Publications

Displaying 201 - 300 of 426
  • Kunert, R., & Slevc, L. R. (2015). A commentary on: “Neural overlap in processing music and speech”. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9: 330. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00330.
  • Kunert, R., Willems, R. M., Casasanto, D., Patel, A. D., & Hagoort, P. (2015). Music and language syntax interact in Broca’s Area: An fMRI study. PLoS One, 10(11): e0141069. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141069.

    Abstract

    Instrumental music and language are both syntactic systems, employing complex, hierarchically-structured sequences built using implicit structural norms. This organization allows listeners to understand the role of individual words or tones in the context of an unfolding sentence or melody. Previous studies suggest that the brain mechanisms of syntactic processing may be partly shared between music and language. However, functional neuroimaging evidence for anatomical overlap of brain activity involved in linguistic and musical syntactic processing has been lacking. In the present study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with an interference paradigm based on sung sentences. We show that the processing demands of musical syntax (harmony) and language syntax interact in Broca’s area in the left inferior frontal gyrus (without leading to music and language main effects). A language main effect in Broca’s area only emerged in the complex music harmony condition, suggesting that (with our stimuli and tasks) a language effect only becomes visible under conditions of increased demands on shared neural resources. In contrast to previous studies, our design allows us to rule out that the observed neural interaction is due to: (1) general attention mechanisms, as a psychoacoustic auditory anomaly behaved unlike the harmonic manipulation, (2) error processing, as the language and the music stimuli contained no structural errors. The current results thus suggest that two different cognitive domains—music and language—might draw on the same high level syntactic integration resources in Broca’s area.
  • Ladd, D. R., Roberts, S. G., & Dediu, D. (2015). Correlational studies in typological and historical linguistics. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 221-241. doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124819.

    Abstract

    We review a number of recent studies that have identified either correlations between different linguistic features (e.g., implicational universals) or correlations between linguistic features and nonlinguistic properties of speakers or their environment (e.g., effects of geography on vocabulary). We compare large-scale quantitative studies with more traditional theoretical and historical linguistic research and identify divergent assumptions and methods that have led linguists to be skeptical of correlational work. We also attempt to demystify statistical techniques and point out the importance of informed critiques of the validity of statistical approaches. Finally, we describe various methods used in recent correlational studies to deal with the fact that, because of contact and historical relatedness, individual languages in a sample rarely represent independent data points, and we show how these methods may allow us to explore linguistic prehistory to a greater time depth than is possible with orthodox comparative reconstruction.
  • Lai, V. T., & Curran, T. (2015). Erratum to “ERP evidence for conceptual mappings and comparison processes during the comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors” [Brain Lang. 127 (3) (2013) 484–496]. Brain and Language, 149, 148-150. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2014.11.001.
  • Lai, V. T., van Dam, W., Conant, L. L., Binder, J. R., & Desai, R. H. (2015). Familiarity differentially affects right hemisphere contributions to processing metaphors and literals. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9: 44. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00044.

    Abstract

    The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. While some studies have reported a special role of the right hemisphere (RH) in processing metaphors, others indicate no difference in laterality relative to literal language. Some studies have found a role of the RH for novel/unfamiliar metaphors, but not
    conventional/familiar metaphors. It is not clear, however, whether the role of the RH
    is specific to metaphor novelty, or whether it reflects processing, reinterpretation or
    reanalysis of novel/unfamiliar language in general. Here we used functional magnetic
    resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of familiarity in both metaphoric and
    non-metaphoric sentences. A left lateralized network containing the middle and inferior
    frontal gyri, posterior temporal regions in the left hemisphere (LH), and inferior frontal
    regions in the RH, was engaged across both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences;
    engagement of this network decreased as familiarity decreased. No region was engaged
    selectively for greater metaphoric unfamiliarity. An analysis of laterality, however, showed that the contribution of the RH relative to that of LH does increase in a metaphorspecific manner as familiarity decreases. These results show that RH regions, taken by themselves, including commonly reported regions such as the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), are responsive to increased cognitive demands of processing unfamiliar stimuli, rather than being metaphor-selective. The division of labor between the two hemispheres, however, does shift towards the right for metaphoric processing. The shift results not because the RH contributes more to metaphoric processing. Rather, relative to
    its contribution for processing literals, the LH contributes less.
  • Lai, V. T., Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2015). Feel between the Lines: Implied emotion from combinatorial semantics. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(8), 1528-1541. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00798.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. Participants read negative sentences without negative words, for example, “The boy fell asleep and never woke up again,” and their neutral counterparts “The boy stood up and grabbed his bag.” This kind of negative sentence allows us to examine implied emotion derived at the sentence level, without associative emotion coming from word retrieval. We found that implied emotion in sentences, relative to neutral sentences, led to activation in some emotion-related areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the insula, as well as certain language-related areas, including the inferior frontal gyrus, which has been implicated in combinatorial processing. These results suggest that the emotional network involved in implied emotion is intricately related to the network for combinatorial processing in language, supporting the view that sentence meaning is more than simply concatenating the meanings of its lexical building blocks.
  • Lam, K. J. Y., Dijkstra, T., & Rueschemeyer, S.-A. (2015). Feature activation during word recognition: action, visual, and associative-semantic priming effects. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 659. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00659.

    Abstract

    Embodied theories of language postulate that language meaning is stored in modality-specific brain areas generally involved in perception and action in the real world. However, the temporal dynamics of the interaction between modality-specific information and lexical-semantic processing remain unclear. We investigated the relative timing at which two types of modality-specific information (action-based and visual-form information) contribute to lexical-semantic comprehension. To this end, we applied a behavioral priming paradigm in which prime and target words were related with respect to (1) action features, (2) visual features, or (3) semantically associative information. Using a Go/No-Go lexical decision task, priming effects were measured across four different inter-stimulus intervals (ISI = 100, 250, 400, and 1000 ms) to determine the relative time course of the different features. Notably, action priming effects were found in ISIs of 100, 250, and 1000 ms whereas a visual priming effect was seen only in the ISI of 1000 ms. Importantly, our data suggest that features follow different time courses of activation during word recognition. In this regard, feature activation is dynamic, measurable in specific time windows but not in others. Thus the current study (1) demonstrates how multiple ISIs can be used within an experiment to help chart the time course of feature activation and (2) provides new evidence for embodied theories of language.
  • Lammertink, I., Casillas, M., Benders, T., Post, B., & Fikkert, P. (2015). Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 495. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00495.
  • Lartseva, A., Dijkstra, T., & Buitelaar, J. (2015). Emotional language processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8: 991. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00991.

    Abstract

    In his first description of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Kanner emphasized emotional impairments by characterizing children with ASD as indifferent to other people, self-absorbed, emotionally cold, distanced, and retracted. Thereafter, emotional impairments became regarded as part of the social impairments of ASD, and research mostly focused on understanding how individuals with ASD recognize visual expressions of emotions from faces and body postures. However, it still remains unclear how emotions are processed outside of the visual domain. This systematic review aims to fill this gap by focusing on impairments of emotional language processing in ASD.
    We systematically searched PubMed for papers published between 1990 and 2013 using standardized search terms. Studies show that people with ASD are able to correctly classify emotional language stimuli as emotionally positive or negative. However, processing of emotional language stimuli in ASD is associated with atypical patterns of attention and memory performance, as well as abnormal physiological and neural activity. Particularly, younger children with ASD have difficulties in acquiring and developing emotional concepts, and avoid using these in discourse. These emotional language impairments were not consistently associated with age, IQ, or level of development of language skills.
    We discuss how emotional language impairments fit with existing cognitive theories of ASD, such as central coherence, executive dysfunction, and weak Theory of Mind. We conclude that emotional impairments in ASD may be broader than just a mere consequence of social impairments, and should receive more attention in future research
  • Lee, S. A., Ferrari, A., Vallortigara, G., & Sovrano, V. A. (2015). Boundary primacy in spatial mapping: Evidence from zebrafish (Danio rerio). Behavioural Processes, 119, 116-122. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2015.07.012.

    Abstract

    The ability to map locations in the surrounding environment is crucial for any navigating animal. Decades of research on mammalian spatial representations suggest that environmental boundaries play a major role in both navigation behavior and hippocampal place coding. Although the capacity for spatial mapping is shared among vertebrates, including birds and fish, it is not yet clear whether such similarities in competence reflect common underlying mechanisms. The present study tests cue specificity in spatial mapping in zebrafish, by probing their use of various visual cues to encode the location of a nearby conspecific. The results suggest that untrained zebrafish, like other vertebrates tested so far, rely primarily on environmental boundaries to compute spatial relationships and, at the same time, use other visible features such as surface markings and freestanding objects as local cues to goal locations. We propose that the pattern of specificity in spontaneous spatial mapping behavior across vertebrates reveals cross-species commonalities in its underlying neural representations.
  • Lev-Ari, S. (2015). Comprehending non-native speakers: Theory and evidence for adjustment in manner of processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 1546. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01546.

    Abstract

    Non-native speakers have lower linguistic competence than native speakers, which renders their language less reliable in conveying their intentions. We suggest that expectations of lower competence lead listeners to adapt their manner of processing when they listen to non-native speakers. We propose that listeners use cognitive resources to adjust by increasing their reliance on top-down processes and extracting less information from the language of the non-native speaker. An eye-tracking study supports our proposal by showing that when following instructions by a non-native speaker, listeners make more contextually-induced interpretations. Those with relatively high working memory also increase their reliance on context to anticipate the speaker’s upcoming reference, and are less likely to notice lexical errors in the non-native speech, indicating that they take less information from the speaker’s language. These results contribute to our understanding of the flexibility in language processing and have implications for interactions between native and non-native speakers

    Additional information

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  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1996). Hoedt u voor neurolinguïstisch programmeren. Actieblad tegen de kwakzalverij, 107, 12-14.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Praamstra, P., Meyer, A. S., Helenius, P., & Salmelin, R. (1998). An MEG study of picture naming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(5), 553-567. doi:10.1162/089892998562960.

    Abstract

    The purpose of this study was to relate a psycholinguistic processing model of picture naming to the dynamics of cortical activation during picture naming. The activation was recorded from eight Dutch subjects with a whole-head neuromagnetometer. The processing model, based on extensive naming latency studies, is a stage model. In preparing a picture's name, the speaker performs a chain of specific operations. They are, in this order, computing the visual percept, activating an appropriate lexical concept, selecting the target word from the mental lexicon, phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, and initiation of articulation. The time windows for each of these operations are reasonably well known and could be related to the peak activity of dipole sources in the individual magnetic response patterns. The analyses showed a clear progression over these time windows from early occipital activation, via parietal and temporal to frontal activation. The major specific findings were that (1) a region in the left posterior temporal lobe, agreeing with the location of Wernicke's area, showed prominent activation starting about 200 msec after picture onset and peaking at about 350 msec, (i.e., within the stage of phonological encoding), and (2) a consistent activation was found in the right parietal cortex, peaking at about 230 msec after picture onset, thus preceding and partly overlapping with the left temporal response. An interpretation in terms of the management of visual attention is proposed.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Het lineariseringsprobleem van de spreker. Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap (TTT), 2(1), 1-15.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Hochleistung in Millisekunden: Sprechen und Sprache verstehen. Universitas, 44(511), 56-68.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Schiller, N. O. (1998). Is the syllable frame stored? [Commentary on the BBS target article 'The frame/content theory of evolution of speech production' by Peter F. McNeilage]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 520.

