Publications

Displaying 201 - 300 of 817
  • Frost, R. L. A., Monaghan, P., & Tatsumi, T. (2017). Domain-general mechanisms for speech segmentation: The role of duration information in language learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(3), 466-476. doi:10.1037/xhp0000325.

    Abstract

    Speech segmentation is supported by multiple sources of information that may either inform language processing specifically, or serve learning more broadly. The Iambic/Trochaic Law (ITL), where increased duration indicates the end of a group and increased emphasis indicates the beginning of a group, has been proposed as a domain-general mechanism that also applies to language. However, language background has been suggested to modulate use of the ITL, meaning that these perceptual grouping preferences may instead be a consequence of language exposure. To distinguish between these accounts, we exposed native-English and native-Japanese listeners to sequences of speech (Experiment 1) and nonspeech stimuli (Experiment 2), and examined segmentation using a 2AFC task. Duration was manipulated over 3 conditions: sequences contained either an initial-item duration increase, or a final-item duration increase, or items of uniform duration. In Experiment 1, language background did not affect the use of duration as a cue for segmenting speech in a structured artificial language. In Experiment 2, the same results were found for grouping structured sequences of visual shapes. The results are consistent with proposals that duration information draws upon a domain-general mechanism that can apply to the special case of language acquisition
  • Frost, R. L. A., Monaghan, P., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Mark my words: High frequency marker words impact early stages of language learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(10), 1883-1898. doi:10.1037/xlm0000683.

    Abstract

    High frequency words have been suggested to benefit both speech segmentation and grammatical categorization of the words around them. Despite utilizing similar information, these tasks are usually investigated separately in studies examining learning. We determined whether including high frequency words in continuous speech could support categorization when words are being segmented for the first time. We familiarized learners with continuous artificial speech comprising repetitions of target words, which were preceded by high-frequency marker words. Crucially, marker words distinguished targets into 2 distributionally defined categories. We measured learning with segmentation and categorization tests and compared performance against a control group that heard the artificial speech without these marker words (i.e., just the targets, with no cues for categorization). Participants segmented the target words from speech in both conditions, but critically when the marker words were present, they influenced acquisition of word-referent mappings in a subsequent transfer task, with participants demonstrating better early learning for mappings that were consistent (rather than inconsistent) with the distributional categories. We propose that high-frequency words may assist early grammatical categorization, while speech segmentation is still being learned.

    Additional information

    Supplemental Material
  • Frost, R. L. A., & Monaghan, P. (2017). Sleep-driven computations in speech processing. PLoS One, 12(1): e0169538. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0169538.

    Abstract

    Acquiring language requires segmenting speech into individual words, and abstracting over those words to discover grammatical structure. However, these tasks can be conflicting—on the one hand requiring memorisation of precise sequences that occur in speech, and on the other requiring a flexible reconstruction of these sequences to determine the grammar. Here, we examine whether speech segmentation and generalisation of grammar can occur simultaneously—with the conflicting requirements for these tasks being over-come by sleep-related consolidation. After exposure to an artificial language comprising words containing non-adjacent dependencies, participants underwent periods of consolidation involving either sleep or wake. Participants who slept before testing demonstrated a sustained boost to word learning and a short-term improvement to grammatical generalisation of the non-adjacencies, with improvements after sleep outweighing gains seen after an equal period of wake. Thus, we propose that sleep may facilitate processing for these conflicting tasks in language acquisition, but with enhanced benefits for speech segmentation.

    Additional information

    Data available
  • Fusaroli, R., Tylén, K., Garly, K., Steensig, J., Christiansen, M. H., & Dingemanse, M. (2017). Measures and mechanisms of common ground: Backchannels, conversational repair, and interactive alignment in free and task-oriented social interactions. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 2055-2060). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    A crucial aspect of everyday conversational interactions is our ability to establish and maintain common ground. Understanding the relevant mechanisms involved in such social coordination remains an important challenge for cognitive science. While common ground is often discussed in very general terms, different contexts of interaction are likely to afford different coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate the presence and relation of three mechanisms of social coordination – backchannels, interactive alignment and conversational repair – across free and task-oriented conversations. We find significant differences: task-oriented conversations involve higher presence of repair – restricted offers in particular – and backchannel, as well as a reduced level of lexical and syntactic alignment. We find that restricted repair is associated with lexical alignment and open repair with backchannels. Our findings highlight the need to explicitly assess several mechanisms at once and to investigate diverse activities to understand their role and relations.
  • Galbiati, A., Verga, L., Giora, E., Zucconi, M., & Ferini-Strambi, L. (2019). The risk of neurodegeneration in REM sleep behavior disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 43, 37-46. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.09.008.

    Abstract

    Several studies report an association between REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) and neurodegenerative diseases, in particular synucleinopathies. Interestingly, the onset of RBD precedes the development of neurodegeneration by several years. This review and meta-analysis aims to establish the rate of conversion of RBD into neurodegenerative diseases. Longitudinal studies were searched from the PubMed, Web of Science, and SCOPUS databases. Using random-effect modeling, we performed a meta-analysis on the rate of RBD conversions into neurodegeneration. Furthermore, we fitted a Kaplan-Meier analysis and compared the differences between survival curves of different diseases with log-rank tests. The risk for developing neurodegenerative diseases was 33.5% at five years follow-up, 82.4% at 10.5 years and 96.6% at 14 years. The average conversion rate was 31.95% after a mean duration of follow-up of 4.75 ± 2.43 years. The majority of RBD patients converted to Parkinson's Disease (43%), followed by Dementia with Lewy Bodies (25%). The estimated risk for RBD patients to develop a neurodegenerative disease over a long-term follow-up is more than 90%. Future studies should include control group for the evaluation of REM sleep without atonia as marker for neurodegeneration also in non-clinical population and target RBD as precursor of neurodegeneration to develop protective trials.
  • Galke, L., Vagliano, I., & Scherp, A. (2019). Can graph neural networks go „online“? An analysis of pretraining and inference. In Proceedings of the Representation Learning on Graphs and Manifolds: ICLR2019 Workshop.

    Abstract

    Large-scale graph data in real-world applications is often not static but dynamic,
    i. e., new nodes and edges appear over time. Current graph convolution approaches
    are promising, especially, when all the graph’s nodes and edges are available dur-
    ing training. When unseen nodes and edges are inserted after training, it is not
    yet evaluated whether up-training or re-training from scratch is preferable. We
    construct an experimental setup, in which we insert previously unseen nodes and
    edges after training and conduct a limited amount of inference epochs. In this
    setup, we compare adapting pretrained graph neural networks against retraining
    from scratch. Our results show that pretrained models yield high accuracy scores
    on the unseen nodes and that pretraining is preferable over retraining from scratch.
    Our experiments represent a first step to evaluate and develop truly online variants
    of graph neural networks.
  • Galke, L., Melnychuk, T., Seidlmayer, E., Trog, S., Foerstner, K., Schultz, C., & Tochtermann, K. (2019). Inductive learning of concept representations from library-scale bibliographic corpora. In K. David, K. Geihs, M. Lange, & G. Stumme (Eds.), Informatik 2019: 50 Jahre Gesellschaft für Informatik - Informatik für Gesellschaft (pp. 219-232). Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. doi:10.18420/inf2019_26.
  • Galke, L., Mai, F., Schelten, A., Brunch, D., & Scherp, A. (2017). Using titles vs. full-text as source for automated semantic document annotation. In O. Corcho, K. Janowicz, G. Rizz, I. Tiddi, & D. Garijo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2017). New York: ACM.

    Abstract

    We conduct the first systematic comparison of automated semantic
    annotation based on either the full-text or only on the title metadata
    of documents. Apart from the prominent text classification baselines
    kNN and SVM, we also compare recent techniques of Learning
    to Rank and neural networks and revisit the traditional methods
    logistic regression, Rocchio, and Naive Bayes. Across three of our
    four datasets, the performance of the classifications using only titles
    reaches over 90% of the quality compared to the performance when
    using the full-text.
  • Galke, L., Saleh, A., & Scherp, A. (2017). Word embeddings for practical information retrieval. In M. Eibl, & M. Gaedke (Eds.), INFORMATIK 2017 (pp. 2155-2167). Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik. doi:10.18420/in2017_215.

    Abstract

    We assess the suitability of word embeddings for practical information retrieval scenarios. Thus, we assume that users issue ad-hoc short queries where we return the first twenty retrieved documents after applying a boolean matching operation between the query and the documents. We compare the performance of several techniques that leverage word embeddings in the retrieval models to compute the similarity between the query and the documents, namely word centroid similarity, paragraph vectors, Word Mover’s distance, as well as our novel inverse document frequency (IDF) re-weighted word centroid similarity. We evaluate the performance using the ranking metrics mean average precision, mean reciprocal rank, and normalized discounted cumulative gain. Additionally, we inspect the retrieval models’ sensitivity to document length by using either only the title or the full-text of the documents for the retrieval task. We conclude that word centroid similarity is the best competitor to state-of-the-art retrieval models. It can be further improved by re-weighting the word frequencies with IDF before aggregating the respective word vectors of the embedding. The proposed cosine similarity of IDF re-weighted word vectors is competitive to the TF-IDF baseline and even outperforms it in case of the news domain with a relative percentage of 15%.
  • Gao, Y., Zheng, L., Liu, X., Nichols, E. S., Zhang, M., Shang, L., Ding, G., Meng, Z., & Liu, L. (2019). First and second language reading difficulty among Chinese–English bilingual children: The prevalence and influences from demographic characteristics. Frontiers in Psychology, 10: 2544. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02544.

    Abstract

    Learning to read a second language (L2) can pose a great challenge for children who have already been struggling to read in their first language (L1). Moreover, it is not clear whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances L1 reading difficulty increases the risk of L2 reading difficulty. This study investigated Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading skills in a large representative sample of 1,824 Chinese–English bilingual children in Grades 4 and 5 from both urban and rural schools in Beijing. We examined the prevalence of reading difficulty in Chinese only (poor Chinese readers, PC), English only (poor English readers, PE), and both Chinese and English (poor bilingual readers, PB) and calculated the co-occurrence, that is, the chances of becoming a poor reader in English given that the child was already a poor reader in Chinese. We then conducted a multinomial logistic regression analysis and compared the prevalence of PC, PE, and PB between children in Grade 4 versus Grade 5, in urban versus rural areas, and in boys versus girls. Results showed that compared to girls, boys demonstrated significantly higher risk of PC, PE, and PB. Meanwhile, compared to the 5th graders, the 4th graders demonstrated significantly higher risk of PC and PB. In addition, children enrolled in the urban schools were more likely to become better second language readers, thus leading to a concerning rural–urban gap in the prevalence of L2 reading difficulty. Finally, among these Chinese–English bilingual children, regardless of sex and school location, poor reading skill in Chinese significantly increased the risk of also being a poor English reader, with a considerable and stable co-occurrence of approximately 36%. In sum, this study suggests that despite striking differences between alphabetic and logographic writing systems, L1 reading difficulty still significantly increases the risk of L2 reading difficulty. This indicates the shared meta-linguistic skills in reading different writing systems and the importance of understanding the universality and the interdependent relationship of reading between different writing systems. Furthermore, the male disadvantage (in both L1 and L2) and the urban–rural gap (in L2) found in the prevalence of reading difficulty calls for special attention to disadvantaged populations in educational practice.
  • Gao, X., Dera, J., Nijhoff, A. D., & Willems, R. M. (2019). Is less readable liked better? The case of font readability in poetry appreciation. PLoS One, 14(12): e0225757. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0225757.

    Abstract

    Previous research shows conflicting findings for the effect of font readability on comprehension and memory for language. It has been found that—perhaps counterintuitively–a hard to read font can be beneficial for language comprehension, especially for difficult language. Here we test how font readability influences the subjective experience of poetry reading. In three experiments we tested the influence of poem difficulty and font readability on the subjective experience of poems. We specifically predicted that font readability would have opposite effects on the subjective experience of easy versus difficult poems. Participants read poems which could be more or less difficult in terms of conceptual or structural aspects, and which were presented in a font that was either easy or more difficult to read. Participants read existing poems and subsequently rated their subjective experience (measured through four dependent variables: overall liking, perceived flow of the poem, perceived topic clarity, and perceived structure). In line with previous literature we observed a Poem Difficulty x Font Readability interaction effect for subjective measures of poetry reading. We found that participants rated easy poems as nicer when presented in an easy to read font, as compared to when presented in a hard to read font. Despite the presence of the interaction effect, we did not observe the predicted opposite effect for more difficult poems. We conclude that font readability can influence reading of easy and more difficult poems differentially, with strongest effects for easy poems.

