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Contains fulltext : 250305.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilinguals’ spatial expressions and visual attention in Dutch and Dutch Sign Language (N = 18) to those of their hearing non-signing (N = 20) and deaf signing peers (N = 18). In speech, hearing bimodal bilinguals expressed more ground-first descriptions and fixated grounds more than hearing non-signers, showing influence from sign. In sign, they used as many ground-first descriptions as deaf signers and fixated grounds equally often, demonstrating no influence from speech. Cross-linguistic influence of word order preference and visual attention in hearing bimodal bilinguals appears to be one-directional modulated by modality-driven differences.

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Contains fulltext : 305321.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), 12 p.

Item does not contain fulltext, Purpose: This study investigated to what extent iconic co-speech gestures help word intelligibility in sentence context in two different linguistic maskers (native vs. foreign). It was hypothesized that sentence recognition improves with the presence of iconic co-speech gestures and with foreign compared to native babble. Method: Thirty-two native Dutch participants performed a Dutch word recognition task in context in which they were presented with videos in which an actress uttered short Dutch sentences (e.g., Ze begint te openen, "She starts to open"). Participants were presented with a total of six audiovisual conditions: no background noise (i.e., clear condition) without gesture, no background noise with gesture, French babble without gesture, French babble with gesture, Dutch babble without gesture, and Dutch babble with gesture; and they were asked to type down what was said by the Dutch actress. The accurate identification of the action verbs at the end of the target sentences was measured. Results: The results demonstrated that performance on the task was better in the gesture compared to the nongesture conditions (i.e., gesture enhancement effect). In addition, performance was better in French babble than in Dutch babble. Conclusions: Listeners benefit from iconic co-speech gestures during communication and from foreign background speech compared to native. These insights into multimodal communication may be valuable to everyone who engages in multimodal communication and especially to a public who often works in public places where competing speech is present in the background.

20 mei 2022, Item does not contain fulltext, We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilinguals’ spatial expressions and visual attention in Dutch and Dutch Sign Language (N = 18) to those of their hearing non-signing (N = 20) and deaf signing peers (N = 18). In speech, hearing bimodal bilinguals expressed more ground-first descriptions and fixated grounds more than hearing non-signers, showing influence from sign. In sign, they used as many ground-first descriptions as deaf signers and fixated grounds equally often, demonstrating no influence from speech. Cross-linguistic influence of word order preference and visual attention in hearing bimodal bilinguals appears to be one-directional modulated by modality-driven differences.

Contains fulltext : 285149.pdf (Author’s version preprint ) (Closed access)

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01 december 2022, Contains fulltext : 285148.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

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Contains fulltext : 252808.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

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Contains fulltext : 240874.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

31 december 2021, Contains fulltext : 242718.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), Recent studies have shown that people make more utilitarian decisions when dealing with a moral dilemma in a foreign language than in their native language. Emotion, cognitive load, and psychological distance have been put forward as explanations for this foreign language effect. The question that arises is whether a similar effect would be observed when processing a dilemma in one’s own language but spoken by a foreign-accented speaker. Indeed, foreign-accented speech has been shown to modulate emotion processing, to disrupt processing fluency and to increase psychological distance due to social categorisation. We tested this hypothesis by presenting 435 participants with two moral dilemmas, the trolley dilemma and the footbridge dilemma online, either in a native accent or a foreign accent. In Experiment 1, 184 native Spanish speakers listened to the dilemmas in Spanish recorded by a native speaker, a British English or a Cameroonian native speaker. In Experiment 2, 251 Dutch native speakers listened to the dilemmas in Dutch in their native accent, in a British English, a Turkish, or in a French accent. Results showed an increase in utilitarian decisions for the Cameroonian- and French-accented speech compared to the Spanish or Dutch native accent, respectively. When collapsing all the speakers from the two experiments, a similar increase in the foreign accent condition compared with the native accent condition was observed. This study is the first demonstration of a foreign accent effect on moral judgements, and despite the variability in the effect across accents, the findings suggest that a foreign accent, like a foreign language, is a linguistic context that modulates (neuro)cognitive mechanisms, and consequently, impacts our behaviour. More research is needed to follow up on this exploratory study and to understand the influence of factors such as emotion reduction, cognitive load, psychological distance, and speaker’s idiosyncratic features on moral judgment

09 december 2021, Contains fulltext : 241216.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

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Contains fulltext : 231348pub.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), This study examined whether the Foreign-Language effect, an increase in bilinguals’ rate of rational decisions to moral dilemmas in their foreign versus their native language, is influenced by emotion and the modality in which the dilemmas are presented. 154 Dutch–English bilinguals were asked to read and listen to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English. Importantly, the reading task had the character of a self-paced reading task to resemble the listening task as closely as possible. In both modalities, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. Results showed that the Foreign-Language effect was present for personal dilemmas only. In addition, an effect of modality demonstrated that participants took overall more rational decisions during the listening than the reading task. These findings give insight in the interplay between language, emotion and task demands, revealing that moral decision making is context-dependent.