    Abstract

    This commentary discusses whether abstract metrical frames are stored. For stress-assigning languages (e.g., Dutch and English), which have a dominant stress pattern, metrical frames are stored only for words that deviate from the default stress pattern. The majority of the words in these languages are produced without retrieving any independent syllabic or metrical frame.
  • 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. (1998). The genetic perspective in psycholinguistics, or: Where do spoken words come from? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27(2), 167-180. doi:10.1023/A:1023245931630.

    Abstract

    The core issue in the 19-century sources of psycholinguistics was the question, "Where does language come from?'' This genetic perspective unified the study of the ontogenesis, the phylogenesis, the microgenesis, and to some extent the neurogenesis of language. This paper makes the point that this original perspective is still a valid and attractive one. It is exemplified by a discussion of the genesis of spoken words.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1996). Waar komen gesproken woorden vandaan? De Psycholoog, 31, 434-437.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Zelfcorrecties in het spreekproces. KNAW: Mededelingen van de afdeling letterkunde, nieuwe reeks, 45(8), 215-228.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1989). A review of Relevance [book review of Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: communication and cognition]. Journal of Linguistics, 25, 455-472.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1996). Language and space. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 353-382. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.353.

    Abstract

    This review describes some recent, unexpected findings concerning variation in spatial language across cultures, and places them in the context of the general anthropology of space on the one hand, and theories of spatial cognition in the cognitive sciences on the other. There has been much concern with the symbolism of space in anthropological writings, but little on concepts of space in practical activities. This neglect of everyday spatial notions may be due to unwitting ethnocentrism, the assumption in Western thinking generally that notions of space are universally of a single kind. Recent work shows that systems of spatial reckoning and description can in fact be quite divergent across cultures, linguistic differences correlating with distinct cognitive tendencies. This unexpected cultural variation raises interesting questions concerning the relation between cultural and linguistic concepts and the biological foundations of cognition. It argues for more sophisticated models relating culture and cognition than we currently have available.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2015). John Joseph Gumperz (1922–2013) [Obituary]. American Anthropologist, 117(1), 212-224. doi:10.1111/aman.12185.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2015). Other-initiated repair in Yélî Dnye: Seeing eye-to-eye in the language of Rossel Island. Open Linguistics, 1(1), 386-410. doi:10.1515/opli-2015-0009.

    Abstract

    Other-initiated repair (OIR) is the fundamental back-up system that ensures the effectiveness of human communication in its primordial niche, conversation. This article describes the interactional and linguistic patterns involved in other-initiated repair in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. The structure of the article is based on the conceptual set of distinctions described in Chapters 1 and 2 of the special issue, and describes the major properties of the Rossel Island system, and the ways in which OIR in this language both conforms to familiar European patterns and deviates from those patterns. Rossel Island specialities include lack of a Wh-word open class repair initiator, and a heavy reliance on visual signals that makes it possible both to initiate repair and confirm it non-verbally. But the overall system conforms to universal expectations.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Studying spatial conceptualization across cultures: Anthropology and cognitive science. Ethos, 26(1), 7-24. doi:10.1525/eth.1998.26.1.7.

    Abstract

    Philosophers, psychologists, and linguists have argued that spatial conception is pivotal to cognition in general, providing a general, egocentric, and universal framework for cognition as well as metaphors for conceptualizing many other domains. But in an aboriginal community in Northern Queensland, a system of cardinal directions informs not only language, but also memory for arbitrary spatial arrays and directions. This work suggests that fundamental cognitive parameters, like the system of coding spatial locations, can vary cross-culturally, in line with the language spoken by a community. This opens up the prospect of a fruitful dialogue between anthropology and the cognitive sciences on the complex interaction between cultural and universal factors in the constitution of mind.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Torreira, F. (2015). Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing models of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 731. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00731.

    Abstract

    The core niche for language use is in verbal interaction, involving the rapid exchange of turns at talking. This paper reviews the extensive literature about this system, adding new statistical analyses of behavioural data where they have been missing, demonstrating that turn-taking has the systematic properties originally noted by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974; hereafter SSJ). This system poses some significant puzzles for current theories of language processing: the gaps between turns are short (of the order of 200 ms), but the latencies involved in language production are much longer (over 600 ms). This seems to imply that participants in conversation must predict (or ‘project’ as SSJ have it) the end of the current speaker’s turn in order to prepare their response in advance. This in turn implies some overlap between production and comprehension despite their use of common processing resources. Collecting together what is known behaviourally and experimentally about the system, the space for systematic explanations of language processing for conversation can be significantly narrowed, and we sketch some first model of the mental processes involved for the participant preparing to speak next.
  • Lewis, A. G., & Bastiaansen, M. C. M. (2015). A predictive coding framework for rapid neural dynamics during sentence-level language comprehension. Cortex, 68, 155-168. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2015.02.014.

    Abstract

    There is a growing literature investigating the relationship between oscillatory neural dynamics measured using EEG and/or MEG, and sentence-level language comprehension. Recent proposals have suggested a strong link between predictive coding accounts of the hierarchical flow of information in the brain, and oscillatory neural dynamics in the beta and gamma frequency ranges. We propose that findings relating beta and gamma oscillations to sentence-level language comprehension might be unified under such a predictive coding account. Our suggestion is that oscillatory activity in the beta frequency range may reflect both the active maintenance of the current network configuration responsible for representing the sentence-level meaning under construction, and the top-down propagation of predictions to hierarchically lower processing levels based on that representation. In addition, we suggest that oscillatory activity in the low and middle gamma range reflect the matching of top-down predictions with bottom-up linguistic input, while evoked high gamma might reflect the propagation of bottom-up prediction errors to higher levels of the processing hierarchy. We also discuss some of the implications of this predictive coding framework, and we outline ideas for how these might be tested experimentally
  • Lewis, A. G., Wang, L., & Bastiaansen, M. C. M. (2015). Fast oscillatory dynamics during language comprehension: Unification versus maintenance and prediction? Brain and Language, 148, 51-63. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2015.01.003.

    Abstract

    The role of neuronal oscillations during language comprehension is not yet well understood. In this paper we review and reinterpret the functional roles of beta- and gamma-band oscillatory activity during language comprehension at the sentence and discourse level. We discuss the evidence in favor of a role for beta and gamma in unification (the unification hypothesis), and in light of mounting evidence that cannot be accounted for under this hypothesis, we explore an alternative proposal linking beta and gamma oscillations to maintenance and prediction (respectively) during language comprehension. Our maintenance/prediction hypothesis is able to account for most of the findings that are currently available relating beta and gamma oscillations to language comprehension, and is in good agreement with other proposals about the roles of beta and gamma in domain-general cognitive processing. In conclusion we discuss proposals for further testing and comparing the prediction and unification hypotheses.
  • Lima, C. F., Lavan, N., Evans, S., Agnew, Z., Halpern, A. R., Shanmugalingam, P., Meekings, S., Boebinger, D., Ostarek, M., McGettigan, C., Warren, J. E., & Scott, S. K. (2015). Feel the Noise: Relating individual differences in auditory imagery to the structure and function of sensorimotor systems. Cerebral Cortex., 2015(25), 4638-4650. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhv134.

    Abstract

    Humans can generate mental auditory images of voices or songs, sometimes perceiving them almost as vividly as perceptual experiences. The functional networks supporting auditory imagery have been described, but less is known about the systems associated with interindividual differences in auditory imagery. Combining voxel-based morphometry and fMRI, we examined the structural basis of interindividual differences in how auditory images are subjectively perceived, and explored associations between auditory imagery, sensory-based processing, and visual imagery. Vividness of auditory imagery correlated with gray matter volume in the supplementary motor area (SMA), parietal cortex, medial superior frontal gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus. An analysis of functional responses to different types of human vocalizations revealed that the SMA and parietal sites that predict imagery are also modulated by sound type. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that higher representational specificity of heard sounds in SMA predicts vividness of imagery, indicating a mechanistic link between sensory- and imagery-based processing in sensorimotor cortex. Vividness of imagery in the visual domain also correlated with SMA structure, and with auditory imagery scores. Altogether, these findings provide evidence for a signature of imagery in brain structure, and highlight a common role of perceptual–motor interactions for processing heard and internally generated auditory information.
  • Liszkowski, U., & Ramenzoni, V. C. (2015). Pointing to nothing? Empty places prime infants' attention to absent objects. Infancy, 20, 433-444. doi:10.1111/infa.12080.

    Abstract

    People routinely point to empty space when referring to absent entities. These points to "nothing" are meaningful because they direct attention to places that stand in for specific entities. Typically, the meaning of places in terms of absent referents is established through preceding discourse and accompanying language. However, it is unknown whether nonlinguistic actions can establish locations as meaningful places, and whether infants have the capacity to represent a place as standing in for an object. In a novel eye-tracking paradigm, 18-month-olds watched objects being placed in specific locations. Then, the objects disappeared and a point directed infants' attention to an emptied place. The point to the empty place primed infants in a subsequent scene (in which the objects appeared at novel locations) to look more to the object belonging to the indicated place than to a distracter referent. The place-object expectations were strong enough to interfere when reversing the place-object associations. Findings show that infants comprehend nonlinguistic reference to absent entities, which reveals an ontogenetic early, nonverbal understanding of places as representations of absent objects
  • Lloyd, S. E., Pearce, S. H. S., Fisher, S. E., Steinmeyer, K., Schwappach, B., Scheinman, S. J., Harding, B., Bolino, A., Devoto, M., Goodyer, P., Rigden, S. P. A., Wrong, O., Jentsch, T. J., Craig, I. W., & Thakker, R. V. (1996). A common molecular basis for three inherited kidney stone diseases [Letter to Nature]. Nature, 379, 445 -449. doi:10.1038/379445a0.

    Abstract

    Kidney stones (nephrolithiasis), which affect 12% of males and 5% of females in the western world, are familial in 45% of patients and are most commonly associated with hypercalciuria. Three disorders of hypercalciuric nephrolithiasis (Dent's disease, X-linked recessive nephrolithiasis (XRN), and X-linked recessive hypophosphataemic rickets (XLRH)) have been mapped to Xp11.22 (refs 5-7). A microdeletion in one Dent's disease kindred allowed the identification of a candidate gene, CLCN5 (refs 8,9) which encodes a putative renal chloride channel. Here we report the investigation of 11 kindreds with these renal tubular disorders for CLCN5 abnormalities; this identified three nonsense, four missense and two donor splice site mutations, together with one intragenic deletion and one microdeletion encompassing the entire gene. Heterologous expression of wild-type CLCN5 in Xenopus oocytes yielded outwardly rectifying chloride currents, which were either abolished or markedly reduced by the mutations. The common aetiology for Dent's disease, XRN and XLRH indicates that CLCN5 may be involved in other renal tubular disorders associated with kidney stones
  • Lockwood, G., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Iconicity in the lab: A review of behavioural, developmental, and neuroimaging research into sound-symbolism. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1246. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01246.

