Synergie in Language Acquisition by Mark Johnson
2013-08-29 10:00 - 12:30 (Europe/Paris) | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Synergie in Language Acquisition by Mark Johnson (Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia)
Each human language contains an unbounded number of different sentences. How can something so large and complex possibly be learnt? Over the past decade and a half we've learned how to define probability distributions over grammars and the linguistic structures they generate, making it possible to define statistical models that learn regularities of complex linguistic structures. Bayesian approaches are particularly attractive because they can exploit ""prior"" (e.g., innate) knowledge as well as learn statistical generalizations from the input.

This talk compares two different Bayesian models of language acquisition. A staged learner learns the components of language independently of each other, while a joint learner learns them simultaneously. A joint learner can take advantages of synergistic dependencies between linguistic components to bootstrap acquisition in ways that a staged learner cannot. We use Bayesian models to show that there are dependencies between word reference, syllable structure and the lexicon that a learner could take advantage of to synergistically improve language acquisition.

What Freud got right about speech errors by Gary S. Dell
2013-09-06 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
What Freud got right about speech errors by Gary S. Dell (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Most people associate Sigmund Freud with the assertion that speech errors reveal repressed thoughts, a claim that does not have a great deal of support. I will mention some other things that Freud said about slips, showing that these, in contrast to the repression notion, do fit well with some modern theories of language production. I will illustrate using the interactive two-step theory of lexical access during production, which we have used to understand aspects of aphasic speech error patterns

Social meaning and speech perception by Benjamin Munson
2013-09-06 11:00 - 12:30 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Social meaning and speech perception by Benjamin Munson (University of Minnesota, Etats-Unis)
It is well established that listeners may categorize ambiguous sounds differently when they are led to believe something about the person who produced them, such as their age, social class, gender, or regional background (Hay, Drager & Nolan, 2006 ; McGowan 2011 ; Staum Casasanto 2008 ; Strand & Johnson 1996). This talk will review a set of studies designed to examine two aspects of this phenomenon. First, are the effects different depending on the specific social meaning ascribed to the variation (i.e., what is it about gender that makes listeners change their categorizations when the speaker is suggested to be a man or a woman?). Second, do these effects occur relatively early and automatically in processing, or do they reflect ambiguity resolutions that occur relatively late in processing ?

Vocalisations of Captive Guinea Baboons by Caralyn Kemp
2013-10-25 11:00 - 12:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Vocalisations of Captive Guinea Baboons by Caralyn Kemp (Labex BLRI)
As part of a larger study investigating vocal production in Guinea baboons, I have been examining the vocalisations of a captive group at the CNRS primate station in Rousset. The main goal of this aspect of the project was to produce a large-scale database in order to 1) characterise the vocal repertoire of this baboon species, 2) determine the acoustic features of the vocalisations, and 3) test the descriptive adequacy of existing categories. Twelve vocalisations were distinguishable by ear, but not all vocalisations were produced by all age and sex groups. A single vocalisation type could occur in different contexts and some vocalisations had a large degree of variability. This database will be useful for new researchers and care staff who work with Guinea baboons in captivity as well as aiding in our understanding of the evolution of vocal communication between baboon taxa and within the primate genera.

Electrophysiological tools to assess brain activity by Eduardo Martinez-Montes
2013-11-22 08:00 - 17:00
Electrophysiological tools to assess brain activity by Eduardo Martinez-Montes (Head of the Neuroinformatics Department, Cuban Neuroscience Center)
The development of a wide variety of neuroimaging methods based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging has opened new ways for studying brain organization and functioning with high spatial resolution. It is also becoming increasingly clear that the complex functions of the human brain such as cognition, language, attention and several pathologies are not fully explained by only considering the activation of spatially fixed cerebral structures. Rather we need to consider brain functioning as networks of structures that dynamically interact through electrical signals coded by different frequencies. To thoroughly investigate the dynamics of such networks it is important to also use other techniques such as EEG and MEG, which provide direct measurements of the brain electrical activity with high temporal resolution. In this talk, we will present classical and novel strategies for the analysis of EEGMEG data, from statistical measures for detection of the Event Related Brain Dynamics, to methods of dimensionality reduction and the combination of multidimensional analysis with source localization methods. We will describe new approaches for obtaining space-time-frequency characterization of brain electrical activity at the level of neural sources.

