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PubMed1993

Event-related potentials in high-functioning adult autistics: linguistic and nonlinguistic visual information processing tasks.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from high-functioning adult autistics and age- and IQ-matched normal controls during performance of two non-linguistic information processing tasks, the Continuous Performance Task (CPT) and Span of Apprehension (SPAN), and an Idiom Recognition Task (IRT) involving idiomatic, literal and nonsense phrases. The autistics exhibited behavioral deficits only when attempting to identify idiomatic phrases. The ERP correlate of that deficit was greatly reduced N400 to idioms. In addition, autistics produced larger N1 amplitudes in all tasks, and larger P3s in the IRT and CPT.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Fundamental frequency, language processing, and linguistic structure in Wernicke's aphasia.

Five Wernicke's aphasics and five normal control subjects were tested in order to assess several aspects of fundamental frequency (F0) in speech production. The clinical impression of normal prosody in Wernicke's aphasia is correct inasmuch as these patients generally exhibited F0 declination. However, F0 declination ranged over shorter domains than in normal speech. Moreover, the increased use of F0 continuation rises by the Wernicke's aphasics indicated their inability to maintain a single F0 contour over constituents which are normally integral. The hypermelodic quality of F0 in the speech of Wernicke's aphasics further supported the notion that speech prosody was not strictly normal. F0 attributes tended to be normal when they corresponded to the global linguistic variable of sentence length, while they were abnormal when they corresponded to the processing of syntactic structure. No evidence was found that paraphasias and neologisms directly affected the programming of F0. The results are discussed in terms of speech processing abilities and limitations in Wernicke's aphasia.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1994

Linguistic approaches to the analysis of sequence information.

Biological macromolecules have many features that resemble modern languages. Thus, linguistic approaches to the analysis of sequence information are becoming powerful tools for deciphering genetic texts. The methodologies used, to date, to determine the global parameters of the genetic language and meaningful patterns within it are described.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1993

A linguistic representation of the regulation of transcription initiation. II. Distinctive features of sigma 70 promoters and their regulatory binding sites.

The goal of this paper and the accompanying one is to achieve a linguistic representation of a set of sigma 70 promoters. Such a description is formed by an ordered concatenated array of complex symbols identified by their categorical property, i.e. promoter, operator, activator binding site, etc. Each of these symbols may contain several properties associated with their respective classes of 'molecular words'. The main problem in attaining such a description is to define which properties are going to be represented, and how. In the accompanying paper the criteria on which the selection of alternative descriptions is based were discussed. The properties of promoters and regulatory sites are discussed here, and their corresponding distinctive features are selected following such criteria. Thus, information that is not directly relevant and that can overspecify the description has been excluded, since it does not seem to contribute to identifying classes of substitutable elements. Other properties, such as strength of promoters, position of regulatory sites, different types of specificities of regulatory proteins, affinity of their binding sites, etc., are also discussed. As a result of this analysis, a complete representation with distinctive features of the set of sigma 70 promoters is attainable.

Binding Sites↗
PubMed1982

In search of more complex genetic codes--can linguistics be a guide?

Striking similarities have been pointed out between the structures of the human language and the genetic code. The primary genetic code utilizes the principle of linear representation much like e.g. the Indo-European languages do. There are numerous indications that more complex secondary and tertiary structural elements in DNA direct highly specific interactions with proteins. Thus, more complex genetic codes might exist which might be superimposed on DNA sequences coding for polypeptides or might be extended to "non-coding" DNA sequences. Structural features of highly complex languages, like Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphics using conceptual expression patterns have been compared to the more complex ways of encoding. It is proposed that the application of linguistic principles may be helpful in the computer analyses of known DNA sequences. There is considerable evidence for the innate specification at least for the basic structural elements of human languages. This innate specification may be the cause for language university. Based on the striking structural similarities between language and genetic code, the question is raised to what extent and in what way DNA sequences might be related to the innate specification of human languages.

Computers↗
PubMed2004

Strategic and automatic components in the processing of linguistic spatial relations.

