The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accente... more This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accented speech. Event Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were obtained while native speakers of Spanish listened to native and foreign-accented speakers of Spanish. We observed a less positive P200 component for foreign-accented speech relative to native speech comprehension. This suggests that the extraction of spectral information and other important acoustic features was hampered during foreign-accented speech comprehension. However, the amplitude of the N400 component for foreign-accented speech comprehension decreased across the experiment, suggesting the use of a higher level, lexical mechanism. Furthermore, during native speech comprehension, semantic violations in the critical words elicited an N400 effect followed by a late positivity. During foreign-accented speech comprehension, semantic violations only elicited an N400 effect. Overall, our results suggest that, despite a lack of improvement in phonetic discrimination, native listeners experience changes at lexical-semantic levels of processing after brief exposure to foreign-accented speech. Moreover, these results suggest that lexical access, semantic integration and linguistic re-analysis processes are permeable to external factors, such as the accent of the speaker.
... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School... more ... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School of Psychology, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS, UK. ... Correspondence to: Guillaume Thierry 1 e-mail: g.thierry@bangor.ac.uk. Introduction. Reply: ...
Although skin is perhaps the most accessible of all somatic tissues for therapeutic gene transfer... more Although skin is perhaps the most accessible of all somatic tissues for therapeutic gene transfer, it is a challenging site when attempting gene delivery. In addition to the transience of gene expression, important obstacles to cutaneous gene therapy have included the inability to sustain gene expression in a large proportion of keratinocytes within a given skin compartment. In this study, we have developed a novel experimental strategy that allows long-term regeneration of entirely genetically engineered human skin on the backs of NOD/SCID mice. Primary human keratinocytes were infected with a retroviral vector encoding the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) produced by transient transfection of 293T cells. EGFP expression allowed cell-sorting selection of a polyclonal population of productively transduced keratinocytes that were assembled in a live fibroblast-containing fibrin dermal matrix and orthotopically grafted onto mice. Epifluorescent illumination of the transplanted zone allowed in vivo monitoring of the genetically modified graft. EGFP-positive human skin was present on mice for 22 weeks after grafting. In addition, frozen sections prepared from the grafts displayed consistently strong EGFP-based fluorescence in all epidermal strata at every time point examined. Persistence of transgene expression was further confirmed through EGFP protein immunodetection. Purified EGFP-positive keratinocytes grafted as part of the fibrin-based artificial skin were capable of generating multilayer human epidermis on mice, with well-developed granulosum and corneum strata, and clearly defined rete ridges. Finally, the large proportion of transduced keratinocytes in our grafts allowed us to study, for the first time, the long-term in vivo clonal reconstitution pattern of the regenerated skin. Analysis of the provirus insertion sites indicates that a discrete number of epidermal stem cell clones was responsible for the maintenance of human skin regenerated in NOD/SCID recipients.
Establishing when and how the human brain differentiates between object categories is key to unde... more Establishing when and how the human brain differentiates between object categories is key to understanding visual cognition. Event-related potential (ERP) investigations have led to the consensus that faces selectively elicit a negative wave peaking 170 ms after presentation, the 'N170'. In such experiments, however, faces are nearly always presented from a full front view, whereas other stimuli are more perceptually variable, leading to uncontrolled interstimulus perceptual variance (ISPV). Here, we compared ERPs elicited by faces, cars and butterflies while—for the first time—controlling ISPV (low or high). Surprisingly, the N170 was sensitive, not to object category, but to ISPV. In addition, we found category effects independent of ISPV 70 ms earlier than has been generally reported. These results demonstrate early ERP category effects in the visual domain, call into question the face selectivity of the N170 and establish ISPV as a critical factor to control in experiments relying on multitrial averaging. In the study of human cognition, one major endeavor is to identify the functional dissociations that reveal how the brain organizes conceptual knowledge. For instance, cognitive neuroscientists have attempted to characterize the neural substrates involved in categorizing objects in the environment. In pursuit of this goal, numerous ERP and, more recently, magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have investigated the time course of category effects in visual object recognition. These have led to the observation that a specific electrical response systematically occurs for faces at a latency of 170 ms after stimulus onset, which is characterized by a vertex positive and bilateral temporal negative deflection 1–3. A consensus has now been reached regarding the face-specificity of the N170 (refs. 4–6) and its magnetic equivalent, the M170 (refs. 7,8), as no other stimulus category is reported to elicit negativities