How Native Prosody Affects Pitch Processing during Word Learning in Limburgian and Dutch Toddlers and Adults.

In this study, Limburgian and Dutch 2.5- to 4-year-olds and adults took part in a word learning experiment. Following the procedure employed by Quam and Swingley (2010) and Singh et al.

When Fiction Is Just as Real as Fact: No Differences in Reading Behavior between Stories Believed to be Based on True or Fictional Events.

Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a "newspaper" vs.

Hot and Cold Smells: Odor-Temperature Associations across Cultures.

It is often assumed odors are associated with hot and cold temperature, since odor processing may trigger thermal sensations, such as coolness in the case of mint. It is unknown, however, whether people make consistent temperature associations for a variety of everyday odors, and, if so, what determines them. Previous work investigating the bases of cross-modal associations suggests a number of possibilities, including universal forces (e.

-Targeted Polymerase Chain Reaction Primers for the Specific Detection and Quantification of Comammox in the Environment.

Nitrification, the oxidation of ammonia via nitrite to nitrate, has always been considered to be catalyzed by the concerted activity of ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizing microorganisms. Only recently, complete ammonia oxidizers ("comammox"), which oxidize ammonia to nitrate on their own, were identified in the bacterial genus , previously assumed to contain only canonical nitrite oxidizers. are widespread in nature, but for assessments of the distribution and functional importance of comammox in ecosystems, cultivation-independent tools to distinguish comammox from strictly nitrite-oxidizing are required.

Iconicity and Sign Lexical Acquisition: A Review.

The study of iconicity, defined as the direct relationship between a linguistic form and its referent, has gained momentum in recent years across a wide range of disciplines. In the spoken modality, there is abundant evidence showing that iconicity is a key factor that facilitates language acquisition. However, when we look at sign languages, which excel in the prevalence of iconic structures, there is a more mixed picture, with some studies showing a positive effect and others showing a null or negative effect.

Feasibility of Motor Imagery Training for Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder - A Pilot Study.

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) experience movement difficulties that may be linked to processes involved in motor imagery (MI). This paper discusses recent advances in theory that underpin the use of MI training for children with DCD. This knowledge is translated in a new MI training protocol which is compared with the cognitive orientation to daily occupational performance (CO-OP).

Evoking and Measuring Identification with Narrative Characters - A Linguistic Cues Framework.

Current research on identification with narrative characters poses two problems. First, although identification is seen as a dynamic process of which the intensity varies during reading, it is usually measured by means of post-reading questionnaires containing self-report items. Second, it is not clear which linguistic characteristics evoke identification.

Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Lexical Processing: Evidence from a Group of Participants with Diverse Educational Backgrounds.

Vocabulary knowledge is central to a speaker's command of their language. In previous research, greater vocabulary knowledge has been associated with advantages in language processing. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual differences in vocabulary and language processing performance more closely by (i) using a battery of vocabulary tests instead of just one test, and (ii) testing not only university students (Experiment 1) but young adults from a broader range of educational backgrounds (Experiment 2).

Depression and Anxiety Prevention Based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for At-Risk Adolescents: A Meta-Analytic Review.

Depression and anxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders during adolescence. During this life phase, the incidence of these clinical disorders rises dramatically, and even more adolescents suffer from symptoms of depression or anxiety that are just below the clinical threshold. Both clinical and subclinical levels of depression or anxiety symptoms are related to decreased functioning in various areas, such as social and academic functioning.

Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that unfamiliar languages sound faster than one's native language. Empirical evidence for this impression has, so far, come from rate judgments. The aim of the present study was to test whether such perceived rate differences between native and foreign languages (FLs) have effects on speech processing.

Estimating the Information Extracted by a Single Spiking Neuron from a Continuous Input Time Series.

Understanding the relation between (sensory) stimuli and the activity of neurons (i.e., "the neural code") lies at heart of understanding the computational properties of the brain.

Evidence for a Priori Existence of Attentional Bias Subgroups in Emotional Processing of Aversive Stimuli.

Little is known regarding inter-individual differences in attentional biases for pain-related information; more knowledge is crucial, since these biases have been associated with differences in pain processing as well as in predicting the risk of postoperative pain. The present study investigated EEG correlates of attentional bias patterns for pain-related information, with specific focus on avoidance- and vigilance-like behavior. Forty-one participants performed a dot-probe task, where neutral and pain-related words were used to create neutral, congruent, incongruent, and double (two pain-related words) trials.

Next Speakers Plan Their Turn Early and Speak after Turn-Final "Go-Signals".

In conversation, turn-taking is usually fluid, with next speakers taking their turn right after the end of the previous turn. Most, but not all, previous studies show that next speakers start to plan their turn early, if possible already during the incoming turn. The present study makes use of the list-completion paradigm (Barthel et al.

