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Published August 29, 2022 We exploit the phenomenon of cross-modal, cross-language activation to examine the dynamics of language processing. Previous within-language work showed that seeing a sign coactivates phonologically related signs, just as hearing a spoken word coactivates phonologically related words. In this study, we conducted a series of eye-tracking experiments using the visual world paradigm to investigate the time course of crosslanguage coactivation in hearing bimodal bilinguals (Spanish–Spanish Sign Language) and unimodal bilinguals (Spanish/Basque). The aim was to gauge whether (and how) seeing a sign could coactivate words and, conversely, how hearing a word could coactivate signs and how such cross-language coactivation patterns differ from withinlanguage coactivation. The results revealed cross-language, cross-modal activation in both directions. Furthermore, comparison with previous findings of within-language lexical coactivation for spoken and signed language showed how the impact of temporal structure changes in different modalities. Spoken word activation follows the temporal structure of that word only when the word itself is heard; for signs, the temporal structure of the sign does not govern the time course of lexical access (location coactivation precedes handshape coactivation)—even when the sign is seen. We provide evidence that, instead, this pattern of activation is motivated by how common in the lexicon the sublexical units of the signs are. These results reveal the interaction between the perceptual properties of the explicit signal and structural linguistic properties. Examining languages across modalities illustrates how this interaction impacts language processing. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), through the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D (CEX2020-001010-S), from the Basque Government through the BERC (Basque Excellence Research Centres) 2022-2025 program, from the National Research Agency [Agencia Estatal de Investigación], MINECO, and European Regional Development Fund, through Grant Nos. PSI-2016-76435-P and PID2019-107325GB-I00 to B.C. and M.G. and PID2021-122918OB-I00 to M.C.), and through Juan de la Cierva Fellowships (FJCI-2017-31806 and IJC2019-038991-I to B.C.).

Published: 04 March 2021 Reading typically involves phonological mediation, especially for transparent orthographies with a regular letter to sound correspondence. In this study we ask whether phonological coding is a necessary part of the reading process by examining prelingually deaf individuals who are skilled readers of Spanish. We conducted two EEG experiments exploiting the pseudohomophone effect, in which nonwords that sound like words elicit phonological encoding during reading. The first, a semantic categorization task with masked priming, resulted in modulation of the N250 by pseudohomophone primes in hearing but not in deaf readers. The second, a lexical decision task, confirmed the pattern: hearing readers had increased errors and an attenuated N400 response for pseudohomophones compared to control pseudowords, whereas deaf readers did not treat pseudohomophones any differently from pseudowords, either behaviourally or in the ERP response. These results offer converging evidence that skilled deaf readers do not rely on phonological coding during visual word recognition. Furthermore, the finding demonstrates that reading can take place in the absence of phonological activation, and we speculate about the alternative mechanisms that allow these deaf individuals to read competently. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI), through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D (SEV‐2015‐490); and Grants (PSI-2016-76435-P to B.C.; ACELERA RED2018-102615-T, SAPIENTIA-CM H2019/HUM-5705 and PGC2018-097145-B-I00 to J.A.D.; and RTI2018-093547-B-I00 to M.C.); and fellowships (Juan de la Cierva Fellowships FJCI-2017-31806 to B.C. and IJCI-2016-27702 to S.C., and predoctoral fellowship BES-2013-064140 to N.F. from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (AEI); and H2020-MSCA-IF-2018-837228 to S.C. from the European Commission). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 837228

Language comprehension depends on the ability to temporally process the periodic structure of the language signal. In this study we investigate temporal processing of Spanish Sign Language (LSE), isolating the specific contribution of signal modality through a comparison with spoken Spanish and the contribution of linguistic status by comparing language with a non-linguistic temporally structured visual signal. Twenty-three highly proficient hearing users of LSE performed an intelligibility task with these three types of materials, manipulated with different levels of temporal distortion. The results show that the distortion differently affects the intelligibility of these signals. Spanish is characterized by a threshold of temporal distortion, beyond which intelligibility rapidly decreases and is almost completely lost. Conversely, in LSE and the visual non-linguistic task greater temporal distortion led to a gradual and constant reduction in intelligibility with no clear threshold. LSE is more resilient to temporal manipulation compared to the visual non-linguistic signal: participants’ performance never drops below 50% even with the most severe distortion. Overall, these findings suggest that the temporal processing of language arises from the complex interaction between the properties of the sensory system and the special characteristics of the language signal.

Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs) provide victims of domestic violence temporary ex parte court-ordered protection against further abuse. Because the vast majority of TRO applications are filed pro se, legal and logistical hurdles often prevent deserving applicants from receiving the legal protection they are entitled to. Chief among these hurdles is the fact that TROs do not go into effect until they are served on respondents, yet service rates are very low. In this paper, we study the factors that affect whether judges grant ex parte TRO applications and whether the TROs are subsequently served. In particular, we evaluate the impact of a program in New Haven, Connecticut that uses law students to provide clerical, non-legal assistance to applicants. We find that applicants assisted by Yale law students are no more or less likely to have their applications granted, but that student assistance is associated with double-digit percentage point increases in in-hand service. Factors that affect grant rates include gender, judge assignment, and various severity factors like police involvement. We confirm earlier evidence that service rates of TROs are exceptionally low, and find that in-hand service rates are relatively lower for racial minorities. We conclude by proposing possible reforms to law school interventions and the TRO application process that would reduce granting and service hurdles for pro se applicants.

Available online 21 June 2019. Spoken words and signs both consist of structured sub-lexical units. While phonemes unfold in time in the case of the spoken signal, visual sub-lexical units such as location and handshape are produced simultaneously in signs. In the current study we investigate the role of sub-lexical units in lexical access in spoken Spanish and in Spanish Sign Language (LSE) in hearing early bimodal bilinguals and in hearing second language (L2) learners of LSE, both native speakers of Spanish, using the visual world paradigm. Experiment 1 investigated phonological competition in spoken Spanish from words sharing onset or rhyme. Experiment 2 investigated competition in LSE from signs sharing handshape or location. For Spanish, the results confirm previous findings for word recognition: onset competition comes first and is more salient than rhyme competition. For sign recognition, native bimodal bilinguals (native speakers of spoken and signed languages) showed earlier competition from location than handshape, and overall stronger competition from handshape compared to location. Hearing bimodal bilinguals who learned LSE as a second language also experienced competition from both signed parameters. However, they showed later effects for location competitors and weaker effects for handshape competitors than native signers. Our results demonstrate that the temporal dynamics of spoken words and signs impact the time course of lexical co-activation. Furthermore, age of acquisition of the signed language modulates sub-lexical processing of signs, and may reflect enhanced abilities of native signers to use early phonological cues in transition movements to constrain sign recognition. This research was partially supported by Grants PSI2015-67353-R and PSI2016-76435-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 654917; and the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D (SEV‐2015‐490).

In this Article, we empirically study the use of administrative validity challenges by defendants in patent infringement suits. By requesting an administrative challenge, defendants can effectively bifurcate a patent infringement suit: staying district court proceedings while they challenge the validity of the patent at the patent office. Because of potential advantages in cost, speed, and legal standards, administrative challenge procedures like inter partes review appear facially attractive to defendants, and have been heralded by scholars as a way to reduce litigation costs and improve the patent system. Despite all of the potential benefits, we find that defendants requested an administrative challenge–inter partes reexamination or inter partes review–in only about ten percent of the sixty thousand infringement cases brought between 2008 and 2015. Some of the low challenge rate can be explained by statutory ineligibility and changes in the standard for the joinder of multiple defendants. But most of the low challenge rate appears driven by speedy resolutions of the underlying dispute: over fifty percent of the cases where defendants did not use a challenge settled or otherwise terminated within one year. Our results have three important implications. First, we discover trends that can inform the design and evaluation of administrative challenge procedures. We find substantial evidence that the 2011 America Invents Act reform increased the use of administrative challenges by defendants. Still, the reform had heterogenous, possibly unintended effects. Small entity patents, for example, are much less likely to be challenged after the AIA than before. We also identify areas ripe for future reform. Despite a growing policy concern over patent assertion entities (PAEs), for example, patents asserted by PAEs are currently less likely to face an administrative challenge than other similar patents. Second, we empirically test several predictions in a growing theoretical literature on the interaction between Article III courts and administrative venues. We confirm an important earlier result: a defendant’s decision to request an administrative challenge appears highly sensitive to the district in which they are sued. Pushing further, we also discover sensitivity to the particular judge assigned, which is driven at least in part by each judge’s docket management. Third, we caution that a growing empirical literature on the outcomes of inter partes review may be clouded by selection bias. We find some evidence that the cases where defendants use administrative challenges involve patents of particularly broad scope and high value compared to the broader pool of litigated patents. Our selection models provide a framework for future authors to consider and account for these selection effects.