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

    It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the frequency account, the Competition Model, and the incremental processing account. Study 1 presents an analysis of Tagalog child-directed speech, which showed that the dominant argument order is agent-before-patient and that morphosyntactic markers are highly valid cues to thematic role assignment. In Study 2, we used a combined self-paced listening and picture verification task to test how Tagalog-speaking adults and 5- and 7-year-old children process reversible transitive sentences. Results showed that adults performed well in all conditions, while children’s accuracy and listening times for the first noun phrase indicated more difficulty in interpreting patient-initial sentences in the agent voice compared to the patient voice. The patient voice advantage is partly explained by both the frequency account and incremental processing account.
  • Gaspard III, J. C., Bauer, G. B., Mann, D. A., Boerner, K., Denum, L., Frances, C., & Reep, R. L. (2017). Detection of hydrodynamic stimuli by the postcranial body of Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) A Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology. Journal of Comparative Physiology, 203, 111-120. doi:10.1007/s00359-016-1142-8.

    Abstract

    Manatees live in shallow, frequently turbid
    waters. The sensory means by which they navigate in these
    conditions are unknown. Poor visual acuity, lack of echo-
    location, and modest chemosensation suggest that other
    modalities play an important role. Rich innervation of sen-
    sory hairs that cover the entire body and enlarged soma-
    tosensory areas of the brain suggest that tactile senses are
    good candidates. Previous tests of detection of underwater
    vibratory stimuli indicated that they use passive movement
    of the hairs to detect particle displacements in the vicinity
    of a micron or less for frequencies from 10 to 150 Hz. In
    the current study, hydrodynamic stimuli were created by
    a sinusoidally oscillating sphere that generated a dipole
    field at frequencies from 5 to 150 Hz. Go/no-go tests of
    manatee postcranial mechanoreception of hydrodynamic
    stimuli indicated excellent sensitivity but about an order of
    magnitude less than the facial region. When the vibrissae
    were trimmed, detection thresholds were elevated, suggest-
    ing that the vibrissae were an important means by which
    detection occurred. Manatees were also highly accurate in two-choice directional discrimination: greater than 90%
    correct at all frequencies tested. We hypothesize that mana-
    tees utilize vibrissae as a three-dimensional array to detect
    and localize low-frequency hydrodynamic stimuli
  • Gehrig, J., Michalareas, G., Forster, M.-T., Lei, J., Hok, P., Laufs, H., Senft, C., Seifert, V., Schoffelen, J.-M., Hanslmayr, H., & Kell, C. A. (2019). Low-frequency oscillations code speech during verbal working memory. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(33), 6498-6512. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0018-19.2019.

    Abstract

    The way the human brain represents speech in memory is still unknown. An obvious characteristic of speech is its evolvement over time.
    During speech processing, neural oscillations are modulated by the temporal properties of the acoustic speech signal, but also acquired
    knowledge on the temporal structure of language influences speech perception-related brain activity. This suggests that speech could be
    represented in the temporal domain, a form of representation that the brain also uses to encode autobiographic memories. Empirical
    evidence for such a memory code is lacking. We investigated the nature of speech memory representations using direct cortical recordings
    in the left perisylvian cortex during delayed sentence reproduction in female and male patients undergoing awake tumor surgery.
    Our results reveal that the brain endogenously represents speech in the temporal domain. Temporal pattern similarity analyses revealed
    that the phase of frontotemporal low-frequency oscillations, primarily in the beta range, represents sentence identity in working memory.
    The positive relationship between beta power during working memory and task performance suggests that working memory
    representations benefit from increased phase separation.
  • Gialluisi, A., Andlauer, T. F. M., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moll, K., Becker, J., Hoffmann, P., Ludwig, K. U., Czamara, D., St Pourcain, B., Brandler, W., Honbolygó, F., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Huguet, G., Morris, A. P., Hulslander, J., Willcutt, E. G., DeFries, J. C., Olson, R. K., Smith, S. D. and 25 moreGialluisi, A., Andlauer, T. F. M., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moll, K., Becker, J., Hoffmann, P., Ludwig, K. U., Czamara, D., St Pourcain, B., Brandler, W., Honbolygó, F., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Huguet, G., Morris, A. P., Hulslander, J., Willcutt, E. G., DeFries, J. C., Olson, R. K., Smith, S. D., Pennington, B. F., Vaessen, A., Maurer, U., Lyytinen, H., Peyrard-Janvid, M., Leppänen, P. H. T., Brandeis, D., Bonte, M., Stein, J. F., Talcott, J. B., Fauchereau, F., Wilcke, A., Francks, C., Bourgeron, T., Monaco, A. P., Ramus, F., Landerl, K., Kere, J., Scerri, T. S., Paracchini, S., Fisher, S. E., Schumacher, J., Nöthen, M. M., Müller-Myhsok, B., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2019). Genome-wide association scan identifies new variants associated with a cognitive predictor of dyslexia. Translational Psychiatry, 9(1): 77. doi:10.1038/s41398-019-0402-0.

    Abstract

    Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders, with high impact on school and psychosocial development and high comorbidity with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety. DD is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including word reading, spelling, rapid naming, and phonology. To investigate the genetic basis of DD, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of these skills within one of the largest studies available, including nine cohorts of reading-impaired and typically developing children of European ancestry (N = 2562–3468). We observed a genome-wide significant effect (p < 1 × 10−8) on rapid automatized naming of letters (RANlet) for variants on 18q12.2, within MIR924HG (micro-RNA 924 host gene; rs17663182 p = 4.73 × 10−9), and a suggestive association on 8q12.3 within NKAIN3 (encoding a cation transporter; rs16928927, p = 2.25 × 10−8). rs17663182 (18q12.2) also showed genome-wide significant multivariate associations with RAN measures (p = 1.15 × 10−8) and with all the cognitive traits tested (p = 3.07 × 10−8), suggesting (relational) pleiotropic effects of this variant. A polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis revealed significant genetic overlaps of some of the DD-related traits with educational attainment (EDUyears) and ADHD. Reading and spelling abilities were positively associated with EDUyears (p ~ [10−5–10−7]) and negatively associated with ADHD PRS (p ~ [10−8−10−17]). This corroborates a long-standing hypothesis on the partly shared genetic etiology of DD and ADHD, at the genome-wide level. Our findings suggest new candidate DD susceptibility genes and provide new insights into the genetics of dyslexia and its comorbities.
  • Gialluisi, A., Guadalupe, T., Francks, C., & Fisher, S. E. (2017). Neuroimaging genetic analyses of novel candidate genes associated with reading and language. Brain and Language, 172, 9-15. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2016.07.002.

    Abstract

    Neuroimaging measures provide useful endophenotypes for tracing genetic effects on reading and language. A recent Genome-Wide Association Scan Meta-Analysis (GWASMA) of reading and language skills (N = 1862) identified strongest associations with the genes CCDC136/FLNC and RBFOX2. Here, we follow up the top findings from this GWASMA, through neuroimaging genetics in an independent sample of 1275 healthy adults. To minimize multiple-testing, we used a multivariate approach, focusing on cortical regions consistently implicated in prior literature on developmental dyslexia and language impairment. Specifically, we investigated grey matter surface area and thickness of five regions selected a priori: middle temporal gyrus (MTG); pars opercularis and pars triangularis in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG-PO and IFG-PT); postcentral parietal gyrus (PPG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG). First, we analysed the top associated polymorphisms from the reading/language GWASMA: rs59197085 (CCDC136/FLNC) and rs5995177 (RBFOX2). There was significant multivariate association of rs5995177 with cortical thickness, driven by effects on left PPG, right MTG, right IFG (both PO and PT), and STG bilaterally. The minor allele, previously associated with reduced reading-language performance, showed negative effects on grey matter thickness. Next, we performed exploratory gene-wide analysis of CCDC136/FLNC and RBFOX2; no other associations surpassed significance thresholds. RBFOX2 encodes an important neuronal regulator of alternative splicing. Thus, the prior reported association of rs5995177 with reading/language performance could potentially be mediated by reduced thickness in associated cortical regions. In future, this hypothesis could be tested using sufficiently large samples containing both neuroimaging data and quantitative reading/language scores from the same individuals.

    Additional information

    mmc1.docx
  • Glock, P., Raum, B., Heermann, T., Kretschmer, S., Schweizer, J., Mücksch, J., Alagöz, G., & Schwille, P. (2019). Stationary patterns in a two-protein reaction-diffusion system. ACS Synthetic Biology, 8(1), 148-157. doi:10.1021/acssynbio.8b00415.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

    Interactive models of language production predict that it should be possible to observe long-distance interactions; effects that arise at one level of processing influence multiple subsequent stages of representation and processing. We examine the hypothesis that disruptions arising in nonform-based levels of planning—specifically, lexical selection—should modulate articulatory processing. A novel automatic phonetic analysis method was used to examine productions in a paradigm yielding both general disruptions to formulation processes and, more specifically, overt errors during lexical selection. This analysis method allowed us to examine articulatory disruptions at multiple levels of analysis, from whole words to individual segments. Baseline performance by young adults was contrasted with young speakers’ performance under time pressure (which previous work has argued increases interaction between planning and articulation) and performance by older adults (who may have difficulties inhibiting nontarget representations, leading to heightened interactive effects). The results revealed the presence of interactive effects. Our new analysis techniques revealed these effects were strongest in initial portions of responses, suggesting that speech is initiated as soon as the first segment has been planned. Interactive effects did not increase under response pressure, suggesting interaction between planning and articulation is relatively fixed. Unexpectedly, lexical selection disruptions appeared to yield some degree of facilitation in articulatory processing (possibly reflecting semantic facilitation of target retrieval) and older adults showed weaker, not stronger interactive effects (possibly reflecting weakened connections between lexical and form-level representations).
  • Goldrick, M., Brehm, L., Pyeong Whan, C., & Smolensky, P. (2019). Transient blend states and discrete agreement-driven errors in sentence production. In G. J. Snover, M. Nelson, B. O'Connor, & J. Pater (Eds.), Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2019) (pp. 375-376). doi:10.7275/n0b2-5305.
  • Goncharova, M. V., & Klenova, A. V. (2019). Siberian crane chick calls reflect their thermal state. Bioacoustics, 28, 115-128. doi:10.1080/09524622.2017.1399827.

    Abstract

    Chicks can convey information about their needs with calls. But it is still unknown if there are any universal need indicators in chick vocalizations. Previous studies have shown that in some species vocal activity and/or temporal-frequency variables of calls are related to the chick state, whereas other studies did not confirm it. Here, we tested experimentally whether vocal activity and temporal-frequency variables of calls change with cooling. We studied 10 human-raised
    Siberian crane (Grus leucogeranus) chicks at 3–15 days of age. We found that the cooled chicks produced calls higher in fundamental
    frequency and power variables, longer in duration and at a higher calling rate than in the control chicks. However, we did not find
    significant changes in level of entropy and occurrence of non-linear phenomena in chick calls recorded during the experimental cooling. We suggest that the level of vocal activity is a universal indicator of need for warmth in precocial and semi-precocial birds (e.g. cranes), but not in altricial ones. We also assume that coding of needs via temporal-frequency variables of calls is typical in species whose adults could not confuse their chicks with other chicks. Siberian cranes stay on separate territories during their breeding season, so parents do not need to check individuality of their offspring in the home area. In this case, all call characteristics are available for other purposes and serve to communicate chicks’ vital needs.
  • Goodhew, S. C., & Kidd, E. (2017). Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations. Acta Psychologica, 173, 73-86. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.12.008.

