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This thesis investigates pragmatic abilities in the language of people with autistic spectrum disorders (‘Autistic Disorder’ as per APA, 2010) and of typically developing children. The thesis introduces a framework describing the levels of pragmatic abilities, and uses this framework to discuss the existing literature, before using it to discuss a corpus of clinical-pragmatic language. The literature review and naturalistic study reveal mixed evidence for pragmatic impairment, in particular revealing an absence of evidence for impairment to high-level pragmatics inferences known as particularised conversational implicature. The thesis then reports a set of experimental studies, using a method adapted from Surian, Baron- Cohen and Van der Lely 1996), with adults with autistic spectrum disorders, typical adults, and typically developing children. These studies showed a significant difference between groups, suggesting an autistic deficit in implicature that is compatible with the notion of a developmental delay. These results support existing studies that posit a pragmatic deficit in autistic spectrum disorders but conflict with existing research on the scalar implicature in autism; the reasons for the differences in results are discussed. The results also support existing studies that show a slow developmental trajectory for implicature in typically developing children; possible methodological reasons for this apparent slow trajectory (i.e. task demands) are discussed. Although the studies tested both IQ and cognitive models of utterance processing as predictors of performance, these explanations only proved useful with typical adults. The thesis discusses alternative, linguistic theories that may be useful in future experimentation: in particular, linguistic-pragmatic Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995).

This thesis investigated the etiology of individual differences in Chinese language and literacy skills with a two-wave longitudinal design using a sample of 312 Chinese twin pairs aged 3 to 11 in Hong Kong. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness, and orthographic skills, as well as nonverbal reasoning and audiometric screening tests. They were tested again on the same tasks, except nonverbal reasoning, one year after the initial testing. Children’s saliva was collected to perform SNP testing for zygosity determination. Also, their demographic information, home literacy environment profile, and motivation for learning text, were obtained from parent-rated questionnaires. Overall, there were four major findings on Chinese language and literacy abilities with the effects of age and nonverbal reasoning controlled for. First, genes and environments had differential influences on various skills, and there was a possibility of different etiology in language and reading development. Second, socioeconomic status and home literacy environment were plausible mediators but not moderators of general language and reading abilities. Third, the stability of various skills across a one-year time period was mainly mediated by genetic influences, but shared environmental factors also influenced syllable and rhyme awareness. Also, new genetic and environmental factors came into play at Time 2 for word reading, and results suggested new genetic influences and new shared environmental influences emerged at Time 2 for tone awareness and morphological awareness respectively. Fourth, both genes and environments contributed to parent-rated communicative ability and motivation for learning text. Furthermore, the link between word reading and parent-rated motivation was mediated by genetic processes. The universality of the genetic and environmental origins across languages and their specificity to Chinese, as well as the implications of these findings, were discussed.

Five experiments explored how we learn to read and recognise words with typical and atypical spelling-sound mappings and to generalize to novel words. In Experiment 1, adults learned to read pseudowords with typical or atypical pronunciations. There was some evidence that prior exposure to word meanings enhanced orthographic learning. However, interpretation was clouded by stimulus control problems that plague research using natural alphabets. In Experiment 2, an artificial orthography paradigm was developed to overcome these problems. Adults learned to read novel words written in novel symbols. Post-training, they could generalize, indicating extraction of individual symbol sounds. The frequency and predictability of symbol-sound mappings influenced learning and generalization, mirroring natural language findings. Experiment 3 found extended training to improve item recognition and generalization. In Experiment 4, pre-exposure to item sounds plus an object referent vs. item sounds provided equivalent benefit for orthographic learning. By the end of training, this was limited to items with low frequency unpredictable symbol-sound mappings. In Experiment 5, pre-exposure to novel definitions enhanced orthographic learning more than pre-exposure to item sounds, but by the end of training, both conditions were again equally beneficial.