Apprentissage par renforcement : de la modélisation des processus neuraux aux applications robotiques by Medhi Khamassi
2013-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 | LIA, chemin des Meinajariès, Avignon, 84911, France
Apprentissage par renforcement : de la modélisation des processus neuraux aux applications robotiques by Medhi Khamassi (l’Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (UPMC))
L'activité phasique des neurones dopaminergiques est considérée depuis une quinzaine d'années comme le substrat neural de signaux d'erreur de prédiction de la récompense (RPE). Ces signaux se sont avérés très proches des signaux d'erreurs générés par les algorithmes d'apprentissage par renforcement (RL). De plus, de nombreuses études ont montré que les algorithmes RL permettaient de bien décrire l'apprentissage animal et humain pendant des tâches de conditionnement pavlovien. Ceci a conduit au développement d'un nombre croissant de modèles computationnels d'apprentissage par renforcement pour décrire les processus neuraux sous-jacents à ces apprentissages. La première partie de l'intervention présentera une introduction à ces modèles, à leur formalisme, et aux données montrant qu'ils permettent de bien décrire certaines activités cérébrales liées à l'apprentissage.
Toutefois, ces modèles d'apprentissage par renforcement commencent à montrer leurs limites, dont l'une est celle du passage à l'échelle, dans le monde réel. Lorsque l'on sort du cadre des simulations parfaites et simplifiées des tâches de laboratoire et que l'on se place dans le cadre de l'interaction réaliste d'un robot avec son environnement, on se rend compte que ces algorithmes ont beaucoup de mal à faire face au bruit, à l'incertitude, aux délais. L'application de ces modèles d'apprentissage au contrôle d'un robot montre que pour réussir à obtenir une bonne performance du robot, il faut faire en plus des hypothèses sur l'interaction de ces modèles avec d'autres systèmes d'apprentissage et avec d'autres processus cognitifs tels que la perception, la cartographie, la navigation. Je montrerai en particulier comment des algorithmes combinant deux types d'apprentissage, dits model-free et model-based, permettent de donner une meilleure performance comportementale au robot et d'expliquer également un plus grand nombre de données expérimentales, en particulier dans des tâches de navigation.

Apprentissage par renforcement (direct et inverse) pour les systèmes interactifs by Olivier Pietquin
2013-12-05 10:00 - 12:00 | LIA, chemin des Meinajariès, Avignon, 84911, France
Apprentissage par renforcement (direct et inverse) pour les systèmes interactifs by Olivier Pietquin (SequeL team, University Lille 1, LIFL CNRS UMR 8022, INRIA Lille)
L'apprentissage par renforcement est une catégorie d'apprentissage automatique qui se différencie des autres par le fait qu'elle a pour objectif l'optimisation d'une séquence de décisions, prenant en compte l'aspect temporel et surtout dirigé par un but du comportement. Cette méthode, d'inspiration biologique, est fondée sur l'accumulation par la machine de récompenses numériques distribuées après chaque décision. Le comportement appris est celui qui maximise, sur le long terme, l'accumulation de récompenses, menant à une séquence de décisions optimale. Ce paradigme d'apprentissage a été introduit dans le domaine des systèmes de dialogue parlé il y a une quinzaine d'année afin d'optimiser les stratégies d'interaction. En effet, ce type de système doit prendre des décisions sur les actes dialogiques à produire à chaque tour d'interaction avec un utilisateur. Ces décisions doivent mener à une interaction la plus naturelle et efficace possible alors que les informations recueillies sont entachées d'erreurs (due à la reconnaissance et la compréhension imparfaites du langage parlé). Il est difficile de définir formellement ce que serait une interaction parfaite, en revanche un utilisateur peut fournir une évaluation a posteriori de cette interaction servant de signal de récompense. Toutefois, un certain nombre de problèmes subsistent encore aujourd'hui pour faire un usage performant de ces méthodes dans le cadre de l'interaction homme-machine. Un de ces problèmes est la définition de la récompense à fournir à la machine pour la voir se comporter de manière naturelle. En effet, l'utilisation de la satisfaction de l'utilisateur a montré quelques limites et est difficile à prédire automatiquement. Dans cet exposé, nous présenterons le paradigme de l'apprentissage par renforcement inverse, visant à estimer la fonction de récompense optimisée par un opérateur humain (supposé optimal) et à la transférer à la machine pour obtenir un comportement similaire dans une tâche d'interaction.