    Abstract

    This review covers experimental approaches to sound-symbolism—from infants to adults, and from Sapir’s foundational studies to twenty-first century product naming. It synthesizes recent behavioral, developmental, and neuroimaging work into a systematic overview of the cross-modal correspondences that underpin iconic links between form and meaning. It also identifies open questions and opportunities, showing how the future course of experimental iconicity research can benefit from an integrated interdisciplinary perspective. Combining insights from psychology and neuroscience with evidence from natural languages provides us with opportunities for the experimental investigation of the role of sound-symbolism in language learning, language processing, and communication. The review finishes by describing how hypothesis-testing and model-building will help contribute to a cumulative science of sound-symbolism in human language.
  • Lockwood, G., & Tuomainen, J. (2015). Ideophones in Japanese modulate the P2 and late positive complex responses. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 933. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00933.

    Abstract

    Sound-symbolism, or the direct link between sound and meaning, is typologically and behaviorally attested across languages. However, neuroimaging research has mostly focused on artificial non-words or individual segments, which do not represent sound-symbolism in natural language. We used EEG to compare Japanese ideophones, which are phonologically distinctive sound-symbolic lexical words, and arbitrary adverbs during a sentence reading task. Ideophones elicit a larger visual P2 response and a sustained late positive complex in comparison to arbitrary adverbs. These results and previous literature suggest that the larger P2 may indicate the integration of sound and sensory information by association in response to the distinctive phonology of ideophones. The late positive complex may reflect the facilitated lexical retrieval of ideophones in comparison to arbitrary words. This account provides new evidence that ideophones exhibit similar cross-modal correspondences to those which have been proposed for non-words and individual sounds, and that these effects are detectable in natural language.
  • Love, B. C., Kopeć, Ł., & Guest, O. (2015). Optimism bias in fans and sports reporters. PLoS One, 10(9): e0137685. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137685.

    Abstract

    People are optimistic about their prospects relative to others. However, existing studies can be difficult to interpret because outcomes are not zero-sum. For example, one person avoiding cancer does not necessitate that another person develops cancer. Ideally, optimism bias would be evaluated within a closed formal system to establish with certainty the extent of the bias and the associated environmental factors, such that optimism bias is demonstrated when a population is internally inconsistent. Accordingly, we asked NFL fans to predict how many games teams they liked and disliked would win in the 2015 season. Fans, like ESPN reporters assigned to cover a team, were overly optimistic about their team’s prospects. The opposite pattern was found for teams that fans disliked. Optimism may flourish because year-to-year team results are marked by auto-correlation and regression to the group mean (i.e., good teams stay good, but bad teams improve).

    Additional information

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  • Lozano, R., Vino, A., Lozano, C., Fisher, S. E., & Deriziotis, P. (2015). A de novo FOXP1 variant in a patient with autism, intellectual disability and severe speech and language impairment. European Journal of Human Genetics, 23, 1702-1707. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2015.66.

    Abstract

    FOXP1 (forkhead box protein P1) is a transcription factor involved in the development of several tissues, including the brain. An emerging phenotype of patients with protein-disrupting FOXP1 variants includes global developmental delay, intellectual disability and mild to severe speech/language deficits. We report on a female child with a history of severe hypotonia, autism spectrum disorder and mild intellectual disability with severe speech/language impairment. Clinical exome sequencing identified a heterozygous de novo FOXP1 variant c.1267_1268delGT (p.V423Hfs*37). Functional analyses using cellular models show that the variant disrupts multiple aspects of FOXP1 activity, including subcellular localization and transcriptional repression properties. Our findings highlight the importance of performing functional characterization to help uncover the biological significance of variants identified by genomics approaches, thereby providing insight into pathways underlying complex neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, our data support the hypothesis that de novo variants represent significant causal factors in severe sporadic disorders and extend the phenotype seen in individuals with FOXP1 haploinsufficiency
  • Majid, A., & Van Staden, M. (2015). Can nomenclature for the body be explained by embodiment theories? Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(4), 570-594. doi:10.1111/tops.12159.

    Abstract

    According to widespread opinion, the meaning of body part terms is determined by salient discontinuities in the visual image; such that hands, feet, arms, and legs, are natural parts. If so, one would expect these parts to have distinct names which correspond in meaning across languages. To test this proposal, we compared three unrelated languages—Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian—and found both naming systems and boundaries of even basic body part terms display variation across languages. Bottom-up cues alone cannot explain natural language semantic systems; there simply is not a one-to-one mapping of the body semantic system to the body structural description. Although body parts are flexibly construed across languages, body parts semantics are, nevertheless, constrained by non-linguistic representations in the body structural description, suggesting these are necessary, although not sufficient, in accounting for aspects of the body lexicon.
  • Majid, A. (2015). Cultural factors shape olfactory language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(11), 629-630. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.06.009.
  • Majid, A., Jordan, F., & Dunn, M. (Eds.). (2015). Semantic systems in closely related languages [Special Issue]. Language Sciences, 49.
  • Majid, A., Jordan, F., & Dunn, M. (2015). Semantic systems in closely related languages. Language Sciences, 49, 1-18. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2014.11.002.

    Abstract

    In each semantic domain studied to date, there is considerable variation in how meanings are expressed across languages. But are some semantic domains more likely to show variation than others? Is the domain of space more or less variable in its expression than other semantic domains, such as containers, body parts, or colours? According to many linguists, the meanings expressed in grammaticised expressions, such as (spatial) adpositions, are more likely to be similar across languages than meanings expressed in open class lexical items. On the other hand, some psychologists predict there ought to be more variation across languages in the meanings of adpositions, than in the meanings of nouns. This is because relational categories, such as those expressed as adpositions, are said to be constructed by language; whereas object categories expressed as nouns are predicted to be “given by the world”. We tested these hypotheses by comparing the semantic systems of closely related languages. Previous cross-linguistic studies emphasise the importance of studying diverse languages, but we argue that a focus on closely related languages is advantageous because domains can be compared in a culturally- and historically-informed manner. Thus we collected data from 12 Germanic languages. Naming data were collected from at least 20 speakers of each language for containers, body-parts, colours, and spatial relations. We found the semantic domains of colour and body-parts were the most similar across languages. Containers showed some variation, but spatial relations expressed in adpositions showed the most variation. The results are inconsistent with the view expressed by most linguists. Instead, we find meanings expressed in grammaticised meanings are more variable than meanings in open class lexical items.
  • Manrique, E., & Enfield, N. J. (2015). Suspending the next turn as a form of repair initiation: Evidence from Argentine Sign Language. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1326. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01326.

    Abstract

    Practices of other initiated repair deal with problems of hearing or understanding what another person has said in the fast-moving turn-by-turn flow of conversation. As such, other-initiated repair plays a fundamental role in the maintenance of intersubjectivity in social interaction. This study finds and analyses a special type of other initiated repair that is used in turn-by-turn conversation in a sign language: Argentine Sign Language (Lengua de Sehas Argentina or LSA). We describe a type of response termed a "freeze-look,' which occurs when a person has just been asked a direct question: instead of answering the question in the next turn position, the person holds still while looking directly at the questioner. In these cases it is clear that the person is aware of having just been addressed and is not otherwise accounting for their delay in responding (e.g., by displaying a "thinking" face or hesitation, etc.). We find that this behavior functions as a way for an addressee to initiate repair by the person who asked the question. The "freeze-look" results in the questioner "re-doing" their action of asking a question, for example by repeating or rephrasing it Thus, we argue that the "freeze-look" is a practice for other-initiation of repair. In addition, we argue that it is an "off-record" practice, thus contrasting with known on record practices such as saying "Huh?" or equivalents. The findings aim to contribute to research on human understanding in everyday turn-by-turn conversation by looking at an understudied sign language, with possible implications for our understanding of visual bodily communication in spoken languages as wel

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  • Martin, J.-R., Kösem, A., & van Wassenhove, V. (2015). Hysteresis in Audiovisual Synchrony Perception. PLoS One, 10(3): e0119365. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0119365.

    Abstract

    The effect of stimulation history on the perception of a current event can yield two opposite effects, namely: adaptation or hysteresis. The perception of the current event thus goes in the opposite or in the same direction as prior stimulation, respectively. In audiovisual (AV) synchrony perception, adaptation effects have primarily been reported. Here, we tested if perceptual hysteresis could also be observed over adaptation in AV timing perception by varying different experimental conditions. Participants were asked to judge the synchrony of the last (test) stimulus of an AV sequence with either constant or gradually changing AV intervals (constant and dynamic condition, respectively). The onset timing of the test stimulus could be cued or not (prospective vs. retrospective condition, respectively). We observed hysteretic effects for AV synchrony judgments in the retrospective condition that were independent of the constant or dynamic nature of the adapted stimuli; these effects disappeared in the prospective condition. The present findings suggest that knowing when to estimate a stimulus property has a crucial impact on perceptual simultaneity judgments. Our results extend beyond AV timing perception, and have strong implications regarding the comparative study of hysteresis and adaptation phenomena.
  • Matić, D., & Odé, C. (2015). On prosodic signalling of focus in Tundra Yukaghir. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, 11(2), 627-644.
  • Meekings, S., Boebinger, D., Evans, S., Lima, C. F., Chen, S., Ostarek, M., & Scott, S. K. (2015). Do we know what we’re saying? The roles of attention and sensory information during speech production. Psychological Science, 26(12), 1975-1977. doi:10.1177/0956797614563766.
  • Meira, S., & Drude, S. (2015). A summary reconstruction of Proto-Maweti-Guarani segmental phonology. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi:Ciencias Humanas, 10, 275-296. doi: 10.1590/1981-81222015000200005.

    Abstract

    This paper presents a succinct reconstruction of the segmental phonology of Proto-Maweti-Guarani, the hypothetical protolanguage from which modern Mawe, Aweti and the Tupi-Guarani branches of the Tupi linguistic family have evolved. Based on about 300 cognate sets from the authors' field data (for Mawe and Aweti) and from Mello's reconstruction (2000) for Proto-Tupi-Guarani (with additional information from other works; and with a few changes concerning certain doubtful features, such as the status of stem-final lenis consonants ∗r and ∗β, and the distinction of ∗c and ∗č), the consonants and vowels of Proto-Maweti-Guarani were reconstructed with the help of the traditional historical-comparative method. The development of the reconstructed segments is then traced from the protolanguage to each of the modern branches. A comparison with other claims made about Proto-Maweti-Guarani is given in the conclusion
  • Meyer, A. S., Levelt, W. J. M., & Wissink, M. T. (1996). Een modulair model van zinsproductie. Logopedie, 9(2), 21-31.

    Abstract

    In deze bijdrage wordt een modulair model van zinsproductie besproken. De planningsprocessen, die aan de productie van een zin voorafgaan, kunnen in twee hoofdcomponenten onderverdeeld worden: deconceptualisering (het bedenken van de inhoud van de uiting) en de formulering (het vastleggen van de linguïstische vorm). Het formuleringsproces bestaat weer uit twee componenten, te weten de grammatische en fonologische codering. Ook deze componenten bestaan elk weer uit een aantal subcomponenten. Dit artikel beschrijft wat de specifieke taak van iedere component is, hoe deze uitgevoerd wordt en hoe de componenten samenwerken. Tevens worden enkele belangrijke methoden van taalproductie-onderzoek besproken.
  • Meyer, A. S. (1996). Lexical access in phrase and sentence production: Results from picture-word interference experiments. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 477-496. doi:doi:10.1006/jmla.1996.0026.

