Publications

Displaying 1001 - 1085 of 1085
  • Van Rhijn, J. R., & Vernes, S. C. (2015). Retinoic acid signaling: A new piece in the spoken language puzzle. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1816. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01816.

    Abstract

    Speech requires precise motor control and rapid sequencing of highly complex vocal musculature. Despite its complexity, most people produce spoken language effortlessly. This is due to activity in distributed neuronal circuitry including cortico-striato-thalamic loops that control speech-motor output. Understanding the neuro-genetic mechanisms that encode these pathways will shed light on how humans can effortlessly and innately use spoken language and could elucidate what goes wrong in speech-language disorders.
    FOXP2 was the first single gene identified to cause speech and language disorder. Individuals with FOXP2 mutations display a severe speech deficit that also includes receptive and expressive language impairments. The underlying neuro-molecular mechanisms controlled by FOXP2, which will give insight into our capacity for speech-motor control, are only beginning to be unraveled. Recently FOXP2 was found to regulate genes involved in retinoic acid signaling and to modify the cellular response to retinoic acid, a key regulator of brain development. Herein we explore the evidence that FOXP2 and retinoic acid signaling function in the same pathways. We present evidence at molecular, cellular and behavioral levels that suggest an interplay between FOXP2 and retinoic acid that may be important for fine motor control and speech-motor output.
    We propose that retinoic acid signaling is an exciting new angle from which to investigate how neurogenetic mechanisms can contribute to the (spoken) language ready brain.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Role and Reference Grammar. In A. Carnie, Y. Sato, & D. Siddiqi (Eds.), Routledge handbook of syntax (pp. 579-603). London: Routledge.
  • Van den Boomen, C., Fahrenfort, J. J., Snijders, T. M., & Kemner, C. (2015). Segmentation precedes face categorization under suboptimal conditions. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 667. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00667.

    Abstract

    Both categorization and segmentation processes play a crucial role in face perception. However, the functional relation between these subprocesses is currently unclear. The present study investigates the temporal relation between segmentation-related and category-selective responses in the brain, using electroencephalography (EEG). Surface segmentation and category content were both manipulated using texture-defined objects, including faces. This allowed us to study brain activity related to segmentation and to categorization. In the main experiment, participants viewed texture-defined objects for a duration of 800 ms. EEG results revealed that segmentation-related responses precede category-selective responses. Three additional experiments revealed that the presence and timing of categorization depends on stimulus properties and presentation duration. Photographic objects were presented for a long and short (92 ms) duration and evoked fast category-selective responses in both cases. On the other hand, presentation of texture-defined objects for a short duration only evoked segmentation-related but no category-selective responses. Category-selective responses were much slower when evoked by texture-defined than by photographic objects. We suggest that in case of categorization of objects under suboptimal conditions, such as when low-level stimulus properties are not sufficient for fast object categorization, segmentation facilitates the slower categorization process
  • Van Rijswijk, R., & Muntendam, A. (2014). The prosody of focus in the Spanish of Quechua-Spanish bilinguals: A case study on noun phrases. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(6), 614-632. doi:10.1177/1367006912456103.

    Abstract

    This study examines the prosody of focus in the Spanish of 16 Quechua-Spanish bilinguals near Cusco, Peru. Data come from a dialogue game that involved noun phrases consisting of a noun and an adjective. The questions in the game elicited broad focus, contrastive focus on the noun (non-final position) and contrastive focus on the adjective (final position). The phonetic analysis in Praat included peak alignment, peak height, local range and duration of the stressed syllable and word. The study revealed that Cusco Spanish differs from other Spanish varieties. In other Spanish varieties, contrastive focus is marked by early peak alignment, whereas broad focus involves a late peak on the non-final word. Furthermore, in other Spanish varieties contrastive focus is indicated by a higher F0 maximum, a wider local range, post-focal pitch reduction and a longer duration of the stressed syllable/word. For Cusco Spanish no phonological contrast between early and late peak alignment was found. However, peak alignment on the adjective in contrastive focus was significantly earlier than in the two other contexts. For women, similar results were found for the noun in contrastive focus. An additional prominence-lending feature marking contrastive focus concerned duration of the final word. Furthermore, the results revealed a higher F0 maximum for broad focus than for contrastive focus. The findings suggest a prosodic change, which is possibly due to contact with Quechua. The study contributes to research on information structure, prosody and contact-induced language change.
  • Van Bommel, T., O'Dwyer, C., Zuidgeest, T. W. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (2015). When the reaper becomes a salesman: The influence of terror management on product preferences. Journal of Economic and Financial Studies, 3(5), 33-42. doi:10.18533/jefs.v3i05.121.

    Abstract

    The present research investigates how consumer choice is affected by Terror Management Theory’s proposition of Mortality Salience increasing one’s cultural worldview defense and self-esteem striving. The study builds empirically upon prior theorizing by Arndt, Solomon, Kasser and Sheldon (2004). During an experiment, we manipulated Mortality Salience and measured product preferences for conspicuousness and familiarity. Participants primed with death were more likely to choose conspicuous products, corroborating previous research of mortality salience raising materialistic tendencies. In addition, participants showed a tendency to prefer familiar brands. These results are in line with the Terror Management Theory framework.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2014). Yurakaré. In M. Crevels, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Las lenguas de Bolivia. Vol. 3: Oriente (pp. 135-174). La Paz: Plural Editores.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1995). Toward a functionalist account of so-called ‘extraction constraints’. In B. Devriendt (Ed.), Complex structures: A functionalist perspective (pp. 29-60). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Van Rooij, D., Hartman, C. A., Van Donkelaar, M. M. J., Bralten, J., von Rhein, D., Hakobjan, M., Franke, B., Heslenfeld, D. J., Oosterlaan, J., Rommelse, N., Buitelaar, J. K., & Hoekstra, P. J. (2015). Variation in serotonin neurotransmission genes affects neural activation during response inhibition in adolescents and young adults with ADHD and healthy controls. The world journal of biological Psychiatry, 16(8), 625-34. doi:10.3109/15622975.2015.1067371.

    Abstract

    OBJECTIVES: Deficits in response inhibition have been associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Given the role of serotonin in ADHD and impulsivity, we postulated that genetic variants within the serotonin pathway might influence response inhibition. METHODS: We measured neural activation during stop-signal task performance in adolescents with ADHD (N = 185), their unaffected siblings (N = 111), and healthy controls (N = 124), and investigated the relationship of two serotonin gene polymorphisms (the rs6296 SNP of the HTR1B gene and HTTLPR variants of the 5-HTT gene) with the neural correlates of response inhibition. RESULTS: The whole-brain analyses demonstrated large scale neural activation differences in the inferior and medial frontal and temporal/parietal regions of the response inhibition network between the different variants of both the HTR1B and 5HTT genes. Activation in these regions was significantly associated with stop-task performance, but not with ADHD diagnosis or severity. No associations were found between HTR1B and 5HTT variants and ADHD or ADHD-related neural activation. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide novel evidence that serotonin may play an important role in the neurobiology of response inhibition. Although response inhibition is strongly linked to ADHD, serotonin linked genetic variants associated with response inhibition and its neural correlates do not explain variance of the ADHD phenotype.
  • Veenstra, A., Meyer, A. S., & Acheson, D. J. (2015). Effects of parallel planning on agreement production. Acta Psychologica, 162, 29-39. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.09.011.

    Abstract

    An important issue in current psycholinguistics is how the time course of utterance planning affects the generation of grammatical structures. The current study investigated the influence of parallel activation of the components of complex noun phrases on the generation of subject-verb agreement. Specifically, the lexical interference account (Gillespie, M. and Pearlmutter, N. J., 2011b and Solomon, E. S. and Pearlmutter, N. J., 2004) predicts more agreement errors (i.e., attraction) for subject phrases in which the head and local noun mismatch in number (e.g., the apple next to the pears) when nouns are planned in parallel than when they are planned in sequence. We used a speeded picture description task that yielded sentences such as the apple next to the pears is red. The objects mentioned in the noun phrase were either semantically related or unrelated. To induce agreement errors, pictures sometimes mismatched in number. In order to manipulate the likelihood of parallel processing of the objects and to test the hypothesized relationship between parallel processing and the rate of agreement errors, the pictures were either placed close together or far apart. Analyses of the participants' eye movements and speech onset latencies indicated slower processing of the first object and stronger interference from the related (compared to the unrelated) second object in the close than in the far condition. Analyses of the agreement errors yielded an attraction effect, with more errors in mismatching than in matching conditions. However, the magnitude of the attraction effect did not differ across the close and far conditions. Thus, spatial proximity encouraged parallel processing of the pictures, which led to interference of the associated conceptual and/or lexical representation, but, contrary to the prediction, it did not lead to more attraction errors.
  • Veenstra, A., Acheson, D. J., Bock, K., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Effects of semantic integration on subject–verb agreement: Evidence from Dutch. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(3), 355-380. doi:10.1080/01690965.2013.862284.

    Abstract

    The generation of subject–verb agreement is a central component of grammatical encoding. It is sensitive to conceptual and grammatical influences, but the interplay between these factors is still not fully understood. We investigate how semantic integration of the subject noun phrase (‘the secretary of/with the governor’) and the Local Noun Number (‘the secretary with the governor/governors’) affect the ease of selecting the verb form. Two hypotheses are assessed: according to the notional hypothesis, integration encourages the assignment of the singular notional number to the noun phrase and facilitates the choice of the singular verb form. According to the lexical interference hypothesis, integration strengthens the competition between nouns within the subject phrase, making it harder to select the verb form when the nouns mismatch in number. In two experiments, adult speakers of Dutch completed spoken preambles (Experiment 1) or selected appropriate verb forms (Experiment 2). Results showed facilitatory effects of semantic integration (fewer errors and faster responses with increasing integration). These effects did not interact with the effects of the Local Noun Number (slower response times and higher error rates for mismatching than for matching noun numbers). The findings thus support the notional hypothesis and a model of agreement where conceptual and lexical factors independently contribute to the determination of the number of the subject noun phrase and, ultimately, the verb.
  • Veenstra, A., Acheson, D. J., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 783. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00783.

