Publications

Displaying 201 - 300 of 429
  • Lev-Ari, S. (2018). Social network size can influence linguistic malleability and the propagation of linguistic change. Cognition, 176, 31-39. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.003.

    Abstract

    We learn language from our social environment, but the more sources we have, the less informative each source is, and therefore, the less weight we ascribe its input. According to this principle, people with larger social networks should give less weight to new incoming information, and should therefore be less susceptible to the influence of new speakers. This paper tests this prediction, and shows that speakers with smaller social networks indeed have more malleable linguistic representations. In particular, they are more likely to adjust their lexical boundary following exposure to a new speaker. Experiment 2 uses computational simulations to test whether this greater malleability could lead people with smaller social networks to be important for the propagation of linguistic change despite the fact that they interact with fewer people. The results indicate that when innovators were connected with people with smaller rather than larger social networks, the population exhibited greater and faster diffusion. Together these experiments show that the properties of people’s social networks can influence individuals’ learning and use as well as linguistic phenomena at the community level.
  • Lev-Ari, S. (2018). The influence of social network size on speech perception. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(10), 2249-2260. doi:10.1177/1747021817739865.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    QJE-STD_17-073.R4-Table_A1.docx
  • Lev-Ari, S., Ho, E., & Keysar, B. (2018). The unforeseen consequences of interacting with non-native speakers. Topics in Cognitive Science, 10, 835-849. doi:10.1111/tops.12325.

    Abstract

    Sociolinguistic research shows that listeners' expectations of speakers influence their interpretation of the speech, yet this is often ignored in cognitive models of language comprehension. Here, we focus on the case of interactions between native and non-native speakers. Previous literature shows that listeners process the language of non-native speakers in less detail, because they expect them to have lower linguistic competence. We show that processing the language of non-native speakers increases lexical competition and access in general, not only of the non-native speaker's speech, and that this leads to poorer memory of one's own speech during the interaction. We further find that the degree to which people adjust their processing to non-native speakers is related to the degree to which they adjust their speech to them. We discuss implications for cognitive models of language processing and sociolinguistic research on attitudes.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). Picture naming and word frequency: Comments on Alario, Costa and Caramazza, Language and Cognitive Processes, 17(3), 299-319. Language and Cognitive Processes, 17(6), 663-671. doi:0.1080/01690960143000443.

    Abstract

    This commentary on Alario et al. (2002) addresses two issues: (1) Different from what the authors suggest, there are no theories of production claiming the phonological word to be the upper bound of advance planning before the onset of articulation; (2) Their picture naming study of word frequency effects on speech onset is inconclusive by lack of a crucial control, viz., of object recognition latency. This is a perennial problem in picture naming studies of word frequency and age of acquisition effects
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1991). Die konnektionistische Mode. Sprache und Kognition, 10(2), 61-72.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Het lineariseringsprobleem van de spreker. Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap (TTT), 2(1), 1-15.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2018). Is language natural to man? Some historical considerations. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 21, 127-131. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.04.003.

    Abstract

    Since the Enlightenment period, natural theories of speech and language evolution have florished in the language sciences. Four ever returning core issues are highlighted in this paper: Firstly, Is language natural to man or just an invention? Secondly, Is language a specific human ability (a ‘language instinct’) or does it arise from general cognitive capacities we share with other animals? Thirdly, Has the evolution of language been a gradual process or did it rather suddenly arise, due to some ‘evolutionary twist’? Lastly, Is the child's language acquisition an appropriate model for language evolution?
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A. S., Pechmann, T., & Havinga, J. (1991). Normal and deviant lexical processing: Reply to Dell and O'Seaghdha. Psychological Review, 98(4), 615-618. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.98.4.615.

    Abstract

    In their comment, Dell and O'Seaghdha (1991) adduced any effect on phonological probes for semantic alternatives to the activation of these probes in the lexical network. We argue that that interpretation is false and, in addition, that the model still cannot account for our data. Furthermore, and different from Dell and O'seaghda, we adduce semantic rebound to the lemma level, where it is so substantial that it should have shown up in our data. Finally, we question the function of feedback in a lexical network (other than eliciting speech errors) and discuss Dell's (1988) notion of a unified production-comprehension system.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Kelter, S. (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 78-106. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(82)90005-6.

    Abstract

    Speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk. This tendency is experimentally established and manipulated in various question-answering situations. It is shown that a question's surface form can affect the format of the answer given, even if this form has little semantic or conversational consequence, as in the pair Q: (At) what time do you close. A: “(At)five o'clock.” Answerers tend to match the utterance to the prepositional (nonprepositional) form of the question. This “correspondence effect” may diminish or disappear when, following the question, additional verbal material is presented to the answerer. The experiments show that neither the articulatory buffer nor long-term memory is normally involved in this retention of recent speech. Retaining recent speech in working memory may fulfill a variety of functions for speaker and listener, among them the correct production and interpretation of surface anaphora. Reusing recent materials may, moreover, be more economical than regenerating speech anew from a semantic base, and thus contribute to fluency. But the realization of this strategy requires a production system in which linguistic formulation can take place relatively independent of, and parallel to, conceptual planning.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Science policy: Three recent idols, and a goddess. IPO Annual Progress Report, 17, 32-35.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Richardson, G., & La Heij, W. (1985). Pointing and voicing in deictic expressions. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 133-164. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(85)90021-X.

    Abstract

    The present paper studies how, in deictic expressions, the temporal interdependency of speech and gesture is realized in the course of motor planning and execution. Two theoretical positions were compared. On the “interactive” view the temporal parameters of speech and gesture are claimed to be the result of feedback between the two systems throughout the phases of motor planning and execution. The alternative “ballistic” view, however, predicts that the two systems are independent during the phase of motor execution, the temporal parameters having been preestablished in the planning phase. In four experiments subjects were requested to indicate which of an array of referent lights was momentarily illuminated. This was done by pointing to the light and/or by using a deictic expression (this/that light). The temporal and spatial course of the pointing movement was automatically registered by means of a Selspot opto-electronic system. By analyzing the moments of gesture initiation and apex, and relating them to the moments of speech onset, it was possible to show that, for deictic expressions, the ballistic view is very nearly correct.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Schriefer, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A. S., Pechmann, T., & Havinga, J. (1991). The time course of lexical access in speech production: A study of picture naming. Psychological Review, 98(1), 122-142. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.98.1.122.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Zelfcorrecties in het spreekproces. KNAW: Mededelingen van de afdeling letterkunde, nieuwe reeks, 45(8), 215-228.
  • Levinson, S. C., Kita, S., Haun, D. B. M., & Rasch, B. H. (2002). Returning the tables: Language affects spatial reasoning. Cognition, 84(2), 155-188. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00045-8.

    Abstract

    Li and Gleitman (Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition, in press) seek to undermine a large-scale cross-cultural comparison of spatial language and cognition which claims to have demonstrated that language and conceptual coding in the spatial domain covary (see, for example, Space in language and cognition: explorations in linguistic diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press; Language 74 (1998) 557): the most plausible interpretation is that different languages induce distinct conceptual codings. Arguing against this, Li and Gleitman attempt to show that in an American student population they can obtain any of the relevant conceptual codings just by varying spatial cues, holding language constant. They then argue that our findings are better interpreted in terms of ecologically-induced distinct cognitive styles reflected in language. Linguistic coding, they argue, has no causal effects on non-linguistic thinking – it simply reflects antecedently existing conceptual distinctions. We here show that Li and Gleitman did not make a crucial distinction between frames of spatial reference relevant to our line of research. We report a series of experiments designed to show that they have, as a consequence, misinterpreted the results of their own experiments, which are in fact in line with our hypothesis. Their attempts to reinterpret the large cross-cultural study, and to enlist support from animal and infant studies, fail for the same reasons. We further try to discern exactly what theory drives their presumption that language can have no cognitive efficacy, and conclude that their position is undermined by a wide range of considerations.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2002). Time for a linguistic anthropology of time. Current Anthropology, 43(4), S122-S123. doi:10.1086/342214.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Senft, G. (1991). Forschungsgruppe für Kognitive Anthropologie - Eine neue Forschungsgruppe in der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Linguistische Berichte, 133, 244-246.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Senft, G. (1991). Research group for cognitive anthropology - A new research group of the Max Planck Society. Cognitive Linguistics, 2, 311-312.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2018). Spatial cognition, empathy and language evolution. Studies in Pragmatics, 20, 16-21.

    Abstract

    The evolution of language and spatial cognition may have been deeply interconnected. The argument
    goes as follows: 1. Human native spatial abilities are poor, but we make up for it with linguistic
    and cultural prostheses; 2. The explanation for the loss of native spatial abilities may be
    that language has cannibalized the hippocampus, the mammalian mental ‘GPS’; 3. Consequently,
    language may have borrowed conceptual primitives from spatial cognition (in line with ‘localism’),
    these being differentially combined in different languages; 4. The hippocampus may have
    been colonized because: (a) space was prime subject matter for communication, (b) gesture uses
    space to represent space, and was likely precursor to language. In order to explain why the other
    great apes haven’t gone in the same direction, we need to invoke other factors, notably the ‘interaction
    engine’, the ensemble of interactional abilities that make cooperative communication possible
    and provide the matrix for the evolution and learning of language.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1991). Pragmatic reduction of the Binding Conditions revisited. Journal of Linguistics, 27, 107-161. doi:10.1017/S0022226700012433.

    Abstract

    In an earlier article (Levinson, 1987b), I raised the possibility that a Gricean theory of implicature might provide a systematic partial reduction of the Binding Conditions; the briefest of outlines is given in Section 2.1 below but the argumentation will be found in the earlier article. In this article I want, first, to show how that account might be further justified and extended, but then to introduce a radical alternative. This alternative uses the same pragmatic framework, but gives an account better adjusted to some languages. Finally, I shall attempt to show that both accounts can be combined by taking a diachronic perspective. The attraction of the combined account is that, suddenly, many facts about long-range reflexives and their associated logophoricity fall into place.
  • Levshina, N. (2018). Probabilistic grammar and constructional predictability: Bayesian generalized additive models of help. GLOSSA-a journal of general linguistics, 3(1): 55. doi:10.5334/gjgl.294.

