Controlling stimulus ambiguity reduces spurious creative ideation variance in a cyclic adaptation of the alternative uses task.

In the alternative uses task (AUT), a well-established creativity assessment, participants propose alternative uses for common items (e.g., a brick) within a 2-3 min timeframe. While idea evaluation is likely involved, the emphasis is strongly on idea generation. Here, we test the value of presenting a word overlapping an image compared to a word only prompt, and we introduce a cyclic adaptation of the AUT explicitly calling on participants to choose their best idea. In Experiment 1, as compared to word only, word + image prompts increased idea fluency but reduced idea originality and variability within a group of native Polish speakers. Thus, word + image prompts improve AUT baselining. In Experiment 2, different participants produced as many ideas as possible within two minutes (List) or their single best idea at the end of each of three 30 s ideation cycles (Cycle). Although originality did not differ between List and Cycle overall, the first three ideas in List were rated as less creative than the ideas in Cycle. Overall, we conclude that using disambiguating images reduces spurious interindividual variability in the AUT while introducing idea evaluation in the task allows us to assess creativity beyond idea generation.

Time flows vertically in Chinese.

Speakers of Mandarin Chinese are thought to conceptualise time along the vertical axis-as evidence for metaphor embodiment-but the extant behavioural evidence remains unclear. Here, we used electrophysiology to test space-time conceptual relationships implicitly in native speakers of Chinese. We employed a modified arrow flanker task, in which the central arrow in a set of three was replaced by a spatial word (e.g., -'up'), a spatiotemporal metaphor (e. g., -'last month', literally 'up month') or a non-spatial temporal expression (e.g., -'last year', literally 'gone year'). N400 modulations of event-related brain potentials served to measure the level of perceived congruency between semantic word content and arrow direction. Critically, we tested whether N400 modulations expected for spatial words and spatial temporal metaphors would generalise to non-spatial temporal expressions. In addition to the predicted N400 effects, we found a congruency effect of a similar magnitude for non-spatial temporal metaphors. On the basis of direct brain measurements indexing semantic processing, and in the absence of contrastive behavioural patterns, we demonstrate that native speakers of Chinese conceptualise time along the vertical axis, and thus have embodied spatiotemporal metaphors.

Brain potentials reveal how emotion filters native language access when bilinguals read words in their second language.

It is now well established that reading words in a second language (L2) automatically activates native language (L1) translations in bilinguals. Although there is evidence that access to such representations is inhibited when words have a negative emotional valence, the mechanism underlying such inhibition is elusive, and it is unknown whether inhibition arises online as L2 is being processed or whether negative valence affects subsequent L1 processing. Here, we recorded event-related brain potentials in Chinese-English bilinguals engaged in an implicit translation-priming paradigm involving L2 (English) word pairs. Participants performed a semantic relatedness task, unaware that word pairs could conceal a sound repetition if translated into Chinese. When emotional valence was manipulated in prime position (first word), we observed form repetition priming through L1 translations for positive but not for negative words. However, when emotional valence was manipulated in target position (second word), priming occurred for both positive and negative word valences. This result begins to elucidate the mechanism by which emotion regulates language processing in bilinguals: Negative words in L2 induce a refractory period during which cross-language lexical access is blocked. These findings show that despite being neuroanatomically distinct in the human brain, emotional (limbic) regulation systems can penetrate language processing.

Positive and negative moods differently affect creative meaning processing in both the native and non-native language.

Previous research has shown that positive and negative moods differently modulate lexico-semantic processes. However, little is known about effects of mood on creative meaning comprehension in bilinguals. Here, Polish-English (L1-L2) female bilinguals made meaningfulness judgments on L1 and L2 novel metaphoric, literal, and anomalous sentences during an EEG session featuring positive and negative mood induction. While novel metaphors elicited comparable event-related potential responses to anomalous sentences in the N400 time frame indexing lexico-semantic processing, the former evoked smaller amplitudes than the anomalous condition in the late positive complex (LPC) window, marking meaning re-evaluation. Also, the LPC responses to the three sentence types all converged when participants were in a negative mood, indicating that a negative mood, unlike a positive one, inhibits reliance on general knowledge structures and leads to more detail-oriented processing of semantically complex meanings in both L1 and L2.

Rapid learning of a phonemic discrimination in the first hours of life.

