Viewing the world through language-tinted glasses: Elucidating the neural mechanisms of language-perception interactions

Contains fulltext : 149749.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Jolien C. Francken Viewing the world through language-tinted glasses. Elucidating the neural mechanisms of language-perception interactions The work described in this doctoral thesis shows that language automatically changes how we perceive the world, even when we are not aware of linguistic information. These results are in line with earlier evidence showing that perception is a constructive process, combining all relevant sources of information, such as expectations. The studies further show that the integration of language and perception occurs in the language system in the brain, rather than the visual cortex. This is contrary to recent proposals on 'embodied cognition' and 'predictive coding'. From these findings it follows that the semantic system is a central part of perception. It seems that the associations between words and the objects they refer to are quite strong, resulting in automatic 'translations' of perceptual input into a more conceptual format. ProefschriftRadboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 14 januari 2016Promotor : Hagoort, P. Co-promotor : Lange, F.P. de132 p

Electron optics of the image ionoscope

aApplied Science

From commonsense to science, and back: the use of cognitive concepts in neuroscience

Contains fulltext : 134259.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access

De nieuwe neurofilosofie

Contains fulltext : 208988.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)11 p

Exploring the automaticity of language-perception interactions: Effects of attention and awareness

Contains fulltext : 150144.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Previous studies have shown that language can modulate visual perception, by biasing and/or enhancing perceptual performance. However, it is still debated where in the brain visual and linguistic information are integrated, and whether the effects of language on perception are automatic and persist even in the absence of awareness of the linguistic material. Here, we aimed to explore the automaticity of language-perception interactions and the neural loci of these interactions in an fMRI study. Participants engaged in a visual motion discrimination task (upward or downward moving dots). Before each trial, a word prime was briefly presented that implied upward or downward motion (e.g., "rise", "fall"). These word primes strongly influenced behavior: congruent motion words sped up reaction times and improved performance relative to incongruent motion words. Neural congruency effects were only observed in the left middle temporal gyrus, showing higher activity for congruent compared to incongruent conditions. This suggests that higher-level conceptual areas rather than sensory areas are the locus of language-perception interactions. When motion words were rendered unaware by means of masking, they still affected visual motion perception, suggesting that language-perception interactions may rely on automatic feed-forward integration of perceptual and semantic material in language areas of the brain.9 p

Intentional Content in Psychopathologies Requires an Expanded Interpretivism

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Cognitive Ontology and the Search for Neural Mechanisms: Three Foundational Problems

The central task of cognitive neuroscience to map cognitive capacities to neural mechanisms faces three interlocking conceptual problems that together frame the problem of cognitive ontology. First, they must establish which tasks elicit which cognitive capacities, and specifically when different tasks elicits the same capacity. To address this operationalization problem, scientists often assess whether the tasks engage the same neural mechanisms. But to determine whether mechanisms are of the same or different kinds, we need to solve the abstraction problem by determining which mechanistic differences are and are not relevant, and also the boundary problem by distinguishing the mechanism from its background conditions. Solving these problems, in turn, requires understanding how cognitive capacities are elicited in tasks. These three problems, which have been noted and discussed elsewhere in the literature, together form a ‘cycle of kinds’ that frames the central problem-space of cognitive ontology. We describe this cycle to clarify the intellectual challenges facing the cognitive ontologist and to reveal the kind of iterative process by which ontological revision in cognitive neuroscience is likely to unfold

Immediate and long-term priming effects are independent of prime awareness

Subliminal primes are assumed to produce weaker and short-lived effects on subsequent behavior compared to clearly visible primes. However, this difference in priming effect may be due to differences in signal strength, rather than level of awareness. In the present study we manipulated prime discriminability by using metacontrast masks and pseudo- masks, while keeping the prime strength equal. This manipulation resulted in large differ- ences in discriminability of the primes. However, both immediate response priming and long-term response priming (measured with conflict adaptation) was equal for the poorly discriminable and well discriminable primes, and equal for groups that differed markedly in terms of how well they could discriminate the primes. Our findings imply that discrim- inability of information is independent of both the immediate and long-term effects that information can have on behavior