    Abstract

    Four experiments investigated the span of advance planning for phrases and short sentences. Dutch subjects were presented with pairs of objects, which they named using noun-phrase conjunctions (e.g., the translation equivalent of ''the arrow and the bag'') or sentences (''the arrow is next to the bag''). Each display was accompanied by an auditory distracter, which was related in form or meaning to the first or second noun of the utterance or unrelated to both. For sentences and phrases, the mean speech onset time was longer when the distracter was semantically related to the first or second noun and shorter when it was phonologically related to the first noun than when it was unrelated. No phonological facilitation was found for the second noun. This suggests that before utterance onset both target lemmas and the first target form were selected.
  • Meyer, A. S., Sleiderink, A. M., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1998). Viewing and naming objects: Eye movements during noun phrase production. Cognition, 66(2), B25-B33. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00009-2.

    Abstract

    Eye movements have been shown to reflect word recognition and language comprehension processes occurring during reading and auditory language comprehension. The present study examines whether the eye movements speakers make during object naming similarly reflect speech planning processes. In Experiment 1, speakers named object pairs saying, for instance, 'scooter and hat'. The objects were presented as ordinary line drawings or with partly dele:ed contours and had high or low frequency names. Contour type and frequency both significantly affected the mean naming latencies and the mean time spent looking at the objects. The frequency effects disappeared in Experiment 2, in which the participants categorized the objects instead of naming them. This suggests that the frequency effects of Experiment 1 arose during lexical retrieval. We conclude that eye movements during object naming indeed reflect linguistic planning processes and that the speakers' decision to move their eyes from one object to the next is contingent upon the retrieval of the phonological form of the object names.
  • Mielcarek, M., Toczek, M., Smeets, C. J. L. M., Franklin, S. A., Bondulich, M. K., Jolinon, N., Muller, T., Ahmed, M., Dick, J. R. T., Piotrowska, I., Greensmith, L., Smolenski, R. T., & Bates, G. P. (2015). HDAC4-Myogenin Axis As an Important Marker of HD-Related Skeletal Muscle Atrophy. PLoS Genetics, 11(3): e1005021. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1005021.

    Abstract

    Skeletal muscle remodelling and contractile dysfunction occur through both acute and chronic disease processes. These include the accumulation of insoluble aggregates of mis- folded amyloid proteins that is a pathological feature of Huntington ’ s disease (HD). While HD has been described primarily as a neurological disease, HD patients ’ exhibit pro- nounced skeletal muscle atrophy. Given that huntingtin is a ubiquitously expressed protein, skeletal muscle fibres may be at risk of a cell autonomous HD-related dysfunction. However the mechanism leading to skeletal muscle abnormalities in the clinical and pre-clinical HD settings remains unknown. To unravel this mechanism, we employed the R6/2 transgenic and Hdh Q150 knock-in mouse models of HD. We found that symptomatic animals devel- oped a progressive impairment of the contractile characteristics of the hind limb muscles tibialis anterior (TA) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL), accompanied by a significant loss of motor units in the EDL. In symptomatic animals, these pronounced functional changes were accompanied by an aberrant deregulation of contractile protein transcripts and their up-stream transcriptional regulators. In addition, HD mouse models develop a sig- nificant reduction in muscle force, possibly as a result of a deterioration in energy metabo- lism and decreased oxidation that is accompanied by the re-expression of the HDAC4- DACH2-myogenin axis. These results show that muscle dysfunction is a key pathological feature of HD.
  • Monaghan, P., Mattock, K., Davies, R., & Smith, A. C. (2015). Gavagai is as gavagai does: Learning nouns and verbs from cross-situational statistics. Cognitive Science, 39, 1099-1112. doi:10.1111/cogs.12186.

    Abstract

    Learning to map words onto their referents is difficult, because there are multiple possibilities for forming these mappings. Cross-situational learning studies have shown that word-object mappings can be learned across multiple situations, as can verbs when presented in a syntactic context. However, these previous studies have presented either nouns or verbs in ambiguous contexts and thus bypass much of the complexity of multiple grammatical categories in speech. We show that noun word-learning in adults is robust when objects are moving, and that verbs can also be learned from similar scenes without additional syntactic information. Furthermore, we show that both nouns and verbs can be acquired simultaneously, thus resolving category-level as well as individual word level ambiguity. However, nouns were learned more accurately than verbs, and we discuss this in light of previous studies investigating the noun advantage in word learning.
  • Moreno, I., De Vega, M., León, I., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Lewis, A. G., & Magyari, L. (2015). Brain dynamics in the comprehension of action-related language. A time-frequency analysis of mu rhythms. Neuroimage, 109, 50-62. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.01.018.

    Abstract

    EEG mu rhythms (8-13Hz) recorded at fronto-central electrodes are generally considered as markers of motor cortical activity in humans, because they are modulated when participants perform an action, when they observe another’s action or even when they imagine performing an action. In this study, we analyzed the time-frequency (TF) modulation of mu rhythms while participants read action language (“You will cut the strawberry cake”), abstract language (“You will doubt the patient´s argument”), and perceptive language (“You will notice the bright day”). The results indicated that mu suppression at fronto-central sites is associated with action language rather than with abstract or perceptive language. Also, the largest difference between conditions occurred quite late in the sentence, while reading the first noun, (contrast Action vs. Abstract), or the second noun following the action verb (contrast Action vs. Perceptive). This suggests that motor activation is associated with the integration of words across the sentence beyond the lexical processing of the action verb. Source reconstruction localized mu suppression associated with action sentences in premotor cortex (BA 6). The present study suggests (1) that the understanding of action language activates motor networks in the human brain, and (2) that this activation occurs online based on semantic integration across multiple words in the sentence.
  • Mulder, K., Dijkstra, T., & Baayen, R. H. (2015). Cross-language activation of morphological relatives in cognates: The role of orthographic overlap and task-related processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9: 16. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00016.

    Abstract

    We considered the role of orthography and task-related processing mechanisms in the activation of morphologically related complex words during bilingual word processing. So far, it has only been shown that such morphologically related words (i.e., morphological family members) are activated through the semantic and morphological overlap they share with the target word. In this study, we investigated family size effects in Dutch-English identical cognates (e.g., tent in both languages), non-identical cognates (e.g., pil and pill, in English and Dutch, respectively), and non-cognates (e.g., chicken in English). Because of their cross-linguistic overlap in orthography, reading a cognate can result in activation of family members both languages. Cognates are therefore well-suited for studying mechanisms underlying bilingual activation of morphologically complex words. We investigated family size effects in an English lexical decision task and a Dutch-English language decision task, both performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. English lexical decision showed a facilitatory effect of English and Dutch family size on the processing of English-Dutch cognates relative to English non-cognates. These family size effects were not dependent on cognate type. In contrast, for language decision, in which a bilingual context is created, Dutch and English family size effects were inhibitory. Here, the combined family size of both languages turned out to better predict reaction time than the separate family size in Dutch or English. Moreover, the combined family size interacted with cognate type: the response to identical cognates was slowed by morphological family members in both languages. We conclude that (1) family size effects are sensitive to the task performed on the lexical items, and (2) depend on both semantic and formal aspects of bilingual word processing. We discuss various mechanisms that can explain the observed family size effects in a spreading activation framework.
  • Neger, T. M., Janse, E., & Rietveld, T. (2015). Correlates of older adults' discrimination of acoustic properties in speech. Speech, Language and Hearing, 18(2), 102-115. doi:10.1179/2050572814Y.0000000055.

    Abstract

    Auditory discrimination of speech stimuli is an essential tool in speech and language therapy, e.g., in dysarthria rehabilitation. It is unclear, however, which listener characteristics are associated with the ability to perceive differences between one's own utterance and target speech. Knowledge about such associations may help to support patients participating in speech and language therapy programs that involve auditory discrimination tasks.
    Discrimination performance was evaluated in 96 healthy participants over 60 years of age as individuals with dysarthria are typically in this age group. Participants compared meaningful words and sentences on the dimensions of loudness, pitch and speech rate. Auditory abilities were assessed using pure-tone audiometry, speech audiometry and speech understanding in noise. Cognitive measures included auditory short-term memory, working memory and processing speed. Linguistic functioning was assessed by means of vocabulary knowledge and language proficiency.
    Exploratory factor analyses showed that discrimination performance was primarily associated with cognitive and linguistic skills, rather than auditory abilities. Accordingly, older adults’ discrimination performance was mainly predicted by cognitive and linguistic skills. Discrimination accuracy was higher in older adults with better speech understanding in noise, faster processing speed, and better language proficiency, but accuracy decreased with age. This raises the question whether these associations generalize to clinical populations and, if so, whether patients with better cognitive or linguistic skills may benefit more from discrimination-based therapeutic approaches than patients with poorer cognitive or linguistic abilities.
  • Niemelä, P. T., Lattenkamp, E. Z., & Dingemanse, N. J. (2015). Personality-related survival and sampling bias in wild cricket nymphs. Behavioral Ecology, 26(3), 936-946. doi:10.1093/beheco/arv036.

    Abstract

    The study of adaptive individual behavior (“animal personality”) focuses on whether individuals differ consistently in (suites of correlated) behavior(s) and whether individual-level behavior is under selection. Evidence for selection acting on personality is biased toward species where behavioral and life-history information can readily be collected in the wild, such as ungulates and passerine birds. Here, we report estimates of repeatability and syndrome structure for behaviors that an insect (field cricket; Gryllus campestris ) expresses in the wild. We used mark-recapture models to estimate personality-related survival and encounter probability and focused on a life-history phase where all individuals could readily be sampled (the nymphal stage). As proxies for risky behaviors, we assayed maximum distance from burrow, flight initiation distance, and emergence time after disturbance; all behaviors were repeatable, but there was no evidence for strong syndrome structure. Flight initiation distance alone predicted both daily survival and encounter probability: bolder individuals were more easily observed but had a shorter life span. Individuals were also somewhat repeatable in the habitat temperature under which they were assayed. Such environment repeatability can lead to upward biases in estimates of repeatability in behavior; this was not the case. Behavioral assays were, however, conducted around the subject’s personal burrow, which could induce pseudorepeatability if burrow characteristics affected behavior. Follow-up translocation experiments allowed us to distinguish individual and burrow identity effects and provided conclusive evidence for individual repeatability of flight initiation distance. Our findings, therefore, forcefully demonstrate that personality variation exists in wild insects and that it is associated with components of fitness.
  • Nieuwland, M. S. (2015). The truth before and after: Brain potentials reveal automatic activation of event knowledge during sentence comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(11), 2215-2228. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00856.

    Abstract

    How does knowledge of real-world events shape our understanding of incoming language? Do temporal terms like “before” and “after” impact the online recruitment of real-world event knowledge? These questions were addressed in two ERP experiments, wherein participants read sentences that started with “before” or “after” and contained a critical word that rendered each sentence true or false (e.g., “Before/After the global economic crisis, securing a mortgage was easy/harder”). The critical words were matched on predictability, rated truth value, and semantic relatedness to the words in the sentence. Regardless of whether participants explicitly verified the sentences or not, false-after-sentences elicited larger N400s than true-after-sentences, consistent with the well-established finding that semantic retrieval of concepts is facilitated when they are consistent with real-world knowledge. However, although the truth judgments did not differ between before- and after-sentences, no such sentence N400 truth value effect occurred in before-sentences, whereas false-before-sentences elicited an enhanced subsequent positive ERPs. The temporal term “before” itself elicited more negative ERPs at central electrode channels than “after.” These patterns of results show that, irrespective of ultimate sentence truth value judgments, semantic retrieval of concepts is momentarily facilitated when they are consistent with the known event outcome compared to when they are not. However, this inappropriate facilitation incurs later processing costs as reflected in the subsequent positive ERP deflections. The results suggest that automatic activation of event knowledge can impede the incremental semantic processes required to establish sentence truth value.
  • Nijhoff, A. D., & Willems, R. M. (2015). Simulating fiction: Individual differences in literature comprehension revealed with fMRI. PLoS One, 10(2): e0116492. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0116492.

