Publications

Abstract

Scholars disagree about the extent to which language can tell us
about conceptualisation of the world. Some believe that language
is a direct window onto concepts: Having a word ‘‘bird’’, ‘‘table’’ or
‘‘sour’’ presupposes the corresponding underlying concept, BIRD,
TABLE, SOUR. Others disagree. Words are thought to be uninformative,
or worse, misleading about our underlying conceptual representations;
after all, our mental worlds are full of ideas that we
struggle to express in language. How could this be so, argue sceptics,
if language were a direct window on our inner life? In this presentation,
I consider what language can tell us about the
conceptualisation of taste. By considering linguistic data from
twenty unrelated cultures – varying in subsistence mode (huntergatherer
to industrial), ecological zone (rainforest jungle to desert),
dwelling type (rural and urban), and so forth – I argue any single language is, indeed, impoverished about what it can reveal about
taste. But recurrent lexicalisation patterns across languages can
provide valuable insights about human taste experience. Moreover,
language patterning is part of the data that a good theory of taste
perception has to be answerable for. Taste researchers, therefore,
cannot ignore the crosslinguistic facts.

Abstract

Emotion scientists often take an ambivalent stance concerning the role of language in a science of emotion. However, it is important for emotion researchers to contemplate some of the consequences of current practices
for their theory building. There is a danger of an overreliance on the English language as a transparent window into emotion categories. More consideration has to be given to cross-linguistic comparison in the future so that models of language acquisition and of the language–cognition interface fit better the extant variation found in today’s peoples.

Abstract

This Research Topic explores the question: what is the relationship between representations of time and space in cultures around the world? This question touches on the broader issue of how humans come to represent and reason about abstract entities – things we cannot see or touch. Time is a particularly opportune domain to investigate this topic. Across cultures, people use spatial representations for time, for example in graphs, time-lines, clocks, sundials, hourglasses, and calendars. In language, time is also heavily related to space, with spatial terms often used to describe the order and duration of events. In English, for example, we might move a meeting forward, push a deadline back, attend a long concert or go on a short break. People also make consistent spatial gestures when talking about time, and appear to spontaneously invoke spatial representations when processing temporal language. A large body of evidence suggests a close correspondence between temporal and spatial language and thought. However, the ways that people spatialize time can differ dramatically across languages and cultures. This research topic identifies and explores some of the sources of this variation, including patterns in spatial thinking, patterns in metaphor, gesture and other cultural systems. This Research Topic explores how speakers of different languages talk about time and space and how they think about these domains, outside of language. The Research Topic invites papers exploring the following issues: 1. Do the linguistic representations of space and time share the same lexical and morphosyntactic resources? 2. To what extent does the conceptualization of time follow the conceptualization of space?

Abstract

The distinctions between red and yellow or arm and hand may seem self-evident to English speakers, but they are not: Languages differ in the named distinctions they make. To help understand what constrains word meaning and how variation arises, we examined name choices in English, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese for 36 instances of human locomotion. Naming patterns showed commonalities largely interpretable in terms of perceived physical similarities among the instances. There was no evidence for languages jointly ignoring salient physical distinctions to build meaning on other bases, nor for a shift in the basis of word meanings between parts of the domain of more vs. less importance to everyday life. Overall, the languages differed most notably in how many named distinctions they made, a form of variation that may be linked to linguistic typology. These findings, considered along with naming patterns from other domains, suggest recurring principles of constraint and variation across domains.

Abstract

Are there individual differences in children’s prediction of upcoming linguistic input and what do these differences reflect? Using a variant of the preferential looking paradigm (Golinkoff et al., 1987), we found that, upon hearing a sentence like “The boy eats a big cake”, two-year-olds fixate edible objects in a visual scene (a cake) soon after they hear the semantically constraining verb, eats, and prior to hearing the word, cake. Importantly, children’s prediction skills were significantly correlated with their productive vocabulary size – Skilled producers (i.e., children with large production vocabularies) showed evidence of predicting upcoming linguistic input while low producers did not. Furthermore, we found that children’s prediction ability is tied specifically to their production skills and not to their comprehension skills. Prediction is really a piece of cake, but only for skilled producers.

Abstract

Despite the efficiency with which language users typically process spoken language, a growing body of research finds substantial individual differences in both the speed and accuracy of spoken language processing potentially attributable to participants’ literacy skills. Against this background, the current study takes a look at the role of word reading skill in listener’s anticipation of upcoming spoken language input in children at the cusp of learning to read: if reading skills impact predictive language processing, then children at this stage of literacy acquisition should be most susceptible to the effects of reading skills on spoken language processing. We tested 8-year-old children on their prediction of upcoming spoken language input in an eye-tracking task. While children, like in previous studies to-date, were successfully able to anticipate upcoming spoken language input, there was a strong positive correlation between children’s word reading (but not their pseudo-word reading and meta-phonological awareness or their spoken word recognition) skills and their prediction skills. We suggest that these findings are most compatible with the notion that the process of learning orthographic representations during reading acquisition sharpens pre-existing lexical representations which in turn also supports anticipation of upcoming spoken words.

Abstract

La ciencia moderna nace de la conjunción entre postulados teóricos y el desarrollo de una infraestructura tecnológica que permite observar los hechos de manera adecuada, realizar experimentos y verificar las hipótesis. Desde Galileo, ciencia y tecnología han avanzado conjuntamente. En el mundo occidental, la ciencia ha evolucionado desde pro-puestas puramente especulativas (basadas en postulados apriorísticos) hasta el uso de métodos experimentales y estadísticos para explicar mejor nuestras observaciones. La tecnología se hermana con la ciencia facilitando al investigador una aproximación adecuada a los hechos que pretende explicar. Así, Galileo, para observar los cuerpos celestes, mejoró el utillaje óptico, lo que le permitió un acercamiento más preciso al objeto de estudio y, en consecuencia, unos fundamentos más sólidos para su propuesta teórica. De modo similar, actualmente el desarrollo tecnológico digital ha posibilitado la extracción masiva de datos y el análisis estadístico de éstos para verificar las hipótesis de partida: la lingüística no ha podido dar el paso desde la pura especulación hacia el análisis estadístico de los hechos hasta la aparición de las tecnologías digitales.

Abstract

Successful dependency resolution during language comprehension relies on accessing certain representations in memory, and not others. We recently reported event-related potential (ERP) evidence that syntactically unavailable, intervening attractor-nouns interfered during comprehension of Spanish noun-phrase ellipsis (the determiner otra/otro): grammatically correct determiners that mismatched the gender of attractor-nouns elicited a sustained negativity as also observed for incorrect determiners (Martin, Nieuwland, & Carreiras, 2012). The current study sought to extend this novel finding in sentences containing object-extracted relative clauses, where the antecedent may be less prominent. Whereas correct determiners that matched the gender of attractor-nouns now elicited an early anterior negativity as also observed for mismatching determiners, the previously reported interaction pattern was replicated in P600 responses to subsequent words. Our results suggest that structural and gender information is simultaneously taken into account, providing further evidence for retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences.

Abstract

Successful language use requires access to products of past processing within an evolving discourse. A central issue for any neurocognitive theory of language then concerns the role of memory variables during language processing. Under a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, linguistic dependency resolution (e.g., retrieving antecedents) is subject to interference from other information in the sentence, especially information that occurs between the words that form the dependency (e.g., between the antecedent and the retrieval site). Retrieval interference may then shape processing complexity as a function of the match of the information at retrieval with the antecedent versus other recent or similar items in memory. To address these issues, we studied the online processing of ellipsis in Castilian Spanish, a language with morphological gender agreement. We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences containing noun-phrase ellipsis indicated by the determiner otro/a (‘another’). These determiners had a grammatically correct or incorrect gender with respect to their antecedent nouns that occurred earlier in the sentence. Moreover, between each antecedent and determiner, another noun phrase occurred that was structurally unavailable as an antecedent and that matched or mismatched the gender of the antecedent (i.e., a local agreement attractor). In contrast to extant P600 results on agreement violation processing, and inconsistent with predictions from neurocognitive models of sentence processing, grammatically incorrect determiners evoked a sustained, broadly distributed negativity compared to correct ones between 400 and 1000 ms after word onset, possibly related to sustained negativities as observed for referential processing difficulties. Crucially, this effect was modulated by the attractor: an increased negativity was observed for grammatically correct determiners that did not match the gender of the attractor, suggesting that structurally unavailable noun phrases were at least temporarily considered for grammatically correct ellipsis. These results constitute the first ERP evidence for cue-based retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences.

Abstract

Models are a flourishing and indispensable area of research in language evolution. Here we
highlight critical issues in using and interpreting models, and suggest viable approaches. First,
contrasting models can explain the same data and similar modelling techniques can lead to
diverging conclusions. This should act as a reminder to use the extreme malleability of
modelling parsimoniously when interpreting results. Second, quantitative techniques similar to
those used in modelling language evolution have proven themselves inadequate in other
disciplines. Cross-disciplinary fertilization is crucial to avoid mistakes which have previously
occurred in other areas. Finally, experimental validation is necessary both to sharpen models'
hypotheses, and to support their conclusions. Our belief is that models should be interpreted as
quantitative demonstrations of logical possibilities, rather than as direct sources of evidence.
Only an integration of theoretical principles, quantitative proofs and empirical validation can
allow research in the evolution of language to progress.

Abstract

Two Siberian languages, Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir, do not obey strong island constraints in questioning: any sub-constituent of a relative or adverbial clause can be questioned. We argue that this has to do with how focusing works in these languages. The focused sub-constituent remains in situ, but there is abundant morphosyntactic evidence that the focus feature is passed up to the head of the clause. The result is the formation of a complex focus structure in which both the head and non head daughter are overtly marked as focus, and they are interpreted as a pairwise list such that the focus background is applicable to this list, but not to other alternative lists

Abstract

This volume is dedicated to exploring the crossroads where complex sentences and information management – more specifically information structure (IS) and reference tracking (RT) – come together. Complex sentences are a highly relevant but understudied domain for studying notions of IS and RT. On the one hand, a complex sentence can be studied as a mini-unit of discourse consisting of two or more elements describing events, situations, or processes, with its own internal information-structural and referential organisation. On the other hand, complex sentences can be studied as parts of larger discourse structures, such as narratives or conversations, in terms of how their information-structural characteristics relate to this wider context.We first focus on the interrelatedness of IS and RT (Section 1) and then define and discuss the notion of complex sentences and their subtypes in Section 2. Section 3 surveys issues of IS in complex sentences, while Section 4 focuses on RT in complex sentences. Sections 5 and 6 briefly consider IS and RT in a wider discourse context. Section 5 discusses the interaction between IS, RT, and other discourse factors, and Section 6 focuses on ways in which a specific RT system, switch reference, can function as an RT device beyond the sentence.

