The L2 acquisition of Spanish non-nominative subjects by adult L1 English speakers

This study investigates the adult second language (L2) acquisition of non- nominative, non-agentive subjects, a particular feature of the Spanish language also shared by other Indo-European and South Asian languages. The existence of non- nominative elements in Spec, IP with subject-like properties is well-documented in the literature. One of the first attempts to account for this phenomenon in Romance languages is Belletti and Rizzi (1988) on Italian. Masullo (1992, 1993) extends the analysis to Spanish, proposing the Non-Nominative Subject (NNSub) Parameter, whereby a language allows NNSubs as part of its core grammar only if nominative case is assigned in situ. Spanish NNSubs can appear in unaccusative, dethematized, as well as impersonal constructions, and can be dative, accusative, or locative. These constituents are shown in Masullo (1992, 1993) not to occupy an A-bar position above IP, like topics and left-dislocated constituents, but rather Spec, IP, moving from the VP to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle. Languages like English and French, in which nominative case is checked in Spec, BP, disallow NNSubs.The aim of this study is to understand the processes involved in the acquisition language (LI) in the process of acquisition. A study involving three groups of adult English L2 learners of Spanish at a British university and a control group was carried out to determine if L2 learners with a [-NNSub] LÍ setting can reset the parameter to the Spanish [+NNSub] value. The learners belonged to one of three language levels: Intermediate, Advanced and Advanced+ according to the number of years spent at university and their contact with Spanish in a Spanish speaking country. The test battery involved an aural preference task, an elicited imitation task, and a picture description task. Hypothesis A predicted that Intermediate L2 learners would show clear L1 effects on their data and that the NNSub parameter would not show resetting. Hypothesis в predicted that the more advanced L2 learners would be able to reset the NNSub parameter to accommodate NNSubs and dative case in their interlanguage. Results from the aural preference and the elicited imitation tasks show correspondence between the results per category in both tasks. Knowledge of unaccusativity and NNSubs develops steadily up to the Advanced level but it suffers a decline with the Advanced+ learners. Results from the picture description task show that competence increases from the Intermediate to the Advanced level but that the percentage of non-target forms either stays at the same level or goes up with respect to the Advanced+ group. This regression seen in the Advanced^ data might be explained by the recent exposure to naturalistic input that the Advanced learners had just had. The L2 data do not show enough evidence that the NNSub parameter has been reset. Most of the grammatical utterances contain the verbs gustar 'like' and doler 'hurt', verbs which are part of the teaching curriculum. On the other hand, grammatical utterances involving other unaccusative verbs with NNSubs are rare. The fact that teaching of these verbs is insufficient does not help the L2 learners overcome the learnability problem posed by the input. This problem stems from the L2 input not showing clear-cut signals to tell learners which verbs require a NNSub. In addition to this, native speakers' use of optional structures to substitute the constructions with NNSubs makes NNSubs even less salient in the input

The anticipation, perception of affective touch in women with, recovered from Anorexia Nervosa

Disruptions in reward processing and anhedonia have long been observed in Anorexia Nervosa (AN). Interoceptive deficits have also been observed in AN, including reduced tactile pleasure. However, the extent to which this tactile anhedonia is specifically liked to an impairment in a specialized, interoceptive C-tactile system originating at the periphery, or a more top-down mechanism in the processing of tactile pleasantness remains debated. Here, we investigated differences between patients with and recovered from AN and healthy controls in the perception of pleasantness of touch delivered in a CT-optimal versus a CT-non-optimal manner, and in their top-down, anticipatory beliefs about the perceived pleasantness of touch. To this end, we measured the anticipated pleasantness of various materials touching the skin and the perceived pleasantness of light, dynamic touch applied to theforearmof 27 women with AN, 24 women who have recovered and 30 healthy controls using C Tactile (CT) afferents-optimal (slow) and non-optimal (fast) velocities. Our results showed that both clinical groups anticipated tactile experiences and rated delivered tactile stimuli as less pleasant than healthy controls, but the latter difference was not related to the CT optimality of the stimulation. Instead, differences in the perception of CT-optimal touch were predicted by differences in top-down beliefs, alexithymia and interoceptive sensibility. Thus, tactile anhedonia in AN might persist as a trait even after otherwise successful recovery of AN and it is not linked to a bottom-up interoceptive deficit in the CT system, but rather to a learned, defective top-down anticipation of tactile pleasantness

Updating Prospective Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Cardiac Interoception in Anorexia Nervosa: An Experimental and Computational Study.

