The role of perceptual integration in the recognition of assimilated word forms

We investigated how spoken words are recognized when they have been altered by phonological assimilation. Previous research has shown that there is a process of perceptual compensation for phonological assimilations. Three recently formulated proposals regarding the mechanisms for compensation for assimilation make different predictions with regard to the level at which compensation is supposed to occur as well as regarding the role of specific language experience. In the present study, Hungarian words and nonwords, in which a viable and an unviable liquid assimilation was applied, were presented to Hungarian and Dutch listeners in an identification task and a discrimination task. Results indicate that viably changed forms are difficult to distinguish from canonical forms independent of experience with the assimilation rule applied in the utterances. This reveals that auditory processing contributes to perceptual compensation for assimilation, while language experience has only a minor role to play when identification is required.peer-reviewe

Die Kooperation zwischen Berufsschulen und Unternehmen im Rahmen der beruflichen Erstausbildung am Beispiel der Volksrepublik China

In the light of youth unemployment and increased transnational mobility practice oriented vocational education and training get more and more importance in the international cooperation in education. There is a broad consensus among educational experts, that one of the possible measures to reduce youth unemployment in the world is to provide youth skills and competences, which are needed on the labour market. The school based vocational education needs to be updated with practical skills. The fundament of each practice oriented vocational education and training system (VET) lays in the cooperation between the main actors: the enterprises and vocational schools. Dual systems in countries as Germany, Switzerland and Austria offer many good practice examples on the benefits of the engagements of both actors in the vocational education and training system but nevertheless these examples cannot be taken as “one model fits all” which can be implemented in each country. Therefore each country interested in the redesign of their own vocational education and training system needs to identify possible benefits of and challenges in their system, to be able to specify the opportunities and threat for future development. It cannot be presumed that enterprises can be forced to take apprentices and train them in their facilities. It has to be evident for every educational actor willing to cooperate with enterprises, that enterprises first strive for growth in profits upon others to be able to secure their existence and secondly they may support additional, non-economic activities; for example the vocational education and training of future employee. Although to ensuring the quality of future employees may partly be seen as their social responsibility this fact will still depend on their economic situation and their need for skilled labour. However, making profit does not collide with the idea of the engagement of enterprises in the vocational education and training. It only needs an in depth-analysis of potentials and needs of enterprises and vocational schools and an adequate planning as well as development of the educational programs and activities. The following example on the PR China delivers many interesting basic approaches on how cooperation between enterprises and vocational schools can be built up, managed and preserved. Thanks to the over thirty years of multilateral cooperation between der PR China and other European and Asian countries, the PR China already knows what is needed to modernize the vocational education and training system. Further education of teachers, redevelopment of curriculums and the redesign of the infrastructure of the vocational schools are those activities, which enriched the Chinese vocational education and training system in the last thirty years. There is still backwardness in the economically weak part of the country but within the “go-west-strategy” of the government innovative measures are offered for enterprises to foster the development of the western region; for example cut red tape or tax and duty exemptions. In the course of the bureaucracy development of the east-southeast part of the country and through the increased perception of the country in the international business the quality of labour become more relevant also for the PR China. Products with low-value-added and unskilled labour were not sufficient anymore for the competitiveness of the country in the international environment. More and more enterprises realised the shortage of qualified labour because of the rise of progressing technology and of the availability of qualified labour. The commitment to quality in the vocational education and training laid on the market orientation and therefore on the establishment of cooperation between enterprises and vocational schools. The PR China can consequently show good practice examples from cooperation in the vocational education after more than thirty years of learning from other countries. The constructive element of these cooperation was identified by the actors as the consensus about the mutual benefit of cooperative activities. Although there are many good practices in the cooperation, nevertheless, more persuasiveness is still needed for continuous fostering of quality in the vocational education and training. The cooperation is not only influenced by the interest, need and the level of cooperation between enterprises and vocational schools, but the nature of the directives of the government are crucial for the cooperation too. For example, the decentralized implementation of the directives of the government may endanger the uneven development and quality assurance in vocational training. The transfer of responsibility of the state in the hands of the provinces ensures on the one side more freedom for provinces, for instance, it allows them to adapt the vocational education and training to their specific needs and to implement it to local circumstances. This means, to offer labour market oriented vocational education and training. On the other side it needs in the context of quality assurance to archive the knowledge gained through the fragmented implementation. This implies, that already developed teaching and learning materials should not get lost but it should be used as synergies and transfer these to other provinces, schools or enterprises. One of the exemplary efforts made by good situated “model vocational schools” is their willingness to overtake a sponsorship for other less developed vocational schools that are located mostly in the western region. Previously mentioned schools support the improvement of the teaching quality of latter mentioned schools and help them especially in the initial phase of the redevelopment of their teaching and training system. More concrete, “school sponsorships” allow to share knowledge, experience or to share technical equipment. The further education of teachers, the establishment of training facilities, the adaptation of curriculum to the labour market needs leave space for the consideration of local needs on the one side, and the dynamics of market development on the other side. It is only possible to take over responsibility for less developed schools, if there is financial support through the government too. School sponsorship is mostly subject to model schools therefore there is a significant need for recognition and promotion of education activities of these model schools. The high dynamic of the labour market in developing regions may cause challenges in the cooperation between vocational schools and enterprises, especially in the time of recession. If the cooperation with a vocational school gives rise to concern because of the limited time, personal availability or financial support in the enterprises, than the support of enterprises may decrease. Therefore the model schools strive to mobilise all actors, ask for financial and material benefits during the time of economic growth to be able to implement those benefits targeted and lay a solid fundament for the performance of less developed schools. This fundament may consist of well-educated vocational teachers, well-equipped training facilities as well as practice oriented curricula. A solid basis allows vocational schools in a economically weak period to use previous investments and benefits. Additional created supplementary services, as further educational offers for enterprise employees, well-educated vocational teachers as consulters by building up of new production lines or by doing research on the effectiveness of human resources, are examples for reserves to bear itself. The redefinition of the role of vocational schools as “service providers” in a wide sense, allows setting quality standards in relation with the pedagogical requirements and economical needs in the vocational education and training. The school administration and teachers need to be equipped with additional management skills in addition to their educational and professional skills to be able to initiate, build and maintain cooperation systematically and analytically. Enterprises need to be aware of taking responsibility for future skilled labour while cooperating with vocational schools. The openness of enterprises for cooperation allows determining one's potential within vocational education and training and look for benefits for both actors. It is necessary for a successful cooperation to be a "win-win" situation, so the motivation for all parties should be maintained. Finally each cooperation needs competent teachers, well equipped training facilities also strategic planning (AIOC-strategy) in sense of analysis of initial situation and the possibilities for the implementation of practical vocational education and training, optimisation of available capacities and resources, the interdependence of responsibilities and competences of both actors, and the consolidation of pedagogical quality criteria under economic premises. The PR China has tried in the past thirty years to modernize its vocational education and training system; this happened mostly in the technical occupations. The challenge for the future will be to do the same effort for the service occupations. The reform and open-door policy of the Chinese government since the 1970s brings many opportunities not only for the economy, but also for the society. The rapid development in the technically based fields brought the anticipated economic upswing and leads the PR China from a development country to the second biggest economy in the world. Now, the current government aims more to increase the life standard of the Chinese and strengthen the domestic consumption than to focus on industry production. Through the emerging middle class the quality and necessity of services gain higher importance in the society and it is seen as an integral part of increasing their quality of life. Chinas new generation remained from the destructive revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, which have slowed down the development in the country. It has now in hand to bring together identity of the country with its traditions and modernity not only outwardly in the perception of the world, but to strengthen it also in the Chinese society