Contains fulltext : 231341.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

04 juni 2021, Contains fulltext : 239306.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

Radboud University, 12 maart 2021, Promotor : Özyürek, A. Co-promotor : Brouwer, S.M., Contains fulltext : 230631.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Item does not contain fulltext, To talk about space, spoken languages rely on arbitrary and categorical forms (e.g., left, right). In sign languages, however, the visual-spatial modality allows for iconic encodings (motivated form-meaning mappings) of space in which form and location of the hands bear resemblance to the objects and spatial relations depicted. We assessed whether the iconic encodings in sign languages guide visual attention to spatial relations differently than spatial encodings in spoken languages during message preparation at the sentence level. Using a visual world production eye-tracking paradigm, we compared 20 deaf native signers of Sign-Language-of-the-Netherlands and 20 Dutch speakers' visual attention to describe left versus right configurations of objects (e.g., "pen is to the left/right of cup"). Participants viewed 4-picture displays in which each picture contained the same 2 objects but in different spatial relations (lateral [left/right], sagittal [front/behind], topological [in/on]) to each other. They described the target picture (left/right) highlighted by an arrow. During message preparation, signers, but not speakers, experienced increasing eye-gaze competition from other spatial configurations. This effect was absent during picture viewing prior to message preparation of relational encoding. Moreover, signers' visual attention to lateral and/or sagittal relations was predicted by the type of iconicity (i.e., object and space resemblance vs. space resemblance only) in their spatial descriptions. Findings are discussed in relation to how "thinking for speaking" differs from "hinking for signing" and how iconicity can mediate the link between language and human experience and guides signers' but not speakers' attention to visual aspects of the world.

The Hague. The Dutch city with the most traffic congestion of all cities. Cities are growing and urban mobility is getting worse. The amount of freight going in cities is ever increasing. The way food is grown, distributed and consumed has been changed over the years. Technologies in mobility changes - think of the impact of the railroad - the behaviour of the people changed, restaurants emerged and gigantic supermarkets have a huge impact on thousands of cities. What is the impact of these trends and innovations on the built environment and how will the city respond to the next trend? With the rise of online orders, the spatial requirements our cities already changed. Within the food industry, there is a rapid increase in online grocery purchases. Picnic is the fastest growing company in the Netherlands. This trend results in an increase of movements in and out of the city. Leading to even more congestion. In the first half year of my graduation I researched the effects, the flows, the spatial requirements and the energy demand of a new proposed urban distribution centre. This distribution centre is supplied at night by cargo trams using the unused tram network. The groceries are distributed during day by an electric fleet with the shortest action radius as possible. So firstly the project creates a m ore efficient system to the the large scale mobility problem by functioning as an urban distribution centre. This results first hand in a decrease of the amount of movements within the city and the amount of motorized covered kilometres. Secondly, the building host several food related functions such as a bakery, brewery and a fully public food court. A clear synergy within the food chain is made which is totally transparent and visible for all the passers-by. To fully show the new future food supply chain, the main pedestrian pathway is elevated, avoiding the busy intersection below the building, going through the building and connecting the city centre of The Hague, Second Life, Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences

01 maart 2019, Contains fulltext : 203620pub.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Previous research has shown that people make systematically different decisions when faced with a moral dilemma in a native than in a foreign language [e.g. Costa, A., A. Foucart, S. Hayakawa, M. Aparici, J. Apesteguia, J. Heafner, and B. Keysar. 2014. “Your Morals Depend on Language.” PLoS One 9 (4): e94842]. The aim of the current study is to test the limits of this so-called Foreign-Language Effect by examining (1) whether it holds for highly proficient bilinguals of a closely related language pair (i.e. Dutch-English), and (2) whether it can be replicated in an auditory setting. In Experiment 1, 60 Dutch-English bilinguals read moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English, whereas in Experiment 2, a different sample of 60 Dutch-English bilinguals listened to the same dilemmas. After reading or listening, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. The results showed that the Foreign-Language Effect was absent in Experiment 1, but present in Experiment 2. These findings aid in understanding the robustness of the Foreign-Language Effect, revealing that in some contexts it may be overcome and/or inhibited, whereas in others it may be enhanced.

Contains fulltext : 208542.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

22 mei 2019, Contains fulltext : 205567pub.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Daily speech communication often takes place in suboptimal listening conditions, in which interlocutors typically need to segregate the target signal from the background sounds. The present study investigated the influence on speech recognition of a relatively familiar foreign accent in background speech (Exp. 1) and whether short-term immediate exposure to the target talker’s voice (Exp. 2) or the background babble (Exp. 3) would either help or hinder the segregation of target from background. A total of 72 native Dutch participants were asked to listen to Dutch target sentences in the presence of Dutch or Germanaccented Dutch babble without (Exp. 1) or with (Exps. 2 and 3) an exposure phase. Their task was to write down what they heard. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that listeners gained a release from masking when the background speech was accented, indicating that dissimilar and less familiar signals are easier to segregate effectively. Experiment 2 demonstrated that short-term immediate exposure to the target talker had no effect on speech-in-speech recognition, whereas exposure to the background babble could hinder separating the target voice from the background speech (Exp. 3). However, this reduced release from masking only appeared in the more difficult and more familiar babble condition (Dutch in Dutch), in which the speech recognition system may have remained attuned to the babble as a potential source of communicatively relevant information. Overall, this research provides evidence that both short-term adaptation and the degrees of target–background similarity and familiarity are of importance for speech-in-speech recognition.

Radboud University, 31 januari 2018, Promotores : Fikkert, J.P.M., Gussenhoven, C. Co-promotor : Brouwer, S.M., Contains fulltext : 183116.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 206019.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access)

15 juni 2017, Item does not contain fulltext

09 oktober 2018, Contains fulltext : 196188.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)