Expectations of Processing Ease, Informativeness, and Accuracy Guide Toddlers' Processing of Novel Communicative Cues.

Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative cues tend to have low processing costs and high cognitive benefits.

Are monkeys sensitive to informativeness: An experimental study with baboons (Papio papio).

Informativeness (defined as reduction of uncertainty) is central in human communication. In the present study, we investigate baboons' sensitivity to informativeness by manipulating the informativity of a cue relative to a response display and by allowing participants to anticipate their answers or to wait for a revealed answer (with variable delays). Our hypotheses were that anticipations would increase with informativity, while response times to revealed trials would decrease with informativity.

Knowledge in Sight: Toddlers Plan Efficient Epistemic Actions by Anticipating Learning Gains.

Anticipating the learning consequences of actions is crucial to plan efficient information seeking. Such a capacity is needed for learners to determine which actions are most likely to result in learning. Here, we tested the early ontogeny of the human capacity to anticipate the amount of learning gained from seeing.

How do we interpret questions? Simplified representations of knowledge guide humans' interpretation of information requests.

This paper investigates the cognitive mechanisms supporting humans' interpretation of requests for information. Learners can only search for a piece of information if they know that they are ignorant about it. Thus, in principle, the interpretation of requests for information could be guided by representations of Socratic ignorance (tracking what people know that they do not know).

Cross-Linguistic Variation in the Meaning of Quantifiers: Implications for Pragmatic Enrichment.

One of the most studied scales in the literature on scalar implicatures is the quantifier scale. While the truth of is entailed by the truth of , is felicitous only when is false. This opens the possibility that would be felicitous if, e.

Basal ganglia involvement in patients: The reason for patients very specific grasping?

The () gene was identified in 2002 as responsible for XLAG syndrome, a lissencephaly characterized by an almost complete absence of cortical GABAergic interneurons, and for milder forms of X-linked Intellectual Disability (ID) without apparent brain abnormalities. The most frequent mutation found in the gene, a duplication of 24 base pairs (c.429_452dup24) in exon 2, results in a recognizable syndrome in which patients present ID without primary motor impairment, but with a very specific upper limb distal motor apraxia associated with a pathognomonic hand-grip, described as developmental Limb Kinetic Apraxia (LKA).

Children's early bilingualism and musical training influence prosodic discrimination of sentences in an unknown language.

This study investigated whether early bilingualism and early musical training positively influence the ability to discriminate between prosodic patterns corresponding to different syntactic structures in otherwise phonetically identical sentences in an unknown language. In a same-different discrimination task, participants (N = 108) divided into four groups (monolingual non-musicians, monolingual musicians, bilingual non-musicians, and bilingual musicians) listened to pairs of short sentences in a language unknown to them (French). In discriminating phonetically identical but prosodically different sentences, musicians, bilinguals, and bilingual musicians outperformed the controls.

Reducing the language content in ToM tests: A developmental scale.

The goal of the current study was to statistically evaluate the reliable scalability of a set of tasks designed to assess Theory of Mind (ToM) without language as a confounding variable. This tool might be useful to study ToM in populations where language is impaired or to study links between language and ToM. Low verbal versions of the ToM tasks proposed by Wellman and Liu (2004) for their scale were tested in 234 children (2.

Role of Two Types of Syntactic Embedding in Belief Attribution in Adults with or without Asperger Syndrome.

The role of syntax in belief attribution (BA) is not completely understood in healthy adults and understudied in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Embedded syntax could be useful either for the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) ( account) or more generally over the lifespan ( account). Two hypotheses have been explored, one suggesting that embedding itself (Relatives and Complement sentences and account) is important for ToM and another one considering that the embedding of a false proposition into a true one (Complement sentences and account) is important.

Theory of mind in SLI revisited: links with syntax, comparisons with ASD.

Background: According to the linguistic determinism approach, knowledge of sentential complements such as: John says that the earth is flat plays a crucial role in theory of mind (ToM) development by providing a means to represent explicitly people's mental attitudes and beliefs. This approach predicts that mastery of complements determines successful belief reasoning across explicit ToM tasks, even low-verbal ones, and across populations.

Aims: (1) To investigate the link between a low-verbal ToM-task and complements in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), (2) To determine whether this population shows similar ToM performance to that of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or those with Typical Development (TD) once these groups are matched on competency for complements, (3) To explore whether complements conveying a falsehood without jeopardizing the veracity of the entire sentence, such as complements of verbs of communication, are more crucial for belief attribution than complements which do not have this property, namely complements of verbs of perception, (?John sees that the earth is flat).

