Presentations

Abstract

Transitions between speakers in conversation are usually smooth, lasting around 200 milliseconds. Such rapid response latencies suggest that, at least sometimes, responders must begin planning their response before the ongoing turn is finished. Indeed, evidence from EEG suggests that listeners start planning their responses to questions as soon as they can, often midway through the incoming turn [1]. But given substantial overlap in the neural hardware for language production and comprehension, early response planning might incur a cost on participants’ concurrent comprehension of the ongoing turn. Do early responses come at the expense of less careful listening? We performed an EEG study in which participants played an interactive game with a confederate partner. Participants saw two pictures on their screen (e.g., a banana and a pineapple), then heard a (prerecorded) question from their partner, and then responded verbally by naming the correct picture. Participants were made to believe that their partner spoke to them live. Examples of the conditions in the experiment: 1. Early planning: 'Which object is curved and is considered to be fruit/healthy?'; 2. Late planning: 'Which object is considered to be fruit/healthy and is curved?' (response: 'the banana'). The questions were designed such that participants could start planning their response early (Example 1) or late (Example 2) in the turn. Crucially, in another part of the turn, we included either an expected word (e.g., 'fruit') or an unexpected one (e.g., 'healthy') to elicit a differential N400 effect. Our aims were two-fold: replicating the prior planning effect [1] and testing the effect of planning on comprehension. First, our results largely replicated the earlier study [1], showing a large positivity in the ERPs and an alpha/beta reduction in the time-frequency domain, both immediately following the onset of the critical information when participants could have first started planning their verbal response (i.e., 'curved'). As before [1], we interpret these effects as indicating the start of response planning. Second, and more importantly, we hypothesized that the N400 effect (the ERP difference between 'fruit' and 'healthy') would be attenuated when participants were already planning a response (i.e., in early vs. late planning). In contrast, we found an N400 effect of similar size in both the early and late planning conditions, although a small late positivity was only found in the late planning condition. Interestingly, we found a positive correlation between participants' overall response time and the size of the N400 effect after planning had started (i.e., in early planning), illustrating a trade-off between comprehension and production during turn taking. That is, quick responders showed a smaller N400 effect. We argue that their focus on production planning reduced their attention to the incoming audio signal and probably also their predictive processing, leading to a smaller N400 effect. Slow responders focused instead on the audio signal, preserving their N400 effect but delaying their response. Reference [1]: Bögels, S., Magyari, L., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). Neural signatures of response planning occur midway through an incoming question in conversation. Scientific Reports, 5: 12881. Topic Area: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics

Abstract

This paper studies communication among deaf sign language users with highly divergent linguistic backgroun
ds
who have no signed or written language in common. It constitutes the earliest, least conventionalised stages of
improvised communication, called ”cross
-
signing” (Zeshan 2015), as opposed to the semi
-
conventionalised
contact language International Sign (
e.g. Supalla & Webb 1995). The specific focus here is on the evolution of the
shared repertoire amongst signers over several weeks as they co
-
construct meaning across linguistic and
cultural boundaries. We look at two possible factors influencing the selec
tion of expressive forms (cf. Tamariz et
al. 2014): content
-
bias (where the more iconically
-
motivated, and/or easily
-
articulated form is selected) and
coordination
-
bias (where participants attempt to match each other’s usag
e). The data set consists of a 320
-
minute corpus of first encounters between dyads of signers of Nepali Sign Language, Indian Sign Language,
Jordanian Sign Language and Indonesian Sign Language. Recordings took place at the first meeting, after one
week, a
nd after three weeks. The participants vary naturally with regard to their linguistic and international
experience as well as their age of sign language acquisition. In addition to spontaneous conversations, we
collected structured dialogues using a Direct
or
-
Matcher task. In this language elicitation game, the Director has
the coloured images and the Matcher has identical but black and white images alongside a set of colour chips
from which they need to select based on the Director’s descriptions. We coded
and examined the various colour
expressions exploited by the participants. The semantic field of colour was chosen for this investigation into the
evolution of shared communication for two reasons: the visual domain of colour retains sufficient levels of
a
bstraction while affording signers with iconic potential.
Participants initially used a range of strategies, including pointing, articulating signs for common objects with
that colour (e.g. referring to a common iconic sign for ‘tree’ and pointing to the b
ase to mean ‘brown’), and their
own native variants. However, three weeks later these individuals all start using the same forms, e.g. the Indian
signer’s variant for ‘green’ and the Nepali signer’s improvised ‘tree
-
trunk’ variant for ‘brown’. The iconic
m
otivation of the latter and the ease of articulation of the former suggest that the content
-
bias is in play. The
coordination
-
bias also seems influential in the group’s eventual selection of one variant (cf. Tamariz et al. 2014).
We explore these and furth
er factors that may affect the two biases in the selection of forms within our data.
We also consider participants’ meta
-
linguistic skills (Zeshan 2013) and fluency in multiple sign
languages (Byun
et al. in preparation).