A longitudinal study lasting 3.5 years was conducted to investigate complex grammar development, focusing on acquisition of the passive and type 3 conditionals, and its relationship with a number of domain-general, domain-specific and environmental factors.128 children (M = 5 years 10 months) were tested at the beginning and towards the end of each school year starting from Year 1. The administered measures included established tests of fluid intelligence, short-term and working memory, seriation, grammar, vocabulary, literacy and arithmetic, plus newly-developed tests of passive and conditional sentence acquisition, and arithmetic word problem solving.It was demonstrated that grammar acquisition is not complete even when children start Year 4 of primary school (M = 8 years 7 months), when the current study was completed. At that time, 32% of children have not acquired type 3 conditionals and 89% showed no understanding of centre-embedded sentences. However, only 3% showed no passive sentence acquisition.Fluid intelligence, verbal STM and WM, ability to seriate, vocabulary and parental education level were all found to contribute to individual differences in complex grammar acquisition, independently of age differences and, where relevant, independently of non-verbal ability. There were differences between the passives and the conditionals in their relationship to these variables.Complex grammar development was found to be a significant predictor of reading comprehension, spelling and arithmetic performance, independently of age, non-verbal ability, verbal STM and WM.The findings demonstrate the inter-relatedness of higher cognitive functions, particularly domain-general with domain-specific ones. Modularity in its strictest sense (informational encapsulation, functional isolation) is not present in normally developing brains. Educational applications of the results are discussed.

Data are presented in seven chapters that address the reciprocal relationship between oral vocabulary and reading development. Chapter 2 explores exception word reading in poor comprehenders longitudinally, finding deficits that are pervasive over a period of two years. The results support the hypothesis that weak oral vocabulary skills are causally related to poor exception word reading in this group. In Chapter 3, orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders are investigated in a word learning paradigm. This chapter provides evidence that poor comprehenders have more difficulty learning and retaining semantic information than orthographic information. A similar paradigm is described in Chapter 4 to investigate predictors of orthographic and semantic learning. In a large group of typically developing readers, this demonstrates that decoding is the strongest predictor of orthographic learning while existing oral vocabulary knowledge is the strongest predictor of semantic learning. In Chapters 5 and 6 orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders and children with dyslexia are compared using standard off-line tasks (Chapter 5) and an online word learning experiment (Chapter 6). These chapters indicate similarities as well as differences in the reading and language profiles of these groups. Chapter 7 adopts a different approach by using a word learning study to investigate the benefit of teaching new oral vocabulary in the presence of orthography.

It has been suggested that specific reading disability (SRD) may be attributable to an impaired ability to perceive spectral differences between sounds that leads to a deficit in frequency discrimination and subsequent problems with language and literacy. The objective of the present study was threefold. We aimed to (a) determine whether children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss were impaired in their ability to discriminate frequency, (b) assess the extent to which any such deficits may be due to an inability to use information derived from phase locking, and (c) examine whether frequency discrimination abilities were predictive of measures of word and nonword reading and nonword repetition. Difference limens for frequency (DLFs) were obtained for 22 children with mild to moderate hearing loss (SNH group) and 22 age-matched controls (CA group) at central frequencies of 1 kHz, where phase-locking information is available, and 6 kHz, where it is not. A battery of standardized tests of language and literacy was also administered. The SNH group exhibited significantly elevated DLFs at both 1 and 6 kHz relative to controls, despite considerable variability of thresholds in both groups. Although no group differences were found for receptive and expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and nonword reading, the SNH group performed worse than controls on word reading and nonword repetition, even though word reading acores were age-appropriate. Frequency discrimination abilities were associated with reading and nonword repetition across groups, but these correlations largely disappeared when the two groups were analyzed separately. Together, these results provide evidence for a dissociation between impaired frequency discrimination and relatively "spared" language and literacy in children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. These results cast doubt on the assertion that a deficit in frequency discrimination necessarily leads to marked deficits in the development of language and literacy.

Recent research suggests that visual-verbal paired associate learning (PAL) taps a crossmodal associative learning mechanism involved in reading acquisition. However, evidence from children with dyslexia indicates that deficits in visual-verbal PAL are strongly linked to the verbal demands of the task. The research presented in this thesis had two overarching aims: first, to dissociate crossmodal and verbal demands in driving the PAL-reading relationship, and second, to assess the hypothesis that visual-verbal PAL plays a causal role in reading development. To address the first aim, a series of experiments examined the relationship between reading ability and PAL tasks differing in modality (crossmodal, unimodal) and output demand (visual, verbal). The results supported a verbal account of the PAL-reading relationship. In typically developing children and children with dyslexia, only tasks with a verbal output demand (i.e., visual-verbal PAL, verbal-verbal PAL) demonstrated a relationship with reading ability. In children with dyslexia, poor performance was isolated to difficulties learning novel phonological forms, rather than difficulties specific to crossmodal associative learning. Furthermore, the ability to learn novel phonological forms was found to fully explain visual-verbal PAL performance across reading abilities. In a final experiment, the causal role of visual-verbal PAL in reading development was assessed. The results of a longitudinal study from the start to the end of kindergarten showed that visual-verbal PAL measured in pre-readers did not predict reading ability at the end of kindergarten. Instead, PAL performance was influenced by learning to read.