    Abstract

    Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1) Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s)); and (2) this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material. We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars) and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue) with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple materials.
  • Veenstra, A. (2014). Semantic and syntactic constraints on the production of subject-verb agreement. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Verbeek, N. E., van der Maas, N. A. T., Sonsma, A. C. M., Ippel, E., Bondt, P., Hagebeuk, E., Jansen, F. E., Geesink, H. H., Braun, K. P., de Louw, A., Augustijn, P. B., Neuteboom, R. F., Schieving, J. H., Stroink, H., Vermeulen, R. J., Nicolai, J., Brouwer, O. F., Van Kempen, M., De Kovel, C. G. F., Kemmeren, J. M. and 5 moreVerbeek, N. E., van der Maas, N. A. T., Sonsma, A. C. M., Ippel, E., Bondt, P., Hagebeuk, E., Jansen, F. E., Geesink, H. H., Braun, K. P., de Louw, A., Augustijn, P. B., Neuteboom, R. F., Schieving, J. H., Stroink, H., Vermeulen, R. J., Nicolai, J., Brouwer, O. F., Van Kempen, M., De Kovel, C. G. F., Kemmeren, J. M., Koeleman, B. P. C., Knoers, N. V., Lindhout, D., Gunning, W. B., & Brilstra, E. H. (2015). Effect of vaccinations on seizure risk and disease course in Dravet syndrome. Neurology, 85(7), 596-603. doi:10.1212/wnl.0000000000001855.

    Abstract

    Objective: To study the effect of vaccination-associated seizure onset on disease course and estimate the risk of subsequent seizures after infant pertussis combination and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccinations in Dravet syndrome (DS). Methods: We retrospectively analyzed data from hospital medical files, child health clinics, and the vaccination register for children with DS and pathogenic SCN1A mutations. Seizures within 24 hours after infant whole-cell, acellular, or nonpertussis combination vaccination or within 5 to 12 days after MMR vaccination were defined as "vaccination-associated." Risks of vaccination-associated seizures for the different vaccines were analyzed in univariable and in multivariable logistic regression for pertussis combination vaccines and by a self-controlled case series analysis using parental seizure registries for MMR vaccines. Disease courses of children with and without vaccination-associated seizure onset were compared. Results: Children who had DS (n = 77) with and without vaccination-associated seizure onset (21% and 79%, respectively) differed in age at first seizure (median 3.7 vs 6.1 months, p < 0.001) but not in age at first nonvaccination-associated seizure, age at first report of developmental delay, or cognitive outcome. The risk of subsequent vaccination-associated seizures was significantly lower for acellular pertussis (9%; odds ratio 0.18, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.05-0.71) and nonpertussis (8%; odds ratio 0.11, 95% CI 0.02-0.59) than whole-cell pertussis (37%; reference) vaccines. Self-controlled case series analysis showed an increased incidence rate ratio of seizures of 2.3 (95% CI 1.5-3.4) within the risk period of 5 to 12 days following MMR vaccination. Conclusions: Our results suggest that vaccination-associated earlier seizure onset does not alter disease course in DS, while the risk of subsequent vaccination-associated seizures is probably vaccine-specific.
  • Verdonschot, R. G., Lai, J., Chen, F., Tamaoka, K., & Schiller, N. O. (2015). Constructing initial phonology in Mandarin Chinese: Syllabic or subsyllabic? A masked priming investigation. Japanese Psychological Research, 57(1), 61-68. doi:10.1111/jpr.12064.

    Abstract

    Recent research has put forward the idea that Chinese speech production is governed by the syllable as the fundamental phonological unit. However, it may be that onset priming might be more difficult to obtain in Mandarin Chinese. Therefore, in this study, the degree of overlap between prime and target was increased from C to CV (i.e., extending beyond the phoneme) as well as whether primes and targets had an overlapping structure (CV vs. CVN). Subsyllabic priming effects were found (i.e., onset + vowel overlap but not purely onset overlap), contrasting with the claim that the syllable is the compulsory building block in the initial construction of Mandarin Chinese phonology.
  • Verdonschot, R. G., & Tamaoka, K. (2015). Editorial: The production of speech sounds across languages. Japanese Psychological Research, 57(1), 1-3. doi:10.1111/jpr.12073.
  • Verdonschot, R. G., Guillemaud, H., Rabenarivo, H., & Tamaoka, K. (2015). The Microsoft KINECT: A novel tool for psycholinguistic research. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 5, 291-301. doi:10.4236/ojml.2015.53026.

    Abstract

    The Microsoft KINECT is a 3D sensing device originally developed for the XBOX. The Microsoft KINECT opens up many exciting new opportunities for conducting experimental research on human behavior. We investigated some of these possibilities within the field of psycholinguistics (specifically: language production) by creating software, using C#, allowing for the KINECT to be used in a typical psycholinguistic experimental setting. The results of a naming experiment using this software confirmed that the KINECT was able to measure the effects of a robust psycholinguistic variable (word frequency) on naming latencies. However, although the current version of the software is able to measure psycholinguistic variables of interest, we also discuss several points where the software can still stand to be improved. The main aim of this paper is to make the software freely available for assessment and use by the psycholinguistic community and to illustrate the KINECT as a potentially valuable tool for investigating human behavior, especially in the field of psycholinguistics.
  • Verdonschot, R. G., & Tamaoka, K. (Eds.). (2015). The production of speech sounds across languages [Special Issue]. Japanese Psychological Research, 57(1).
  • Verga, L. (2015). Learning together or learning alone: Investigating the role of social interaction in second language word learning. PhD Thesis, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
  • Verga, L., Bigand, E., & Kotz, S. A. (2015). Play along: Effects of music and social interaction on word learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1316. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01316.

    Abstract

    Learning new words is an increasingly common necessity in everyday life. External factors, among which music and social interaction are particularly debated, are claimed to facilitate this task. Due to their influence on the learner’s temporal behavior, these stimuli are able to drive the learner’s attention to the correct referent of new words at the correct point in time. However, do music and social interaction impact learning behavior in the same way? The current study aims to answer this question. Native German speakers (N = 80) were requested to learn new words (pseudo-words) during a contextual learning game. This learning task was performed alone with a computer or with a partner, with or without music. Results showed that music and social interaction had a different impact on the learner’s behavior: Participants tended to temporally coordinate their behavior more with a partner than with music, and in both cases more than with a computer. However, when both music and social interaction were present, this temporal coordination was hindered. These results suggest that while music and social interaction do influence participants’ learning behavior, they have a different impact. Moreover, impaired behavior when both music and a partner are present suggests that different mechanisms are employed to coordinate with the two types of stimuli. Whether one or the other approach is more efficient for word learning, however, is a question still requiring further investigation, as no differences were observed between conditions in a retrieval phase, which took place immediately after the learning session. This study contributes to the literature on word learning in adults by investigating two possible facilitating factors, and has important implications for situations such as music therapy, in which music and social interaction are present at the same time.
  • Vergani, F., Mahmood, S., Morris, C., Mitchell, P., & Forkel, S. J. (2014). Intralobar fibres of the occipital lobe: A post mortem dissection study. Cortex, 56, 145-156. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2014.03.002.

    Abstract

    Introduction

    The atlas by Heinrich Sachs (1892) provided an accurate description of the intralobar fibres of the occipital lobe, with a detailed representation of the short associative tracts connecting different parts of the lobe. Little attention has been paid to the work of Sachs since its publication. In this study, we present the results of the dissection of three hemispheres, performed according to the Klingler technique (1935). Our anatomical findings are then compared to the original description of the occipital fibres anatomy as detailed by Sachs.
    Methods

    Three hemispheres were dissected according to Klingler's technique (1935). Specimens were fixed in 10% formalin and frozen at −15 °C for two weeks. After defreezing, dissection of the white matter fibres was performed with blunt dissectors. Coronal sections were obtained according to the cuts originally described by Sachs. In addition, medial to lateral and lateral to medial dissection of the white matter of the occipital lobe was also performed.

    Results

    A network of short association fibres was demonstrated in the occipital lobe, comprising intralobar association fibres and U-shaped fibres, which are connecting neighbouring gyri. Lateral to the ventricles, longitudinal fibres of the stratum sagittale were also identified that are arranged as external and internal layers. Fibres of the forceps major were also found to be in direct contact with the ventricular walls. We were able to replicate all tracts originally described by Sachs. In addition, a previously unrecognised tract, connecting the cuneus to the lingual gyrus, was identified. This tract corresponds to the “sledge runner”, described in tractography studies.

    Conclusions

    The occipital lobe shows a rich network of intralobar fibres, arranged around the ventricular wall. Good concordance was observed between the Klingler dissection technique and the histological preparations of Sachs.
  • Verhees, M. W. F. T., Chwilla, D. J., Tromp, J., & Vissers, C. T. W. M. (2015). Contributions of emotional state and attention to the processing of syntactic agreement errors: evidence from P600. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 388. doi:10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2015.00388.

    Abstract

    The classic account of language is that language processing occurs in isolation from other cognitive systems, like perception, motor action, and emotion. The central theme of this paper is the relationship between a participant’s emotional state and language comprehension. Does emotional context affect how we process neutral words? Recent studies showed that processing of word meaning – traditionally conceived as an automatic process – is affected by emotional state. The influence of emotional state on syntactic processing is less clear. One study reported a mood-related P600 modulation, while another study did not observe an effect of mood on syntactic processing. The goals of this study were: First, to clarify whether and if so how mood affects syntactic processing. Second, to shed light on the underlying mechanisms by separating possible effects of mood from those of attention on syntactic processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read syntactically correct or incorrect sentences. Mood (happy vs. sad) was manipulated by presenting film clips. Attention was manipulated by directing attention to syntactic features vs. physical features. The mood induction was effective. Interactions between mood, attention and syntactic correctness were obtained, showing that mood and attention modulated P600. The mood manipulation led to a reduction in P600 for sad as compared to happy mood when attention was directed at syntactic features. The attention manipulation led to a reduction in P600 when attention was directed at physical features compared to syntactic features for happy mood. From this we draw two conclusions: First, emotional state does affect syntactic processing. We propose mood-related differences in the reliance on heuristics as the underlying mechanism. Second, attention can contribute to emotion-related ERP effects in syntactic language processing. Therefore, future studies on the relation between language and emotion will have to control for effects of attention
  • Verhoef, T., Roberts, S. G., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Emergence of systematic iconicity: Transmission, interaction and analogy. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 2481-2486). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Languages combine arbitrary and iconic signals. How do iconic signals emerge and when do they persist? We present an experimental study of the role of iconicity in the emergence of structure in an artificial language. Using an iterated communication game in which we control the signalling medium as well as the meaning space, we study the evolution of communicative signals in transmission chains. This sheds light on how affordances of the communication medium shape and constrain the mappability and transmissibility of form-meaning pairs. We find that iconic signals can form the building blocks for wider compositional patterns
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). Diachronic change in Indo-European motion event encoding. Journal of Historical Linguistics, 4, 40-83. doi:10.1075/jhl.4.1.02ver.