    Abstract

    Synaesthesia is the neuropsychological phenomenon in which individuals experience unusual sensory associations, such as experiencing particular colours in response to particular words. While it was once thought the particular pairings between stimuli were arbitrary and idiosyncratic to particular synaesthetes, there is now growing evidence for a systematic psycholinguistic basis to the associations. Here we sought to assess the explanatory value of quantifiable lexical association measures (via latent semantic analysis; LSA) in the pairings observed between words and colours in synaesthesia. To test this, we had synaesthetes report the particular colours they experienced in response to given concept words, and found that language association between the concept and colour words provided highly reliable predictors of the reported pairings. These results provide convergent evidence for a psycholinguistic basis to synaesthesia, but in a novel way, showing that exposure to particular patterns of associations in language can predict the formation of particular synaesthetic lexical-colour associations. Consistent with previous research, the prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word also played a role in shaping the colour for the whole word, and this effect also interacted with language association, such that the effect of the colour for the first letter was stronger as the association between the concept word and the colour word in language increased. Moreover, when a group of non-synaesthetes were asked what colours they associated with the concept words, they produced very similar reports to the synaesthetes that were predicted by both language association and prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word. This points to a shared linguistic experience generating the associations for both groups.
  • Goriot, C. (2019). Early-English education works no miracles: Cognitive and linguistic development in mainstream, early-English, and bilingual primary-school pupils in the Netherlands. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Goudbeek, M., Smits, R., Cutler, A., & Swingley, D. (2017). Auditory and phonetic category formation. In H. Cohen, & C. Lefebvre (Eds.), Handbook of categorization in cognitive science (2nd revised ed.) (pp. 687-708). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • De Graaf, T. A., Duecker, F., Stankevich, Y., Ten Oever, S., & Sack, A. T. (2017). Seeing in the dark: Phosphene thresholds with eyes open versus closed in the absence of visual inputs. Brain Stimulation, 10(4), 828-835. doi:10.1016/j.brs.2017.04.127.

    Abstract

    Background: Voluntarily opening or closing our eyes results in fundamentally different input patterns and expectancies. Yet it remains unclear how our brains and visual systems adapt to these ocular states.
    Objective/Hypothesis: We here used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to probe the excitability of the human visual system with eyes open or closed, in the complete absence of visual inputs.
    Methods: Combining Bayesian staircase procedures with computer control of TMS pulse intensity allowed interleaved determination of phosphene thresholds (PT) in both conditions. We measured parieto-occipital EEG baseline activity in several stages to track oscillatory power in the alpha (8-12 Hz) frequency-band, which has previously been shown to be inversely related to phosphene perception.
    Results: Since closing the eyes generally increases alpha power, one might have expected a decrease in excitability (higher PT). While we confirmed a rise in alpha power with eyes closed, visual excitability was actually increased (PT was lower) with eyes closed.
    Conclusions: This suggests that, aside from oscillatory alpha power, additional neuronal mechanisms influence the excitability of early visual cortex. One of these may involve a more internally oriented mode of brain operation, engaged by closing the eyes. In this state, visual cortex may be more susceptible to top-down inputs, to facilitate for example multisensory integration or imagery/working memory, although alternative explanations remain possible. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Additional information

    Supplementary data
  • Grabot, L., Kösem, A., Azizi, L., & Van Wassenhove, V. (2017). Prestimulus Alpha Oscillations and the Temporal Sequencing of Audio-visual Events. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1566-1582. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01145.

    Abstract

    Perceiving the temporal order of sensory events typically depends on participants' attentional state, thus likely on the endogenous fluctuations of brain activity. Using magnetoencephalography, we sought to determine whether spontaneous brain oscillations could disambiguate the perceived order of auditory and visual events presented in close temporal proximity, that is, at the individual's perceptual order threshold (Point of Subjective Simultaneity [PSS]). Two neural responses were found to index an individual's temporal order perception when contrasting brain activity as a function of perceived order (i.e., perceiving the sound first vs. perceiving the visual event first) given the same physical audiovisual sequence. First, average differences in prestimulus auditory alpha power indicated perceiving the correct ordering of audiovisual events irrespective of which sensory modality came first: a relatively low alpha power indicated perceiving auditory or visual first as a function of the actual sequence order. Additionally, the relative changes in the amplitude of the auditory (but not visual) evoked responses were correlated with participant's correct performance. Crucially, the sign of the magnitude difference in prestimulus alpha power and evoked responses between perceived audiovisual orders correlated with an individual's PSS. Taken together, our results suggest that spontaneous oscillatory activity cannot disambiguate subjective temporal order without prior knowledge of the individual's bias toward perceiving one or the other sensory modality first. Altogether, our results suggest that, under high perceptual uncertainty, the magnitude of prestimulus alpha (de)synchronization indicates the amount of compensation needed to overcome an individual's prior in the serial ordering and temporal sequencing of information
  • Greenfield, P. M., Slobin, D., Cole, M., Gardner, H., Sylva, K., Levelt, W. J. M., Lucariello, J., Kay, A., Amsterdam, A., & Shore, B. (2017). Remembering Jerome Bruner: A series of tributes to Jerome “Jerry” Bruner, who died in 2016 at the age of 100, reflects the seminal contributions that led him to be known as a co-founder of the cognitive revolution. Observer, 30(2). Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/remembering-jerome-bruner.

    Abstract

    Jerome Seymour “Jerry” Bruner was born on October 1, 1915, in New York City. He began his academic career as psychology professor at Harvard University; he ended it as University Professor Emeritus at New York University (NYU) Law School. What happened at both ends and in between is the subject of the richly variegated remembrances that follow. On June 5, 2016, Bruner died in his Greenwich Village loft at age 100. He leaves behind his beloved partner Eleanor Fox, who was also his distinguished colleague at NYU Law School; his son Whitley; his daughter Jenny; and three grandchildren.

    Bruner’s interdisciplinarity and internationalism are seen in the remarkable variety of disciplines and geographical locations represented in the following tributes. The reader will find developmental psychology, anthropology, computer science, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, cultural psychology, education, and law represented; geographically speaking, the writers are located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. The memories that follow are arranged in roughly chronological order according to when the writers had their first contact with Jerry Bruner.
  • Greenhill, S. J., Wu, C.-H., Hua, X., Dunn, M., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Evolutionary dynamics of language systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(42), E8822-E8829. doi:10.1073/pnas.1700388114.

    Abstract

    Understanding how and why language subsystems differ in their evolutionary dynamics is a fundamental question for historical and comparative linguistics. One key dynamic is the rate of language change. While it is commonly thought that the rapid rate of change hampers the reconstruction of deep language relationships beyond 6,000–10,000 y, there are suggestions that grammatical structures might retain more signal over time than other subsystems, such as basic vocabulary. In this study, we use a Dirichlet process mixture model to infer the rates of change in lexical and grammatical data from 81 Austronesian languages. We show that, on average, most grammatical features actually change faster than items of basic vocabulary. The grammatical data show less schismogenesis, higher rates of homoplasy, and more bursts of contact-induced change than the basic vocabulary data. However, there is a core of grammatical and lexical features that are highly stable. These findings suggest that different subsystems of language have differing dynamics and that careful, nuanced models of language change will be needed to extract deeper signal from the noise of parallel evolution, areal readaptation, and contact.
  • Grey, S., Schubel, L. C., McQueen, J. M., & Van Hell, J. G. (2019). Processing foreign-accented speech in a second language: Evidence from ERPs during sentence comprehension in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(5), 912-929. doi:10.1017/S1366728918000937.

    Abstract

    This study examined electrophysiological correlates of sentence comprehension of native-accented and foreign-accented
    speech in a second language (L2), for sentences produced in a foreign accent different from that associated with the listeners’
    L1. Bilingual speaker-listeners process different accents in their L2 conversations, but the effects on real-time L2 sentence
    comprehension are unknown. Dutch–English bilinguals listened to native American-English accented sentences and foreign
    (and for them unfamiliarly-accented) Chinese-English accented sentences while EEG was recorded. Behavioral sentence
    comprehension was highly accurate for both native-accented and foreign-accented sentences. ERPs showed different patterns
    for L2 grammar and semantic processing of native- and foreign-accented speech. For grammar, only native-accented speech
    elicited an Nref. For semantics, both native- and foreign-accented speech elicited an N400 effect, but with a delayed onset
    across both accent conditions. These findings suggest that the way listeners comprehend native- and foreign-accented
    sentences in their L2 depends on their familiarity with the accent.
  • Grieco-Calub, T. M., Ward, K. M., & Brehm, L. (2017). Multitasking During Degraded Speech Recognition in School-Age Children. Trends in hearing, 21, 1-14. doi:10.1177/2331216516686786.

    Abstract

    Multitasking requires individuals to allocate their cognitive resources across different tasks. The purpose of the current study was to assess school-age children’s multitasking abilities during degraded speech recognition. Children (8 to 12 years old) completed a dual-task paradigm including a sentence recognition (primary) task containing speech that was either unpro- cessed or noise-band vocoded with 8, 6, or 4 spectral channels and a visual monitoring (secondary) task. Children’s accuracy and reaction time on the visual monitoring task was quantified during the dual-task paradigm in each condition of the primary task and compared with single-task performance. Children experienced dual-task costs in the 6- and 4-channel conditions of the primary speech recognition task with decreased accuracy on the visual monitoring task relative to baseline performance. In all conditions, children’s dual-task performance on the visual monitoring task was strongly predicted by their single-task (baseline) performance on the task. Results suggest that children’s proficiency with the secondary task contributes to the magnitude of dual-task costs while multitasking during degraded speech recognition.
  • De Groot, F., Huettig, F., & Olivers, C. N. L. (2017). Language-induced visual and semantic biases in visual search are subject to task requirements. Visual Cognition, 25, 225-240. doi:10.1080/13506285.2017.1324934.

