At the functional level, some electroencephalography studies have indicated left fronto-cortical hypoactivity and right parietal hypoactivity in depressive disorders, so aspects of lateralized anatomy may also be affected. The authors used pooled individual-level data from data sets collected around the world to investigate differences in laterality in measures of cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volume between individuals with major depression and healthy control subjects.
    Methods:

    The authors investigated differences in the laterality of thickness and surface area measures of 34 cerebral cortical regions in 2,256 individuals with major depression and 3,504 control subjects from 31 separate data sets, and they investigated volume asymmetries of eight subcortical structures in 2,540 individuals with major depression and 4,230 control subjects from 32 data sets. T1-weighted MRI data were processed with a single protocol using FreeSurfer and the Desikan-Killiany atlas. The large sample size provided 80% power to detect effects of the order of Cohen’s d=0.1.
    Results:

    The largest effect size (Cohen’s d) of major depression diagnosis was 0.085 for the thickness asymmetry of the superior temporal cortex, which was not significant after adjustment for multiple testing. Asymmetry measures were not significantly associated with medication use, acute compared with remitted status, first episode compared with recurrent status, or age at onset.
    Conclusions:

    Altered brain macro-anatomical asymmetry may be of little relevance to major depression etiology in most cases.
  • De Kovel, C. G. F., & Francks, C. (2019). The molecular genetics of hand preference revisited. Scientific Reports, 9: 5986. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-42515-0.

    Abstract

    Hand preference is a prominent behavioural trait linked to human brain asymmetry. A handful of genetic variants have been reported to associate with hand preference or quantitative measures related to it. Most of these reports were on the basis of limited sample sizes, by current standards for genetic analysis of complex traits. Here we performed a genome-wide association analysis of hand preference in the large, population-based UK Biobank cohort (N = 331,037). We used gene-set enrichment analysis to investigate whether genes involved in visceral asymmetry are particularly relevant to hand preference, following one previous report. We found no evidence supporting any of the previously suggested variants or genes, nor that genes involved in visceral laterality have a role in hand preference. It remains possible that some of the previously reported genes or pathways are relevant to hand preference as assessed in other ways, or else are relevant within specific disorder populations. However, some or all of the earlier findings are likely to be false positives, and none of them appear relevant to hand preference as defined categorically in the general population. Our analysis did produce a small number of novel, significant associations, including one implicating the microtubule-associated gene MAP2 in handedness.
  • Krämer, I. (1998). Children's interpretations of indefinite object noun phrases. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 1998, 163-174. doi:10.1075/avt.15.15kra.
  • Krebs, J., Wilbur, R. B., Alday, P. M., & Roehm, D. (2019). The impact of transitional movements and non-manual markings on the disambiguation of locally ambiguous argument structures in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Language and Speech, 62(4), 652-680. doi:10.1177/0023830918801399.

    Abstract

    Previous studies of Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) word-order variations have demonstrated the human processing system’s tendency to interpret a sentence-initial (case-) ambiguous argument as the subject of the clause (“subject preference”). The electroencephalogram study motivating the current report revealed earlier reanalysis effects for object-subject compared to subject-object sentences, in particular, before the start of the movement of the agreement marking sign. The effects were bound to time points prior to when both arguments were referenced in space and/or the transitional hand movement prior to producing the disambiguating sign. Due to the temporal proximity of these time points, it was not clear which visual cues led to disambiguation; that is, whether non-manual markings (body/shoulder/head shift towards the subject position) or the transitional hand movement resolved ambiguity. The present gating study further supports that disambiguation in ÖGS is triggered by cues occurring before the movement of the disambiguating sign. Further, the present study also confirms the presence of the subject preference in ÖGS, showing again that signers and speakers draw on similar strategies during language processing independent of language modality. Although the ultimate role of the visual cues leading to disambiguation (i.e., non-manual markings and transitional movements) requires further investigation, the present study shows that they contribute crucial information about argument structure during online processing. This finding provides strong support for granting these cues some degree of linguistic status (at least in ÖGS).
  • Kuperberg, G., Weber, K., Delaney-Busch, N., Ustine, C., Stillerman, B., Hämäläinen, M., & Lau, E. (2019). Multimodal neuroimaging evidence for looser lexico-semantic connections in schizophrenia. Neuropsychologia, 124, 337-349. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.10.024.

    Abstract

    It has been hypothesized that schizophrenia is characterized by overly broad automatic activity within lexico-semantic networks. We used two complementary neuroimaging techniques, Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), in combination with a highly automatic indirect semantic priming paradigm, to spatiotemporally localize this abnormality in the brain.

