To dash or to dawdle: verb-associated speed of motion influences eye movements during spoken sentence comprehension

In describing motion events verbs of manner provide information about the speed of agents or objects in those events. We used eye tracking to investigate how inferences about this verb-associated speed of motion would influence the time course of attention to a visual scene that matched an event described in language. Eye movements were recorded as participants heard spoken sentences with verbs that implied a fast (“dash”) or slow (“dawdle”) movement of an agent towards a goal. These sentences were heard whilst participants concurrently looked at scenes depicting the agent and a path which led to the goal object. Our results indicate a mapping of events onto the visual scene consistent with participants mentally simulating the movement of the agent along the path towards the goal: when the verb implies a slow manner of motion, participants look more often and longer along the path to the goal; when the verb implies a fast manner of motion, participants tend to look earlier at the goal and less on the path. These results reveal that event comprehension in the presence of a visual world involves establishing and dynamically updating the locations of entities in response to linguistic descriptions of events

Randomised, Controlled, Assessor Blind Trial Comparing 4% Dimeticone Lotion with 0.5% Malathion Liquid for Head Louse Infestation

BACKGROUND:Malathion 0.5% has been the most prescribed pediculicide in the United Kingdom for around 10 years, and is widely used in Europe and North America. Anecdotal reports suggest malathion treatments are less effective than formerly, but this has not been confirmed clinically. This study was designed to determine whether malathion is still effective and if 4% dimeticone lotion is a more effective treatment for head louse infestation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:We designed this study as an assessor blinded, randomised, controlled, parallel group trial involving 58 children and 15 adults with active head louse infestation. Each participant received two applications 7 days apart of either 4% dimeticone lotion, applied for 8 hours or overnight, or 0.5% malathion liquid applied for 12 hours or overnight. All treatment and check-up visits were conducted in participants' homes. Cure of infestation was defined as no evidence of head lice after the second treatment. Some people were found free from lice but later reinfested. Worst case, intention to treat, analysis found dimeticone was significantly more effective than malathion, with 30/43 (69.8%) participants cured using dimeticone compared with 10/30 (33.3%) using malathion (p<0.01, difference 36.4%, 95% confidence interval 14.7% to 58.2%). Per protocol analysis showed cure rates of 30/39 (76.9%) and 10/29 (34.5%) respectively. Irritant reactions were observed in only two participants, both treated with malathion. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:We concluded that, although malathion liquid is still effective for some people, dimeticone lotion offers a significantly more effective alternative treatment for most people. TRIAL REGISTRATION:Controlled-Trials.com ISRCTN47755726

Ception and the discrepancy between vision and language

This chapter deals with the sensory perception of vision and investigates the correlation between body, mind, and language in a corpus of English written descriptions of pictorial material. Expressions such as The track plunges down the mountain or The biceps muscle goes from the shoulder to the elbow represent a specific type of event verbalisation, which Talmy (1983) named \u2018Fictive Motion\u2019, whereby a degree of discrepancy exists between the visual experience of a stationary scene (track, muscle) and its linguistic description as a motion event (to plunge, to go). The production of such sentences requires the percipient/describer to mentally simulate motion along a path or linear configuration, although the subject noun phrase is a stationary entity. The frameworks of Cognitive Semantics (Talmy 2000) and Embodiment (Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Boulenger et al. 2008) along with the cognitively-oriented version of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006; Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal Us\uf3n 2008) are the main theoretical approaches brought together (1) to address the category of General Fictivity and the Embodied Cognition Theory, (2) to analyse the syntactic patterns of FictiveMotion expressions, (3) to show the inconsistency of Matlock\u2019s (2004) \u201cbinary typology\u201d, and (4) to pin down the internal and external constraints that licence the wording of nonveridical motion events