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically hold altered beliefs about their body that they struggle to update, including global, prospective beliefs about their ability to know and regulate their body and particularly their interoceptive states. While clinical questionnaire studies have provided ample evidence on the role of such beliefs in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of AN, psychophysical studies have typically focused on perceptual and 'local' beliefs. Across two experiments, we examined how women at the acute AN (N = 86) and post-acute AN state (N = 87), compared to matched healthy controls (N = 180) formed and updated their self-efficacy beliefs retrospectively (Experiment 1) and prospectively (Experiment 2) about their heartbeat counting abilities in an adapted heartbeat counting task. As preregistered, while AN patients did not differ from controls in interoceptive accuracy per se, they hold and maintain 'pessimistic' interoceptive, metacognitive self-efficacy beliefs after performance. Modelling using a simplified computational Bayesian learning framework showed that neither local evidence from performance, nor retrospective beliefs following that performance (that themselves were suboptimally updated) seem to be sufficient to counter and update pessimistic, self-efficacy beliefs in AN. AN patients showed lower learning rates than controls, revealing a tendency to base their posterior beliefs more on prior beliefs rather than prediction errors in both retrospective and prospective belief updating. Further explorations showed that while these differences in both explicit beliefs, and the latent mechanisms of belief updating, were not explained by general cognitive flexibility differences, they were explained by negative mood comorbidity, even after the acute stage of illness

Ultra-low temperature structure determination of a Mn12 single-molecule magnet and the interplay between lattice solvent and structural disorder

We have determined the ultra-low temperature crystal structure of the archetypal single-molecule magnet (SMM) [Mn12O12(O2CMe)16(H2O)4]·4H2O·2MeCO2H (1) at 2 K, by using a combination of single-crystal X-ray and single-crystal neutron diffraction. This is the first structural study of any SMM in the same temperature regime where slow magnetic relaxation occurs. We reveal an additional hydrogen bonding interaction between the {Mn12} cluster and its solvent of crystallisation, which shows how the lattice solvent transmits disorder to the acetate ligands in the {Mn12} complex. Unusual quantum properties observed in 1 have long been attributed to disorder. Hence, we studied the desolvation products of 1, in order to understand precisely the influence of lattice solvent on the structure of the cluster. We present two new axially symmetric structures corresponding to different levels of desolvation of 1, [Mn12O12(O2CMe)16(H2O)4]·4H2O (2) and [Mn12O12(O2CMe)16(H2O)4] (3). In 2, removal of acetic acid of crystallisation largely resolves positional disorder in the affected acetate ligands, whereas removal of lattice water molecules further resolves the acetate ligand disorder in 3. Due to the absence of acetic acid of crystallisation, both 2 and 3 have true, unbroken S4 symmetry, showing for the first time that it is possible to prepare fully axial Mn12–acetate analogues from 1, via single-crystal to single-crystal transformations

The relationship between interoception and agency and its modulation by heartbeats: an exploratory study.

Interoception, the sense of the internal physiological state of the body, theoretically underpins aspects of self-representation. Experimental studies link feelings of body ownership to interoceptive perception, yet few studies have tested for association between the sense of agency and interoceptive processing. Here, we combined an intentional binding paradigm with cardiac measures of interoceptive processing (behavioural performance on a heartbeat discrimination task, and effects of timing within the cardiac cycle) in twenty-six non-clinical participants as an exploratory study. We found performance accuracy on the heartbeat discrimination task correlated positively with the intentional binding effect, an index of sense of agency (β = 0.832, p = 0.005), even after controlling for effects of age, sex, educational level, heart rate, heart rate variability and time accuracy. The intentional binding effect was enhanced during cardiac systole (compared to diastole) in individuals with greater heartbeat discrimination accuracy (β = 0.640, p = 0.047). These findings support the proposal that interoception contributes to mechanisms underlying the emergence of sense of agency

Spin density studies on p-O2NC6F4CNSSN: A heavy p-block organic ferromagnet

A complete picture of the spin density distribution in the organic radical p-O2NC6F4CNSSN has been obtained by a combination of polarized neutron diffraction, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopies, and ab initio density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. Polarized neutron diffraction revealed that the spin distribution is predominantly localized on the N and S atoms (+0.25μB and +0.28μB, respectively) of the heterocyclic ring with a small negative spin density on the heterocyclic C atom (−0.06μB). These spin populations are in excellent agreement with both ab initio DFT calculations (spin populations on the C, N, and S sites of −0.07, 0.22 and 0.31, respectively) and cw-EPR studies which estimated the spin population on the N site as 0.24. The DFT calculated spin density revealed less than 1% spin delocalization onto the perfluoroaryl ring, several orders of magnitude lower than the density on the heterocyclic ring. cw-ENDOR studies at both X-band (9 GHz) and Q-band (34 GHz) frequencies probed the spin populations on the two chemically distinct F atoms. These spin populations on the F atoms ortho and meta to the dithiadiazolyl ring are of magnitude 10−3 and 10−4, respectively

Structural studies of light-induced excited states

Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the number of structural studies carried out on light-induced excited states. Until now, however, there has been no systematic approach to the irradiation of samples, which can make data collection difficult and results unreliable. This paper presents a device for mounting a laser on a CCD diffractometer; this device not only enables the collection of data without any constraints on the data collection strategy, but also simplifies alignment of the laser and can be left in place permanently