Phonological Variations Are Compensated at the Lexical Level : Evidence From Auditory Neural Activity

Dealing with phonological variations is important for speech processing. This article addresses whether phonological variations introduced by assimilatory processes are compensated for at the pre-lexical or lexical level, and whether the nature of variation and the phonological context influence this process. To this end, Swedish nasal regressive place assimilation was investigated using the mismatch negativity (MMN) component. In nasal regressive assimilation, the coronal nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following segment, most clearly with a velar or labial place of articulation, as in utan mej "without me" > [MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLONtam mejMODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON]. In a passive auditory oddball paradigm, 15 Swedish speakers were presented with Swedish phrases with attested and unattested phonological variations and contexts for nasal assimilation. Attested variations - a coronal-to-labial change as in utan "without" > [MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLONtam] - were contrasted with unattested variations - a labial-to-coronal change as in utom "except" > *[MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLONtLATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN On] - in appropriate and inappropriate contexts created by mej "me" [mejMODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON] and dej "you" [dejMODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON]. Given that the MMN amplitude depends on the degree of variation between two stimuli, the MMN responses were expected to indicate to what extent the distance between variants was tolerated by the perceptual system. Since the MMN response reflects not only low-level acoustic processing but also higher-level linguistic processes, the results were predicted to indicate whether listeners process assimilation at the pre-lexical and lexical levels. The results indicated no significant interactions across variations, suggesting that variations in phonological forms do not incur any cost in lexical retrieval; hence such variation is compensated for at the lexical level. However, since the MMN response reached significance only for a labial-to-coronal change in a labial context and for a coronal-to-labial change in a coronal context, the compensation might have been influenced by the nature of variation and the phonological context. It is therefore concluded that while assimilation is compensated for at the lexical level, there is also some influence from pre-lexical processing. The present results reveal not only signal-based perception of phonological units, but also higher-level lexical processing, and are thus able to reconcile the bottom-up and top-down models of speech processing.Peer reviewe