La Poesie des synapses ou comment les mots nous font plaisir ou peur ? by Arthur Jacobs
2013-12-20 14:00 - 17:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
La Poesie des synapses ou comment les mots nous font plaisir ou peur ? by Arthur Jacobs (Freie Universität Berlin, Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.))
La lecture n'est pas seulement un processus de traitement d'information, mais elle comporte des réponses affectives et esthétiques qui vont bien au-delà de ce que les modèles actuels de la lecture décrivent. Des mots peuvent nous plaire ou faire mal, des textes nous rendre heureux ou faire pleurer. Mais comment des stimuli ""symboliques"" peuvent-ils évoquer des réponses émotionelles? Quels sont les processus neurocognitifs qui les sous-tendent, et comment les réactions émotionelles à des narrations fictives se distinguent-elles de celles à des narrations factuelles? Dans ce séminaire, j'aborde ces questions dans le cadre d'un modèle neuropoétique de la lecture littéraire qui intègre des éléments de rhétorique, d'esthétique et de poétique cognitive avec des concepts de neurolinguistique et de psychonarrotologie (Jacobs, 2011; 2013). Ces prédictions sont discutées à la lumière des données venant d'études empiriques sur la reconnaissance des mots, la réception de la poésie, et de la compréhension des phrases et textes.

A Vocal Brain: Cerebral Processing of Voice Information by Pascal Belin
2014-01-24 08:00 - 17:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
A Vocal Brain: Cerebral Processing of Voice Information (Institut des Neurosciences de La Timone, Marseille, France)
The human voice carries speech but also a wealth of socially-relevant, speaker-related information. Listeners routinely perceive precious information on the speaker's identity (gender, age), affective state (happy, scared), as well as more subtle cues on perceived personality traits (attractiveness, dominance, etc.), strongly influencing social interactions. Using voice psychoacoustics and neuroimaging techniques, we examine the cerebral processing of person-related information in perceptual and neural voice representations. Results indicate a cerebral architecture of voice cognition sharing many similarities with the cerebral organization of face processing, with the main types of information in voices (identity, affect, speech) processed in interacting, but partly dissociable functional pathways.

Sensorimotor processing of speech : brain inspired approaches to automatic speech recognition by Luciano Fadiga, Alessandro D'Ausilio, Leonardo Badino
2014-02-13 11:00 - 17:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Sensorimotor processing of speech : brain inspired approaches to automatic speech recognition by Luciano Fadiga, Alessandro D’Ausilio, Leonardo Badino (University of ferrara, Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia à Gênes)

Prosodic and Social Dimensions of Entrainment in Dialogue by Julia Hirschberg
2014-03-18 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Prosodic and Social Dimensions of Entrainment in Dialogue by (Columbia University)
When people speak together, they often adapt aspects of their speaking style based upon the style of their conversational partner. This phenomena goes by many names, including adaptation, alignment, and entrainment, inter alia. In this talk, I will describe experiments in English and Mandarin prosodic entrainment in the Columbia Games Corpus and in the Tongji Games Corpus, large corpora of speech recorded from subjects playing a series of computer games. I will discuss how prosodic entrainment is related to turn-taking behaviors and to several measures of task and dialogue success. I will also discuss experiments relating entrainment to several social dimensions, including likeability and dominance. This is joint work with Stefan Benus, Agustín Gravano, Ani Nenkova, Rivka Levitan, Laura Willson, and Zhihua Xia.