Mapping the Speech Code: Cortical Responses Linking the Perception and Production of Vowels.

The acoustic realization of speech is constrained by the physical mechanisms by which it is produced. Yet for speech perception, the degree to which listeners utilize experience derived from speech production has long been debated. In the present study, we examined how sensorimotor adaptation during production may affect perception, and how this relationship may be reflected in early vs.

Untangling Genomes of Novel and Species from Monterey Bay Kelp Forest Metagenomes by Refined Binning.

The kelp forest of the Pacific temperate rocky marine coastline of Monterey Bay in California is a dominant habitat for large brown macro-algae in the order of . It is probably one of the most species-rich, structurally complex and productive ecosystems in temperate waters and well-studied in terms of trophic ecology. However, still little is known about the microorganisms thriving in this habitat.

Non-Interfering Effects of Active Post-Encoding Tasks on Episodic Memory Consolidation in Humans.

So far, studies that investigated interference effects of post-learning processes on episodic memory consolidation in humans have used tasks involving only complex and meaningful information. Such tasks require reallocation of general or encoding-specific resources away from consolidation-relevant activities. The possibility that interference can be elicited using a task that heavily taxes our limited brain resources, but has low semantic and hippocampal related long-term memory processing demands, has never been tested.

MicroRNAs in Palatogenesis and Cleft Palate.

Palatogenesis requires a precise spatiotemporal regulation of gene expression, which is controlled by an intricate network of transcription factors and their corresponding DNA motifs. Even minor perturbations of this network may cause cleft palate, the most common congenital craniofacial defect in humans. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small regulatory non-coding RNAs, have elicited strong interest as key regulators of embryological development, and as etiological factors in disease.

Using Dual Regression to Investigate Network Shape and Amplitude in Functional Connectivity Analyses.

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is one of the most popular techniques for the analysis of resting state FMRI data because it has several advantageous properties when compared with other techniques. Most notably, in contrast to a conventional seed-based correlation analysis, it is model-free and multivariate, thus switching the focus from evaluating the functional connectivity of single brain regions identified a priori to evaluating brain connectivity in terms of all brain resting state networks (RSNs) that simultaneously engage in oscillatory activity. Furthermore, typical seed-based analysis characterizes RSNs in terms of spatially distributed patterns of correlation (typically by means of simple Pearson's coefficients) and thereby confounds together amplitude information of oscillatory activity and noise.

Ethical issues of CRISPR technology and gene editing through the lens of solidarity.

Background: The avalanche of commentaries on CRISPR-Cas9 technology, a bacterial immune system modified to recognize any short DNA sequence, cut it out, and insert a new one, has rekindled hopes for gene therapy and other applications and raised criticisms of engineering genes in future generations.

Sources Of Data: This discussion draws on articles that emphasize ethics, identified partly through PubMed and Google, 2014-2016.

Areas Of Agreement: CRISPR-Cas9 has taken the pace and prospects for genetic discovery and applications to a high level, stoking anticipation for somatic gene engineering to help patients.

Temporal Preparation for Speaking in Question-Answer Sequences.

In every-day conversations, the gap between turns of conversational partners is most frequently between 0 and 200 ms. We were interested how speakers achieve such fast transitions. We designed an experiment in which participants listened to pre-recorded questions about images presented on a screen and were asked to answer these questions.

Three Novel Species with Peptidoglycan Cell Walls form the New Genus gen. nov. in the Family Opitutaceae of the Verrucomicrobial Subdivision 4.

The cell wall of free-living bacteria consists of peptidoglycan (PG) and is critical for maintenance of shape as dissolved solutes cause osmotic pressure and challenge cell integrity. Surprisingly, the subdivision 4 of the phylum Verrucomicrobia appears to be exceptional in this respect. Organisms of this subdivision are described to be devoid of muramic or diaminopimelic acid (DAP), usually found as components of PG in bacterial cell walls.

Effects of Hand Proximity and Movement Direction in Spatial and Temporal Gap Discrimination.

Previous research on the interplay between static manual postures and visual attention revealed enhanced visual selection near the hands (near-hand effect). During active movements there is also superior visual performance when moving toward compared to away from the stimulus (direction effect). The "modulated visual pathways" hypothesis argues that differential involvement of magno- and parvocellular visual processing streams causes the near-hand effect.

The Timing of Utterance Planning in Task-Oriented Dialogue: Evidence from a Novel List-Completion Paradigm.

In conversation, interlocutors rarely leave long gaps between turns, suggesting that next speakers begin to plan their turns while listening to the previous speaker. The present experiment used analyses of speech onset latencies and eye-movements in a task-oriented dialogue paradigm to investigate when speakers start planning their responses. German speakers heard a confederate describe sets of objects in utterances that either ended in a noun [e.