    Abstract

    Visual attention is biased by both visual and semantic representations activated by words. We investigated to what extent language-induced visual and semantic biases are subject to task demands. Participants memorized a spoken word for a verbal recognition task, and performed a visual search task during the retention period. Crucially, while the word had to be remembered in all conditions, it was either relevant for the search (as it also indicated the target) or irrelevant (as it only served the memory test afterwards). On critical trials, displays contained objects that were visually or semantically related to the memorized word. When the word was relevant for the search, eye movement biases towards visually related objects arose earlier and more strongly than biases towards semantically related objects. When the word was irrelevant, there was still evidence for visual and semantic biases, but these biases were substantially weaker, and similar in strength and temporal dynamics, without a visual advantage. We conclude that language-induced attentional biases are subject to task requirements.
  • Grove, J., Ripke, S., Als, T. D., Mattheisen, M., Walters, R., Won, H., Pallesen, J., Agerbo, E., Andreassen, O. A., Anney, R., Belliveau, R., Bettella, F., Buxbaum, J. D., Bybjerg-Grauholm, J., Bækved-Hansen, M., Cerrato, F., Chambert, K., Christensen, J. H., Churchhouse, C., Dellenvall, K. and 55 moreGrove, J., Ripke, S., Als, T. D., Mattheisen, M., Walters, R., Won, H., Pallesen, J., Agerbo, E., Andreassen, O. A., Anney, R., Belliveau, R., Bettella, F., Buxbaum, J. D., Bybjerg-Grauholm, J., Bækved-Hansen, M., Cerrato, F., Chambert, K., Christensen, J. H., Churchhouse, C., Dellenvall, K., Demontis, D., De Rubeis, S., Devlin, B., Djurovic, S., Dumont, A., Goldstein, J., Hansen, C. S., Hauberg, M. E., Hollegaard, M. V., Hope, S., Howrigan, D. P., Huang, H., Hultman, C., Klei, L., Maller, J., Martin, J., Martin, A. R., Moran, J., Nyegaard, M., Nærland, T., Palmer, D. S., Palotie, A., Pedersen, C. B., Pedersen, M. G., Poterba, T., Poulsen, J. B., St Pourcain, B., Qvist, P., Rehnström, K., Reichenberg, A., Reichert, J., Robinson, E. B., Roeder, K., Roussos, P., Saemundsen, E., Sandin, S., Satterstrom, F. K., Smith, G. D., Stefansson, H., Stefansson, K., Steinberg, S., Stevens, C., Sullivan, P. F., Turley, P., Walters, G. B., Xu, X., Autism Spectrum Disorders Working Group of The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, BUPGEN, Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Me Research Team, Geschwind, D., Nordentoft, M., Hougaard, D. M., Werge, T., Mors, O., Mortensen, P. B., Neale, B. M., Daly, M. J., & Børglum, A. D. (2019). Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder. Nature Genetics, 51, 431-444. doi:10.1038/s41588-019-0344-8.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Supplementary Text and Figures
  • Guadalupe, T., Mathias, S. R., Van Erp, T. G. M., Whelan, C. D., Zwiers, M. P., Abe, Y., Abramovic, L., Agartz, I., Andreassen, O. A., Arias-Vásquez, A., Aribisala, B. S., Armstrong, N. J., Arolt, V., Artiges, E., Ayesa-Arriola, R., Baboyan, V. G., Banaschewski, T., Barker, G., Bastin, M. E., Baune, B. T. and 141 moreGuadalupe, T., Mathias, S. R., Van Erp, T. G. M., Whelan, C. D., Zwiers, M. P., Abe, Y., Abramovic, L., Agartz, I., Andreassen, O. A., Arias-Vásquez, A., Aribisala, B. S., Armstrong, N. J., Arolt, V., Artiges, E., Ayesa-Arriola, R., Baboyan, V. G., Banaschewski, T., Barker, G., Bastin, M. E., Baune, B. T., Blangero, J., Bokde, A. L., Boedhoe, P. S., Bose, A., Brem, S., Brodaty, H., Bromberg, U., Brooks, S., Büchel, C., Buitelaar, J., Calhoun, V. D., Cannon, D. M., Cattrell, A., Cheng, Y., Conrod, P. J., Conzelmann, A., Corvin, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Crivello, F., Dannlowski, U., De Zubicaray, G. I., De Zwarte, S. M., Deary, I. J., Desrivières, S., Doan, N. T., Donohoe, G., Dørum, E. S., Ehrlich, S., Espeseth, T., Fernández, G., Flor, H., Fouche, J.-P., Frouin, V., Fukunaga, M., Gallinat, J., Garavan, H., Gill, M., Suarez, A. G., Gowland, P., Grabe, H. J., Grotegerd, D., Gruber, O., Hagenaars, S., Hashimoto, R., Hauser, T. U., Heinz, A., Hibar, D. P., Hoekstra, P. J., Hoogman, M., Howells, F. M., Hu, H., Hulshoff Pol, H. E.., Huyser, C., Ittermann, B., Jahanshad, N., Jönsson, E. G., Jurk, S., Kahn, R. S., Kelly, S., Kraemer, B., Kugel, H., Kwon, J. S., Lemaitre, H., Lesch, K.-P., Lochner, C., Luciano, M., Marquand, A. F., Martin, N. G., Martínez-Zalacaín, I., Martinot, J.-L., Mataix-Cols, D., Mather, K., McDonald, C., McMahon, K. L., Medland, S. E., Menchón, J. M., Morris, D. W., Mothersill, O., Maniega, S. M., Mwangi, B., Nakamae, T., Nakao, T., Narayanaswaamy, J. C., Nees, F., Nordvik, J. E., Onnink, A. M. H., Opel, N., Ophoff, R., Martinot, M.-L.-P., Orfanos, D. P., Pauli, P., Paus, T., Poustka, L., Reddy, J. Y., Renteria, M. E., Roiz-Santiáñez, R., Roos, A., Royle, N. A., Sachdev, P., Sánchez-Juan, P., Schmaal, L., Schumann, G., Shumskaya, E., Smolka, M. N., Soares, J. C., Soriano-Mas, C., Stein, D. J., Strike, L. T., Toro, R., Turner, J. A., Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., Uhlmann, A., Valdés Hernández, M., Van den Heuvel, O. A., Van der Meer, D., Van Haren, N. E.., Veltman, D. J., Venkatasubramanian, G., Vetter, N. C., Vuletic, D., Walitza, S., Walter, H., Walton, E., Wang, Z., Wardlaw, J., Wen, W., Westlye, L. T., Whelan, R., Wittfeld, K., Wolfers, T., Wright, M. J., Xu, J., Xu, X., Yun, J.-Y., Zhao, J., Franke, B., Thompson, P. M., Glahn, D. C., Mazoyer, B., Fisher, S. E., & Francks, C. (2017). Human subcortical asymmetries in 15,847 people worldwide reveal effects of age and sex. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 11(5), 1497-1514. doi:10.1007/s11682-016-9629-z.

    Abstract

    The two hemispheres of the human brain differ functionally and structurally. Despite over a century of research, the extent to which brain asymmetry is influenced by sex, handedness, age, and genetic factors is still controversial. Here we present the largest ever analysis of subcortical brain asymmetries, in a harmonized multi-site study using meta-analysis methods. Volumetric asymmetry of seven subcortical structures was assessed in 15,847 MRI scans from 52 datasets worldwide. There were sex differences in the asymmetry of the globus pallidus and putamen. Heritability estimates, derived from 1170 subjects belonging to 71 extended pedigrees, revealed that additive genetic factors influenced the asymmetry of these two structures and that of the hippocampus and thalamus. Handedness had no detectable effect on subcortical asymmetries, even in this unprecedented sample size, but the asymmetry of the putamen varied with age. Genetic drivers of asymmetry in the hippocampus, thalamus and basal ganglia may affect variability in human cognition, including susceptibility to psychiatric disorders.

    Additional information

    11682_2016_9629_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
  • Guadalupe, T. (2017). The biology of variation in anatomical brain asymmetries. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Guest, O., Kanayet, F. J., & Love, B. C. (2019). Gerrymandering and computational redistricting. Journal of Computational Social Science, 2, 119-131. doi:10.1007/s42001-019-00053-9.

    Abstract

    Partisan gerrymandering poses a threat to democracy. Moreover, the complexity of the districting task may exceed human capacities. One potential solution is using computational models to automate the districting process by optimizing objective and open criteria, such as how spatially compact districts are. We formulated one such model that minimised pairwise distance between voters within a district. Using US Census Bureau data, we confirmed our prediction that the difference in compactness between the computed and actual districts would be greatest for states that are large and, therefore, difficult for humans to properly district given their limited capacities. The computed solutions highlighted differences in how humans and machines solve this task with machine solutions more fully optimised and displaying emergent properties not evident in human solutions. These results suggest a division of labour in which humans debate and formulate districting criteria whereas machines optimise the criteria to draw the district boundaries. We discuss how criteria can be expanded beyond notions of compactness to include other factors, such as respecting municipal boundaries, historic communities, and relevant legislation.
  • Guest, O., & Love, B. C. (2017). What the success of brain imaging implies about the neural code. eLife, 6: e21397. doi:10.7554/eLife.21397.

    Abstract

    The success of fMRI places constraints on the nature of the neural code. The fact that researchers can infer similarities between neural representations, despite fMRI’s limitations, implies that certain neural coding schemes are more likely than others. For fMRI to succeed given its low temporal and spatial resolution, the neural code must be smooth at the voxel and functional level such that similar stimuli engender similar internal representations. Through proof and simulation, we determine which coding schemes are plausible given both fMRI’s successes and its limitations in measuring neural activity. Deep neural network approaches, which have been forwarded as computational accounts of the ventral stream, are consistent with the success of fMRI, though functional smoothness breaks down in the later network layers. These results have implications for the nature of the neural code and ventral stream, as well as what can be successfully investigated with fMRI.
  • Gunz, P., Tilot, A. K., Wittfeld, K., Teumer, A., Shapland, C. Y., Van Erp, T. G. M., Dannemann, M., Vernot, B., Neubauer, S., Guadalupe, T., Fernandez, G., Brunner, H., Enard, W., Fallon, J., Hosten, N., Völker, U., Profico, A., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Kelso, J. and 7 moreGunz, P., Tilot, A. K., Wittfeld, K., Teumer, A., Shapland, C. Y., Van Erp, T. G. M., Dannemann, M., Vernot, B., Neubauer, S., Guadalupe, T., Fernandez, G., Brunner, H., Enard, W., Fallon, J., Hosten, N., Völker, U., Profico, A., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Kelso, J., St Pourcain, B., Hublin, J.-J., Franke, B., Pääbo, S., Macciardi, F., Grabe, H. J., & Fisher, S. E. (2019). Neandertal introgression sheds light on modern human endocranial globularity. Current Biology, 29(1), 120-127. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.065.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    mmc1.pdf mmc2.xlsx
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). It is the facts, stupid. In J. Brockman, F. Van der Wa, & H. Corver (Eds.), Wetenschappelijke parels: het belangrijkste wetenschappelijke nieuws volgens 193 'briljante geesten'. Amsterdam: Maven Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). Don't forget neurobiology: An experimental approach to linguistic representation. Commentary on Branigan and Pickering "An experimental approach to linguistic representation". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40: e292. doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000401.

    Abstract

    Acceptability judgments are no longer acceptable as the holy grail for testing the nature of linguistic representations. Experimental and quantitative methods should be used to test theoretical claims in psycholinguistics. These methods should include not only behavior, but also the more recent possibilities to probe the neural codes for language-relevant representation
  • Hagoort, P. (Ed.). (2019). Human language: From genes and brains to behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Hagoort, P., & Beckmann, C. F. (2019). Key issues and future directions: The neural architecture for language. In P. Hagoort (Ed.), Human language: From genes and brains to behavior (pp. 527-532). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2019). Introduction. In P. Hagoort (Ed.), Human language: From genes and brains to behavior (pp. 1-6). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). The core and beyond in the language-ready brain. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 81, 194-204. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.048.

    Abstract

    In this paper a general cognitive architecture of spoken language processing is specified. This is followed by an account of how this cognitive architecture is instantiated in the human brain. Both the spatial aspects of the networks for language are discussed, as well as the temporal dynamics and the underlying neurophysiology. A distinction is proposed between networks for coding/decoding linguistic information and additional networks for getting from coded meaning to speaker meaning, i.e. for making the inferences that enable the listener to understand the intentions of the speaker
  • Hagoort, P. (2019). The meaning making mechanism(s) behind the eyes and between the ears. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 375: 20190301. doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0301.

    Abstract

    In this contribution, the following four questions are discussed: (i) where is meaning?; (ii) what is meaning?; (iii) what is the meaning of mechanism?; (iv) what are the mechanisms of meaning? I will argue that meanings are in the head. Meanings have multiple facets, but minimally one needs to make a distinction between single word meanings (lexical meaning) and the meanings of multi-word utterances. The latter ones cannot be retrieved from memory, but need to be constructed on the fly. A mechanistic account of the meaning-making mind requires an analysis at both a functional and a neural level, the reason being that these levels are causally interdependent. I will show that an analysis exclusively focusing on patterns of brain activation lacks explanatory power. Finally, I shall present an initial sketch of how the dynamic interaction between temporo-parietal areas and inferior frontal cortex might instantiate the interpretation of linguistic utterances in the context of a multimodal setting and ongoing discourse information.
  • Hagoort, P. (2017). The neural basis for primary and acquired language skills. In E. Segers, & P. Van den Broek (Eds.), Developmental Perspectives in Written Language and Literacy: In honor of Ludo Verhoeven (pp. 17-28). Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/z.206.02hag.

    Abstract

    Reading is a cultural invention that needs to recruit cortical infrastructure that was not designed for it (cultural recycling of cortical maps). In the case of reading both visual cortex and networks for speech processing are recruited. Here I discuss current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of spoken language that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind model. More areas than Broca’s and Wernicke’s region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication. The consequences of this architecture for reading are discussed.
  • Hagoort, P. (2019). The neurobiology of language beyond single word processing. Science, 366(6461), 55-58. doi:10.1126/science.aax0289.

    Abstract

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

    Files private

    Request files
  • Hagoort, P. (1992). Vertraagde lexicale integratie bij afatisch taalverstaan. Stem, Spraak- en Taalpathologie, 1, 5-23.
  • Hahn, L. E., Ten Buuren, M., De Nijs, M., Snijders, T. M., & Fikkert, P. (2019). Acquiring novel words in a second language through mutual play with child songs - The Noplica Energy Center. In L. Nijs, H. Van Regenmortel, & C. Arculus (Eds.), MERYC19 Counterpoints of the senses: Bodily experiences in musical learning (pp. 78-87). Ghent, Belgium: EuNet MERYC 2019.