Human neonates can discriminate phonemes, but the neural mechanism underlying this ability is poorly understood. Here we show that the neonatal brain can learn to discriminate natural vowels from backward vowels, a contrast unlikely to have been learnt in the womb. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, we examined the neuroplastic changes caused by 5 h of postnatal exposure to random sequences of natural and reversed (backward) vowels (T1), and again 2 h later (T2). Neonates in the experimental group were trained with the same stimuli as those used at T1 and T2. Compared with controls, infants in the experimental group showed shorter haemodynamic response latencies for forward vs backward vowels at T1, maximally over the inferior frontal region. At T2, neural activity differentially increased, maximally over superior temporal regions and the left inferior parietal region. Neonates thus exhibit ultra-fast tuning to natural phonemes in the first hours after birth.

In a Bilingual Mood: Mood Affects Lexico-Semantic Processing Differently in Native and Non-Native Languages.

Positive and negative moods tend to have differential effects on lexico-semantic processing in the native language (L1). Though accumulating evidence points to dampened sensitivity to affective stimuli in the non-native language (L2), little is known about the effects of positive and negative moods on L2 processing. Here, we show that lexico-semantic processing is differently affected by positive and negative moods only in L1. Unbalanced Polish-English bilinguals made meaningfulness judgments on L1 and L2 sentences during two EEG recording sessions featuring either positive- or negative-mood-inducing films. We observed a reduced N1 (lexical processing) for negative compared to positive mood in L2 only, a reduced N2 (lexico-semantic processing) in negative compared to positive mood in L1 only, a reduced N400 (lexico-semantic processing) for meaningless compared to meaningful L1 sentences in positive mood only, and an enhanced late positive complex (semantic integration and re-analysis) for L2 compared to L1 meaningful sentence in negative mood only. Altogether, these results suggest that positive and negative moods affect lexical, lexico-semantic, and semantic processing differently in L1 and L2. Our observations are consistent with previous accounts of mood-dependent processing and emotion down-regulation observed in bilinguals.

Irreversible specialization for speech perception in early international adoptees.

In early childhood, the human brain goes through a period of tuning to native speech sounds but retains remarkable flexibility, allowing the learning of new languages throughout life. However, little is known about the stability over time of early neural specialization for speech and its influence on the formation of novel language representations. Here, we provide evidence that early international adoptees, who lose contact with their native language environment after adoption, retain enhanced sensitivity to a native lexical tone contrast more than 15 years after being adopted to Sweden from China, in the absence of any pretest familiarization with the stimuli. Changes in oscillatory brain activity showed how adoptees resort to inhibiting the processing of defunct phonological representations, rather than forgetting or replacing them with new ones. Furthermore, neurophysiological responses to native and nonnative contrasts were not negatively correlated, suggesting that native language retention does not interfere with the acquisition of adoptive phonology acquisition. These results suggest that early language experience provides strikingly resilient specialization for speech which is compensated for through inhibitory control mechanisms as learning conditions change later in life.

Inhibitory control training reveals a common neurofunctional basis for generic executive functions and language switching in bilinguals.

BACKGROUND: The neural networks underpinning language control and domain-general executive functions overlap in bilinguals, but existing evidence is mainly correlative. Here, we present the first neurofunctional evidence for a transfer effect between (domain-general) inhibitory control and language control through training. We trained Chinese-English bilinguals for 8 days using a Simon task taxing the inhibitory control system, whilst an active control group was trained with a color judgment task that does not tax the inhibitory control system. All participants performed a language-switching task before and after training. It has been suggested that the activity of the left DLPFC was associated with domain-general top-down cognitive control (Macdonald et al. Science 288: 1835-1838, 2000) and bilingual language control (Wang et al. Neuroimage 35: 862-870, 2007). In addition, the dACC was closely related to the conflict detection (Abutalebi et al. Cereb Cortex 18:1496-1505, 2008). Last, the activity of the left caudate has been linked with lexical selection (Abutalebi et al. Cereb Cortex 18:1496-1505, 2008), especially the selection of the weak language (Abutalebi et al. Cortex 49: 905-911, 2013). Therefore, we focused on these three regions of interest (ROIs) where neural changes associated with transfer were expected to occur. RESULTS: The results showed a negative correlation between changes in activation levels in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and changes in the switch cost magnitude in the language-switching task in the training group but not in the control group, suggesting that the DLPFC plays a critical role in the transfer effect from domain-general executive functions to language control. However, there was no measurable effect in the anterior cingulate cortex or left caudate nucleus, suggesting that the inhibitory control training increased the neural efficiency for language production in bilinguals in terms of attention shifting and conflict resolution, but the training did not affect conflict detection and lexical selection. CONCLUSION: These findings showed how cognitive training evidence can help establish a causational link between the neural basis of domain-general executive functions and language control in bilinguals.