Theoretical accounts of grammatical limitations in specific language impairment (SLI) have been polarized between those that postulate problems with domain-specific grammatical knowledge, and those that regard grammatical deficits as downstream consequences of perceptual or memory limitations. Here we consider an alternative view that grammatical deficits arise when the learning system is biased towards memorization of exemplars, and is poor at extracting statistical dependencies from the input. We examine evidence that SLI involves deficits in extracting nonadjacent dependencies from input, leading to reliance on rote learning, and consider how far this may be part of a limitation of procedural learning, or a secondary consequence of memory limitations. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.

This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenröthe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heißt Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heißt Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.

The 'transfer' of reading comprehension skills from a first language (L1) to a second language (L2) has long been discussed in the literature. This study challenges the transfer metaphor, proposing instead a notion of access. Studies based on Gernsbacher’s Structure Building Framework (SBF) show that reading comprehension draws on general, amodal cognitive processes. It follows that L1-literate learners of an L2 already have comprehension skills: their need is to access these skills from the L2. To examine whether the SBF predicts L2 readers’ performance, two groups of French learners of English performed an anomaly detection task. Results corresponded to the predictions of the SBF. The difficulty of lower-intermediate readers in accessing their comprehension skills was also linked to capacity problems in L2-based working memory.

Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have provided evidence that reading is strongly left lateralized, and the degree of this pattern of functional lateralization can be indicative of reading competence. However, it remains unclear whether functional lateralization differs between the first (L1) and second (L2) languages in bilingual L2 readers. This question is particularly important when the particular script, or orthography, learned by the L2 readers is markedly different from their L1 script. In this study, we quantified functional lateralization in brain regions involved in visual word recognition for participants' L1 and L2 scripts, with a particular focus on the effects of L1-L2 script differences in the visual complexity and orthographic depth of the script. Two different groups of late L2 learners participated in an fMRI experiment using a visual one-back matching task: L1 readers of Japanese who learnt to read alphabetic English and L1 readers of English who learnt to read both Japanese syllabic Kana and logographic Kanji. The results showed weaker leftward lateralization in the posterior lateral occipital complex (pLOC) for logographic Kanji compared with syllabic and alphabetic scripts in both L1 and L2 readers of Kanji. When both L1 and L2 scripts were non-logographic, where symbols are mapped onto sounds, functional lateralization did not significantly differ between L1 and L2 scripts in any region, in any group. Our findings indicate that weaker leftward lateralization for logographic reading reflects greater requirement of the right hemisphere for processing visually complex logographic Kanji symbols, irrespective of whether Kanji is the readers' L1 or L2, rather than characterizing additional cognitive efforts of L2 readers. Finally, brain-behavior analysis revealed that functional lateralization for L2 visual word processing predicted L2 reading competency. © 2014 Koyama, Stein, Stoodley and Hansen.

Which acoustic properties of the speech signal differ between rhythmically prominent syllables and non-prominent ones? A production experiment was conducted to identify these acoustic properties. Subjects read out repetitive text to a metronome, trying to match stressed syllables to its beat. The analysis searched for the function of the speech signal that best predicts the timing of the metronome ticks. The most important factor in this function is found to be the contrast in loudness between a syllable and its neighbors. The prominence of a syllable can be deduced from the specific loudness in an (approximately) $360$~millisecond window centered on the syllable in question relative to an (approximately) $800$~millisecond-wide symmetric window.