    Abstract

    The present study investigates the construction with help followed by the bare or to-infinitive in seven varieties of web-based English from Australia, Ghana, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica and the USA. In addition to various factors known from the literature, such as register, minimization of cognitive complexity and avoidance of identity (horror aequi), it studies the effect of predictability of the infinitive given help and the other way round on the language user’s choice between the constructional variants. These probabilistic constraints are tested in a series of Bayesian generalized additive mixed-effects regression models. The results demonstrate that the to-infinitive is particularly frequent in contexts with low predictability, or, in information-theoretic terms, with high information content. This tendency is interpreted as communicatively efficient behaviour, when more predictable units of discourse get less formal marking, and less predictable ones get more formal marking. However, the strength, shape and directionality of predictability effects exhibit variation across the countries, which demonstrates the importance of the cross-lectal perspective in research on communicative efficiency and other universal functional principles.
  • Lewis, A. G., Schriefers, H., Bastiaansen, M., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2018). Assessing the utility of frequency tagging for tracking memory-based reactivation of word representations. Scientific Reports, 8: 7897. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-26091-3.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Lewis_etal_2018sup.docx
  • Liang, S., Vega, R., Kong, X., Deng, W., Wang, Q., Ma, X., Li, M., Hu, X., Greenshaw, A. J., Greiner, R., & Li, T. (2018). Neurocognitive Graphs of First-Episode Schizophrenia and Major Depression Based on Cognitive Features. Neuroscience Bulletin, 34(2), 312-320. doi:10.1007/s12264-017-0190-6.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Liang_etal_2017sup.pdf
  • Ligthart, S., Vaez, A., Võsa, U., Stathopoulou, M. G., De Vries, P. S., Prins, B. P., Van der Most, P. J., Tanaka, T., Naderi, E., Rose, L. M., Wu, Y., Karlsson, R., Barbalic, M., Lin, H., Pool, R., Zhu, G., Macé, A., Sidore, C., Trompet, S., Mangino, M. and 267 moreLigthart, S., Vaez, A., Võsa, U., Stathopoulou, M. G., De Vries, P. S., Prins, B. P., Van der Most, P. J., Tanaka, T., Naderi, E., Rose, L. M., Wu, Y., Karlsson, R., Barbalic, M., Lin, H., Pool, R., Zhu, G., Macé, A., Sidore, C., Trompet, S., Mangino, M., Sabater-Lleal, M., Kemp, J. P., Abbasi, A., Kacprowski, T., Verweij, N., Smith, A. V., Huang, T., Marzi, C., Feitosa, M. F., Lohman, K. K., Kleber, M. E., Milaneschi, Y., Mueller, C., Huq, M., Vlachopoulou, E., Lyytikäinen, L.-P., Oldmeadow, C., Deelen, J., Perola, M., Zhao, J. H., Feenstra, B., LifeLines Cohort Study, Amini, M., CHARGE Inflammation Working Group, Lahti, J., Schraut, K. E., Fornage, M., Suktitipat, B., Chen, W.-M., Li, X., Nutile, T., Malerba, G., Luan, J., Bak, T., Schork, N., Del Greco M., F., Thiering, E., Mahajan, A., Marioni, R. E., Mihailov, E., Eriksson, J., Ozel, A. B., Zhang, W., Nethander, M., Cheng, Y.-C., Aslibekyan, S., Ang, W., Gandin, I., Yengo, L., Portas, L., Kooperberg, C., Hofer, E., Rajan, K. B., Schurmann, C., Den Hollander, W., Ahluwalia, T. S., Zhao, J., Draisma, H. H. M., Ford, I., Timpson, N., Teumer, A., Huang, H., Wahl, S., Liu, Y., Huang, J., Uh, H.-W., Geller, F., Joshi, P. K., Yanek, L. R., Trabetti, E., Lehne, B., Vozzi, D., Verbanck, M., Biino, G., Saba, Y., Meulenbelt, I., O’Connell, J. R., Laakso, M., Giulianini, F., Magnusson, P. K. E., Ballantyne, C. M., Hottenga, J. J., Montgomery, G. W., Rivadineira, F., Rueedi, R., Steri, M., Herzig, K.-H., Stott, D. J., Menni, C., Franberg, M., St Pourcain, B., Felix, S. B., Pers, T. H., Bakker, S. J. L., Kraft, P., Peters, A., Vaidya, D., Delgado, G., Smit, J. H., Großmann, V., Sinisalo, J., Seppälä, I., Williams, S. R., Holliday, E. G., Moed, M., Langenberg, C., Räikkönen, K., Ding, J., Campbell, H., Sale, M. M., Chen, Y.-D.-I., James, A. L., Ruggiero, D., Soranzo, N., Hartman, C. A., Smith, E. N., Berenson, G. S., Fuchsberger, C., Hernandez, D., Tiesler, C. M. T., Giedraitis, V., Liewald, D., Fischer, K., Mellström, D., Larsson, A., Wang, Y., Scott, W. R., Lorentzon, M., Beilby, J., Ryan, K. A., Pennell, C. E., Vuckovic, D., Balkau, B., Concas, M. P., Schmidt, R., Mendes de Leon, C. F., Bottinger, E. P., Kloppenburg, M., Paternoster, L., Boehnke, M., Musk, A. W., Willemsen, G., Evans, D. M., Madden, P. A. F., Kähönen, M., Kutalik, Z., Zoledziewska, M., Karhunen, V., Kritchevsky, S. B., Sattar, N., Lachance, G., Clarke, R., Harris, T. B., Raitakari, O. T., Attia, J. R., Van Heemst, D., Kajantie, E., Sorice, R., Gambaro, G., Scott, R. A., Hicks, A. A., Ferrucci, L., Standl, M., Lindgren, C. M., Starr, J. M., Karlsson, M., Lind, L., Li, J. Z., Chambers, J. C., Mori, T. A., De Geus, E. J. C. N., Heath, A. C., Martin, N. G., Auvinen, J., Buckley, B. M., De Craen, A. J. M., Waldenberger, M., Strauch, K., Meitinger, T., Scott, R. J., McEvoy, M., Beekman, M., Bombieri, C., Ridker, P. M., Mohlke, K. L., Pedersen, N. L., Morrison, A. C., Boomsma, D. I., Whitfield, J. B., Strachan, D. P., Hofman, A., Vollenweider, P., Cucca, F., Jarvelin, M.-R., Jukema, J. W., Spector, T. D., Hamsten, A., Zeller, T., Uitterlinden, A. G., Nauck, M., Gudnason, V., Qi, L., Grallert, H., Borecki, I. B., Rotter, J. I., März, W., Wild, P. S., Lokki, M.-L., Boyle, M., Salomaa, V., Melbye, M., Eriksson, J. G., Wilson, J. F., Penninx, B. W. J. H., Becker, D. M., Worrall, B. B., Gibson, G., Krauss, R. M., Ciullo, M., Zaza, G., Wareham, N. J., Oldehinkel, A. J., Palmer, L. J., Murray, S. S., Pramstaller, P. P., Bandinelli, S., Heinrich, J., Ingelsson, E., Deary, I. J., Ma¨gi, R., Vandenput, L., Van der Harst, P., Desch, K. C., Kooner, J. S., Ohlsson, C., Hayward, C., Lehtima¨ki, T., Shuldiner, A. R., Arnett, D. K., Beilin, L. J., Robino, A., Froguel, P., Pirastu, M., Jess, T., Koenig, W., Loos, R. J. F., Evans, D. A., Schmidt, H., Smith, G. D., Slagboom, P. E., Eiriksdottir, G., Morris, A. P., Psaty, B. M., Tracy, R. P., Nolte, I. M., Boerwinkle, E., Visvikis-Siest, S., Reiner, A. P., Gross, M., Bis, J. C., Franke, L., Franco, O. H., Benjamin, E. J., Chasman, D. I., Dupuis, J., Snieder, H., Dehghan, A., & Alizadeh, B. Z. (2018). Genome Analyses of >200,000 Individuals Identify 58 Loci for Chronic Inflammation and Highlight Pathways that Link Inflammation and Complex Disorders. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 103(5), 691-706. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2018.09.009.

    Abstract

    C-reactive protein (CRP) is a sensitive biomarker of chronic low-grade inflammation and is associated with multiple complex diseases. The genetic determinants of chronic inflammation remain largely unknown, and the causal role of CRP in several clinical outcomes is debated. We performed two genome-wide association studies (GWASs), on HapMap and 1000 Genomes imputed data, of circulating amounts of CRP by using data from 88 studies comprising 204,402 European individuals. Additionally, we performed in silico functional analyses and Mendelian randomization analyses with several clinical outcomes. The GWAS meta-analyses of CRP revealed 58 distinct genetic loci (p < 5 × 10−8). After adjustment for body mass index in the regression analysis, the associations at all except three loci remained. The lead variants at the distinct loci explained up to 7.0% of the variance in circulating amounts of CRP. We identified 66 gene sets that were organized in two substantially correlated clusters, one mainly composed of immune pathways and the other characterized by metabolic pathways in the liver. Mendelian randomization analyses revealed a causal protective effect of CRP on schizophrenia and a risk-increasing effect on bipolar disorder. Our findings provide further insights into the biology of inflammation and could lead to interventions for treating inflammation and its clinical consequences.
  • Liu, X., Gao, Y., Di, Q., Hu, J., Lu, C., Nan, Y., Booth, J. R., & Liu, L. (2018). Differences between child and adult large-scale functional brain networks for reading tasks. Human Brain Mapping, 39(2), 662-679. doi:10.1002/hbm.23871.

    Abstract

    Reading is an important high‐level cognitive function of the human brain, requiring interaction among multiple brain regions. Revealing differences between children's large‐scale functional brain networks for reading tasks and those of adults helps us to understand how the functional network changes over reading development. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 17 adults (19–28 years old) and 16 children (11–13 years old), and graph theoretical analyses to investigate age‐related changes in large‐scale functional networks during rhyming and meaning judgment tasks on pairs of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that: (1) adults had stronger inter‐regional connectivity and nodal degree in occipital regions, while children had stronger inter‐regional connectivity in temporal regions, suggesting that adults rely more on visual orthographic processing whereas children rely more on auditory phonological processing during reading. (2) Only adults showed between‐task differences in inter‐regional connectivity and nodal degree, whereas children showed no task differences, suggesting the topological organization of adults’ reading network is more specialized. (3) Children showed greater inter‐regional connectivity and nodal degree than adults in multiple subcortical regions; the hubs in children were more distributed in subcortical regions while the hubs in adults were more distributed in cortical regions. These findings suggest that reading development is manifested by a shift from reliance on subcortical to cortical regions. Taken together, our study suggests that Chinese reading development is supported by developmental changes in brain connectivity properties, and some of these changes may be domain‐general while others may be specific to the reading domain.
  • Xu, S., Liu, P., Chen, Y., Chen, Y., Zhang, W., Zhao, H., Cao, Y., Wang, F., Jiang, N., Lin, S., Li, B., Zhang, Z., Wei, Z., Fan, Y., Jin, Y., He, L., Zhou, R., Dekker, J. D., Tucker, H. O., Fisher, S. E. and 4 moreXu, S., Liu, P., Chen, Y., Chen, Y., Zhang, W., Zhao, H., Cao, Y., Wang, F., Jiang, N., Lin, S., Li, B., Zhang, Z., Wei, Z., Fan, Y., Jin, Y., He, L., Zhou, R., Dekker, J. D., Tucker, H. O., Fisher, S. E., Yao, Z., Liu, Q., Xia, X., & Guo, X. (2018). Foxp2 regulates anatomical features that may be relevant for vocal behaviors and bipedal locomotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(35), 8799-8804. doi:10.1073/pnas.1721820115.

    Abstract

    Fundamental human traits, such as language and bipedalism, are associated with a range of anatomical adaptations in craniofacial shaping and skeletal remodeling. However, it is unclear how such morphological features arose during hominin evolution. FOXP2 is a brain-expressed transcription factor implicated in a rare disorder involving speech apraxia and language impairments. Analysis of its evolutionary history suggests that this gene may have contributed to the emergence of proficient spoken language. In the present study, through analyses of skeleton-specific knockout mice, we identified roles of Foxp2 in skull shaping and bone remodeling. Selective ablation of Foxp2 in cartilage disrupted pup vocalizations in a similar way to that of global Foxp2 mutants, which may be due to pleiotropic effects on craniofacial morphogenesis. Our findings also indicate that Foxp2 helps to regulate strength and length of hind limbs and maintenance of joint cartilage and intervertebral discs, which are all anatomical features that are susceptible to adaptations for bipedal locomotion. In light of the known roles of Foxp2 in brain circuits that are important for motor skills and spoken language, we suggest that this gene may have been well placed to contribute to coevolution of neural and anatomical adaptations related to speech and bipedal locomotion.

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  • Long, M., Horton, W. S., Rohde, H., & Sorace, A. (2018). Individual differences in switching and inhibition predict perspective-taking across the lifespan. Cognition, 170, 25-30. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.09.004.

    Abstract

    Studies exploring the influence of executive functions (EF) on perspective-taking have focused on inhibition and working memory in young adults or clinical populations. Less consideration has been given to more complex capacities that also involve switching attention between perspectives, or to changes in EF and concomitant effects on perspective-taking across the lifespan. To address this, we assessed whether individual differences in inhibition and attentional switching in healthy adults (ages 17–84) predict performance on a task in which speakers identified targets for a listener with size-contrasting competitors in common or privileged ground. Modification differences across conditions decreased with age. Further, perspective taking interacted with EF measures: youngest adults’ sensitivity to perspective was best captured by their inhibitory performance; oldest adults’ sensitivity was best captured by switching performance. Perspective-taking likely involves multiple aspects of EF, as revealed by considering a wider range of EF tasks and individual capacities across the lifespan.
  • Lumaca, M., Ravignani, A., & Baggio, G. (2018). Music evolution in the laboratory: Cultural transmission meets neurophysiology. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12: 246. doi:10.3389%2Ffnins.2018.00246.

    Abstract

    In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the biological and cultural evolution of music, and specifically in the role played by perceptual and cognitive factors in shaping core features of musical systems, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm. One proposal originates in the language sciences. It holds that aspects of musical systems evolve by adapting gradually, in the course of successive generations, to the structural and functional characteristics of the sensory and memory systems of learners and “users” of music. This hypothesis has found initial support in laboratory experiments on music transmission. In this article, we first review some of the most important theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of music evolution. Next, we identify a major current limitation of these studies, i.e., the lack of direct neural support for the hypothesis of cognitive adaptation. Finally, we discuss a recent experiment in which this issue was addressed by using event-related potentials (ERPs). We suggest that the introduction of neurophysiology in cultural transmission research may provide novel insights on the micro-evolutionary origins of forms of variation observed in cultural systems.
  • Lutzenberger, H. (2018). Manual and nonmanual features of name signs in Kata Kolok and sign language of the Netherlands. Sign Language Studies, 18(4), 546-569. doi:10.1353/sls.2018.0016.

    Abstract

    Name signs are based on descriptions, initialization, and loan translations. Nyst and Baker (2003) have found crosslinguistic similarities in the phonology of name signs, such as a preference for one-handed signs and for the head location. Studying Kata Kolok (KK), a rural sign language without indigenous fingerspelling, strongly suggests that one-handedness is not correlated to initialization, but represents a more general feature of name sign phonology. Like in other sign languages, the head location is used frequently in both KK and Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) name signs. The use of nonmanuals, however, is strikingly different. NGT name signs are always accompanied by mouthings, which are absent in KK. Instead, KK name signs may use mouth gestures; these may disambiguate manually identical name signs, and even form independent name signs without any manual features
  • Maess, B., Friederici, A. D., Damian, M., Meyer, A. S., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). Semantic category interference in overt picture naming: Sharpening current density localization by PCA. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(3), 455-462. doi:10.1162/089892902317361967.