    Abstract

    There are many different syntactic constructions that languages can use to encode motion events. In recent decades, great advances have been made in the description and study of these syntactic constructions from languages spoken around the world (Talmy 1985, 1991, Slobin 1996, 2004). However, relatively little attention has been paid to historical change in these systems (exceptions are Vincent 1999, Dufresne, Dupuis & Tremblay 2003, Kopecka 2006 and Peyraube 2006). In this article, diachronic change of motion event encoding systems in Indo-European is investigated using the available historical–comparative data and phylogenetic comparative methods adopted from evolutionary biology. It is argued that Proto-Indo-European was not satellite-framed, as suggested by Talmy (2007) and Acedo Matellán and Mateu (2008), but had a mixed motion event encoding system, as is suggested by the available historical–comparative data
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). The correlation between motion event encoding and path verb lexicon size in the Indo-European language family. Folia Linguistica Historica, 35, 307-358. doi:10.1515/flih.2014.009.

    Abstract

    There have been opposing views on the possibility of a relationship between motion event encoding and the size of the path verb lexicon. Özçalışkan (2004) has proposed that verb-framed and satellite-framed languages should approximately have the same number of path verbs, whereas a review of some of the literature suggests that verb-framed languages typically have a bigger path verb lexicon than satelliteframed languages. In this article I demonstrate that evidence for this correlation can be found through phylogenetic comparative analysis of parallel corpus data from twenty Indo-European languages.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). The evolutionary dynamics of motion event encoding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). Where Alice fell into: Motion events from a parallel corpus. In B. Szmrecsanyi, & B. Wälchli (Eds.), Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis: Linguistic variation in text and speech (pp. 324-354). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Verkerk, A. (2015). Where do all the motion verbs come from? The speed of development of manner verbs and path verbs in Indo-European. Diachronica, 32(1), 69-104. doi:10.1075/dia.32.1.03ver.

    Abstract

    The last four decades have seen huge progress in the description and analysis of cross-linguistic diversity in the encoding of motion (Talmy 1985, 1991, Slobin 1996, 2004). Comparisons between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages suggest that satellite-framed languages typically have a larger manner of motion verb lexicon (swim, dash), while verb-framed languages typically have a larger path of motion verb lexicon (enter, cross) (Slobin 2004, Verkerk 2013, 2014b). This paper investigates how differences between the motion verb lexicons of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages emerge. Phylogenetic comparative methods adopted from biology and an etymological study are used to investigate manner verb lexicons and path verb lexicons in an Indo-European dataset. I show that manner verbs and path verbs typically have different types of etymological origins and that manner verbs emerge faster in satellite-framed subgroups, while path verbs emerge faster in verb-framed subgroups.
  • Vernes, S. C. (2014). Genome wide identification of fruitless targets suggests a role in upregulating genes important for neural circuit formation. Scientific Reports, 4: 4412. doi:10.1038/srep04412.

    Abstract

    The fruitless gene (fru) encodes a set of transcription factors (Fru) that display sexually dimorphic gene expression in the brain of the fruit-fly;Drosophila melanogaster . Behavioural studies have demonstrated that fru isessentialforcourtshipbehaviour inthemale flyandisthoughttoact bydirectingthe development of sex-specific neural circuitry that encodes this innate behavioural response. This study reports the identification of direct regulatory targets of the sexually dimorphic isoforms of the Fru protein using an in vitro model system. Genome wide binding sites were identified for each of the isoforms using Chromatin Immunoprecipitation coupled to deep sequencing (ChIP-Seq). Putative target genes were found to be involved in processes such as neurotransmission, ion-channel signalling and neuron development. All isoforms showed asignificant bias towards genes located on the X-chromosome,which may reflect a specific role for Fru in regulating x-linked genes. Taken together with expression analysis carried out in Fru positive neurons specifically isolated from the male fly brain, it appears that the Fru protein acts as a transcriptional activator. Understanding the regulatory cascades induced by Fru will help to shed light on the molecular mechanisms that are important for specification of neural circuitry underlying complex behaviour
  • Viebahn, M., Ernestus, M., & McQueen, J. M. (2015). Syntactic predictability in the recognition of carefully and casually produced speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(6), 1684-1702. doi:10.1037/a0039326.
  • Villanueva, P., Nudel, R., Hoischen, A., Fernández, M. A., Simpson, N. H., Gilissen, C., Reader, R. H., Jara, L., Echeverry, M., Francks, C., Baird, G., Conti-Ramsden, G., O’Hare, A., Bolton, P., Hennessy, E. R., the SLI Consortium, Palomino, H., Carvajal-Carmona Veltman J.A., L., Veltman, J. A., Cazier, J.-B. and 3 moreVillanueva, P., Nudel, R., Hoischen, A., Fernández, M. A., Simpson, N. H., Gilissen, C., Reader, R. H., Jara, L., Echeverry, M., Francks, C., Baird, G., Conti-Ramsden, G., O’Hare, A., Bolton, P., Hennessy, E. R., the SLI Consortium, Palomino, H., Carvajal-Carmona Veltman J.A., L., Veltman, J. A., Cazier, J.-B., De Barbieri, Z., Fisher, S. E., & Newbury, D. (2015). Exome sequencing in an admixed isolated population indicates NFXL1 variants confer a risk for Specific Language Impairment. PLoS Genetics, 11(3): e1004925. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004925.
  • De Vos, C. (2014). Absolute spatial deixis and proto-toponyms in Kata Kolok. NUSA: Linguistic studies of languages in and around Indonesia, 56, 3-26.

    Abstract

    This paper presents an overview of spatial deictic structures in Kata Kolok, a sign language which is indigenous to a Balinese village community. Sociolinguistic surveys and lexicographic comparisons have indicated that Kata Kolok is unrelated to the signing varieties in other parts of Bali and should be considered a sign language isolate as such. Kata Kolok emerged five generations ago and has been in intimate contact with spoken Balinese from its incipience. The findings from this paper suggest that this cross-modal contact has led to an absolute construction of the signing space, which is radically different in comparison to spatial deixis in other sign languages. Furthermore, Kata Kolok does not seem to have a class of true toponyms, but rather deploys deictic proto-toponyms. The Kata Kolok system on the whole does not exhibit any related linguistic forms or direct calques from spoken Balinese, and this suggests that the conceptual overlap between these two languages may have been facilitated by shared cultural practices as well as gestural communication rather than direct borrowings. Ultimately, this analysis challenges the very notion of a sign language isolate and suggests that Kata Kolok and other emergent signing varieties should be considered in light of the broader semiotic context in which they have evolved.

    Additional information

    http://hdl.handle.net/11372/VC-1001
  • De Vos, C., & Pfau, R. (2015). Sign Language Typology: The contribution of rural sign languages. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 265-288. doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124958.

    Abstract

    Since the 1990s, the field of sign language typology has shown that sign languages exhibit typological variation at all relevant levels of linguistic description. These initial typological comparisons were heavily skewed toward the urban sign languages of developed countries, mostly in the Western world. This review reports on the recent contributions made by rural signing varieties, that is, sign languages that have evolved in village communities, often in developing countries, due to a high incidence of deafness. With respect to a number of structural properties, rural sign languages fit into previously established typological classifications. However, they also exhibit unique and typologically marked features that challenge received views on possible sign languages. At the same time, the shared features of geographically dispersed rural signing varieties provide a unique window into the social dynamics that may shape the structures of modern human languages.
  • De Vos, C. (2015). The Kata Kolok pointing system: Morphemization and syntactic integration. Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(1), 150-168. doi:10.1111/tops.12124.

    Abstract

    Signed utterances are densely packed with pointing signs, reaching a frequency of one in six signs in spontaneous conversations (de Vos, 2012; Johnston, 2013a; Morford & MacFarlane, 2003). These pointing signs attain a wide range of functions and are formally highly diversified. Based on corpus analysis of spontaneous pointing signs in Kata Kolok, a rural signing variety of Bali, this paper argues that the full meaning potentials of pointing signs come about through the integration of a varied set of linguistic and extralinguistic cues. Taking this hybrid nature of point- ing phenomena into account, it is argued that pointing signs may become an intrinsic aspect of sign language grammars through two mechanisms: morphemization and syntactic integration. Although not entailed in this research, this approach could implicate that some highly systema- tized pointing systems of speaking communities may to a degree be grammatical as well.

    Additional information

    tops12124-sup-0001-AppenidxSa-Sb.docx
  • De Vos, C., Torreira, F., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). Turn-timing in signed conversations: Coordinating stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 268. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00268.

    Abstract

    In spoken interactions, interlocutors carefully plan and time their utterances, minimising gaps and overlaps between consecutive turns. Cross-linguistic comparison has indicated that spoken languages vary only minimally in terms of turn-timing, and language acquisition research has shown pre-linguistic vocal turn-taking in the first half year of life. These observations suggest that the turn-taking system may provide a fundamental basis for our linguistic capacities. The question remains however to what extent our capacity for rapid turn-taking is determined by modality constraints. The avoidance of overlapping turns could be motivated by the difficulty of hearing and speaking at the same time. If so, turn-taking in sign might show greater toleration for overlap. Alternatively, signed conversations may show a similar distribution of turn-timing as spoken languages, thus avoiding both gaps and overlaps. To address this question we look at turn-timing in question-answer sequences in spontaneous conversations of Sign Language of the Netherlands. The findings indicate that although there is considerable overlap in two or more signers' articulators in conversation, when proper allowance is made for onset preparation, post-utterance retraction and the intentional holding of signs for response, turn-taking latencies in sign look remarkably like those reported for spoken language. This is consistent with the possibility that, at least with regard to responses to questions, speakers and signers follow similar time courses in planning and producing their utterances in on-going conversation. This suggests that turn-taking systems may well be a shared cognitive infrastructure underlying all modern human languages, both spoken and signed.
  • De Vries, B., Eising, E., Broos, L. A. M., Koelewijn, S. C., Todorov, B., Frants, R. R., Boer, J. M., Ferraro, M. D., Thoen, P. A. C., & Van Den Maagdenberg, A. (2014). RNA expression profiling in brains of familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 knock-in mice. Cephalalgia, 34(3), 174-182. doi:10.1177/0333102413502736.