    Eighteen people with schizophrenia and 20 demographically-matched control participants viewed target words (“bell”) preceded by directly related (“church”), indirectly related (“priest”), or unrelated (“pants”) prime words in MEG and fMRI sessions. To minimize top-down processing, the prime was masked, the target appeared only 140ms after prime onset, and participants simply monitored for words within a particular semantic category that appeared in filler trials.

    Both techniques revealed a significantly larger automatic indirect priming effect in people with schizophrenia than in control participants. MEG temporally localized this enhanced effect to the N400 time window (300-500ms) — the critical stage of accessing meaning from words. fMRI spatially localized the effect to the left temporal fusiform cortex, which plays a role in mapping of orthographic word-form on to meaning. There was no evidence of an enhanced automatic direct semantic priming effect in the schizophrenia group.

    These findings provide converging neural evidence for abnormally broad highly automatic lexico-semantic activity in schizophrenia. We argue that, rather than arising from an unconstrained spread of automatic activation across semantic memory, this broader automatic lexico-semantic activity stems from looser connections between the form and meaning of words.

    Additional information

    1-s2.0-S0028393218307310-mmc1.docx
  • Lameira, A. R., Eerola, T., & Ravignani, A. (2019). Coupled whole-body rhythmic entrainment between two chimpanzees. Scientific Reports, 9: 18914. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55360-y.

    Abstract

    Dance is an icon of human expression. Despite astounding diversity around the world’s cultures and dazzling abundance of reminiscent animal systems, the evolution of dance in the human clade remains obscure. Dance requires individuals to interactively synchronize their whole-body tempo to their partner’s, with near-perfect precision. This capacity is motorically-heavy, engaging multiple neural circuitries, but also dependent on an acute socio-emotional bond between partners. Hitherto, these factors helped explain why no dance forms were present amongst nonhuman primates. Critically, evidence for conjoined full-body rhythmic entrainment in great apes that could help reconstruct possible proto-stages of human dance is still lacking. Here, we report an endogenously-effected case of ritualized dance-like behaviour between two captive chimpanzees – synchronized bipedalism. We submitted video recordings to rigorous time-series analysis and circular statistics. We found that individual step tempo was within the genus’ range of “solo” bipedalism. Between-individual analyses, however, revealed that synchronisation between individuals was non-random, predictable, phase concordant, maintained with instantaneous centi-second precision and jointly regulated, with individuals also taking turns as “pace-makers”. No function was apparent besides the behaviour’s putative positive social affiliation. Our analyses show a first case of spontaneous whole-body entrainment between two ape peers, thus providing tentative empirical evidence for phylogenies of human dance. Human proto-dance, we argue, may have been rooted in mechanisms of social cohesion among small groups that might have granted stress-releasing benefits via gait-synchrony and mutual-touch. An external sound/musical beat may have been initially uninvolved. We discuss dance evolution as driven by ecologically-, socially- and/or culturally-imposed “captivity”.

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  • Larsson, M., Richter, J., & Ravignani, A. (2019). Bipedal steps in the development of rhythmic behavior in humans. Music & Science, 2, 1-14. doi:10.1177/2059204319892617.

    Abstract

    We contrast two related hypotheses of the evolution of dance: H1: Maternal bipedal walking influenced the fetal experience of sound and associated movement patterns; H2: The human transition to bipedal gait produced more isochronous/predictable locomotion sound resulting in early music-like behavior associated with the acoustic advantages conferred by moving bipedally in pace. The cadence of walking is around 120 beats per minute, similar to the tempo of dance and music. Human walking displays long-term constancies. Dyads often subconsciously synchronize steps. The major amplitude component of the step is a distinctly produced beat. Human locomotion influences, and interacts with, emotions, and passive listening to music activates brain motor areas. Across dance-genres the footwork is most often performed in time to the musical beat. Brain development is largely shaped by early sensory experience, with hearing developed from week 18 of gestation. Newborns reacts to sounds, melodies, and rhythmic poems to which they have been exposed in utero. If the sound and vibrations produced by footfalls of a walking mother are transmitted to the fetus in coordination with the cadence of the motion, a connection between isochronous sound and rhythmical movement may be developed. Rhythmical sounds of the human mother locomotion differ substantially from that of nonhuman primates, while the maternal heartbeat heard is likely to have a similar isochronous character across primates, suggesting a relatively more influential role of footfall in the development of rhythmic/musical abilities in humans. Associations of gait, music, and dance are numerous. The apparent absence of musical and rhythmic abilities in nonhuman primates, which display little bipedal locomotion, corroborates that bipedal gait may be linked to the development of rhythmic abilities in humans. Bipedal stimuli in utero may primarily boost the ontogenetic development. The acoustical advantage hypothesis proposes a mechanism in the phylogenetic development.

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