The research presented in this thesis had two overarching aims; the first, to supplement our knowledge concerning the aetiological underpinnings of poor comprehension, and the second, to investigate the impact of being a poor comprehender on behavioural and educational outcomes in the school context. A combination of standardised test batteries, novel experimental paradigms, and questionnaire measures were used to obtain data that addressed hypotheses connected to these two aims. Poor comprehenders were found to have working memory deficits, as well as more specific deficits in suppressing irrelevant information from working memory. However, these deficits were largely confined to the verbal domain, giving credence to the theory that their poor performance on working memory and suppression tasks may be driven by underlying language difficulties. Poor comprehenders did show some evidence of broader executive deficits in both the verbal and non-verbal domains, raising the possibility that there might be subgroups of poor comprehenders with distinct aetiological profiles. In terms of behavioural and educational outcomes, poor comprehenders’ deficits were found to impact selectively on these areas, producing a distinct pattern of behavioural and educational impairments. These findings highlighted the need for early identification of, and effective intervention for, poor comprehenders.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

Can one trust experiments conducted with repetitive speech to represent normal language behaviour? We compare the spectra of repetitive productions of phrases with the same phrases read from a randomised list. We use a data-driven spectral distortion measure that is trained to respond to linguistically relevant differences: it is based on a classifier that separates sounds into linguistically equivalent or not. We find that repetitive speech is not distinct from individually uttered speech. The difference between these two sorts of speech is smaller than variation within each. It is substantially smaller than typical differences between utterances produced by different subjects.

Este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio de Young Lives sobre el impacto y las percepciones del Programa Nacional Wawa Wasi, un programa del gobierno peruano para niños pobres de entre seis y 48 meses. Hasta ocho niños pasan cinco días a la semana en un centro de Wawa Wasi donde son asistidos por un cuidador cuidadosamente seleccionado de la comunidad local. Los resultados sugieren que los niños que han pasado en al menos seis meses en un centro tienen indicadores similares en el motor grueso, el lenguaje y el motor fino desarrollo a los niños que se han quedado en casa. Las entrevistas con varios actores clave indicaron una resultado positivo: los centros son entornos donde los niños se mantienen seguros y alimentados con comidas nutritivas, liberando a las madres de preocupaciones y permitiéndoles trabajar o estudiar. Sin embargo, el objetivo de Wawa Wasi de mejorar el desarrollo de los niños no se prioriza lo suficiente. Hay una necesidad de Wawa Wasi gerentes para fortalecer los componentes de aprendizaje temprano del programa, para mejorar las habilidades de aquellos que brindan atención y reconocen la dedicación de cuidadores y voluntarios pagados que han contribuido al éxito de Wawa Wasi.

This thesis explores the development of emergent literacy in Hong Kong Kindergarten children who are learning English as a Second Language (L2). Two interrelated empirical studies have been conducted, and both aim to examine the contribution of code-related and oral language skills to predicting early L2 reading ability, controlling for home influences. The majority of research on emergent literacy has been conducted on First-Language (L1) English-speaking children, and it is possible that these established concepts and models could also be relevant to L2 children. The first is a 2-year longitudinal study examining the continuity of L2 emergent literacy development in Hong Kong children from Kindergarten to early Primary school. The convenience sample of 51 children were initially assessed in their final or penultimate year of Kindergarten (mean age: 4;6 SD = 6.16) on 3 emergent literacy measures (receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter identification) and a non-verbal cognitive measure. They later progressed onto the Primary section of the same school, and were assessed again as first or second-graders (mean age: 6;4 SD = 6.21) on a more comprehensive battery of measures. An extensive parental questionnaire on family demographics and the home literacy environment was also administered. In addition to assessing a wide range of L2 emergent literacy skills and English word reading ability, a Chinese syllable deletion task was also included, to explore the potential effects of cross-linguistic phonological transfer between the children’s L1 (Cantonese) and L2 (English). The second study sought to improve upon the first by selecting a larger, more representative sample of children from 3 bilingual Kindergartens in the Kowloon City School District. It examines the concurrent relationships between emergent literacy skills and L2 word reading ability in 137 children. They were all in their final year of Kindergarten (mean age: 5;2 SD = 5.61), and were assessed once on largely the same battery of measures as Study 1 (Time 2). Again, a non-verbal cognitive measure was administered, as well as the parental questionnaire on home support for language development. The main data analysis was carried out via multivariate statistical techniques such as multiple regression. Further analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling in Study 2, but in a cautious and exploratory manner. The overall findings suggest that like the L1 emergent literacy model, early L2 word reading ability is predominantly influenced by children’s code-related skills, especially print knowledge and phonological sensitivity. Also, the relationship between oral language and word reading seems to be mediated by code-related skills. Thus, while oral language abilities do not appear to make substantial direct contributions to early L2 reading, they do play an essential albeit indirect role. Furthermore, L2 children’s home influences seem to make their strongest impact before formal schooling begins, again in the form of indirect effects on pre-school oral language skills. In short, the development of emergent literacy and early word reading skills is similar in many ways for both L1 and L2 children, and implications for practice are considered.