Abstract

No island effects are observable in Tundra Yukaghir questions, which are possible in virtually all syntactic environments. It is argued that this feature of Tundra Yukaghir relates to its capability of explicitly marking focus domains. If a question word occurs in a syntactic island, the whole island is morphologically treated as a focus domain. In order to take scope and function as question markers, question words must remain within the focus domain, i.e. in the island clause. This syntactic configuration is reflected in the semantics of question islands, which are used to inquire about the identity of the whole island, not merely the denotation of the question word.

Abstract

The nature and the typological validity of the categories ‘realis’ and ‘irrealis’ has been a matter of intensive debate. In this paper we analyse the realis/irrealis dichotomy in Tundra Yukaghir (isolate, north-eastern Siberia), and show that in this language realis is associated with a meaningful contribution, namely, existential quantification over events. This contribution must be expressed overtly by a combination of syntactic and prosodic means. Irrealis is the default category: the clause is interpreted as irrealis in the absence of the marker of realis. This implies that the relevant typological question may turn out to be the semantics of realis, rather than irrealis. We further argue that the Tundra Yukaghir realis is a hybrid category composed of elements from different domains (information structure, lexical semantics, and quantification) unified at the level of interpretation via pragmatic enrichment. The concept of notional mood must therefore be expanded to include moods which come about in interpretation and do not constitute a discrete denotation.

Abstract

Even though assertion has held centre stage in much philosophical and linguistic theorising on language, Mark Jary’s ‘Assertion’ represents the first book-length treatment of the topic. The content of the book is aptly described by the author himself: ''This book has two aims. One is to bring together and discuss in a systematic way a range of perspectives on assertion: philosophical, linguistic and psychological. [...] The other is to present a view of the pragmatics of assertion, with particular emphasis on the contribution of the declarative mood to the process of utterance interpretation.'' (p. 1). The promise contained in this introductory note is to a large extent fulfilled: the first seven chapters of the book discuss many of the relevant philosophical and linguistic approaches to assertion and at the same time provide the background for the presentation of Jary's own view on the pragmatics of declaratives, presented in the last (and longest) chapter.

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which age-related language processing difficulties are due to a decline in sensory processes or to a deterioration of cognitive factors, specifically, attentional control. Two facets of attentional control were examined: inhibition of irrelevant information and divided attention. Younger and older adults were asked to categorize the initial phoneme of spoken syllables (“Was it m or n?”), trying to ignore the lexical status of the syllables. The phonemes were manipulated to range in eight steps from m to n. Participants also did a discrimination task on syllable pairs (“Were the initial sounds the same or different?”). Categorization and discrimination were performed under either divided attention (concurrent visual-search task) or focused attention (no visual task). The results showed that even when the younger and older adults were matched on their discrimination scores: (1) the older adults had more difficulty inhibiting lexical knowledge than did younger adults, (2) divided attention weakened lexical inhibition in both younger and older adults, and (3) divided attention impaired sound discrimination more in older than younger listeners. The results confirm the independent and combined contribution of sensory decline and deficit in attentional control to language processing difficulties associated with aging. The relative weight of these variables and their mechanisms of action are discussed in the context of theories of aging and language.

Abstract

he present study tested Japanese 4.5- and 10-month old infants' ability to discriminate three German vowel pairs, none of which are contrastive in Japanese, using a visual habituation–dishabituation paradigm. Japanese adults' discrimination of the same pairs was also tested. The results revealed that Japanese 4.5-month old infants discriminated the German /bu:k/-/by:k/ contrast, but they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bi:k/-/be:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese 10-month old infants, on the other hand, discriminated the German /bi:k/-/be:k/ contrast, while they showed no evidence of discriminating the /bu:k/-/by:k/ or /bu:k/-/bo:k/ contrasts. Japanese adults, in contrast, were highly accurate in their discrimination of all of the pairs. The results indicate that discrimination of non-native contrasts is not always easy even for young infants, and that their ability to discriminate non-native contrasts can improve with age even when they receive no exposure to a language in which the given contrast is phonemic. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 192–209, 2014.

Abstract

An eye-tracking experiment examined contextual flexibility in speech processing in response to distortions in spoken input. Dutch participants heard Dutch sentences containing critical words and saw four-picture displays. The name of one picture either had the same onset phonemes as the critical word or had a different first phoneme and rhymed. Participants fixated onset-overlap more than rhyme-overlap pictures, but this tendency varied with speech quality. Relative to a baseline with noise-free sentences, participants looked less at onset-overlap and more at rhyme-overlap pictures when phonemes in the sentences (but not in the critical words) were replaced by noises like those heard on a badly-tuned AM radio. The position of the noises (word-initial or word-medial) had no effect. Noises elsewhere in the sentences apparently made evidence about the critical word less reliable: Listeners became less confident of having heard the onset-overlap name but also less sure of having not heard the rhyme-overlap name. The same acoustic information has different effects on spoken-word recognition as the probability of distortion changes.

Abstract

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of pre-exposure to
pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for
auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in
isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory
stimuli were preceded by primes which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures’ printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onsetrelated (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijlzwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological
interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming
magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words, and did not vary with picture
viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects
arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision-making. This suggests
that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how
quickly we recognize related spoken words.

Abstract

Children hear new words from many different talkers; to learn words most efficiently, they should be able to represent them independently of talker-specific pronunciation detail. However, do children know what the component sounds of words should be, and can they use that knowledge to deal with different talkers' phonetic realizations? Experiment 1 replicated prior studies on lexically guided retuning of speech perception in adults, with a picture-verification methodology suitable for children. One participant group heard an ambiguous fricative ([s/f]) replacing /f/ (e.g., in words like giraffe); another group heard [s/f] replacing /s/ (e.g., in platypus). The first group subsequently identified more tokens on a Simpie-[s/f]impie-Fimpie toy-name continuum as Fimpie. Experiments 2 and 3 found equivalent lexically guided retuning effects in 12- and 6-year-olds. Children aged 6 have all that is needed for adjusting to talker variation in speech: detailed and abstract phonological representations and the ability to apply them during spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Differences in the oscillatory EEG dynamics of reading open class (OC) and closed class (CC) words have previously been found (Bastiaansen et al., 2005) and are thought to reflect differences in lexical-semantic content between these word classes. In particular, the theta-band (4–7 Hz) seems to play a prominent role in lexical-semantic retrieval. We tested whether this theta effect is robust in an older population of subjects. Additionally, we examined how the context of a word can modulate the oscillatory dynamics underlying retrieval for the two different classes of words. Older participants (mean age 55) read words presented in either syntactically correct sentences or in a scrambled order (“scrambled sentence”) while their EEG was recorded. We performed time–frequency analysis to examine how power varied based on the context or class of the word. We observed larger power decreases in the alpha (8–12 Hz) band between 200–700 ms for the OC compared to CC words, but this was true only for the scrambled sentence context. We did not observe differences in theta power between these conditions. Context exerted an effect on the alpha and low beta (13–18 Hz) bands between 0 and 700 ms. These results suggest that the previously observed word class effects on theta power changes in a younger participant sample do not seem to be a robust effect in this older population. Though this is an indirect comparison between studies, it may suggest the existence of aging effects on word retrieval dynamics for different populations. Additionally, the interaction between word class and context suggests that word retrieval mechanisms interact with sentence-level comprehension mechanisms in the alpha-band.

Abstract

In speaking, semantic encoding is the conversion of a non-verbal mental representation (the reference) into a semantic structure suitable for expression (the sense). In this fMRI study on sentence production we investigate how the speaking brain accomplishes this transition from non-verbal to verbal representations. In an overt picture description task, we manipulated repetition of sense (the semantic structure of the sentence) and reference (the described situation) separately. By investigating brain areas showing response adaptation to repetition of each of these sentence properties, we disentangle the neuronal infrastructure for these two components of semantic encoding. We also performed a control experiment with the same stimuli and design but without any linguistic task to identify areas involved in perception of the stimuli per se. The bilateral inferior parietal lobes were selectively sensitive to repetition of reference, while left inferior frontal gyrus showed selective suppression to repetition of sense. Strikingly, a widespread network of areas associated with language processing (left middle frontal gyrus, bilateral superior parietal lobes and bilateral posterior temporal gyri) all showed repetition suppression to both sense and reference processing. These areas are probably involved in mapping reference onto sense, the crucial step in semantic encoding. These results enable us to track the transition from non-verbal to verbal representations in our brains.

Abstract

Models of speaking distinguish producing meaning, words and syntax as three different linguistic components of speaking. Nevertheless, little is known about the brain’s integrated neuronal infrastructure for speech production. We investigated semantic, lexical and syntactic aspects of speaking using fMRI. In a picture description task, we manipulated repetition of sentence meaning, words, and syntax separately. By investigating brain areas showing response adaptation to repetition of each of these sentence properties, we disentangle the neuronal infrastructure for these processes. We demonstrate that semantic, lexical and syntactic processes are carried out in partly overlapping and partly distinct brain networks and show that the classic left-hemispheric dominance for language is present for syntax but not semantics.

Abstract

The interactive-alignment account of dialogue proposes that interlocutors achieve conversational success by aligning their understanding of the situation under discussion. Such alignment occurs because they prime each other at different levels of representation (e.g., phonology, syntax, semantics), and this is possible because these representations are shared across production and comprehension. In this paper, we briefly review the behavioral evidence, and then consider how findings from cognitive neuroscience might lend support to this account, on the assumption that alignment of neural activity corresponds to alignment of mental states. We first review work supporting representational parity between production and comprehension, and suggest that neural activity associated with phonological, lexical, and syntactic aspects of production and comprehension are closely related. We next consider evidence for the neural bases of the activation and use of situation models during production and comprehension, and how these demonstrate the activation of non-linguistic conceptual representations associated with language use. We then review evidence for alignment of neural mechanisms that are specific to the act of communication. Finally, we suggest some avenues of further research that need to be explored to test crucial predictions of the interactive alignment account.