    Abstract

    When we read literary fiction, we are transported to fictional places, and we feel and think along with the characters. Despite the importance of narrative in adult life and during development, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying fiction comprehension are unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how individuals differently employ neural networks important for understanding others’ beliefs and intentions (mentalizing), and for sensori-motor simulation while listening to excerpts from literary novels. Localizer tasks were used to localize both the cortical motor network and the mentalizing network in participants after they listened to excerpts from literary novels. Results show that participants who had high activation in anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC; part of the mentalizing network) when listening to mentalizing content of literary fiction, had lower motor cortex activity when they listened to action-related content of the story, and vice versa. This qualifies how people differ in their engagement with fiction: some people are mostly drawn into a story by mentalizing about the thoughts and beliefs of others, whereas others engage in literature by simulating more concrete events such as actions. This study provides on-line neural evidence for the existence of qualitatively different styles of moving into literary worlds, and adds to a growing body of literature showing the potential to study narrative comprehension with neuroimaging methods.
  • Noordman, L. G. M., & Vonk, W. (1998). Memory-based processing in understanding causal information. Discourse Processes, 191-212. doi:10.1080/01638539809545044.

    Abstract

    The reading process depends both on the text and on the reader. When we read a text, propositions in the current input are matched to propositions in the memory representation of the previous discourse but also to knowledge structures in long‐term memory. Therefore, memory‐based text processing refers both to the bottom‐up processing of the text and to the top‐down activation of the reader's knowledge. In this article, we focus on the role of cognitive structures in the reader's knowledge. We argue that causality is an important category in structuring human knowledge and that this property has consequences for text processing. Some research is discussed that illustrates that the more the information in the text reflects causal categories, the more easily the information is processed.
  • Norcliffe, E., Harris, A., & Jaeger, T. F. (2015). Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1009-1032. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1080373.

    Abstract

    Recent years have seen a small but growing body of psycholinguistic research focused on typologically diverse languages. This represents an important development for the field, where theorising is still largely guided by the often implicit assumption of universality. This paper introduces a special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience devoted to the topic of cross-linguistic and field-based approaches to the study of psycholinguistics. The papers in this issue draw on data from a variety of genetically and areally divergent languages, to address questions in the production and comprehension of phonology, morphology, words, and sentences. To contextualise these studies, we provide an overview of the field of cross-linguistic psycholinguistics, from its early beginnings to the present day, highlighting instances where cross-linguistic data have significantly contributed to psycholinguistic theorising.
  • Norcliffe, E., Konopka, A. E., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). Word order affects the time course of sentence formulation in Tzeltal. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1187-1208. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1006238.

    Abstract

    The scope of planning during sentence formulation is known to be flexible, as it can be influenced by speakers' communicative goals and language production pressures (among other factors). Two eye-tracked picture description experiments tested whether the time course of formulation is also modulated by grammatical structure and thus whether differences in linear word order across languages affect the breadth and order of conceptual and linguistic encoding operations. Native speakers of Tzeltal [a primarily verb–object–subject (VOS) language] and Dutch [a subject–verb–object (SVO) language] described pictures of transitive events. Analyses compared speakers' choice of sentence structure across events with more accessible and less accessible characters as well as the time course of formulation for sentences with different word orders. Character accessibility influenced subject selection in both languages in subject-initial and subject-final sentences, ruling against a radically incremental formulation process. In Tzeltal, subject-initial word orders were preferred over verb-initial orders when event characters had matching animacy features, suggesting a possible role for similarity-based interference in influencing word order choice. Time course analyses revealed a strong effect of sentence structure on formulation: In subject-initial sentences, in both Tzeltal and Dutch, event characters were largely fixated sequentially, while in verb-initial sentences in Tzeltal, relational information received priority over encoding of either character during the earliest stages of formulation. The results show a tight parallelism between grammatical structure and the order of encoding operations carried out during sentence formulation.
  • O'Brien, D. P., & Bowerman, M. (1998). Martin D. S. Braine (1926–1996): Obituary. American Psychologist, 53, 563. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.53.5.563.

    Abstract

    Memorializes Martin D. S. Braine, whose research on child language acquisition and on both child and adult thinking and reasoning had a major influence on modern cognitive psychology. Addressing meaning as well as position, Braine argued that children start acquiring language by learning narrow-scope positional formulas that map components of meaning to positions in the utterance. These proposals were critical in starting discussions of the possible universality of the pivot-grammar stage and of the role of syntax, semantics,and pragmatics in children's early grammar and were pivotal to the rise of approaches in which cognitive development in language acquisition is stressed.
  • Orfanidou, E., McQueen, J. M., Adam, R., & Morgan, G. (2015). Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap! Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 68, 641-663. doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.945467.

    Abstract

    This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous signing, there are salient transitions between sign locations. We used the sign-spotting task to ask if and how BSL signers use these transitions in segmentation. A total of 96 real BSL signs were preceded by nonsense signs which were produced in either the target location or another location (with a small or large transition). Half of the transitions were within the same major body area (e.g., head) and half were across body areas (e.g., chest to hand). Deaf adult BSL users (a group of natives and early learners, and a group of late learners) spotted target signs best when there was a minimal transition and worst when there was a large transition. When location changes were present, both groups performed better when transitions were to a different body area than when they were within the same area. These findings suggest that transitions do not provide explicit sign-boundary cues in a modality-specific fashion. Instead, we argue that smaller transitions help recognition in a modality-general way by limiting lexical search to signs within location neighbourhoods, and that transitions across body areas also aid segmentation in a modality-general way, by providing a phonotactic cue to a sign boundary. We propose that sign segmentation is based on modality-general procedures which are core language-processing mechanisms
  • Ortega, G., & Morgan, G. (2015). Input processing at first exposure to a sign language. Second language research, 19(10), 443-463. doi:10.1177/0267658315576822.

    Abstract

    There is growing interest in learners’ cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back on their L1 to process novel signs because the modality differences between speech (aural–oral) and sign (visual-manual) do not allow for direct cross-linguistic influence. Sign language learners might use alternative strategies to process input expressed in the manual channel. Learners may rely on iconicity, the direct relationship between a sign and its referent. Evidence up to now has shown that iconicity facilitates learning in non-signers, but it is unclear whether it also facilitates sign production. In order to fill this gap, the present study investigated how iconicity influenced articulation of the phonological components of signs. In Study 1, hearing non-signers viewed a set of iconic and arbitrary signs along with their English translations and repeated the signs as accurately as possible immediately after. The results show that participants imitated iconic signs significantly less accurately than arbitrary signs. In Study 2, a second group of hearing non-signers imitated the same set of signs but without the accompanying English translations. The same lower accuracy for iconic signs was observed. We argue that learners rely on iconicity to process manual input because it brings familiarity to the target (sign) language. However, this reliance comes at a cost as it leads to a more superficial processing of the signs’ full phonetic form. The present findings add to our understanding of learners’ cognitive capacities at first exposure to a signed L2, and raises new theoretical questions in the field of second language acquisition
  • Ortega, G., & Morgan, G. (2015). Phonological development in hearing learners of a sign language: The role of sign complexity and iconicity. Language Learning, 65(3), 660-668. doi:10.1111/lang.12123.

    Abstract

    The present study implemented a sign-repetition task at two points in time to hearing adult learners of British Sign Language and explored how each phonological parameter, sign complexity, and iconicity affected sign production over an 11-week (22-hour) instructional period. The results show that training improves articulation accuracy and that some sign components are produced more accurately than others: Handshape was the most difficult, followed by movement, then orientation, and finally location. Iconic signs were articulated less accurately than arbitrary signs because the direct sign-referent mappings and perhaps their similarity with iconic co-speech gestures prevented learners from focusing on the exact phonological structure of the sign. This study shows that multiple phonological features pose greater demand on the production of the parameters of signs and that iconicity interferes in the exact articulation of their constituents
  • Ortega, G., & Morgan, G. (2015). The effect of sign iconicity in the mental lexicon of hearing non-signers and proficient signers: Evidence of cross-modal priming. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(5), 574-585. doi:10.1080/23273798.2014.959533.

    Abstract

    The present study investigated the priming effect of iconic signs in the mental lexicon of hearing adults. Non-signers and proficient British Sign Language (BSL) users took part in a cross-modal lexical decision task. The results indicate that iconic signs activated semantically related words in non-signers' lexicon. Activation occurred regardless of the type of referent because signs depicting actions and perceptual features of an object yielded the same response times. The pattern of activation was different in proficient signers because only action signs led to cross-modal activation. We suggest that non-signers process iconicity in signs in the same way as they do gestures, but after acquiring a sign language, there is a shift in the mechanisms used to process iconic manual structures
  • Otake, T., Yoneyama, K., Cutler, A., & van der Lugt, A. (1996). The representation of Japanese moraic nasals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100, 3831-3842. doi:10.1121/1.417239.

    Abstract

    Nasal consonants in syllabic coda position in Japanese assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. The resulting forms may be perceived as different realizations of a single underlying unit, and indeed the kana orthographies represent them with a single character. In the present study, Japanese listeners' response time to detect nasal consonants was measured. Nasals in coda position, i.e., moraic nasals, were detected faster and more accurately than nonmoraic nasals, as reported in previous studies. The place of articulation with which moraic nasals were realized affected neither response time nor accuracy. Non-native subjects who knew no Japanese, given the same materials with the same instructions, simply failed to respond to moraic nasals which were realized bilabially. When the nasals were cross-spliced across place of articulation contexts the Japanese listeners still showed no significant place of articulation effects, although responses were faster and more accurate to unspliced than to cross-spliced nasals. When asked to detect the phoneme following the (cross-spliced) moraic nasal, Japanese listeners showed effects of mismatch between nasal and context, but non-native listeners did not. Together, these results suggest that Japanese listeners are capable of very rapid abstraction from phonetic realization to a unitary representation of moraic nasals; but they can also use the phonetic realization of a moraic nasal effectively to obtain anticipatory information about following phonemes.
  • Ozyurek, A. (1996). How children talk about a conversation. Journal of Child Language, 23(3), 693-714. doi:10.1017/S0305000900009004.

    Abstract

    This study investigates how children of different ages talk about a conversation that they have witnessed. 48 Turkish children, five, nine and thirteen years in age, saw a televised dialogue between two Sesame Street characters (Bert and Ernie). Afterward, they narrated what they had seen and heard. Their reports were analysed for the development of linguistic devices used to orient their listeners to the relevant properties of a conversational exchange. Each utterance in the child's narrative was analysed as to its conversational role: (1) whether the child used direct or indirect quotation frames; (2) whether the child marked the boundaries of conversational turns using speakers' names and (3) whether the child used a marker for pairing of utterances made by different speakers (agreement-disagreement, request-refusal, questioning-answering). Within pairings, children's use of (a) the temporal and evaluative connectivity markers and (b) the kind of verb of saying were identified. The data indicate that there is a developmental change in children's ability to use appropriate linguistic means to orient their listeners to the different properties of a conversation. The development and use of these linguistic means enable the child to establish different social roles in a narrative interaction. The findings are interpreted in terms of the child's social-communicative development from being a ' character' to becoming a ' narrator' and ' author' of the reported conversation in the narrative situation.
  • Ozyurek, A., Furman, R., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2015). On the way to language: Event segmentation in homesign and gesture. Journal of Child Language, 42, 64-94. doi:10.1017/S0305000913000512.