Scalar Implicatures: The Psychological Reality of Scales.

Scalar implicatures, the phenomena where a sentence like "The pianist played Mozart sonatas" is interpreted, as "The pianist did play Mozart sonatas" have been given two different analyses. Neo-Griceans (NG) claim that this interpretation is based on lexical scales (e.g.

Children's allocation of resources in social dominance situations.

Two experiments with preschoolers (36 to 78 months) and 8-year-old children (Experiment 1, N = 173; Experiment 2, N = 132) investigated the development of children's resource distribution in dominance contexts. On the basis of the distributive justice literature, 2 opposite predictions were tested. Children could match resource allocation with the unequal social setting they observe and thus favor a dominant individual over a subordinate 1.

The semantics of person and de se effects in free indirect discourse.

In this contribution we will address the main puzzling empirical issues that have been formulated around Free Indirect Discourse (FID): the constraints on the use of first person pronouns and of proper names (as well as of definite descriptions), the reasons why different grammatical features (person, gender, number) give rise to presuppositions that must be resolved at different levels of interpretation in FID, the factors that account for the observation that person and tense behave similarly in FID. At the same time, we will also discuss the main controversies to which the ongoing debate on FID has given rise in the literature, showing that Schlenker (Mind Lang 19(3):279-304, 2004)'s distinction between a Context of Thought (CT) and a Context of Utterance (CU) still provides a fundamentally valid insight into the nature of FID, in spite of many qualifications that are necessary and some well-motivated criticism. However, our main task here is more ambitious than simply taking a stand on the many unsettled controversies surrounding FID.

Context in Generalized Conversational Implicatures: The Case of Some.

There is now general agreement about the optionality of scalar implicatures: the pragmatic interpretation will be accessed depending on the context relative to which the utterance is interpreted. The question, then, is what makes a context upper- (vs. lower-) bounding.

Why language really is not a communication system: a cognitive view of language evolution.

While most evolutionary scenarios for language see it as a communication system with consequences on the language-ready brain, there are major difficulties for such a view. First, language has a core combination of features-semanticity, discrete infinity, and decoupling-that makes it unique among communication systems and that raise deep problems for the view that it evolved for communication. Second, extant models of communication systems-the code model of communication (Millikan, 2005) and the ostensive model of communication (Scott-Phillips, 2015) cannot account for language evolution.

Decoupling, situated cognition and immersion in art.

Situated cognition seems incompatible with strong decoupling, where representations are deployed in the absence of their targets and are not oriented toward physical action. Yet, in art consumption, the epitome of a strongly decoupled cognitive process, the artwork is a physical part of the environment and partly controls the perception of its target by the audience, leading to immersion. Hence, art consumption combines strong decoupling with situated cognition.

Differentiating semantic categories during the acquisition of novel words: correspondence analysis applied to event-related potentials.

Growing evidence suggests that semantic knowledge is represented in distributed neural networks that include modality-specific structures. Here, we examined the processes underlying the acquisition of words from different semantic categories to determine whether the emergence of visual- and action-based categories could be tracked back to their acquisition. For this, we applied correspondence analysis (CA) to ERPs recorded at various moments during acquisition.

The c.429_452 duplication of the ARX gene: a unique developmental-model of limb kinetic apraxia.

Background: The c.429_452dup24 of the ARX gene is a rare genetic anomaly, leading to X-Linked Intellectual Disability without brain malformation. While in certain cases c.

Learning to associate novel words with motor actions: language-induced motor activity following short training.

Action words referring to face, arm or leg actions activate areas along the motor strip that also control the planning and execution of the actions specified by the words. This electroencephalogram (EEG) study aimed to test the learning profile of this language-induced motor activity. Participants were trained to associate novel verbal stimuli to videos of object-oriented hand and arm movements or animated visual images on two consecutive days.

[French version of screening questionnaire for high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome in adolescent: Autism Spectrum Quotient, Empathy Quotient and Systemizing Quotient. Protocol and questionnaire translation].

Aim: No tools are currently available in France, for the detection of autism without mental retardation (high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome here referred as TED SDI). Use of screening tests by first-line clinicians would allow better detection of children who are likely to display such difficulties and to improve patients' care. In England, 3 questionnaires have been evaluated: Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), Empathy Quotient (EQ), and Systemizing Quotient (SQ).

Experimental pragmatics: a Gricean turn in the study of language.

Discerning the meaning of an utterance requires not only mastering grammar and knowing the meanings of words but also understanding the communicative (i.e., pragmatic) features of language.