Abstract

Earlier studies had shown that speakers naming several objects typically look at each object until they have retrieved the phonological form of its name and therefore look longer at objects with long names than at objects with shorter names. We examined whether this tight eye-to-speech coordination was maintained at different speech rates and after increasing amounts of practice. Participants named the same set of objects with monosyllabic or disyllabic names on up to 20 successive trials. In Experiment 1, they spoke as fast as they could, whereas in Experiment 2 they had to maintain a fixed moderate or faster speech rate. In both experiments, the durations of the gazes to the objects decreased with increasing speech rate, indicating that at higher speech rates, the speakers spent less time planning the object names. The eye-speech lag (the time interval between the shift of gaze away from an object and the onset of its name) was independent of the speech rate but became shorter with increasing practice. Consistent word length effects on the durations of the gazes to the objects and the eye speech lags were only found in Experiment 2. The results indicate that shifts of eye gaze are often linked to the completion of phonological encoding, but that speakers can deviate from this default coordination of eye gaze and speech, for instance when the descriptive task is easy and they aim to speak fast.

Abstract

In this paper, we present two attempts to replicate a widely-cited but never fully published experiment in which German and Spanish speakers were asked to associate adjectives with nouns of masculine and feminine grammati-cal gender (Boroditsky et al. 2003). The researchers claim that speakers associ-ated more stereotypically female adjectives with grammatically feminine nouns and more stereotypically male adjectives with grammatically masculine nouns. We were not able to replicate the results either in a word association task or in an analogous primed lexical decision task. This suggests that the results of the original experiment were either an artifact of some non-documented aspect of the experimental procedure or a statistical fluke. The question whether speakers assign sex-based interpretations to grammatical gender categories at all cannot be answered definitively, as the results in the published literature vary consider-ably. However, our experiments show that if such an effect exists, it is not strong enough to be measured indirectly via the priming of adjectives by nouns.

Abstract

Refers to Yasuyo Minagawa-Kawai, Alejandrina Cristià, Emmanuel Dupoux "Cerebral lateralization and early speech acquisition: A developmental scenario" Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2011, Pages 217-232

Abstract

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns.

Abstract

We investigated whether levels of reading ability attained through formal literacy are related to anticipatory language-mediated eye movements. Indian low and high literates listened to simple spoken sentences containing a target word (e.g., "door") while at the same time looking at a visual display of four objects (a target, i.e. the door, and three distractors). The spoken sentences were constructed in such a way that participants could use semantic, associative, and syntactic information from adjectives and particles (preceding the critical noun) to anticipate the visual target objects. High literates started to shift their eye gaze to the target objects well before target word onset. In the low literacy group this shift of eye gaze occurred only when the target noun (i.e. "door") was heard, more than a second later. Our findings suggest that formal literacy may be important for the fine-tuning of language-mediated anticipatory mechanisms, abilities which proficient language users can then exploit for other cognitive activities such as spoken language-mediated eye
gaze. In the conclusion, we discuss three potential mechanisms of how reading acquisition and practice may contribute to the differences in predictive spoken language processing between low and high literates.

Abstract

Our knowledge of speech perception is largely based on experiments conducted with carefully recorded clear speech presented under good listening conditions to undistracted listeners - a near-ideal situation, in other words. But the reality poses a set of different challenges. First of all, listeners may need to divide their attention between speech comprehension and another task (e.g., driving). Outside the laboratory, the speech signal is often slurred by less than careful pronunciation and the listener has to deal with background noise. Moreover, in a globalized world, listeners need to understand speech in more than their native language. Relatedly, the speakers we listen to often have a different language background so we have to deal with a foreign or regional accent we are not familiar with. Finally, outside the laboratory, speech perception is not an end in itself, but rather a mean to contribute to a conversation. Listeners do not only need to understand the speech they are hearing, they also need to use this information to plan and time their own responses. For this special topic, we invite papers that address any of these ecological aspects of speech perception.

Abstract

Casual speech processes, such as /t/-reduction, make word recognition harder. Additionally, word-recognition is also harder in a second language (L2). Combining these challenges, we investigated whether L2 learners have recourse to knowledge from their native language (L1) when dealing with casual-speech processes in their L2. In three experiments, production and perception of /t/-reduction was investigated. An initial production experiment showed that /t/-reduction occurred in both languages and patterned similarly in proper nouns but differed when /t/ was a verbal inflection. Two perception experiments compared the performance of German learners of Dutch with that of native speakers for nouns and verbs. Mirroring the production patterns, German learners' performance strongly resembled that of native Dutch listeners when the reduced /t/ was part of a word stem, but deviated where /t/ was a verbal inflection. These results suggest that a casual speech process in a second language is problematic for learners when the process is not known from the leaner's native language, similar to what has been observed for phoneme contrasts.

Abstract

This paper describes the pilot study of phonetic segmentation applied to Nijmegen Corpus of Casual Czech (NCCCz). This corpus contains informal speech of strong spontaneous nature which influences the character of produced speech at various levels. This work is the part of wider research related to the analysis of pronunciation reduction in such informal speech. We present the analysis of the accuracy of phonetic segmentation when canonical or reduced pronunciation is used. The achieved accuracy of realized phonetic segmentation provides information about general accuracy of proper acoustic modelling which is supposed to be applied in spontaneous speech recognition. As a byproduct of presented spontaneous speech segmentation, this paper also describes the created lexicon with canonical pronunciations of words in NCCCz, a tool supporting pronunciation check of lexicon items, and finally also a minidatabase of selected utterances from NCCCz manually labelled on phonetic level suitable for evaluation purposes

Abstract

In this work, Mandarin tone production is examined using simultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound (SLLUS). Laryngoscopy is used to obtain information about laryngeal state, and laryngeal ultrasound is used to quantify changes in larynx height. With this methodology, several observations are made concerning the production of Mandarin tone in citation form. Two production strategies are attested for low tone production: (i) larynx lowering and (ii) larynx raising with laryngeal constriction. Another finding is that the larynx rises continually during level tone production, which is interpreted as a means to compensate for declining subglottal pressure. In general, we argue that larynx height plays a supportive role in facilitating f0 change under circumstances where intrinsic mechanisms for f0 control are insufficient to reach tonal targets due to vocal fold inertia. Activation of the laryngeal constrictor can be used to achieve low tone targets through mechanical adjustment to vocal fold dynamics. We conclude that extra-glottal laryngeal mechanisms play important roles in facilitating the production of tone targets and should be integrated into the contemporary articulatory model of tone production

Abstract

Purpose: Physiological and phonetic studies suggest that, at moderate levels of epilaryngeal stricture, the ventricular folds impinge upon the vocal folds and influence their dynamical behavior, which is thought to be responsible for constricted laryngeal sounds. In this work, the authors examine this hypothesis through biomechanical modeling. Method: The dynamical response of a low-dimensional, lumped-element model of the vocal folds under the influence of vocal-ventricular fold coupling was evaluated. The model was assessed for F0 and cover-mass phase difference. Case studies of simulations of different constricted phonation types and of glottal stop illustrate various additional aspects of model performance. Results: Simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling lowers F0 and perturbs the mucosal wave. It also appears to reinforce irregular patterns of oscillation, and it can enhance laryngeal closure in glottal stop production. Conclusion: The effects of simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling are consistent with sounds, such as creaky voice, harsh voice, and glottal stop, that have been observed to involve epilaryngeal stricture and apparent contact between the vocal folds and ventricular folds. This supports the view that vocal-ventricular fold coupling is important in the vibratory dynamics of such sounds and, furthermore, suggests that these sounds may intrinsically require epilaryngeal stricture

Abstract

Sensorimotor areas activate to action- and object-related words, but their role in abstract meaning processing is still debated. Abstract emotion words denoting body internal states are a critical test case because they lack referential links to objects. If actions expressing emotion are crucial for learning correspondences between word forms and emotions, emotion word–evoked activity should emerge in motor brain systems controlling the face and arms, which typically express emotions. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 18 native speakers and used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activation evoked by abstract emotion words to that by face- and arm-related action words. In addition to limbic regions, emotion words indeed sparked precentral cortex, including body-part–specific areas activated somatotopically by face words or arm words. Control items, including hash mark strings and animal words, failed to activate precentral areas. We conclude that, similar to their role in action word processing, activation of frontocentral motor systems in the dorsal stream reflects the semantic binding of sign and meaning of abstract words denoting emotions and possibly other body internal states.

Abstract

This study investigated primary and secondary morphological family size effects in monolingual and bilingual processing, combining experimentation with computational modeling. Family size effects were investigated in an English lexical decision task for Dutch-English bilinguals and English monolinguals using the same materials. To account for the possibility that family size effects may only show up in words that resemble words in the native language of the bilinguals, the materials included, in addition to purely English items, Dutch-English cognates (identical and non-identical in form). As expected, the monolingual data revealed facilitatory effects of English primary family size. Moreover, while the monolingual data did not show a main effect of cognate status, only form-identical cognates revealed an inhibitory effect of English secondary family size. The bilingual data showed stronger facilitation for identical cognates, but as for monolinguals, this effect was attenuated for words with a large secondary family size. In all, the Dutch-English primary and secondary family size effects in bilinguals were strikingly similar to those of monolinguals. Computational simulations suggest that the primary and secondary family size effects can be understood in terms of discriminative learning of the English lexicon. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Abstract

The effect of phonological similarity on L1-L2 cognate translation priming was examined with Japanese-English bilinguals. According to the phonological account, the cognate priming effect for different-script bilinguals consists of additive effects of phonological and conceptual facilitation. If true, then the size of the cognate priming effect would be directly influenced by the phonological similarity of cognate translation equivalents. The present experiment tested and confirmed this prediction: the cognate priming effect was significantly larger for cognate prime-target pairs with high-phonological similarity than pairs with low-phonological similarity. Implications for the nature of lexical processing in same-versus different-script bilinguals are discussed.

