- Professor Douglas Saddy
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
CENTRE FOR INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND NEURODYNAMICS
UNIVERSITY OF READING
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
Earley Gate
Reading RG6 6AL - +44 (0)118 378 6269
Douglas Saddy
University of Reading, Clinical Language Sciences, Faculty Member
- Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Physics, Languages and Linguistics, Mathematics, and 19 moreHealth Sciences, Neuroscience, Evolutionary Biology, Translation Studies, Second Language Acquisition, Mental Health, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Signal Processing, Behavioral Sciences, Medical Imaging, Physiology, Refugee Studies, Medical Genetics, Eye tracking, Sign Languages, Electrophysiology, F Mri, Nutraceuticals, and Sign Languageedit
- Noam Chomskyedit
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We describe an experiment that investigated the failure to license polarity items in German using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results reveal distinct processing reflexes associated with failure to license positive polarity... more
We describe an experiment that investigated the failure to license polarity items in German using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results reveal distinct processing reflexes associated with failure to license positive polarity items in comparison to failure to license negative polarity items. Failure to license both negative and positive polarity items elicited an N400 component reflecting semantic integration cost. Failure to license positive polarity items, however, also elicited a P600 component. The additional P600 in the positive polarity violations may reflect higher processing complexity associated with a negative operator. This difference between the two types of violation suggests that the processing of negative and positive polarity items does not involve identical mechanisms.
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Research Interests: Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Algorithms, Language, Medicine, and 15 moreLanguage Processing, Germany, Chaos, Brain, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Impulse response, Female, Male, Nonlinear, Adult, Nonlinear Dynamic System, Nonlinear system, Numerical Analysis and Computational Mathematics, and N
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Research Interests: Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Theory, Electroencephalography, Language, and 15 moreMedicine, Entropy, Brain, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Computer Simulation, Multivariate Time Series, Dynamic Systems Theory, Electroencephalogram, Physical, Dynamical Systems Theory, Dynamic System, Experimental Data, Development Time, and Logistic Models
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This paper examines aggrammatics' interpretation of quantificationally ambiguous sentences. Although agrammatics are capable of recognizing quantificational ambiguities, they ascribe nonstandard entailments to those sentences... more
This paper examines aggrammatics' interpretation of quantificationally ambiguous sentences. Although agrammatics are capable of recognizing quantificational ambiguities, they ascribe nonstandard entailments to those sentences involving universal quantification. Since quantificational ambiguity arises from movement of quantifiers at LF, doubt is cast on accounts of agrammatic behavior that rely on an inability to interpret moved constituents. Furthermore, the agrammatics are seen to improve in their thematic interpretation of arguments in reversible passive constructions and relatives if one of the arguments is universally quantified. The nonstandard entailments and improved performance on passive and relatives are accounted for via an elaboration of event semantics in which we propose that the agrammatic treats the event variable associated with a verb as nominal.
Research Interests: Psychology, Speech perception, Syntax, Linguistics, Medicine, and 13 moreSemantics (Computer Science), Humans, Ambiguity, Male, Verb, Language Culture and Communication, Middle Aged, Agrammatism, Language and the Brain, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Intracranial aneurysm, Medical and Health Sciences, and Language tests
The purpose of the present study is to explore the role of an explicit expression of macrostructure in facilitating performance on a Story Arrangement Task. Subjects were presented with a series of sentences which they were required to... more
The purpose of the present study is to explore the role of an explicit expression of macrostructure in facilitating performance on a Story Arrangement Task. Subjects were presented with a series of sentences which they were required to arrange into a coherent paragraph. Half of the items were preceded by a theme sentence containing the framework or macrostructure of the paragraph, while the items without theme sentences required subjects to formulate their own macrostructure in a bottom-up fashion. Results of the study support the hypothesis that the presence of a theme sentence facilitates performance on the Story Arrangement Task for non-brain-damaged individuals (NBDs) and left brain-damaged patients (LBDs), but not for right brain-damaged patients (RBDs). This suggests that RBDs are impaired in their ability to recognize and benefit from explicit thematic statements in narratives. Other discourse-level deficits in RBDs are discussed in the light of these findings. The performance of LBDs on such tasks is also discussed.