    Abstract

    Child songs are a great source for linguistic learning. Here we explore whether children can acquire novel words in a second language by playing a game featuring child songs in a playhouse. We present data from three studies that serve as scientific proof for the functionality of one game of the playhouse: the Energy Center. For this game, three hand-bikes were mounted on a panel. When children start moving the hand-bikes, child songs start playing simultaneously. Once the children produce enough energy with the hand-bikes, the songs are additionally accompanied with the sounds of musical instruments. In our studies, children executed a picture-selection task to evaluate whether they acquired new vocabulary from the songs presented during the game. Two of our studies were run in the field, one at a Dutch and one at an Indian pre-school. The third study features data from a more controlled laboratory setting. Our results partly confirm that the Energy Center is a successful means to support vocabulary acquisition in a second language. More research with larger sample sizes and longer access to the Energy Center is needed to evaluate the overall functionality of the game. Based on informal observations at our test sites, however, we are certain that children do pick up linguistic content from the songs during play, as many of the children repeat words and phrases from songs they heard. We will pick up upon these promising observations during future studies
  • Hammarström, H. (2019). An inventory of Bantu languages. In M. Van de Velde, K. Bostoen, D. Nurse, & G. Philippson (Eds.), The Bantu languages (2nd). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    This chapter aims to provide an updated list of all Bantu languages known at present and to provide individual pointers to further information on the inventory. The area division has some correlation with what are perceived genealogical relations between Bantu languages, but they are not defined as such and do not change whenever there is an update in our understanding of genealogical relations. Given the popularity of Guthrie codes in Bantu linguistics, our listing also features a complete mapping to Guthrie codes. The language inventory listed excludes sign languages used in the Bantu area, speech registers, pidgins, drummed/whistled languages and urban youth languages. Pointers to such languages in the Bantu area are included in the continent-wide overview in Hammarstrom. The most important alternative names, subvarieties and spelling variants are given for each language, though such lists are necessarily incomplete and reflect some degree of arbitrary selection.
  • Han, J.-I., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2019). Spoken-word production in Korean: A non-word masked priming and phonological Stroop task investigation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(4), 901-912. doi:10.1177/1747021818770989.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    stimuli for experiment 1 and 2
  • Hao, X., Huang, Y., Song, Y., Kong, X., & Liu, J. (2017). Experience with the Cardinal Coordinate System Contributes to the Precision of Cognitive Maps. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 1166. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01166.

    Abstract

    The coordinate system has been proposed as a fundamental and cross-culturally used spatial representation, through which people code location and direction information in the environment. Here we provided direct evidence demonstrating that daily experience with the cardinal coordinate system (i.e., east, west, north, and south) contributed to the representation of cognitive maps. Behaviorally, we found that individuals who relied more on the cardinal coordinate system for daily navigation made smaller errors in an indoor pointing task, suggesting that the cardinal coordinate system is an important element of cognitive maps. Neurally, the extent to which individuals relied on the cardinal coordinate system was positively correlated with the gray matter volume of the entorhinal cortex, suggesting that the entorhinal cortex may serve as the neuroanatomical basis of coordinate-based navigation (the entorhinal coordinate area, ECA). Further analyses on the resting-state functional connectivity revealed that the intrinsic interaction between the ECA and two hippocampal sub-regions, the subiculum and cornu ammonis, might be linked with the representation precision of cognitive maps. In sum, our study reveals an association between daily experience with the cardinal coordinate system and cognitive maps, and suggests that the ECA works in collaboration with hippocampal sub-regions to represent cognitive maps.
  • Harmon, Z., Idemaru, K., & Kapatsinski, V. (2019). Learning mechanisms in cue reweighting. Cognition, 189, 76-88. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.03.011.

    Abstract

    Feedback has been shown to be effective in shifting attention across perceptual cues to a phonological contrast in speech perception (Francis, Baldwin & Nusbaum, 2000). However, the learning mechanisms behind this process remain obscure. We compare the predictions of supervised error-driven learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) and reinforcement learning (Sutton & Barto, 1998) using computational simulations. Supervised learning predicts downweighting of an informative cue when the learner receives evidence that it is no longer informative. In contrast, reinforcement learning suggests that a reduction in cue weight requires positive evidence for the informativeness of an alternative cue. Experimental evidence supports the latter prediction, implicating reinforcement learning as the mechanism behind the effect of feedback on cue weighting in speech perception. Native English listeners were exposed to either bimodal or unimodal VOT distributions spanning the unaspirated/aspirated boundary (bear/pear). VOT is the primary cue to initial stop voicing in English. However, lexical feedback in training indicated that VOT was no longer predictive of voicing. Reduction in the weight of VOT was observed only when participants could use an alternative cue, F0, to predict voicing. Frequency distributions had no effect on learning. Overall, the results suggest that attention shifting in learning the phonetic cues to phonological categories is accomplished using simple reinforcement learning principles that also guide the choice of actions in other domains.
  • Harmon, Z., & Kapatsinski, V. (2017). Putting old tools to novel uses: The role of form accessibility in semantic extension. Cognitive Psychology, 98, 22-44. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.08.002.

    Abstract

    An increase in frequency of a form has been argued to result in semantic extension (Bybee, 2003; Zipf, 1949). Yet, research on the acquisition of lexical semantics suggests that a form that frequently co-occurs with a meaning gets restricted to that meaning (Xu & Tenenbaum, 2007). The current work reconciles these positions by showing that – through its effect on form accessibility – frequency causes semantic extension in production, while at the same time causing entrenchment in comprehension. Repeatedly experiencing a form paired with a specific meaning makes one more likely to re-use the form to express related meanings, while also increasing one’s confidence that the form is never used to express those meanings. Recurrent pathways of semantic change are argued to result from a tug of war between the production-side pressure to reuse easily accessible forms and the comprehension-side confidence that one has seen all possible uses of a frequent form.
  • Harneit, A., Braun, U., Geiger, L. S., Zang, Z., Hakobjan, M., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Schweiger, J. I., Schwarz, K., Gan, G., Erk, S., Heinz, A., Romanczuk‐Seiferth, N., Witt, S., Rietschel, M., Walter, H., Franke, B., Meyer‐Lindenberg, A., & Tost, H. (2019). MAOA-VNTR genotype affects structural and functional connectivity in distributed brain networks. Human Brain Mapping, 40(18), 5202-5212. doi:10.1002/hbm.24766.

    Abstract

    Previous studies have linked the low expression variant of a variable number of tandem repeat polymorphism in the monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA‐L) to the risk for impulsivity and aggression, brain developmental abnormalities, altered cortico‐limbic circuit function, and an exaggerated neural serotonergic tone. However, the neurobiological effects of this variant on human brain network architecture are incompletely understood. We studied healthy individuals and used multimodal neuroimaging (sample size range: 219–284 across modalities) and network‐based statistics (NBS) to probe the specificity of MAOA‐L‐related connectomic alterations to cortical‐limbic circuits and the emotion processing domain. We assessed the spatial distribution of affected links across several neuroimaging tasks and data modalities to identify potential alterations in network architecture. Our results revealed a distributed network of node links with a significantly increased connectivity in MAOA‐L carriers compared to the carriers of the high expression (H) variant. The hyperconnectivity phenotype primarily consisted of between‐lobe (“anisocoupled”) network links and showed a pronounced involvement of frontal‐temporal connections. Hyperconnectivity was observed across functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of implicit emotion processing (pFWE = .037), resting‐state fMRI (pFWE = .022), and diffusion tensor imaging (pFWE = .044) data, while no effects were seen in fMRI data of another cognitive domain, that is, spatial working memory (pFWE = .540). These observations are in line with prior research on the MAOA‐L variant and complement these existing data by novel insights into the specificity and spatial distribution of the neurogenetic effects. Our work highlights the value of multimodal network connectomic approaches for imaging genetics.
  • Hartung, F. (2017). Getting under your skin: The role of perspective and simulation of experience in narrative comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hartung, F., Hagoort, P., & Willems, R. M. (2017). Readers select a comprehension mode independent of pronoun: Evidence from fMRI during narrative comprehension. Brain and Language, 170, 29-38. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2017.03.007.

    Abstract

    Perspective is a crucial feature for communicating about events. Yet it is unclear how linguistically encoded perspective relates to cognitive perspective taking. Here, we tested the effect of perspective taking with short literary stories. Participants listened to stories with 1st or 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist, while undergoing fMRI. When comparing action events with 1st and 3rd person pronouns, we found no evidence for a neural dissociation depending on the pronoun. A split sample approach based on the self-reported experience of perspective taking revealed 3 comprehension preferences. One group showed a strong 1st person preference, another a strong 3rd person preference, while a third group engaged in 1st and 3rd person perspective taking simultaneously. Comparing brain activations of the groups revealed different neural networks. Our results suggest that comprehension is perspective dependent, but not on the perspective suggested by the text, but on the reader’s (situational) preference
  • Hartung, F., Withers, P., Hagoort, P., & Willems, R. M. (2017). When fiction is just as real as fact: No differences in reading behavior between stories believed to be based on true or fictional events. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 1618. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01618.

    Abstract

    Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a ‘newspaper’ versus ‘literature’ comparison. In the present study, we investigated the effect of reader’s expectation to whether information is true or fictional with a subtler manipulation by labelling short stories as either based on true or fictional events. In addition, we tested whether narrative perspective or individual preference in perspective taking affects reading true or fictional stories differently. In an online experiment, participants (final N=1742) read one story which was introduced as based on true events or as fictional (factor fictionality). The story could be narrated in either 1st or 3rd person perspective (factor perspective). We measured immersion in and appreciation of the story, perspective taking, as well as memory for events. We found no evidence that knowing a story is fictional or based on true events influences reading behavior or experiential aspects of reading. We suggest that it is not whether a story is true or fictional, but rather expectations towards certain reading situations (e.g. reading newspaper or literature) which affect behavior by activating appropriate reading goals. Results further confirm that narrative perspective partially influences perspective taking and experiential aspects of reading
  • Haworth, S., Shapland, C. Y., Hayward, C., Prins, B. P., Felix, J. F., Medina-Gomez, C., Rivadeneira, F., Wang, C., Ahluwalia, T. S., Vrijheid, M., Guxens, M., Sunyer, J., Tachmazidou, I., Walter, K., Iotchkova, V., Jackson, A., Cleal, L., Huffmann, J., Min, J. L., Sass, L. and 15 moreHaworth, S., Shapland, C. Y., Hayward, C., Prins, B. P., Felix, J. F., Medina-Gomez, C., Rivadeneira, F., Wang, C., Ahluwalia, T. S., Vrijheid, M., Guxens, M., Sunyer, J., Tachmazidou, I., Walter, K., Iotchkova, V., Jackson, A., Cleal, L., Huffmann, J., Min, J. L., Sass, L., Timmers, P. R. H. J., UK10K consortium, Davey Smith, G., Fisher, S. E., Wilson, J. F., Cole, T. J., Fernandez-Orth, D., Bønnelykke, K., Bisgaard, H., Pennell, C. E., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Dedoussis, G., Timpson, N. J., Zeggini, E., Vitart, V., & St Pourcain, B. (2019). Low-frequency variation in TP53 has large effects on head circumference and intracranial volume. Nature Communications, 10: 357. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07863-x.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Supplementary Information
  • Heilbron, M., Ehinger, B., Hagoort, P., & De Lange, F. P. (2019). Tracking naturalistic linguistic predictions with deep neural language models. In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (pp. 424-427). doi:10.32470/CCN.2019.1096-0.