as pronounced as faces at 170 ms or to share the same scalp topography 5. The sensitivity of the N170 to faces, however, is not necessarily interpreted as evidence for a face-specific modular system in the human brain, as modulation of the N170 by expertise is found for objects other than faces 9,10. Furthermore, it has been argued that low-level visual characteristics of the stimuli could account at least in part for some of the differences observed between categories of objects 11. Because neuroimaging studies of visual face and object recognition generally use full front views of faces contrasted with pictures of other objects presented in a variety of sizes and spatial layouts, category contrasts typically involve implicit comparisons of low and high ISPV conditions (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, as the amount of ISPV involved is virtually never evaluated or reported (see ref. 5 for an exception), it is impossible to know whether differences between experimental conditions arise from categorical differences or whether they are merely driven by ISPV. We therefore formulated the hypothesis that the face selectivity of the N170 might be an artifact driven by ISPV differences. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated ISPV as an experimental factor independently of object category: we compared the ERPs elicited by pictures of faces and cars, half of which were highly variable in position, orientation and size, and half of which were systematically centered, full front, and resized to fit in a predefined template (Fig. 2). If the N170 is genuinely face selective, its amplitude should be relatively insensitive to ISPV, but maximally sensitive to object category (Experiment 1). We then tested whether the effects of ISPV found in Experiment 1 could be due to differences in symmetry between high and low ISPV conditions by comparing ERPs elicited by side views of faces and butterflies, half of which had low ISPV and half of which had high ISPV (Experiment 2, Fig. 2). Another aspect of Experiment 2 is that the high ISPV stimuli were generated by manipulating the size, eccentricity and height/width ratio of the stimuli from the low ISPV condition. This enabled us to control for stimulus variance in the stimuli while holding object similarity from a psychological standpoint relatively constant. Finally, we tested whether the effects seen in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to faces attracting attention more than other objects. We compared the ERPs elicited by pictures of blue and green overlapped faces and cars that were controlled for IPSV (Fig. 3), and instructed participants to detect repetition of images in one color only (Experiment 3). Here we expected differential attentional effects on P1 and N170 amplitude elicited by faces and potentially confounding ISPV modulations in Experiment 1 and 2 to be revealed. RESULTS Controlling ISPV cancels N170 face-selectivity In Experiment 1, visual ERPs recorded in 28 participants displayed a characteristic P1-N1-P2 complex in all experimental conditions
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014
Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present articl... more Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present article we investigate whether difficulties during L2 sentence comprehension come from differences in the way L1 and L2 speakers anticipate upcoming words. We recorded the brain activity (event-related potentials) of Spanish monolinguals, French-Spanish late bilinguals, and Spanish-Catalan early bilinguals while reading sentences in Spanish. We manipulated the ending of highly constrained sentences so that the critical noun was either expected or not. The expected and unexpected nouns were of different gender so that we could observe potential anticipation effects already on the article. In line with previous studies, a modulation of the N400 effect was observed on the article and the noun, followed by an anterior positivity on the noun. Importantly, this pattern was found in all 3 groups, suggesting that, at least when their 2 languages are closely related, bilinguals are able to anticipate upcoming words in a similar manner as monolinguals.
A crucial step for understanding how lexical knowledge is represented is to describe the relative... more A crucial step for understanding how lexical knowledge is represented is to describe the relative similarity of lexical items, and how it influences language processing. Previous studies of the effects of form similarity on word production have reported conflicting results, notably within and across languages. The aim of the present study was to clarify this empirical issue to provide specific constraints for theoretical models of language production. We investigated the role of phonological neighborhood density in a large-scale picture naming experiment using fine-grained statistical models. The results showed that increasing phonological neighborhood density has a detrimental effect on naming latencies, and re-analyses of independently obtained data sets provide supplementary evidence for this effect. Finally, we reviewed a large body of evidence concerning phonological neighborhood density effects in word production, and discussed the occurrence of facilitatory and inhibitory effects in accuracy measures. The overall pattern shows that phonological neighborhood generates two opposite forces, one facilitatory and one inhibitory. In cases where speech production is disrupted (e.g. certain aphasic symptoms), the facilitatory component may emerge, but inhibitory processes dominate in efficient naming by healthy speakers. These findings are difficult to accommodate in terms of monitoring processes, but can be explained within interactive activation accounts combining phonological facilitation and lexical competition.