Research Interests: Logic, Decision Making, Narrative, Medicine, Language disorders, and 15 moreBrain, Humans, Female, Male, Language Culture and Communication, Aged, Middle Aged, Language Proficiency Tests, Paragraph, Cerebrovascular Disorders, Cognition disorders, Functional Laterality, Brain injuries, Medical and Health Sciences, and Language tests
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DOUGLAS SADDY SENSITIVITY TO ISLANDS IN AN APHASIC INDIVIDUAL* This paper contributes to the discussion of the nature of the underlying deficit found in Agrammatic Broca's aphasia. In the tradition of Linebarger et al.(1983),... more
DOUGLAS SADDY SENSITIVITY TO ISLANDS IN AN APHASIC INDIVIDUAL* This paper contributes to the discussion of the nature of the underlying deficit found in Agrammatic Broca's aphasia. In the tradition of Linebarger et al.(1983), Saffran et al.(1985) and Shankweiler et al. ...
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Advances in neuroimaging technology have increased our knowledge of the neuroanatomy of higher functions of the central nervous system: It is now possible to get a glimpse of the brain while it is in action. However, this progress would... more
Advances in neuroimaging technology have increased our knowledge of the neuroanatomy of higher functions of the central nervous system: It is now possible to get a glimpse of the brain while it is in action. However, this progress would not have been possible without ...
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Research Interests: Engineering, Computer Science, Algorithms, Lattice Theory, Signal Processing, and 15 moreElectroencephalography, Medicine, Language Processing, Brain Mapping, Brain, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Mathematical Sciences, Physical sciences, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Nonlinear Filter, Retrospective Studies, Reproducibility of Results, Sensitivity and Specificity, and Signal to Noise Ratio
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In the present paper we will analyze mapping operations as modelled in transformational generative grammar, as part of a more general inquiry into the limits of algorithmic approaches to natural language structure. Building on previous... more
In the present paper we will analyze mapping operations as modelled in transformational generative grammar, as part of a more general inquiry into the limits of algorithmic approaches to natural language structure. Building on previous works, we propose a kind of system in which structure assignment proceeds by local domains and only assigns the computationally simplest structural description which captures syntactic- semantic dependencies within these domains. We will also present some prospects for an approach to structure mapping that is compatible with computationally mixed derivations.
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Evidence shows that nutritional and environmental stress stimuli during postnatal period influence brain development and interactions between gut and brain. In this study we show that in rats, prevention of weaning from maternal milk... more
Evidence shows that nutritional and environmental stress stimuli during postnatal period influence brain development and interactions between gut and brain. In this study we show that in rats, prevention of weaning from maternal milk results in depressive-like behavior, which is accompanied by changes in the gut bacteria and host metabolism. Depressive-like behavior was studied using the forced-swim test on postnatal day (PND) 25 in rats either weaned on PND 21, or left with their mother until PND 25 (non-weaned). Non-weaned rats showed an increased immobility time consistent with a depressive phenotype. Fluorescence in situ hybridization showed non-weaned rats to harbor significantly lowered Clostridium histolyticum bacterial groups but exhibit marked stress-induced increases. Metabonomic analysis of urine from these animals revealed significant differences in the metabolic profiles, with biochemical phenotypes indicative of depression in the non-weaned animals. In addition, non-we...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Acoustics, Semantics, Psycholinguistics, Medicine, and 15 moreLanguage Processing, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Evaluation methods, Negation, Language Culture and Communication, Symbolic Dynamics, Semantic Integration, Analysis of Variance, Language and the Brain, P, N, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Relative Clause, and Medical and Health Sciences
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In this paper we probe the interaction between sequential and hierarchical learning by investigating implicit learning in a group of school-aged children. We administered a serial reaction time task, in the form of a modified Simon Task... more
In this paper we probe the interaction between sequential and hierarchical learning by investigating implicit learning in a group of school-aged children. We administered a serial reaction time task, in the form of a modified Simon Task in which the stimuli were organised following the rules of two distinct artificial grammars, specifically Lindenmayer systems: the Fibonacci grammar (Fib) and the Skip grammar (a modification of the former). The choice of grammars is determined by the goal of this study, which is to investigate how sensitivity to structure emerges in the course of exposure to an input whose surface transitional properties (by hypothesis) bootstrap structure. The studies conducted to date have been mainly designed to investigate low-level superficial regularities, learnable in purely statistical terms, whereas hierarchical learning has not been effectively investigated yet. The possibility to directly pinpoint the interplay between sequential and hierarchical learning is instead at the core of our study: we presented children with two grammars, Fib and Skip, which share the same transitional regularities, thus providing identical opportunities for sequential learning, while crucially differing in their hierarchical structure. More particularly, there are specific points in the sequence (k-points), which, despite giving rise to the same transitional regularities in the two grammars, support hierarchical reconstruction in Fib but not in Skip. In our protocol, children were simply asked to perform a traditional Simon Task, and they were completely unaware of the real purposes of the task. Results indicate that sequential learning occurred in both grammars, as shown by the decrease in reaction times throughout the task, while differences were found in the sensitivity to k-points: these, we contend, play a role in hierarchical reconstruction in Fib, whereas they are devoid of structural significance in Skip. More particularly, we found that children were faster in correspondence to k-points in sequences produced by Fib, thus providing an entirely new kind of evidence for the hypothesis that implicit learning involves an early activation of strategies of hierarchical reconstruction, based on a straightforward interplay with the statistically-based computation of transitional regularities on the sequences of symbols.