Abstract

Studies have shown that listeners segmenting unfamiliar languages transfer native-language (L1) segmentation cues. These studies, however, conflated L1 and recent linguistic exposure. The present study investigates the relative influences of L1 and recent linguistic exposure on the use of prosodic cues for segmenting an artificial language (AL). Participants were L1-French listeners, high-proficiency L2-French L1-English listeners, and L1-English listeners without functional knowledge of French. The prosodic cue assessed was F0 rise, which is word-final in French, but in English tends to be word-initial. 30 participants heard a 20-minute AL speech stream with word-final boundaries marked by F0 rise, and decided in a subsequent listening task which of two words (without word-final F0 rise) had been heard in the speech stream. The analyses revealed a marginally significant effect of L1 (all listeners) and, importantly, a significant effect of recent linguistic exposure (L1-French and L2-French listeners): accuracy increased with decreasing time in the US since the listeners’ last significant (3+ months) stay in a French-speaking environment. Interestingly, no effect of L2 proficiency was found (L2-French listeners).

Abstract

Many languages have general or “light” verbs used by speakers to describe a wide range of situations owing to their relatively schematic meanings, e.g., the English verb do that can be used to describe many different kinds of actions, or the verb put that labels a range of types of placement of objects at locations. Such semantically bleached verbs often become grammaticalized and used to encode an extended (set of) meaning(s), e.g., Tamil veyyii ‘put/place’ is used to encode causative meaning in periphrastic causatives (e.g., okkara veyyii ‘make sit’, nikka veyyii ‘make stand’). But do general verbs in different languages have the same kinds of (schematic) meanings and extensional ranges? Or do they reveal different, perhaps even cross-cutting, ways of structuring the same semantic domain in different languages? These questions require detailed crosslinguistic investigation using comparable methods of eliciting data. The present study is a first step in this direction, and focuses on the use of general verbs to describe events of placement and removal in two South Asian languages, Hindi and Tamil.

Abstract

Within a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech relates to statistical learning, as sensitivity to probabilistic information may aid identification of relevant cues in novel speech input. If statistical learning and perceptual learning (partly) draw on the same general mechanisms, then statistical learning in a non-auditory modality using non-linguistic sequences should predict adaptation to degraded speech. In the present study, 73 older adults (aged over 60 years) and 60 younger adults (aged between 18 and 30 years) performed a visual artificial grammar learning task and were presented with sixty meaningful noise-vocoded sentences in an auditory recall task. Within age groups, sentence recognition performance over exposure was analyzed as a function of statistical learning performance, and other variables that may predict learning (i.e., hearing, vocabulary, attention switching control, working memory and processing speed). Younger and older adults showed similar amounts of perceptual learning, but only younger adults showed significant statistical learning. In older adults, improvement in understanding noise-vocoded speech was constrained by age. In younger adults, amount of adaptation was associated with lexical knowledge and with statistical learning ability. Thus, individual differences in general cognitive abilities explain listeners' variability in adapting to noise-vocoded speech. Results suggest that perceptual and statistical learning share mechanisms of implicit regularity detection, but that the ability to detect statistical regularities is impaired in older adults if visual sequences are presented quickly.

Abstract

The aim of this event-related fMRI study was to investigate the cortical networks involved in case processing, an operation that is crucial to language comprehension yet whose neural underpinnings are not well-understood. What is the relationship of these networks to those that serve other aspects of syntactic and semantic processing? Participants read Basque sentences that contained case violations, number agreement violations or semantic anomalies, or that were both syntactically and semantically correct. Case violations elicited activity increases, compared to correct control sentences, in a set of parietal regions including the posterior cingulate, the precuneus, and the left and right inferior parietal lobules. Number agreement violations also elicited activity increases in left and right inferior parietal regions, and additional activations in the left and right middle frontal gyrus. Regions-of-interest analyses showed that almost all of the clusters that were responsive to case or number agreement violations did not differentiate between these two. In contrast, the left and right anterior inferior frontal gyrus and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex were only sensitive to semantic violations. Our results suggest that whereas syntactic and semantic anomalies clearly recruit distinct neural circuits, case, and number violations recruit largely overlapping neural circuits and that the distinction between the two rests on the relative contributions of parietal and prefrontal regions, respectively. Furthermore, our results are consistent with recently reported contributions of bilateral parietal and dorsolateral brain regions to syntactic processing, pointing towards potential extensions of current neurocognitive theories of language. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Abstract

What makes a proposition true or false has traditionally played an essential role in philosophical and linguistic theories of meaning. A comprehensive neurobiological theory of language must ultimately be able to explain the combined contributions of real-world truth-value and discourse context to sentence meaning. This fMRI study investigated the neural circuits that are sensitive to the propositional truth-value of sentences about counterfactual worlds, aiming to reveal differential hemispheric sensitivity of the inferior prefrontal gyri to counterfactual truth-value and real-world truth-value. Participants read true or false counterfactual conditional sentences (“If N.A.S.A. had not developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon would be Russia/America”) and real-world sentences (“Because N.A.S.A. developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon has been America/Russia”) that were matched on contextual constraint and truth-value. ROI analyses showed that whereas the left BA 47 showed similar activity increases to counterfactual false sentences and to real-world false sentences (compared to true sentences), the right BA 47 showed a larger increase for counterfactual false sentences. Moreover, whole-brain analyses revealed a distributed neural circuit for dealing with propositional truth-value. These results constitute the first evidence for hemispheric differences in processing counterfactual truth-value and real-world truth-value, and point toward additional right hemisphere involvement in counterfactual comprehension.

Abstract

Three experiments used event-related potentials to examine the processing consequences of gender-mismatching pronouns (e.g., “The aunt found out that he had won the lottery”), which have been shown to elicit P600 effects when judged as syntactically anomalous (Osterhout & Mobley, 1995). In each experiment, mismatching pronouns elicited a sustained, frontal negative shift (Nref) compared to matching pronouns: when participants were instructed to posit a new referent for mismatching pronouns (Experiment 1), and without this instruction (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiments 1 and 2, the observed Nref was robust only in individuals with higher reading span scores. In Experiment 1, participants with lower reading span showed P600 effects instead, consistent with an attempt at coreferential interpretation despite gender mismatch. The results from the experiments combined suggest that, in absence of an acceptability judgment task, people are more likely to interpret mismatching pronouns as referring to an unknown, unheralded antecedent than as a grammatically anomalous anaphor for a given antecedent.

Abstract

Propositional truth-value can be a defining feature of a sentence’s relevance to the unfolding discourse, and establishing propositional truth-value in context can be key to successful interpretation. In the current study, we investigate its role in the comprehension of counterfactual conditionals, which describe imaginary consequences of hypothetical events, and are thought to require keeping in mind both what is true and what is false. Pre-stored real-world knowledge may therefore intrude upon and delay counterfactual comprehension, which is predicted by some accounts of discourse comprehension, and has been observed during online comprehension. The impact of propositional truth-value may thus be delayed in counterfactual conditionals, as also claimed for sentences containing other types of logical operators (e.g., negation, scalar quantifiers). In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we investigated the impact of propositional truth-value when described consequences are both true and predictable given the counterfactual premise. False words elicited larger N400 ERPs than true words, in negated counterfactual sentences (e.g., “If N.A.S.A. had not developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon would have been Russia/America”) and real-world sentences (e.g., “Because N.A.S.A. developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon was America/Russia”) alike. These indistinguishable N400 effects of propositional truth-value, elicited by opposite word pairs, argue against disruptions by real-world knowledge during counterfactual comprehension, and suggest that incoming words are mapped onto the counterfactual context without any delay. Thus, provided a sufficiently constraining context, propositional truth-value rapidly impacts ongoing semantic processing, be the proposition factual or counterfactual.

Abstract

The role of linguistic experience in structural priming is unclear. Although it is explicitly predicted that experience contributes to priming effects on several theoretical accounts, to date the empirical data has been mixed. To investigate this issue, we conducted four sentence-picture-matching experiments that primed for the comprehension of object relative clauses in L1 and proficient L2 speakers of German. It was predicted that an effect of experience would only be observed in instances where priming effects are likely to be weak in experienced L1 speakers. In such circumstances, priming should be stronger in L2 speakers because of their comparative lack of experience using and processing the L2 test structures. The experiments systematically manipulated the primes to decrease lexical and conceptual overlap between primes and targets. The results supported the hypothesis: in two of the four studies, the L2 group showed larger priming effects in comparison to the L1 group. This effect only occurred when animacy differences were introduced between the prime and target. The results suggest that linguistic experience as operationalised by nativeness affects the strength of priming, specifically in cases where there is a lack of lexical and conceptual overlap between prime and target.

Abstract

There is ample evidence that individuals with dyslexia have a phonological deficit. A growing body of research also suggests that individuals with dyslexia have problems with categorical perception, as evidenced by weaker discrimination of between-category differences and better discrimination of within-category differences compared to average readers. Whether the categorical perception problems of individuals with dyslexia are a result of their reading problems or a cause has yet to be determined. Whether the observed perception deficit relates to a more general auditory deficit or is specific to speech also has yet to be determined. To shed more light on these issues, the categorical perception abilities of children at risk for dyslexia and chronological age controls were investigated before and after the onset of formal reading instruction in a longitudinal study. Both identification and discrimination data were collected using identical paradigms for speech and non-speech stimuli. Results showed the children at risk for dyslexia to shift from an allophonic mode of perception in kindergarten to a phonemic mode of perception in first grade, while the control group showed a phonemic mode already in kindergarten. The children at risk for dyslexia thus showed an allophonic perception deficit in kindergarten, which was later suppressed by phonemic perception as a result of formal reading instruction in first grade; allophonic perception in kindergarten can thus be treated as a clinical marker for the possibility of later reading problems.

Abstract

Learning to read is a complex process that develops normally in the majority of children and requires the mapping of graphemes to their corresponding phonemes. Problems with the mapping process nevertheless occur in about 5% of the population and are typically attributed to poor phonological representations, which are — in turn — attributed to underlying speech processing difficulties. We examined auditory discrimination of speech sounds in 6-year-old beginning readers with a familial risk of dyslexia (n=31) and no such risk (n=30) using the mismatch negativity (MMN). MMNs were recorded for stimuli belonging to either the same phoneme category (acoustic variants of/bə/) or different phoneme categories (/bə/vs./də/). Stimuli from different phoneme categories elicited MMNs in both the control and at-risk children, but the MMN amplitude was clearly lower in the at-risk children. In contrast, the stimuli from the same phoneme category elicited an MMN in only the children at risk for dyslexia. These results show children at risk for dyslexia to be sensitive to acoustic properties that are irrelevant in their language. Our findings thus suggest a possible cause of dyslexia in that they show 6-year-old beginning readers with at least one parent diagnosed with dyslexia to have a neural sensitivity to speech contrasts that are irrelevant in the ambient language. This sensitivity clearly hampers the development of stable phonological representations and thus leads to significant reading impairment later in life.