Tracking the implicit acquisition of nonadjacent transitional probabilities by ERPs

The implicit acquisition of complex probabilistic regularities has been found to be crucial in numerous automatized cognitive abilities, including language processing and associative learning. However, the neurocognitive processes supporting the implicit extraction of 2nd order non-adjacent transitional probabilities have not been completely elucidated. Therefore, this study investigated the sensitivity of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to these probabilistic regularities embedded in a sequence of visual stimuli without providing explicit information on the structure of the stimulus stream. Healthy young adults (N = 32) performed a perceptual-motor RT task that included an alternating sequential regularity between non-adjacent trials while RTs and ERPs were measured time-locked to the onset of the stimulus. RT effects indicated the rapid acquisition of transitional probabilities. The acquisition process was also tracked by the P3 component. Modulations of the P3 amplitude indicated that the more probable short-range relations could be integrated in the internal representations formed on the experienced stimulus environment. Meanwhile, the less probable short-range relations delivered possibly surprising information over the course of the task, by which the internal representations could have been updated. These results suggest that representations on the probabilistic regularities of the ongoing stimulus context are implicitly formed and constantly revised. Overall, this study (1) highlights the role of predictive processes during implicit memory formation, and (2) delineates a potential to gain further insight into the dynamics of implicit acquisition processes

Povezanost između vremenskih uvjeta i varijacija u peludu ambrouzije u okolici grada Szegeda, Mađarska

This study analyses potential associations between day-to-day variations in common ragweed pollen counts in the southern Hungarian district of Szeged and meteorological variables using adapted factor analysis. The database includes ten years (1997-2006) worth of data on daily common ragweed pollen ratios (value on the given day per value on the day before) and daily differences (value on the given day minus value on the day before) in eight meteorological variables (mean temperature, minimum temperature, maximum temperature, temperature range, irradiance, relative humidity, wind speed, and rainfall) over the ragweed pollen season. This method is new, as it has only been applied in the economics. In factor analysis it is advisable to combine all the weights of the factors and the resultant variable into one factor indicating the rank of importance of the given explanatory variables in infl uencing the resultant variable, while the remaining factors are uncorrelated with the resultant variable. The procedure shows that wind speed, rainfall, and temperature range are the most important, while minimum temperature and irradiance are the least important meteorological variables infl uencing daily pollen ratios. We found a tendency to stronger associations between the meteorological variables and the pollen variable when the pollen ratio was 1 or below. This is due to the fact that data corresponding to the pollen ratio over 1 come mainly from the prepeak pollen season, while data corresponding to less than 1 are characteristic of the post-peak pollen season (late summer to early autumn).Primjenom prilagođene metode faktorske analize istražili smo povezanost između dnevnih varijacija u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca ambrozije u zraku i meteoroloških varijabli u okolici grada Szegeda u južnoj Mađarskoj. Koristili smo bazu podataka prikupljenih tijekom desetogodišnjeg razdoblja (1997.-2006.) za dnevne omjere u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca ambrozije (vrijednost određena na promatrani dan podijeljena s vrijednošću određenom prethodnog dana) i dnevne razlike u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca ambrozije (vrijednost određena na promatrani dan od koje je oduzeta vrijednost određena prethodnog dana) te podatke o osam meteoroloških varijabli (prosječna temperatura, minimalna temperatura, maksimalna temperatura, raspon temperatura, sijanje sunca, relativna vlažnost, brzina vjetra, padaline) tijekom sezona cvatnje ambrozije. Prikazali smo novu metodu za ovo područje istraživanja, jer je ona do sada bila primjenjivana samo u ekonomiji. U faktorskoj analizi poželjno je sve faktorske težine i izlaznu varijablu kombinirati u jedan faktor koji označava razinu važnosti pojedinih nezavisnih varijabli u utjecaju na izlaznu varijablu, dok preostali faktori nisu u korelaciji s izlaznom varijablom. Primjenom spomenutoga statističkog modela utvrdili smo da su najvažnije meteorološke varijable brzina vjetra, padaline i raspon temperatura, dok su minimalna temperatura i sijanje sunca imali najmanje utjecaja na dnevne omjere u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca ambrozije u promatranu razdoblju. Uočili smo sklonost prema jačoj povezanosti između meteoroloških varijabli i varijabli peluda u slučajevima kad je omjer u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca iznosio 1,00 ili niže. To tumačimo činjenicom da su podaci koji se odnose na omjer u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca veći od 1,00 uglavnom dobiveni u razdoblju koje prethodi vrhuncu sezone cvatnje ambrozije, dok su podaci koji se odnose na omjer u koncentracijama peludnih zrnaca manji od 1,00 karakteristični za razdoblje koje slijedi nakon vrhunca sezone cvatnje ambrozije (kasno ljeto – rana jesen)

