Predictive language processing: integrating comprehension and production, and what atypical populations can tell us.

Predictive processing, a crucial aspect of human cognition, is also relevant for language comprehension. In everyday situations, we exploit various sources of information to anticipate and therefore facilitate processing of upcoming linguistic input. In the literature, there are a variety of models that aim at accounting for such ability.

I know how you'll say it: evidence of speaker-specific speech prediction.

Most models of language comprehension assume that the linguistic system is able to pre-activate phonological information. However, the evidence for phonological prediction is mixed and controversial. In this study, we implement a paradigm that capitalizes on the fact that foreign speakers usually make phonological errors.

Pragmatic and knowledge range lenience towards foreigners.

Foreign-accented speech categorizes the speaker as an outgroup individual with a lower linguistic competence and a different knowledge heritage from a native speaker. Here we explore whether the identification of an individual as a native or a foreign speaker has an impact on trivia statement judgments, regardless of her foreign-accented speech. Italian native participants first read a bio description of a native and of a foreign speaker and then rate to what degree a series of statements associated with each of the speakers makes sense (Studies 1 and 2) or are true (Study 3).

Allophonic familiarity differentiates word representations in the brain of native speakers of regional linguistic varieties.

This study aims to shed light on the issue whether familiar allophonic variation is encoded in word representations. Both Italian speakers born in Trentino and speakers born in the Central-Southern regions of Italy took part in the experiment. We tested the MMN elicited by the same word encompassing two different allophones, one of which was more familiar to one group of participants than to the other, depending on their regional variety of Italian.

The unique role of novel linguistic labels on the disengagement of visual attention.

Do novel linguistic labels have privileged access to attentional resources compared to non-linguistic labels? This study explores this possibility through two experiments with a training and an attentional overlap task. Experiment 1 investigates how novel label and object-only stimuli influence resource allocation and disengagement of visual attention. Experiment 2 tests the impact of linguistic information on visual attention by comparing novel tones and labels.

Distinct Neural Processes for Memorizing Form and Meaning Within Sentences.

In order to memorize sentences we use both processes of language comprehension during encoding and processes of language production during maintenance. While the former processes are easily testable via controlled presentation of the input, the latter are more difficult to assess directly as language production is typically initiated and controlled internally. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study we track subvocal rehearsal of sentences, with the goal of studying the concomitant planning processes with the help of a silent cued-production task.

Attachment and Concord of Temporal Adverbs: Evidence From Eye Movements.

The present study examined the processing of temporal adverbial phrases such as "last week," which must agree in temporal features with the verb they modify. We investigated readers' sensitivity to this feature match or mismatch in two eye-tracking studies. The main aim of this study was to expand the range of concord phenomena which have been investigated in real-time processing in order to understand how linguistic dependencies are formed during sentence comprehension (Felser et al.

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: Behavioral and ERPs evidence of the regulation of pictures and words.

Background: Whilst there has been extensive study of the mechanisms underlying the regulation for pictures, the ability and the mechanisms beyond the regulation of words remains to be clarified. Similarly, the effect of strategy when applying a regulatory process is still poorly explored. The present study seeks to elucidate these issues comparing the effect of regulation and of strategy to both neutral and emotional words and pictures.

Basic composition and enriched integration in idiom processing: An EEG study.

We investigated the extent to which the literal meanings of the words forming literally plausible idioms (e.g., break the ice) are semantically composed and how the idiomatic meaning is integrated in the unfolding sentence representation.

First Language Attrition Induces Changes in Online Morphosyntactic Processing and Re-Analysis: An ERP Study of Number Agreement in Complex Italian Sentences.

First language (L1) attrition in adulthood offers new insight on neuroplasticity and the role of language experience in shaping neurocognitive responses to language. Attriters are multilinguals for whom advancing L2 proficiency comes at the cost of the L1, as they experience a shift in exposure and dominance (e.g.

On the time course of lexical stress priming in speech production: Behavioral and ERPs evidence from a free-stress language.

The goal of the present research was to study the time course of lexical stress encoding in a free-stress language with unpredictable stress. To this aim we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during lexical priming. Participants named pictures bearing either the dominant or non-dominant stress pattern, and preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent word prime (e.

The Sound of Voice: Voice-Based Categorization of Speakers' Sexual Orientation within and across Languages.