Abstract

Incidental learning of phonological structures through repeated exposure is an important component of native and foreign-language vocabulary acquisition that is not well understood at the neurophysiological level. It is also not settled when this type of learning occurs at the level of word forms as opposed to phoneme sequences. Here, participants listened to and repeated back foreign phonological forms (Korean words) and new native-language word forms (Finnish pseudowords) on two days. Recognition performance was improved, repetition latency became shorter and repetition accuracy increased when phonological forms were encountered multiple times. Cortical magnetoencephalography responses occurred bilaterally but the experimental effects only in the left hemisphere. Superior temporal activity at 300–600 ms, probably reflecting acoustic-phonetic processing, lasted longer for foreign phonology than for native phonology. Formation of longer-term auditory-motor representations was evidenced by a decrease of a spatiotemporally separate left temporal response and correlated increase of left frontal activity at 600–1200 ms on both days. The results point to item-level learning of novel whole-word representations.

Abstract

Language resources can be divided into structural resources treating phonology, morphosyntax, semantics etc. and resources treating the social, demographic, ethnic, political context. A third type are meta-resources, like bibliographies, which provide access to the resources of the first two kinds. This poster will present the Glottolog/Langdoc project, a comprehensive bibliography providing web access to 180k bibliographical records to (mainly) low visibility resources from low-density languages. The resources are annotated for macro-area, content language, and document type and are available in XHTML and RDF.

Abstract

This article explores the expression of placement and removal events in Moroccan Arabic, particularly the semantic features of ‘putting’ and ‘taking’ verbs, classified in accordance with their combination with Goal and/or Source NPs. Moroccan Arabic verbs encode a variety of components of placement and removal events, including containment, attachment, features of the figure, and trajectory. Furthermore, accidental events are distinguished from deliberate events either by the inherent semantics of predicates or denoted syntactically. The postures of the Figures, in spite of some predicates distinguishing them, are typically not specified as they are in other languages, such as Dutch. Although Ground locations are frequently mentioned in both source-oriented and goal-oriented clauses, they are used more often in goal-oriented clauses.

Abstract

Background Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci have been implicated in several neurodevelopmental disorders in which language is affected. However, to date, no studies have investigated the possible involvement of HLA loci in specific language impairment (SLI), a disorder that is defined primarily upon unexpected language impairment. We report association analyses of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and HLA types in a cohort of individuals affected by language impairment. Methods We perform quantitative association analyses of three linguistic measures and case-control association analyses using both SNP data and imputed HLA types. Results Quantitative association analyses of imputed HLA types suggested a role for the HLA-A locus in susceptibility to SLI. HLA-A A1 was associated with a measure of short-term memory (P = 0.004) and A3 with expressive language ability (P = 0.006). Parent-of-origin effects were found between HLA-B B8 and HLA-DQA1*0501 and receptive language. These alleles have a negative correlation with receptive language ability when inherited from the mother (P = 0.021, P = 0.034, respectively) but are positively correlated with the same trait when paternally inherited (P = 0.013, P = 0.029, respectively). Finally, case control analyses using imputed HLA types indicated that the DR10 allele of HLA-DRB1 was more frequent in individuals with SLI than population controls (P = 0.004, relative risk = 2.575), as has been reported for individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Conclusion These preliminary data provide an intriguing link to those described by previous studies of other neurodevelopmental disorders and suggest a possible role for HLA loci in language disorders.

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects
linguistic abilities when development is otherwise normal. We report the results of a genomewide association study of SLI which included parent-of-origin effects and child genotype effects and used 278 families of language-impaired children. The child genotype effects analysis did not identify significant associations. We found genome-wide significant paternal
parent-of-origin effects on chromosome 14q12 (P=3.74×10-8) and suggestive maternal parent-of-origin-effects on chromosome 5p13 (P=1.16×10-7). A subsequent targeted association of six single-nucleotide-polymorphisms (SNPs) on chromosome 5 in 313 language-impaired individuals from the ALSPAC cohort replicated the maternal effects,
albeit in the opposite direction (P=0.001); as fathers’ genotypes were not available in the ALSPAC study, the replication analysis did not include paternal parent-of-origin effects. The paternally-associated SNP on chromosome 14 yields a non-synonymous coding change within the NOP9 gene. This gene encodes an RNA-binding protein that has been reported to be significantly dysregulated in individuals with schizophrenia. The region of maternal
association on chromosome 5 falls between the PTGER4 and DAB2 genes, in a region
previously implicated in autism and ADHD. The top SNP in this association locus is a
potential expression QTL of ARHGEF19 (also called WGEF) on chromosome 1. Members of this protein family have been implicated in intellectual disability. In sum, this study implicates parent-of-origin effects in language impairment, and adds an interesting new dimension to the emerging picture of shared genetic etiology across various neurodevelopmental disorders.

Abstract

This paper offers a structural and semantic analysis of expressions of caused motion in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. The data were collected using a video stimulus designed to elicit a wide range of caused motion event descriptions. The most frequent event types in the corpus depict caused motion to and from relations of support and containment, fundamental notions in the de­scription of spatial relations between two entities and critical semantic components of the linguistic encoding of caused motion in this language. Formal features of verbal construction type and argument realization are examined by sorting event descriptions into semantic types of placement and removal, to and from support and to and from containment. Together with typological factors that shape the distribution of spatial semantics and referent expression, separate treatments of support and containment relations serve to clarify notable asymmetries in patterns of predicate type and argument realization.

Abstract

This study investigated the development of second language online auditory processing with ab initio German learners of Dutch. We assessed the influence of different levels of background noise and different levels of semantic and syntactic target word predictability on word-monitoring latencies. There was evidence of syntactic, but not lexical-semantic, transfer from the L1 to the L2 from the onset of L2 learning. An initial stronger adverse effect of noise on syntactic compared to phonological processing disappeared after two weeks of learning Dutch suggesting a change towards more robust syntactic processing. At the same time the L2 learners started to exploit semantic constraints predicting upcoming target words. The use of semantic predictability remained less efficient compared to native speakers until the end of the observation period. The improvement and the persistent problems in semantic processing we found were independent of noise and rather seem to reflect the need for more context information to build up online semantic representations in L2 listening.

Abstract

Currently one in five adults is still unable to read despite a rapidly developing world. Here we show that (il)literacy has important consequences for the cognitive ability of selecting relevant information from a visual display of non-linguistic material. In two experiments we compared low to high literacy observers on both an easy and a more difficult visual search task involving different types of chicken. Low literates were consistently slower (as indicated by overall RTs) in both experiments. More detailed analyses, including eye movement measures, suggest that the slowing is partly due to display wide (i.e. parallel) sensory processing but mainly due to post-selection processes, as low literates needed more time between fixating the target and generating a manual response. Furthermore, high and low literacy groups differed in the way search performance was distributed across the visual field. High literates performed relatively better when the target was presented in central regions, especially on the right. At the same time, high literacy was also associated with a more general bias towards the top and the left, especially in the more difficult search. We conclude that learning to read results in an extension of the functional visual field from the fovea to parafoveal areas, combined with some asymmetry in scan pattern influenced by the reading direction, both of which also influence other (e.g. non-linguistic) tasks such as visual search.

Abstract

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have smaller volumes of total brain matter and subcortical regions, but it is unclear whether these represent delayed maturation or persist into adulthood. We performed a structural MRI study in 119 adult ADHD patients and 107 controls and investigated total gray and white matter and volumes of accumbens, caudate, globus pallidus, putamen, thalamus, amygdala and hippocampus. Additionally, we investigated effects of gender, stimulant treatment and history of major depression (MDD). There was no main effect of ADHD on the volumetric measures, nor was any effect observed in a secondary voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis of the entire brain. However, in the volumetric analysis a significant gender by diagnosis interaction was found for caudate volume. Male patients showed reduced right caudate volume compared to male controls, and caudate volume correlated with hyperactive/impulsive symptoms. Furthermore, patients using stimulant treatment had a smaller right hippocampus volume compared to medication-naïve patients and controls. ADHD patients with previous MDD showed smaller hippocampus volume compared to ADHD patients with no MDD. While these data were obtained in a cross-sectional sample and need to be replicated in a longitudinal study, the findings suggest that developmental brain differences in ADHD largely normalize in adulthood. Reduced caudate volume in male patients may point to distinct neurobiological deficits underlying ADHD in the two genders. Smaller hippocampus volume in ADHD patients with previous MDD is consistent with neurobiological alterations observed in MDD.

Abstract

Early studies investigating sign language acquisition claimed
that signs whose structures are motivated by the form of their
referent (iconic) are not favoured in language development.
However, recent work has shown that the first signs in deaf
children’s lexicon are iconic. In this paper we go a step
further and ask whether different types of iconicity modulate
learning sign-referent links. Results from a picture description
task indicate that children and adults used signs with two
possible variants differentially. While children signing to
adults favoured variants that map onto actions associated with
a referent (action signs), adults signing to another adult
produced variants that map onto objects’ perceptual features
(perceptual signs). Parents interacting with children used
more action variants than signers in adult-adult interactions.
These results are in line with claims that language
development is tightly linked to motor experience and that
iconicity can be a communicative strategy in parental input.

Abstract

Gestures are meaningful movements of the body, the hands, and the face during communication,
which accompany the production of both spoken and signed utterances. Recent
research has shown that gestures are an integral part of language and that they contribute
semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic information to the linguistic utterance. Furthermore,
they reveal internal representations of the language user during communication in ways
that might not be encoded in the verbal part of the utterance. Firstly, this chapter summarizes
research on the role of gesture in spoken languages. Subsequently, it gives an overview
of how gestural components might manifest themselves in sign languages, that is,
in a situation in which both gesture and sign are expressed by the same articulators.
Current studies are discussed that address the question of whether gestural components are the same or different in the two language modalities from a semiotic as well as from a cognitive and processing viewpoint. Understanding the role of gesture in both sign and
spoken language contributes to our knowledge of the human language faculty as a multimodal communication system.