Online publication 9/12/2015 This study investigates cross-language and cross-modal activation in bimodal bilinguals. Two groups of hearing bimodal bilinguals, natives (Experiment 1) and late learners (Experiment 2), for whom spoken Spanish is their dominant language and Spanish Sign Language (LSE) their non-dominant language, performed a monolingual semantic decision task with word pairs heard in Spanish. Half of the word pairs had phonologically related signed translations in LSE. The results showed that bimodal bilinguals were faster at judging semantically related words when the equivalent signed translations were phonologically related while they were slower judging semantically unrelated word pairs when the LSE translations were phonologically related. In contrast, monolingual controls with no knowledge of LSE did not show any of these effects. The results indicate cross-language and cross-modal activation of the non-dominant language in hearing bimodal bilinguals, irrespective of the age of acquisition of the signed language. This research was partially funded by Grant PSI2012- 31448 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by financial assistance as a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence SEV-2015-0490.

Online First March 23, 2017 This study investigated whether language control during language production in bilinguals generalizes across modalities, and to what extent the language control system is shaped by competition for the same articulators. Using a cued language-switching paradigm, we investigated whether switch costs are observed when hearing signers switch between a spoken and a signed language. The results showed an asymmetrical switch cost for bimodal bilinguals on reaction time (RT) and accuracy, with larger costs for the (dominant) spoken language. Our findings suggest important similarities in the mechanisms underlying language selection in bimodal bilinguals and unimodal bilinguals, with competition occurring at multiple levels other than phonology. This research was supported by Grant PSI2015-67353-R to Manuel Carreiras and Grant PSI2016-76435-P to Marcel R. Giezen and Brendan Costello from the MINECO, financial assistance as a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence (SEV-2015–0490), and by Grant 249581/2013–2 from the Brazilian agency (CNPq) awarded to Patricia Dias.

Patent reexamination or patent review systems can lower the cost of challenging patent validity and help improve patent quality. We empirically investigate post-grant patent validity challenges at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and how the 2011 America Invents Act affected them. We compare the inter partes reexamination procedure with the inter partes review procedure that replaced it after the reform. To identify the effect of the policy changes, we exploit the fact that patents filed before the act passed, but granted after the new inter partes review system took effect, are not eligible for reexamination in the old system. We find that more patent challenges end with a patentee win after the policy change. Still, at least one patent claim is canceled in more than 60% of the cases. Litigated patents issued to small entities more often had at least one claim canceled compared to other patents.

In our commentary, we raise concerns with the idea that location should be considered a gestural component of sign languages. We argue that psycholinguistic studies provide evidence for location as a “categorical” element of signs. More generally, we propose that the use of space in sign languages comes in many flavours and may be both categorical and imagistic.In their target article, Goldin-Meadow & Brentari (G-M&B) discuss several observations suggesting that the use of space is imagistic and may not form part of the categorical properties of sign languages. Specifically, they point out that (1) the number of locations toward which agreeing verbs can be directed is not part of a discrete set, (2) event descriptions by users of different sign languages and hearing nonsigners exhibit marked similarities in the use of space, and (3) location as a phonological parameter is not categorically perceived by native signers. It should be noted that G-M&B acknowledge that categorical properties of location and movement may simply not have been captured yet because the proper investigative tools are not yet readily available.

Epub ahead of print 07/09/2015. This article was originally published with errors. This version has been amended. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1144398). The neuroanatomical bases of bilingualism have recently received intensive attention. However, it is still a matter of debate how the brain structure changes due to bilingual experience since current findings are highly variable. The aim of this review is to examine these structural studies from a methodological perspective and to discuss two major methodological problems that could give rise to this variability. The first problem is sample selection, an issue directly related to the heterogeneous nature of bilingualism. The second problem is the inconsistency in the methods used for the analysis of brain imaging data. This review reveals that although structural changes related to bilingualism have been reported in regions comprising language/cognitive control and language processing, these results are not yet sufficiently numerous or consistent to allow important generalizations to be reached. Consequently, current evidence offers ambiguous support for neural models of bilingualism. This shortcoming in the field is exacerbated by critical methodological differences between studies that only further complicate the matter. We conclude by identifying issues that should be taken into consideration so that studies are more comparable and results are easier to aggregate and interpret. We also point out future directions that would allow for progress in the field. This article was partially supported by grants CONSOLIDERINGENIO2010 CSD2008-00048, PSI2012–32123 and PSI2012– 31448 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, by ERC-2011-ADG-295362 grant from the European Research Council and by the AThEME project funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme [grant number 613465].