The forkhead-box protein P2 (FOXP2) is a transcription factor implicated in an inherited human speech and language disorder. A heterozygous R553H mutation in the gene is associated with a monogenic form of developmental verbal dyspraxia. Reduced functional dosage in mice brains causes altered synaptic plasticity in cortico-striatal circuits, and impairs motor learning. Genome-wide in vivo ChIP–chip screens for Foxp2 binding in the developing mouse brain have identified a set of microRNAs (miRNAs) whose promoter regions were occupied by Foxp2. Thus, I employed microarray expression profiling to identify microRNAs regulated by Foxp2 in the embryonic mouse brain. Interestingly, the microarray results were divergent from in vitro effects of Foxp2/FOXP2 on these microRNAs, suggesting that regulation of these microRNAs is context-specific. In light of the regulation of MIR137 by FOXP2, I went on to study a putative genetic network involving FOXP2, TCF4, CNTNAP2 and MIR137. While TCF4, CNTNAP2 and MIR137 each are regulated in vitro by FOXP2, the regions bound by FOXP2 were insufficient to generate the anticipated transcriptional regulation when cloned upstream of a reporter gene. To test if FOXP2-regulated microRNAs are risk factors for specific language impairment (SLI), I performed candidate association analyses on a large family-based cohort of SLI probands. I also identified 5 common variants and 3 rare variants in predicted microRNA binding sites in the 3' UTR from the exomes of 48 of these probands. I tested them for association with SLI in the larger cohort. rs72727021, lying in the miR-192/215 binding site of the C9ORF100 3' UTR, was significantly associated with nonword repetition in the SLI cohort (p-value = 2.75 X 10-4). Testing of rs72727021 and the 3 rare variants with a luciferase reporter assay revealed that 2 rare variants affected gene expression levels independently of the microRNA, suggesting that these 2 microRNA binding sites might be risk factors contributing to the SLI phenotype. FOXP2/Foxp2 is likely to act through microRNAs to generate and fine-tune neural gene expressionpatterns that underlie neuronal function and neural circuits important for vocal learning, and for human speech and language.

It has been well established that subject–verb number agreement can be disrupted by local noun phrases that differ in number from the subject head noun phrase. In sentence production, mismatches in the grammatical number of the head and local noun phrases lead to agreement errors on the verb as in: the key to the cabinets are. Similarly, although ungrammaticality typically causes disruption in measures of sentence comprehension, the disruption is reduced when the local noun phrase has a plural feature. Using a forced-choice comprehension question method, we report two experiments that provide evidence that comprehenders were likely to misinterpret the number information on the head noun phrase when morphosyntactic number markings on the local noun phrase and verb did not match the head. These results are consistent with a growing body of research that suggests that comprehenders often arrive at a final interpretation of a sentence that is not faithful to the linguistic input.

This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenröthe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heißt Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heißt Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

The forkhead-box protein P2 (FOXP2) is a transcription factor implicated in an inherited human speech and language disorder. A heterozygous R553H mutation in the gene is associated with a monogenic form of developmental verbal dyspraxia. Reduced functional dosage in mice brains causes altered synaptic plasticity in cortico-striatal circuits, and impairs motor learning. Genome-wide in vivo ChIP–chip screens for Foxp2 binding in the developing mouse brain have identified a set of microRNAs (miRNAs) whose promoter regions were occupied by Foxp2. Thus, I employed microarray expression profiling to identify microRNAs regulated by Foxp2 in the embryonic mouse brain. Interestingly, the microarray results were divergent from in vitro effects of Foxp2/FOXP2 on these microRNAs, suggesting that regulation of these microRNAs is context-specific. In light of the regulation of MIR137 by FOXP2, I went on to study a putative genetic network involving FOXP2, TCF4, CNTNAP2 and MIR137. While TCF4, CNTNAP2 and MIR137 each are regulated in vitro by FOXP2, the regions bound by FOXP2 were insufficient to generate the anticipated transcriptional regulation when cloned upstream of a reporter gene. To test if FOXP2-regulated microRNAs are risk factors for specific language impairment (SLI), I performed candidate association analyses on a large family-based cohort of SLI probands. I also identified 5 common variants and 3 rare variants in predicted microRNA binding sites in the 3' UTR from the exomes of 48 of these probands. I tested them for association with SLI in the larger cohort. rs72727021, lying in the miR-192/215 binding site of the C9ORF100 3' UTR, was significantly associated with nonword repetition in the SLI cohort (p-value = 2.75 X 10-4). Testing of rs72727021 and the 3 rare variants with a luciferase reporter assay revealed that 2 rare variants affected gene expression levels independently of the microRNA, suggesting that these 2 microRNA binding sites might be risk factors contributing to the SLI phenotype. FOXP2/Foxp2 is likely to act through microRNAs to generate and fine-tune neural gene expressionpatterns that underlie neuronal function and neural circuits important for vocal learning, and for human speech and language.