Abstract

As we speak, we use not only the arbitrary form–meaning mappings of the speech channel but also motivated form–meaning correspondences, i.e. iconic gestures that accompany speech (e.g. inverted V-shaped hand wiggling across gesture space to demonstrate walking). This article reviews what we know about processing of semantic information from speech and iconic gestures in spoken languages during comprehension of such composite utterances. Several studies have shown that comprehension of iconic gestures involves brain activations known to be involved in semantic processing of speech: i.e. modulation of the electrophysiological recording component N400, which is sensitive to the ease of semantic integration of a word to previous context, and recruitment of the left-lateralized frontal–posterior temporal network (left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), medial temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/S)). Furthermore, we integrate the information coming from both channels recruiting brain areas such as left IFG, posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS)/MTG and even motor cortex. Finally, this integration is flexible: the temporal synchrony between the iconic gesture and the speech segment, as well as the perceived communicative intent of the speaker, modulate the integration process. Whether these findings are special to gestures or are shared with actions or other visual accompaniments to speech (e.g. lips) or other visual symbols such as pictures are discussed, as well as the implications for a multimodal view of language.

Abstract

Recent studies have emphasized that developmental dyslexia is a multiple-deficit disorder, in contrast to the traditional single-deficit view. In this context, cognitive profiling of children with dyslexia may be a relevant contribution to this unresolved discussion. The aim of this study was to profile 36 Portuguese children with dyslexia from the 2nd to 5th grade. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group participants according to their phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence abilities. The results suggested a two-cluster solution: a group with poorer performance on phoneme deletion and rapid automatized naming compared with the remaining variables (Cluster 1) and a group characterized by underperforming on the variables most related to phonological processing (phoneme deletion and digit span), but not on rapid automatized naming (Cluster 2). Overall, the results seem more consistent with a hybrid perspective, such as that proposed by Pennington and colleagues (2012), for understanding the heterogeneity of dyslexia. The importance of characterizing the profiles of individuals with dyslexia becomes clear within the context of constructing remediation programs that are specifically targeted and are more effective in terms of intervention outcome.

Abstract

Craniofacial morphology is highly heritable, but little is known about which genetic variants influence normal facial variation in the general population. We aimed to identify genetic variants associated with normal facial variation in a population-based cohort of 15-year-olds from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. 3D high-resolution images were obtained with two laser scanners, these were merged and aligned, and 22 landmarks were identified and their x, y, and z coordinates used to generate 54 3D distances reflecting facial features. 14 principal components (PCs) were also generated from the landmark locations. We carried out genome-wide association analyses of these distances and PCs in 2,185 adolescents and attempted to replicate any significant associations in a further 1,622 participants. In the discovery analysis no associations were observed with the PCs, but we identified four associations with the distances, and one of these, the association between rs7559271 in PAX3 and the nasion to midendocanthion distance (n-men), was replicated (p = 4 × 10−7). In a combined analysis, each G allele of rs7559271 was associated with an increase in n-men distance of 0.39 mm (p = 4 × 10−16), explaining 1.3% of the variance. Independent associations were observed in both the z (nasion prominence) and y (nasion height) dimensions (p = 9 × 10−9 and p = 9 × 10−10, respectively), suggesting that the locus primarily influences growth in the yz plane. Rare variants in PAX3 are known to cause Waardenburg syndrome, which involves deafness, pigmentary abnormalities, and facial characteristics including a broad nasal bridge. Our findings show that common variants within this gene also influence normal craniofacial development.

Abstract

We report an investigation of aging and individual differences in binding information during sentence understanding. An age-continuous sample of adults (N=91), ranging from 18 to 81 years of age, read sentences in which a relative clause could be attached high to a head noun NP1, attached low to its modifying prepositional phrase NP2 (e.g., The son of the princess who scratched himself/herself in public was humiliated), or in which the attachment site of the relative clause was ultimately indeterminate (e.g., The maid of the princess who scratched herself in public was humiliated). Word-by-word reading times and comprehension (e.g., who scratched?) were measured. A series of mixed-effects models were fit to the data, revealing: (1) that, on average, NP1-attached sentences were harder to process and comprehend than NP2-attached sentences; (2) that these average effects were independently moderated by verbal working memory capacity and reading experience, with effects that were most pronounced in the oldest participants and; (3) that readers on average did not allocate extra time to resolve global ambiguities, though older adults with higher working memory span did. Findings are discussed in relation to current models of lifespan cognitive development, working memory, language experience, and the role of prosodic segmentation strategies in reading. Collectively, these data suggest that aging brings differences in sentence understanding, and these differences may depend on independent influences of verbal working memory capacity and reading experience.

Abstract

We examined language-switching effects in French–English bilinguals using a paradigm where pictures are always named in the same language (either French or English) within a block of trials, and on each trial, the picture is preceded by a printed word from the same language or from the other language. Participants had to either make a language decision on the word or categorize it as an animal name or not. Picture-naming latencies in French (Language 1 [L1]) were slower when pictures were preceded by an English word than by a French word, independently of the task performed on the word. There were no language-switching effects when pictures were named in English (L2). This pattern replicates asymmetrical switch costs found with the cued picture-naming paradigm and shows that the asymmetrical pattern can be obtained (a) in the absence of artificial (nonlinguistic) language cues, (b) when the switch involves a shift from comprehension in 1 language to production in another, and (c) when the naming language is blocked (univalent response). We concluded that language switch costs in bilinguals cannot be reduced to effects driven by task control or response-selection mechanisms.

Abstract

Wanneer iemand goed is in het spreken van meerdere talen, wordt wel gezegd dat zo iemand een talenknobbel heeft. Iedereen weet dat dat niet letterlijk bedoeld is: iemand met een talenknobbel herkennen we niet aan een grote bult op zijn hoofd. Toch dacht men vroeger wel degelijk dat mensen een letterlijke talenknobbel konden ontwikkelen. Een goed ontwikkeld taalvermogen zou gepaard gaan met het groeien van het hersengebied dat hiervoor verantwoordelijk was. Dit deel van het brein zou zelfs zo groot kunnen worden dat het van binnenuit tegen de schedel drukte, met name rond de ogen. Nu weten we wel beter. Maar waar in het brein bevindt de taal zich dan wel precies?

Abstract

Did one of your parents, siblings, or friends ever tell you that you were talking in your sleep? Nothing to be ashamed of! A recent study found that more than half of all people have had the experience of speaking out loud while being asleep [1]. This might even be underestimated, because often people do not notice that they are sleep-talking, unless somebody wakes them up or tells them the next day. Most neuroscientists, linguists, and psychologists studying language are interested in our language production and language comprehension skills during the day. In the present article, we will explore what is known about the production of overt speech during the night. We suggest that the study of sleep-talking may be just as interesting and informative as the study of wakeful speech.

Abstract

Iconic gestures are hypothesized to be c rucial to the evolution of language. Yet the important question of whether apes produce iconic gestures is the subject of considerable debate. This paper presents the current state of research on iconicity in ape gesture. In particular, it describes some of the empirical evidence suggesting that apes produce three different kinds of iconic gestures; it compares the iconicity hypothesis to other major hypotheses of ape gesture; and finally, it offers some directions for future ape gesture research

Abstract

Scholars have often reasoned that vocalizations are extremely limited in their potential for iconic expression, especially in comparison to manual gestures (e.g., Armstrong & Wilcox, 2007; Tomasello, 2008). As evidence for an alternative view, we first review the growing body of research related to iconicity in vocalizations, including experimental work on sound symbolism, cross-linguistic studies documenting iconicity in the grammars and lexicons of languages, and experimental studies that examine iconicity in the production of speech and vocalizations. We then report an experiment in which participants created vocalizations to communicate 60 different meanings, including 30 antonymic pairs. The vocalizations were measured along several acoustic properties, and these properties were compared between antonyms. Participants were highly consistent in the kinds of sounds they produced for the majority of meanings, supporting the hypothesis that vocalization has considerable potential for iconicity. In light of these findings, we present a comparison between vocalization and manual gesture, and examine the detailed ways in which each modality can function in the iconic expression of particular kinds of meanings. We further discuss the role of iconic vocalizations and gesture in the evolution of language since our divergence from the great apes. In conclusion, we suggest that human communication is best understood as an ensemble of kinesis and vocalization, not just speech, in which expression in both modalities spans the range from arbitrary to iconic.

Abstract

The question of whether different linguistic patterns differentially influence semantic and conceptual representations is of central interest in cognitive science. In this paper, we investigate whether the regular encoding of shape within a nominal classification system leads to an increased salience of shape in speakers' semantic representations by comparing English, (Amazonian) Spanish, and Bora, a shape-based classifier language spoken in the Amazonian regions of Columbia and Peru. Crucially, in displaying obligatory use, pervasiveness in grammar, high discourse frequency, and phonological variability of forms corresponding to particular shape features, the Bora classifier system differs in important ways from those in previous studies investigating effects of nominal classification, thereby allowing better control of factors that may have influenced previous findings. In addition, the inclusion of Spanish monolinguals living in the Bora village allowed control for the possibility that differences found between English and Bora speakers may be attributed to their very different living environments. We found that shape is more salient in the semantic representation of objects for speakers of Bora, which systematically encodes shape, than for speakers of English and Spanish, which do not. Our results are consistent with assumptions that semantic representations are shaped and modulated by our specific linguistic experiences.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the semantic and pragmatic uses of space. The questions addressed concern how sign space (i.e. the area of space in front of the signer’s body) is used for meaning construction, how locations in sign space are associated with discourse referents, and how signers choose to structure sign space for their communicative intents. The chapter gives an overview of linguistic analyses of the use of space, starting with the distinction between syntactic and topographic uses of space and the different types of signs that function to establish referent-location associations, and moving to analyses based on mental spaces and conceptual blending theories. Semantic-pragmatic conventions for organizing sign space are discussed, as well as spatial devices notable in the visual-spatial modality (particularly, classifier predicates and signing perspective), which influence and determine the way meaning is created in sign space. Finally, the special role of simultaneity in sign languages is discussed, focusing on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic functions of simultaneous constructions.