The objective of the present study was to determine the extent to which strategies influence the representational format of a linguistic spatial relation. The propositional model assumes that a sentence describing a spatial relation is always represented as a set of propositions, whereas the strategic model claims that a spatial sentence can be represented either as a set of propositions or as a mental image, depending on the strategy (verbal or visual-spatial) an individual follows. Participants read a sentence (spatial or non-spatial) followed by a picture or sentence, which did or did not exemplify the information of the first sentence. In order to examine the involvement of strategic and automatic components the probability (20% or 80%) of the nature (sentence or picture) of the second stimulus was varied. Participants had slower verification RTs for unexpected stimuli than for expected stimuli, but this cost was significantly larger for an unexpected picture than an unexpected sentence. Furthermore, this asymmetric cost for the unexpected visual-spatial stimulus only occurred with spatial sentences and not with non-spatial sentences. Surprisingly, these data do not support a strictly propositional or a strategic model. Instead, we propose a third option: a dual representational model, in which people automatically represent the spatial sentence propositionally. In addition, depending on the context, a pictorial strategy is employed, which results in a supplementary visual-spatial representation.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Effects of self reflection on engagement in a 12-step addiction treatment programme: a linguistic analysis of diary entries.

Thirty clients receiving Twelve-Step Facilitation Therapy in a rehabilitation setting formed the intervention group. They were asked to complete in third person a weekly evaluation of progress based on reading personal "Feelings" diaries they had written on a daily basis over a period of one week, starting 3weeks previously. The diaries of the clients and of a further 60 clients in two matched control groups were compared. One control group consisted of clients receiving treatment before the intervention was introduced, and clients in the second control group received treatment after the intervention was terminated. Clients in the control groups were matched to the intervention group according to presenting disorder (alcohol, drugs or food), gender and age. Analysis of the number of words written and diaries produced suggested that the experimental group's productivity was enhanced. Linguistic and cluster analyses indicated that the clients in the Intervention group referred more frequently to key elements of the programme (steps and spirituality) and responded in a more integrated way to the major aspects of their treatment regime. The study supported the expectation that by promoting self-reflection on progress in therapeutic settings, an increase in programme engagement can be expected.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Cultural and linguistic influence on neural bases of 'Theory of Mind': an fMRI study with Japanese bilinguals.

Theory of mind (ToM)-our ability to predict behaviors of others in terms of their underlying intentions-has been thought to be universal and invariant across different cultures. However, several ToM studies conducted outside the Anglo-American cultural or linguistic boundaries have obtained mixed results. To examine the influence of culture/language on neural bases of ToM, we studied 16 American English-speaking monolinguals and 16 Japanese-English bilinguals with second-order false-belief story tasks, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Several neural correlates of ToM including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were recruited by both cultural/linguistic groups. However, some other brain areas including inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were employed in a culture/language-specific manner, during the ToM tasks. These results suggest that the ways in which adults understand ToM are not entirely universal.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Lack of asymmetrical transfer for linguistic stimuli in schizophrenia: an ERP study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the mechanisms underlying lack of speeded information transfer asymmetry (faster right to left) for verbal information in schizophrenia. METHODS: Interhemispheric transfer times (IHTT) between the hemispheres were assessed using a lateralized lexical-decision task in males with schizophrenia (N = 12) and matched controls (N = 12). Words were presented to the left visual field (LVF), right visual field (RVF), or bilaterally (BVF) while 128-channel EEG was recorded continuously. A direct measure of IHTT in each direction was obtained by comparing the latencies of the N160 evoked potential (EP) component in the hemispheres contralateral and ipsilateral to stimulation. RESULTS: Controls showed faster information transfer from the right to left hemisphere (R-to-L) for linguistic stimuli. The two groups did not differ for IHTTs L-to-R. Lack of IHTT asymmetry in the schizophrenia groups was associated with an overall concomitant decrease in the amplitude of the N160 in the right hemisphere. CONCLUSIONS: Differences in IHTT asymmetry may be attributed to lack of right hemisphere activation and not callosal dysfunction as has been previously suggested. SIGNIFICANCE: It is suggested that a relative excess of myelinated axons in the right hemisphere speeds IHTT faster R-to-L, findings are discussed with reference to differences in right hemisphere white matter connectivity in schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Linguistic processing in visual and modality-nonspecific brain areas: PET recordings during selective attention.

Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to investigate the neural basis of selective processing of linguistic material during concurrent presentation of multiple stimulus streams ("cocktail-party effect"). Fifteen healthy right-handed adult males were to attend to one of three simultaneously presented messages: one presented visually, one to the left ear, and one to the right ear. During the control condition, subjects attended to visually presented consonant letter strings and ignored auditory messages. This paper reports the modality-nonspecific language processing and visual word-form processing, whereas the auditory attention effects have been reported elsewhere [Cogn. Brain Res. 17 (2003) 201]. The left-hemisphere areas activated by both the selective processing of text and speech were as follows: the inferior prefrontal (Brodmann's area, BA 45, 47), anterior temporal (BA 38), posterior insular (BA 13), inferior (BA 20) and middle temporal (BA 21), occipital (BA 18/30) cortices, the caudate nucleus, and the amygdala. In addition, bilateral activations were observed in the medial occipito-temporal cortex and the cerebellum. Decreases of activation during both text and speech processing were found in the parietal (BA 7, 40), frontal (BA 6, 8, 44) and occipito-temporal (BA 37) regions of the right hemisphere. Furthermore, the present data suggest that the left occipito-temporal cortex (BA 18, 20, 37, 21) can be subdivided into three functionally distinct regions in the posterior-anterior direction on the basis of their activation during attentive processing of sublexical orthography, visual word form, and supramodal higher-level aspects of language.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: reply to Boroditsky (2001).

Six unsuccessful attempts at replicating a key finding in the linguistic relativity literature [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1-22] are reported. In addition to these empirical issues in replicating the original finding, theoretical issues present in the original report are discussed. In sum, we conclude that Boroditsky (2001) provides no support for the Whorfian hypothesis.

Cognition↗
PubMed2006

Linguistic complexity and information structure in Korean: evidence from eye-tracking during reading.

The nature of the memory processes that support language comprehension and the manner in which information packaging influences online sentence processing were investigated in three experiments that used eye-tracking during reading to measure the ease of understanding complex sentences in Korean. All three experiments examined reading of embedded complement sentences; the third experiment additionally examined reading of sentences with object-modifying, object-extracted relative clauses. In Korean, both of these structures place two NPs with nominative case marking early in the sentence, with the embedded and matrix verbs following later. The type (pronoun, name or description) of these two critical NPs was varied in the experiments. When the initial NPs were of the same type, comprehension was slowed after participants had read the sentence-final verbs, a finding that supports the view that working memory in language comprehension is constrained by similarity-based interference during the retrieval of information necessary to determine the syntactic or semantic relations between noun phrases and verb phrases. Ease of comprehension was also influenced by the association between type of NP and syntactic position, with the best performance being observed when more definite NPs (pronouns and names) were in a prominent syntactic position (e.g., matrix subject) and less definite NPs (descriptions) were in a non-prominent syntactic position (embedded subject). This pattern provides evidence that the interpretation of sentences is facilitated by consistent packaging of information in different linguistic elements.

Asian People↗
PubMed2006

How to reach linguistic consensus: a proof of convergence for the naming game.

In this paper we introduce a mathematical model of naming games. Naming games have been widely used within research on the origins and evolution of language. Despite the many interesting empirical results these studies have produced, most of this research lacks a formal elucidating theory. In this paper we show how a population of agents can reach linguistic consensus, i.e. learn to use one common language to communicate with one another. Our approach differs from existing formal work in two important ways: one, we relax the too strong assumption that an agent samples infinitely often during each time interval. This assumption is usually made to guarantee convergence of an empirical learning process to a deterministic dynamical system. Two, we provide a proof that under these new realistic conditions, our model converges to a common language for the entire population of agents. Finally the model is experimentally validated.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed2006

Organization of the state space of a simple recurrent network before and after training on recursive linguistic structures.