    Abstract

    The study investigated the neuronal basis of the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon. The semantic category interference effect was used to locate lexical retrieval processes in time and space. This effect reflects the finding that, for overt naming, volunteers are slower when naming pictures out of a sequence of items from the same semantic category than from different categories. Participants named pictures blockwise either in the context of same- or mixedcategory items while the brain response was registered using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Fifteen out of 20 participants showed longer response latencies in the same-category compared to the mixed-category condition. Event-related MEG signals for the participants demonstrating the interference effect were submitted to a current source density (CSD) analysis. As a new approach, a principal component analysis was applied to decompose the grand average CSD distribution into spatial subcomponents (factors). The spatial factor indicating left temporal activity revealed significantly different activation for the same-category compared to the mixedcategory condition in the time window between 150 and 225 msec post picture onset. These findings indicate a major involvement of the left temporal cortex in the semantic interference effect. As this effect has been shown to take place at the level of lexical selection, the data suggest that the left temporal cortex supports processes of lexical retrieval during production.
  • Majid, A., Roberts, S. G., Cilissen, L., Emmorey, K., Nicodemus, B., O'Grady, L., Woll, B., LeLan, B., De Sousa, H., Cansler, B. L., Shayan, S., De Vos, C., Senft, G., Enfield, N. J., Razak, R. A., Fedden, S., Tufvesson, S., Dingemanse, M., Ozturk, O., Brown, P. and 6 moreMajid, A., Roberts, S. G., Cilissen, L., Emmorey, K., Nicodemus, B., O'Grady, L., Woll, B., LeLan, B., De Sousa, H., Cansler, B. L., Shayan, S., De Vos, C., Senft, G., Enfield, N. J., Razak, R. A., Fedden, S., Tufvesson, S., Dingemanse, M., Ozturk, O., Brown, P., Hill, C., Le Guen, O., Hirtzel, V., Van Gijn, R., Sicoli, M. A., & Levinson, S. C. (2018). Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(45), 11369-11376. doi:10.1073/pnas.1720419115.

    Abstract

    Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language.
  • Majid, A. (2002). Frames of reference and language concepts. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(12), 503-504. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)02024-7.
  • Majid, A. (2018). Humans are neglecting our sense of smell. Here's what we could gain by fixing that. Time, March 7, 2018: 5130634.
  • Majid, A., & Kruspe, N. (2018). Hunter-gatherer olfaction is special. Current Biology, 28(3), 409-413. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.014.

    Abstract

    People struggle to name odors, but this
    limitation is not universal. Majid and
    Kruspe investigate whether superior
    olfactory performance is due to
    subsistence, ecology, or language family.
    By comparing closely related
    communities in the Malay Peninsula, they
    find that only hunter-gatherers are
    proficient odor namers, suggesting that
    subsistence is crucial.

    Additional information

    The data are archived at RWAAI
  • Majid, A., Burenhult, N., Stensmyr, M., De Valk, J., & Hansson, B. S. (2018). Olfactory language and abstraction across cultures. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 373: 20170139. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0139.

    Abstract

    Olfaction presents a particularly interesting arena to explore abstraction in language. Like other abstract domains, such as time, odours can be difficult to conceptualize. An odour cannot be seen or held, it can be difficult to locate in space, and for most people odours are difficult to verbalize. On the other hand, odours give rise to primary sensory experiences. Every time we inhale we are using olfaction to make sense of our environment. We present new experimental data from 30 Jahai hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula and 30 matched Dutch participants from the Netherlands in an odour naming experiment. Participants smelled monomolecular odorants and named odours while reaction times, odour descriptors and facial expressions were measured. We show that while Dutch speakers relied on concrete descriptors, i.e. they referred to odour sources (e.g. smells like lemon), the Jahai used abstract vocabulary to name the same odours (e.g. musty). Despite this differential linguistic categorization, analysis of facial expressions showed that the two groups, nevertheless, had the same initial emotional reactions to odours. Critically, these cross-cultural data present a challenge for how to think about abstraction in language.
  • Mak, W. M., Vonk, W., & Schriefers, H. (2002). The influence of animacy on relative clause processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(1), 50-68. doi:10.1006/jmla.2001.2837.

    Abstract

    In previous research it has been shown that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Several theories have been proposed that explain the difference on the basis of different theoretical perspectives. However, previous research tested relative clauses only with animate protagonists. In a corpus study of Dutch and German newspaper texts, we show that animacy is an important determinant of the distribution of subject and object relative clauses. In two experiments in Dutch, in which the animacy of the object of the relative clause is varied, no difference in reading time is obtained between subject and object relative clauses when the object is inanimate. The experiments show that animacy influences the processing difficulty of relative clauses. These results can only be accounted for by current major theories of relative clause processing when additional assumptions are introduced, and at the same time show that the possibility of semantically driven analysis can be considered as a serious alternative.
  • Mamus, E., & Boduroglu, A. (2018). The role of context on boundary extension. Visual Cognition, 26(2), 115-130. doi:10.1080/13506285.2017.1399947.

    Abstract

    Boundary extension (BE) is a memory error in which observers remember more of a scene than they actually viewed. This error reflects one’s prediction that a scene naturally continues and is driven by scene schema and contextual knowledge. In two separate experiments we investigated the necessity of context and scene schema in BE. In Experiment 1, observers viewed scenes that either contained semantically consistent or inconsistent objects as well as objects on white backgrounds. In both types of scenes and in the no-background condition there was a BE effect; critically, semantic inconsistency in scenes reduced the magnitude of BE. In Experiment 2 when we used abstract shapes instead of meaningful objects, there was no BE effect. We suggest that although scene schema is necessary to elicit BE, contextual consistency is not required.
  • Manahova, M. E., Mostert, P., Kok, P., Schoffelen, J.-M., & De Lange, F. P. (2018). Stimulus familiarity and expectation jointly modulate neural activity in the visual ventral stream. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(9), 1366-1377. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01281.

    Abstract

    Prior knowledge about the visual world can change how a visual stimulus is processed. Two forms of prior knowledge are often distinguished: stimulus familiarity (i.e., whether a stimulus has been seen before) and stimulus expectation (i.e., whether a stimulus is expected to occur, based on the context). Neurophysiological studies in monkeys have shown suppression of spiking activity both for expected and for familiar items in object-selective inferotemporal cortex. It is an open question, however, if and how these types of knowledge interact in their modulatory effects on the sensory response. To address this issue and to examine whether previous findings generalize to noninvasively measured neural activity in humans, we separately manipulated stimulus familiarity and expectation while noninvasively recording human brain activity using magnetoencephalography. We observed independent suppression of neural activity by familiarity and expectation, specifically in the lateral occipital complex, the putative human homologue of monkey inferotemporal cortex. Familiarity also led to sharpened response dynamics, which was predominantly observed in early visual cortex. Together, these results show that distinct types of sensory knowledge jointly determine the amount of neural resources dedicated to object processing in the visual ventral stream.
  • Mandy, W., Pellicano, L., St Pourcain, B., Skuse, D., & Heron, J. (2018). The development of autistic social traits across childhood and adolescence in males and females. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 59(11), 1143-1151. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12913.

    Abstract

    Background

    Autism is a dimensional condition, representing the extreme end of a continuum of social competence that extends throughout the general population. Currently, little is known about how autistic social traits (ASTs), measured across the full spectrum of severity, develop during childhood and adolescence, including whether there are developmental differences between boys and girls. Therefore, we sought to chart the trajectories of ASTs in the general population across childhood and adolescence, with a focus on gender differences.
    Methods

    Participants were 9,744 males (n = 4,784) and females (n = 4,960) from ALSPAC, a UK birth cohort study. ASTs were assessed when participants were aged 7, 10, 13 and 16 years, using the parent‐report Social Communication Disorders Checklist. Data were modelled using latent growth curve analysis.
    Results

    Developmental trajectories of males and females were nonlinear, showing a decline from 7 to 10 years, followed by an increase between 10 and 16 years. At 7 years, males had higher levels of ASTs than females (mean raw score difference = 0.88, 95% CI [.72, 1.04]), and were more likely (odds ratio [OR] = 1.99; 95% CI, 1.82, 2.16) to score in the clinical range on the SCDC. By 16 years this gender difference had disappeared: males and females had, on average, similar levels of ASTs (mean difference = 0.00, 95% CI [−0.19, 0.19]) and were equally likely to score in the SCDC's clinical range (OR = 0.91, 95% CI, 0.73, 1.10). This was the result of an increase in females’ ASTs between 10 and 16 years.
    Conclusions

    There are gender‐specific trajectories of autistic social impairment, with females more likely than males to experience an escalation of ASTs during early‐ and midadolescence. It remains to be discovered whether the observed female adolescent increase in ASTs represents the genuine late onset of social difficulties or earlier, subtle, pre‐existing difficulties becoming more obvious.

    Additional information

    jcpp12913-sup-0001-supinfo.docx
  • Marlow, A. J., Fisher, S. E., Richardson, A. J., Francks, C., Talcott, J. B., Monaco, A. P., Stein, J. F., & Cardon, L. R. (2002). Investigation of quantitative measures related to reading disability in a large sample of sib-pairs from the UK. Behavior Genetics, 31(2), 219-230. doi:10.1023/A:1010209629021.

    Abstract

    We describe a family-based sample of individuals with reading disability collected as part of a quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping study. Eighty-nine nuclear families (135 independent sib-pairs) were identified through a single proband using a traditional discrepancy score of predicted/actual reading ability and a known family history. Eight correlated psychometric measures were administered to each sibling, including single word reading, spelling, similarities, matrices, spoonerisms, nonword and irregular word reading, and a pseudohomophone test. Summary statistics for each measure showed a reduced mean for the probands compared to the co-sibs, which in turn was lower than that of the population. This partial co-sib regression back to the mean indicates that the measures are influenced by familial factors and therefore, may be suitable for a mapping study. The variance of each of the measures remained largely unaffected, which is reassuring for the application of a QTL approach. Multivariate genetic analysis carried out to explore the relationship between the measures identified a common factor between the reading measures that accounted for 54% of the variance. Finally the familiality estimates (range 0.32–0.73) obtained for the reading measures including the common factor (0.68) supported their heritability. These findings demonstrate the viability of this sample for QTL mapping, and will assist in the interpretation of any subsequent linkage findings in an ongoing genome scan.
  • Martin, A. E. (2018). Cue integration during sentence comprehension: Electrophysiological evidence from ellipsis. PLoS One, 13(11): e0206616. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0206616.

    Abstract

    Language processing requires us to integrate incoming linguistic representations with representations of past input, often across intervening words and phrases. This computational situation has been argued to require retrieval of the appropriate representations from memory via a set of features or representations serving as retrieval cues. However, even within in a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, both the structure of retrieval cues and the particular computation that underlies direct-access retrieval are still underspecified. Evidence from two event-related brain potential (ERP) experiments that show cue-based interference from different types of linguistic representations during ellipsis comprehension are consistent with an architecture wherein different cue types are integrated, and where the interaction of cue with the recent contents of memory determines processing outcome, including expression of the interference effect in ERP componentry. I conclude that retrieval likely includes a computation where cues are integrated with the contents of memory via a linear weighting scheme, and I propose vector addition as a candidate formalization of this computation. I attempt to account for these effects and other related phenomena within a broader cue-based framework of language processing.
  • Martin, A. E., & McElree, B. (2018). Retrieval cues and syntactic ambiguity resolution: Speed-accuracy tradeoff evidence. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33(6), 769-783. doi:10.1080/23273798.2018.1427877.

    Abstract

    Language comprehension involves coping with ambiguity and recovering from misanalysis. Syntactic ambiguity resolution is associated with increased reading times, a classic finding that has shaped theories of sentence processing. However, reaction times conflate the time it takes a process to complete with the quality of the behavior-related information available to the system. We therefore used the speed-accuracy tradeoff procedure (SAT) to derive orthogonal estimates of processing time and interpretation accuracy, and tested whether stronger retrieval cues (via semantic relatedness: neighed->horse vs. fell->horse) aid interpretation during recovery. On average, ambiguous sentences took 250ms longer (SAT rate) to interpret than unambiguous controls, demonstrating veridical differences in processing time. Retrieval cues more strongly related to the true subject always increased accuracy, regardless of ambiguity. These findings are consistent with a language processing architecture where cue-driven operations give rise to interpretation, and wherein diagnostic cues aid retrieval, regardless of parsing difficulty or structural uncertainty.
  • Maslowski, M., Meyer, A. S., & Bosker, H. R. (2018). Listening to yourself is special: Evidence from global speech rate tracking. PLoS One, 13(9): e0203571. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0203571.

    Abstract

    Listeners are known to use adjacent contextual speech rate in processing temporally ambiguous speech sounds. For instance, an ambiguous vowel between short /A/ and long /a:/ in Dutch sounds relatively long (i.e., as /a:/) embedded in a fast precursor sentence, but short in a slow sentence. Besides the local speech rate, listeners also track talker-specific global speech rates. However, it is yet unclear whether other talkers' global rates are encoded with reference to a listener's self-produced rate. Three experiments addressed this question. In Experiment 1, one group of participants was instructed to speak fast, whereas another group had to speak slowly. The groups were compared on their perception of ambiguous /A/-/a:/ vowels embedded in neutral rate speech from another talker. In Experiment 2, the same participants listened to playback of their own speech and again evaluated target vowels in neutral rate speech. Neither of these experiments provided support for the involvement of self-produced speech in perception of another talker's speech rate. Experiment 3 repeated Experiment 2 but with a new participant sample that was unfamiliar with the participants from Experiment 2. This experiment revealed fewer /a:/ responses in neutral speech in the group also listening to a fast rate, suggesting that neutral speech sounds slow in the presence of a fast talker and vice versa. Taken together, the findings show that self-produced speech is processed differently from speech produced by others. They carry implications for our understanding of the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved in rate-dependent speech perception in dialogue settings.
  • Mauner, G., Melinger, A., Koenig, J.-P., & Bienvenue, B. (2002). When is schematic participant information encoded: Evidence from eye-monitoring. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(3), 386-406. doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00009-8.