Neuroanatomical correlates of developmental dyslexia by Irène Altarelli
2014-04-04 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Neuroanatomical correlates of developmental dyslexia by Irène Altarelli (Brain and Learning Lab., University of Geneva)
Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that impacts reading abilities, despite normal education, intelligence and perception. The aim of the present work is to determine its neuroanatomical correlates, with the broader goal of identifying associations between genetic variants, brain anatomy and cognitive impairments. To this end, three studies were conducted, comparing magnetic resonance images of dyslexic and control subjects. In a first study, we analysed a variety of cortical measures with both a region of interest and a global vertex-by-vertex approach. In a second study, we focused on the ventral temporo-occipital regions, looking at the structure of functionally defined areas. We defined the subject-by-subject location of cortical regions preferentially responding to written words, faces or houses. A cortical thickness reduction in dyslexic subjects was observed in the left-hemisphere word-responsive region, an effect exclusively driven by dyslexic girls. Finally, in a third study we examined the anatomical asymmetry of the planum temporale, a region which importance in dyslexia has been widely debated. By manually labelling this structure, we observed an abnormal pattern of asymmetry in dyslexic boys only. To conclude, a number of anatomical correlates of dyslexia have emerged from the work presented here, offering a better characterisation of its brain basis.Importantly, our results also stress the importance of gender, a long neglected factor in dyslexia

Fallait-il brûler Verbal Behavior ? by Marc Richelle
2014-04-18 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Fallait-il brûler Verbal Behavior ? by Marc Richelle (University of Liège, Belgium)
En partant de mon expérience personnelle de ma rencontre avec Verbal Behavior (et avec son auteur) , et des avatars que ce livre a connus, - notamment sa mise à l'écart plus encore dans le monde francophone qu'ailleurs - je tenterai d'en restituer la portée, et aussi de comprendre les raisons, par delà la critique de Chomsky, qui en ont fait un texte largement méconnu.

Fan Cao, Chotiga Pattamadilok, Johannes Ziegler
2014-06-05
Fan Cao (1), Chotiga Pattamadilok (2), Johannes Ziegler (3)
((1)Michigan State University), (2) LPL UMR7309 CNRS AMU, (3) LPC UMR7290 CNRS AMU)
Salle de conférences B011, bât. B 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence
9h30-12h30 Salle de conférences B011, bât. B 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence

Cross-linguistic and neurolinguistic perspectives on reading and speech processing

Neural specialization and reading ability
Fan Cao (Michigan State University)

The brain becomes specialized with exposure to the environment. One piece of evidence comes from how the language system shapes brain function. In a cross-linguistic developmental study, we show growing divergence between Chinese reading and English reading from children to adults. We found that specialization is positively correlated with proficiency. For example, there is reduced specialization in children with reading disability. Another example is proficiency effect in bilinguals, where we found greater specialization with higher proficiency in a group of late Chinese-English bilinguals. We also found that specialization can be facilitated by providing more effective instruction. In a series of training studies, we compared writing and visual-only learning in English learners of Chinese, and we found writing training evoked a more native-like brain network, suggesting greater specialization and accommodation. In summary, the brain becomes specialized with language experience and optimal instruction will promote the process of specialization.

How does learning to read modify speech processing ? Chotiga Pattamadilok (Laboratoire Parole et Langage)

Behavioral and brain imaging studies have demonstrated that learning to read and write changes the way the brain processes spoken language. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying such modification are still under debate. Two complementary hypotheses have been proposed. According to the ""online"" account, strong connections between spoken and written language result in the automatic co-activation of both codes when one processes language, such that hearing a spoken word activates, in real time, its corresponding written form and vice-versa. According to the ""offline or developmental account"" learning to read induces more profound changes withinthe spoken language system itself, probably by restructuring the nature of the phonological representations. Evidence supporting both hypotheses will be discussed.

A cross-language perspective on reading, reading development and dyslexia Johannes Ziegler (Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive)

Many theories assume that different languages or writing systems afford different reading styles. One idea that has been around since the early 70s is that opaque writing systems favor a ""Chinese"" style of reading (a direct route to meaning) whereas transparent writing systems favor a ""Phoenician"" style (an indirect route that is phonologically mediated). However, research on reading development and dyslexia across languages draws a different picture, one in which the core reading processes are very similar across languages. The main differences are related to consistency and orthographic complexity – these variables affect the granularity of the computations rather than the computations themselves.

