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Abstract

Accommodating talker variability is a complex and multi-layered cognitive process. It involves shifting attention to the vocal characteristics of the talker as well as the linguistic content of their speech. Due to an interdependence between voice and phonological processing, multi-talker
environments typically incur additional processing costs compared to single-talker environments. A failure or inability to efficiently distribute attention over multiple acoustic cues in the speech signal
may have detrimental language learning consequences. Yet, no studies have examined effects of multi-talker processing in populations with atypical perceptual, social and language processing for communication, including autistic people. Employing a classic word-monitoring task, we investigated
effects of talker variability in Australian English autistic (n = 24) and non-autistic (n = 28) adults.
Listeners responded to target words (e.g., apple, duck, corn) in randomised sequences of words. Half of the sequences were spoken by a single talker and the other half by multiple talkers. Results revealed that autistic participants’ sensitivity scores to accurately-spotted target words did not differ to those
of non-autistic participants, regardless of whether they were spoken by a single or multiple talkers. As expected, the non-autistic group showed the well-established processing cost associated with talker
variability (e.g., slower response times). Remarkably, autistic listeners’ response times did not differ across single- or multi-talker conditions, indicating they did not show perceptual processing costs
when accommodating talker variability. The present findings have implications for theories of autistic perception and speech and language processing.

Abstract

Over the past three decades, functional neuroimaging has amassed abundant evidence of the intricate interplay between brain structure and function. However, the potential anatomical and experimental overlap, independence, granularity, and gaps between functions remain poorly understood. Here, we show the latent structure of the current brain-cognition knowledge and its organisation. Our approach utilises the most comprehensive meta-analytic fMRI database (Neurosynth) to compute a three-dimensional embedding space–morphospace capturing the relationship between brain functions as we currently understand them. The space structure enables us to statistically test the relationship between functions expressed as the degree to which the characteristics of each functional map can be anticipated based on its similarities with others–the predictability index. The morphospace can also predict the activation pattern of new, unseen functions and decode thoughts and inner states during movie watching. The framework defined by the morphospace will spur the investigation of novel functions and guide the exploration of the fabric of human cognition.

Abstract

We examine the relation between event segmentation in language and cognition in the domain of motion events, focusing on Turkish, a verb-framed language that segments motion paths in separate linguistic units (verb clauses). We compare motion events that have a path change to those that did not have a path change. In the linguistic task, participants were more likely to use multiple verb phrases when describing events that had a path change compared to those that did not have a path change. In the non-linguistic Dwell Time task, participants viewed self-paced slideshows of still images sampled from the motion event videos in the linguistic task. Dwell times for slides corresponding to path changes were not significantly longer than those for temporally similar slides in the events without a path change. These findings suggest that event units in language may not have strong and stable influences on event segmentation in cognition.

Abstract

Importance
Previous studies indicated that female sex might be a modifier in Stargardt disease, which is an ABCA4-associated retinopathy.

Objective
To investigate whether women are overrepresented among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy who are carrying at least 1 mild allele or carrying nonmild alleles.

Data Sources
Literature data, data from 2 European centers, and a new study. Data from a Radboudumc database and from the Rotterdam Eye Hospital were used for exploratory hypothesis testing.

Study Selection
Studies investigating the sex ratio in individuals with ABCA4-AR and data from centers that collected ABCA4 variant and sex data. The literature search was performed on February 1, 2023; data from the centers were from before 2023.

Data Extraction and Synthesis
Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted to test whether the proportions of women among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy with mild and nonmild variants differed from 0.5, including subgroup analyses for mild alleles. Sensitivity analyses were performed excluding data with possibly incomplete variant identification. χ2 Tests were conducted to compare the proportions of women in adult-onset autosomal non–ABCA4-associated retinopathy and adult-onset ABCA4-associated retinopathy and to investigate if women with suspected ABCA4-associated retinopathy are more likely to obtain a genetic diagnosis. Data analyses were performed from March to October 2023.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Proportion of women per ABCA4-associated retinopathy group. The exploratory testing included sex ratio comparisons for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy vs those with other autosomal retinopathies and for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy who underwent genetic testing vs those who did not.

Results
Women were significantly overrepresented in the mild variant group (proportion, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.56-0.62; P < .001) but not in the nonmild variant group (proportion, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.46-0.54; P = .89). Sensitivity analyses confirmed these results. Subgroup analyses on mild variants showed differences in the proportions of women. Furthermore, in the Radboudumc database, the proportion of adult women among individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy (652/1154 = 0.56) was 0.10 (95% CI, 0.05-0.15) higher than among individuals with other retinopathies (280/602 = 0.47).

Conclusions and Relevance
This meta-analysis supports the likelihood that sex is a modifier in developing ABCA4-associated retinopathy for individuals with a mild ABCA4 allele. This finding may be relevant for prognosis predictions and recurrence risks for individuals with ABCA4-associated retinopathy. Future studies should further investigate whether the overrepresentation of women is caused by differences in the disease mechanism, by differences in health care–seeking behavior, or by health care discrimination between women and men with ABCA4-AR.

Abstract

Previous research examining the factors that determine language choice and voluntary switching mainly involved early bilinguals. Here, using picture naming, we investigated language choice and switching in late Dutch–English bilinguals. We found that naming was overall slower in cued than in voluntary switching, but switch costs occurred in both types of switching. The magnitude of switch costs differed depending on the task and language, and was moderated by L2 proficiency. Self-rated rather than objectively assessed proficiency predicted voluntary switching and ease of lexical access was associated with language choice. Between-language and within-language switch costs were not correlated. These results highlight self-rated proficiency as a reliable predictor of voluntary switching, with language modulating switch costs. As in early bilinguals, ease of lexical access was related to word-level language choice of late bilinguals.

Abstract

Based on a large-scale computational analysis of scholarly articles, this study investigates the dynamics of interdisciplinary research in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thereby, the study also analyses the reorientation effects away from other topics that receive less attention due to the high focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aims to examine what can be learned from the (failing) interdisciplinarity of coronavirus research and its displacing effects for managing potential similar crises at the scientific level. To explore our research questions, we run several analyses by using the COVID-19++ dataset, which contains scholarly publications, preprints from the field of life sciences, and their referenced literature including publications from a broad scientific spectrum. Our results show the high impact and topic-wise adoption of research related to the COVID-19 crisis. Based on the similarity analysis of scientific topics, which is grounded on the concept embedding learning in the graph-structured bibliographic data, we measured the degree of interdisciplinarity of COVID-19 research in 2020. Our findings reveal a low degree of research interdisciplinarity. The publications’ reference analysis indicates the major role of clinical medicine, but also the growing importance of psychiatry and social sciences in COVID-19 research. A social network analysis shows that the authors’ high degree of centrality significantly increases her or his degree of interdisciplinarity.