    Abstract

    Two eye-monitoring studies examined when unexpressed schematic participant information specified by verbs is used during sentence processing. Experiment 1 compared the processing of sentences with passive and intransitive verbs hypothesized to introduce or not introduce, respectively, an agent when their main clauses were preceded by either agent-dependent rationale clauses or adverbial clause controls. While there were no differences in the processing of passive clauses following rationale and control clauses, intransitive verb clauses elicited anomaly effects following agent-dependent rationale clauses. To determine whether the source of this immediately available schematic participant information is lexically specified or instead derived solely from conceptual sources associated with verbs, Experiment 2 compared the processing of clauses with passive and middle verbs following rationale clauses (e.g., To raise money for the charity, the vase was/had sold quickly…). Although both passive and middle verb forms denote situations that logically require an agent, middle verbs, which by hypothesis do not lexically specify an agent, elicited longer processing times than passive verbs in measures of early processing. These results demonstrate that participants access and interpret lexically encoded schematic participant information in the process of recognizing a verb.
  • Mei, C., Fedorenko, E., Amor, D. J., Boys, A., Hoeflin, C., Carew, P., Burgess, T., Fisher, S. E., & Morgan, A. T. (2018). Deep phenotyping of speech and language skills in individuals with 16p11.2 deletion. European journal of human genetics, 26(5), 676-686. doi:10.1038/s41431-018-0102-x.

    Abstract

    Recurrent deletions of a ~600-kb region of 16p11.2 have been associated with a highly penetrant form of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Yet prior findings have been based on a small, potentially biased sample using retrospectively collected data. We examine the prevalence of CAS in a larger cohort of individuals with 16p11.2 deletion using a prospectively designed assessment battery. The broader speech and language phenotype associated with carrying this deletion was also examined. 55 participants with 16p11.2 deletion (47 children, 8 adults) underwent deep phenotyping to test for the presence of CAS and other speech and language diagnoses. Standardized tests of oral motor functioning, speech production, language, and non-verbal IQ were conducted. The majority of children (77%) and half of adults (50%) met criteria for CAS. Other speech outcomes were observed including articulation or phonological errors (i.e., phonetic and cognitive-linguistic errors, respectively), dysarthria (i.e., neuromuscular speech disorder), minimal verbal output, and even typical speech in some. Receptive and expressive language impairment was present in 73% and 70% of children, respectively. Co-occurring neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., autism) and non-verbal IQ did not correlate with the presence of CAS. Findings indicate that CAS is highly prevalent in children with 16p11.2 deletion with symptoms persisting into adulthood for many. Yet CAS occurs in the context of a broader speech and language profile and other neurobehavioral deficits. Further research will elucidate specific genetic and neural pathways leading to speech and language deficits in individuals with 16p11.2 deletions, resulting in more targeted speech therapies addressing etiological pathways.
  • Melinger, A. (2002). Foot structure and accent in Seneca. International Journal of American Linguistics, 68(3), 287-315.

    Abstract

    Argues that the Seneca accent system can be explained more simply and naturally if the foot structure is reanalyzed as trochaic. Determination of the position of the accent by the position and structure of the accented syllable and by the position and structure of the post-tonic syllable; Assignment of the pair of syllables which interact to predict where accent is assigned in different iambic feet.
  • Meyer, A. S., & Schriefers, H. (1991). Phonological facilitation in picture-word interference experiments: Effects of stimulus onset asynchrony and types of interfering stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 1146-1160. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.17.6.1146.

    Abstract

    Subjects named pictures while hearing distractor words that shared word-initial or word-final segments with the picture names or were unrelated to the picture names. The relative timing of distractor and picture presentation was varied. Compared with unrelated distractors, both types of related distractors facilitated picture naming under certain timing conditions. Begin-related distractors facilitated the naming responses if the shared segments began 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after picture onset. By contrast, end-related distractors only facilitated the responses if the shared segments began at or 150 ms after picture onset. The results suggest that the phonological encoding of the beginning of a word is initiated before the encoding of its end.
  • Meyer, A. S. (1991). The time course of phonological encoding in language production: Phonological encoding inside a syllable. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 69-69. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(91)90011-8.

    Abstract

    Eight experiments were carried out investigating whether different parts of a syllable must be phonologically encoded in a specific order or whether they can be encoded in any order. A speech production task was used in which the subjects in each test trial had to utter one out of three or five response words as quickly as possible. In the so-called homogeneous condition these words were related in form, while in the heterogeneous condition they were unrelated in form. For monosyllabic response words shorter reaction times were obtained in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words had the same onset, but not when they had the same rhyme. Similarly, for disyllabic response words, the reaction times were shorter in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words shared only the onset of the first syllable, but not when they shared only its rhyme. Furthermore, a stronger facilitatory effect was observed when the words had the entire first syllable in common than when they only shared the onset, or the onset and the nucleus, but not the coda of the first syllable. These results suggest that syllables are phonologically encoded in two ordered steps, the first of which is dedicated to the onset and the second to the rhyme.
  • Meyer, A. S., Alday, P. M., Decuyper, C., & Knudsen, B. (2018). Working together: Contributions of corpus analyses and experimental psycholinguistics to understanding conversation. Frontiers in Psychology, 9: 525. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00525.

    Abstract

    As conversation is the most important way of using language, linguists and psychologists should combine forces to investigate how interlocutors deal with the cognitive demands arising during conversation. Linguistic analyses of corpora of conversation are needed to understand the structure of conversations, and experimental work is indispensable for understanding the underlying cognitive processes. We argue that joint consideration of corpus and experimental data is most informative when the utterances elicited in a lab experiment match those extracted from a corpus in relevant ways. This requirement to compare like with like seems obvious but is not trivial to achieve. To illustrate this approach, we report two experiments where responses to polar (yes/no) questions were elicited in the lab and the response latencies were compared to gaps between polar questions and answers in a corpus of conversational speech. We found, as expected, that responses were given faster when they were easy to plan and planning could be initiated earlier than when they were harder to plan and planning was initiated later. Overall, in all but one condition, the latencies were longer than one would expect based on the analyses of corpus data. We discuss the implication of this partial match between the data sets and more generally how corpus and experimental data can best be combined in studies of conversation.

    Additional information

    Data_Sheet_1.pdf
  • Mitterer, H., Reinisch, E., & McQueen, J. M. (2018). Allophones, not phonemes in spoken-word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 98, 77-92. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2017.09.005.

    Abstract

    What are the phonological representations that listeners use to map information about the segmental content of speech onto the mental lexicon during spoken-word recognition? Recent evidence from perceptual-learning paradigms seems to support (context-dependent) allophones as the basic representational units in spoken-word recognition. But recent evidence from a selective-adaptation paradigm seems to suggest that context-independent phonemes also play a role. We present three experiments using selective adaptation that constitute strong tests of these representational hypotheses. In Experiment 1, we tested generalization of selective adaptation using different allophones of Dutch /r/ and /l/ – a case where generalization has not been found with perceptual learning. In Experiments 2 and 3, we tested generalization of selective adaptation using German back fricatives in which allophonic and phonemic identity were varied orthogonally. In all three experiments, selective adaptation was observed only if adaptors and test stimuli shared allophones. Phonemic identity, in contrast, was neither necessary nor sufficient for generalization of selective adaptation to occur. These findings and other recent data using the perceptual-learning paradigm suggest that pre-lexical processing during spoken-word recognition is based on allophones, and not on context-independent phonemes
  • Monster, I., & Lev-Ari, S. (2018). The effect of social network size on hashtag adoption on Twitter. Cognitive Science, 42(8), 3149-3158. doi:10.1111/cogs.12675.

    Abstract

    Propagation of novel linguistic terms is an important aspect of language use and language
    change. Here, we test how social network size influences people’s likelihood of adopting novel
    labels by examining hashtag use on Twitter. Specifically, we test whether following fewer Twitter
    users leads to more varied and malleable hashtag use on Twitter , because each followed user is
    ascribed greater weight and thus exerts greater influence on the following user. Focusing on Dutch
    users tweeting about the terrorist attack in Brussels in 2016, we show that people who follow
    fewer other users use a larger number of unique hashtags to refer to the event, reflecting greater
    malleability and variability in use. These results have implications for theories of language learning, language use, and language change.
  • Morgan, A. T., van Haaften, L., van Hulst, K., Edley, C., Mei, C., Tan, T. Y., Amor, D., Fisher, S. E., & Koolen, D. A. (2018). Early speech development in Koolen de Vries syndrome limited by oral praxis and hypotonia. European journal of human genetics, 26, 75-84. doi:10.1038/s41431-017-0035-9.

    Abstract

    Communication disorder is common in Koolen de Vries syndrome (KdVS), yet its specific symptomatology has not been examined, limiting prognostic counselling and application of targeted therapies. Here we examine the communication phenotype associated with KdVS. Twenty-nine participants (12 males, 4 with KANSL1 variants, 25 with 17q21.31 microdeletion), aged 1.0–27.0 years were assessed for oral-motor, speech, language, literacy, and social functioning. Early history included hypotonia and feeding difficulties. Speech and language development was delayed and atypical from onset of first words (2; 5–3; 5 years of age on average). Speech was characterised by apraxia (100%) and dysarthria (93%), with stuttering in some (17%). Speech therapy and multi-modal communication (e.g., sign-language) was critical in preschool. Receptive and expressive language abilities were typically commensurate (79%), both being severely affected relative to peers. Children were sociable with a desire to communicate, although some (36%) had pragmatic impairments in domains, where higher-level language was required. A common phenotype was identified, including an overriding ‘double hit’ of oral hypotonia and apraxia in infancy and preschool, associated with severely delayed speech development. Remarkably however, speech prognosis was positive; apraxia resolved, and although dysarthria persisted, children were intelligible by mid-to-late childhood. In contrast, language and literacy deficits persisted, and pragmatic deficits were apparent. Children with KdVS require early, intensive, speech motor and language therapy, with targeted literacy and social language interventions as developmentally appropriate. Greater understanding of the linguistic phenotype may help unravel the relevance of KANSL1 to child speech and language development.

    Additional information

    41431_2017_35_MOESM1_ESM.docx
  • Mostert, P., Albers, A. M., Brinkman, L., Todorova, L., Kok, P., & De Lange, F. P. (2018). Eye movement-related confounds in neural decoding of visual working memory representations. eNeuro, 5(4): ENEURO.0401-17.2018. doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0401-17.2018.

    Abstract

    A relatively new analysis technique, known as neural decoding or multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), has become increasingly popular for cognitive neuroimaging studies over recent years. These techniques promise to uncover the representational contents of neural signals, as well as the underlying code and the dynamic profile thereof. A field in which these techniques have led to novel insights in particular is that of visual working memory (VWM). In the present study, we subjected human volunteers to a combined VWM/imagery task while recording their neural signals using magnetoencephalography (MEG). We applied multivariate decoding analyses to uncover the temporal profile underlying the neural representations of the memorized item. Analysis of gaze position however revealed that our results were contaminated by systematic eye movements, suggesting that the MEG decoding results from our originally planned analyses were confounded. In addition to the eye movement analyses, we also present the original analyses to highlight how these might have readily led to invalid conclusions. Finally, we demonstrate a potential remedy, whereby we train the decoders on a functional localizer that was specifically designed to target bottom-up sensory signals and as such avoids eye movements. We conclude by arguing for more awareness of the potentially pervasive and ubiquitous effects of eye movement-related confounds.
  • Mulder, K., Van Heuven, W. J., & Dijkstra, T. (2018). Revisiting the neighborhood: How L2 proficiency and neighborhood manipulation affect bilingual processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 9: 1860. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01860.

    Abstract

    We conducted three neighborhood experiments with Dutch-English bilinguals to test effects of L2 proficiency and neighborhood characteristics within and between languages. In the past 20 years, the English (L2) proficiency of this population has considerably increased. To consider the impact of this development on neighborhood effects, we conducted a strict replication of the English lexical decision task by van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger (1998, Exp. 4). In line with our prediction, English characteristics (neighborhood size, word and bigram frequency) dominated the word and nonword responses, while the nonwords also revealed an interaction of English and Dutch neighborhood size.
    The prominence of English was tested again in two experiments introducing a stronger neighborhood manipulation. In English lexical decision and progressive demasking, English items with no orthographic neighbors at all were contrasted with items having neighbors in English or Dutch (‘hermits’) only, or in both languages. In both tasks, target processing was affected strongly by the presence of English neighbors, but only weakly by Dutch neighbors. Effects are interpreted in terms of two underlying processing mechanisms: language-specific global lexical activation and lexical competition.
  • Mulhern, M. S., Stumpel, C., Stong, N., Brunner, H. G., Bier, L., Lippa, N., Riviello, J., Rouhl, R. P. W., Kempers, M., Pfundt, R., Stegmann, A. P. A., Kukolich, M. K., Telegrafi, A., Lehman, A., Lopez-Rangel, E., Houcinat, N., Barth, M., Den Hollander, N., Hoffer, M. J. V., Weckhuysen, S. and 31 moreMulhern, M. S., Stumpel, C., Stong, N., Brunner, H. G., Bier, L., Lippa, N., Riviello, J., Rouhl, R. P. W., Kempers, M., Pfundt, R., Stegmann, A. P. A., Kukolich, M. K., Telegrafi, A., Lehman, A., Lopez-Rangel, E., Houcinat, N., Barth, M., Den Hollander, N., Hoffer, M. J. V., Weckhuysen, S., Roovers, J., Djemie, T., Barca, D., Ceulemans, B., Craiu, D., Lemke, J. R., Korff, C., Mefford, H. C., Meyers, C. T., Siegler, Z., Hiatt, S. M., Cooper, G. M., Bebin, E. M., Snijders Blok, L., Veenstra-Knol, H. E., Baugh, E. H., Brilstra, E. H., Volker-Touw, C. M. L., Van Binsbergen, E., Revah-Politi, A., Pereira, E., McBrian, D., Pacault, M., Isidor, B., Le Caignec, C., Gilbert-Dussardier, B., Bilan, F., Heinzen, E. L., Goldstein, D. B., Stevens, S. J. C., & Sands, T. T. (2018). NBEA: Developmental disease gene with early generalized epilepsy phenotypes. Annals of Neurology, 84(5), 788-795. doi:10.1002/ana.25350.