    Abstract

    Background Various CACNA1A missense mutations cause familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 (FHM1), a rare monogenic subtype of migraine with aura. FHM1 mutation R192Q is associated with pure hemiplegic migraine, whereas the S218L mutation causes hemiplegic migraine, cerebellar ataxia, seizures, and mild head trauma-induced brain edema. Transgenic knock-in (KI) migraine mouse models were generated that carried either the FHM1 R192Q or the S218L mutation and were shown to exhibit increased CaV2.1 channel activity. Here we investigated their cerebellar and caudal cortical transcriptome. Methods Caudal cortical and cerebellar RNA expression profiles from mutant and wild-type mice were studied using microarrays. Respective brain regions were selected based on their relevance to migraine aura and ataxia. Relevant expression changes were further investigated at RNA and protein level by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and/or immunohistochemistry, respectively. Results Expression differences in the cerebellum were most pronounced in S218L mice. Particularly, tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker of delayed cerebellar maturation, appeared strongly upregulated in S218L cerebella. In contrast, only minimal expression differences were observed in the caudal cortex of either mutant mice strain. Conclusion Despite pronounced consequences of migraine gene mutations at the neurobiological level, changes in cortical RNA expression in FHM1 migraine mice compared to wild-type are modest. In contrast, pronounced RNA expression changes are seen in the cerebellum of S218L mice and may explain their cerebellar ataxia phenotype
  • Wain, L. V., Shrine, N., Miller, S., Jackson, V. E., Ntalla, I., Artigas, M. S., Billington, C. K., Kheirallah, A. K., Allen, R., Cook, J. P., Probert, K., Obeidat, M., Bossé, Y., Hao, K., Postma, D. S., Paré, P. D., Ramasamy, A., UK Brain Expression Consortium (UKBEC), Mägi, R., Mihailov, E., Reinmaa, E. and 20 moreWain, L. V., Shrine, N., Miller, S., Jackson, V. E., Ntalla, I., Artigas, M. S., Billington, C. K., Kheirallah, A. K., Allen, R., Cook, J. P., Probert, K., Obeidat, M., Bossé, Y., Hao, K., Postma, D. S., Paré, P. D., Ramasamy, A., UK Brain Expression Consortium (UKBEC), Mägi, R., Mihailov, E., Reinmaa, E., Melén, E., O’Connell, J., Frangou, E., Delaneau, O., OxGSK, C., Freeman, C., Petkova, D., McCarthy, M., Sayers, I., Deloukas, P., Hubbard, R., Pavord, I., Hansell, A. L., Thomson, N. C., Zeggini, E., Morris, A. P., Marchini, J., Strachan, D. P., Tobin, M. D., & Hall, I. P. (2015). Novel insights into the genetics of smoking behaviour, lung function, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (UK BiLEVE): a genetic association study in UK Biobank. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 3(10), 769-781. doi:10.1016/S2213-2600(15)00283-0.

    Abstract

    Understanding the genetic basis of airflow obstruction and smoking behaviour is key to determining the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We used UK Biobank data to study the genetic causes of smoking behaviour and lung health.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Wang, L., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., & Yang, Y. (2015). ERP responses to person names as a measure of trait inference in person perception. Social Neuroscience, 10, 89-99. doi:10.1080/17470919.2014.944995.

    Abstract

    Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this study examines how trait information inferred from behaviors is associated with person names. In linguistic discourses, person names were associated with descriptions of either positive or negative behaviors. In a subsequent explicit evaluation task, the previously described person names were presented in isolation, and the participants were asked to judge the emotional valence of these names. We found that the names associated with positive descriptions elicited a larger positivity in the ERP than the names associated with negative descriptions. The results indicate that the emotional valence of person names attached to person perception can be dynamically influenced by short descriptions of the target person, probably due to trait inference based on the provided behavioral descriptions

    Files private

    Request files
  • Wanrooij, K., De Vos, J., & Boersma, P. (2015). Distributional vowel training may not be effective for Dutch adults. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    Distributional vowel training for adults has been reported as “effective” for Spanish and Bulgarian learners of Dutch vowels, in studies using a behavioural task. A recent study did not yield a similar clear learning effect for Dutch learners of the English vowel contrast /æ/~/ε/, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). The present study aimed to examine the possibility that the latter result was related to the method. As in the ERP study, we tested whether distributional training improved Dutch adult learners’ perception of English /æ/~/ε/. However, we measured behaviour instead of ERPs, in a design identical to that used in the previous studies with Spanish learners. The results do not support an effect of distributional training and thus “replicate” the ERP study. We conclude that it remains unclear whether distributional vowel training is effective for Dutch adults.
  • Ward, M. E., McMahon, G., St Pourcain, B., Evans, D. M., Rietveld, C. A., Benjamin, D. J., Koellinger, P. D., Cesarini, D., Smith, G. D., Timpson, N. J., & Consortium}, {. S. G. A. (2014). Genetic variation associated with differential educational attainment in adults has anticipated associations with school performance in children. PLoS ONE, 9(7): e100248. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100248.

    Abstract

    Genome-wide association study results have yielded evidence for the association of common genetic variants with crude measures of completed educational attainment in adults. Whilst informative, these results do not inform as to the mechanism of these effects or their presence at earlier ages and where educational performance is more routinely and more precisely assessed. Single nucleotide polymorphisms exhibiting genome-wide significant associations with adult educational attainment were combined to derive an unweighted allele score in 5,979 and 6,145 young participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children with key stage 3 national curriculum test results (SATS results) available at age 13 to 14 years in English and mathematics respectively. Standardised (z-scored) results for English and mathematics showed an expected relationship with sex, with girls exhibiting an advantage over boys in English (0.433 SD (95%CI 0.395, 0.470), p<10-10) with more similar results (though in the opposite direction) in mathematics (0.042 SD (95%CI 0.004, 0.080), p = 0.030). Each additional adult educational attainment increasing allele was associated with 0.041 SD (95%CI 0.020, 0.063), p = 1.79×10-04 and 0.028 SD (95%CI 0.007, 0.050), p = 0.01 increases in standardised SATS score for English and mathematics respectively. Educational attainment is a complex multifactorial behavioural trait which has not had heritable contributions to it fully characterised. We were able to apply the results from a large study of adult educational attainment to a study of child exam performance marking events in the process of learning rather than realised adult end product. Our results support evidence for common, small genetic contributions to educational attainment, but also emphasise the likely lifecourse nature of this genetic effect. Results here also, by an alternative route, suggest that existing methods for child examination are able to recognise early life variation likely to be related to ultimate educational attainment.
  • Warner, N., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2014). Tracking perception of the sounds of English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 135, 2295-3006. doi:10.1121/1.4870486.

    Abstract

    Twenty American English listeners identified gated fragments of all 2288 possible English within-word and cross-word diphones, providing a total of 538 560 phoneme categorizations. The results show orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal and provide a view of where information about segments occurs in time. Information locus depends on each speech sound’s identity and phonological features. Affricates and diphthongs have highly localized information so that listeners’ perceptual accuracy rises during a confined time range. Stops and sonorants have more distributed and gradually appearing information. The identity and phonological features (e.g., vowel vs consonant) of the neighboring segment also influences when acoustic information about a segment is available. Stressed vowels are perceived significantly more accurately than unstressed vowels, but this effect is greater for lax vowels than for tense vowels or diphthongs. The dataset charts the availability of perceptual cues to segment identity across time for the full phoneme repertoire of English in all attested phonetic contexts.
  • Warrier, V., Chakrabarti, B., Murphy, L., Chan, A., Craig, I., Mallya, U., Lakatošová, S., Rehnstrom, K., Peltonen, L., Wheelwright, S., Allison, C., Fisher, S. E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). A pooled genome-wide association study of Asperger Syndrome. PLoS One, 10(7): e0131202. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131202.

    Abstract

    Asperger Syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, alongside the presence of unusually repetitive, restricted interests and stereotyped behaviour. Individuals with AS have no delay in cognitive and language development. It is a subset of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), which are highly heritable and has a population prevalence of approximately 1%. Few studies have investigated the genetic basis of AS. To address this gap in the literature, we performed a genome-wide pooled DNA association study to identify candidate loci in 612 individuals (294 cases and 318 controls) of Caucasian ancestry, using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping version 6.0 array. We identified 11 SNPs that had a p-value below 1x10-5. These SNPs were independently genotyped in the same sample. Three of the SNPs (rs1268055, rs7785891 and rs2782448) were nominally significant, though none remained significant after Bonferroni correction. Two of our top three SNPs (rs7785891 and rs2782448) lie in loci previously implicated in ASC. However, investigation of the three SNPs in the ASC genome-wide association dataset from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium indicated that these three SNPs were not significantly associated with ASC. The effect sizes of the variants were modest, indicating that our study was not sufficiently powered to identify causal variants with precision.
  • Warrington, N. M., Howe, L. D., Paternoster, L., Kaakinen, M., Herrala, S., Huikari, V., Wu, Y. Y., Kemp, J. P., Timpson, N. J., St Pourcain, B., Smith, G. D., Tilling, K., Jarvelin, M.-R., Pennell, C. E., Evans, D. M., Lawlor, D. A., Briollais, L., & Palmer, L. J. (2015). A genome-wide association study of body mass index across early life and childhood. International Journal of Epidemiology, 44(2), 700-712. doi:10.1093/ije/dyv077.