How do central processes cascade into peripheral processes in written language production? by Sonia Kandel
2014-06-20 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
How do central processes cascade into peripheral processes in written language production? by Sonia Kandel (Univ. Grenoble Alpes, LPNC (CNRS UMR 5105) – Grenoble, France And Univ. Grenoble Alpes, GIPSA-LAB (CNRS UMR 5216), Dept. Parole & Cognition –Grenoble, France)
With the arrival of internet, tablets and smartphones many people spend more time writing than speaking (email, chat, SMS, etc.). Despite the importance of writing in our society, the studies investigating written language production are scarce. In addition, most studies investigated written production either from a central point of view (i.e., spelling processing) or a peripheral approach (i.e., motor production) without questioning their relation. We believe, instead, that central and peripheral processing cannot be investigated independently. There is a functional interaction between spelling and motor processing. Letter production does not merely depend on its shape –and its specifications for stroke order and direction– but also on the way we encode it orthographically. For example, the movements to produce letters PAR in the orthographically irregular word PARFUM (perfume) are different than in the regular word PARDON (pardon). Spelling processes cascade into motor production. The nature of the spelling processes that are activated before movement initiation will determine the way the cascade will operate during movement production. Lexical and sub-lexical processes do not spread into motor execution to the same extent.

The bilingual brain: Plasticity and processing from cradle to grave by Manuel Carreira
2014-07-04 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The bilingual brain: Plasticity and processing from cradle to grave by Manuel Carreira (Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain IKERBASQUE. Basque Foundation for Science. Bilbao. Spain)
Most people either learn more than one language from birth or invest quite a lot of time and effort learning a second language. Bilingualism and second language learning is an interesting case for investigating cognitive and brain plasticity. In this talk I will describe behavioral and neuroimaging evidence on the cognitive and brain mechanisms adults and infants (monlinguals, bilinguals and second language learners) use for processing language. In particular I will address whether proficient second language learners use similar or different brain mechanisms during processing and what are the neural consequences (structural and functional) of dealing with two languages.

Towards an Online Rhyming Dictionary for Mexican Spanish by Alfonso Medina
2014-07-18 14:00 - 17:00 | LIA, chemin des Meinajariès, Avignon, 84911, France
Towards an Online Rhyming Dictionary for Mexican Spanish by Alfonso Medina
Rhyming dictionaries are a kind of reverse dictionaries. They group words according to rhyming patterns. Rhymes can share exact sequences of vowel and consonant sounds towards the end of a word (consonant rhyme) or just similar vowel sounds (assonant rhyme). Thus, these dictionaries are based on pronunciation, not on writing patterns. Also, since consonance and assonance depend on the stressed syllable, words which end with a stressed syllable are grouped together, those whose stressed syllable is the next to last appear together, and so on.

In addition, word pronunciation may vary with time and across geographical and social dialects. In Spanish, this is particularly clear when word loans (for instance, Anglicisms and Galicisms) are considered. In fact, they tend to keep their original writing, at least in the Mexican variant which is the most spoken one. For example, the following loan words, common in Mexican Spanish, rhyme: flash, collage, garage, cottage, squash. Their last syllable is stressed and they are ordered in reverse according to their sounds and not their letters: (respectively, /fláʃ/, /ko.láʃ/, /ga.ráʃ/, /ko.táʃ/ and /es.kwáʃ/).

The project described takes the current nomenclature of the Diccionario del español de México (http://dem.colmex.mx/) to generate automatically a rhyming dictionary. Also, since the results of an online query to such a dictionary can be quite large, a procedure was developed to rank them semantically. The idea is to measure the similarities of the query definition to each of the definitions of the rhyming words. These words are then ordered from highest to lowest similarity to the query.

