Reduction in Prosodic Prominence Predicts Speakers' Recall: Implications for Theories of Prosody.

Repeated words are often reduced in prosodic prominence, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The present study contrasted two theories: does prosodic reduction reflect the choice of a particular linguistic form, or does ease of retrieval within the language production system lead to facilitated, less prominent productions? One test of facilitation-based theories is suggested by findings on human memory: Whether a second presentation of an item benefits later memory is predicted by the item's availability at the time of the second presentation. If prosodic reduction partially reflects facilitated retrieval, it should predict later memory.

Comprehension through explanation as the interaction of the brain's coherence and cognitive control networks.

Discourse comprehension processes attempt to produce an elaborate and well-connected representation in the reader's mind. A common network of regions including the angular gyrus, posterior cingulate, and dorsal frontal cortex appears to be involved in constructing coherent representations in a variety of tasks including social cognition tasks, narrative comprehension, and expository text comprehension. Reading strategies that require the construction of explicit inferences are used in the present research to examine how this coherence network interacts with other brain regions.

Early literacy experiences constrain L1 and L2 reading procedures.

Computational models of reading posit that there are two pathways to word recognition, using sublexical phonology or morphological/orthographic information. They further theorize that everyone uses both pathways to some extent, but the division of labor between the pathways can vary. This review argues that the first language one was taught to read, and the instructional method by which one was taught, can have profound and long-lasting effects on how one reads, not only in one's first language, but also in one's second language.

The contribution of phonological knowledge, memory, and language background to reading comprehension in deaf populations.

Unlabelled: While reading is challenging for many deaf individuals, some become proficient readers. Little is known about the component processes that support reading comprehension in these individuals. Speech-based phonological knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in hearing individuals, yet its role in deaf readers is controversial.

Conflict and metacognitive control: the mismatch-monitoring hypothesis of how others' knowledge states affect recall.

Information about others' success in remembering is frequently available. For example, students taking an exam may assess its difficulty by monitoring when others turn in their exams. In two experiments, we investigated how rememberers use this information to guide recall.

Inhibitory control may not explain the link between approximation and math abilities in kindergarteners from middle class families.

Past research suggests that individual differences in the acuity of the approximate number system (ANS) are associated with children's math abilities. However, some recent work has argued that these associations can be explained through shared reliance on inhibitory control. Here, we test this claim in two separate experiments.

An exploratory analysis linking neuropsychological testing to quantification of tractography using High Definition Fiber Tracking (HDFT) in military TBI.

To realize the potential value of tractography in traumatic brain injury (TBI), we must identify metrics that provide meaningful information about functional outcomes. The current study explores quantitative metrics describing the spatial properties of tractography from advanced diffusion imaging (High Definition Fiber Tracking, HDFT). In a small number of right-handed males from military TBI (N = 7) and civilian control (N = 6) samples, both tract homologue symmetry and tract spread (proportion of brain mask voxels contacted) differed for several tracts among civilian controls and extreme groups in the TBI sample (high scorers and low scorers) for verbal recall, serial reaction time, processing speed index, and trail-making.

Science classroom inquiry (SCI) simulations: a novel method to scaffold science learning.

Science education is progressively more focused on employing inquiry-based learning methods in the classroom and increasing scientific literacy among students. However, due to time and resource constraints, many classroom science activities and laboratory experiments focus on simple inquiry, with a step-by-step approach to reach predetermined outcomes. The science classroom inquiry (SCI) simulations were designed to give students real life, authentic science experiences within the confines of a typical classroom.

Subcomponents and connectivity of the superior longitudinal fasciculus in the human brain.

The subcomponents of the human superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) are disputed. The objective of this study was to investigate the segments, connectivity and asymmetry of the SLF. We performed high angular diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) analysis on ten healthy adults.

A high-definition fiber tracking report for patients with traumatic brain injury and their doctors.

We have developed a tablet-based application, the High-Definition Fiber Tracking Report App, to enable clinicians and patients in research studies to see and understand damage from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) by viewing 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional images of their brain, with a focus on white matter tracts with quantitative metrics. The goal is to visualize white matter fiber tract injury like bone fractures; that is, to make the "invisible wounds of TBI" understandable for patients. Using mobile computing technology (iPad), imaging data for individual patients can be downloaded remotely within hours of a magnetic resonance imaging brain scan.

Quantifying white matter structural integrity with high-definition fiber tracking in traumatic brain injury.

There is an urgent, unmet demand for definitive biological diagnosis of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to pinpoint the location and extent of damage. We have developed High-Definition Fiber Tracking, a 3 T magnetic resonance imaging-based diffusion spectrum imaging and tractography analysis protocol, to quantify axonal injury in military and civilian TBI patients. A novel analytical methodology quantified white matter integrity in patients with TBI and healthy controls.

Content-specific evidence accumulation in inferior temporal cortex during perceptual decision-making.

During a perceptual decision, neuronal activity can change as a function of time-integrated evidence. Such neurons may serve as decision variables, signaling a choice when activity reaches a boundary. Because the signals occur on a millisecond timescale, translating to human decision-making using functional neuroimaging has been challenging.

The influence of event-related knowledge on verb-argument processing in aphasia.