    Abstract

    Background: Several studies have investigated the effect of known adult body mass index (BMI) associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on BMI in childhood. There has been no genome-wide association study (GWAS) of BMI trajectories over childhood.
    Methods: We conducted a GWAS meta-analysis of BMI trajectories from 1 to 17 years of age in 9377 children (77 967 measurements) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Genome-wide significant loci were examined in a further 3918 individuals (48 530 measurements) from Northern Finland. Linear mixed effects models with smoothing splines were used in each cohort for longitudinal modelling of BMI.
    Results: A novel SNP, downstream from the FAM120AOS gene on chromosome 9, was detected in the meta-analysis of ALSPAC and Raine. This association was driven by a difference in BMI at 8 years (T allele of rs944990 increased BMI; PSNP = 1.52 × 10−8), with a modest association with change in BMI over time (PWald(Change) = 0.006). Three known adult BMI-associated loci (FTO, MC4R and ADCY3) and one childhood obesity locus (OLFM4) reached genome-wide significance (PWald < 1.13 × 10−8) with BMI at 8 years and/or change over time.
    Conclusions: This GWAS of BMI trajectories over childhood identified a novel locus that warrants further investigation. We also observed genome-wide significance with previously established obesity loci, making the novel observation that these loci affected both the level and the rate of change in BMI. We have demonstrated that the use of repeated measures data can increase power to allow detection of genetic loci with smaller sample sizes.
  • Warrington, N. M., Zhu, G., Dy, V., Heath, A. C., Madden, P. A. F., Hemani, G., Kemp, J. P., McMahon, G., St Pourcain, B., Timpson, N. J., Taylor, C. M., Golding, J., Lawlor, D. A., Steer, C., Montgomery, G. W., Martin, N. G., Smith, G. D., Evans, D. M., & Whitfield, J. B. (2015). Genome-wide association study of blood lead shows multiple associations near ALAD. Human Molecular Genetics, 24(13), 3871-3879. doi:10.1093/hmg/ddv112.

    Abstract

    Exposure to high levels of environmental lead, or biomarker evidence of high body lead content, is associated with anaemia, developmental and neurological deficits in children, and increased mortality in adults. Adverse effects of lead still occur despite substantial reduction in environmental exposure. There is genetic variation between individuals in blood lead concentration but the polymorphisms contributing to this have not been defined. We measured blood or erythrocyte lead content, and carried out genome-wide association analysis, on population-based cohorts of adult volunteers from Australia and UK (N = 5433). Samples from Australia were collected in two studies, in 1993–1996 and 2002–2005 and from UK in 1991–1992. One locus, at ALAD on chromosome 9, showed consistent association with blood lead across countries and evidence for multiple independent allelic effects. The most significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs1805313 (P = 3.91 × 10−14 for lead concentration in a meta-analysis of all data), is known to have effects on ALAD expression in blood cells but other SNPs affecting ALAD expression did not affect blood lead. Variants at 12 other loci, including ABO, showed suggestive associations (5 × 10−6 >} P {> 5 × 10−8). Identification of genetic polymorphisms affecting blood lead reinforces the view that genetic factors, as well as environmental ones, are important in determining blood lead levels. The ways in which ALAD variation affects lead uptake or distribution are still to be determined.
  • Watson, L. M., Wong, M. M. K., & Becker, E. B. E. (2015). Induced pluripotent stem cell technology for modelling and therapy of cerebellar ataxia. Open Biology, 5: 150056. doi:10.1098/rsob.150056.

    Abstract

    Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has emerged as an important tool in understanding, and potentially reversing, disease pathology. This is particularly true in the case of neurodegenerative diseases, in which the affected cell types are not readily accessible for study. Since the first descriptions of iPSC-based disease modelling, considerable advances have been made in understanding the aetiology and progression of a diverse array of neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. To date, however, relatively few studies have succeeded in using iPSCs to model the neurodegeneration observed in cerebellar ataxia. Given the distinct neurodevelopmental phenotypes associated with certain types of ataxia, iPSC-based models are likely to provide significant insights, not only into disease progression, but also to the development of early-intervention therapies. In this review, we describe the existing iPSC-based disease models of this heterogeneous group of conditions and explore the challenges associated with generating cerebellar neurons from iPSCs, which have thus far hindered the expansion of this research.
  • Weber, A. (1998). Listening to nonnative language which violates native assimilation rules. In D. Duez (Ed.), Proceedings of the European Scientific Communication Association workshop: Sound patterns of Spontaneous Speech (pp. 101-104).

    Abstract

    Recent studies using phoneme detection tasks have shown that spoken-language processing is neither facilitated nor interfered with by optional assimilation, but is inhibited by violation of obligatory assimilation. Interpretation of these results depends on an assessment of their generality, specifically, whether they also obtain when listeners are processing nonnative language. Two separate experiments are presented in which native listeners of German and native listeners of Dutch had to detect a target fricative in legal monosyllabic Dutch nonwords. All of the nonwords were correct realisations in standard Dutch. For German listeners, however, half of the nonwords contained phoneme strings which violate the German fricative assimilation rule. Whereas the Dutch listeners showed no significant effects, German listeners detected the target fricative faster when the German fricative assimilation was violated than when no violation occurred. The results might suggest that violation of assimilation rules does not have to make processing more difficult per se.
  • Weber, A., Di Betta, A. M., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Treack or trit: Adaptation to genuine and arbitrary foreign accents by monolingual and bilingual listeners. Journal of phonetics, 46, 34-51. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2014.05.002.

    Abstract

    Two cross-modal priming experiments examined two questions about word recognition in foreign-accented speech: Does accent adaptation occur only for genuine accents markers, and does adaptation depend on language experience? We compared recognition of words spoken with canonical, genuinely-accented and arbitrarily-accented vowels. In Experiment 1, an Italian speaker pronounced vowels in English prime words canonically, or by lengthening /ɪ/ as in a genuine Italian accent (*/tri:k/ for trick), or by arbitrarily shortening /i:/ (*/trɪt/ for treat). Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words showed different priming effects in three listener groups. Monolingual native English listeners recognized variants with lengthened but not shortened vowels. Bilingual nonnative Italian-English listeners, who could not reliably distinguish vowel length, recognized both variants. Bilingual nonnative Dutch-English listeners also recognized both variants. In Experiment 2, bilingual Dutch-English listeners recognized Dutch words with genuinely- and arbitrarily-accented vowels (spoken by a native Italian with lengthened and shortened vowels respectively), but recognized words with canonical vowels more easily than words with accented vowels. These results suggest that adaptation to genuine accent markers arises for monolingual and bilingual listeners alike and can occur in native and nonnative languages, but that bilinguals can adapt to arbitrary accent markers better than monolinguals.
  • Wegman, J., Fonteijn, H. M., van Ekert, J., Tyborowska, A., Jansen, C., & Janzen, G. (2014). Gray and white matter correlates of navigational ability in humans. Human Brain Mapping, 35(6), 2561-2572. doi:10.1002/hbm.22349.

    Abstract

    Humans differ widely in their navigational abilities. Studies have shown that self-reports on navigational abilities are good predictors of performance on navigation tasks in real and virtual environments. The caudate nucleus and medial temporal lobe regions have been suggested to subserve different navigational strategies. The ability to use different strategies might underlie navigational ability differences. This study examines the anatomical correlates of self-reported navigational ability in both gray and white matter. Local gray matter volume was compared between a group (N = 134) of good and bad navigators using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), as well as regional volumes. To compare between good and bad navigators, we also measured white matter anatomy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and looked at fractional anisotropy (FA) values. We observed a trend toward higher local GM volume in right anterior parahippocampal/rhinal cortex for good versus bad navigators. Good male navigators showed significantly higher local GM volume in right hippocampus than bad male navigators. Conversely, bad navigators showed increased FA values in the internal capsule, the white matter bundle closest to the caudate nucleus and a trend toward higher local GM volume in the caudate nucleus. Furthermore, caudate nucleus regional volume correlated negatively with navigational ability. These convergent findings across imaging modalities are in line with findings showing that the caudate nucleus and the medial temporal lobes are involved in different wayfinding strategies. Our study is the first to show a link between self-reported large-scale navigational abilities and different measures of brain anatomy.
  • Wheeldon, L. R., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1995). Monitoring the time course of phonological encoding. Journal of Memory and Language, 34(3), 311-334. doi:10.1006/jmla.1995.1014.

    Abstract

    Three experiments examined the time course of phonological encoding in speech production. A new methodology is introduced in which subjects are required to monitor their internal speech production for prespecified target segments and syllables. Experiment 1 demonstrated that word initial target segments are monitored significantly faster than second syllable initial target segments. The addition of a concurrent articulation task (Experiment 1b) had a limited effect on performance, excluding the possibility that subjects are monitoring a subvocal articulation of the carrier word. Moreover, no relationship was observed between the pattern of monitoring latencies and the timing of the targets in subjects′ overt speech. Subjects are not, therefore, monitoring an internal phonetic representation of the carrier word. Experiment 2 used the production monitoring task to replicate the syllable monitoring effect observed in speech perception experiments: responses to targets were faster when they corresponded to the initial syllable of the carrier word than when they did not. We conclude that subjects are monitoring their internal generation of a syllabified phonological representation. Experiment 3 provides more detailed evidence concerning the time course of the generation of this representation by comparing monitoring latencies to targets within, as well as between, syllables. Some amendments to current models of phonological encoding are suggested in light of these results.
  • Whelpton, M., Guðmundsdóttir Beck, þ., & Jordan, F. (2015). The semantics and morphology of household container names in Icelandic and Dutch. Language Sciences, 49, 67-81. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2014.07.014.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we report an experiment on the naming of household containers in Dutch and Icelandic carried out as part of the Evolution of Semantic Systems project (EoSS; Majid et al., 2011). This naming experiment allows us to support and elaborate on a hypothesis by Malt et al. (2003) that productive morphology in the naming domain can have an influence on boundary placement within the extensional space. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Dutch diminutive -(t)je favours a cut between small items versus others, whereas Icelandic, which does not use the diminutive in this domain, favours a cut between large items and others. This is not a typological effect, as Dutch and Icelandic are both Germanic languages and both have diminutive morphology available in principle. We find no evidence that the diminutive produces a proliferation of terms and/or fine-grained nesting within the extensional domain. Rather, the Dutch diminutive favours a more even distribution of terms across the space whereas Icelandic favours broad inclusive terms with a number of narrower specialist terms. Further, the extensional space defined by the diminutive is not associated with its own clear prototypical exemplar. Using evidence from compounding and modification, we also consider which semantic features are prominent in differentiating categories within the domain. By far the most prominent in both languages is the inferred contents of the container. Other than contents, however, the languages differ in the range and prominence of features such as intended usage or material of composition. Our results demonstrate that in order to understand the processes that produce semantic divisions of basic object classes, we should consider fine-grained analyses of closely related languages alongside analyses of typologically different languages.
  • Whitmarsh, S., Barendregt, H., Schoffelen, J.-M., & Jensen, O. (2014). Metacognitive awareness of covert somatosensory attention corresponds to contralateral alpha power. NeuroImage, 85(2), 803-809. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.031.