Abstract

There is some evidence that systems of minimal response (‘feedback’, ‘back-channel’, ‘reactive tokens’) may vary systematically across speakers of different languages and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Maynard, 1986; Clancy et al., 1996). The questions we address here are these: what is the nature of such differences? And what difference do they make to how do these differences affect the interactional system as a whole? We explore this these questions by looking in detail at conversational data from two languages and cultures: Y ́elˆı Dnye, spoken on Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea), and Tzeltal Mayan, spoken in southern Mexico. The Rossel system is gaze-based, interlocutors tend to maintain a high level of mutual gaze, and a large proportion of feedback signals – many nonverbal – occur during the production of the turn that is being reacted to. Tzeltal speakers, in contrast, practice gaze avoidance, and produce very few visual feedback signals, but instead relying on frequent verbal response signals at the end of each TCU, and an elaborate convention of repeating (parts of) the prior turn to display understanding and agreement. We outline the repertoire of response tokens for each language, illustrate their differential usage, and suggest some consequences of these properties of turn-taking systems for interactional style and for on- line processing

Abstract

Along with complexity, the extent of the variability of human language across social groups is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, and we need to understand how this is possible. An underdetermined innate basis is plausible, but there is no consensus about what it is (other than vocal learning and the vocal apparatus), or how it would make it possible to learn varied languages. An alternative, and potentially complementary, explanation suggests that there is a set of communicative instincts and motivations that together make it possible for the infant to bootstrap into the local language, whatever it may be. Some evidence for this is as follows. First, the organization of informal interactive human communication – the core niche for language use – looks much less variable than languages. Thus all language users in this niche take rapid turns at talking even though the speed of this is highly demanding. Similarly, all users avail themselves of the same mechanisms for repairing miscommunication, and use the same restricted system for building coherent dialogues. Second, long before infants have any linguistic knowledge, they take part in ‘proto-conversations’ that exhibit these same universal organizations. Third, where normal spoken language is not accessible to individuals (as when they are profoundly deaf), they still share the same communicative infrastructure. Finally, there are some signs of phylogenetic parallels in other primates. If this is correct, Darwin’s characterization of language as “an instinct to acquire an art” may have its root in communicative instincts as much as specific instincts about language structure

Abstract

In psycholinguistic experiments on language processing, researchers have traditionally focused on either comprehension or production. However, real-life, communicative language use happens most often in an interactive setting, involving rapid turn-taking between interlocutors. In such a setting, listening to a turn probably overlaps with preparing an answer to this turn. In the current EEG experiment, participants answered quiz questions, asked by the experimenter. Unknowingly to participants, these questions were pre-recorded, while the experimenter gave live feedback on participants’ answers. Questions appeared in two different conditions. Participants could confidently guess the answer to the question either halfway through the question (e.g., "Which character, also known as James Bond, appears in the famous movies?"), or only when they heard the last word(s) (e.g., "Which character, who appears in the famous movies, is also known as James Bond?"). ERP results showed a small N400 effect, followed by a large positivity at the moment within the question that the answer started to become apparent (the critical point). In the frequency domain, an alpha/mu desynchronization effect was found, starting within 500 milliseconds after the critical point. A follow-up control-experiment in which participants only listened to the questions and tried to remember them, showed a qualitatively similar pattern in the ERPs, but with a larger N400 and a smaller positivity. The alpha/mu desynchronization effect was absent or at least very much redu ced. We tentatively interpret the alpha/mu desynchronization from the main experiment as a signal of response preparation, starting quickly after an appropriate response can be retrieved

Abstract

Combining data from two longitudinal studies of young children, we track the development of turn-timing in spontaneous infant-caregiver interactions. We focus on three aspects of timing: overlap, gap, and delay marking. We find evidence for early development of turn-timing skills, in-line with the Interaction Engine Hypothesis. (see attached .pdf for our 2-page abstract)