Abstract

In Kalasha, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Northwest Pakistan, the linguistic encoding of ‘put’ and ‘take’ events reveals a symmetry between lexical ‘put’ and ‘take’ verbs that implies ‘placement on’ and ‘removal from’ a supporting surface. As regards ‘placement in’ and ‘removal from’ an enclosure, the data reveal a lexical asymmetry as ‘take’ verbs display a larger degree of linguistic elaboration of the Figure-Ground relation and the type of caused motion than ‘put’ verbs. When considering syntactic patterns, more instances of asymmetry between these two event types show up. The analysis presented here supports the proposal that an asymmetry exists in the encoding of goals versus sources as suggested in Nam (2004) and Ikegami (1987), but it calls into question the statement put forward by Regier and Zheng (2007) that endpoints (goals) are more finely differentiated semantically than starting points (sources).

Abstract

The human capacity to acquire language is an outstanding scientific challenge to understand. Somehow our language capacities arise from the way the human brain processes, develops and learns in interaction with its environment. To set the stage, we begin with a summary of what is known about the neural organization of language and what our artificial grammar learning (AGL) studies have revealed. We then review the Chomsky hierarchy in the context of the theory of computation and formal learning theory. Finally, we outline a neurobiological model of language acquisition and processing based on an adaptive, recurrent, spiking network architecture. This architecture implements an asynchronous, event-driven, parallel system for recursive processing. We conclude that the brain represents grammars (or more precisely, the parser/generator) in its connectivity, and its ability for syntax is based on neurobiological infrastructure for structured sequence processing. The acquisition of this ability is accounted for in an adaptive dynamical systems framework. Artificial language learning (ALL) paradigms might be used to study the acquisition process within such a framework, as well as the processing properties of the underlying neurobiological infrastructure. However, it is necessary to combine and constrain the interpretation of ALL results by theoretical models and empirical studies on natural language processing. Given that the faculty of language is captured by classical computational models to a significant extent, and that these can be embedded in dynamic network architectures, there is hope that significant progress can be made in understanding the neurobiology of the language faculty.

Abstract

In this paper we examine the neurobiological correlates of syntax, the processing of structured sequences, by comparing FMRI results on artificial and natural language syntax. We discuss these and similar findings in the context of formal language and computability theory. We used a simple right-linear unification grammar in an implicit artificial grammar learning paradigm in 32 healthy Dutch university students (natural language FMRI data were already acquired for these participants). We predicted that artificial syntax processing would engage the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) and that this activation would overlap with syntax-related variability observed in the natural language experiment. The main findings of this study show that the left inferior frontal region centered on BA 44/45 is active during artificial syntax processing of well-formed (grammatical) sequence independent of local subsequence familiarity. The same region is engaged to a greater extent when a syntactic violation is present and structural unification becomes difficult or impossible. The effects related to artificial syntax in the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) were essentially identical when we masked these with activity related to natural syntax in the same subjects. Finally, the medial temporal lobe was deactivated during this operation, consistent with the view that implicit processing does not rely on declarative memory mechanisms that engage the medial temporal lobe. In the context of recent FMRI findings, we raise the question whether Broca’s region (or subregions) is specifically related to syntactic movement operations or the processing of hierarchically nested non-adjacent dependencies in the discussion section. We conclude that this is not the case. Instead, we argue that the left inferior frontal region is a generic on-line sequence processor that unifies information from various sources in an incremental and recursive manner, independent of whether there are any processing requirements related to syntactic movement or hierarchically nested structures. In addition, we argue that the Chomsky hierarchy is not directly relevant for neurobiological systems.

Abstract

This study compares words and gestures produced in a controlled experimental setting by children raised in different linguistic/cultural environments to examine the robustness of gesture use at an early stage of lexical development. Twenty-two Italian and twenty-two Japanese toddlers (age range 25–37 months) performed the same picture-naming task. Italians produced more spoken correct labels than Japanese but a similar amount of representational gestures temporally matched with words. However, Japanese gestures reproduced more closely the action represented in the picture. Results confirm that gestures are linked to motor actions similarly for all children, suggesting a common developmental stage, only minimally influenced by culture.

Abstract

According to a prominent theory of language production, concepts activate multiple associated words in memory, which enter into competition for selection. However, only a few electrophysiological studies have identified brain responses reflecting competition. Here, we report a magnetoencephalography study in which the activation of competing words was manipulated by presenting pictures (e.g., dog) with distractor words. The distractor and picture name were semantically related (cat), unrelated (pin), or identical (dog). Related distractors are stronger competitors to the picture name because they receive additional activation from the picture relative to other distractors. Picture naming times were longer with related than unrelated and identical distractors. Phase-locked and non-phase-locked activity were distinct but temporally related. Phase-locked activity in left temporal cortex, peaking at 400 ms, was larger on unrelated than related and identical trials, suggesting differential activation of alternative words by the picture-word stimuli. Non-phase-locked activity between roughly 350–650 ms (4–10 Hz) in left superior frontal gyrus was larger on related than unrelated and identical trials, suggesting differential resolution of the competition among the alternatives, as reflected in the naming times. These findings characterise distinct patterns of activity associated with lexical activation and competition, supporting the theory that words are selected by competition.

Abstract

Whereas it has long been assumed that competition plays a role in lexical selection in word production (e.g., Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999), recently Finkbeiner and Caramazza (2006) argued against the competition assumption on the basis of their observation that visible distractors yield semantic interference in picture naming, whereas masked distractors yield semantic facilitation. We examined an alternative account of these findings that preserves the competition assumption. According to this account, the interference and facilitation effects of distractor words reflect whether or not distractors are strong enough to exceed a threshold for entering the competition process. We report two experiments in which distractor strength was manipulated by means of coactivation and visibility. Naming performance was assessed in terms of mean response time (RT) and RT distributions. In Experiment 1, with low coactivation, semantic facilitation was obtained from clearly visible distractors, whereas poorly visible distractors yielded no semantic effect. In Experiment 2, with high coactivation, semantic interference was obtained from both clearly and poorly visible distractors. These findings support the competition threshold account of the polarity of semantic effects in naming.

Abstract

Disagreement exists regarding the functional locus of semantic interference of distractor words in picture naming. This effect is a cornerstone of modern psycholinguistic models of word production, which assume that it arises in lexical response-selection. However, recent evidence from studies of dual-task performance suggests a locus in perceptual or conceptual processing, prior to lexical response-selection. In these studies, participants manually responded to a tone and named a picture while ignoring a written distractor word. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between tone and picture–word stimulus was manipulated. Semantic interference in naming latencies was present at long tone pre-exposure SOAs, but reduced or absent at short SOAs. Under the prevailing structural or strategic response-selection bottleneck and central capacity sharing models of dual-task performance, the underadditivity of the effects of SOA and stimulus type suggests that semantic interference emerges before lexical response-selection. However, in more recent studies, additive effects of SOA and stimulus type were obtained. Here, we examined the discrepancy in results between these studies in 6 experiments in which we systematically manipulated various dimensions on which these earlier studies differed, including tasks, materials, stimulus types, and SOAs. In all our experiments, additive effects of SOA and stimulus type on naming latencies were obtained. These results strongly suggest that the semantic interference effect arises after perceptual and conceptual processing, during lexical response-selection or later. We discuss several theoretical alternatives with respect to their potential to account for the discrepancy between the present results and other studies showing underadditivity.

Abstract

Picture–word interference is a widely employed paradigm to investigate lexical access in word production: Speakers name pictures while trying to ignore superimposed distractor words. The distractor can be congruent to the picture (pictured cat, word cat), categorically related (pictured cat, word dog), or unrelated (pictured cat, word pen). Categorically related distractors slow down picture naming relative to unrelated distractors, the so-called semantic interference. Categorically related distractors slow down picture naming relative to congruent distractors, analogous to findings in the colour–word Stroop task. The locus of semantic interference and Stroop-like effects in naming performance has recently become a topic of debate. Whereas some researchers argue for a pre-lexical locus of semantic interference and a lexical locus of Stroop-like effects, others localise both effects at the lexical selection stage. We investigated the time course of semantic and Stroop-like interference effects in overt picture naming by means of event-related potentials (ERP) and time–frequency analyses. Moreover, we employed cluster-based permutation for statistical analyses. Naming latencies showed semantic and Stroop-like interference effects. The ERP waveforms for congruent stimuli started diverging statistically from categorically related stimuli around 250 ms. Deflections for the categorically related condition were more negative-going than for the congruent condition (the Stroop-like effect). The time–frequency analysis revealed a power increase in the beta band (12–30 Hz) for categorically related relative to unrelated stimuli roughly between 250 and 370 ms (the semantic effect). The common time window of these effects suggests that both semantic interference and Stroop-like effects emerged during lexical selection.

Abstract

Two fundamental factors affecting the speed of spoken word production are lexical frequency and sentential constraint, but little is known about their timing and electrophysiological basis. In the present study, we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) and oscillatory brain responses induced by these factors, using a task in which participants named pictures after reading sentences. Sentence contexts were either constraining or nonconstraining towards the final word, which was presented as a picture. Picture names varied in their frequency of occurrence in the language. Naming latencies and electrophysiological responses were examined as a function of context and lexical frequency. Lexical frequency is an index of our cumulative learning experience with words, so lexical-frequency effects most likely reflect access to memory representations for words. Pictures were named faster with constraining than nonconstraining contexts. Associated with this effect, starting around 400 ms pre-picture presentation, oscillatory power between 8 and 30 Hz was lower for constraining relative to nonconstraining contexts. Furthermore, pictures were named faster with high-frequency than low-frequency names, but only for nonconstraining contexts, suggesting differential ease of memory access as a function of sentential context. Associated with the lexical-frequency effect, starting around 500 ms pre-picture presentation, oscillatory power between 4 and 10 Hz was higher for high-frequency than for low-frequency names, but only for constraining contexts. Our results characterise electrophysiological responses associated with lexical frequency and sentential constraint in spoken word production, and point to new avenues for studying these fundamental factors in language production.

Abstract

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal, segmental and suprasegmental properties of speech on the one hand, and fluency and accent as rated by native raters on the other hand. For 90 speech fragments from Turkish and English L2 learners of Dutch, several acoustic measures of fluency and accent were calculated. In Experiment 1, 20 native speakers of Dutch rated the L2 Dutch samples on fluency. In Experiment 2, 20 different untrained native speakers of Dutch judged the L2 Dutch samples on accentedness. Regression analyses revealed that acoustic measures of fluency were good predictors of fluency ratings. Secondly, segmental and suprasegmental measures of accent could predict some variance of accent ratings. Thirdly, perceived fluency and perceived accent were only weakly related. In conclusion, this study shows that fluency and perceived foreign accent can be judged as separate constructs.