    Abstract

    Studies on metacognition have shown that participants can report on their performance on a wide range of perceptual, memory and behavioral tasks. We know little, however, about the ability to report on one's attentional focus. The degree and direction of somatosensory attention can, however, be readily discerned through suppression of alpha band frequencies in EEG/MEG produced by the somatosensory cortex. Such top-down attentional modulations of cortical excitability have been shown to result in better discrimination performance and decreased response times. In this study we asked whether the degree of attentional focus is also accessible for subjective report, and whether such evaluations correspond to the amount of somatosensory alpha activity. In response to auditory cues participants maintained somatosensory attention to either their left or right hand for intervals varying randomly between 5 and 32seconds, while their brain activity was recorded with MEG. Trials were terminated by a probe sound, to which they reported their level of attention on the cued hand right before probe-onset. Using a beamformer approach, we quantified the alpha activity in left and right somatosensory regions, one second before the probe. Alpha activity from contra- and ipsilateral somatosensory cortices for high versus low attention trials were compared. As predicted, the contralateral somatosensory alpha depression correlated with higher reported attentional focus. Finally, alpha activity two to three seconds before the probe-onset was correlated with attentional focus. We conclude that somatosensory attention is indeed accessible to metacognitive awareness.
  • Widlok, T., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Sehen, riechen, orientieren. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, June 2014, 76-81.
  • Wilkins, D. (1995). Towards a Socio-Cultural Profile of the Communities We Work With. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 70-79). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513481.

    Abstract

    Field data are drawn from a particular speech community at a certain place and time. The intent of this survey is to enrich understanding of the various socio-cultural contexts in which linguistic and “cognitive” data may have been collected, so that we can explore the role which societal, cultural and contextual factors may play in this material. The questionnaire gives guidelines concerning types of ethnographic information that are important to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic enquiry, and will be especially useful to researchers who do not have specialised training in anthropology.
  • Wilkins, D., Pederson, E., & Levinson, S. C. (1995). Background questions for the "enter"/"exit" research. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 14-16). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003935.

    Abstract

    How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This document outlines topics concerning the investigation of “enter” and “exit” events. It helps contextualise research tasks that examine this domain (see 'Motion Elicitation' and 'Enter/Exit animation') and gives some pointers about what other questions can be explored.
  • Wilkins, D. (1995). Motion elicitation: "moving 'in(to)'" and "moving 'out (of)'". In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 4-12). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003391.

    Abstract

    How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This task investigates the expression of “enter” and “exit” activities, that is, events involving motion in(to) and motion out (of) container-like items. The researcher first uses particular stimuli (a ball, a cup, rice, etc.) to elicit descriptions of enter/exit events from one consultant, and then asks another consultant to demonstrate the event based on these descriptions. See also the related entries Enter/Exit Animation and Background Questions for Enter/Exit Research.
  • Wilkins, D. P., & Hill, D. (1995). When "go" means "come": Questioning the basicness of basic motion verbs. Cognitive Linguistics, 6, 209-260. doi:10.1515/cogl.1995.6.2-3.209.

    Abstract

    The purpose of this paper is to question some of the basic assumpiions concerning motion verbs. In particular, it examines the assumption that "come" and "go" are lexical universals which manifest a universal deictic Opposition. Against the background offive working hypotheses about the nature of'come" and ''go", this study presents a comparative investigation of t wo unrelated languages—Mparntwe Arrernte (Pama-Nyungan, Australian) and Longgu (Oceanic, Austronesian). Although the pragmatic and deictic "suppositional" complexity of"come" and "go" expressions has long been recognized, we argue that in any given language the analysis of these expressions is much more semantically and systemically complex than has been assumed in the literature. Languages vary at the lexical semantic level äs t o what is entailed by these expressions, äs well äs differing äs t o what constitutes the prototype and categorial structure for such expressions. The data also strongly suggest that, ifthere is a lexical universal "go", then this cannof be an inherently deictic expression. However, due to systemic Opposition with "come", non-deictic "go" expressions often take on a deictic Interpretation through pragmatic attribution. Thus, this crosslinguistic investigation of "come" and "go" highlights the need to consider semantics and pragmatics äs modularly separate.
  • Willems, R. M. (Ed.). (2015). Cognitive neuroscience of natural language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Willems, R. M. (2015). Cognitive neuroscience of natural language use: Introduction. In Cognitive neuroscience of natural language use (pp. 1-7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Willems, R. M., Van der Haegen, L., Fisher, S. E., & Francks, C. (2014). On the other hand: Including left-handers in cognitive neuroscience and neurogenetics. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 193-201. doi:10.1038/nrn3679.

    Abstract

    Left-handers are often excluded from study cohorts in neuroscience and neurogenetics in order to reduce variance in the data. However, recent investigations have shown that the inclusion or targeted recruitment of left-handers can be informative in studies on a range of topics, such as cerebral lateralization and the genetic underpinning of asymmetrical brain development. Left-handed individuals represent a substantial portion of the human population and therefore left-handedness falls within the normal range of human diversity; thus, it is important to account for this variation in our understanding of brain functioning. We call for neuroscientists and neurogeneticists to recognize the potential of studying this often-discarded group of research subjects.
  • Willems, R. M., & Francks, C. (2014). Your left-handed brain. Frontiers for Young Minds, 2: 13. doi:10.3389/frym.2014.00013.

    Abstract

    While most people prefer to use their right hand to brush their teeth, throw a ball, or hold a tennis racket, left-handers prefer to use their left hand. This is the case for around 10 per cent of all people. There was a time (not so long ago) when left-handers were stigmatized in Western (and other) communities: it was considered a bad sign if you were left-handed, and left-handed children were often forced to write with their right hand. This is nonsensical: there is nothing wrong with being left-handed, and trying to write with the non-preferred hand is frustrating for almost everybody. As a matter of fact, science can learn from left-handers, and in this paper, we discuss how this may be the case. We review why some people are left-handed and others are not, how left-handers' brains differ from right-handers’, and why scientists study left-handedness in the first place
  • Wilson, J. J., & Little, H. (2014). Emerging languages in Esoteric and Exoteric Niches: evidence from Rural Sign Languages. In Ways to Potolanguage 3 book of abstracts (pp. 54-55).
  • Windhouwer, M., Petro, J., & Shayan, S. (2014). RELISH LMF: Unlocking the full power of the lexical markup framework. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 1032-1037).
  • De Wit, S. J., van der Werf, Y. D., Mataix-Cols, D., Trujillo, J. P., van Oppen, P., Veltman, D. J., & van den Heuvel, O. A. (2015). Emotion regulation before and after transcranial magnetic stimulation in obsessive compulsive disorder. Psychological Medicine, 45(14), 3059-3073. doi:10.1017/S0033291715001026.

    Abstract

    Impaired emotion regulation may underlie exaggerated emotional reactivity in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), yet instructed emotion regulation has never been studied in the disorder. METHOD: This study aimed to assess the neural correlates of emotion processing and regulation in 43 medication-free OCD patients and 38 matched healthy controls, and additionally test if these can be modulated by stimulatory (patients) and inhibitory (controls) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants performed an emotion regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after a single session of randomly assigned real or sham rTMS. Effect of group and rTMS were assessed on self-reported distress ratings and brain activity in frontal-limbic regions of interest. RESULTS: Patients had higher distress ratings than controls during emotion provocation, but similar rates of distress reduction after voluntary emotion regulation. OCD patients compared with controls showed altered amygdala responsiveness during symptom provocation and diminished left dlPFC activity and frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation. Real v. sham dlPFC stimulation differentially modulated frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation in OCD patients. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the increased emotional reactivity in OCD may be due to a deficit in emotion regulation caused by a failure of cognitive control exerted by the dorsal frontal cortex. Modulatory rTMS over the left dlPFC may influence automatic emotion regulation capabilities by influencing frontal-limbic connectivity.
  • Wittek, A. (1998). Learning verb meaning via adverbial modification: Change-of-state verbs in German and the adverb "wieder" again. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H. Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 779-790). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Witteman, M. J., Bardhan, N. P., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2015). Automaticity and stability of adaptation to foreign-accented speech. Language and Speech, 52(2), 168-189. doi:10.1177/0023830914528102.

    Abstract

    In three cross-modal priming experiments we asked whether adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker is automatic, and whether adaptation can be seen after a long delay between initial exposure and test. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Hebrew-accented Dutch speaker with two types of Dutch words: those that contained [ɪ] (globally accented words), and those in which the Dutch [i] was shortened to [ɪ] (specific accent marker words). Experiment 1, which served as a baseline, showed that native Dutch participants showed facilitatory priming for globally accented, but not specific accent, words. In experiment 2, participants performed a 3.5-minute phoneme monitoring task, and were tested on their comprehension of the accented speaker 24 hours later using the same cross-modal priming task as in experiment 1. During the phoneme monitoring task, listeners were asked to detect a consonant that was not strongly accented. In experiment 3, the delay between exposure and test was extended to 1 week. Listeners in experiments 2 and 3 showed facilitatory priming for both globally accented and specific accent marker words. Together, these results show that adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker can be rapid and automatic, and can be observed after a prolonged delay in testing.
  • Witteman, M. J., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Tolerance for inconsistency in foreign-accented speech. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 512-519. doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0519-8.

    Abstract

    Are listeners able to adapt to a foreign-accented speaker who has, as is often the case, an inconsistent accent? Two groups of native Dutch listeners participated in a cross-modal priming experiment, either in a consistent-accent condition (German-accented items only) or in an inconsistent-accent condition (German-accented and nativelike pronunciations intermixed). The experimental words were identical for both groups (words with vowel substitutions characteristic of German-accented speech); additional contextual words differed in accentedness (German-accented or nativelike words). All items were spoken by the same speaker: a German native who could produce the accented forms but could also pass for a Dutch native speaker. Listeners in the consistent-accent group were able to adapt quickly to the speaker (i.e., showed facilitatory priming for words with vocalic substitutions). Listeners in the inconsistent-accent condition showed adaptation to words with vocalic substitutions only in the second half of the experiment. These results indicate that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid. Accent inconsistency slows listeners down initially, but a short period of additional exposure is enough for them to adapt to the speaker. Listeners can therefore tolerate inconsistency in foreign-accented speech.
  • Wittenburg, P., Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, F. (2014). Corpus archiving and dissemination. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 133-149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Wnuk, E., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Contact and isolation in hunter-gatherer language dynamics: Evidence from Maniq phonology (Aslian, Malay Peninsula). Studies in Language, 38(4), 956-981. doi:10.1075/sl.38.4.06wnu.
  • Wnuk, E., & Majid, A. (2014). Revisiting the limits of language: The odor lexicon of Maniq. Cognition, 131, 125-138. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.008.