The influence of expertise on perception, cognition, and brain connectivity by Stefan Elmer
2014-09-19 11:00 - 13:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
The influence of expertise on perception, cognition, and brain connectivity by Stefan Elmer (Universität Zürich)
A better understanding of the perceptual and cognitive neural underpinnings underlying exceptional behavioural skills has important educational, societal, as well as clinical implications (i.e., for example in the context of developmental dyslexia, aphasia, and foreign language learning). Here, I will present recent data collected from professional musicians with and without absolute pitch, as well as from simultaneous language interpreters, to reveal how expertise and training has an influence on the functional-structural malleability of perceptual and cognitive subdivisions of the human brain. In the same context, I will also provide some evidence for transfer effects from musicianship to specific aspects of speech processing. Finally, since currently there is no doubt that perceptual and cognitive functions do not work in isolation but are embedded in neuronal assemblies consisting of networks influencing each other's in a reciprocal manner, I will propose some novel methodological approaches for evaluating functional and structural connectivity within small-scale perceptual-cognitive networks in musicians with and without absolute pitch.

Probabilistic Graphical Models of Dyslexia by Yaïr LAKRETZ
2014-11-28 11:00 - 13:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Probabilistic Graphical Models of Dyslexia by Yaïr LAKRETZ (‘Sagol’ school of neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University)
Reading is a complex cognitive faculty, errors in which assume diverse forms. To capture the complex structure of reading errors, we propose a novel way of analyzing these errors using probabilistic graphical models. Our study focuses on three inquiries. (a) We examine which graphical model best captures the hidden structure of reading errors. (b) We draw on the results of (a) to resolve a theoretical debate on whether dyslexia is a monolithic or heterogeneous disorder. (c) We examine whether a graphical model can diagnose dyslexia closely to how experts do. We explore three different models: an LDA-based model and two Naïve Bayes models which differ by their assumptions about the generation process of reading errors. The models are trained on a large corpus of reading errors. Our results show that the LDA-based model best captures patterns of reading errors and may therefore contribute to the understanding of dyslexia and to the diagnostic procedure. We also demonstrate that patterns of reading errors are best described by a model assuming multiple dyslexia subtypes, therefore supporting the heterogeneous approach to dyslexia. Finally, a Naïve Bayes model, which shares assumptions with diagnostic practice, best replicates labels given by clinicians and can be therefore used for automation of the diagnosis process.

Do visual and attentional factors predict reading skills? by Veronica Montani
2015-01-30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Do visual and attentional factors predict reading skills? by Veronica Montani (BLRI, AMU)
Visual-attentional abilities have a prominent role in reading. Reading rate is constrained by the number of letters acquired at each fixation, i.e. the visual span, that in turn seems to be mainly determined by the effect of crowding. On the other hand, spatial attention is critically involved in reading process, in particular for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar strings. I will briefly review studies that investigated the role of low-level processing factors in reading and their possible implication in reading disorders. Furthermore, I will present new data that show the distinct contribution of different visual-attentional factors on various reading measures, such as text reading, word naming and eye movements.

Do inhibit or not to inhibit during bilingual language control by Mathieu Declerck
2015-02-06 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Do inhibit or not to inhibit during bilingual language control by Mathieu Declerck (BLRI, AMU)
One of the mayor topics in the language control literature specifically, and the bilingual literature in general is inhibition, which entails the reduction of non-target language activation and thus interference resolution. In this talk I would discuss the existing evidence for inhibitory control processes at work during language switching, a commonly used task to investigate the underlying mechanism of language control. More specifically, asymmetrical switch costs, n-2 language repetition costs, and reversed language proficiency in mixed language blocks will be discussed in relation to inhibition. Finally, since several models assume little to no implementation of inhibition with highly proficient bilinguals, the role of language proficiency will also be considered.

Reverse engineering early language learning by Emmanuel Dupoux
2015-05-13
Reverse engineering early language learning by Emmanuel Dupoux by (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique)
Decades of research on early language acquisition have documented how infants quickly and robustly acquire their native tongue(s) across large variations in their input and environment. The mechanisms that enable such a feat remain, however, poorly understood. The proposition, here, is to supplement experimental investigations by a quantitative approach based on tools from machine learning and language technologies, applied to corpora of infant directed input. I illustrate the power of this approach through a reanalysis of some previous claims made regarding the nature and function of Infant Directed as opposed to Adult Directed Speech (IDS vs ADS). I also revisit current ideas about the learning of phoneme categories, a problem that has been long thought to involve only bottom-up statistical learning. In contrast, I show that a bottom up strategy does not scale up to real speech input, and that phoneme learning requires not only the joint learning of phoneme and word forms but also of prosodic and semantic representations. I discuss a global learning architecture where provisional linguistic representations are gradually learned in parallel, and present some predictions for language learning in infants.

