How Does Language Change Perception: A Cautionary Note

The relationship of language, perception, and action has been the focus of recent studies exploring the representation of conceptual knowledge. A substantial literature has emerged, providing ample demonstrations of the intimate relationship between language and perception. The appropriate characterization of these interactions remains an important challenge. Recent evidence involving visual search tasks has led to the hypothesis that top-down input from linguistic representations may sharpen visual feature detectors, suggesting a direct influence of language on early visual perception. We present two experiments to explore this hypothesis. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the benefits of linguistic priming in visual search may arise from a reduction in the demands on working memory. Experiment 2 presents a situation in which visual search performance is disrupted by the automatic activation of irrelevant linguistic representations, a result consistent with the idea that linguistic and sensory representations interact at a late, response-selection stage of processing. These results raise a cautionary note: While language can influence performance on a visual search, the influence need not arise from a change in perception per se

An Explicit Strategy Prevails When the Cerebellum Fails to Compute Movement Errors

In sensorimotor adaptation, explicit cognitive strategies are thought to be unnecessary because the motor system implicitly corrects performance throughout training. This seemingly automatic process involves computing an error between the planned movement and actual feedback of the movement. When explicitly provided with an effective strategy to overcome an experimentally induced visual perturbation, people are immediately successful and regain good task performance. However, as training continues, their accuracy gets worse over time. This counterintuitive result has been attributed to the independence of implicit motor processes and explicit cognitive strategies. The cerebellum has been hypothesized to be critical for the computation of the motor error signals that are necessary for implicit adaptation. We explored this hypothesis by testing patients with cerebellar degeneration on a motor learning task that puts the explicit and implicit systems in conflict. Given this, we predicted that the patients would be better than controls in maintaining an effective strategy assuming strategic and adaptive processes are functionally and neurally independent. Consistent with this prediction, the patients were easily able to implement an explicit cognitive strategy and showed minimal interference from undesirable motor adaptation throughout training. These results further reveal the critical role of the cerebellum in an implicit adaptive process based on movement errors and suggest an asymmetrical interaction of implicit and explicit processes

Neurolinguistic relativity How language flexes human perception and cognition

Time has come, perhaps, to go beyond acknowledging that language is a core manifestation of the workings of the human mind and that it relates interactively to all aspects of thinking. The issue, thus, is not to decide whether language and human thought may be ineluctably linked (they just are) but rather to determine what the characteristics of this relationship may be and to understand how language influences �and may be influenced by� nonverbal information processing. Here I review neurolinguistic studies from our group that have shown a link between linguistic distinctions and perception or conceptualization in an attempt to demystify linguistic relativity. On the basis of empirical evidence showing effects of terminology on perception, language-idiosyncratic relationships in semantic memory, grammatical skewing of event conceptualisation, and unconscious modulation of executive functioning by verbal input, I advocate a neurofunctional approach through which we can systematically explore how languages shape human though

Lithium Impacts on the Amplitude and Period of the Molecular Circadian Clockwork

Lithium salt has been widely used in treatment of Bipolar Disorder, a mental disturbance associated with circadian rhythm disruptions. Lithium mildly but consistently lengthens circadian period of behavioural rhythms in multiple organisms. To systematically address the impacts of lithium on circadian pacemaking and the underlying mechanisms, we measured locomotor activity in mice in vivo following chronic lithium treatment, and also tracked clock protein dynamics (PER2::Luciferase) in vitro in lithium-treated tissue slices/cells. Lithium lengthens period of both the locomotor activity rhythms, as well as the molecular oscillations in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, lung tissues and fibroblast cells. In addition, we also identified significantly elevated PER2::LUC expression and oscillation amplitude in both central and peripheral pacemakers. Elevation of PER2::LUC by lithium was not associated with changes in protein stabilities of PER2, but instead with increased transcription of Per2 gene. Although lithium and GSK3 inhibition showed opposing effects on clock period, they acted in a similar fashion to up-regulate PER2 expression and oscillation amplitude. Collectively, our data have identified a novel amplitude-enhancing effect of lithium on the PER2 protein rhythms in the central and peripheral circadian clockwork, which may involve a GSK3-mediated signalling pathway. These findings may advance our understanding of the therapeutic actions of lithium in Bipolar Disorder or other psychiatric diseases that involve circadian rhythm disruptions

DID SHE DO IT ON PURPOSE? : YOUNG CHILDREN'S PERFORMANCE ON YES/NO AND MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS ABOUT INTENTIONS

While children demonstrate the ability to understand others? intentions as early as 6 months of age, they are not able to verbally answer questions about intentions until between 3 and 6 years of age. The present study was designed to explore whether different question formats influence the accuracy of children?s responses to questions about intentions, and whether the development of executive attention plays a role in children?s ability to answer questions about intentions. Seventy-nine preschool children between 3 and 5 years of age were recruited for this study. Children viewed videos of playground events involving two main characters. Within this video there were three events which were performed either on purpose or by accident. After the video, children were asked a series of questions including prompts about the intentions behind the three target events. Children were significantly worse at answering questions about intentions as compared to questions which did not involve intentions. Children demonstrated an overall ?yes? bias for intentions and non- intentions questions. For intentions questions, this means that they were most accurate when they were asked yes/no questions where the answer should be ?yes? (Match) and least accurate when they were asked yes/no questions where the answer should be ?no? (NonMatch). They were equally accurate at Match and forced-choice questions. There was an interaction with age for the non-intentions questions so that younger children were more prone to demonstrate a ?yes? bias and show increased accuracy for Match questions and decreased accuracy for NonMatch questions. Younger children were equally accurate at Match and forced-choice questions, and more accurate at forced choice questions than NonMatch questions. Executive attention measures predicted children?s accuracy for NonMatch, non intention questions. The results are discussed in terms of forensic applications

Predicting Accuracy: A Model For Assessing Children'S Testimonial Competence

Three million children were subjects of at least one abuse or neglect report in the United States in 2009. When legal cases result from these reports, child testimony is usually the only source of prosecuting evidence. If there is a question about a child's ability to provide legal testimony, his or her testimonial competence may be assessed. When the presiding judge deems a child incompetent, the child is not allowed to testify, or if the child's status is unclear, the judge may provide a warning to the jury about giving less weight to the testimony. However, there are only skeletal legal guidelines in place to aid judges in these decisions and there is little empirical research in this area. The present study was designed to assess new techniques for determining children's testimonial competence. Sixty-four 3 to 5-year-old children completed sections of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence- Third Edition (WPPSI-III), the Test of Language Development- Primary- Fourth Edition (TOLD-P-4), the Child Memory Scale (CMS), and the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC) and answered questions designed to approximate the types of questions typically asked in competency hearings. Children also participated in a series of staged events with a confederate and were interviewed about the staged events immediately and after a delay of several days. Children's performance on the WPPSI-III, CMS, and VSSC predicted the ratio of correct to incorrect details children provided about the staged events at the delayed interview. Analyses comparing children who had accuracy ratios above 1 to those with accuracy ratios of 1 or below showed that children who gave more correct information than incorrect information scored higher on every language and memory variable and were less likely to yield to suggested items on the VSSC. Implications for the legal system are discussed