Abstract

This presentation will report on the findings of a large-scale comparative project on other-initiated repair in 12 languages, representing major and minor languages of Europe, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, South America, and Papua New Guinea (and including a sign language). This comparative project is based on a multilanguage corpus of video-recorded interaction in informal settings in homes and villages, among family and friends. Building on findings from qualitative work, a research team in the "Interactional Foundations of Language" Project at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen has developed a detailed coding scheme for the systematic comparison of other-initiated repair sequences across languages. These languages belong to different language families, have different typological profiles, and are spoken by members of distinctly different cultures. Despite the diversity of languages and cultures represented, the findings of this study show a striking set of commonalities in the sequential and formal organization of other-initiated repair. This lends some support to an ''interactional infrastructure'' hypothesis, which suggests that interactional structures are more likely to be universal than lexico-grammatical structures. At the same time, however, we also observe differences across the languages in how the common system of possibilities for other-initiated repair is used: for example, while most if not all languages allow speakers to use both an interjection ("Huh?") and a WH-word ("What?") strategy for ''open-class other-initiation of repair'', the relative frequency of these strategies varies, with English showing quite common use of ''What?'' for this function, but with many other languages almost exclusively using a ''Huh?'' strategy. The presentation will summarize and explain findings of the coding study, with reference not only to the different strategies available for other-initiation of repair, but also the kinds of repair operations that can be carried out as a function of the choice of repair initiator. There will also be some discussion of the relevance of these results to our understanding of the cultural status of rights and responsibilities in the domain of social agency.

Abstract

To develop into competent communicators infants need to learn to appropriately time their turns in social interaction. Few studies have assessed the actual timing of turn-taking in infant development and debate continues about whether infants actively contribute to the turn-taking. In order to assess whether changes in infants’ vocal turntaking abilities as they get older are really attributable to infants’ improving skills, we analyzed video recordings of 12 mother-infant dyads in free-play interactions longitudinally at 12 and 18 months. Findings indicate that in the first half of the second year of life infants become more skilled in taking turns in vocal exchanges, as evidenced by decreasing onset times of their turns as well as a decrease in the percentage of onsets produced in overlap with their mothers. These changes are not explained by the mothers providing more opportunities to their infants to take their turn. The mean number of utterances produced by the mother did not differ significantly at 12 and 18 months, mothers did not shorten their utterances, nor did they increase the pauses between their consecutive turns. We therefore conclude that infants play an active part in vocal turn-taking exchanges with their mothers and its developmental progress.

Abstract

The theory of evolution is “unreasonably effective” (in Wigner’s terms) in that it seems to apply to both biological evolution and cultural change -- domains that might seem completely unrelated. Nowhere is this parallelism clearer than in the domain of language, where there is both an evolved biological basis for language and processes of cultural evolution that lie behind the diversification of languages. Language is clearly a bio-cultural hybrid -- we are biologically equipped for language in general, but inherit the specific cultural form of the languages in which we are socialized. This symposium explores the genetic foundations of language, the phylogenetic patterns of cultural diversification in language, and the ongoing interplay between biological and cultural evolution. Individual papers will address the relation between linguistic ability, brain, and genes; the biological basis for communicative interaction; the phylogenetic patterns in language diversification both in form and content; the effects of population genetics on language diversification; and the case of village sign languages: the interplay between genetics and language type. The papers suggest that one reason that evolutionary theory applies so well to both biological and cultural phenomena is that the two are intertwined and in ongoing interaction. Organizer: Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Co-Organizer: Karen Emmorey, Ph.D., San Diego State University Discussant: Dan Dediu, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Speakers: Simon E. Fisher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Language, Evolution, and the Genomics Revolution Russell Gray, University of Auckland Evolutionary Principles and the Diversification of Linguistic Form Carol Padden, University of California Culture Before Genes: The Case of a Village Sign Language

Abstract

de novo languages – only sign languages: village sign languages & home sign How do you build a language from the ground up? Is there a ‘starting base’? If so, what is it? What elements get innovated in what order, and why? How quickly does system get imposed? For real language isolates like village sign systems, what apogee of structure is got in c. 5-7 generations? Strand (1) from gesture to home sign (seeding of sign, iconicity, single generation…)Strand (2) village sign languages (5+ generations, small demography, 2nd L signers…, effects of local gesture systems)Strand (3) urban community sign languages with recent take-off (large demography, connections to other sign languages, systematic exploitation of the manual medium) Strand (4) genes & language: feedback relations

Abstract

Supplementary material: Stephen C. Levinson's keynote lecture, "Exploring language diversity: Wohin?", as recorded (05-06-2013) and broadcast (25-09-2013) by DRadio Wissen. * To save and/or listen to the mp3 file: please right-click on the link, and select the 'Save Link As...' option. * Source: http://www.dradiowissen.de/ Length: 45 min.

Abstract

The properties that make our species special, namely language, technology and culture, are all ‘bio-cultural hybrids’ interweaving biology (e.g. anatomy of vocal tract and hand, cooperative instincts) and cultural diversity. But at the birth of the cognitive sciences a radical idealization was made, namely the assumption of THE human mind, a singular system shared by all humans. This idealization, useful at the time, now hampers the understanding of our species, whose success is predicated on diverse cultural adaptations. This paper will illustrate how in the language domain, different languages require different algorithms served by different neural networks, yielding differing minds and brains.