Abstract

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are sizeable stretches of homozygous genotypes at consecutive polymorphic DNA marker positions, traditionally captured by means of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping. With the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, a number of methods initially devised for the analysis of SNP array data (those based on sliding-window algorithms such as PLINK or GERMLINE and graphical tools like HomozygosityMapper) or specifically conceived for NGS data have been adopted for the detection of ROH from whole exome sequencing (WES) data. In the latter group, algorithms for both graphical representation (AgileVariantMapper, HomSI) and computational detection (H3M2) of WES-derived ROH have been proposed. Here we examine these different approaches and discuss available strategies to implement ROH detection in WES analysis. Among sliding-window algorithms, PLINK appears to be well-suited for the detection of ROH, especially of the long ones. As a method specifically tailored for WES data, H3M2 outperforms existing algorithms especially on short and medium ROH. We conclude that, notwithstanding the irregular distribution of exons, WES data can be used with some approximation for unbiased genome-wide analysis of ROH features, with promising applications to homozygosity mapping of disease genes, comparative analysis of populations and epidemiological studies based on consanguinity

Abstract

Two eye-tracking experiments tested whether native listeners can adapt
to reductions in casual Dutch speech. Listeners were exposed to segmental
([b] > [m]), syllabic (full-vowel-deletion), or no reductions. In a subsequent
test phase, all three listener groups were tested on how efficiently they could
recognize both types of reduced words. In the first Experiment’s exposure
phase, the (un)reduced target words were predictable. The segmental reductions
were completely consistent (i.e., involved the same input sequences).
Learning about them was found to be pattern-specific and generalized in the
test phase to new reduced /b/-words. The syllabic reductions were not consistent
(i.e., involved variable input sequences). Learning about them was
weak and not pattern-specific. Experiment 2 examined effects of word repetition
and predictability. The (un-)reduced test words appeared in the exposure
phase and were not predictable. There was no evidence of learning for
the segmental reductions, probably because they were not predictable during
exposure. But there was word-specific learning for the vowel-deleted words.
The results suggest that learning about reductions is pattern-specific and
generalizes to new words if the input is consistent and predictable. With
variable input, there is more likely to be adaptation to a general speaking
style and word-specific learning.

Abstract

This study investigates if and how listeners adapt to reductions in casual continuous speech. In a perceptual-learning variant of the visual-world paradigm, two groups of Dutch participants were exposed to either segmental (/b/ → [ʋ]) or syllabic (ver- → [fː]) reductions in spoken Dutch sentences. In the test phase, both groups heard both kinds of reductions, but now applied to different words. In one of two experiments, the segmental reduction exposure group was better than the syllabic reduction exposure group in recognizing new reduced /b/-words. In both experiments, the syllabic reduction group showed a greater target preference for new reduced ver-words. Learning about reductions was thus applied to previously unheard words. This lexical generalization suggests that mechanisms compensating for segmental and syllabic reductions take place at a prelexical level, and hence that lexical access involves an abstractionist mode of processing. Existing abstractionist models need to be revised, however, as they do not include representations of sequences of segments (corresponding e.g. to ver-) at the prelexical level.

Abstract

Three eye-tracking experiments tested whether native listeners recognized reduced Dutch words better after having heard the same reduced words, or different reduced words of the same reduction type and whether familiarization with one reduction type helps listeners to deal with another reduction type. In the exposure phase, a segmental reduction group was exposed to /b/-reductions (e.g., "minderij" instead of "binderij", 'book binder') and a syllabic reduction group was exposed to full-vowel deletions (e.g., "p'raat" instead of "paraat", 'ready'), while a control group did not hear any reductions. In the test phase, all three groups heard the same speaker producing reduced-/b/ and deleted-vowel words that were either repeated (Experiments 1 & 2) or new (Experiment 3), but that now appeared as targets in semantically neutral sentences. Word-specific learning effects were found for vowel-deletions but not for /b/-reductions. Generalization of learning to new words of the same reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically consistent reduction pattern (/b/-reductions). In contrast, generalization of learning to words of another reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically inconsistent reduction pattern (the vowel deletions; learning about them generalized to recognition of the /b/-reductions). In order to deal with reductions, listeners thus use various means. They store reduced variants (e.g., for the inconsistent vowel-deleted words) and they abstract over incoming information to build up and apply mapping rules (e.g., for the consistent /b/-reductions). Experience with inconsistent pronunciations leads to greater perceptual flexibility in dealing with other forms of reduction uttered by the same speaker than experience with consistent pronunciations.

Abstract

A major theoretical debate in language acquisition research regards the learnability of hierarchical structures. The artificial grammar learning methodology is increasingly influential in approaching this question. Studies using an artificial centre-embedded AnBn grammar without semantics draw conflicting conclusions. This study investigates the facilitating effect of distributional biases in simple AB adjacencies in the input sample—caused in natural languages, among others, by semantic biases—on learning a centre-embedded structure. A mathematical simulation of the linguistic input and the learning, comparing various distributional biases in AB pairs, suggests that strong distributional biases might help us to grasp the complex AnBn hierarchical structure in a later stage. This theoretical investigation might contribute to our understanding of how distributional features of the input—including those caused by semantic variation—help learning complex structures in natural languages.

Abstract

Background Social-communication abilities are heritable traits, and their impairments overlap with the autism continuum. To characterise the genetic architecture of social-communication difficulties developmentally and identify genetic links with the autistic dimension, we conducted a genome-wide screen of social-communication problems at multiple time-points during childhood and adolescence. Methods Social-communication difficulties were ascertained at ages 8, 11, 14 and 17 years in a UK population-based birth cohort (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children; N ≤ 5,628) using mother-reported Social Communication Disorder Checklist scores. Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) was conducted for all phenotypes. The time-points with the highest GCTA heritability were subsequently analysed for single SNP association genome-wide. Type I error in the presence of measurement relatedness and the likelihood of observing SNP signals near known autism susceptibility loci (co-location) were assessed via large-scale, genome-wide permutations. Association signals (P ≤ 10−5) were also followed up in Autism Genetic Resource Exchange pedigrees (N = 793) and the Autism Case Control cohort (Ncases/Ncontrols = 1,204/6,491). Results GCTA heritability was strongest in childhood (h2(8 years) = 0.24) and especially in later adolescence (h2(17 years) = 0.45), with a marked drop during early to middle adolescence (h2(11 years) = 0.16 and h2(14 years) = 0.08). Genome-wide screens at ages 8 and 17 years identified for the latter time-point evidence for association at 3p22.2 near SCN11A (rs4453791, P = 9.3 × 10−9; genome-wide empirical P = 0.011) and suggestive evidence at 20p12.3 at PLCB1 (rs3761168, P = 7.9 × 10−8; genome-wide empirical P = 0.085). None of these signals contributed to risk for autism. However, the co-location of population-based signals and autism susceptibility loci harbouring rare mutations, such as PLCB1, is unlikely to be due to chance (genome-wide empirical Pco-location = 0.007). Conclusions Our findings suggest that measurable common genetic effects for social-communication difficulties vary developmentally and that these changes may affect detectable overlaps with the autism spectrum.

Abstract

Recent literature on learning with instructional manipulatives seems to call for a moderate view on the effects of perceptual and interactive richness of instructional manipulatives on learning. This “moderate view” holds that manipulatives’ perceptual and interactive richness may compromise learning in two ways: (1) by imposing a very high cognitive load on the learner, and (2) by hindering drawing of symbolic inferences that are supposed to play a key role in transfer (i.e., application of knowledge to new situations in the absence of instructional manipulatives). This paper presents a contrasting view. Drawing on recent insights from Embedded Embodied perspectives on cognition, it is argued that (1) perceptual and interactive richness may provide opportunities for alleviating cognitive load (Embedded Cognition), and (2) transfer of learning is not reliant on decontextualized knowledge but may draw on previous sensorimotor experiences of the kind afforded by perceptual and interactive richness of manipulatives (Embodied Cognition). By negotiating the Embedded Embodied Cognition view with the moderate view, implications for research are derived.

Abstract

Gestures are often considered to be demonstrative of the embodied nature of the mind (Hostetter and Alibali, 2008). In this article, we review current theories and research targeted at the intra-cognitive role of gestures. We ask the question how can gestures support internal cognitive processes of the gesturer? We suggest that extant theories are in a sense disembodied, because they focus solely on embodiment in terms of the sensorimotor neural precursors of gestures. As a result, current theories on the intra-cognitive role of gestures are lacking in explanatory scope to address how gestures-as-bodily-acts fulfill a cognitive function. On the basis of recent theoretical appeals that focus on the possibly embedded/extended cognitive role of gestures (Clark, 2013), we suggest that gestures are external physical tools of the cognitive system that replace and support otherwise solely internal cognitive processes. That is gestures provide the cognitive system with a stable external physical and visual presence that can provide means to think with. We show that there is a considerable amount of overlap between the way the human cognitive system has been found to use its environment, and how gestures are used during cognitive processes. Lastly, we provide several suggestions of how to investigate the embedded/extended perspective of the cognitive function of gestures.

Abstract

Higher brain dopamine content depending on lower activity of Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) in subjects with high hypnotizability scores (highs) has been considered responsible for their attentional characteristics. However, the results of the previous genetic studies on association between hypnotizability and the COMT single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4680 (Val158Met) were inconsistent. Here, we used a selective genotyping approach to re-evaluate the association between hypnotizability and COMT in the context of a two-SNP haplotype analysis, considering not only the Val158Met polymorphism, but also the closely located rs4818 SNP. An Italian sample of 53 highs, 49 low hypnotizable subjects (lows), and 57 controls, were genotyped for a segment of 805 bp of the COMT gene, including Val158Met and the closely located rs4818 SNP. Our selective genotyping approach had 97.1% power to detect the previously reported strongest association at the significance level of 5%. We found no evidence of association at the SNP, haplotype, and diplotype levels. Thus, our results challenge the dopamine-based theory of hypnosis and indirectly support recent neuropsychological and neurophysiological findings reporting the lack of any association between hypnotizability and focused attention abilities.