Switchmate! An Electrophysiological Attempt to Adjudicate Between Competing Accounts of Adjective-Noun Code-Switching.

Here, we used event-related potentials to test the predictions of two prominent accounts of code-switching in bilinguals: The Matrix Language Framework (MLF; Myers-Scotton, 1993) and an application of the Minimalist Programme (MP; Cantone and MacSwan, 2009). We focused on the relative order of the noun with respect to the adjective in mixed Welsh-English nominal constructions given the clear contrast between pre- and post-nominal adjective position between Welsh and English. MP would predict that the language of the adjective should determine felicitous word order (i.e., English adjectives should appear pre-nominally and Welsh adjectives post-nominally). In contrast, MLF contends that it is the language of the finite verb inflexion rather than that of a particular word that governs felicitous word order. To assess the predictions of the two models, we constructed sentences featuring a code-switch between the adjective and the noun, that complied with either English or Welsh word-order. Highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals made semantic acceptability judgements upon reading the last word of sentences which could violate MP assumptions, MLF assumptions, both assumptions, or neither. Behaviourally, MP violations had no significant effect, whereas MLF violations induced an average drop of 11% in acceptability judgements. Neurophysiologically, MP violations elicited a significant Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) modulation, whereas MLF violations modulated both P600 and LAN mean amplitudes. In addition, there was a significant interaction between MP and MLF status in the P600 range: When MP was violated, MLF status did not matter, and when MP criteria were met, MLF violations resulted in a P600 modulation. This interaction possibly reflects a general preference for noun over adjective insertions, and may provide support for MLF over MP at a global sentence processing level. Model predictions also manifested differently in each of the matrix languages (MLs): When the ML was Welsh, MP and MLF violations elicited greater P600 mean amplitudes than MP and MLF adherences, however, this pattern was not observed when the ML was English. We discuss methodological considerations relating to the neuroscientific study of code-switching, and the extent to which our results shed light on adjective-noun code-switching beyond findings from production and experimental-behavioural studies.

Towards Optimization of Hydroxychloroquine Dosing in Intensive Care Unit COVID-19 Patients.

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) appears to be a promising treatment for COVID-19. However, all ongoing clinical trials with HCQ use different dosing regimens, resulting in various concentrations. Pharmacokinetic studies are therefore needed to define the optimal dosing regimen.

Conceptual relation preference: A matter of strategy or one of salience?

In order to determine whether preference in object matching tasks measures participants' strategy or tells us something about the salience of relations between corresponding concepts, we conducted three experiments. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, we approached this question by measuring the ease with which adult participants process different relations when they are under strategic instruction. When asked to group objects based on thematic or taxonomic relatedness, participants were slower (Experiment 2) and tended to make more errors (Experiment 1-2) when they had to find a taxonomically related pair than when they searched for a thematically related one. In Experiment 3, participants performed a standard matching task and their eye-movements were monitored throughout. In addition to the strong thematic preference in participants' choices, we measured longer fixations to thematically related objects than taxonomic competitors. Even though thematic and taxonomic information appear to compete for selection in early phases of observation, thematic conceptual relations appear to be more salient and preferred, independently of instruction.

Electrophysiological Differentiation of the Effects of Stress and Accent on Lexical Integration in Highly Fluent Bilinguals.

Individuals who acquire a second language (L2) after infancy often retain features of their native language (L1) accent. Cross-language priming studies have shown negative effects of L1 accent on L2 comprehension, but the role of specific speech features, such as lexical stress, is mostly unknown. Here, we investigate whether lexical stress and accent differently modulate semantic processing and cross-language lexical activation in Welsh-English bilinguals, given that English and Welsh differ substantially in terms of stress realisation. In an L2 cross-modal priming paradigm, we manipulated the stress pattern and accent of spoken primes, whilst participants made semantic relatedness judgments on visual word targets. Event-related brain potentials revealed a main effect of stress on target integration, such that stimuli with stress patterns compatible with either the L1 or L2 required less processing effort than stimuli with stress incompatible with both Welsh and English. An independent cross-language phonological overlap manipulation revealed an interaction between accent and L1 access. Interestingly, although it increased processing effort, incorrect stress did not significantly modulate semantic priming effects or covert access to L1 phonological representations. Our results are consistent with the concept of language-specific stress templates, and suggest that accent and lexical stress affect speech comprehension mechanisms differentially.