Gesture as a Window Onto Conceptualization. by Gale Stam
2015-06-19
Gesture as a Window Onto Conceptualization by Gale Stam (National Louis University)
According to McNeill (1992, 2005, 2012) gestures are as much a part of language as speech is. Together gesture and speech develop from a 'growth point' that has both imagistic and verbal aspects. This model for verbal thought is ""a 'language-imagery' or language-gesture dialectic"" in which thought, language, and gesture develop over time and influence each other (McNeill, 2005 p.25).
Research on both the perception of speech and gesture (Kelly, Kravitz & Hopkins, 2004) and the production of speech and gesture (Marstaller & Burianová, 2014) have shown that the same areas of the brain are involved in both. In addition, empirical research (e.g., Chase & Wittman, 2013; Goldin-Meadow, Wein, and Chang, 1992; Goldin-Meadow & Alibali, 1995; Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; McNeill & Duncan, 2000; Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005, 2009; Stam, 1998, 2006, 2008, 2010b, 2014) on co-speech gestures indicates that gestures provide information about speakers' thinking and conceptualizations that speech alone does not. Research on the light gestures can shed on the second language acquisition process and second language teaching has been growing (for reviews, see Stam 2013; Stam & McCafferty 2008). One area in particular where gestures have been shown to provide an enhanced window onto the mind is that of motion events and thinking for speaking (Stam 2007). This talk will discuss how gestures allow us to see speakers' conceptualizations in first language and second language thinking for speaking. It will present evidence from several studies (Stam, 2010a, 2015 ;

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart by Albert Costa
2015-06-26
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart by Albert Costa
We are constantly making decisions of many different sorts. From more mundane decisions such as which clothes to wear every morning or where to go for lunch, to more relevant ones, such as whether we can afford the price of a nice holiday on a Pacific island, or whether an investment plan is too risky; decision making is an everyday life activity. It is well known that our decisions often depart from a purely rational cost benefit economical analysis, and that indeed they are biased by several factors that prompt intuitive responses that often drive the decision made. In this talk, I will describe several studies in which there is a pervasive effect of the language in which problems are presented on decision-making. These studies cover economic, moral and intellectual decisions. Together the evidence suggests that a reduction in the emotional resonance prompted by the problem leads to a reduction in the impact of intuitive processes on decision-making. This evidence not only helps to understand the forces driving decision-making, but it also has important implications for a world in which people are commonly faced with problems in a foreign language.

Apes, Language and the Brain by Bill Hopkins
2015-10-23 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Apes, Language and the Brain by Bill Hopkins (Georgia State University)
For more than 150 years, philosophers and scientist have pondered the uniqueness of human language with a particular fascination with the linguistic, cognitive and neural capacities of great apes. A majority of the scientific work on this topic has come from so-called ""ape-language"" studies With the advent of modern imaging technologies, the question of human language uniqueness can now be addressed from a neurological perspective. In this presentation, I discuss the neurobiology of language from the standpoint of comparative studies on the evolution of Broca's and Werncicke's areas in primates, notably chimpanzees.

How do central processes cascade into peripheral processes in written language production ? by Sonia Kandel
2015-12-03 16:00 - 18:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
How do central processes cascade into peripheral processes in written language production ? by Sonia Kandel (LPNC & Gipsa-Lab Grenoble (Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS))
With the arrival of internet, tablets and smartphones many people spend more time writing than speaking (email, chat, SMS, etc.). Despite the importance of writing in our society, the studies investigating written language production are scarce. In addition, most studies investigated written production either from a central point of view (i.e., spelling processing) or a peripheral approach (i.e., motor production) without questioning their relation. We believe, instead, that central and peripheral processing cannot be investigated independently. There is a functional interaction between spelling and motor processing. Letter production does not merely depend on its shape –and its specifications for stroke order and direction– but also on the way we encode it orthographically. For example, the movements to produce letters PAR in the orthographically irregular word PARFUM (perfume) are different than in the regular word PARDON (pardon). Spelling processes cascade into motor production. The nature of the spelling processes that are activated before movement initiation will determine the way the cascade will operate during movement production. Lexical and sub-lexical processes do not spread into motor execution to the same extent.

Statistical learning as an individual ability by Ram Frost
2015-12-11 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Statistical learning as an individual ability by Ram Frost (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Department of Psychology)
Most research in Statistical Learning (SL) has focused on mean success rate of participants in detecting statistical contingencies at a group level. In recent years, however, researchers show increased interest in individual abilities in SL. What determines individuals' efficacy in detecting regularities in SL? What does it predict? Is it stable across modalities? We explore these questions by trying to understand the source of variance in performance in a visual SL task through a novel methodology. The theoretical implications for a mechanistic explanation of SL will be discussed.

Analyzing, Cognitive, and Neural Modeling of Language-Related Brain Potentials by Peter Beim Graben
2015-12-15 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Analyzing, Cognitive, and Neural Modeling of Language-Related Brain Potentials by Peter Beim Graben (Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
How is the human language faculty neurally implemented in the brain? What are the neural correlates of linguistic computations? To which extent are neuromorphic cognitive architectures feasible and could they eventually lead to new diagnosis and treatment methods in clinical linguistics (such as linguistic prosthetics)? These questions interfacing neurolinguistics with computational linguistics and computational neuroscience are addressed by the emergent discipline of computational neurolinguistics. In my presentation I will give an overview about my own research in computational neurolinguistics in the framework of language-related brain potentials (ERPs). By means of a paradigmatic ERP experiment for the processing and resolution of local ambiguities in German [1], I first introduce a novel method to identifying ERP components such as the P600 as ""recurrence domains"" in neuronal dynamics [2]. In a second step, I use a neuro-computational approach, called ""nonlinear dynamical automaton"" NDA [1] in order to construct a context-free ""limited repair parser"" [3] for processing the linguistic stimuli of the study. Finally, I demonstrate how the time-discrete evolution of the NDA can be embedded into continuous time using winner-less competition in neural population models [4]. This leads to a representation of the automaton's configurations as recurrence domains in the neural network that can be correlated with experimentally measured ERPs through subsequent statistical modeling [5,6]

Learning to take turns : The role of linguistic and interactional cues in children's conversation by Marisa Casillas
2016-01-22 08:00 - 17:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Learning to take turns : The role of linguistic and interactional cues in children’s conversation by Marisa Casillas (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
Children begin taking turns with their caregivers long before their first words emerge. But as their turns begin to change from vocalizations to true, verbal utterances, children face a major challenge in integrating linguistic cues into their previously functional non-verbal turn-taking systems. I will present an overview of children's turn-taking behaviors from infancy through young childhood and will review recent corpus and experimental work on how children's response timing is affected by linguistic planning and how their spontaneous predictions about upcoming turns change as they develop.

Dissociating Prediction and Attention Components in Language by Ruth de Diego-Balaguer
2016-02-26 10:00 - 12:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Dissociating Prediction and Attention Components in Language by Ruth de Diego-Balaguer (ICREA Research Professor – Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Universitat de Barcelona)
Speech is composed of sequences of syllables, words and phrases. These elements unfold in time in specific orders. Thus, acquiring a language requires not only learning each of these representations but also their temporal organisation. The areas conforming the dorsal stream in language has been proposed to have a role in the processing of sequential information. In this talk I will present novel behavioural, developmental and neuroimaging evidence indicating that the roles of the fronto-parietal and fronto temporal connectivity within this dorsal stream can be dissociated in language learning. In addition, I will present data indicating that learning non-adjacent dependencies in language, a core mechanism for the acquisition of syntactic rules, involves both the ability to predict forthcoming elements implicitly and to endogenously orient attention based on the predictive cues learned. This type of learning implies the interface between the language and attention networks during the early stages of language acquisition.
