ILCB's monthly newsletter N°6 - September 15th, 2021
Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain Bringing together experts in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, medicine and computer science to understand and to model how language functions.

Dear members of the ILCB,

Welcome to the new academic year, which holds the promise for exciting collaborations, conferences and meetings! We had a sneak preview of this at the ILCB summer school at the end of August (see below). A big thanks to the organizers for an outstanding summer conference! Lots of new people joined the ILCB over the summer and you’ll find the portrait of some of them below.

I look forward to seeing many of you at our various upcoming events.

Best wishes,

Johannes

Quote of the month
"Generative adversarial networks unlock new methods for cognitive science."
While technically a "quote", it is really the title of a very interesting paper recently published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences
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Figure of the month
When written words speak louder than actions…

Native speakers of French have difficulty distinguishing the English /θ/-/f/ phonemic contrast (e.g. three vs. free). Could articulatory gestures or the word’s written form help them learn new English words containing these confusable sounds?

(A) Three learning methods were compared: AUD: auditory forms of new words alone; AUD+ORTHO: auditory forms and their written, orthographic representations; AUD+ARTIC: auditory forms and their corresponding articulatory gestures.

When simultaneously presented with speech, both visual cues allowed participants to better dissociate and learn minimal-pair words. However, only the AUD+ORTHO learning led to a residual, long term benefit.

(B) There was a significant increase of performance in the picture-word matching task measured the day after the learning session (Day2) suggesting the overnight consolidation of the new lexical knowledge.

(C) This consolidated lexical knowledge also had a top-down influence, leading to enhanced perceptual ability by reinforcing the distinct phonological categories of the /θ-/f/ contrast.

Pattamadilok et al. (in press). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Read more...


Scientific portraits
Isabelle Darcy, Professor at Indiana University Bloomington (USA)
Dr. Isabelle Darcy is Professor of Second Language Studies at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) and currently a research fellow at the IMéRA/ILCB until July 2022. Her research explores how adult language learners acquire…
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Franziska Geringswald
Franziska Geringswald is joining the CREx engineer team. Franziska obtained a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences from Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany. She then worked with Marie-Hélène Grosbras (LNC) for several years. Franziska has…
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Raphaël PY
Raphaël Py was awarded a 2021 ILCB PhD grant to conduct a project under the supervision of Marie Montant (LPC) and Marie-Hélène Grosbras (LNC). Raphaël was drawn to ILCB by its multiple research…
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Auriane Boudin
Auriane Boudin was awarded a 2021 ILCB PhD grant to conduct a project under the supervision of Philippe Blache (LPL) and Magalie Ochs (LIS), and collaborations with Roxane Bertrand (LPL) and Stéphane Rauzy…
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Featured publications
Strengths and challenges of longitudinal non-human primate neuroimaging
Xiaowei Song,  Pamela García-Saldivar,  Nathan Kindred,  Yujiang Wang,  Hugo Merchant,  Adrien Meguerditchian, ... & Colline Poirier
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Do you want /ʃoloka/ on a /bistɔk/? On the scope of transposed-phoneme effects with non-adjacent phonemes
Sophie Dufour,  Jonathan Mirault, & Jonathan Grainger
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Master in Cognitive Science
Class of 2021 - Master in Cognitive Science
The class of 2021 of the master in Cognitive Science, aka MasCo, is here! On this very week, 27 students are joining the Master 1, of which 14 will follow…
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ILCB summer school
Another truly remarkable ILCB summer school!
This year 140 students from all over the world (France, Italy, Russia, Mexico, Taiwan…) gathered at CIRM on the Luminy Campus for the 4th ILCB summer school. They were offered a variety of introductory and advanced courses…
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Summary of future events

Oct. 15th,15:00 à 18:00

Prof. Evelina Fedorenko, MIT (visio-conference)
The language system in the human brain.

    Read more and register...   

Oct. 29th,15:00 - 18:00

Luc Arnal & Keith Doelling,
TBA

    Read more and register...   

Nov. 12th, 12:00 - 16:00

Aurélie Bidet-Caulet, INS (AMU & INSERM)
How does the human brain resist auditory distraction?

    Read more and register...   

Dec. 3rd, 12:00 - 16:00

Andrea E. Martin, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen)
TBA

    Read more and register...   

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