    Abstract

    It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English,
    and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this
    view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter–gatherers in
    southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated
    to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar
    listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that
    Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the
    similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions.
    The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line
    rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping
    into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot
    encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding
    new light on the limits of language.
  • Li, Q., Wojciechowski, R., Simpson, C. L., Hysi, P. G., Verhoeven, V. J. M., Ikram, M. K., Höhn, R., Vitart, V., Hewitt, A. W., Oexle, K., Mäkelä, K.-M., MacGregor, S., Pirastu, M., Fan, Q., Cheng, C.-Y., St Pourcain, B., McMahon, G., Kemp, J. P., Northstone, K., Rahi, J. S. and 69 moreLi, Q., Wojciechowski, R., Simpson, C. L., Hysi, P. G., Verhoeven, V. J. M., Ikram, M. K., Höhn, R., Vitart, V., Hewitt, A. W., Oexle, K., Mäkelä, K.-M., MacGregor, S., Pirastu, M., Fan, Q., Cheng, C.-Y., St Pourcain, B., McMahon, G., Kemp, J. P., Northstone, K., Rahi, J. S., Cumberland, P. M., Martin, N. G., Sanfilippo, P. G., Lu, Y., Wang, Y. X., Hayward, C., Polašek, O., Campbell, H., Bencic, G., Wright, A. F., Wedenoja, J., Zeller, T., Schillert, A., Mirshahi, A., Lackner, K., Yip, S. P., Yap, M. K. H., Ried, J. S., Gieger, C., Murgia, F., Wilson, J. F., Fleck, B., Yazar, S., Vingerling, J. R., Hofman, A., Uitterlinden, A., Rivadeneira, F., Amin, N., Karssen, L., Oostra, B. A., Zhou, X., Teo, Y.-Y., Tai, E. S., Vithana, E., Barathi, V., Zheng, Y., Siantar, R. G., Neelam, K., Shin, Y., Lam, J., Yonova-Doing, E., Venturini, C., Hosseini, S. M., Wong, H.-S., Lehtimäki, T., Kähönen, M., Raitakari, O., Timpson, N. J., Evans, D. M., Khor, C.-C., Aung, T., Young, T. L., Mitchell, P., Klein, B., van Duijn, C. M., Meitinger, T., Jonas, J. B., Baird, P. N., Mackey, D. A., Wong, T. Y., Saw, S.-M., Pärssinen, O., Stambolian, D., Hammond, C. J., Klaver, C. C. W., Williams, C., Paterson, A. D., Bailey-Wilson, J. E., & Guggenheim, J. A. (2015). Genome-wide association study for refractive astigmatism reveals genetic co-determination with spherical equivalent refractive error: the CREAM consortium. Human Genetics, 134, 131-146. doi:10.1007/s00439-014-1500-y.

    Abstract

    To identify genetic variants associated with refractive astigmatism in the general population, meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies were performed for: White Europeans aged at least 25 years (20 cohorts, N = 31,968); Asian subjects aged at least 25 years (7 cohorts, N = 9,295); White Europeans aged <25 years (4 cohorts, N = 5,640); and all independent individuals from the above three samples combined with a sample of Chinese subjects aged <25 years (N = 45,931). Participants were classified as cases with refractive astigmatism if the average cylinder power in their two eyes was at least 1.00 diopter and as controls otherwise. Genome-wide association analysis was carried out for each cohort separately using logistic regression. Meta-analysis was conducted using a fixed effects model. In the older European group the most strongly associated marker was downstream of the neurexin-1 (NRXN1) gene (rs1401327, P = 3.92E−8). No other region reached genome-wide significance, and association signals were lower for the younger European group and Asian group. In the meta-analysis of all cohorts, no marker reached genome-wide significance: The most strongly associated regions were, NRXN1 (rs1401327, P = 2.93E−07), TOX (rs7823467, P = 3.47E−07) and LINC00340 (rs12212674, P = 1.49E−06). For 34 markers identified in prior GWAS for spherical equivalent refractive error, the beta coefficients for genotype versus spherical equivalent, and genotype versus refractive astigmatism, were highly correlated (r = −0.59, P = 2.10E−04). This work revealed no consistent or strong genetic signals for refractive astigmatism; however, the TOX gene region previously identified in GWAS for spherical equivalent refractive error was the second most strongly associated region. Analysis of additional markers provided evidence supporting widespread genetic co-susceptibility for spherical and astigmatic refractive errors.
  • Wolf, M. C. (2015). Het verschil tussen hardop en stillezen wat betreft leessnelheid en tekstbegrip en de invloed hierop van fonologisch bewustzijn, benoemsnelheid en visuele aandachtsspanne. Student Undergraduate Research E-journal, 1(1), 261-264. Retrieved from http://journals.library.tudelft.nl/index.php/sure/article/view/1025.

    Abstract

    In het onderwijs wordt aangenomen dat hardop en stillezen dezelfde processen zijn. In dit onderzoek wordt gekeken naar het verschil tussen hardop en stillezen wat betreft leessnelheid en tekstbegrip bij 90 kinderen uit groep 4. Ook wordt de invloed van de cognitieve vaardigheden fonologisch bewustzijn, benoemsnelheid en visuele aandachtsspanne op de verschillende leesmodi onderzocht. De participanten lazen stil sneller, maar begrepen de tekst beter hardop. De cognitieve vaardigheden correleerden met hardop en stillezen wat betreft leessnelheid, maar hingen in beide leesmodi niet samen met tekstbegrip. Hoewel hardop en stillezen samenhangen, onderstrepen deze bevindingen dat het verschillende leesmodi zijn.
  • Wright, S. E., Windhouwer, M., Schuurman, I., & Broeder, D. (2014). Segueing from a Data Category Registry to a Data Concept Registry. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (TKE 2014).

    Abstract

    The terminology Community of Practice has long standardized data categories in the framework of ISO TC 37. ISO 12620:2009 specifies the data model and procedures for a Data Category Registry (DCR), which has been implemented by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics as the ISOcat DCR. The DCR has been used by not only ISO TC 37, but also by the CLARIN research infra-structure. This paper describes how the needs of these communities have started to diverge and the process of segueing from a DCR to a Data Concept Registry in order to meet the needs of both communities.
  • Xiang, H., Van Leeuwen, T. M., Dediu, D., Roberts, L., Norris, D. G., & Hagoort, P. (2015). L2-proficiency-dependent laterality shift in structural connectivity of brain language pathways. Brain Connectivity, 5(6), 349-361. doi:10.1089/brain.2013.0199.

    Abstract

    Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and a longitudinal language learning approach were applied to investigate the relationship between the achieved second language (L2) proficiency during L2 learning and the reorganization of structural connectivity between core language areas. Language proficiency tests and DTI scans were obtained from German students before and after they completed an intensive 6-week course of the Dutch language. In the initial learning stage, with increasing L2 proficiency, the hemispheric dominance of the BA6-temporal pathway (mainly along the arcuate fasciculus) shifted from the left to the right hemisphere. With further increased proficiency, however, lateralization dominance was again found in the left BA6-temporal pathway. This result is consistent with reports in the literature that imply a stronger involvement of the right hemisphere in L2-processing especially for less proficient L2-speakers. This is the first time that a L2-proficiency-dependent laterality shift in structural connectivity of language pathways during L2 acquisition has been observed to shift from left to right, and back to left hemisphere dominance with increasing L2-proficiency. We additionally find that changes in fractional anisotropy values after the course are related to the time elapsed between the two scans. The results suggest that structural connectivity in (at least part of) the perisylvian language network may be subject to fast dynamic changes following language learning
  • Yang, A., & Chen, A. (2014). Prosodic focus marking in child and adult Mandarin Chinese. In C. Gussenhoven, Y. Chen, & D. Dediu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 54-58).

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speaking children and adults use prosody to mark focus in spontaneous speech. SVO sentences were elicited from 4- and 8-year-olds and adults in a game setting. Sentence-medial verbs were acoustically analysed for both duration and pitch range in different focus conditions. We have found that like the adults, the 8-year-olds used both duration and pitch range to distinguish focus from non-focus. The 4-year-olds used only duration to distinguish focus from non-focus, unlike the adults and 8-year-olds. None of the three groups of speakers distinguished contrastive focus from non-contrastive focus using pitch range or duration. Regarding the distinction between narrow focus from broad focus, the 4- and 8-year-olds used both pitch range and duration for this purpose, while the adults used only duration
  • Yang, A., & Chen, A. (2014). Prosodic focus-marking in Chinese four- and eight-year-olds. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon, & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2014 (pp. 713-717).

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speaking children use prosody to distinguish focus from non-focus, and focus types differing in size of constituent and contrastivity. SVO sentences were elicited from four- and eight-year-olds in a game setting. Sentence-medial verbs were acoustically analysed for both duration and pitch range in different focus conditions. The children started to use duration to differentiate focus from non-focus at the age of four. But their use of pitch range varied with age and depended on non-focus conditions (pre- vs. postfocus) and the lexical tones of the verbs. Further, the children in both age groups used pitch range but not duration to differentiate narrow focus from broad focus, and they did not differentiate contrastive narrow focus from non-contrastive narrow focus using duration or pitch range. The results indicated that Chinese children acquire the prosodic means (duration and pitch range) of marking focus in stages, and their acquisition of these two means appear to be early, compared to children speaking an intonation language, for example, Dutch.
  • Yang, Y., Dai, B., Howell, P., Wang, X., Li, K., & Lu, C. (2014). White and Grey Matter Changes in the Language Network during Healthy Aging. PLoS One, 9(9): e108077. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0108077.