Retrieval of proper names is a cause of concern and complaint among elderly adults and it is an e... more Retrieval of proper names is a cause of concern and complaint among elderly adults and it is an early symptom of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). While it is well established that AD patients have deficits of proper name retrieval, the nature of such impairment is not yet fully understood. Specifically, it is unknown whether this deficit is due to a degradation of the links between faces and proper names, or due to deficits in intentionally accessing and retrieving proper names from faces. Here, we aim to investigate the integrity of the links between famous faces and proper names in AD while minimizing the impact of the explicit retrieval. We compare the performances of AD patients and elderly controls in a face-name priming task. We assess the integrity of the link between faces and names at two different levels: identity level - the name and face belong to the same person; and semantic level - the name and face belong to the same category (e.g., politicians). Our results reveal that AD patients compared with controls show intact semantic priming but reduced priming for person identity. This suggests that the deficits in intentionally retrieving proper names in AD are the result of a partial disruption of the network at the identity level, i.e., the links between known faces and proper names.
The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also... more The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also be observed when an interaction partner is naming objects. We compared the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of participants performing a conditional go/no-go picture naming task in two different conditions: individually and jointly with a confederate participant. To obtain an index of lexical processing, we manipulated lexical frequency, so that half of the pictures had corresponding names of high-frequency and the remaining half had names of low-frequency. Color cues determined whether participants should respond, whether their task-partner should respond, or whether nobody should respond. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants engaged in lexical processing when it was their turn to respond. Crucially, ERP results on no-go trials revealed that participants also engaged in lexical processing when it was their partner's turn to act. In addition, ERP results showed increased response inhibition selectively when it was the partner's turn to act. These findings provide evidence for the claim that listeners generate predictions about speakers' utterances by relying on their own action production system.
... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School... more ... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School of Psychology, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS, UK. ... Correspondence to: Guillaume Thierry 1 e-mail: g.thierry@bangor.ac.uk. Introduction. Reply: ...
The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accente... more This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accented speech. Event Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were obtained while native speakers of Spanish listened to native and foreign-accented speakers of Spanish. We observed a less positive P200 component for foreign-accented speech relative to native speech comprehension. This suggests that the extraction of spectral information and other important acoustic features was hampered during foreign-accented speech comprehension. However, the amplitude of the N400 component for foreign-accented speech comprehension decreased across the experiment, suggesting the use of a higher level, lexical mechanism. Furthermore, during native speech comprehension, semantic violations in the critical words elicited an N400 effect followed by a late positivity. During foreign-accented speech comprehension, semantic violations only elicited an N400 effect. Overall, our results suggest that, despite a lack of improvement in phonetic discrimination, native listeners experience changes at lexical-semantic levels of processing after brief exposure to foreign-accented speech. Moreover, these results suggest that lexical access, semantic integration and linguistic re-analysis processes are permeable to external factors, such as the accent of the speaker.
... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School... more ... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School of Psychology, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS, UK. ... Correspondence to: Guillaume Thierry 1 e-mail: g.thierry@bangor.ac.uk. Introduction. Reply: ...
Although skin is perhaps the most accessible of all somatic tissues for therapeutic gene transfer... more Although skin is perhaps the most accessible of all somatic tissues for therapeutic gene transfer, it is a challenging site when attempting gene delivery. In addition to the transience of gene expression, important obstacles to cutaneous gene therapy have included the inability to sustain gene expression in a large proportion of keratinocytes within a given skin compartment. In this study, we have developed a novel experimental strategy that allows long-term regeneration of entirely genetically engineered human skin on the backs of NOD/SCID mice. Primary human keratinocytes were infected with a retroviral vector encoding the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) produced by transient transfection of 293T cells. EGFP expression allowed cell-sorting selection of a polyclonal population of productively transduced keratinocytes that were assembled in a live fibroblast-containing fibrin dermal matrix and orthotopically grafted onto mice. Epifluorescent illumination of the transplanted zone allowed in vivo monitoring of the genetically modified graft. EGFP-positive human skin was present on mice for 22 weeks after grafting. In addition, frozen sections prepared from the grafts displayed consistently strong EGFP-based fluorescence in all epidermal strata at every time point examined. Persistence of transgene expression was further confirmed through EGFP protein immunodetection. Purified EGFP-positive keratinocytes grafted as part of the fibrin-based artificial skin were capable of generating multilayer human epidermis on mice, with well-developed granulosum and corneum strata, and clearly defined rete ridges. Finally, the large proportion of transduced keratinocytes in our grafts allowed us to study, for the first time, the long-term in vivo clonal reconstitution pattern of the regenerated skin. Analysis of the provirus insertion sites indicates that a discrete number of epidermal stem cell clones was responsible for the maintenance of human skin regenerated in NOD/SCID recipients.