    Abstract

    NBEA is a candidate gene for autism, and de novo variants have been reported in neurodevelopmental disease (NDD) cohorts. However, NBEA has not been rigorously evaluated as a disease gene, and associated phenotypes have not been delineated. We identified 24 de novo NBEA variants in patients with NDD, establishing NBEA as an NDD gene. Most patients had epilepsy with onset in the first few years of life, often characterized by generalized seizure types, including myoclonic and atonic seizures. Our data show a broader phenotypic spectrum than previously described, including a myoclonic-astatic epilepsy–like phenotype in a subset of patients.

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  • Newbury, D. F., Cleak, J. D., Ishikawa-Brush, Y., Marlow, A. J., Fisher, S. E., Monaco, A. P., Stott, C. M., Merricks, M. J., Goodyer, I. M., Bolton, P. F., Jannoun, L., Slonims, V., Baird, G., Pickles, A., Bishop, D. V. M., Helms., P. J., & The SLI Consortium (2002). A genomewide scan identifies two novel loci involved in specific language impairment. American Journal of Human Genetics, 70(2), 384-398. doi:10.1086/338649.

    Abstract

    Approximately 4% of English-speaking children are affected by specific language impairment (SLI), a disorder in the development of language skills despite adequate opportunity and normal intelligence. Several studies have indicated the importance of genetic factors in SLI; a positive family history confers an increased risk of development, and concordance in monozygotic twins consistently exceeds that in dizygotic twins. However, like many behavioral traits, SLI is assumed to be genetically complex, with several loci contributing to the overall risk. We have compiled 98 families drawn from epidemiological and clinical populations, all with probands whose standard language scores fall ⩾1.5 SD below the mean for their age. Systematic genomewide quantitative-trait–locus analysis of three language-related measures (i.e., the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Revised [CELF-R] receptive and expressive scales and the nonword repetition [NWR] test) yielded two regions, one on chromosome 16 and one on 19, that both had maximum LOD scores of 3.55. Simulations suggest that, of these two multipoint results, the NWR linkage to chromosome 16q is the most significant, with empirical P values reaching 10−5, under both Haseman-Elston (HE) analysis (LOD score 3.55; P=.00003) and variance-components (VC) analysis (LOD score 2.57; P=.00008). Single-point analyses provided further support for involvement of this locus, with three markers, under the peak of linkage, yielding LOD scores >1.9. The 19q locus was linked to the CELF-R expressive-language score and exceeds the threshold for suggestive linkage under all types of analysis performed—multipoint HE analysis (LOD score 3.55; empirical P=.00004) and VC (LOD score 2.84; empirical P=.00027) and single-point HE analysis (LOD score 2.49) and VC (LOD score 2.22). Furthermore, both the clinical and epidemiological samples showed independent evidence of linkage on both chromosome 16q and chromosome 19q, indicating that these may represent universally important loci in SLI and, thus, general risk factors for language impairment.
  • Newbury, D. F., Bonora, E., Lamb, J. A., Fisher, S. E., Lai, C. S. L., Baird, G., Jannoun, L., Slonims, V., Stott, C. M., Merricks, M. J., Bolton, P. F., Bailey, A. J., Monaco, A. P., & International Molecular Genetic Study of Autism Consortium (2002). FOXP2 is not a major susceptibility gene for autism or specific language impairment. American Journal of Human Genetics, 70(5), 1318-1327. doi:10.1086/339931.

    Abstract

    The FOXP2 gene, located on human 7q31 (at the SPCH1 locus), encodes a transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead domain. FOXP2 is mutated in a severe monogenic form of speech and language impairment, segregating within a single large pedigree, and is also disrupted by a translocation in an isolated case. Several studies of autistic disorder have demonstrated linkage to a similar region of 7q (the AUTS1 locus), leading to the proposal that a single genetic factor on 7q31 contributes to both autism and language disorders. In the present study, we directly evaluate the impact of the FOXP2 gene with regard to both complex language impairments and autism, through use of association and mutation screening analyses. We conclude that coding-region variants in FOXP2 do not underlie the AUTS1 linkage and that the gene is unlikely to play a role in autism or more common forms of language impairment.
  • Nieuwland, M. S., Politzer-Ahles, S., Heyselaar, E., Segaert, K., Darley, E., Kazanina, N., Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn, S., Bartolozzi, F., Kogan, V., Ito, A., Mézière, D., Barr, D. J., Rousselet, G., Ferguson, H. J., Busch-Moreno, S., Fu, X., Tuomainen, J., Kulakova, E., Husband, E. M., Donaldson, D. I. and 3 moreNieuwland, M. S., Politzer-Ahles, S., Heyselaar, E., Segaert, K., Darley, E., Kazanina, N., Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn, S., Bartolozzi, F., Kogan, V., Ito, A., Mézière, D., Barr, D. J., Rousselet, G., Ferguson, H. J., Busch-Moreno, S., Fu, X., Tuomainen, J., Kulakova, E., Husband, E. M., Donaldson, D. I., Kohút, Z., Rueschemeyer, S.-A., & Huettig, F. (2018). Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension. eLife, 7: e33468. doi:10.7554/eLife.33468.

    Abstract

    Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words.

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    Data sets
  • Niso, G., Gorgolewski, K. J., Bock, E., Brooks, T. L., Flandin, G., Gramfort, A., Henson, R. N., Jas, M., Litvak, V., Moreau, J. T., Oostenveld, R., Schoffelen, J.-M., Tadel, F., Wexler, J., & Baillet, S. (2018). MEG-BIDS, the brain imaging data structure extended to magnetoencephalography. Scientific Data, 5: 180110. doi:10.1038/sdata.2018.110.

    Abstract

    We present a significant extension of the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) to support the specific
    aspects of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. MEG measures brain activity with millisecond
    temporal resolution and unique source imaging capabilities. So far, BIDS was a solution to organise
    magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The nature and acquisition parameters of MRI and MEG data
    are strongly dissimilar. Although there is no standard data format for MEG, we propose MEG-BIDS as a
    principled solution to store, organise, process and share the multidimensional data volumes produced
    by the modality. The standard also includes well-defined metadata, to facilitate future data
    harmonisation and sharing efforts. This responds to unmet needs from the multimodal neuroimaging
    community and paves the way to further integration of other techniques in electrophysiology. MEGBIDS
    builds on MRI-BIDS, extending BIDS to a multimodal data structure. We feature several dataanalytics
    software that have adopted MEG-BIDS, and a diverse sample of open MEG-BIDS data
    resources available to everyone.
  • Noppeney, U., Jones, S. A., Rohe, T., & Ferrari, A. (2018). See what you hear – How the brain forms representations across the senses. Neuroforum, 24(4), 257-271. doi:10.1515/nf-2017-A066.

    Abstract

    Our senses are constantly bombarded with a myriad of signals. To make sense of this cacophony, the brain needs to integrate signals emanating from a common source, but segregate signals originating from the different sources. Thus, multisensory perception relies critically on inferring the world’s causal structure (i. e. one common vs. multiple independent sources). Behavioural research has shown that the brain arbitrates between sensory integration and segregation consistent with the principles of Bayesian Causal Inference. At the neural level, recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) studies have shown that the brain accomplishes Bayesian Causal Inference by dynamically encoding multiple perceptual estimates across the sensory processing hierarchies. Only at the top of the hierarchy in anterior parietal cortices did the brain form perceptual estimates that take into account the observer’s uncertainty about the world’s causal structure consistent with Bayesian Causal Inference.
  • Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2018). Commentary on “Interaction in spoken word recognition models". Frontiers in Psychology, 9: 1568. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01568.
  • Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2002). Bias effects in facilitatory phonological priming. Memory & Cognition, 30(3), 399-411.

    Abstract

    In four experiments, we examined the facilitation that occurs when spoken-word targets rhyme with preceding spoken primes. In Experiment 1, listeners’ lexical decisions were faster to words following rhyming words (e.g., ramp–LAMP) than to words following unrelated primes (e.g., pink–LAMP). No facilitation was observed for nonword targets. Targets that almost rhymed with their primes (foils; e.g., bulk–SULSH) were included in Experiment 2; facilitation for rhyming targets was severely attenuated. Experiments 3 and 4 were single-word shadowing variants of the earlier experiments. There was facilitation for both rhyming words and nonwords; the presence of foils had no significant influence on the priming effect. A major component of the facilitation in lexical decision appears to be strategic: Listeners are biased to say “yes” to targets that rhyme with their primes, unless foils discourage this strategy. The nonstrategic component of phonological facilitation may reflect speech perception processes that operate prior to lexical access.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1985). Juncture detection. Linguistics, 23, 689-705.
  • Nyberg, L., Forkstam, C., Petersson, K. M., Cabeza, R., & Ingvar, M. (2002). Brain imaging of human memory systems: Between-systems similarities and within-system differences. Cognitive Brain Research, 13(2), 281-292. doi:10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00052-6.

    Abstract

    There is much evidence for the existence of multiple memory systems. However, it has been argued that tasks assumed to reflect different memory systems share basic processing components and are mediated by overlapping neural systems. Here we used multivariate analysis of PET-data to analyze similarities and differences in brain activity for multiple tests of working memory, semantic memory, and episodic memory. The results from two experiments revealed between-systems differences, but also between-systems similarities and within-system differences. Specifically, support was obtained for a task-general working-memory network that may underlie active maintenance. Premotor and parietal regions were salient components of this network. A common network was also identified for two episodic tasks, cued recall and recognition, but not for a test of autobiographical memory. This network involved regions in right inferior and polar frontal cortex, and lateral and medial parietal cortex. Several of these regions were also engaged during the working-memory tasks, indicating shared processing for episodic and working memory. Fact retrieval and synonym generation were associated with increased activity in left inferior frontal and middle temporal regions and right cerebellum. This network was also associated with the autobiographical task, but not with living/non-living classification, and may reflect elaborate retrieval of semantic information. Implications of the present results for the classification of memory tasks with respect to systems and/or processes are discussed.
  • Ostarek, M., Ishag, I., Joosen, D., & Huettig, F. (2018). Saccade trajectories reveal dynamic interactions of semantic and spatial information during the processing of implicitly spatial words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(10), 1658-1670. doi:10.1037/xlm0000536.

    Abstract

    Implicit up/down words, such as bird and foot, systematically influence performance on visual tasks involving immediately following targets in compatible vs. incompatible locations. Recent studies have observed that the semantic relation between prime words and target pictures can strongly influence the size and even the direction of the effect: Semantically related targets are processed faster in congruent vs. incongruent locations (location-specific priming), whereas unrelated targets are processed slower in congruent locations. Here, we used eye-tracking to investigate the moment-to-moment processes underlying this pattern. Our reaction time results for related targets replicated the location-specific priming effect and showed a trend towards interference for unrelated targets. We then used growth curve analysis to test how up/down words and their match vs. mismatch with immediately following targets in terms of semantics and vertical location influences concurrent saccadic eye movements. There was a strong main effect of spatial association on linear growth with up words biasing changes in y-coordinates over time upwards relative to down words (and vice versa). Similar to the RT data, this effect was strongest for semantically related targets and reversed for unrelated targets. Intriguingly, all conditions showed a bias in the congruent direction in the initial stage of the saccade. Then, at around halfway into the saccade the effect kept increasing in the semantically related condition, and reversed in the unrelated condition. These results suggest that online processing of up/down words triggers direction-specific oculomotor processes that are dynamically modulated by the semantic relation between prime words and targets.
  • Ozker, M., Yoshor, D., & Beauchamp, M. (2018). Converging evidence from electrocorticography and BOLD fMRI for a sharp functional boundary in superior temporal gyrus related to multisensory speech processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12: 141. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00141.

    Abstract

    Although humans can understand speech using the auditory modality alone, in noisy environments visual speech information from the talker’s mouth can rescue otherwise unintelligible auditory speech. To investigate the neural substrates of multisensory speech perception, we compared neural activity from the human superior temporal gyrus (STG) in two datasets. One dataset consisted of direct neural recordings (electrocorticography, ECoG) from surface electrodes implanted in epilepsy patients (this dataset has been previously published). The second dataset consisted of indirect measures of neural activity using blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI). Both ECoG and fMRI participants viewed the same clear and noisy audiovisual speech stimuli and performed the same speech recognition task. Both techniques demonstrated a sharp functional boundary in the STG, spatially coincident with an anatomical boundary defined by the posterior edge of Heschl’s gyrus. Cortex on the anterior side of the boundary responded more strongly to clear audiovisual speech than to noisy audiovisual speech while cortex on the posterior side of the boundary did not. For both ECoG and fMRI measurements, the transition between the functionally distinct regions happened within 10 mm of anterior-to-posterior distance along the STG. We relate this boundary to the multisensory neural code underlying speech perception and propose that it represents an important functional division within the human speech perception network.
  • Ozker, M., Yoshor, D., & Beauchamp, M. (2018). Frontal cortex selects representations of the talker’s mouth to aid in speech perception. eLife, 7: e30387. doi:10.7554/eLife.30387.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2002). Do speakers design their co-speech gestures for their addresees? The effects of addressee location on representational gestures. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(4), 688-704. doi:10.1006/jmla.2001.2826.

    Abstract

    Do speakers use spontaneous gestures accompanying their speech for themselves or to communicate their message to their addressees? Two experiments show that speakers change the orientation of their gestures depending on the location of shared space, that is, the intersection of the gesture spaces of the speakers and addressees. Gesture orientations change more frequently when they accompany spatial prepositions such as into and out, which describe motion that has a beginning and end point, rather than across, which depicts an unbounded path across space. Speakers change their gestures so that they represent the beginning and end point of motion INTO or OUT by moving into or out of the shared space. Thus, speakers design their gestures for their addressees and therefore use them to communicate. This has implications for the view that gestures are a part of language use as well as for the role of gestures in speech production.
  • Palva, J. M., Wang, S. H., Palva, S., Zhigalov, A., Monto, S., Brookes, M. J., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2018). Ghost interactions in MEG/EEG source space: A note of caution on inter-areal coupling measures. NeuroImage, 173, 632-643. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.032.

    Abstract

    When combined with source modeling, magneto- (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to study
    long-range interactions among cortical processes non-invasively. Estimation of such inter-areal connectivity is
    nevertheless hindered by instantaneous field spread and volume conduction, which artificially introduce linear
    correlations and impair source separability in cortical current estimates. To overcome the inflating effects of linear
    source mixing inherent to standard interaction measures, alternative phase- and amplitude-correlation based
    connectivity measures, such as imaginary coherence and orthogonalized amplitude correlation have been proposed.
    Being by definition insensitive to zero-lag correlations, these techniques have become increasingly popular
    in the identification of correlations that cannot be attributed to field spread or volume conduction. We show here,
    however, that while these measures are immune to the direct effects of linear mixing, they may still reveal large
    numbers of spurious false positive connections through field spread in the vicinity of true interactions. This
    fundamental problem affects both region-of-interest-based analyses and all-to-all connectome mappings. Most
    importantly, beyond defining and illustrating the problem of spurious, or “ghost” interactions, we provide a
    rigorous quantification of this effect through extensive simulations. Additionally, we further show that signal
    mixing also significantly limits the separability of neuronal phase and amplitude correlations. We conclude that
    spurious correlations must be carefully considered in connectivity analyses in MEG/EEG source space even when
    using measures that are immune to zero-lag correlations.
  • Pascucci, D., Hervais-Adelman, A., & Plomp, G. (2018). Gating by induced A-Gamma asynchrony in selective attention. Human Brain Mapping, 39(10), 3854-3870. doi:10.1002/hbm.24216.

    Abstract

    Visual selective attention operates through top–down mechanisms of signal enhancement and suppression, mediated by a-band oscillations. The effects of such top–down signals on local processing in primary visual cortex (V1) remain poorly understood. In this work, we characterize the interplay between large-s cale interactions and local activity changes in V1 that orchestrat es selective attention, using Granger-causality and phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) analysis of EEG source signals. The task required participants to either attend to or ignore oriented gratings. Results from time-varying, directed connectivity analysis revealed frequency-specific effects of attentional selection: bottom–up g-band influences from visual areas increased rapidly in response to attended stimuli while distributed top–down a-band influences originated from parietal cortex in response to ignored stimuli. Importantly, the results revealed a critical interplay between top–down parietal signals and a–g PAC in visual areas.
    Parietal a-band influences disrupted the a–g coupling in visual cortex, which in turn reduced the amount of g-band outflow from visual area s. Our results are a first demon stration of how directed interactions affect cross-frequency coupling in downstream areas depending on task demands. These findings suggest that parietal cortex realizes selective attention by disrupting cross-frequency coupling at target regions, which prevents them from propagating task-irrelevant information.
  • Peeters, D. (2018). A standardized set of 3D-objects for virtual reality research and applications. Behavior Research Methods, 50(3), 1047-1054. doi:10.3758/s13428-017-0925-3.

    Abstract

    The use of immersive virtual reality as a research tool is rapidly increasing in numerous scientific disciplines. By combining ecological validity with strict experimental control, immersive virtual reality provides the potential to develop and test scientific theory in rich environments that closely resemble everyday settings. This article introduces the first standardized database of colored three-dimensional (3D) objects that can be used in virtual reality and augmented reality research and applications. The 147 objects have been normed for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, visual complexity, and corresponding lexical characteristics of the modal object names. The availability of standardized 3D-objects for virtual reality research is important, as reaching valid theoretical conclusions critically hinges on the use of well controlled experimental stimuli. Sharing standardized 3D-objects across different virtual reality labs will allow for science to move forward more quickly.
  • Peeters, D., & Dijkstra, T. (2018). Sustained inhibition of the native language in bilingual language production: A virtual reality approach. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21(5), 1035-1061. doi:10.1017/S1366728917000396.

    Abstract

    Bilinguals often switch languages as a function of the language background of their addressee. The control mechanisms supporting bilinguals' ability to select the contextually appropriate language are heavily debated. Here we present four experiments in which unbalanced bilinguals named pictures in their first language Dutch and their second language English in mixed and blocked contexts. Immersive virtual reality technology was used to increase the ecological validity of the cued language-switching paradigm. Behaviorally, we consistently observed symmetrical switch costs, reversed language dominance, and asymmetrical mixing costs. These findings indicate that unbalanced bilinguals apply sustained inhibition to their dominant L1 in mixed language settings. Consequent enhanced processing costs for the L1 in a mixed versus a blocked context were reflected by a sustained positive component in event-related potentials. Methodologically, the use of virtual reality opens up a wide range of possibilities to study language and communication in bilingual and other communicative settings.
  • Perlman, M., Little, H., Thompson, B., & Thompson, R. L. (2018). Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: A comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish. Frontiers in Psychology, 9: 1433. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01433.

    Abstract

    Considerable evidence now shows that all languages, signed and spoken, exhibit a significant amount of iconicity. We examined how the visual-gestural modality of signed languages facilitates iconicity for different kinds of lexical meanings compared to the auditory-vocal modality of spoken languages. We used iconicity ratings of hundreds of signs and words to compare iconicity across the vocabularies of two signed languages – American Sign Language and British Sign Language, and two spoken languages – English and Spanish. We examined (1) the correlation in iconicity ratings between the languages; (2) the relationship between iconicity and an array of semantic variables (ratings of concreteness, sensory experience, imageability, perceptual strength of vision, audition, touch, smell and taste); (3) how iconicity varies between broad lexical classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, grammatical words and adverbs); and (4) between more specific semantic categories (e.g., manual actions, clothes, colors). The results show several notable patterns that characterize how iconicity is spread across the four vocabularies. There were significant correlations in the iconicity ratings between the four languages, including English with ASL, BSL, and Spanish. The highest correlation was between ASL and BSL, suggesting iconicity may be more transparent in signs than words. In each language, iconicity was distributed according to the semantic variables in ways that reflect the semiotic affordances of the modality (e.g., more concrete meanings more iconic in signs, not words; more auditory meanings more iconic in words, not signs; more tactile meanings more iconic in both signs and words). Analysis of the 220 meanings with ratings in all four languages further showed characteristic patterns of iconicity across broad and specific semantic domains, including those that distinguished between signed and spoken languages (e.g., verbs more iconic in ASL, BSL, and English, but not Spanish; manual actions especially iconic in ASL and BSL; adjectives more iconic in English and Spanish; color words especially low in iconicity in ASL and BSL). These findings provide the first quantitative account of how iconicity is spread across the lexicons of signed languages in comparison to spoken languages
  • Perry, L. K., Perlman, M., Winter, B., Massaro, D. W., & Lupyan, G. (2018). Iconicity in the speech of children and adults. Developmental Science, 21: e12572. doi:10.1111/desc.12572.

    Abstract

    Iconicity – the correspondence between form and meaning – may help young children learn to use new words. Early-learned words are higher in iconicity than later learned words. However, it remains unclear what role iconicity may play in actual language use. Here, we ask whether iconicity relates not just to the age at which words are acquired, but also to how frequently children and adults use the words in their speech. If iconicity serves to bootstrap word learning, then we would expect that children should say highly iconic words more frequently than less iconic words, especially early in development. We would also expect adults to use iconic words more often when speaking to children than to other adults. We examined the relationship between frequency and iconicity for approximately 2000 English words. Replicating previous findings, we found that more iconic words are learned earlier. Moreover, we found that more iconic words tend to be used more by younger children, and adults use more iconic words when speaking to children than to other adults. Together, our results show that young children not only learn words rated high in iconicity earlier than words low in iconicity, but they also produce these words more frequently in conversation – a pattern that is reciprocated by adults when speaking with children. Thus, the earliest conversations of children are relatively higher in iconicity, suggesting that this iconicity scaffolds the production and comprehension of spoken language during early development.
  • Petrovic, P., Kalso, E., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2002). Placebo and opioid analgesia - Imaging a shared neuronal network. Science, 295(5560), 1737-1740. doi:10.1126/science.1067176.

    Abstract

    It has been suggested that placebo analgesia involves both higher order cognitive networks and endogenous opioid systems. The rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and the brainstem are implicated in opioid analgesia, suggesting a similar role for these structures in placebo analgesia. Using positron emission tomography, we confirmed that both opioid and placebo analgesia are associated with increased activity in the rACC. We also observed a covariation between the activity in the rACC and the brainstem during both opioid and placebo analgesia, but not during the pain-only condition. These findings indicate a related neural mechanism in placebo and opioid analgesia.
  • Petrovic, P., Kalso, E., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2002). Placebo and opioid analgesia - Imaging a shared neuronal network. Science, 295(5560), 1737-1740. doi:10.1126/science.1067176.

    Abstract

    It has been suggested that placebo analgesia involves both higher order cognitive networks and endogenous opioid systems. The rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and the brainstem are implicated in opioid analgesia, suggesting a similar role for these structures in placebo analgesia. Using positron emission tomography, we confirmed that both opioid and placebo analgesia are associated with increased activity in the rACC. We also observed a covariation between the activity in the rACC and the brainstem during both opioid and placebo analgesia, but not during the pain-only condition. These findings indicate a related neural mechanism in placebo and opioid analgesia.
  • Petrovic, P., Petersson, K. M., Hansson, P., & Ingvar, M. (2002). A regression analysis study of the primary somatosensory cortex during pain. NeuroImage, 16(4), 1142-1150. doi:10.1006/nimg.2002.1069.

    Abstract

    Several functional imaging studies of pain, using a number of different experimental paradigms and a variety of reference states, have failed to detect activations in the somatosensory cortices, while other imaging studies of pain have reported significant activations in these regions. The role of the somatosensory areas in pain processing has therefore been debated. In the present study the left hand was immersed in painfully cold water (standard cold pressor test) and in nonpainfully cold water during 2 min, and PET-scans were obtained either during the first or the second minute of stimulation. We observed no significant increase of activity in the somatosensory regions when the painful conditions were directly compared with the control conditions. In order to better understand the role of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in pain processing we used a regression analysis to study the relation between a ROI (region of interest) in the somatotopic S1-area for the stimulated hand and other regions known to be involved in pain processing. We hypothesized that although no increased activity was observed in the S1 during pain, this region would change its covariation pattern during noxious input as compared to the control stimulation if it is involved in or affected by the processing of pain. In the nonpainful cold conditions widespread regions of the ipsilateral and contralateral somatosensory cortex showed a positive covariation with the activity in the S1-ROI. However, during the first and second minute of pain this regression was significantly attenuated. During the second minute of painful stimulation there was a significant positive covariation between the activity in the S1-ROI and the other regions that are known to be involved in pain processing. Importantly, this relation was significantly stronger for the insula and the orbitofrontal cortex bilaterally when compared to the nonpainful state. The results indicate that the S1-cortex may be engaged in or affected by the processing of pain although no differential activity is observed when pain is compared with the reference condition.
  • Piai, V., Rommers, J., & Knight, R. T. (2018). Lesion evidence for a critical role of left posterior but not frontal areas in alpha–beta power decreases during context-driven word production. European Journal of Neuroscience, 48(7), 2622-2629. doi:10.1111/ejn.13695.