    Abstract

    Prediction in language has traditionally been studied using
    simple designs in which neural responses to expected
    and unexpected words are compared in a categorical
    fashion. However, these designs have been contested
    as being ‘prediction encouraging’, potentially exaggerating
    the importance of prediction in language understanding.
    A few recent studies have begun to address
    these worries by using model-based approaches to probe
    the effects of linguistic predictability in naturalistic stimuli
    (e.g. continuous narrative). However, these studies
    so far only looked at very local forms of prediction, using
    models that take no more than the prior two words into
    account when computing a word’s predictability. Here,
    we extend this approach using a state-of-the-art neural
    language model that can take roughly 500 times longer
    linguistic contexts into account. Predictability estimates
    fromthe neural network offer amuch better fit to EEG data
    from subjects listening to naturalistic narrative than simpler
    models, and reveal strong surprise responses akin to
    the P200 and N400. These results show that predictability
    effects in language are not a side-effect of simple designs,
    and demonstrate the practical use of recent advances
    in AI for the cognitive neuroscience of language.
  • Hendricks, A. E., Bochukova, E. G., Marenne, G., Keogh, J. M., Atanassova, N., Bounds, R., Wheeler, E., Mistry, V., Henning, E., Körner, A., Muddyman, D., McCarthy, S., Hinney, A., Hebebrand, J., Scott, R. A., Langenberg, C., Wareham, N. J., Surendran, P., Howson, J. M., Butterworth, A. S. and 14 moreHendricks, A. E., Bochukova, E. G., Marenne, G., Keogh, J. M., Atanassova, N., Bounds, R., Wheeler, E., Mistry, V., Henning, E., Körner, A., Muddyman, D., McCarthy, S., Hinney, A., Hebebrand, J., Scott, R. A., Langenberg, C., Wareham, N. J., Surendran, P., Howson, J. M., Butterworth, A. S., Danesh, J., Børge G, N., Nielse, S. F., Afzal, S., Papadia, S., Ashford, S., Garg, S., Palomino, R. I., Kwasniewska, A., Tachmazidou, I., O’Rahilly, S., Zeggini, E., Barroso, I., & Farooqi, I. S. (2017). Rare Variant Analysis of Human and Rodent Obesity Genes in Individuals with Severe Childhood Obesity. Scientific Reports, 7: 4394. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-03054-8.

    Abstract

    Obesity is a genetically heterogeneous disorder. Using targeted and whole-exome sequencing, we studied 32 human and 87 rodent obesity genes in 2,548 severely obese children and 1,117 controls. We identified 52 variants contributing to obesity in 2% of cases including multiple novel variants in GNAS, which were sometimes found with accelerated growth rather than short stature as described previously. Nominally significant associations were found for rare functional variants in BBS1, BBS9, GNAS, MKKS, CLOCK and ANGPTL6. The p.S284X variant in ANGPTL6 drives the association signal (rs201622589, MAF~0.1%, odds ratio = 10.13, p-value = 0.042) and results in complete loss of secretion in cells. Further analysis including additional case-control studies and population controls (N = 260,642) did not support association of this variant with obesity (odds ratio = 2.34, p-value = 2.59 × 10−3), highlighting the challenges of testing rare variant associations and the need for very large sample sizes. Further validation in cohorts with severe obesity and engineering the variants in model organisms will be needed to explore whether human variants in ANGPTL6 and other genes that lead to obesity when deleted in mice, do contribute to obesity. Such studies may yield druggable targets for weight loss therapies.
  • Hervais-Adelman, A., Moser-Mercer, B., Murray, M. M., & Golestani, N. (2017). Cortical thickness increases after simultaneous interpretation training. Neuropsychologia, 98, 212-219. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.01.008.

    Abstract

    Simultaneous interpretation is a complex cognitive task that not only demands multilingual language processing, but also requires application of extreme levels of domain-general cognitive control. We used MRI to longitudinally measure cortical thickness in simultaneous interpretation trainees before and after a Master's program in conference interpreting. We compared them to multilingual control participants scanned at the same interval of time. Increases in cortical thickness were specific to trainee interpreters. Increases were observed in regions involved in lower-level, phonetic processing (left posterior superior temporal gyrus, anterior supramarginal gyrus and planum temporale), in the higher-level formulation of propositional speech (right angular gyrus) and in the conversion of items from working memory into a sequence (right dorsal premotor cortex), and finally, in domain-general executive control and attention (right parietal lobule). Findings are consistent with the linguistic requirements of simultaneous interpretation and also with the more general cognitive demands on attentional control for expert performance in simultaneous interpreting. Our findings may also reflect beneficial, potentially protective effects of simultaneous interpretation training, which has previously been shown to confer enhanced skills in certain executive and attentional domains over and above those conferred by bilingualism.
  • Hervais-Adelman, A., Kumar, U., Mishra, R. K., Tripathi, V. N., Guleria, A., Singh, J. P., Eisner, F., & Huettig, F. (2019). Learning to read recycles visual cortical networks without destruction. Science Advances, 5(9): eaax0262. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax0262.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

    We investigate the type of attention (domain-general or language-specific) used during
    syntactic processing. We focus on syntactic priming: In this task, participants listen to a
    sentence that describes a picture (prime sentence), followed by a picture the participants need
    to describe (target sentence). We measure the proportion of times participants use the
    syntactic structure they heard in the prime sentence to describe the current target sentence as a
    measure of syntactic processing. Participants simultaneously conducted a motion-object
    tracking (MOT) task, a task commonly used to tax domain-general attentional resources. We
    manipulated the number of objects the participant had to track; we thus measured
    participants’ ability to process syntax while their attention is not-, slightly-, or overly-taxed.
    Performance in the MOT task was significantly worse when conducted as a dual-task
    compared to as a single task. We observed an inverted U-shaped curve on priming magnitude
    when conducting the MOT task concurrently with prime sentences (i.e., memory encoding),
    but no effect when conducted with target sentences (i.e., memory retrieval). Our results
    illustrate how, during the encoding of syntactic information, domain-general attention
    differentially affects syntactic processing, whereas during the retrieval of syntactic
    information domain-general attention does not influence syntactic processing
  • Heyselaar, E., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2017). How social opinion influences syntactic processing – An investigation using virtual reality. PLoS One, 12(4): e0174405. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0174405.
  • Heyselaar, E., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2017). In dialogue with an avatar, language behavior is identical to dialogue with a human partner. Behavior Research Methods, 49(1), 46-60. doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0688-7.

    Abstract

    The use of virtual reality (VR) as a methodological tool is becoming increasingly popular in behavioral research as its flexibility allows for a wide range of applications. This new method has not been as widely accepted in the field of psycholinguistics, however, possibly due to the assumption that language processing during human-computer interactions does not accurately reflect human-human interactions. Yet at the same time there is a growing need to study human-human language interactions in a tightly controlled context, which has not been possible using existing methods. VR, however, offers experimental control over parameters that cannot be (as finely) controlled in the real world. As such, in this study we aim to show that human-computer language interaction is comparable to human-human language interaction in virtual reality. In the current study we compare participants’ language behavior in a syntactic priming task with human versus computer partners: we used a human partner, a human-like avatar with human-like facial expressions and verbal behavior, and a computer-like avatar which had this humanness removed. As predicted, our study shows comparable priming effects between the human and human-like avatar suggesting that participants attributed human-like agency to the human-like avatar. Indeed, when interacting with the computer-like avatar, the priming effect was significantly decreased. This suggests that when interacting with a human-like avatar, sentence processing is comparable to interacting with a human partner. Our study therefore shows that VR is a valid platform for conducting language research and studying dialogue interactions in an ecologically valid manner.
  • Heyselaar, E. (2017). Influences on the magnitude of syntactic priming. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Heyselaar, E., Segaert, K., Walvoort, S. J., Kessels, R. P., & Hagoort, P. (2017). The role of nondeclarative memory in the skill for language: Evidence from syntactic priming in patients with amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 101, 97-105. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.033.

    Abstract

    Syntactic priming, the phenomenon in which participants adopt the linguistic behaviour of their partner, is widely used in psycholinguistics to investigate syntactic operations. Although the phenomenon of syntactic priming is well documented, the memory system that supports the retention of this syntactic information long enough to influence future utterances, is not as widely investigated. We aim to shed light on this issue by assessing patients with Korsakoff's amnesia on an active-passive syntactic priming task and compare their performance to controls matched in age, education, and premorbid intelligence. Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome display deficits in all subdomains of declarative memory, yet their nondeclarative memory remains intact, making them an ideal patient group to determine which memory system supports syntactic priming. In line with the hypothesis that syntactic priming relies on nondeclarative memory, the patient group shows strong priming tendencies (12.6% passive structure repetition). Our healthy control group did not show a priming tendency, presumably due to cognitive interference between declarative and nondeclarative memory. We discuss the results in relation to amnesia, aging, and compensatory mechanisms.
  • Hibar, D. P., Adams, H. H. H., Jahanshad, N., Chauhan, G., Stein, J. L., Hofer, E., Rentería, M. E., Bis, J. C., Arias-Vasquez, A., Ikram, M. K., Desrivieres, S., Vernooij, M. W., Abramovic, L., Alhusaini, S., Amin, N., Andersson, M., Arfanakis, K., Aribisala, B. S., Armstrong, N. J., Athanasiu, L. and 312 moreHibar, D. P., Adams, H. H. H., Jahanshad, N., Chauhan, G., Stein, J. L., Hofer, E., Rentería, M. E., Bis, J. C., Arias-Vasquez, A., Ikram, M. K., Desrivieres, S., Vernooij, M. W., Abramovic, L., Alhusaini, S., Amin, N., Andersson, M., Arfanakis, K., Aribisala, B. S., Armstrong, N. J., Athanasiu, L., Axelsson, T., Beecham, A. H., Beiser, A., Bernard, M., Blanton, S. H., Bohlken, M. M., Boks, M. P., Bralten, J., Brickman, A. M., Carmichael, O., Chakravarty, M. M., Chen, Q., Ching, C. R. K., Chouraki, V., Cuellar-Partida, G., Crivello, F., den Brabander, A., Doan, N. T., Ehrlich, S., Giddaluru, S., Goldman, A. L., Gottesman, R. F., Grimm, O., Griswold, M. E., Guadalupe, T., Gutman, B. A., Hass, J., Haukvik, U. K., Hoehn, D., Holmes, A. J., Hoogman, M., Janowitz, D., Jia, T., Jørgensen, K. N., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Kasperaviciute, D., Kim, S., Klein, M., Krämer, B., Lee, P. H., Liewald, D. C. M., Lopez, L. M., Luciano, M., Macare, C., Marquand, A. F., Matarin, M., Mather, K. A., Mattheisen, M., McKay, D. R., Milaneschi, Y., Maniega, S. M., Nho, K., Nugent, A. C., Nyquist, P., Olde Loohuis, L. M., Oosterlaan, J., Papmeyer, M., Pirpamer, L., Pütz, B., Ramasamy, A., Richards, J. S., Risacher, S., Roiz-Santiañez, R., Rommelse, N., Ropele, S., Rose, E., Royle, N. A., Rundek, T., Sämann, P. G., Saremi, A., Satizabal, C. L., Schmaal, L., Schork, A. J., Shen, L., Shin, J., Shumskaya, E., Smith, A. V., Sprooten, E., Strike, L. T., Teumer, A., Tordesillas-Gutierrez, D., Toro, R., Trabzuni, D., Trompet, S., Vaidya, D., Van der Grond, J., Van der Lee, S. J., Van der Meer, D., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Van Eijk, K. R., van Erp, T. G. M., Van Rooij, D., Walton, E., Westlye, L. T., Whelan, C. D., Windham, B. G., Winkler, A. M., Wittfeld, K. M., Woldehawariat, G., Wolf, C., Wolfers, T., Yanek, L. R., Yang, J., Zijdenbos, A., Zwiers, M. P., Agartz, I., Almasy, L., Ames, D., Amouyel, P., Andreassen, O. A., Arepalli, S., Assareh, A. A., Barral, S., Bastin, M. E., Becker, D. M., Becker, J. T., Bennett, D. A., Blangero, J., Van Bokhoven, H., Boomsma, D. I., Brodaty, H., Brouwer, R. M., Brunner, H. G., Buckner, R. L., Buitelaar, J. K., Bulayeva, K. B., Cahn, W., Calhoun, V. D., Cannon, D. M., Cavalleri, G. L., Cheng, C.-Y., Cichon, S., Cookson, M. R., Corvin, A., Crespo-Facorro, B., Curran, J. E., Czisch, M., Dale, A. M., Davies, G. E., De Craen, A. J. M., De Geus, E. J. C., De Jager, P. L., De Zubicaray, G. i., Deary, I. J., Debette, S., DeCarli, C., Delanty, N., Depondt, C., DeStefano, A., Dillman, A., Djurovic, S., Donohoe, G., Drevets, W. C., Duggirala, R., Dyer, T. D., Enzinger, C., Erk, S., Espeseth, T., Fedko, I. O., Fernández, G., Ferrucci, L., Fisher, S. E., Fleischman, D. A., Ford, I., Fornage, M., Foroud, T. M., Fox, P. T., Francks, C., Fukunaga, M., Gibbs, J. R., Glahn, D. C., Gollub, R. L., Göring, H. H. H., Green, R. C., Gruber, O., Gudnason, V., Guelfi, S., Haberg, A. K., Hansell, N. K., Hardy, J., Hartman, C. A., Hashimoto, R., Hegenscheid, K., Heinz, A., Le Hellard, S., Hernandez, D. G., Heslenfeld, D. J., Ho, B.-C., Hoekstra, P. J., Hoffmann, W., Hofman, A., Holsboer, F., Homuth, G., Hosten, N., Hottenga, J.-J., Huentelman, M., Pol, H. E. H., Ikeda, M., Jack Jr., C. R., Jenkinson, M., Johnson, R., Jonsson, E. G., Jukema, J. W., Kahn, R. S., Kanai, R., Kloszewska, I., Knopman, D. S., Kochunov, P., Kwok, J. B., Lawrie, S. M., Lemaître, H., Liu, X., Longo, D. L., Lopez, O. L., Lovestone, S., Martinez, O., Martinot, J.-L., Mattay, V. S., McDonald, C., Mcintosh, A. M., McMahon, F., McMahon, K. L., Mecocci, P., Melle, I., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Mohnke, S., Montgomery, G. W., Morris, D. W., Mosley, T. H., Mühleisen, T. W., Müller-Myhsok, B., Nalls, M. A., Nauck, M., Nichols, T. E., Niessen, W. J., Nöthen, M. M., Nyberg, L., Ohi, K., Olvera, R. L., Ophoff, R. A., Pandolfo, M., Paus, T., Pausova, Z., Penninx, B. W. J. H., Pike, G. B., Potkin, S. G., Psaty, B. M., Reppermund, S., Rietschel, M., Roffman, J. L., Romanczuk-Seiferth, N., Rotter, J. I., Ryten, M., Sacco, R. L., Sachdev, P. S., Saykin, A. J., Schmidt, R., Schmidt, H., Schofield, P. R., Sigursson, S., Simmons, A., Singleton, A., Sisodiya, S. M., Smith, C., Smoller, J. W., Soininen, H., Steen, V. M., Stott, D. J., Sussmann, J. E., Thalamuthu, A., Toga, A. W., Traynor, B. J., Troncoso, J., Tsolaki, M., Tzourio, C., Uitterlinden, A. G., Hernández, M. C. V., Van der Brug, M., Van der Lugt, A., Van der Wee, N. J. A., Van Haren, N. E. M., Van Tol, M.-J., Vardarajan, B. N., Vellas, B., Veltman, D. J., Völzke, H., Walter, H., Wardlaw, J. M., Wassink, T. H., Weale, M. e., Weinberger, D. R., Weiner, M., Wen, W., Westman, E., White, T., Wong, T. Y., Wright, C. B., Zielke, R. H., Zonderman, A. B., Martin, N. G., Van Duijn, C. M., Wright, M. J., Longstreth, W. W. T., Schumann, G., Grabe, H. J., Franke, B., Launer, L. J., Medland, S. E., Seshadri, S., Thompson, P. M., & Ikram, A. (2017). Novel genetic loci associated with hippocampal volume. Nature Communications, 8: 13624. doi:10.1038/ncomms13624.