Regular aerobic exercise has a wide range of positive effects on health and cognition. Exercise has been demonstrated to provide a particularly powerful and replicable method of triggering a wide range of structural changes within both human and animal brains. However, the details and mechanisms of these changes remain poorly understood. This thesis undertakes a comprehensive examination of the relationship between brain plasticity and aerobic exercise. A large, longitudinal experiment was conducted in which healthy but sedentary participants were scanned before and after six-weeks of monitored aerobic exercise. Increases in the volume of the anterior hippocampus were observed, as previously reported in an older cohort after a longer exercise intervention. Multimodal imaging methods allowed an in-depth exploration of the mechanisms underlying this volume change, which proved to be dominated by white matter changes rather than the vascular changes that have been previously reported. A surprising global change in the balance of CSF, blood, and brain tissue within the cranial cavity was also observed. Cross-sectional differences in memory and brain structure associated with fitness were also observed. The volume of the anterior hippocampus was shown to correlate with a measure of working memory. Higher cerebral blood volume throughout the brain was found to correlate with greater fitness and better working memory. Focal associations between fitness and magnetic susceptibility, a measure of iron content, were also observed in the basal ganglia. These findings demonstrate that aerobic fitness is associated with improved cognition and brain structure throughout the lifespan rather than simply acting to mitigate age related brain atrophy or accelerate brain development. Finally, a new pipeline was developed for analysing hippocampal morphometry using high-resolution, 7 Tesla scans. Striking variability in the convolution of the hippocampal surface is reported. This technique shows promise for imaging the precise nature of the change in hippocampal volume associated with aerobic exercise. This thesis adds to the evidence that aerobic exercise is a potent catalyst for behavioural and brain plasticity while also demonstrating that the mechanisms for those plastic changes are likely different than previously supposed. Future work will refine these measurement techniques, perhaps to a point where brain changes can be monitored on a single subject level. This work will provide an important tool to understand how best to utilize aerobic exercise to facilitate adaptive behavioural changes, mitigate the negative effects of ageing and disease on the brain, and maximize the benefits of active lifestyles.

The lecture gives an overview of the psycholinguistic research that has been done in Croatia recently with the emphasis on the language imapirments.

A longitudinal study lasting 3.5 years was conducted to investigate complex grammar development, focusing on acquisition of the passive and type 3 conditionals, and its relationship with a number of domain-general, domain-specific and environmental factors.128 children (M = 5 years 10 months) were tested at the beginning and towards the end of each school year starting from Year 1. The administered measures included established tests of fluid intelligence, short-term and working memory, seriation, grammar, vocabulary, literacy and arithmetic, plus newly-developed tests of passive and conditional sentence acquisition, and arithmetic word problem solving.It was demonstrated that grammar acquisition is not complete even when children start Year 4 of primary school (M = 8 years 7 months), when the current study was completed. At that time, 32% of children have not acquired type 3 conditionals and 89% showed no understanding of centre-embedded sentences. However, only 3% showed no passive sentence acquisition.Fluid intelligence, verbal STM and WM, ability to seriate, vocabulary and parental education level were all found to contribute to individual differences in complex grammar acquisition, independently of age differences and, where relevant, independently of non-verbal ability. There were differences between the passives and the conditionals in their relationship to these variables.Complex grammar development was found to be a significant predictor of reading comprehension, spelling and arithmetic performance, independently of age, non-verbal ability, verbal STM and WM.The findings demonstrate the inter-relatedness of higher cognitive functions, particularly domain-general with domain-specific ones. Modularity in its strictest sense (informational encapsulation, functional isolation) is not present in normally developing brains. Educational applications of the results are discussed.