How alliteration enhances conceptual-attentional interactions in reading.

In linguistics, the relationship between phonological word form and meaning is mostly considered arbitrary. Why, then, do literary authors traditionally craft sound relationships between words? We set out to characterise how dynamic interactions between word form and meaning may account for this literary practice. Here, we show that alliteration influences both meaning integration and attentional engagement during reading. We presented participants with adjective-noun phrases, having manipulated semantic relatedness (congruent, incongruent) and form repetition (alliterating, non-alliterating) orthogonally, as in "dazzling-diamond"; "sparkling-diamond"; "dangerous-diamond"; and "creepy-diamond". Using simultaneous recording of event-related brain potentials and pupil dilation (PD), we establish that, whilst semantic incongruency increased N400 amplitude as expected, it reduced PD, an index of attentional engagement. Second, alliteration affected semantic evaluation of word pairs, since it reduced N400 amplitude even in the case of unrelated items (e.g., "dangerous-diamond"). Third, alliteration specifically boosted attentional engagement for related words (e.g., "dazzling-diamond"), as shown by a sustained negative correlation between N400 amplitudes and PD change after the window of lexical integration. Thus, alliteration strategically arouses attention during reading and when comprehension is challenged, phonological information helps readers link concepts beyond the level of literal semantics. Overall, our findings provide a tentative mechanism for the empowering effect of sound repetition in literary constructs.

Keep calm and carry on: electrophysiological evaluation of emotional anticipation in the second language.

Investigations of the so-called 'foreign language effect' have shown that emotional experience is language-dependent in bilingual individuals. Response to negative experiences, in particular, appears attenuated in the second language (L2). However, the human brain is not only reactive, but it also builds on past experiences to anticipate future events. Here, we investigated affective anticipation in immersed Polish-English bilinguals using a priming paradigm in which a verbal cue of controlled affective valence allowed making predictions about a subsequent picture target. As expected, native word cues with a negative valence increased the amplitude of the stimulus preceding negativity, an electrophysiological marker of affective anticipation, as compared with neutral ones. This effect was observed in Polish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals alike. The contrast was non-significant when Polish participants were tested in English, suggesting a possible reduction in affective sensitivity in L2. However, this reduction was not validated by a critical language × valence interaction in the bilingual group, possibly because they were highly fluent in English and because the affective stimuli used in the present study were particularly mild. These results, which are neither fully consistent nor inconsistent with the foreign language effect, provide initial insights into the electrophysiology of affective anticipation in bilingualism.

Back to the future? How Chinese-English bilinguals switch between front and back orientation for time.

The ability to conceive time is a corner stone of human cognition. It is unknown, however, whether time conceptualisation differs depending on language of operation in bilinguals. Whilst both Chinese and English cultures associate the future with the front space, some temporal expressions of Chinese involve a configuration reversal due to historic reasons. For instance, Chinese refers to the day after tomorrow using the spatiotemporal metaphor hou-tian - 'back-day' and to the day before yesterday using qian-tian - 'front-day'. Here, we show that native metaphors interfere with time conceptualisation when bilinguals operate in the second language. We asked Chinese-English bilinguals to indicate whether an auditory stimulus depicted a day of the week either one or two days away from the present day, irrespective of whether it referred to the past or the future, and ignoring whether it was presented through loudspeakers situated in the back or the front space. Stimulus configurations incongruent with spatiotemporal metaphors of Chinese (e.g., "Friday" presented in the front of the participant during a session held on a Wednesday) were conceptually more challenging than congruent configurations (e.g., the same stimulus presented in their back), as indexed by N400 modulations of event-related brain potentials. The same pattern obtained for days or years as stimuli, but surprisingly, it was found only when participants operated in English, not in Chinese. We contend that the task was easier and less prone to induce cross-language activation when conducted in the native language. We thus show that, when they operate in the second language, bilinguals unconsciously retrieve irrelevant native language representations that shape time conceptualisation in real time.

Variation in Nonsurgical Treatment Recommendations for Common Upper Extremity Conditions.