    Abstract

    The hippocampal formation is a brain structure integrally involved in episodic memory, spatial navigation, cognition and stress responsiveness. Structural abnormalities in hippocampal volume and shape are found in several common neuropsychiatric disorders. To identify the genetic underpinnings of hippocampal structure here we perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 33,536 individuals and discover six independent loci significantly associated with hippocampal volume, four of them novel. Of the novel loci, three lie within genes (ASTN2, DPP4 and MAST4) and one is found 200 kb upstream of SHH. A hippocampal subfield analysis shows that a locus within the MSRB3 gene shows evidence of a localized effect along the dentate gyrus, subiculum, CA1 and fissure. Further, we show that genetic variants associated with decreased hippocampal volume are also associated with increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease (rg=−0.155). Our findings suggest novel biological pathways through which human genetic variation influences hippocampal volume and risk for neuropsychiatric illness.

    Additional information

    ncomms13624-s1.pdf ncomms13624-s2.xlsx
  • Hintz, F., Meyer, A. S., & Huettig, F. (2017). Predictors of verb-mediated anticipatory eye movements in the visual world. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(9), 1352-1374. doi:10.1037/xlm0000388.

    Abstract

    Many studies have demonstrated that listeners use information extracted from verbs to guide anticipatory eye movements to objects in the visual context that satisfy the selection restrictions of the verb. An important question is what underlies such verb-mediated anticipatory eye gaze. Based on empirical and theoretical suggestions, we investigated the influence of five potential predictors of this behavior: functional associations and general associations between verb and target object, as well as the listeners’ production fluency, receptive vocabulary knowledge, and non-verbal intelligence. In three eye-tracking experiments, participants looked at sets of four objects and listened to sentences where the final word was predictable or not predictable (e.g., “The man peels/draws an apple”). On predictable trials only the target object, but not the distractors, were functionally and associatively related to the verb. In Experiments 1 and 2, objects were presented before the verb was heard. In Experiment 3, participants were given a short preview of the display after the verb was heard. Functional associations and receptive vocabulary were found to be important predictors of verb-mediated anticipatory eye gaze independent of the amount of contextual visual input. General word associations did not and non-verbal intelligence was only a very weak predictor of anticipatory eye movements. Participants’ production fluency correlated positively with the likelihood of anticipatory eye movements when participants were given the long but not the short visual display preview. These findings fit best with a pluralistic approach to predictive language processing in which multiple mechanisms, mediating factors, and situational context dynamically interact. 
  • Hirschmann, J., Schoffelen, J.-M., Schnitzler, A., & Van Gerven, M. A. J. (2017). Parkinsonian rest tremor can be detected accurately based on neuronal oscillations recorded from the subthalamic nucleus. Clinical Neurophysiology, 128, 2029-2036. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2017.07.419.

    Abstract

    Objective: To investigate the possibility of tremor detection based on deep brain activity.
    Methods: We re-analyzed recordings of local field potentials (LFPs) from the subthalamic nucleus in 10
    PD patients (12 body sides) with spontaneously fluctuating rest tremor. Power in several frequency bands
    was estimated and used as input to Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) which classified short data segments
    as either tremor-free rest or rest tremor. HMMs were compared to direct threshold application to individual
    power features.
    Results: Applying a threshold directly to band-limited power was insufficient for tremor detection (mean
    area under the curve [AUC] of receiver operating characteristic: 0.64, STD: 0.19). Multi-feature HMMs, in
    contrast, allowed for accurate detection (mean AUC: 0.82, STD: 0.15), using four power features obtained
    from a single contact pair. Within-patient training yielded better accuracy than across-patient training
    (0.84 vs. 0.78, p = 0.03), yet tremor could often be detected accurately with either approach. High frequency
    oscillations (>200 Hz) were the best performing individual feature.
    Conclusions: LFP-based markers of tremor are robust enough to allow for accurate tremor detection in
    short data segments, provided that appropriate statistical models are used.
    Significance: LFP-based markers of tremor could be useful control signals for closed-loop deep brain
    stimulation.
  • Hoedemaker, R. S., & Gordon, P. C. (2017). The onset and time course of semantic priming during rapid recognition of visual words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(5), 881-902. doi:10.1037/xhp0000377.

    Abstract

    In 2 experiments, we assessed the effects of response latency and task-induced goals on the onset and time course of semantic priming during rapid processing of visual words as revealed by ocular response
    tasks. In Experiment 1 (ocular lexical decision task), participants performed a lexical decision task using eye movement responses on a sequence of 4 words. In Experiment 2, the same words were encoded for an episodic recognition memory task that did not require a metalinguistic judgment. For both tasks, survival analyses showed that the earliest observable effect (divergence point [DP]) of semantic priming on target-word reading times occurred at approximately 260 ms, and ex-Gaussian distribution fits revealed that the magnitude of the priming effect increased as a function of response time. Together, these
    distributional effects of semantic priming suggest that the influence of the prime increases when target processing is more effortful. This effect does not require that the task include a metalinguistic judgment;
    manipulation of the task goals across experiments affected the overall response speed but not the location of the DP or the overall distributional pattern of the priming effect. These results are more readily explained as the result of a retrospective, rather than a prospective, priming mechanism and are consistent with compound-cue models of semantic priming.
  • Hoedemaker, R. S., Ernst, J., Meyer, A. S., & Belke, E. (2017). Language production in a shared task: Cumulative semantic interference from self- and other-produced context words. Acta Psychologica, 172, 55-63. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.11.007.

    Abstract

    This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this paradigm, naming latencies have been found to increase for successive presentations of exemplars from the same category, a phenomenon known as Cumulative Semantic Interference (CSI). As expected, the joint-naming task showed a within-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies increased as a function of the number of category exemplars named previously by the participant (self-produced items). Crucially, we also observed an across-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies slowed as a function of the number of category members named by the participant's task partner (other-produced items). The magnitude of the across-speaker CSI effect did not vary as a function of whether or not the listening participant could see the pictures their partner was naming. The observation of across-speaker CSI suggests that the effect originates at the conceptual level of the language system, as proposed by Belke's (2013) Conceptual Accumulation account. Whereas self-produced and other-produced words both resulted in a CSI effect on naming latencies, post-experiment free recall rates were higher for self-produced than other-produced items. Together, these results suggest that both speaking and listening result in implicit learning at the conceptual level of the language system but that these effects are independent of explicit learning as indicated by item recall.
  • Hoedemaker, R. S., & Meyer, A. S. (2019). Planning and coordination of utterances in a joint naming task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(4), 732-752. doi:10.1037/xlm0000603.

    Abstract

    Dialogue requires speakers to coordinate. According to the model of dialogue as joint action, interlocutors achieve this coordination by corepresenting their own and each other’s task share in a functionally equivalent manner. In two experiments, we investigated this corepresentation account using an interactive joint naming task in which pairs of participants took turns naming sets of objects on a shared display. Speaker A named the first, or the first and third object, and Speaker B named the second object. In control conditions, Speaker A named one, two, or all three objects and Speaker B remained silent. We recorded the timing of the speakers’ utterances and Speaker A’s eye movements. Interturn pause durations indicated that the speakers effectively coordinated their utterances in time. Speaker A’s speech onset latencies depended on the number of objects they named, but were unaffected by Speaker B’s naming task. This suggests speakers were not fully incorporating their partner’s task into their own speech planning. Moreover, Speaker A’s eye movements indicated that they were much less likely to attend to objects their partner named than to objects they named themselves. When speakers did inspect their partner’s objects, viewing times were too short to suggest that speakers were retrieving these object names as if they were planning to name the objects themselves. These results indicate that speakers prioritized planning their own responses over attending to their interlocutor’s task and suggest that effective coordination can be achieved without full corepresentation of the partner’s task.
  • Hoey, E. (2017). [Review of the book Temporality in Interaction]. Studies in Language, 41(1), 232-238. doi:10.1075/sl.41.1.08hoe.
  • Hoey, E. (2017). Lapse organization in interaction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hoey, E. (2017). Sequence recompletion: A practice for managing lapses in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 109, 47-63. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2016.12.008.