    Abstract

    Languages typically express semantic components of motion events such as manner (roll) and path (down) in separate lexical items. We explore how these combinatorial possibilities of language arise by focusing on (i) gestures produced by deaf children who lack access to input from a conventional language (homesign); (ii) gestures produced by hearing adults and children while speaking; and (iii) gestures used by hearing adults without speech when asked to do so in elicited descriptions of motion events with simultaneous manner and path. Homesigners tended to conflate manner and path in one gesture, but also used a mixed form, adding a manner and/or path gesture to the conflated form sequentially. Hearing speakers, with or without speech, used the conflated form, gestured manner, or path, but rarely used the mixed form. Mixed form may serve as an intermediate structure on the way to the discrete and sequenced forms found in natural languages.
  • Pederson, E., Danziger, E., Wilkins, D. G., Levinson, S. C., Kita, S., & Senft, G. (1998). Semantic typology and spatial conceptualization. Language, 74(3), 557-589. doi:10.2307/417793.
  • Peeters, D., Chu, M., Holler, J., Hagoort, P., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). Electrophysiological and kinematic correlates of communicative intent in the planning and production of pointing gestures and speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(12), 2352-2368. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00865.

    Abstract

    In everyday human communication, we often express our communicative intentions by manually pointing out referents in the material world around us to an addressee, often in tight synchronization with referential speech. This study investigated whether and how the kinematic form of index finger pointing gestures is shaped by the gesturer's communicative intentions and how this is modulated by the presence of concurrently produced speech. Furthermore, we explored the neural mechanisms underpinning the planning of communicative pointing gestures and speech. Two experiments were carried out in which participants pointed at referents for an addressee while the informativeness of their gestures and speech was varied. Kinematic and electrophysiological data were recorded online. It was found that participants prolonged the duration of the stroke and poststroke hold phase of their gesture to be more communicative, in particular when the gesture was carrying the main informational burden in their multimodal utterance. Frontal and P300 effects in the ERPs suggested the importance of intentional and modality-independent attentional mechanisms during the planning phase of informative pointing gestures. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex interplay between action, attention, intention, and language in the production of pointing gestures, a communicative act core to human interaction.
  • Peeters, D., Hagoort, P., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). Electrophysiological evidence for the role of shared space in online comprehension of spatial demonstratives. Cognition, 136, 64-84. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.10.010.

    Abstract

    A fundamental property of language is that it can be used to refer to entities in the extra-linguistic physical context of a conversation in order to establish a joint focus of attention on a referent. Typological and psycholinguistic work across a wide range of languages has put forward at least two different theoretical views on demonstrative reference. Here we contrasted and tested these two accounts by investigating the electrophysiological brain activity underlying the construction of indexical meaning in comprehension. In two EEG experiments, participants watched pictures of a speaker who referred to one of two objects using speech and an index-finger pointing gesture. In contrast with separately collected native speakers’ linguistic intuitions, N400 effects showed a preference for a proximal demonstrative when speaker and addressee were in a face-to-face orientation and all possible referents were located in the shared space between them, irrespective of the physical proximity of the referent to the speaker. These findings reject egocentric proximity-based accounts of demonstrative reference, support a sociocentric approach to deixis, suggest that interlocutors construe a shared space during conversation, and imply that the psychological proximity of a referent may be more important than its physical proximity.
  • Perlman, M., Clark, N., & Falck, M. J. (2015). Iconic prosody in story reading. Cognitive Science, 39(6), 1348-1368. doi:10.1111/cogs.12190.

    Abstract

    Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance (e.g., Shintel et al., 2006). This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed (e.g., a fast drive, slow career progress) and size (e.g., a small grasshopper, an important contract). Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech.
  • Perlman, M., Dale, R., & Lupyan, G. (2015). Iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols. Royal Society Open Science, 2: 150152. doi:10.1098/rsos.150152.

    Abstract

    Studies of gestural communication systems find that they originate from spontaneously created iconic gestures. Yet, we know little about how people create vocal communication systems, and many have suggested that vocalizations do not afford iconicity beyond trivial instances of onomatopoeia. It is unknown whether people can generate vocal communication systems through a process of iconic creation similar to gestural systems. Here, we examine the creation and development of a rudimentary vocal symbol system in a laboratory setting. Pairs of participants generated novel vocalizations for 18 different meanings in an iterative ‘vocal’ charades communication game. The communicators quickly converged on stable vocalizations, and naive listeners could correctly infer their meanings in subsequent playback experiments. People's ability to guess the meanings of these novel vocalizations was predicted by how close the vocalization was to an iconic ‘meaning template’ we derived from the production data. These results strongly suggest that the meaningfulness of these vocalizations derived from iconicity. Our findings illuminate a mechanism by which iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols, analogous to the function of iconicity in gestural communication systems.
  • Perlman, M., & Clark, N. (2015). Learned vocal and breathing behavior in an enculturated gorilla. Animal Cognition, 18(5), 1165-1179. doi:10.1007/s10071-015-0889-6.

    Abstract

    We describe the repertoire of learned vocal and breathing-related behaviors (VBBs) performed by the enculturated gorilla Koko. We examined a large video corpus of Koko and observed 439 VBBs spread across 161 bouts. Our analysis shows that Koko exercises voluntary control over the performance of nine distinctive VBBs, which involve variable coordination of her breathing, larynx, and supralaryngeal articulators like the tongue and lips. Each of these behaviors is performed in the context of particular manual action routines and gestures. Based on these and other findings, we suggest that vocal learning and the ability to exercise volitional control over vocalization, particularly in a multimodal context, might have figured relatively early into the evolution of language, with some rudimentary capacity in place at the time of our last common ancestor with great apes.
  • Perniss, P. M., Zwitserlood, I., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). Does space structure spatial language? A comparison of spatial expression across sign languages. Language, 91(3), 611-641.

    Abstract

    The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we compare locative expression in two unrelated sign languages, Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili, TİD) and German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS), focusing on the expression of figure-ground (e.g. cup on table) and figure-figure (e.g. cup next to cup) relationships in a discourse context. In addition to similarities, we report qualitative and quantitative differences between the sign languages in the formal devices used (i.e. unimanual vs. bimanual; simultaneous vs. sequential) and in the degree of iconicity of the spatial devices. Our results suggest that sign languages may display more diversity in the spatial domain than has been previously assumed, and in a way more comparable with the diversity found in spoken languages. The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how space gets encoded in language
  • Perniss, P. M., Ozyurek, A., & Morgan, G. (2015). The Influence of the visual modality on language structure and conventionalization: Insights from sign language and gesture. Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(1), 2-11. doi:10.1111/tops.12127.

    Abstract

    For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. The main examples of this are sign languages and (co-speech) gestures. Sign languages, the natural languages of Deaf communities, use systematic and conventionalized movements of the hands, face, and body for linguistic expression. Co-speech gestures, though non-linguistic, are produced in tight semantic and temporal integration with speech and constitute an integral part of language together with speech. The articles in this issue explore and document how gestures and sign languages are similar or different and how communicative expression in the visual modality can change from being gestural to grammatical in nature through processes of conventionalization. As such, this issue contributes to our understanding of how the visual modality shapes language and the emergence of linguistic structure in newly developing systems. Studying the relationship between signs and gestures provides a new window onto the human ability to recruit multiple levels of representation (e.g., categorical, gradient, iconic, abstract) in the service of using or creating conventionalized communicative systems.
  • Perniss, P. M., Ozyurek, A., & Morgan, G. (Eds.). (2015). The influence of the visual modality on language structure and conventionalization: Insights from sign language and gesture [Special Issue]. Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(1). doi:10.1111/tops.12113.
  • Perniss, P. M., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). Visible cohesion: A comparison of reference tracking in sign, speech, and co-speech gesture. Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(1), 36-60. doi:10.1111/tops.12122.

    Abstract

    Establishing and maintaining reference is a crucial part of discourse. In spoken languages, differential linguistic devices mark referents occurring in different referential contexts, that is, introduction, maintenance, and re-introduction contexts. Speakers using gestures as well as users of sign languages have also been shown to mark referents differentially depending on the referential context. This article investigates the modality-specific contribution of the visual modality in marking referential context by providing a direct comparison between sign language (German Sign Language; DGS) and co-speech gesture with speech (German) in elicited narratives. Across all forms of expression, we find that referents in subject position are referred to with more marking material in re-introduction contexts compared to maintenance contexts. Furthermore, we find that spatial modification is used as a modality-specific strategy in both DGS and German co-speech gesture, and that the configuration of referent locations in sign space and gesture space corresponds in an iconic and consistent way to the locations of referents in the narrated event. However, we find that spatial modification is used in different ways for marking re-introduction and maintenance contexts in DGS and German co-speech gesture. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique contribution of the visual modality to reference tracking in discourse when it is used in a unimodal system with full linguistic structure (i.e., as in sign) versus in a bimodal system that is a composite of speech and gesture
  • Perry, L. K., Perlman, M., & Lupyan, G. (2015). Iconicity in English and Spanish and Its Relation to Lexical Category and Age of Acquisition. PLoS One, 10(9): e0137147. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137147.

    Abstract

    Signed languages exhibit iconicity (resemblance between form and meaning) across their vocabulary, and many non-Indo-European spoken languages feature sizable classes of iconic words known as ideophones. In comparison, Indo-European languages like English and Spanish are believed to be arbitrary outside of a small number of onomatopoeic words. In three experiments with English and two with Spanish, we asked native speakers to rate the iconicity of ~600 words from the English and Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories. We found that iconicity in the words of both languages varied in a theoretically meaningful way with lexical category. In both languages, adjectives were rated as more iconic than nouns and function words, and corresponding to typological differences between English and Spanish in verb semantics, English verbs were rated as relatively iconic compared to Spanish verbs. We also found that both languages exhibited a negative relationship between iconicity ratings and age of acquisition. Words learned earlier tended to be more iconic, suggesting that iconicity in early vocabulary may aid word learning. Altogether these findings show that iconicity is a graded quality that pervades vocabularies of even the most “arbitrary” spoken languages. The findings provide compelling evidence that iconicity is an important property of all languages, signed and spoken, including Indo-European languages.

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  • Peter, M., Chang, F., Pine, J. M., Blything, R., & Rowland, C. F. (2015). When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task. Journal of Memory and Language, 81, 1-15. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2014.12.002.