Newborns discriminate novel from harmonic sounds: a study using magnetoencephalography

Objective: We investigated whether newborns respond differently to novel and deviant sounds during quiet sleep. Methods: Twelve healthy neonates were presented with a three-stimulus oddball paradigm, consisting of frequent standard (76%), infrequent deviant (12%), and infrequent novel stimuli (12%). The standards and deviants were counterbalanced between the newborns and consisted of 500 and 750 Hz tones with two upper harmonics. The novel stimuli contained animal, human, and mechanical sounds. All stimuli had a duration of 300 ms and the stimulus onset asynchrony was 1 s. Evoked magnetic responses during quiet sleep were recorded and averaged offline. Results: Two deflections peaking at 345 and 615 ms after stimulus onset were observed in the evoked responses of most of the newborns. The first deflection was larger to novel and deviant stimuli than to the standard and, furthermore, larger to novel than to deviant stimuli. The second deflection was larger to novel and deviant stimuli than to standards, but did not differ between the novels and deviants. Conclusions: The two deflections found in the present study reflect different mechanisms of auditory change detection and discriminative processes. Significance: The early brain indicators of novelty detection may be crucial in assessing the normal and abnormal cortical function in newborns. Further, studying evoked magnetic fields to complex auditory stimulation in healthy newborns is needed for studying the newborns at-risk for cognitive or language problems

A dual role for prediction error in associative learning

Confronted with a rich sensory environment, the brain must learn statistical regularities across sensory domains to construct causal models of the world. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to furnish neurophysiological evidence that statistical associations are learnt, even when task-irrelevant. Subjects performed an audio-visual target-detection task while being exposed to distractor stimuli. Unknown to them, auditory distractors predicted the presence or absence of subsequent visual distractors. We modeled incidental learning of these associations using a Rescorla--Wagner (RW) model. Activity in primary visual cortex and putamen reflected learning-dependent surprise: these areas responded progressively more to unpredicted, and progressively less to predicted visual stimuli. Critically, this prediction-error response was observed even when the absence of a visual stimulus was surprising. We investigated the underlying mechanism by embedding the RW model into a DCM to show that auditory to visual connectivity changed significantly over time as a function of prediction error. Thus, consistent with predictive coding models of perception, associative learning is mediated by prediction-error dependent changes in connectivity. These results posit a dual role for prediction-error in encoding surprise and driving associative plasticity

Adaptation to recent outcomes attenuates the lasting effect of initial experience on risky decisions

Both primarily and recently encountered information have been shown to influence experience-based risky decision making. The primacy effect predicts that initial experience will influence later choices even if outcome probabilities change and reward is ultimately more or less sparse than primarily experienced. However, it has not been investigated whether extended initial experience would induce a more profound primacy effect upon risky choices than brief experience. Therefore, the present study tested in two experiments whether young adults adjusted their risk-taking behavior in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task after an unsignaled and unexpected change point. The change point separated early “good luck” or “bad luck” trials from subsequent ones. While mostly positive (more reward) or mostly negative (no reward) events characterized the early trials, subsequent trials were unbiased. In Experiment 1, the change point occurred after one-sixth or one-third of the trials (brief vs. extended experience) without intermittence, whereas in Experiment 2, it occurred between separate task phases. In Experiment 1, if negative events characterized the early trials, after the change point, risk-taking behavior increased as compared with the early trials. Conversely, if positive events characterized the early trials, risk-taking behavior decreased after the change point. Although the adjustment of risk-taking behavior occurred due to integrating recent experiences, the impact of initial experience was simultaneously observed. The length of initial experience did not reliably influence the adjustment of behavior. In Experiment 2, participants became more prone to take risks as the task progressed, indicating that the impact of initial experience could be overcome. Altogether, we suggest that initial beliefs about outcome probabilities can be updated by recent experiences to adapt to the continuously changing decision environment

Reproducibility of Brain Responses: High for Speech Perception, Low for Reading Difficulties

Neuroscience findings have recently received critique on the lack of replications. To examine the reproducibility of brain indices of speech sound discrimination and their role in dyslexia, a specific reading difficulty, brain event-related potentials using EEG were measured using the same cross-linguistic passive oddball paradigm in about 200 dyslexics and 200 typically reading 8-12-year-old children from four countries with different native languages. Brain responses indexing speech and non-speech sound discrimination were extremely reproducible, supporting the validity and reliability of cognitive neuroscience methods. Significant differences between typical and dyslexic readers were found when examined separately in different country and language samples. However, reading group differences occurred at different time windows and for different stimulus types between the four countries. This finding draws attention to the limited generalizability of atypical brain response findings in children with dyslexia across language environments and raises questions about a common neurobiological factor for dyslexia. Our results thus show the robustness of neuroscience methods in general while highlighting the need for multi-sample studies in the brain research of language disorders