From the Richness of the Signal to the Poverty of the Stimulus: Mechanisms of Early Language Acquisition

1.1 The poverty of stimulus argument and the learnability of lan-guage................................ 12 1.1.1 The induction problem.................. 1

The Novelty Effect as a Predictor of Language Outcome

A controversial issue in the field of language acquisition is the extent to which general attentional or cognitive abilities play a role in individual differences in early language outcomes. Here we report a longitudinal study where we examined whether processing efficiency in a novelty detection task predicted later vocabulary size in a stable manner across time. We found that the novelty detection ability measured at 9 months was significantly predictive of later vocabulary size at 12, 14, 18, and 24 months. This study, therefore, emphasizes the importance of controlling for non-linguistic factors when assessing individual variability in language development. A more accurate assessment of language development may be obtained if general attentional and cognitive abilities are also taken into account in addition to linguistic factors

Magyarországi C-vírus-hepatitises betegek vírustípus- és szubtípusmegoszlásának elemzése = Analysis of hepatitis C virus type and subtype distribution in Hungary

Absztrakt Bevezetés: A hepatitis C-vírus (HCV) nagy szerkezeti variabilitást mutat. A genom szekvenálása és filogenetikai analízise alapján 7 típusa és 67 szubtípusa különíthető el, melyek földrajzi megoszlása különböző. A 2014-ben bevezetett direkt ható antivirális terápia (DAA) alkalmazása óta meghatározásuk kiemelten fontossá vált, mivel a gyógyszerek típusa, dózisa, a kezelések optimális időtartama genotípus/szubtípus függő. Célkitűzés: Magyarországon 1992-ben kezdődött a krónikus C-vírus-hepatitises betegek kezelése, az ehhez szükséges speciális diagnosztikát Molekuláris Diagnosztikai Laboratóriumunkban vezettük be. Meghatároztuk a magyarországi HCV1b NS5A/PKR-BR régiójának nukleotidszekvenciáját és a magyarországi betegekből izolált vírustípus- és szubtípus-előfordulást. A jelen összefoglalóban 6092 krónikus C hepatitises beteg (175 szerotípus, 5917 genotípus) 1996 és 2017 közötti eredményét elemezzük típus/szubtípus, életkor, nem és a magyarországi régiókon belüli megoszlás alapján, valamint követjük a genotípusarányok két évtized alatti változását. Módszer: Szerotípusvizsgálat (1996–1999). Genotípusvizsgálat: hibridizáció (2000–2016), real-time PCR-módszer (2016–; Cobas 4800 HCV GT). Eredmények: A genotípusmegoszlás átlaga: GT1a: 5,6%; GT1b: 84,6%; GT1a + 1b: 5,1%; GT2: 0,1%; GT3: 1,8%; GT4: 0,1%; vegyes: 1,6%; GT1 (szubtípusa nem differenciált): 1,1%. Nő : férfi = 52% : 48%. A víruspozitív betegek 37%-a az 50–60 éves korosztályba tartozott. A négy magyarországi régióban, valamint Budapesten és környékén jelentős genotípusaszimmetria nem igazolódott. A 3-as genotípus prevalenciája az utóbbi években 1,6%-ról 2,8%-ra emelkedett; a 40 év alattiakban megduplázódott a számuk. Következtetés: Hazánkban 20 év alatt a HCV típus/szubtípus megoszlásában jelentős változás nem történt, jelenleg is az 1/b a leggyakoribb. Minőségi előrelépést hozott a real-time PCR-genotípusmódszer bevezetése, a kapott eredmények letisztultak, kevés közöttük a vegyes szubtípusú, ami a hatékonyabb gyógyszerválasztást segíti. Orv Hetil. 2018; 159(Suppl 2): 2–8. | Abstract Introduction: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) shows great structural variability. Based on genome sequencing and phylogenetical analysis, 7 types and 67 subtypes can be differentiated with varying geographical distribution. It is very important to determine the HCV type/subtype prior to starting direct antiviral therapy (DAA), which has been available since 2014, because the type, dose and optimal length of medication depends on these. Aim: In Hungary, the treatment of chronic HCV patients started in 1992 with the relevant special diagnostic tests being carried out in our Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory. Determination of the nucleotide sequence of the Hungarian HCV1b NS5A/PKR-BR region and the type and subtype distribution of Hungarian patients have already been carried out. The current summary discusses the results of 6092 chronic HCV patients (175 serotypes, 5917 genotypes) based on age, gender, regions and genotype distribution changes over the period between 1996 and 2017. Method: Serotyping (1996–1999). Genotyping: hybridization (2000–2016), real-time PCR (2016–; Cobas 4800 HCV GT). Results: Genotype distribution: GT1a: 5.6%; GT1b: 84.6%; GT1a + 1b: 5.1%; GT2: 0.1%; GT3: 1.8%; GT4: 0.1%; mixed: 1.6%; GT1 (non-differentiated subtype): 1,1%. Women/men ratio: 52%/48%. The most common age category is 50–60 years (37% of all cases). There was no genotype asymmetry among the four Hungarian regions and Budapest. Over time, the prevalence of genotype 3 increased from 1.6% to 2.8% and the number of patients under the age of 40 doubled. Conclusion: There have been no substantial changes in the HCV type/subtype distribution in Hungary over the past 20 years, 1b remaining the most common. The introduction of real-time PCR method for genotyping has resulted in a major quality improvement including only a few mixed subtype results leading to more efficient drug selection. Orv Hetil. 2018; 159(Suppl 2): 2–8