Recurrent neural networks are often employed in the cognitive science community to process symbol sequences that represent various natural language structures. The aim is to study possible neural mechanisms of language processing and aid in development of artificial language processing systems. We used data sets containing recursive linguistic structures and trained the Elman simple recurrent network (SRN) for the next-symbol prediction task. Concentrating on neuron activation clusters in the recurrent layer of SRN we investigate the network state space organization before and after training. Given a SRN and a training stream, we construct predictive models, called neural prediction machines, that directly employ the state space dynamics of the network. We demonstrate two important properties of representations of recursive symbol series in the SRN. First, the clusters of recurrent activations emerging before training are meaningful and correspond to Markov prediction contexts. We show that prediction states that naturally arise in the SRN initialized with small random weights approximately correspond to states of Variable Memory Length Markov Models (VLMM) based on individual symbols (i.e. words). Second, we demonstrate that during training, the SRN reorganizes its state space according to word categories and their grammatical subcategories, and the next-symbol prediction is again based on the VLMM strategy. However, after training, the prediction is based on word categories and their grammatical subcategories rather than individual words. Our conclusion holds for small depths of recursions that are comparable to human performances. The methods of SRN training and analysis of its state space introduced in this paper are of a general nature and can be used for investigation of processing of any other symbol time series by means of SRN.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2005

Early life linguistic ability, late life cognitive function, and neuropathology: findings from the Nun Study.

The relationships between early life variables, cognitive function, and neuropathology were examined in participants in the Nun Study who were between the ages of 75 and 95. Our early life variable was idea density, which is a measure of linguistic ability, derived from autobiographies written at a mean age of 22 years. Six discrete categories of cognitive function, including mild cognitive impairments, were evaluated, using the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) battery of cognitive tests. Neuropathologic data included Braak staging, neurofibrillary tangle and senile plaque counts, brain weight, degree of cerebral atrophy, severity of atherosclerosis, and the presence of brain infarcts. Early-life idea density was significantly related to the categories of late-life cognitive function, including mild cognitive impairments: low idea density was associated with greater impairment. Low idea density also was significantly associated with lower brain weight, higher degree of cerebral atrophy, more severe neurofibrillary pathology, and the likelihood of meeting neuropathologic criteria for Alzheimer's disease.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

Multiple objective evolutionary algorithm for temporal linguistic rule extraction.

Autonomous temporal linguistic rule extraction is an application of growing interest for its relevance to both decision support systems and fuzzy controllers. In the presented work, rules are evaluated using three qualitative metrics based on their representation on the truth space diagram. Performance metrics are then treated as competing objectives and the multiple objective evolutionary algorithm is used to search for an optimal set of nondominant rules. Novel techniques for data pre-processing and rule set post-processing are designed that deal directly with the delays involved in dynamic systems. Data collected from a simulated hot and cold water mixer are used to validate the proposed procedure.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1992

Easily overlooked language disabilities during childhood and adolescence. A cognitive-linguistic perspective.

The population of individuals with LLD make up a heterogeneous group. The identification of individuals with LLD may vary depending on the type(s) and adequacy of the tests used. Assessment protocols for evaluating the language functioning of older school-aged and adolescent individuals are few and far between. This state of affairs necessitates speech-language pathologists to begin to develop a variety of informal tools to assess the higher level (and perhaps more subtle) language abilities of these individuals. Because language functioning entails the convergence of a variety of cognitive and linguistic processes, these informal protocols must be informed by the developmental literature so as to take into account both language-specific (e.g., lexical knowledge, syntactic structure, semantic complexity) and general cognitive processes. Careful task and process analyses must be done to characterize the language performance of any individual.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

The effect of spectral manipulations on the identification of affective and linguistic prosody.

We investigated the effect of various spectral manipulations on the identification of sentential prosody. Two main categories of prosody--affective (happy, angry, sad) and linguistic (statement, question, continuation)--were studied. Thirty-six subjects were presented with stimuli that were recorded by a female native speaker of American English. The stimuli were digitally manipulated to create synthesized, band-pass filtered (F0-range and F2/F3-range) and re-entrant (pitch only version of stimulus is convolved with a steady-state signal) conditions. Results of a forced-choice discrimination paradigm showed that, in general, performance is remarkably robust despite spectral manipulation, even when there is relatively little spectral information. However, performance was significantly degraded in the low band-pass and re-entrant conditions. These observations are discussed in light of the relevance of the fundamental frequency as well as syllabification for the analysis of prosodic information.

Adolescent↗