Empirical research had initially shown that English listeners are able to identify the speakers' sexual orientation based on voice cues alone. However, the accuracy of this voice-based categorization, as well as its generalizability to other languages (language-dependency) and to non-native speakers (language-specificity), has been questioned recently. Consequently, we address these open issues in 5 experiments: First, we tested whether Italian and German listeners are able to correctly identify sexual orientation of same-language male speakers.

Asymmetric activation spreading in the multiplication associative network due to asymmetric overlap between numerosities semantic representations?

Simple multiplication facts are thought to be organised in a network structure in which problems and solutions are associated. Converging evidence suggests that the ability for solving symbolic arithmetic problems is based on an approximate number system (ANS). Most theoretical stances concerning the metric underlying the ANS converge on the assumption that the representational overlap between two adjacent numbers increases as the numerical magnitude of the numbers increases.

Is the noun ending a cue to grammatical gender processing? An ERP study on sentences in Italian.

Gender-to-ending consistency has been shown to influence grammatical gender retrieval in isolated word presentation. Notwithstanding the wealth of evidence, the exact role and the time course of processing of this distributional information remain unclear. This ERP study investigated if and when the brain detects gender-to-ending consistency in sentences containing Italian determiner-noun pairs.

Operand-order effect in multiplication and addition: the long-term effects of reorganization processand acquisition sequence.

Butterworth, Marchesini, and Girelli (2003) showed that children solved multiplications faster when the larger operand was first (e.g., 5 · 2) than when the smaller operand was first (e.

Brain MRI diffusion-weighted imaging in patients with classical phenylketonuria.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to grade magnetic resonance white matter abnormalities (WMAs) of classical phenylketonuria (cPKU) patients treated from birth and to compare sensitivity and specificity of T2-weighted and diffusion-weighted images (DWI).

Methods: Twenty early-treated cPKU patients still on a low-phenylalanine diet (12 males; mean age 21.2 years) and 26 normal subjects (ten males; mean age 25.

Predictive mechanisms in idiom comprehension.

Prediction is pervasive in human cognition and plays a central role in language comprehension. At an electrophysiological level, this cognitive function contributes substantially in determining the amplitude of the N400. In fact, the amplitude of the N400 to words within a sentence has been shown to depend on how predictable those words are: The more predictable a word, the smaller the N400 elicited.

Cloze probability does not only affect N400 amplitude: the case of complex prepositions.

Cloze-probability levels are inversely correlated with N400 amplitude, indicating an easier integration for expected words in semantic-pragmatic contexts. Here we exploited the prespecified standard order of complex prepositions and measured the ERPs time-locked to the last preposition in sentences in which complex prepositions were presented in their standard form or with the last preposition changed. The expected preposition elicited an N280 followed by an N400-700, two ERP components previously associated to the processing of closed-class words.

A deeper reanalysis of a superficial feature: an ERP study on agreement violations.

A morphosyntactic agreement violation during reading elicits a well-documented biphasic ERP pattern (LAN+P600). The cognitive variables that affect both the amplitude of the two components and the topography of the anterior negativity are still debated. We studied the ERP correlates of the violation of a specific agreement feature based on the phonology of the critical word.

Anaphoric agreement violation: an ERP analysis of its interpretation.

In the present study we analyzed the processing of grammatically anomalous sentences like "The famous dancer were nervously preparing herself/themselves to face the crowd.", which contains two anomalies, one early and one late. We investigated how processing of the later anomaly (at the pronoun 'herself' or 'themselves') was affected by the processing of the early anomaly (at 'were').

Differences in the perception and time course of syntactic and semantic violations.

A reading time and an ERP experiment conducted in Italian investigated the parser's responses to a syntactic violation (subject-verb number agreement) and to a semantic violation (subject-verb selectional restriction), examining the time course of comprehension processes until sentence end. The reading-time data showed that the syntactic violation was detected earlier than the semantic one and that the two violations differed in the time-course. The ERP data fully supported the reading time data: Syntactic anomalies elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN) and a P600.

Cortical brain responses to semantic incongruity and syntactic violation in Italian language: an event-related potential study.

The present experiment investigated cortical responses of native Italian subjects during reading of short sentences including semantic or morphosyntactic violations. Given the specificity of the Italian language in which the sequencing of words is relatively more free than in English or other languages, we investigated whether syntactic and semantic violations were able to elicit event-related potential (ERP) components similar to those found in other languages. Cortical potentials evoked by the anomalous target word were recorded at frontal, central and parietal electrodes.