A magyar morfológia elsajátításának kezdetei

Pszicholingvisztikai szempontból igen jelentős, és máig vitatott kérdés, hogyan dolgozzák fel a beszélők a morfológiailag komplex szóalakokat: egészlegesen, elemeikre bontva vagy a két stratégiát flexibilisen használva. Még kevésbé ismert, hogyan sajátítható el a magyar és a hozzá hasonló nyelvek komplex agglutináló morfológiája. A magyar morfológia elsajátítását óvodás korú és annál nagyobb gyermekek beszédében az elmúlt évtizedekben nagy részletességgel feltárták. Sokkal kevesebbet tudunk azonban e tanulási folyamat kezdeteiről. A jelen tanulmány néhány újabb kutatást foglal össze, amelyek magyar csecsemők beszédészlelésében és nyelvfeldolgozásában vizsgálják az alaktan kibontakozásának kezdeteit, különösképpen a magánhangzó-harmónia és a morfológiai dekompozíció megjelenését

Does rhythmic priming improve grammatical processing in Hungarian‐speaking children with and without developmental language disorder?

Research has described several features shared between musical rhythm and speech or language, and experimental studies consistently show associations between performance on tasks in the two domains as well as impaired rhythm processing in children with language disorders. Motivated by these results, in the current study our first aim was to explore whether a short exposure to a regular musical rhythm (i.e., rhythmic priming) can improve subsequent grammatical processing in preschool-aged Hungarian-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Second, we investigated whether rhythmic priming is specific to grammar processing by assessing priming in two additional domains: a linguistic but non-grammatical task (picture naming) and a non-linguistic task (nonverbal Stroop task). Third, to confirm that the rhythmic priming effect originates from the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm and not the negative effect of the control condition, we added a third condition, silence, for all the three tasks. Both groups of children showed better performance on the grammaticality judgment task in the regular compared to both the irregular and the silent conditions but no such effect appeared in the non-grammatical and non-linguistic tasks. These results suggest that (1) rhythmic priming can improve grammatical processing in Hungarian, a language with complex morphosyntax, both in children with and without DLD, (2) the effect is specific to grammar and (3) is a result of the facilitating effect of the regular rhythm. These results could motivate further research about integrating rhythmic priming into traditional speech-language therapy