Published online: 12 Feb 2016 Six commentaries [Bialystok, E. (2015). How hazy views become full pictures. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1074255; de Bruin, A., & Della Sala, S. (2015) The importance of language use when studying the neuroanatomical basis of bilingualism. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1082608; Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2015). Language control and the neuroanatomy of bilingualism: In praise of variety. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:0.1080/23273798.2015.1084428; Kroll, J. and Chiarello, C. (2015). Language experience and the brain: Variability, neuroplasticity, and bilingualism. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1086009; Luk, G., & Pliatsikas, C. (2015). Converging diversity to unity: Commentary on the neuroanatomy of bilingualism. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience; Paap, K. (2015). The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: Will winds of change lift the fog? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1082607] were produced in relation to the review “The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: How to turn a hazy view into the full picture” (García-Pentón, L., Fernández, Y., Costello, B., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M. (2015). The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: How to turn a hazy view into the full picture. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1068944). In the review, we argued that the available evidence for structural changes in bilingualism offers ambiguous support for current neural models of bilingualism and that this shortcoming in the field is exacerbated by critical methodological differences between studies. Thus, best practices need to be established for studying and modelling bilingualism. The commentaries bring to the discussion new perspectives and highlight additional challenges. Our response addresses the issues raised under two broad topics: the need to connect structural findings with behavioural and functional data, and a series of methodological concerns that are critical if the field is to advance. This article was partially supported by the Severo Ochoa program grant [SEV-2015-0490], and by grants from CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 [CSD2008-00048], from the MINECO [PSI2012-32123, PSI2012-31448], from the Basque Government [PI-2015-1-27] and from the European Research Council [ERC-2011-ADG-295362].

An extraction procedure was developed which allowed the quantification of gangliosides from small volumes of sera (0.5 cm(3)) and samples of tissue (10 mg wet weight) from subjects with bladder cancer and from controls. The gangliosides were identified by high performance thin layer chromatography and mass spectrometry. In all samples the major ganglioside was GM(3) and amounts were elevated in both tissue and sera derived from tumour patients. The total lipid-bound sialic acid was greater in tumour tissue than in healthy bladder but was below the level of detection in all sera. We suggest that serum GM(3) may be of prognostic value in bladder cancer.

There is strong published and unpublished evidence that our CD105 Mab E9, which is highly reactive with angiogenic endothelial cells, could be a useful reagent to target the vasculature of solid tumors in man. Since Mab E9 does not cross-react with animal tissues, we undertook here to evaluate its localization using human kidney as an ex vivo model. Perfusion was performed through the renal artery of 99Tcm-labeled purified CD105 Mab in freshly excised kidneys from 7 patients with renal carcinoma. In all 7 cases, immunoscintigraphs showed the presence of well-defined radioactive hot spots, which matched the positions of the tumors as identified by presurgery MRI scans and subsequent histopathologic examination. Importantly, in one instance, where a presurgery MRI scan had identified only one tumor, immunoscintigraphs showed 2 distinct hot spots of radioactivity. The pathology report confirmed that the additional hot spot corresponded to a small secondary well-vascularized tumor. The implication of this finding is that the radiolabeled Mab, E9, may be of use in the detection of metastatic disease. That the labeling of tumors was specific was confirmed when prior perfusion of unlabeled mab E9 in 2 kidneys completely blocked the localization of 99Tcm-conjugated Mab E9. Radioactivity in samples of tumor and normal tissue taken from 7 kidneys was counted in a gamma counter. In all cases, there was a greater uptake of radioactivity in tumors compared with the corresponding normal kidneys. The median values, adjusted per gram wet weight, for 99Tcm were 14.8 times (range, 4.8-113.0) greater in kidney tumors than in normal kidney tissue (p < 0.007). Immunofluorescent staining of cryostat sections of tumor tissues in each of the 7 cases showed strong and uniform localization of Mab E9 in tumor microvessels. Interestingly, chimeric staining of endothelial cells (ECs) was seen in an occasional microvessel segment. That is, while most of the ECs lining a microvessel were strongly stained, an occasional EC was negative. This was not an artifact of staining. Unstained ECs may be nonangiogenic or apoptotic since CD105 is a proliferation/activation-associated antigen. Further investigations are warranted to establish the pharmacokinetics of 99Tcm-labeled CD105 antibody in vivo. This would enable us to determine whether an apparently highly successful ex vivo study has the potential for tumor imaging/therapeutic vascular targeting in patients with cancer.