Establishing when and how the human brain differentiates between object categories is key to unde... more Establishing when and how the human brain differentiates between object categories is key to understanding visual cognition. Event-related potential (ERP) investigations have led to the consensus that faces selectively elicit a negative wave peaking 170 ms after presentation, the 'N170'. In such experiments, however, faces are nearly always presented from a full front view, whereas other stimuli are more perceptually variable, leading to uncontrolled interstimulus perceptual variance (ISPV). Here, we compared ERPs elicited by faces, cars and butterflies while—for the first time—controlling ISPV (low or high). Surprisingly, the N170 was sensitive, not to object category, but to ISPV. In addition, we found category effects independent of ISPV 70 ms earlier than has been generally reported. These results demonstrate early ERP category effects in the visual domain, call into question the face selectivity of the N170 and establish ISPV as a critical factor to control in experiments relying on multitrial averaging. In the study of human cognition, one major endeavor is to identify the functional dissociations that reveal how the brain organizes conceptual knowledge. For instance, cognitive neuroscientists have attempted to characterize the neural substrates involved in categorizing objects in the environment. In pursuit of this goal, numerous ERP and, more recently, magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have investigated the time course of category effects in visual object recognition. These have led to the observation that a specific electrical response systematically occurs for faces at a latency of 170 ms after stimulus onset, which is characterized by a vertex positive and bilateral temporal negative deflection 1–3. A consensus has now been reached regarding the face-specificity of the N170 (refs. 4–6) and its magnetic equivalent, the M170 (refs. 7,8), as no other stimulus category is reported to elicit negativities as pronounced as faces at 170 ms or to share the same scalp topography 5. The sensitivity of the N170 to faces, however, is not necessarily interpreted as evidence for a face-specific modular system in the human brain, as modulation of the N170 by expertise is found for objects other than faces 9,10. Furthermore, it has been argued that low-level visual characteristics of the stimuli could account at least in part for some of the differences observed between categories of objects 11. Because neuroimaging studies of visual face and object recognition generally use full front views of faces contrasted with pictures of other objects presented in a variety of sizes and spatial layouts, category contrasts typically involve implicit comparisons of low and high ISPV conditions (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, as the amount of ISPV involved is virtually never evaluated or reported (see ref. 5 for an exception), it is impossible to know whether differences between experimental conditions arise from categorical differences or whether they are merely driven by ISPV. We therefore formulated the hypothesis that the face selectivity of the N170 might be an artifact driven by ISPV differences. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated ISPV as an experimental factor independently of object category: we compared the ERPs elicited by pictures of faces and cars, half of which were highly variable in position, orientation and size, and half of which were systematically centered, full front, and resized to fit in a predefined template (Fig. 2). If the N170 is genuinely face selective, its amplitude should be relatively insensitive to ISPV, but maximally sensitive to object category (Experiment 1). We then tested whether the effects of ISPV found in Experiment 1 could be due to differences in symmetry between high and low ISPV conditions by comparing ERPs elicited by side views of faces and butterflies, half of which had low ISPV and half of which had high ISPV (Experiment 2, Fig. 2). Another aspect of Experiment 2 is that the high ISPV stimuli were generated by manipulating the size, eccentricity and height/width ratio of the stimuli from the low ISPV condition. This enabled us to control for stimulus variance in the stimuli while holding object similarity from a psychological standpoint relatively constant. Finally, we tested whether the effects seen in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to faces attracting attention more than other objects. We compared the ERPs elicited by pictures of blue and green overlapped faces and cars that were controlled for IPSV (Fig. 3), and instructed participants to detect repetition of images in one color only (Experiment 3). Here we expected differential attentional effects on P1 and N170 amplitude elicited by faces and potentially confounding ISPV modulations in Experiment 1 and 2 to be revealed. RESULTS Controlling ISPV cancels N170 face-selectivity In Experiment 1, visual ERPs recorded in 28 participants displayed a characteristic P1-N1-P2 complex in all experimental conditions
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014
Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present articl... more Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present article we investigate whether difficulties during L2 sentence comprehension come from differences in the way L1 and L2 speakers anticipate upcoming words. We recorded the brain activity (event-related potentials) of Spanish monolinguals, French-Spanish late bilinguals, and Spanish-Catalan early bilinguals while reading sentences in Spanish. We manipulated the ending of highly constrained sentences so that the critical noun was either expected or not. The expected and unexpected nouns were of different gender so that we could observe potential anticipation effects already on the article. In line with previous studies, a modulation of the N400 effect was observed on the article and the noun, followed by an anterior positivity on the noun. Importantly, this pattern was found in all 3 groups, suggesting that, at least when their 2 languages are closely related, bilinguals are able to anticipate upcoming words in a similar manner as monolinguals.
