The way humans generate meaning is incredibly efficient but also flexible. When you hear a sentence like “We got cash from the bank” you presumably do not think about the side of a river, even though the word “bank” has multiple meanings. In the current study we evaluate the contribution of word form and its (sentential) context to its mental representation. To this end, we developed a novel task where subjects learned to associate symbols...

Given the limited processing capabilities of the sensory system, it is essential that attended information is gated to downstream areas, whereas unattended information is blocked. While it has been proposed that alpha band (8–13 Hz) activity serves to route information to downstream regions by inhibiting neuronal processing in task-irrelevant regions, this hypothesis remains untested. Here we investigate how neuronal oscillations detected by electroencephalography in visual areas during working memory encoding serve to gate information reflected...

Differences in auditory perception between species are influenced by phylogenetic origin and the perceptual challenges imposed by the natural environment, e.g. detecting prey- or predator-generated sounds and communication signals. Bats are well suited for comparative studies on auditory perception since they predominantly rely on echolocation to perceive the world, while their social calls and most environmental sounds have low frequencies. We tested if hearing sensitivity and stimulus level coding in bats differ between high and...

Human societies are characterized by more cultural diversity than chimpanzee communities. However, it is currently unclear what mechanism might be driving this difference. Since reliance on social information is a pivotal characteristic of culture, we investigated individual and social information reliance in children and chimpanzees. We repeatedly presented subjects with a reward-retrieval task on which they had collected conflicting individual and social information of equal accuracy in counterbalanced order. While both species relied mostly on...

Comprising more than 1,400 species, bats possess adaptations unique among mammals including powered flight, unexpected longevity given small body size, and extraordinary immunity. Some of the molecular mechanisms underlying these unique adaptations includes DNA repair, metabolism and immunity. However, analyses have been limited to a few divergent lineages, reducing the scope of inferences on gene family evolution across the Order Chiroptera. We conducted an exhaustive comparative genomic study of 37 bat species encompassing a large...

Probabilistic prediction plays a crucial role in language comprehension. When predictions are fulfilled, the resulting facilitation allows for fast, efficient processing of ambiguous, rapidly-unfolding input; when predictions are not fulfilled, the resulting error signal allows us to adapt to broader statistical changes in this input. We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to examine the neuroanatomical networks engaged in semantic predictive processing and adaptation. We used a relatedness proportion semantic priming paradigm, in which we manipulated...

Objective: Determining the genetic basis of speech disorders provides insight into the neurobiology of human communication. Despite intensive investigation over the past two decades, the etiology of most children with speech disorder remains unexplained. Here we searched for a genetic etiology in children with severe speech disorder, specifically childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Methods: Precise phenotyping together with research genome or exome analysis were performed on children referred with a primary diagnosis of CAS, as...

Error-based theories of language acquisition suggest that children, like adults, continuously make and evaluate predictions in order to reach an adult-like state of language use. However, while these theories have become extremely influential, their central claim - that unpredictable input leads to higher rates of lasting change in linguistic representations – has scarcely been tested. We designed a prime surprisal-based intervention study to assess this claim. As predicted, both 5- to 6-year-old children (n=72) and...

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the...

The way humans generate meaning is incredibly efficient but also flexible. When you hear a sentence like “We got cash from the bank” you presumably do not think about the side of a river, even though the word “bank” has multiple meanings. In the current study we evaluate the contribution of word form and its (sentential) context to its mental representation. To this end, we developed a novel task where subjects learned to associate symbols...