Processing for relevance: a pragmatically based account of how we process natural language

This thesis presents an account of some of the mental mechanisms and processes that take the addressee from a linguistic input to the interpretation of that input. Because on-line interpretation involves our knowledge of language, the relation between input processing and grammar is evaluated. The full interpretation of a linguistic input also involves pragmatic, i.e. central cognitive processes, but these processes are the least well understood within psycholinguistics. Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) gives us a way of making our understanding of these processes more explicit. However, Relevance theory claims turn out to be incompatible with psycholinguistic models which postulate an autonomous syntactic parser, such as the 'Garden-path' model. A review of the experimental literature reveals that the findings claimed to support the 'Garden-path' model do not in fact support it. Likewise, the principle of Lexical Preference, proposed to account for how verb subcategorization frames are accessed, turns out not to be supported by the experimental evidence. Full interpretation involves computing a conceptual representation, and an account is given of what constitutes conceptual structure. This leads to the proposal that verbs are represented as structured concepts. This view of verb representation together with Relevance theory can account for when arguments of verbs can be left implicit. Finally, an account is given of how the addressee computes the propositional form communicated by an utterance, by building hypotheses about the conceptual structure of the proposition on-line. These hypotheses are based on structural information stored under the concepts referred to by the utterance. This proposal can account for psycholinguistic research findings, with pragmatics playing an integral role in the explanations: it is no longer grafted onto the model as a psycholinguistic afterthought

Brain responses and approach bias to social alcohol cues and their association with drinking in a social setting in young adult males

Alcohol is mainly consumed in social settings, in which people often adapt their drinking behaviour to that of others, also called imitation of drinking. Yet, it remains unclear what drives this drinking in a social setting. In this study, we expected to see stronger brain and behavioural responses to social compared to non-social alcohol cues, and these responses to be associated with drinking in a social setting. The sample consisted of 153 beer-drinking males, aged 18–25 years. Brain responses to social alcohol cues were measured during an alcohol cue-exposure task performed in an fMRI scanner. Behavioural responses to social alcohol cues were measured using a stimulus-response compatibility task, providing an index of approach bias towards these cues. Drinking in a social setting was measured in a laboratory mimicking a bar environment. Specific brain responses to social alcohol cues were observed in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus and the left inferior parietal lobe. There was no approach bias towards social alcohol cues specifically; however, we did find an approach bias towards alcohol (versus soda) cues in general. Brain responses and approach bias towards social alcohol cues were unrelated and not associated with actual drinking. Thus, we found no support for a relation between drinking in a social setting on the one hand, and brain cue-reactivity or behavioural approach biases to social alcohol cues on the other hand. This suggests that, in contrast to our hypothesis, drinking in a social setting may not be driven by brain or behavioural responses to social alcohol cues

Interoperability framework of virtual factory and business innovation

Interoperability framework of virtual factory and business innovationTask T51 Design a common schema and schema evolution framework for supporting interoperabilityTask T52 Design interoperability framework for supporting datainformation transformation service composition and business process cooperation among partnersA draft version is envisioned for month 44 which will be updated to reflect incremental changes driven by the other working packages for month 72 deliverable 7.

Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30-39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods. https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/795

Correction: Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study:An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.]

Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30-39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods/access. Trail registration: https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/7955

Processing the relevance A pragmatically based account of how we process natural language

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Neural correlates of the anticipation of a sip of beer in young adult males

Contains fulltext : 179640.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access

Business Process Variability: A Tool for Declarative Template Design

To lower both implementation time and cost, many Business Process Management tools use process templates to implement highly recurring processes. However, in order for such templates to be used, a process has to adhere substantially to the template. Therefore, current practice for processes which deviate more than marginally is to either manually implement them at high costs, or for the business to inflexibly comply to the template. In this paper, we describe a tool which demonstrates a variability based solution to process template definition

The role of social stimuli content in neuroimaging studies investigating alcohol cue-reactivity

Contains fulltext : 157184.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access) Contains fulltext : 157184pub.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Introduction: Cue-reactivity is thought to play a fundamental role in the maintenance of addiction. The incentive sensitization theory proposes that conditioned responses are related to increased sensitivity of the reward-related dopaminergic pathways in the brain. However, neuroimaging studies on alcohol cue-reactivity show inconsistent results. Methods: Stimuli content of 26 alcohol cue-reactivity studies was systematically reviewed. Results: No differences were found between alcoholic beverage stimuli and non-alcoholic beverage stimuli in human display and brand factors; however, alcoholic beverage stimuli were more likely to display social interaction compared to non-alcoholic beverage stimuli. Conclusions: Given that processing of social information activates brain areas that partly overlap with reward-related brain areas associated with cue-reactivity, such differences between conditions can introduce noise in the findings. We therefore suggest matching stimuli sets on the reviewed factors carefully to improve reliability of neuroimaging studies investigating alcohol-related cue-reactivity