A crucial step for understanding how lexical knowledge is represented is to describe the relative... more A crucial step for understanding how lexical knowledge is represented is to describe the relative similarity of lexical items, and how it influences language processing. Previous studies of the effects of form similarity on word production have reported conflicting results, notably within and across languages. The aim of the present study was to clarify this empirical issue to provide specific constraints for theoretical models of language production. We investigated the role of phonological neighborhood density in a large-scale picture naming experiment using fine-grained statistical models. The results showed that increasing phonological neighborhood density has a detrimental effect on naming latencies, and re-analyses of independently obtained data sets provide supplementary evidence for this effect. Finally, we reviewed a large body of evidence concerning phonological neighborhood density effects in word production, and discussed the occurrence of facilitatory and inhibitory effects in accuracy measures. The overall pattern shows that phonological neighborhood generates two opposite forces, one facilitatory and one inhibitory. In cases where speech production is disrupted (e.g. certain aphasic symptoms), the facilitatory component may emerge, but inhibitory processes dominate in efficient naming by healthy speakers. These findings are difficult to accommodate in terms of monitoring processes, but can be explained within interactive activation accounts combining phonological facilitation and lexical competition.
Retrieval of proper names is a cause of concern and complaint among elderly adults and it is an e... more Retrieval of proper names is a cause of concern and complaint among elderly adults and it is an early symptom of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). While it is well established that AD patients have deficits of proper name retrieval, the nature of such impairment is not yet fully understood. Specifically, it is unknown whether this deficit is due to a degradation of the links between faces and proper names, or due to deficits in intentionally accessing and retrieving proper names from faces. Here, we aim to investigate the integrity of the links between famous faces and proper names in AD while minimizing the impact of the explicit retrieval. We compare the performances of AD patients and elderly controls in a face-name priming task. We assess the integrity of the link between faces and names at two different levels: identity level - the name and face belong to the same person; and semantic level - the name and face belong to the same category (e.g., politicians). Our results reveal that AD patients compared with controls show intact semantic priming but reduced priming for person identity. This suggests that the deficits in intentionally retrieving proper names in AD are the result of a partial disruption of the network at the identity level, i.e., the links between known faces and proper names.
The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also... more The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also be observed when an interaction partner is naming objects. We compared the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of participants performing a conditional go/no-go picture naming task in two different conditions: individually and jointly with a confederate participant. To obtain an index of lexical processing, we manipulated lexical frequency, so that half of the pictures had corresponding names of high-frequency and the remaining half had names of low-frequency. Color cues determined whether participants should respond, whether their task-partner should respond, or whether nobody should respond. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants engaged in lexical processing when it was their turn to respond. Crucially, ERP results on no-go trials revealed that participants also engaged in lexical processing when it was their partner's turn to act. In addition, ERP results showed increased response inhibition selectively when it was the partner's turn to act. These findings provide evidence for the claim that listeners generate predictions about speakers' utterances by relying on their own action production system.
... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School... more ... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School of Psychology, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS, UK. ... Correspondence to: Guillaume Thierry 1 e-mail: g.thierry@bangor.ac.uk. Introduction. Reply: ...
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