    Abstract

    Different frequency bands in the electroencephalogram are postulated to support distinct language functions. Studies have suggested
    that alpha–beta power decreases may index word-retrieval processes. In context-driven word retrieval, participants hear
    lead-in sentences that either constrain the final word (‘He locked the door with the’) or not (‘She walked in here with the’). The last
    word is shown as a picture to be named. Previous studies have consistently found alpha–beta power decreases prior to picture
    onset for constrained relative to unconstrained sentences, localised to the left lateral-temporal and lateral-frontal lobes. However,
    the relative contribution of temporal versus frontal areas to alpha–beta power decreases is unknown. We recorded the electroencephalogram
    from patients with stroke lesions encompassing the left lateral-temporal and inferior-parietal regions or left-lateral
    frontal lobe and from matched controls. Individual participant analyses revealed a behavioural sentence context facilitation effect
    in all participants, except for in the two patients with extensive lesions to temporal and inferior parietal lobes. We replicated the
    alpha–beta power decreases prior to picture onset in all participants, except for in the two same patients with extensive posterior
    lesions. Thus, whereas posterior lesions eliminated the behavioural and oscillatory context effect, frontal lesions did not. Hierarchical
    clustering analyses of all patients’ lesion profiles, and behavioural and electrophysiological effects identified those two
    patients as having a unique combination of lesion distribution and context effects. These results indicate a critical role for the left
    lateral-temporal and inferior parietal lobes, but not frontal cortex, in generating the alpha–beta power decreases underlying context-
    driven word production.
  • Pika, S., Wilkinson, R., Kendrick, K. H., & Vernes, S. C. (2018). Taking turns: Bridging the gap between human and animal communication. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1880): 20180598. doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.0598.

    Abstract

    Language, humans’ most distinctive trait, still remains a ‘mystery’ for evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure—cooperative turn-taking—which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an overview of the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa—birds, mammals, insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa.
  • Poletiek, F. H. (2002). [Review of the book Adaptive thinking: Rationality in the real world by G. Gigerenzer]. Acta Psychologica, 111(3), 351-354. doi:10.1016/S0001-6918(02)00046-X.
  • Poletiek, F. H. (2002). How psychiatrists and judges assess the dangerousness of persons with mental illness: An 'expertise bias'. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 20(1-2), 19-29. doi:10.1002/bsl.468.

    Abstract

    When assessing dangerousness of mentally ill persons with the objective of making a decision on civil commitment, medical and legal experts use information typically belonging to their professional frame of reference. This is investigated in two studies of the commitment decision. It is hypothesized that an ‘expertise bias’ may explain differences between the medical and the legal expert in defining the dangerousness concept (study 1), and in assessing the seriousness of the danger (study 2). Judges define dangerousness more often as harming others, whereas psychiatrists more often include harm to self in the definition. In assessing the seriousness of the danger, experts tend to be more tolerant with regard to false negatives, as the type of behavior is more familiar to them. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
  • Poletiek, F. H. (2002). Implicit learning of a recursive rule in an artificial grammar. Acta Psychologica, 111(3), 323-335. doi:10.1016/S0001-6918(02)00057-4.

    Abstract

    Participants performed an artificial grammar learning task, in which the standard finite
    state grammar (J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behavior 6 (1967) 855) was extended with a recursive
    rule generating self-embedded sequences. We studied the learnability of such a rule in two experiments.
    The results verify the general hypothesis that recursivity can be learned in an artificial
    grammar learning task. However this learning seems to be rather based on recognising
    chunks than on abstract rule induction. First, performance was better for strings with more
    than one level of self-embedding in the sequence, uncovering more clearly the self-embedding
    pattern. Second, the infinite repeatability of the recursive rule application was not spontaneously
    induced from the training, but it was when an additional cue about this possibility was
    given. Finally, participants were able to verbalise their knowledge of the fragments making up
    the sequences––especially in the crucial front and back positions––, whereas knowledge of the
    underlying structure, to the extent it was acquired, was not articulatable. The results are discussed
    in relation to previous studies on the implicit learnability of complex and abstract rules.
  • Poletiek, F. H., Conway, C. M., Ellefson, M. R., Lai, J., Bocanegra, B. R., & Christiansen, M. H. (2018). Under what conditions can recursion be learned? Effects of starting small in artificial grammar learning of recursive structure. Cognitive Science, 42(8), 2855-2889. doi:10.1111/cogs.12685.

    Abstract

    It has been suggested that external and/or internal limitations paradoxically may lead to superior learning, that is, the concepts of starting small and less is more (Elman, 1993; Newport, 1990). In this paper, we explore the type of incremental ordering during training that might help learning, and what mechanism explains this facilitation. We report four artificial grammar learning experiments with human participants. In Experiments 1a and 1b we found a beneficial effect of starting small using two types of simple recursive grammars: right‐branching and center‐embedding, with recursive embedded clauses in fixed positions and fixed length. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 100). In Experiment 3 and 4, we used a more complex center‐embedded grammar with recursive loops in variable positions, producing strings of variable length. When participants were presented an incremental ordering of training stimuli, as in natural language, they were better able to generalize their knowledge of simple units to more complex units when the training input “grew” according to structural complexity, compared to when it “grew” according to string length. Overall, the results suggest that starting small confers an advantage for learning complex center‐embedded structures when the input is organized according to structural complexity.
  • Popov, T., Jensen, O., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2018). Dorsal and ventral cortices are coupled by cross-frequency interactions during working memory. NeuroImage, 178, 277-286. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.05.054.

    Abstract

    Oscillatory activity in the alpha and gamma bands is considered key in shaping functional brain architecture. Power
    increases in the high-frequency gamma band are typically reported in parallel to decreases in the low-frequency alpha
    band. However, their functional significance and in particular their interactions are not well understood. The present
    study shows that, in the context of an N-backworking memory task, alpha power decreases in the dorsal visual stream
    are related to gamma power increases in early visual areas. Granger causality analysis revealed directed interregional
    interactions from dorsal to ventral stream areas, in accordance with task demands. Present results reveal a robust,
    behaviorally relevant, and architectonically decisive power-to-power relationship between alpha and gamma activity.
    This relationship suggests that anatomically distant power fluctuations in oscillatory activity can link cerebral network
    dynamics on trial-by-trial basis during cognitive operations such as working memory
  • Popov, T., Oostenveld, R., & Schoffelen, J.-M. (2018). FieldTrip made easy: An analysis protocol for group analysis of the auditory steady state brain response in time, frequency, and space. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12: 711. doi:10.3389/fnins.2018.00711.

    Abstract

    The auditory steady state evoked response (ASSR) is a robust and frequently utilized
    phenomenon in psychophysiological research. It reflects the auditory cortical response
    to an amplitude-modulated constant carrier frequency signal. The present report
    provides a concrete example of a group analysis of the EEG data from 29 healthy human
    participants, recorded during an ASSR paradigm, using the FieldTrip toolbox. First, we
    demonstrate sensor-level analysis in the time domain, allowing for a description of the
    event-related potentials (ERPs), as well as their statistical evaluation. Second, frequency
    analysis is applied to describe the spectral characteristics of the ASSR, followed by
    group level statistical analysis in the frequency domain. Third, we show how timeand
    frequency-domain analysis approaches can be combined in order to describe
    the temporal and spectral development of the ASSR. Finally, we demonstrate source
    reconstruction techniques to characterize the primary neural generators of the ASSR.
    Throughout, we pay special attention to explaining the design of the analysis pipeline
    for single subjects and for the group level analysis. The pipeline presented here can be
    adjusted to accommodate other experimental paradigms and may serve as a template
    for similar analyses.
  • Popov, V., Ostarek, M., & Tenison, C. (2018). Practices and pitfalls in inferring neural representations. NeuroImage, 174, 340-351. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.03.041.

    Abstract

    A key challenge for cognitive neuroscience is deciphering the representational schemes of the brain. Stimulus-feature-based encoding models are becoming increasingly popular for inferring the dimensions of neural representational spaces from stimulus-feature spaces. We argue that such inferences are not always valid because successful prediction can occur even if the two representational spaces use different, but correlated, representational schemes. We support this claim with three simulations in which we achieved high prediction accuracy despite systematic differences in the geometries and dimensions of the underlying representations. Detailed analysis of the encoding models' predictions showed systematic deviations from ground-truth, indicating that high prediction accuracy is insufficient for making representational inferences. This fallacy applies to the prediction of actual neural patterns from stimulus-feature spaces and we urge caution in inferring the nature of the neural code from such methods. We discuss ways to overcome these inferential limitations, including model comparison, absolute model performance, visualization techniques and attentional modulation.
  • St Pourcain, B., Eaves, L. J., Ring, S. M., Fisher, S. E., Medland, S., Evans, D. M., & Smith, G. D. (2018). Developmental changes within the genetic architecture of social communication behaviour: A multivariate study of genetic variance in unrelated individuals. Biological Psychiatry, 83(7), 598-606. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.09.020.

    Abstract

    Background: Recent analyses of trait-disorder overlap suggest that psychiatric dimensions may relate to distinct sets of genes that exert their maximum influence during different periods of development. This includes analyses of social-communciation difficulties that share, depending on their developmental stage, stronger genetic links with either Autism Spectrum Disorder or schizophrenia. Here we developed a multivariate analysis framework in unrelated individuals to model directly the developmental profile of genetic influences contributing to complex traits, such as social-communication difficulties, during a ~10-year period spanning childhood and adolescence. Methods: Longitudinally assessed quantitative social-communication problems (N ≤ 5,551) were studied in participants from a UK birth cohort (ALSPAC, 8 to 17 years). Using standardised measures, genetic architectures were investigated with novel multivariate genetic-relationship-matrix structural equation models (GSEM) incorporating whole-genome genotyping information. Analogous to twin research, GSEM included Cholesky decomposition, common pathway and independent pathway models. Results: A 2-factor Cholesky decomposition model described the data best. One genetic factor was common to SCDC measures across development, the other accounted for independent variation at 11 years and later, consistent with distinct developmental profiles in trait-disorder overlap. Importantly, genetic factors operating at 8 years explained only ~50% of the genetic variation at 17 years. Conclusion: Using latent factor models, we identified developmental changes in the genetic architecture of social-communication difficulties that enhance the understanding of ASD and schizophrenia-related dimensions. More generally, GSEM present a framework for modelling shared genetic aetiologies between phenotypes and can provide prior information with respect to patterns and continuity of trait-disorder overlap
  • St Pourcain, B., Robinson, E. B., Anttila, V., Sullivan, B. B., Maller, J., Golding, J., Skuse, D., Ring, S., Evans, D. M., Zammit, S., Fisher, S. E., Neale, B. M., Anney, R., Ripke, S., Hollegaard, M. V., Werge, T., iPSYCH-SSI-Broad Autism Group, Ronald, A., Grove, J., Hougaard, D. M., Børglum, A. D. and 3 moreSt Pourcain, B., Robinson, E. B., Anttila, V., Sullivan, B. B., Maller, J., Golding, J., Skuse, D., Ring, S., Evans, D. M., Zammit, S., Fisher, S. E., Neale, B. M., Anney, R., Ripke, S., Hollegaard, M. V., Werge, T., iPSYCH-SSI-Broad Autism Group, Ronald, A., Grove, J., Hougaard, D. M., Børglum, A. D., Mortensen, P. B., Daly, M., & Davey Smith, G. (2018). ASD and schizophrenia show distinct developmental profiles in common genetic overlap with population-based social-communication difficulties. Molecular Psychiatry, 23, 263-270. doi:10.1038/mp.2016.198.

    Abstract

    Difficulties in social communication are part of the phenotypic overlap between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and
    schizophrenia. Both conditions follow, however, distinct developmental patterns. Symptoms of ASD typically occur during early childhood, whereas most symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia do not appear before early adulthood. We investigated whether overlap in common genetic in fluences between these clinical conditions and impairments in social communication depends on
    the developmental stage of the assessed trait. Social communication difficulties were measured in typically-developing youth
    (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children,N⩽5553, longitudinal assessments at 8, 11, 14 and 17 years) using the Social
    Communication Disorder Checklist. Data on clinical ASD (PGC-ASD: 5305 cases, 5305 pseudo-controls; iPSYCH-ASD: 7783 cases,
    11 359 controls) and schizophrenia (PGC-SCZ2: 34 241 cases, 45 604 controls, 1235 trios) were either obtained through the
    Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) or the Danish iPSYCH project. Overlap in genetic in fluences between ASD and social
    communication difficulties during development decreased with age, both in the PGC-ASD and the iPSYCH-ASD sample. Genetic overlap between schizophrenia and social communication difficulties, by contrast, persisted across age, as observed within two independent PGC-SCZ2 subsamples, and showed an increase in magnitude for traits assessed during later adolescence. ASD- and schizophrenia-related polygenic effects were unrelated to each other and changes in trait-disorder links reflect the heterogeneity of
    genetic factors in fluencing social communication difficulties during childhood versus later adolescence. Thus, both clinical ASD and schizophrenia share some genetic in fluences with impairments in social communication, but reveal distinct developmental profiles in their genetic links, consistent with the onset of clinical symptoms

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    mp2016198x1.docx
  • Pouw, W., Van Gog, T., Zwaan, R. A., Agostinho, S., & Paas, F. (2018). Co-thought gestures in children's mental problem solving: Prevalence and effects on subsequent performance. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 32(1), 66-80. doi:10.1002/acp.3380.