Event-related conceptual knowledge outside the language system rapidly affects verb-argument processing in unimpaired adults (McRae and Matsuki, 2009). Some have argued that verb-argument processing is in fact reducible to the activation of such event-related knowledge. However, data favoring this conclusion have come primarily from college-aged healthy adults, for whom both linguistic and conceptual semantic processing is fast and automatic.

Scaffolded reaching experiences encourage grasping activity in infants at high risk for autism.

Recent findings suggest impaired motor skill development during infancy in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether infants at high familial risk for ASD would benefit from early interventions targeting the motor domain. The current study investigated this issue by providing 3-month-old infants at high familial risk for ASD with training experiences aimed at facilitating independent reaching.

Role of sleep continuity and total sleep time in executive function across the adult lifespan.

The importance of sleep for cognition in young adults is well established, but the role of habitual sleep behavior in cognition across the adult life span remains unknown. We examined the relationship between sleep continuity and total sleep time as assessed with a sleep-detection device, and cognitive performance using a battery of tasks in young (n = 59, mean age = 23.05) and older (n = 53, mean age = 62.

Word-to-text integration: Message level and lexical level influences in ERPs.

Although the reading of connected text proceeds in a largely incremental fashion, the relative degree to which message level and lexical level factors contribute to integration processes across sentences remains an open question. We examined the influence of both factors on single words using event-related potentials (ERPs). Word pairs with either strong or weak forward association strength were critical items: embedded as coreferential words within two-sentence passages in a text comprehension task, and as isolated word pairs in a word meaning judgment task.

Is the link from working memory to analogy causal? No analogy improvements following working memory training gains.

Analogical reasoning has been hypothesized to critically depend upon working memory through correlational data, but less work has tested this relationship through experimental manipulation. An opportunity for examining the connection between working memory and analogical reasoning has emerged from the growing, although somewhat controversial, body of literature suggests complex working memory training can sometimes lead to working memory improvements that transfer to novel working memory tasks. This study investigated whether working memory improvements, if replicated, would increase analogical reasoning ability.

Staying Engaged: Knowledge and Research Needs in Student Engagement.

In this article, we review knowledge about student engagement and look ahead to the future of study in this area. We begin by describing how researchers in the field define and study student engagement. In particular, we describe the levels, contexts, and dimensions that constitute the measurement of engagement, summarize the contexts that shape engagement and the outcomes that result from it, and articulate person-centered approaches for analyzing engagement.

Prior probability and feature predictability interactively bias perceptual decisions.

Anticipating a forthcoming sensory experience facilitates perception for expected stimuli but also hinders perception for less likely alternatives. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that expectation biases arise from feature-level predictions that enhance early sensory representations and facilitate evidence accumulation for contextually probable stimuli while suppressing alternatives. Reasonably then, the extent to which prior knowledge biases subsequent sensory processing should depend on the precision of expectations at the feature level as well as the degree to which expected features match those of an observed stimulus.

Neural networks mediating sentence reading in the deaf.

The present work addresses the neural bases of sentence reading in deaf populations. To better understand the relative role of deafness and spoken language knowledge in shaping the neural networks that mediate sentence reading, three populations with different degrees of English knowledge and depth of hearing loss were included-deaf signers, oral deaf and hearing individuals. The three groups were matched for reading comprehension and scanned while reading sentences.

Number word use in toddlerhood is associated with number recall performance at seven years of age.

Previous studies have shown that verbal working memory and vocabulary acquisition are linked in early childhood. However, it is unclear whether acquisition of a narrow range of words during toddlerhood may be particularly related to recall of the same words later in life. Here we asked whether vocabulary acquisition of number words, location and quantifier terms over the first three years of life are associated with verbal and visuospatial working memory at seven years.

How meaning similarity influences ambiguous word processing: the current state of the literature.

The majority of words in the English language do not correspond to a single meaning, but rather correspond to two or more unrelated meanings (i.e., are homonyms) or multiple related senses (i.

The impact of analogies on creative concept generation: lessons from an in vivo study in engineering design.

Research on innovation often highlights analogies from sources outside the current problem domain as a major source of novel concepts; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. We analyzed the temporal interplay between far analogy use and creative concept generation in a professional design team's brainstorming conversations, investigating the hypothesis that far analogies lead directly to very novel concepts via large steps in conceptual spaces (jumps). Surprisingly, we found that concepts were more similar to their preceding concepts after far analogy use compared to baseline situations (i.

Understanding the mapping between numerical approximation and number words: evidence from Williams syndrome and typical development.

All numerate humans have access to two systems of number representation: an exact system that is argued to be based on language and that supports formal mathematics, and an Approximate Number System (ANS) that is present at birth and appears independent of language. Here we examine the interaction between these two systems by comparing the profiles of people with Williams syndrome (WS) with those of typically developing children between ages 4 and 9 years. WS is a rare genetic deficit marked by fluent and well-structured language together with severe spatial deficits, deficits in formal math, and abnormalities of the parietal cortex, which is thought to subserve the ANS.

Reading faces: investigating the use of a novel face-based orthography in acquired alexia.

Skilled visual word recognition is thought to rely upon a particular region within the left fusiform gyrus, the visual word form area (VWFA). We investigated whether an individual (AA1) with pure alexia resulting from acquired damage to the VWFA territory could learn an alphabetic "FaceFont" orthography, in which faces rather than typical letter-like units are used to represent phonemes. FaceFont was designed to distinguish between perceptual versus phonological influences on the VWFA.