This thesis investigated the etiology of individual differences in Chinese language and literacy skills with a two-wave longitudinal design using a sample of 312 Chinese twin pairs aged 3 to 11 in Hong Kong. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness, and orthographic skills, as well as nonverbal reasoning and audiometric screening tests. They were tested again on the same tasks, except nonverbal reasoning, one year after the initial testing. Children’s saliva was collected to perform SNP testing for zygosity determination. Also, their demographic information, home literacy environment profile, and motivation for learning text, were obtained from parent-rated questionnaires. Overall, there were four major findings on Chinese language and literacy abilities with the effects of age and nonverbal reasoning controlled for. First, genes and environments had differential influences on various skills, and there was a possibility of different etiology in language and reading development. Second, socioeconomic status and home literacy environment were plausible mediators but not moderators of general language and reading abilities. Third, the stability of various skills across a one-year time period was mainly mediated by genetic influences, but shared environmental factors also influenced syllable and rhyme awareness. Also, new genetic and environmental factors came into play at Time 2 for word reading, and results suggested new genetic influences and new shared environmental influences emerged at Time 2 for tone awareness and morphological awareness respectively. Fourth, both genes and environments contributed to parent-rated communicative ability and motivation for learning text. Furthermore, the link between word reading and parent-rated motivation was mediated by genetic processes. The universality of the genetic and environmental origins across languages and their specificity to Chinese, as well as the implications of these findings, were discussed.

Five experiments explored how we learn to read and recognise words with typical and atypical spelling-sound mappings and to generalize to novel words. In Experiment 1, adults learned to read pseudowords with typical or atypical pronunciations. There was some evidence that prior exposure to word meanings enhanced orthographic learning. However, interpretation was clouded by stimulus control problems that plague research using natural alphabets. In Experiment 2, an artificial orthography paradigm was developed to overcome these problems. Adults learned to read novel words written in novel symbols. Post-training, they could generalize, indicating extraction of individual symbol sounds. The frequency and predictability of symbol-sound mappings influenced learning and generalization, mirroring natural language findings. Experiment 3 found extended training to improve item recognition and generalization. In Experiment 4, pre-exposure to item sounds plus an object referent vs. item sounds provided equivalent benefit for orthographic learning. By the end of training, this was limited to items with low frequency unpredictable symbol-sound mappings. In Experiment 5, pre-exposure to novel definitions enhanced orthographic learning more than pre-exposure to item sounds, but by the end of training, both conditions were again equally beneficial.

The research presented in this thesis had two overarching aims; the first, to supplement our knowledge concerning the aetiological underpinnings of poor comprehension, and the second, to investigate the impact of being a poor comprehender on behavioural and educational outcomes in the school context. A combination of standardised test batteries, novel experimental paradigms, and questionnaire measures were used to obtain data that addressed hypotheses connected to these two aims. Poor comprehenders were found to have working memory deficits, as well as more specific deficits in suppressing irrelevant information from working memory. However, these deficits were largely confined to the verbal domain, giving credence to the theory that their poor performance on working memory and suppression tasks may be driven by underlying language difficulties. Poor comprehenders did show some evidence of broader executive deficits in both the verbal and non-verbal domains, raising the possibility that there might be subgroups of poor comprehenders with distinct aetiological profiles. In terms of behavioural and educational outcomes, poor comprehenders’ deficits were found to impact selectively on these areas, producing a distinct pattern of behavioural and educational impairments. These findings highlighted the need for early identification of, and effective intervention for, poor comprehenders.

Data are presented in seven chapters that address the reciprocal relationship between oral vocabulary and reading development. Chapter 2 explores exception word reading in poor comprehenders longitudinally, finding deficits that are pervasive over a period of two years. The results support the hypothesis that weak oral vocabulary skills are causally related to poor exception word reading in this group. In Chapter 3, orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders are investigated in a word learning paradigm. This chapter provides evidence that poor comprehenders have more difficulty learning and retaining semantic information than orthographic information. A similar paradigm is described in Chapter 4 to investigate predictors of orthographic and semantic learning. In a large group of typically developing readers, this demonstrates that decoding is the strongest predictor of orthographic learning while existing oral vocabulary knowledge is the strongest predictor of semantic learning. In Chapters 5 and 6 orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders and children with dyslexia are compared using standard off-line tasks (Chapter 5) and an online word learning experiment (Chapter 6). These chapters indicate similarities as well as differences in the reading and language profiles of these groups. Chapter 7 adopts a different approach by using a word learning study to investigate the benefit of teaching new oral vocabulary in the presence of orthography.