    Abstract

    Neural structures change with age but there is no consensus on the exact processes involved. This study tested the hypothesis that white and grey matter in the language network changes during aging according to a “last in, first out” process. The fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter and cortical thickness of grey matter were measured in 36 participants whose ages ranged from 55 to 79 years. Within the language network, the dorsal pathway connecting the mid-to-posterior superior temporal cortex (STC) and the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) was affected more by aging in both FA and thickness than the other dorsal pathway connecting the STC with the premotor cortex and the ventral pathway connecting the mid-to-anterior STC with the ventral IFC. These results were independently validated in a second group of 20 participants whose ages ranged from 50 to 73 years. The pathway that is most affected during aging matures later than the other two pathways (which are present at birth). The results are interpreted as showing that the neural structures which mature later are affected more than those that mature earlier, supporting the “last in, first out” theory.
  • Zampieri, M., & Gebre, B. G. (2014). VarClass: An open-source language identification tool for language varieties. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3305-3308).

    Abstract

    This paper presents VarClass, an open-source tool for language identification available both to be downloaded as well as through a graphical user-friendly interface. The main difference of VarClass in comparison to other state-of-the-art language identification tools is its focus on language varieties. General purpose language identification tools do not take language varieties into account and our work aims to fill this gap. VarClass currently contains language models for over 27 languages in which 10 of them are language varieties. We report an average performance of over 90.5% accuracy in a challenging dataset. More language models will be included in the upcoming months
  • Zhang, Y., Yurovsky, D., & Yu, C. (2015). Statistical word learning is a continuous process: Evidence from the human simulation paradigm. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 2422-2427). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    In the word-learning domain, both adults and young children are able to find the correct referent of a word from highly ambiguous contexts that involve many words and objects by computing distributional statistics across the co-occurrences of words and referents at multiple naming moments (Yu & Smith, 2007; Smith & Yu, 2008). However, there is still debate regarding how learners accumulate distributional information to learn object labels in natural learning environments, and what underlying learning mechanism learners are most likely to adopt. Using the Human Simulation Paradigm (Gillette, Gleitman, Gleitman & Lederer, 1999), we found that participants’ learning performance gradually improved and that their ability to remember and carry over partial knowledge from past learning instances facilitated subsequent learning. These results support the statistical learning model that word learning is a continuous process.
  • Zhao, H., Zhou, W., Yao, Z., Wan, Y., Cao, J., Zhang, L., Zhao, J., Li, H., Zhou, R., Li, B., Wei, G., Zhang, Z., French, C. A., Dekker, J. D., Yang, Y., Fisher, S. E., Tucker, H. O., & Guo, X. (2015). Foxp1/2/4 regulate endochondral ossification as a suppresser complex. Developmental Biology, 398, 242-254. doi:10.1016/j.ydbio.2014.12.007.

    Abstract

    Osteoblast induction and differentiation in developing long bones is dynamically controlled by the opposing action of transcriptional activators and repressors. In contrast to the long list of activators that have been discovered over past decades, the network of repressors is not well-defined. Here we identify the expression of Foxp1/2/4 proteins, comprised of Forkhead-box (Fox) transcription factors of the Foxp subfamily, in both perichondrial skeletal progenitors and proliferating chondrocytes during endochondral ossification. Mice carrying loss-of-function and gain-of-function Foxp mutations had gross defects in appendicular skeleton formation. At the cellular level, over-expression of Foxp1/2/4 in chondroctyes abrogated osteoblast formation and chondrocyte hypertrophy. Conversely, single or compound deficiency of Foxp1/2/4 in skeletal progenitors or chondrocytes resulted in premature osteoblast differentiation in the perichondrium, coupled with impaired proliferation, survival, and hypertrophy of chondrocytes in the growth plate. Foxp1/2/4 and Runx2 proteins interacted in vitro and in vivo, and Foxp1/2/4 repressed Runx2 transactivation function in heterologous cells. This study establishes Foxp1/2/4 proteins as coordinators of osteogenesis and chondrocyte hypertrophy in developing long bones and suggests that a novel transcriptional repressor network involving Foxp1/2/4 may regulate Runx2 during endochondral ossification.
  • Zhen, Z., Yang, Z., Huang, L., Kong, X., Wang, X., Dang, X., Huang, Y., Song, Y., & Liu, J. (2015). Quantifying interindividual variability and asymmetry of face-selective regions: A probabilistic functional atlas. NeuroImage, 113, 13-25. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.03.010.

    Abstract

    Face-selective regions (FSRs) are among the most widely studied functional regions in the human brain. However, individual variability of the FSRs has not been well quantified. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to localize the FSRs and quantify their spatial and functional variabilities in 202 healthy adults. The occipital face area (OFA), posterior and anterior fusiform face areas (pFFA and aFFA), posterior continuation of the superior temporal sulcus (pcSTS), and posterior and anterior STS (pSTS and aSTS) were delineated for each individual with a semi-automated procedure. A probabilistic atlas was constructed to characterize their interindividual variability, revealing that the FSRs were highly variable in location and extent across subjects. The variability of FSRs was further quantified on both functional (i.e., face selectivity) and spatial (i.e., volume, location of peak activation, and anatomical location) features. Considerable interindividual variability and rightward asymmetry were found in all FSRs on these features. Taken together, our work presents the first effort to characterize comprehensively the variability of FSRs in a large sample of healthy subjects, and invites future work on the origin of the variability and its relation to individual differences in behavioral performance. Moreover, the probabilistic functional atlas will provide an adequate spatial reference for mapping the face network.
  • Zhou, W. (2015). Assessing birth language memory in young adoptees. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Zhou, W., & Broersma, M. (2014). Perception of birth language tone contrasts by adopted Chinese children. In C. Gussenhoven, Y. Chen, & D. Dediu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 63-66).

    Abstract

    The present study investigates how long after adoption adoptees forget the phonology of their birth language. Chinese children who were adopted by Dutch families were tested on the perception of birth language tone contrasts before, during, and after perceptual training. Experiment 1 investigated Cantonese tone 2 (High-Rising) and tone 5 (Low-Rising), and Experiment 2 investigated Mandarin tone 2 (High-Rising) and tone 3 (Low-Dipping). In both experiments, participants were adoptees and non-adopted Dutch controls. Results of both experiments show that the tone contrasts were very difficult to perceive for the adoptees, and that adoptees were not better at perceiving the tone contrasts than their non-adopted Dutch peers, before or after training. This demonstrates that forgetting took place relatively soon after adoption, and that the re-exposure that the adoptees were presented with did not lead to an improvement greater than that of the Dutch control participants. Thus, the findings confirm what has been anecdotally reported by adoptees and their parents, but what had not been empirically tested before, namely that birth language forgetting occurs very soon after adoption
  • Zora, H., Schwarz, I.-C., & Heldner, M. (2015). Neural correlates of lexical stress: Mismatch negativity reflects fundamental frequency and intensity. NeuroReport, 26(13), 791-796. doi:10.1097/WNR.0000000000000426.

    Abstract

    Neural correlates of lexical stress were studied using the mismatch negativity (MMN) component in event-related potentials. The MMN responses were expected to reveal the encoding of stress information into long-term memory and the contributions of prosodic features such as fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity toward lexical access. In a passive oddball paradigm, neural responses to changes in F0, intensity, and in both features together were recorded for words and pseudowords. The findings showed significant differences not only between words and pseudowords but also between prosodic features. Early processing of prosodic information in words was indexed by an intensity-related MMN and an F0-related P200. These effects were stable at right-anterior and mid-anterior regions. At a later latency, MMN responses were recorded for both words and pseudowords at the mid-anterior and posterior regions. The P200 effect observed for F0 at the early latency for words developed into an MMN response. Intensity elicited smaller MMN for pseudowords than for words. Moreover, a larger brain area was recruited for the processing of words than for the processing of pseudowords. These findings suggest earlier and higher sensitivity to prosodic changes in words than in pseudowords, reflecting a language-related process. The present study, therefore, not only establishes neural correlates of lexical stress but also confirms the presence of long-term memory traces for prosodic information in the brain.
  • De Zubicaray, G. I., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Acheson, D. J. (2014). Mind what you say—general and specific mechanisms for monitoring in speech production. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8: 514. doi:10.3389%2Ffnhum.2014.00514.

    Abstract

    For most people, speech production is relatively effortless and error-free. Yet it has long been recognized that we need some type of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. Precisely how we monitor our internal and external speech has been a topic of research interest for several decades. The predominant approach in psycholinguistics has assumed monitoring of both is accomplished via systems responsible for comprehending others' speech.

    This special topic aimed to broaden the field, firstly by examining proposals that speech production might also engage more general systems, such as those involved in action monitoring. A second aim was to examine proposals for a production-specific, internal monitor. Both aims require that we also specify the nature of the representations subject to monitoring.
  • Zumer, J. M., Scheeringa, R., Schoffelen, J.-M., Norris, D. G., & Jensen, O. (2014). Occipital alpha activity during stimulus processing gates the information flow to object-selective cortex. PLoS Biology, 12(10): e1001965. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001965.

    Abstract

    Given the limited processing capabilities of the sensory system, it is essential that attended information is gated to downstream areas, whereas unattended information is blocked. While it has been proposed that alpha band (8–13 Hz) activity serves to route information to downstream regions by inhibiting neuronal processing in task-irrelevant regions, this hypothesis remains untested. Here we investigate how neuronal oscillations detected by electroencephalography in visual areas during working memory encoding serve to gate information reflected in the simultaneously recorded blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signals recorded by functional magnetic resonance imaging in downstream ventral regions. We used a paradigm in which 16 participants were presented with faces and landscapes in the right and left hemifields; one hemifield was attended and the other unattended. We observed that decreased alpha power contralateral to the attended object predicted the BOLD signal representing the attended object in ventral object-selective regions. Furthermore, increased alpha power ipsilateral to the attended object predicted a decrease in the BOLD signal representing the unattended object. We also found that the BOLD signal in the dorsal attention network inversely correlated with visual alpha power. This is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, that oscillations in the alpha band are implicated in the gating of information from the visual cortex to the ventral stream, as reflected in the representationally specific BOLD signal. This link of sensory alpha to downstream activity provides a neurophysiological substrate for the mechanism of selective attention during stimulus processing, which not only boosts the attended information but also suppresses distraction. Although previous studies have shown a relation between the BOLD signal from the dorsal attention network and the alpha band at rest, we demonstrate such a relation during a visuospatial task, indicating that the dorsal attention network exercises top-down control of visual alpha activity.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2014). Meaning at the feature level in sign languages. The case of name signs in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). In R. Kager (Ed.), Where the Principles Fail. A Festschrift for Wim Zonneveld on the occasion of his 64th birthday (pp. 241-251). Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.

Share this page