BACKGROUND: In orthopaedic surgery, there is known surgeon-to-surgeon variation in recommendations for surgery. Variation in recommendations for nonsurgical treatment of common upper extremity conditions for which surgery is discretionary remains unclear. METHODS: One hundred eighty-three surgeons were included after completing six questions on six scenarios of upper extremity conditions regarding nonsurgical treatment recommendations. For one scenario, we measured the influence of reading a summary of preferred practice before making recommendations. RESULTS: Variation in nonsurgical treatment recommendations was observed between surgeons and between upper extremity conditions. Surgeons that reviewed a decision support paragraph were more likely to opine that surgery would eventually be beneficial. DISCUSSION: The notable variation in nonsurgical treatment recommendations indicates a substantial influence of surgeon bias in decision-making. To help ensure that decisions are consistent, surgeons may benefit from decision support and guidelines to help limit practice variation.

The Role of Orthotactics in Language Switching: An ERP Investigation Using Masked Language Priming.

It is commonly accepted that bilinguals access lexical representations from their two languages during language comprehension, even when they operate in a single language context. Language detection mechanisms are, thus, hypothesized to operate after the stage of lexical access during visual word recognition. However, recent studies showed reduced cross-language activation when sub-lexical properties of words are specific to one of the bilingual's two languages, hinting at the fact that language selection may start before the stage of lexical access. Here, we tested highly fluent Spanish-Basque and Spanish-English bilinguals in a masked language priming paradigm in which first language (L1) target words are primed by unconsciously perceived L1 or second language (L2) words. Critically, L2 primes were either orthotactically legal or illegal in L1. Results showed automatic language detection effects only for orthotactically marked L2 primes and within the timeframe of the N250, an index of sub-lexical-to-lexical integration. Marked L2 primes also affected the processing of L1 targets at the stage of conceptual processing, but only in bilinguals whose languages are transparent. We conclude that automatic and unconscious language detection mechanisms can operate at sub-lexical levels of processing. In the absence of sub-lexical language cues, unconsciously perceived primes in the irrelevant language might not automatically trigger post-lexical language identification, thereby resulting in the lack of observable language switching effects.

Social feedback interferes with implicit rule learning: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

The human brain can learn contingencies built into stimulus sequences unconsciously. The quality of such implicit learning has been connected to stimulus social relevance, but results so far are inconsistent. We engaged participants in an implicit-intentional learning task in which they learned to discriminate between legal and illegal card triads on the sole basis of feedback provided within a staircase procedure. Half of the participants received feedback from pictures of faces with a happy or sad expression (social group) and the other half based on traffic light icons (symbolic group). We hypothesised that feedback from faces would have a greater impact on learning than that from traffic lights. Although performance during learning did not differ between groups, the feedback error-related negativity (fERN) was delayed by ~20 ms for social relative to symbolic feedback, and the P3b modulation elicited by infrequent legal card triads within a stream of illegal ones during the test phase was significantly larger in the symbolic than the social feedback group. Furthermore, the P3b mean amplitude recorded at test negatively correlated with the latency of the fERN recorded during learning. These results counterintuitively suggest that, relative to symbolic feedback, socially salient feedback interferes with implicit learning.

Timeline blurring in fluent Chinese-English bilinguals.

Linguistic relativity effects arising from differences in terminology and syntax between languages have now been established in various domains of human cognition. Although metaphors have been shown to affect time conceptualisation, there is little evidence to date that the presence or absence of tense within a given language can affect how one processes temporal sequences of events. Here, we set out to characterise how native speakers of Mandarin Chinese - a tenseless language- deal with reference time misalignment using event-related brain potentials. Fluent Chinese-English participants and native speakers of English made acceptability judgements on sentences in which the adjunct clause started with the connective 'after' and was either temporally aligned or not with the main clause in terms of reference time conveyed by the verb. Native speakers of English failed to overtly report such reference time misalignments between clauses, but significant N400 modulations showed that they nevertheless required additional semantic processing effort. Chinese speakers, however, showed no such N400 modulation suggesting that they did not covertly detect reference time misalignments between clauses in real time. Critically, all participants manifested normal sentence comprehension as shown by a standard N400 semantic violation elicited by incongruent endings. We conclude that Chinese speakers of English experience difficulties locating events on a timeline in relation to one another when temporal information is conveyed by tense.