This thesis explores the development of emergent literacy in Hong Kong Kindergarten children who are learning English as a Second Language (L2). Two interrelated empirical studies have been conducted, and both aim to examine the contribution of code-related and oral language skills to predicting early L2 reading ability, controlling for home influences. The majority of research on emergent literacy has been conducted on First-Language (L1) English-speaking children, and it is possible that these established concepts and models could also be relevant to L2 children. The first is a 2-year longitudinal study examining the continuity of L2 emergent literacy development in Hong Kong children from Kindergarten to early Primary school. The convenience sample of 51 children were initially assessed in their final or penultimate year of Kindergarten (mean age: 4;6 SD = 6.16) on 3 emergent literacy measures (receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter identification) and a non-verbal cognitive measure. They later progressed onto the Primary section of the same school, and were assessed again as first or second-graders (mean age: 6;4 SD = 6.21) on a more comprehensive battery of measures. An extensive parental questionnaire on family demographics and the home literacy environment was also administered. In addition to assessing a wide range of L2 emergent literacy skills and English word reading ability, a Chinese syllable deletion task was also included, to explore the potential effects of cross-linguistic phonological transfer between the children’s L1 (Cantonese) and L2 (English). The second study sought to improve upon the first by selecting a larger, more representative sample of children from 3 bilingual Kindergartens in the Kowloon City School District. It examines the concurrent relationships between emergent literacy skills and L2 word reading ability in 137 children. They were all in their final year of Kindergarten (mean age: 5;2 SD = 5.61), and were assessed once on largely the same battery of measures as Study 1 (Time 2). Again, a non-verbal cognitive measure was administered, as well as the parental questionnaire on home support for language development. The main data analysis was carried out via multivariate statistical techniques such as multiple regression. Further analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling in Study 2, but in a cautious and exploratory manner. The overall findings suggest that like the L1 emergent literacy model, early L2 word reading ability is predominantly influenced by children’s code-related skills, especially print knowledge and phonological sensitivity. Also, the relationship between oral language and word reading seems to be mediated by code-related skills. Thus, while oral language abilities do not appear to make substantial direct contributions to early L2 reading, they do play an essential albeit indirect role. Furthermore, L2 children’s home influences seem to make their strongest impact before formal schooling begins, again in the form of indirect effects on pre-school oral language skills. In short, the development of emergent literacy and early word reading skills is similar in many ways for both L1 and L2 children, and implications for practice are considered.

BackgroundT. J. Crow suggested that the genetic variance associated with the evolution in Homo sapiens of hemispheric dominance for language carries with it the hazard of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Individuals lacking the typical left hemisphere advantage for language, in particular for phonological components, would be at increased risk of the typical symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and delusions.Methodology/Principal FindingsTwelve schizophrenic patients treated with low levels of neuroleptics and twelve matched healthy controls participated in an event-related potential experiment. Subjects matched word-pairs in three tasks: rhyming/phonological, semantic judgment and word recognition. Slow evoked potentials were recorded from 26 scalp electrodes, and a laterality index was computed for anterior and posterior regions during the inter stimulus interval. During phonological processing individuals with schizophrenia failed to achieve the left hemispheric dominance consistently observed in healthy controls. The effect involved anterior (fronto-temporal) brain regions and was specific for the Phonological task; group differences were small or absent when subjects processed the same stimulus material in a Semantic task or during Word Recognition, i.e. during tasks that typically activate more widespread areas in both hemispheres.Conclusions/SignificanceWe show for the first time how the deficit of lateralization in the schizophrenic brain is specific for the phonological component of language. This loss of hemispheric dominance would explain typical symptoms, e.g. when an individual's own thoughts are perceived as an external intruding voice. The change can be interpreted as a consequence of hemispheric indecision , a failure to segregate phonological engrams in one hemisphere.