    Abstract

    In this study, we investigated when children develop adult-like verb–structure links, and examined two mechanisms, associative and error-based learning, that might explain how these verb–structure links are learned. Using structural priming, we tested children’s and adults’ ability to use verb–structure links in production in three ways; by manipulating: (1) verb overlap between prime and target, (2) target verb bias, and (3) prime verb bias. Children (aged 3–4 and 5–6 years old) and adults heard and produced double object dative (DOD) and prepositional object dative (PD) primes with DOD- and PD-biased verbs. Although all age groups showed significant evidence of structural priming, only adults showed increased priming when there was verb overlap between prime and target sentences (the lexical boost). The effect of target verb bias also grew with development. Critically, however, the effect of prime verb bias on the size of the priming effect (prime surprisal) was larger in children than in adults, suggesting that verb–structure links are present at the earliest age tested. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that children begin to acquire knowledge about verb-argument structure preferences early in acquisition, but that the ability to use adult-like verb bias in production gradually improves over development. We also argue that this pattern of results is best explained by a learning model that uses an error-based learning mechanism.
  • Petersson, K. M. (1998). Comments on a Monte Carlo approach to the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. NeuroImage, 8, 108-112.
  • Pettigrew, K. A., Fajutrao Valles, S. F., Moll, K., Northstone, K., Ring, S., Pennell, C., Wang, C., Leavett, R., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., Thompson, P., Simpson, N. H., Fisher, S. E., The SLI Consortium, Whitehouse, A. J., Snowling, M. J., Newbury, D. F., & Paracchini, S. (2015). Lack of replication for the myosin-18B association with mathematical ability in independent cohorts. Genes, Brain and Behavior, 14(4), 369-376. doi:10.1111/gbb.12213.

    Abstract

    Twin studies indicate that dyscalculia (or mathematical disability) is caused partly by a genetic component, which is yet to be understood at the molecular level. Recently, a coding variant (rs133885) in the myosin-18B gene was shown to be associated with mathematical abilities with a specific effect among children with dyslexia. This association represents one of the most significant genetic associations reported to date for mathematical abilities and the only one reaching genome-wide statistical significance.

    We conducted a replication study in different cohorts to assess the effect of rs133885 maths-related measures. The study was conducted primarily using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), (N = 3819). We tested additional cohorts including the York Cohort, the Specific Language Impairment Consortium (SLIC) cohort and the Raine Cohort, and stratified them for a definition of dyslexia whenever possible.

    We did not observe any associations between rs133885 in myosin-18B and mathematical abilities among individuals with dyslexia or in the general population. Our results suggest that the myosin-18B variant is unlikely to be a main factor contributing to mathematical abilities.
  • Piai, V., Roelofs, A., Rommers, J., & Maris, E. (2015). Beta oscillations reflect memory and motor aspects of spoken word production. Human brain mapping, 36(7), 2767-2780. doi:10.1002/hbm.22806.

    Abstract

    Two major components form the basis of spoken word production: the access of conceptual and lexical/phonological information in long-term memory, and motor preparation and execution of an articulatory program. Whereas the motor aspects of word production have been well characterized as reflected in alpha-beta desynchronization, the memory aspects have remained poorly understood. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neurophysiological signature of not only motor but also memory aspects of spoken-word production. Participants named or judged pictures after reading sentences. To probe the involvement of the memory component, we manipulated sentence context. Sentence contexts were either constraining or nonconstraining toward the final word, presented as a picture. In the judgment task, participants indicated with a left-hand button press whether the picture was expected given the sentence. In the naming task, they named the picture. Naming and judgment were faster with constraining than nonconstraining contexts. Alpha-beta desynchronization was found for constraining relative to nonconstraining contexts pre-picture presentation. For the judgment task, beta desynchronization was observed in left posterior brain areas associated with conceptual processing and in right motor cortex. For the naming task, in addition to the same left posterior brain areas, beta desynchronization was found in left anterior and posterior temporal cortex (associated with memory aspects), left inferior frontal cortex, and bilateral ventral premotor cortex (associated with motor aspects). These results suggest that memory and motor components of spoken word production are reflected in overlapping brain oscillations in the beta band.

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  • Piai, V., Roelofs, A., & Roete, I. (2015). Semantic interference in picture naming during dual-task performance does not vary with reading ability. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(9), 1758-68. doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.985689.

    Abstract

    Previous dual-task studies examining the locus of semantic interference of distractor words in picture naming have obtained diverging results. In these studies, participants manually responded to tones and named pictures while ignoring distractor words (picture-word interference, PWI) with varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between tone and PWI stimulus. Whereas some studies observed no semantic interference at short SOAs, other studies observed effects of similar magnitude at short and long SOAs. The absence of semantic interference in some studies may perhaps be due to better reading skill of participants in these than in the other studies. According to such a reading-ability account, participants' reading skill should be predictive of the magnitude of their interference effect at short SOAs. To test this account, we conducted a dual-task study with tone discrimination and PWI tasks and measured participants' reading ability. The semantic interference effect was of similar magnitude at both short and long SOAs. Participants' reading ability was predictive of their naming speed but not of their semantic interference effect, contrary to the reading ability account. We conclude that the magnitude of semantic interference in picture naming during dual-task performance does not depend on reading skill.
  • Pine, J. M., Lieven, E. V., & Rowland, C. F. (1998). Comparing different models of the development of the English verb category. Linguistics, 36(4), 807-830. doi:10.1515/ling.1998.36.4.807.

    Abstract

    In this study data from the first six months of 12 children s multiword speech were used to test the validity of Valian's (1991) syntactic perfor-mance-limitation account and Tomasello s (1992) verb-island account of early multiword speech with particular reference to the development of the English verb category. The results provide evidence for appropriate use of verb morphology, auxiliary verb structures, pronoun case marking, and SVO word order from quite early in development. However, they also demonstrate a great deal of lexical specificity in the children's use of these systems, evidenced by a lack of overlap in the verbs to which different morphological markers were applied, a lack of overlap in the verbs with which different auxiliary verbs were used, a disproportionate use of the first person singular nominative pronoun I, and a lack of overlap in the lexical items that served as the subjects and direct objects of transitive verbs. These findings raise problems for both a syntactic performance-limitation account and a strong verb-island account of the data and suggest the need to develop a more general lexiealist account of early multiword speech that explains why some words come to function as "islands" of organization in the child's grammar and others do not.
  • Pine, J. M., Lieven, E. V., & Rowland, C. F. (1996). Observational and checklist measures of vocabulary composition: What do they mean? Journal of Child Language, 23(3), 573-590. doi:10.1017/S0305000900008953.

    Abstract

    Observational and checklist measures of vocabulary composition have both recently been used to look at the absolute proportion of nouns in children's early vocabularies. However, they have tended to generate rather different results. The present study is an attempt to investigate the relationship between such measures in a sample of 26 children between 1;1 and 2;1 at approximately 50 and 100 words. The results show that although observational and checklist measures are significantly correlated, there are also systematic quantitative differences between them which seem to reflect a combination of checklist, maternal-report and observational sampling biases. This suggests that, although both kinds of measure may represent good indices of differences in vocabulary size and composition across children and hence be useful as dependent variables in correlational research, neither may be ideal for estimating the absolute proportion of nouns in children's vocabularies. The implication is that questions which rely on information about the absolute proportion of particular kinds of words in children's vocabularies can only be properly addressed by detailed longitudinal studies in which an attempt is made to collect more comprehensive vocabulary records for individual children.
  • Plomp, G., Hervais-Adelman, A., Astolfi, L., & Michel, C. M. (2015). Early recurrence and ongoing parietal driving during elementary visual processing. Scientific Reports, 5: 18733. doi:10.1038/srep18733.

    Abstract

    Visual stimuli quickly activate a broad network of brain areas that often show reciprocal structural connections between them. Activity at short latencies (<100 ms) is thought to represent a feed-forward activation of widespread cortical areas, but fast activation combined with reciprocal connectivity between areas in principle allows for two-way, recurrent interactions to occur at short latencies after stimulus onset. Here we combined EEG source-imaging and Granger-causal modeling with high temporal resolution to investigate whether recurrent and top-down interactions between visual and attentional brain areas can be identified and distinguished at short latencies in humans. We investigated the directed interactions between widespread occipital, parietal and frontal areas that we localized within participants using fMRI. The connectivity results showed two-way interactions between area MT and V1 already at short latencies. In addition, the results suggested a large role for lateral parietal cortex in coordinating visual activity that may be understood as an ongoing top-down allocation of attentional resources. Our results support the notion that indirect pathways allow early, evoked driving from MT to V1 to highlight spatial locations of motion transients, while influence from parietal areas is continuously exerted around stimulus onset, presumably reflecting task-related attentional processes.
  • Poletiek, F. H. (1998). De geest van de jury. Psychologie en Maatschappij, 4, 376-378.
  • Poletiek, F. H. (1996). Paradoxes of falsification. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 49(2), 447-462. doi:10.1080/713755628.
  • St Pourcain, B., Haworth, C. M. A., Davis, O. S. P., Wang, K., Timpson, N. J., Evans, D. M., Kemp, J. P., Ronald, A., Price, T., Meaburn, E., Ring, S. M., Golding, J., Hakonarson, H., Plomin, R., & Davey Smith, G. (2015). Heritability and genome-wide analyses of problematic peer relationships during childhood and adolescence. Human Genetics, 134(6), 539-551. doi:10.1007/s00439-014-1514-5.

    Abstract

    Peer behaviour plays an important role in the development of social adjustment, though little is known about its genetic architecture. We conducted a twin study combined with a genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) and a genome-wide screen to characterise genetic influences on problematic peer behaviour during childhood and adolescence. This included a series of longitudinal measures (parent-reported Strengths-and-Difficulties Questionnaire) from a UK population-based birth-cohort (ALSPAC, 4–17 years), and a UK twin sample (TEDS, 4–11 years). Longitudinal twin analysis (TEDS; N ≤ 7,366 twin pairs) showed that peer problems in childhood are heritable (4–11 years, 0.60 < twin-h 2 ≤ 0.71) but genetically heterogeneous from age to age (4–11 years, twin-r g = 0.30). GCTA (ALSPAC: N ≤ 5,608, TEDS: N ≤ 2,691) provided furthermore little support for the contribution of measured common genetic variants during childhood (4–12 years, 0.02 < GCTA-h 2(Meta) ≤ 0.11) though these influences become stronger in adolescence (13–17 years, 0.14 < GCTA-h 2(ALSPAC) ≤ 0.27). A subsequent cross-sectional genome-wide screen in ALSPAC (N ≤ 6,000) focussed on peer problems with the highest GCTA-heritability (10, 13 and 17 years, 0.0002 < GCTA-P ≤ 0.03). Single variant signals (P ≤ 10−5) were followed up in TEDS (N ≤ 2835, 9 and 11 years) and, in search for autism quantitative trait loci, explored within two autism samples (AGRE: N Pedigrees = 793; ACC: N Cases = 1,453/N Controls = 7,070). There was, however, no evidence for association in TEDS and little evidence for an overlap with the autistic continuum. In summary, our findings suggest that problematic peer relationships are heritable but genetically complex and heterogeneous from age to age, with an increase in common measurable genetic variation during adolescence.
  • Pouw, W., & Looren de Jong, H. (2015). Rethinking situated and embodied social psychology. Theory and Psychology, 25(4), 411-433. doi:10.1177/0959354315585661.

    Abstract

    This article aims to explore the scope of a Situated and Embodied Social Psychology (ESP). At first sight, social cognition seems embodied cognition par excellence. Social cognition is first and foremost a supra-individual, interactive, and dynamic process (Semin & Smith, 2013). Radical approaches in Situated/Embodied Cognitive Science (Enactivism) claim that social cognition consists in an emergent pattern of interaction between a continuously coupled organism and the (social) environment; it rejects representationalist accounts of cognition (Hutto & Myin, 2013). However, mainstream ESP (Barsalou, 1999, 2008) still takes a rather representation-friendly approach that construes embodiment in terms of specific bodily formatted representations used (activated) in social cognition. We argue that mainstream ESP suffers from vestiges of theoretical solipsism, which may be resolved by going beyond internalistic spirit that haunts mainstream ESP today.
  • Praamstra, P., Meyer, A. S., Cools, A. R., Horstink, M. W. I. M., & Stegeman, D. F. (1996). Movement preparation in Parkinson's disease: Time course and distribution of movement-related potentials in a movement precueing task. Brain, 119, 1689-1704. doi:10.1093/brain/119.5.1689.