    Abstract

    Conversational interaction occasionally lapses as topics become exhausted or as participants are left with no obvious thing to talk about next. In this article I look at episodes of ordinary conversation to examine how participants resolve issues of speakership and sequentiality in lapse environments. In particular, I examine one recurrent phenomenon—sequence recompletion—whereby participants bring to completion a sequence of talk that was already treated as complete. Using conversation analysis, I describe four methods for sequence recompletion: turn-exiting, action redoings, delayed replies, and post-sequence transitions. With this practice, participants use verbal and vocal resources to locally manage their participation framework when ending one course of action and potentially starting up a new one
  • Holler, J., & Bavelas, J. (2017). Multi-modal communication of common ground: A review of social functions. In R. B. Church, M. W. Alibali, & S. D. Kelly (Eds.), Why gesture? How the hands function in speaking, thinking and communicating (pp. 213-240). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Until recently, the literature on common ground depicted its influence as a purely verbal phenomenon. We review current research on how common ground influences gesture. With informative exceptions, most experiments found that speakers used fewer gestures as well as fewer words in common ground contexts; i.e., the gesture/word ratio did not change. Common ground often led to more poorly articulated gestures, which parallels its effect on words. These findings support the principle of recipient design as well as more specific social functions such as grounding, the given-new contract, and Grice’s maxims. However, conceptual pacts or linking old with new information may maintain the original form. All together, these findings implicate gesture-speech ensembles rather than isolated effects on gestures alone.
  • Holler, J., & Levinson, S. C. (2019). Multimodal language processing in human communication. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(8), 639-652. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.006.

    Abstract

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

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

    The basis of the processing mechanisms involved in multimodal language comprehension is hypothesized to be domain general, coopted for communication, and refined with domain-specific characteristics.
    A new, situated framework for understanding human language processing is called for that takes into consideration the multilayered, multimodal nature of language and its production and comprehension in conversational interaction requiring fast processing.
  • Hömke, P., Holler, J., & Levinson, S. C. (2017). Eye blinking as addressee feedback in face-to-face conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50, 54-70. doi:10.1080/08351813.2017.1262143.

    Abstract

    Does blinking function as a type of feedback in conversation? To address this question, we built a corpus of Dutch conversations, identified short and long addressee blinks during extended turns, and measured their occurrence relative to the end of turn constructional units (TCUs), the location
    where feedback typically occurs. Addressee blinks were indeed timed to the
    end of TCUs. Also, long blinks were more likely than short blinks to occur
    during mutual gaze, with nods or continuers, and their occurrence was
    restricted to sequential contexts in which signaling understanding was
    particularly relevant, suggesting a special signaling capacity of long blinks.
  • Hömke, P. (2019). The face in face-to-face communication: Signals of understanding and non-understanding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hörpel, S. G., & Firzlaff, U. (2019). Processing of fast amplitude modulations in bat auditory cortex matches communication call-specific sound features. Journal of Neurophysiology, 121(4), 1501-1512. doi:10.1152/jn.00748.2018.
  • Howe, L., Lawson, D. J., Davies, N. M., St Pourcain, B., Lewis, S. J., Smith, G. D., & Hemani, G. (2019). Genetic evidence for assortative mating on alcohol consumption in the UK Biobank. Nature Communications, 10: 5039. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12424-x.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

    There is a consensus among language researchers that people can predict upcoming language. But do people always predict when comprehending language? Notions that “brains … are essentially prediction machines” certainly suggest so. In three eye-tracking experiments we tested this view. Participants listened to simple Dutch sentences (‘Look at the displayed bicycle’) while viewing four objects (a target, e.g. a bicycle, and three unrelated distractors). We used the identical visual stimuli and the same spoken sentences but varied speech rates, preview time, and participant instructions. Target nouns were preceded by definite gender-marked determiners, which allowed participants to predict the target object because only the targets but not the distractors agreed in gender with the determiner. In Experiment 1, participants had four seconds preview and sentences were presented either in a slow or a normal speech rate. Participants predicted the targets as soon as they heard the determiner in both conditions. Experiment 2 was identical except that participants were given only a one second preview. Participants predicted the targets only in the slow speech condition. Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2 except that participants were explicitly told to predict. This led only to a small prediction effect in the normal speech condition. Thus, a normal speech rate only afforded prediction if participants had an extensive preview. Even the explicit instruction to predict the target resulted in only a small anticipation effect with a normal speech rate and a short preview. These findings are problematic for theoretical proposals that assume that prediction pervades cognition.
  • Huettig, F., Mishra, R. K., & Padakannaya, P. (2017). Editorial. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 1( 1), 1. doi:10.1007/s41809-017-0006-2.
  • Huisman, J. L. A., Majid, A., & Van Hout, R. (2019). The geographical configuration of a language area influences linguistic diversity. PLoS One, 14(6): e0217363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217363.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

    Supplementary material
  • Iacozza, S., Costa, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2017). What do your eyes reveal about your foreign language? Reading emotional sentences in a native and foreign language. PLoS One, 12(10): e0186027. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186027.

    Abstract

    Foreign languages are often learned in emotionally neutral academic environments which differ greatly from the familiar context where native languages are acquired. This difference in learning contexts has been argued to lead to reduced emotional resonance when confronted with a foreign language. In the current study, we investigated whether the reactivity of the sympathetic nervous system in response to emotionally-charged stimuli is reduced in a foreign language. To this end, pupil sizes were recorded while reading aloud emotional sentences in the native or foreign language. Additionally, subjective ratings of emotional impact were provided after reading each sentence, allowing us to further investigate foreign language effects on explicit emotional understanding. Pupillary responses showed a larger effect of emotion in the native than in the foreign language. However, such a difference was not present for explicit ratings of emotionality. These results reveal that the sympathetic nervous system reacts differently depending on the language context, which in turns suggests a deeper emotional processing when reading in a native compared to a foreign language.

    Additional information

    pone.0186027.s001.docx
  • Indefrey, P., Sahin, H., & Gullberg, M. (2017). The expression of spatial relationships in Turkish-Dutch bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(3), 473-493. doi:10.1017/S1366728915000875.

    Abstract

    We investigated how two groups of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals and two groups of monolingual speakers of the two languages described static topological relations. The bilingual groups differed with respect to their first (L1) and second (L2) language proficiencies and a number of sociolinguistic factors. Using an elicitation tool that covers a wide range of topological relations, we first assessed the extensions of different spatial expressions (topological relation markers, TRMs) in the Turkish and Dutch spoken by monolingual speakers. We then assessed differences in the use of TRMs between the two bilingual groups and monolingual speakers. In both bilingual groups, differences compared to monolingual speakers were mainly observed for Turkish. Dutch-dominant bilinguals showed enhanced congruence between translation-equivalent Turkish and Dutch TRMs. Turkish-dominant bilinguals extended the use of a topologically neutral locative marker. Our results can be interpreted as showing different bilingual optimization strategies (Muysken, 2013) in bilingual speakers who live in the same environment but differ with respect to L2 onset, L2 proficiency, and perceived importance of the L1.
  • Ioumpa, K., Graham, S. A., Clausner, T., Fisher, S. E., Van Lier, R., & Van Leeuwen, T. M. (2019). Enhanced self-reported affect and prosocial behaviour without differential physiological responses in mirror-sensory synaesthesia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 374: 20190395. doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0395.

    Abstract

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

    Files private

    Request files
  • Isbilen, E. S., McCauley, S. M., Kidd, E., & Christiansen, M. H. (2017). Testing statistical learning implicitly: A novel chunk-based measure of statistical learning. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 564-569). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Attempts to connect individual differences in statistical learning with broader aspects of cognition have received considerable attention, but have yielded mixed results. A possible explanation is that statistical learning is typically tested using the two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task. As a meta-cognitive task relying on explicit familiarity judgments, 2AFC may not accurately capture implicitly formed statistical computations. In this paper, we adapt the classic serial-recall memory paradigm to implicitly test statistical learning in a statistically-induced chunking recall (SICR) task. We hypothesized that artificial language exposure would lead subjects to chunk recurring statistical patterns, facilitating recall of words from the input. Experiment 1 demonstrates that SICR offers more fine-grained insights into individual differences in statistical learning than 2AFC. Experiment 2 shows that SICR has higher test-retest reliability than that reported for 2AFC. Thus, SICR offers a more sensitive measure of individual differences, suggesting that basic chunking abilities may explain statistical learning.
  • Ito, A., Martin, A. E., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32, 954-965. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1242761.

    Abstract

    Current psycholinguistic theory proffers prediction as a central, explanatory mechanism in language
    processing. However, widely-replicated prediction effects may not mean that prediction is
    necessary in language processing. As a case in point, C. D. Martin et al. [2013. Bilinguals reading
    in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do.
    Journal of
    Memory and Language, 69
    (4), 574

    588. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001] reported ERP evidence for
    prediction in native- but not in non-native speakers. Articles mismatching an expected noun
    elicited larger negativity in the N400 time window compared to articles matching the expected
    noun in native speakers only. We attempted to replicate these findings, but found no evidence
    for prediction irrespective of language nativeness. We argue that pre-activation of phonological
    form of upcoming nouns, as evidenced in article-elicited effects, may not be a robust
    phenomenon. A view of prediction as a necessary computation in language comprehension
    must be re-evaluated.
  • Ito, A., Martin, A. E., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). On predicting form and meaning in a second language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(4), 635-652. doi:10.1037/xlm0000315.

    Abstract

    We used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether Spanish−English bilinguals preactivate form and meaning of predictable words. Participants read high-cloze sentence contexts (e.g., “The student is going to the library to borrow a . . .”), followed by the predictable word (book), a word that was form-related (hook) or semantically related (page) to the predictable word, or an unrelated word (sofa). Word stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) was 500 ms (Experiment 1) or 700 ms (Experiment 2). In both experiments, all nonpredictable words elicited classic N400 effects. Form-related and unrelated words elicited similar N400 effects. Semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, which however, did not depend on cloze value of the predictable word. Thus, we found no N400 evidence for preactivation of form or meaning at either SOA, unlike native-speaker results (Ito, Corley et al., 2016). However, non-native speakers did show the post-N400 posterior positivity (LPC effect) for form-related words like native speakers, but only at the slower SOA. This LPC effect increased gradually with cloze value of the predictable word. We do not interpret this effect as necessarily demonstrating prediction, but rather as evincing combined effects of top-down activation (contextual meaning) and bottom-up activation (form similarity) that result in activation of unseen words that fit the context well, thereby leading to an interpretation conflict reflected in the LPC. Although there was no evidence that non-native speakers preactivate form or meaning, non-native speakers nonetheless appear to use bottom-up and top-down information to constrain incremental interpretation much like native speakers do.
  • Ito, A., Martin, A. E., & Nieuwland, M. S. (2017). Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: A rebuttal to DeLong, Urbach & Kutas (2017). Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(8), 974-983. doi:10.1080/23273798.2017.1323112.
  • Iyer, S., Sam, F. S., DiPrimio, N., Preston, G., Verheijen, J., Murthy, K., Parton, Z., Tsang, H., Lao, J., Morava, E., & Perlstein, E. O. (2019). Repurposing the aldose reductase inhibitor and diabetic neuropathy drug epalrestat for the congenital disorder of glycosylation PMM2-CDG. Disease models & mechanisms, 12(11): UNSP dmm040584. doi:10.1242/dmm.040584.

    Abstract

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

    Additional information

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

    Abstract

    Research Findings: The present study compared effects of explicit instruction on and practice with the phonological form of words (form-focused instruction) versus explicit instruction on and practice with the meaning of words (meaning-focused instruction). Instruction was given via interactive storybook reading in the kindergarten classroom of children learning Dutch. We asked whether the 2 types of instruction had different effects on vocabulary development and 2 precursors of reading ability—phonological awareness and letter knowledge—and we examined effects on these measures of the ability to learn new words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences. Learners showed similar receptive target-word vocabulary gain after both types of instruction, but learners who received form-focused vocabulary instruction showed more gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge than learners who received meaning-focused vocabulary instruction. Level of ability to learn pairs of words with minimal acoustic-phonetic differences predicted gain in semantic knowledge of target vocabulary and in letter knowledge in the form-focused instruction group only. Practice or Policy: A focus on the form of words during instruction appears to have benefits for young children learning vocabulary.

Share this page