What’s next? Sufficiency of subject-object plausibility for anticipatory eye movements

Visual-world studies have shown that listeners can combine verb restrictions and case information with world knowledge to anticipate upcoming arguments (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999; Kamide, Scheepers, & Altmann, 2003). Kamide, Altmann, & Heywood (2003; Experiment 3) further demonstrated that anticipation does not depend on main verbs but can also be driven by the combination of nominative and dative-marked NPs. In their study, a dative NP2 implicated a subsequent transferable THEME object. Unlike dative NPs, nominative NPs only weakly constrain dependencies amongst remaining objects

The influence of stimulus preview on phonological competition: Evidence from synonyms in language comprehension

In visual-world experiments, stimulus pictures and names are sometimes introduced in preview sessions. To determine whether preview influences subsequent phonological competition, we paired, in a German study, target pictures (glider, 'Segelflugzeug') with competitor pictures with two synonymous names (pirate, 'Pirat' and 'Seeräuber') and two unrelated distractor pictures. Preview either introduced pictures and their subordinate names or just pictures. If subordinate names ('Seeräuber') of competitor pictures are automatically activated during spoken-word recognition, we predicted more looks to competitor than to distractor pictures due to phonological similarity with the target, even when subordinate names were not previewed. If, however, preview modulates the availability of subordinate names, either by inhibiting dominant names or by priming subordinate names, the magnitude of the competition should vary with preview. In two experiments, we found that subordinate names competed with target names even without preview, although previewing subordinate names modulated the magnitude of the competition

The mapping of phonetic information to lexical presentations in Spanish: Evidence from eye movements

In a visual-world study, we examined spoken-wordrecognition in Spanish. Spanish listeners followed spoken instructions to click on pictures while their eye movements were monitored. When instructed to click on the picture of a door (puerta), they experienced interference from the picture of a pig (p u e r c o ). The same interference from phonologically related items was observed when the displays contained printed names or a combination of pictures with their names printed underneath, although the effect was strongest for displays with printed names. Implications of the finding that the interference effect can be induced with standard pictorial displays as well as with orthographic displays are discussed

Characterizing response types and revealing noun ambiguity in German association norms

This paper presents an analysis of semantic association norms for German nouns. In contrast to prior studies, we not only collected associations elicited by written representations of target objects but also by their pictorial representations. In a first analysis, we identified systematic differences in the type and distribution of associate responses for the two presentation forms. In a second analysis, we applied a soft cluster analysis to the collected target-response pairs. We subsequently used the clustering to predict noun ambiguity and to discriminate senses in our target nouns

Laser phase modulation approaches towards ensemble quantum computing

Selective control of decoherence is demonstrated for a multilevel system by generalizing the instantaneous phase of any chirped pulse as individual terms of a Taylor series expansion. In the case of a simple two-level system, all odd terms in the series lead to population inversion while the even terms lead to self-induced transparency. These results also hold for multiphoton transitions that do not have any lower-order photon resonance or any intermediate virtual state dynamics within the laser pulse-width. Such results form the basis of a robustly implementable CNOT gate.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, PRL (accepted

Observation of coherent transients in ultrashort chirped excitation of an undamped two-level system

The effects of Coherent excitation of a two level system with a linearly chirped pulse are studied theoretically and experimentally (in Rb (5s - 5p)) in the low field regime. The Coherent Transients are measured directly on the excited state population on an ultrashort time scale. A sharp step corresponds to the passage through resonance. It is followed by oscillations resulting from interferences between off-resonant and resonant contributions. We finally show the equivalence between this experiment and Fresnel diffraction by a sharp edge.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PR

Pursuing Excitonic Energy Transfer with Programmable DNA-Based Optical Breadboards

DNA nanotechnology has now enabled the self-assembly of almost any prescribed 3-dimensional nanoscale structure in large numbers and with high fidelity. These structures are also amenable to site-specific modification with a variety of small molecules ranging from drugs to reporter dyes. Beyond obvious application in biotechnology, such DNA structures are being pursued as programmable nanoscale optical breadboards where multiple different/identical fluorophores can be positioned with sub-nanometer resolution in a manner designed to allow them to engage in multistep excitonic energy-transfer (ET) via Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) or other related processes. Not only is the ability to create such complex optical structures unique, more importantly, the ability to rapidly redesign and prototype almost all structural and optical analogues in a massively parallel format allows for deep insight into the underlying photophysical processes. Dynamic DNA structures further provide the unparalleled capability to reconfigure a DNA scaffold on the fly in situ and thus switch between ET pathways within a given assembly, actively change its properties, and even repeatedly toggle between two states such as on/off. Here, we review progress in developing these composite materials for potential applications that include artificial light harvesting, smart sensors, nanoactuators, optical barcoding, bioprobes, cryptography, computing, charge conversion, and theranostics to even new forms of optical data storage. Along with an introduction into the DNA scaffolding itself, the diverse fluorophores utilized in these structures, their incorporation chemistry, and the photophysical processes they are designed to exploit, we highlight the evolution of DNA architectures implemented in the pursuit of increased transfer efficiency and the key lessons about ET learned from each iteration. We also focus on recent and growing efforts to exploit DNA as a scaffold for assembling molecular dye aggregates that host delocalized excitons as a test bed for creating excitonic circuits and accessing other quantum-like optical phenomena. We conclude with an outlook on what is still required to transition these materials from a research pursuit to application specific prototypes and beyond

Gesture and naming therapy for people with severe aphasia: a group study

In this study, the authors (a) investigated whether a group of people with severe aphasia could learn a vocabulary of pantomime gestures through therapy and (b) compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. The authors also examined whether gesture therapy cued word production and whether naming therapy cued gestures