    Abstract

    Investigations of the effects of advance information on movement preparation in Parkinson's disease using reaction time (RT) measures have yielded contradictory results. In order to obtain direct information regarding the time course of movement preparation, we combined RT measurements in a movement precueing task with multi-channel recordings of movement-related potentials in the present study. Movements of the index and middle fingers of the left and right hand were either precued or not by advance information regarding the side (left or right hand) of the required response. Reaction times were slower for patients than for control subjects. Both groups benefited equally from informative precues, indicating that patients utilized the advance information as effectively as control subjects. Lateralization of the movement-preceding cerebral activity [i.e. the lateralized readiness potential (LRP)] confirmed that patients used the available partial information to prepare their responses and started this process no later than controls. In conjunction with EMG onset times, the LRP onset measures allowed for a fractionation of the RTs, which provided clues to the stages where the slowness of Parkinson's disease patients might arise. No definite abnormalities of temporal parameters were found, but differences in the distribution of the lateralized movement-preceding activity between patients and controls suggested differences in the cortical organization of movement preparation. Differences in amplitude of the contingent negative variation (CNV) and differences in the way in which the CNV was modulated by the information given by the precue pointed in the same direction. A difference in amplitude of the P300 between patients and controls suggested that preprogramming a response required more effort from. patients than from control subjects.
  • Praamstra, P., Stegeman, D. F., Cools, A. R., Meyer, A. S., & Horstink, M. W. I. M. (1998). Evidence for lateral premotor and parietal overactivity in Parkinson's disease during sequential and bimanual movements: A PET study. Brain, 121, 769-772. doi:10.1093/brain/121.4.769.
  • Radeau, M., & Van Berkum, J. J. A. (1996). Gender decision. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11(6), 605-610. doi:10.1080/016909696387006.

    Abstract

    In languages in which nouns have a grammatical gender, word recognition can be estimated by gender decision response times. Although gender decision has yet to be used extensively, it has proved sensitive to several factors that have been shown to affect lexical access. The task is not restricted to spoken language but can be used with linguistic information from other sensory modalities.
  • Ravignani, A., & Sonnweber, R. (2015). Measuring teaching through hormones and time series analysis: Towards a comparative framework. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, 40-41. doi:10.1017/S0140525X14000806.

    Abstract


    In response to: How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals

    Arguments about the nature of teaching have depended principally on naturalistic observation and some experimental work. Additional measurement tools, and physiological variations and manipulations can provide insights on the intrinsic structure and state of the participants better than verbal descriptions alone: namely, time-series analysis, and examination of the role of hormones and neuromodulators on the behaviors of teacher and pupil.
  • Ravignani, A., Westphal-Fitch, G., Aust, U., Schlumpp, M. M., & Fitch, W. T. (2015). More than one way to see it: Individual heuristics in avian visual computation. Cognition, 143, 13-24. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.05.021.

    Abstract

    Comparative pattern learning experiments investigate how different species find regularities in sensory input, providing insights into cognitive processing in humans and other animals. Past research has focused either on one species’ ability to process pattern classes or different species’ performance in recognizing the same pattern, with little attention to individual and species-specific heuristics and decision strategies. We trained and tested two bird species, pigeons (Columba livia) and kea (Nestor notabilis, a parrot species), on visual patterns using touch-screen technology. Patterns were composed of several abstract elements and had varying degrees of structural complexity. We developed a model selection paradigm, based on regular expressions, that allowed us to reconstruct the specific decision strategies and cognitive heuristics adopted by a given individual in our task. Individual birds showed considerable differences in the number, type and heterogeneity of heuristic strategies adopted. Birds’ choices also exhibited consistent species-level differences. Kea adopted effective heuristic strategies, based on matching learned bigrams to stimulus edges. Individual pigeons, in contrast, adopted an idiosyncratic mix of strategies that included local transition probabilities and global string similarity. Although performance was above chance and quite high for kea, no individual of either species provided clear evidence of learning exactly the rule used to generate the training stimuli. Our results show that similar behavioral outcomes can be achieved using dramatically different strategies and highlight the dangers of combining multiple individuals in a group analysis. These findings, and our general approach, have implications for the design of future pattern learning experiments, and the interpretation of comparative cognition research more generally.

    Additional information

    Supplementary data
  • Ravignani, A. (2015). Evolving perceptual biases for antisynchrony: A form of temporal coordination beyond synchrony. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9: 339. doi:10.3389/fnins.2015.00339.
  • Rivero, O., Selten, M. M., Sich, S., Popp, S., Bacmeister, L., Amendola, E., Negwer, M., Schubert, D., Proft, F., Kiser, D., Schmitt, A. G., Gross, C., Kolk, S. M., Strekalova, T., van den Hove, D., Resink, T. J., Nadif Kasri, N., & Lesch, K. P. (2015). Cadherin-13, a risk gene for ADHD and comorbid disorders, impacts GABAergic function in hippocampus and cognition. Translational Psychiatry, 5: e655. doi:10.1038/tp.2015.152.

    Abstract

    Cadherin-13 (CDH13), a unique glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored member of the cadherin family of cell adhesion molecules, has been identified as a risk gene for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and various comorbid neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including depression, substance abuse, autism spectrum disorder and violent behavior, while the mechanism whereby CDH13 dysfunction influences pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders remains elusive. Here we explored the potential role of CDH13 in the inhibitory modulation of brain activity by investigating synaptic function of GABAergic interneurons. Cellular and subcellular distribution of CDH13 was analyzed in the murine hippocampus and a mouse model with a targeted inactivation of Cdh13 was generated to evaluate how CDH13 modulates synaptic activity of hippocampal interneurons and behavioral domains related to psychopathologic (endo)phenotypes. We show that CDH13 expression in the cornu ammonis (CA) region of the hippocampus is confined to distinct classes of interneurons. Specifically, CDH13 is expressed by numerous parvalbumin and somatostatin-expressing interneurons located in the stratum oriens, where it localizes to both the soma and the presynaptic compartment. Cdh13−/− mice show an increase in basal inhibitory, but not excitatory, synaptic transmission in CA1 pyramidal neurons. Associated with these alterations in hippocampal function, Cdh13−/− mice display deficits in learning and memory. Taken together, our results indicate that CDH13 is a negative regulator of inhibitory synapses in the hippocampus, and provide insights into how CDH13 dysfunction may contribute to the excitatory/inhibitory imbalance observed in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as ADHD and autism.
  • Roberts, S. G. (2015). Commentary: Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 950. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00950.

    Abstract

    Talhelm et al. (2014) test the hypothesis that activities which require more intensive collaboration foster more collectivist cultures. They demonstrate that a measure of collectivism correlates with the proportion of cultivated land devoted to rice paddies, which require more work to grow and maintain than other grains. The data come from individual measures of provinces in China. While the data is analyzed carefully, one aspect that is not directly controlled for is the historical relations between these provinces. Spurious correlations can occur between cultural traits that are inherited from ancestor cultures or borrowed through contact, what is commonly known as Galton's problem (Roberts and Winters, 2013). Effectively, Talhelm et al. treat the measures of each province as independent samples, while in reality both farming practices (e.g., Renfrew, 1997; Diamond and Bellwood, 2003; Lee and Hasegawa, 2011) and cultural values (e.g., Currie et al., 2010; Bulbulia et al., 2013) can be inherited or borrowed. This means that the data may be composed of non-independent points, inflating the apparent correlation between rice growing and collectivism. The correlation between farming practices and collectivism may be robust, but this cannot be known without an empirical control for the relatedness of the samples. Talhelm et al. do discuss this problem in the supplementary materials of their paper. They acknowledge that a phylogenetic analysis could be used to control for relatedness, but that at the time of publication there were no genetic or linguistic trees of descent which are detailed enough to suit this purpose. In this commentary I would like to make two points. First, since the original publication, researchers have created new linguistic trees that can provide the needed resolution. For example, the Glottolog phylogeny (Hammarström et al., 2015) has at least three levels of classification for the relevant varieties, though this does not have branch lengths (see also “reference” trees produced in List et al., 2014). Another recently published phylogeny uses lexical data to construct a phylogenetic tree for many language varieties within China (List et al., 2014). In this commentary I use these lexical data to estimate cultural contact between different provinces, and test whether these measures explain variation in rice farming pracices. However, the second point is that Talhelm et al. focus on descent (vertical transmission), while it may be relevant to control for both descent and borrowing (horizontal transmission). In this case, all that is needed is some measure of cultural contact between groups, not necessarily a unified tree of descent. I use a second source of linguistic data to calculate simple distances between languages based directly on the lexicon. These distances reflect borrowing as well as descent.
  • Roberts, S. G., Winters, J., & Chen, K. (2015). Future tense and economic decisions: Controlling for cultural evolution. PLoS One, 10(7): e0132145. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132145.

    Abstract

    A previous study by Chen demonstrates a correlation between languages that grammatically mark future events and their speakers' propensity to save, even after controlling for numerous economic and demographic factors. The implication is that languages which grammatically distinguish the present and the future may bias their speakers to distinguish them psychologically, leading to less future-oriented decision making. However, Chen's original analysis assumed languages are independent. This neglects the fact that languages are related, causing correlations to appear stronger than is warranted (Galton's problem). In this paper, we test the robustness of Chen's correlations to corrections for the geographic and historical relatedness of languages. While the question seems simple, the answer is complex. In general, the statistical correlation between the two variables is weaker when controlling for relatedness. When applying the strictest tests for relatedness, and when data is not aggregated across individuals, the correlation is not significant. However, the correlation did remain reasonably robust under a number of tests. We argue that any claims of synchronic patterns between cultural variables should be tested for spurious correlations, with the kinds of approaches used in this paper. However, experiments or case-studies would be more fruitful avenues for future research on this specific topic, rather than further large-scale cross-cultural correlational studies.
  • Roberts, S. G., Torreira, F., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). The effects of processing and sequence organisation on the timing of turn taking: A corpus study. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 509. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00509.

    Abstract

    The timing of turn taking in conversation is extremely rapid given the cognitive demands on speakers to comprehend, plan and execute turns in real time. Findings from psycholinguistics predict that the timing of turn taking is influenced by demands on processing, such as word frequency or syntactic complexity. An alternative view comes from the field of conversation analysis, which predicts that the rules of turn-taking and sequence organization may dictate the variation in gap durations (e.g. the functional role of each turn in communication). In this paper, we estimate the role of these two different kinds of factors in determining the speed of turn-taking in conversation. We use the Switchboard corpus of English telephone conversation, already richly annotated for syntactic structure speech act sequences, and segmental alignment. To this we add further information including Floor Transfer Offset (the amount of time between the end of one turn and the beginning of the next), word frequency, concreteness, and surprisal values. We then apply a novel statistical framework ('random forests') to show that these two dimensions are interwoven together with indexical properties of the speakers as explanatory factors determining the speed of response. We conclude that an explanation of the of the timing of turn taking will require insights from both processing and sequence organisation.

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