    Abstract

    Co-thought gestures are understudied as compared to co-speech gestures yet, may provide insight into cognitive functions of gestures that are independent of speech processes. A recent study with adults showed that co-thought gesticulation occurred spontaneously during mental preparation of problem solving. Moreover, co-thought gesturing (either spontaneous or instructed) during mental preparation was effective for subsequent solving of the Tower of Hanoi under conditions of high cognitive load (i.e., when visual working memory capacity was limited and when the task was more difficult). In this preregistered study (), we investigated whether co-thought gestures would also spontaneously occur and would aid problem-solving processes in children (N=74; 8-12years old) under high load conditions. Although children also spontaneously used co-thought gestures during mental problem solving, this did not aid their subsequent performance when physically solving the problem. If these null results are on track, co-thought gesture effects may be different in adults and children.

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  • Praamstra, P., Hagoort, P., Maassen, B., & Crul, T. (1991). Word deafness and auditory cortical function: A case history and hypothesis. Brain, 114, 1197-1225. doi:10.1093/brain/114.3.1197.

    Abstract

    A patient who already had Wernick's aphasia due to a left temporal lobe lesion suffered a severe deterioration specifically of auditory language comprehension, subsequent to right temporal lobe infarction. A detailed comparison of his new condition with his language status before the second stroke revealed that the newly acquired deficit was limited to tasks related to auditory input. Further investigations demonstrated a speech perceptual disorder, which we analysed as due to deficits both at the level of general auditory processes and at the level of phonetic analysis. We discuss some arguments related to hemisphere specialization of phonetic processing and to the disconnection explanation of word deafness that support the hypothesis of word deafness being generally caused by mixed deficits.
  • Quinn, S., Donnelly, S., & Kidd, E. (2018). The relationship between symbolic play and language acquisition: A meta-analytic review. Developmental Review, 49, 121-135. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2018.05.005.

    Abstract

    A developmental relationship between symbolic play and language has been long proposed, going as far back as the writings of Piaget and Vygotsky. In the current paper we build on recent qualitative reviews of the literature by reporting the first quantitative analysis of the relationship. We conducted a three-level meta-analysis of past studies that have investigated the relationship between symbolic play and language acquisition. Thirty-five studies (N = 6848) met the criteria for inclusion. Overall, we observed a significant small-to-medium association between the two domains (r = .35). Several moderating variables were included in the analyses, including: (i) study design (longitudinal, concurrent), (ii) the manner in which language was measured (comprehension, production), and (iii) the age at which this relationship is measured. The effect was weakly moderated by these three variables, but overall the association was robust, suggesting that symbolic play and language are closely related in development.

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    Quinn_Donnelly_Kidd_2018sup.docx
  • Ravignani, A. (2018). Darwin, sexual selection, and the origins of music. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 33(10), 716-719. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2018.07.006.

    Abstract

    Humans devote ample time to produce and perceive music. How and why this behavioral propensity originated in our species is unknown. For centuries, speculation dominated the study of the evolutionary origins of musicality. Following Darwin’s early intuitions, recent empirical research is opening a new chapter to tackle this mystery.
  • Ravignani, A. (2018). Comment on “Temporal and spatial variation in harbor seal (Phoca vitulina L.) roar calls from southern Scandinavia” [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141, 1824-1834 (2017)]. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143, 504-508. doi:10.1121/1.5021770.

    Abstract

    In their recent article, Sabinsky and colleagues investigated heterogeneity in harbor seals' vocalizations. The authors found seasonal and geographical variation in acoustic parameters, warning readers that recording conditions might account for some of their results. This paper expands on the temporal aspect of the encountered heterogeneity in harbor seals' vocalizations. Temporal information is the least susceptible to variable recording conditions. Hence geographical and seasonal variability in roar timing constitutes the most robust finding in the target article. In pinnipeds, evidence of timing and rhythm in the millisecond range—as opposed to circadian and seasonal rhythms—has theoretical and interdisciplinary relevance. In fact, the study of rhythm and timing in harbor seals is particularly decisive to support or confute a cross-species hypothesis, causally linking the evolution of vocal production learning and rhythm. The results by Sabinsky and colleagues can shed light on current scientific questions beyond pinniped bioacoustics, and help formulate empirically testable predictions.
  • Ravignani, A., Chiandetti, C., & Gamba, M. (2018). L'evoluzione del ritmo. Le Scienze, (04 maggio 2018).
  • Ravignani, A., Thompson, B., Grossi, T., Delgado, T., & Kirby, S. (2018). Evolving building blocks of rhythm: How human cognition creates music via cultural transmission. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1423(1), 176-187. doi:10.1111/nyas.13610.

    Abstract

    Why does musical rhythm have the structure it does? Musical rhythm, in all its cross-cultural diversity, exhibits
    commonalities across world cultures. Traditionally, music research has been split into two fields. Some scientists
    focused onmusicality, namely the human biocognitive predispositions formusic, with an emphasis on cross-cultural
    similarities. Other scholars investigatedmusic, seen as a cultural product, focusing on the variation in worldmusical
    cultures.Recent experiments founddeep connections betweenmusicandmusicality, reconciling theseopposing views.
    Here, we address the question of how individual cognitive biases affect the process of cultural evolution of music.
    Data from two experiments are analyzed using two complementary techniques. In the experiments, participants
    hear drumming patterns and imitate them. These patterns are then given to the same or another participant to
    imitate. The structure of these initially random patterns is tracked along experimental “generations.” Frequentist
    statistics show how participants’ biases are amplified by cultural transmission, making drumming patterns more
    structured. Structure is achieved faster in transmission within rather than between participants. A Bayesian model
    approximates the motif structures participants learned and created. Our data and models suggest that individual
    biases for musicality may shape the cultural transmission of musical rhythm.

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    nyas13610-sup-0001-suppmat.pdf
  • Ravignani, A., Thompson, B., & Filippi, P. (2018). The evolution of musicality: What can be learned from language evolution research? Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12: 20. doi:10.3389/fnins.2018.00020.

    Abstract

    Language and music share many commonalities, both as natural phenomena and as subjects of intellectual inquiry. Rather than exhaustively reviewing these connections, we focus on potential cross-pollination of methodological inquiries and attitudes. We highlight areas in which scholarship on the evolution of language may inform the evolution of music. We focus on the value of coupled empirical and formal methodologies, and on the futility of mysterianism, the declining view that the nature, origins and evolution of language cannot be addressed empirically. We identify key areas in which the evolution of language as a discipline has flourished historically, and suggest ways in which these advances can be integrated into the study of the evolution of music.
  • Ravignani, A. (2018). Spontaneous rhythms in a harbor seal pup calls. BMC Research Notes, 11: 3. doi:10.1186/s13104-017-3107-6.

    Abstract

    Objectives: Timing and rhythm (i.e. temporal structure) are crucial, though historically neglected, dimensions of animal communication. When investigating these in non-human animals, it is often difficult to balance experimental control and ecological validity. Here I present the first step of an attempt to balance the two, focusing on the timing of vocal rhythms in a harbor seal pup (Phoca vitulina). Collection of this data had a clear aim: To find spontaneous vocal rhythms in this individual in order to design individually-adapted and ecologically-relevant stimuli for a later playback experiment. Data description: The calls of one seal pup were recorded. The audio recordings were annotated using Praat, a free software to analyze vocalizations in humans and other animals. The annotated onsets and offsets of vocalizations were then imported in a Python script. The script extracted three types of timing information: the duration of calls, the intervals between calls’ onsets, and the intervals between calls’ maximum-intensity peaks. Based on the annotated data, available to download, I provide simple descriptive statistics for these temporal measures, and compare their distributions.
  • Ravignani, A., & Verhoef, T. (2018). Which melodic universals emerge from repeated signaling games?: A Note on Lumaca and Baggio (2017). Artificial Life, 24(2), 149-153. doi:10.1162/ARTL_a_00259.

    Abstract

    Music is a peculiar human behavior, yet we still know little as to why and how music emerged. For centuries, the study of music has been the sole prerogative of the humanities. Lately, however, music is being increasingly investigated by psychologists, neuroscientists, biologists, and computer scientists. One approach to studying the origins of music is to empirically test hypotheses about the mechanisms behind this structured behavior. Recent lab experiments show how musical rhythm and melody can emerge via the process of cultural transmission. In particular, Lumaca and Baggio (2017) tested the emergence of a sound system at the boundary between music and language. In this study, participants were given random pairs of signal-meanings; when participants negotiated their meaning and played a “ game of telephone ” with them, these pairs became more structured and systematic. Over time, the small biases introduced in each artificial transmission step accumulated, displaying quantitative trends, including the emergence, over the course of artificial human generations, of features resembling properties of language and music. In this Note, we highlight the importance of Lumaca and Baggio ʼ s experiment, place it in the broader literature on the evolution of language and music, and suggest refinements for future experiments. We conclude that, while psychological evidence for the emergence of proto-musical features is accumulating, complementary work is needed: Mathematical modeling and computer simulations should be used to test the internal consistency of experimentally generated hypotheses and to make new predictions.
  • Ravignani, A., Thompson, B., Lumaca, M., & Grube, M. (2018). Why do durations in musical rhythms conform to small integer ratios? Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 12: 86. doi:10.3389/fncom.2018.00086.

    Abstract

    One curious aspect of human timing is the organization of rhythmic patterns in small integer ratios. Behavioral and neural research has shown that adjacent time intervals in rhythms tend to be perceived and reproduced as approximate fractions of small numbers (e.g., 3/2). Recent work on iterated learning and reproduction further supports this: given a randomly timed drum pattern to reproduce, participants subconsciously transform it toward small integer ratios. The mechanisms accounting for this “attractor” phenomenon are little understood, but might be explained by combining two theoretical frameworks from psychophysics. The scalar expectancy theory describes time interval perception and reproduction in terms of Weber's law: just detectable durational differences equal a constant fraction of the reference duration. The notion of categorical perception emphasizes the tendency to perceive time intervals in categories, i.e., “short” vs. “long.” In this piece, we put forward the hypothesis that the integer-ratio bias in rhythm perception and production might arise from the interaction of the scalar property of timing with the categorical perception of time intervals, and that neurally it can plausibly be related to oscillatory activity. We support our integrative approach with mathematical derivations to formalize assumptions and provide testable predictions. We present equations to calculate durational ratios by: (i) parameterizing the relationship between durational categories, (ii) assuming a scalar timing constant, and (iii) specifying one (of K) category of ratios. Our derivations provide the basis for future computational, behavioral, and neurophysiological work to test our model.
  • Raviv, L., & Arnon, I. (2018). Systematicity, but not compositionality: Examining the emergence of linguistic structure in children and adults using iterated learning. Cognition, 181, 160-173. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.011.

    Abstract

    Recent work suggests that cultural transmission can lead to the emergence of linguistic structure as speakers’ weak individual biases become amplified through iterated learning. However, to date no published study has demonstrated a similar emergence of linguistic structure in children. The lack of evidence from child learners constitutes a problematic
    2
    gap in the literature: if such learning biases impact the emergence of linguistic structure, they should also be found in children, who are the primary learners in real-life language transmission. However, children may differ from adults in their biases given age-related differences in general cognitive skills. Moreover, adults’ performance on iterated learning tasks may reflect existing (and explicit) linguistic biases, partially undermining the generality of the results. Examining children’s performance can also help evaluate contrasting predictions about their role in emerging languages: do children play a larger or smaller role than adults in the creation of structure? Here, we report a series of four iterated artificial language learning studies (based on Kirby, Cornish & Smith, 2008) with both children and adults, using a novel child-friendly paradigm. Our results show that linguistic structure does not emerge more readily in children compared to adults, and that adults are overall better in both language learning and in creating linguistic structure. When languages could become underspecified (by allowing homonyms), children and adults were similar in developing consistent mappings between meanings and signals in the form of structured ambiguities. However, when homonimity was not allowed, only adults created compositional structure. This study is a first step in using iterated language learning paradigms to explore child-adult differences. It provides the first demonstration that cultural transmission has a different effect on the languages produced by children and adults: While children were able to develop systematicity, their languages did not show compositionality. We focus on the relation between learning and structure creation as a possible explanation for our findings and discuss implications for children’s role in the emergence of linguistic structure.

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    results A results B results D stimuli
  • Raviv, L., & Arnon, I. (2018). The developmental trajectory of children’s auditory and visual statistical learning abilities: Modality-based differences in the effect of age. Developmental Science, 21(4): e12593. doi:10.1111/desc.12593.

    Abstract

    Infants, children and adults are capable of extracting recurring patterns from their environment through statistical learning (SL), an implicit learning mechanism that is considered to have an important role in language acquisition. Research over the past 20 years has shown that SL is present from very early infancy and found in a variety of tasks and across modalities (e.g., auditory, visual), raising questions on the domain generality of SL. However, while SL is well established for infants and adults, only little is known about its developmental trajectory during childhood, leaving two important questions unanswered: (1) Is SL an early-maturing capacity that is fully developed in infancy, or does it improve with age like other cognitive capacities (e.g., memory)? and (2) Will SL have similar developmental trajectories across modalities? Only few studies have looked at SL across development, with conflicting results: some find age-related improvements while others do not. Importantly, no study to date has examined auditory SL across childhood, nor compared it to visual SL to see if there are modality-based differences in the developmental trajectory of SL abilities. We addressed these issues by conducting a large-scale study of children's performance on matching auditory and visual SL tasks across a wide age range (5–12y). Results show modality-based differences in the development of SL abilities: while children's learning in the visual domain improved with age, learning in the auditory domain did not change in the tested age range. We examine these findings in light of previous studies and discuss their implications for modality-based differences in SL and for the role of auditory SL in language acquisition. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kg35hoF0pw.

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    Video abstract of the article

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