Six-month-old infants' perception of structural regularities in speech

In order to acquire grammar, infants need to extract regularities from the linguistic input. From birth, infants can detect regularities in speech based on identity relations, and show strong neural activation to syllable sequences containing adjacent repetitions of identical syllables (e.g. ABB: mubaba). Meanwhile, newborns' neural responses to sequences of different syllables (e.g. ABC: mubage, i.e. diversity-based relations) do not differ from baseline. However, this latter ability needs to emerge during development, as most linguistic units, such as words, are composed of highly variable sequences. As infants begin to learn their first word forms at 6 months, we hypothesize that the ability to represent sequences of different syllables might become important for them at this age. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), we measured 6-month-old infants' brain responses to repetitionand diversity-based sequences in the bilateral temporal, parietal and frontal areas. We found that 6-month-olds discriminated the repetition- and diversity-based structures in frontal and parietal regions, and exhibited equally strong activation to both grammars as compared to baseline. These results show that by 6 months of age, infants encode sequences with diversity-based structures. They thus provide the earliest evidence that prelexical infants represent difference in speech stimuli, which behavioral studies first attest at 11 months of age

Infants’ sensitivity to nonadjacent vowel dependencies: The case of vowel harmony in Hungarian

Vowel harmony is a linguistic phenomenon whereby vowels within a word share one or several of their phonological features, constituting a nonadjacent, and thus challenging, dependency to learn. It can be found in a large number of agglutinating languages, such as Hungarian and Turkish, and it may apply both at the lexical level (i.e., within word stems) and at the morphological level (i.e., between stems and their affixes). Thus, it might affect both lexical and morphological development in infants whose native language has vowel harmony. The current study asked at what age infants learning an irregular harmonic language, Hungarian, become sensitive to vowel harmony within word stems. In a head-turn preference study, 13-month-old, but not 10-month-old, Hungarian-learning infants preferred listening to nonharmonic VCV (vowel–consonant–vowel) pseudowords over vowel-harmonic ones. A control experiment with 13-month-olds exposed to French, a nonharmonic language, showed no listening preference for either of the sequences, suggesting that this finding cannot be explained by a universal preference for nonharmonic sequences but rather reflects language-specific knowledge emerging between 10 and 13 months of age. We discuss the implications of this finding for morphological and lexical learning

Infants' Perception of Repetition-Based Regularities in Speech: a Look from the Perspective of the Same/Different Distinction

We review the existing evidence, behavioral and neural, of infants' ability to encode repetition- ('same') and diversity-('different') based regularities in speech. These studies show that, from birth, infants exhibit a robust capacity for learning repetition-based rules from speech (e.g. AAB or ABA, in which A = A). Further, the ability to generalize such repetition-based structures is not strictly language-specific, as infants' extract repetition-based structures from musical tones, animal pictures, abstract geometrical shapes, or faces under some conditions. However, this capacity is strongest when presented with speech or other communicative/meaningful stimuli. Additionally and importantly, recent brain-imaging studies suggest that by six months of age, infants also distinctly encode the notion of difference in speech stimuli. This is the youngest age at which this ability has been shownThis work was supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant "BabyRhythm" nr. 773202 to JG, and the Basque Foundation for Science Ikerbasque and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [Grant nr. PID2019-105100RJ-I00] to IdlC

Acoustic characterization of speech rhythm: going beyond metrics with recurrent neural networks

Languages have long been described according to their perceived rhythmic attributes. The associated typologies are of interest in psycholinguistics as they partly predict newborns' abilities to discriminate between languages and provide insights into how adult listeners process non-native languages. Despite the relative success of rhythm metrics in supporting the existence of linguistic rhythmic classes, quantitative studies have yet to capture the full complexity of temporal regularities associated with speech rhythm. We argue that deep learning offers a powerful pattern-recognition approach to advance the characterization of the acoustic bases of speech rhythm. To explore this hypothesis, we trained a medium-sized recurrent neural network on a language identification task over a large database of speech recordings in 21 languages. The network had access to the amplitude envelopes and a variable identifying the voiced segments, assuming that this signal would poorly convey phonetic information but preserve prosodic features. The network was able to identify the language of 10-second recordings in 40% of the cases, and the language was in the top-3 guesses in two-thirds of the cases. Visualization methods show that representations built from the network activations are consistent with speech rhythm typologies, although the resulting maps are more complex than two separated clusters between stress and syllable-timed languages. We further analyzed the model by identifying correlations between network activations and known speech rhythm metrics. The findings illustrate the potential of deep learning tools to advance our understanding of speech rhythm through the identification and exploration of linguistically relevant acoustic feature spaces.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure