Marco Haverkort

Evidence for bilateral involvement in idiom comprehension: An fMRI study.

The goal of the current study was to identify the neural substrate of idiom comprehension using fMRI. Idioms are familiar, fixed expressions whose meaning is not dependent on the literal interpretation of the component words. We presented literally plausible idioms in a sentence forcing a figurative or a literal interpretation and contrasted them with sentences containing idioms for which no literal interpretation was available and with unambiguously literal sentences. The major finding of the current study is that figurative comprehension in the case of both ambiguous and unambiguous idioms is supported by bilateral inferior frontal gyri and left middle temporal gyrus. The right middle temporal gyrus is also involved, but seems to exclusively process the ambiguous idioms. Therefore, our data suggest a bilateral neural network underlying figurative comprehension, as opposed to the exclusive participation of the right hemisphere. The data also provide evidence against proposed models of idiom comprehension in which literal processing is by-passed, since figurative processing demanded more resources than literal processing in the language network.

New Machine Learning Methods Demonstrate the Existence of a Human Stylome

Earlier research has shown that established authors can be distinguished by measuring specific properties of their writings, their stylome as it were. Here, we examine writings of less experienced authors. We succeed in distinguishing between these authors with a very high probability, which implies that a stylome exists even in the general population. However, the number of traits needed for so successful a distinction is an order of magnitude larger than assumed so far. Furthermore, traits referring to syntactic patterns prove less distinctive than traits referring to vocabulary, but much more distinctive than expected on the basis of current generativist theories of language learning.

A Standard Computerized Version of the Reading Span Test in Different Languages

The Reading Span Test (RST) is a verbal working-memory test. The original RST (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980), and derivatives of it, are being used increasingly as assessments of central executive functioning and for research on aging-associated cognitive decline (Whitney, Arnett, Driver, & Budd, 2001). Several versions have been made in order to further improve the test or to develop a version in a different language. However, all versions changed different things, making direct comparisons of the results with the RST between different research groups and across different languages impossible. This paper presents the results of testing a new standard computerized version of the RST in four languages (Dutch, English, German, and Norwegian). The new RST meets strict methodological criteria that are the same for all four language versions. A plausibility test, an abstract-concrete rating scale, and a pilot-study were conducted on native speakers to test the new RST. In addition, the internal and external relia...

APT: Costs and Benefits of a Hybrid Model

In their keynote contribution, Truscott and Sharwood Smith offer a general model of language development from a processing perspective. As they state, their model is very ambitious: Their ‘acquisition by processing’ theory (APT) aims not only at explaining both first and second language acquisition but also real-time processing in language comprehension and production. APT takes a cross-disciplinary approach that intends to bring together research on linguistic structure and on general cognition. However, the joint contribution of linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches is mainly evident in terms of theoretical concepts (e.g. UG, syntactic rules, modules, activation) because the presented empirical evidence is limited in scope.