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In this article, we explore the extraction of recursive nested structure in the processing of binary sequences. Our aim was to determine whether the brain learns the higher order regularities of a highly simplified input where only... more
In this article, we explore the extraction of recursive nested structure in the processing of binary sequences. Our aim was to determine whether the brain learns the higher order regularities of a highly simplified input where only sequential order information marks the hierarchical structure. To this end, we implemented sequence generated by the Fibonacci grammar in a serial reaction time task. This deterministic grammar generates aperiodic but self-similar sequences. The combination of these two properties allowed us to evaluate hierarchical learning while controlling for the use of low-level strategies like detecting recurring patterns. The deterministic aspect of the grammar allowed us to predict precisely which points in the sequence should be subject to anticipation. Results showed that participants’ pattern of anticipation could not be accounted for by “flat” statistical learning processes and was consistent with them anticipating upcoming points based on hierarchical assumpt...
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In this paper we will attempt to classify Lindenmayer systems based on properties of sets of rules and the kind of strings those rules generate. This classification will be referred to as a parametrization of the L-space: the L-space is... more
In this paper we will attempt to classify Lindenmayer systems based on properties of sets of rules and the kind of strings those rules generate. This classification will be referred to as a parametrization of the L-space: the L-space is the phase space in which all possible L-developments are represented. This space is infinite, because there is no halting algorithm for L-grammars; but it is also subjected to hard conditions, because there are grammars and developments which are not possible states of an L-system: a very well-known example is the space of normal grammars. Just as the space of normal grammars is parametrized into Regular, Context-Free, Context-Sensitive, and Unrestricted (with proper containment relations holding among them; see Chomsky, 1959: Theorem 1), we contend here that the L-space is a very rich landscape of grammars which cluster into kinds that are not mutually translatable.
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We describe a part of the stimulus sentences of a German language processing ERP experiment using a context-free grammar and represent different processing preferences by its unambiguous partitions. The processing is modeled by... more
We describe a part of the stimulus sentences of a German language processing ERP experiment using a context-free grammar and represent different processing preferences by its unambiguous partitions. The processing is modeled by deterministic pushdown automata. Using a theorem proven by Moore, we map these automata onto discrete time dynamical systems acting at the unit square, where the processing preferences are represented by a control parameter. The actual states of the automata are rectangles lying in the unit square that can be interpreted as cylinder sets in the context of symbolic dynamics theory. We show that applying a wrong processing preference to a certain input string leads to an unwanted invariant set in the parsers dynamics. Then, syntactic reanalysis and repair can be modeled by a switching of the control parameter — in analogy to phase transitions observed in brain dynamics. We argue that ERP components are indicators of these bifurcations and propose an ERP-like me...
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There is evidence to suggest that exposure to maternal milk can influence the ontogenesis of μand δ(DOP) opioid receptors. We have shown that weaning rat pups at day 21 activates DOPr development in cortical brain regions and this... more
There is evidence to suggest that exposure to maternal milk can influence the ontogenesis of μand δ(DOP) opioid receptors. We have shown that weaning rat pups at day 21 activates DOPr development in cortical brain regions and this activation was shown to be dependent on the loss of dietary casein, which is known to produce peptide fragments that can exert opioid activity (Goody and Kitchen, 2001). The DOPr system is known to play an important role in mediating mood and social behaviour and transgenic mice lacking DOPr exhibit depressive and anxiogenic phenotypes (Filliol et al., 2000). We therefore hypothesise that time of weaning or exposure to maternal milk may influence mood and social behaviour via a DOPr mediated mechanism. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of weaning time on anxiety, depressive and social interaction behaviours.
Broca's aphasia is a term that refers to language disturbance characterized by halting, disfluent, effortful speech. Historically, this type of impairment is associated with damage to the superior frontal convolutions of the left... more
Broca's aphasia is a term that refers to language disturbance characterized by halting, disfluent, effortful speech. Historically, this type of impairment is associated with damage to the superior frontal convolutions of the left temporal lobe. This area is generally described as Broca's area, after Pierre Broca, who first associated this language impairment with damage to the left temporal lobe. Broca's research was first presented to the French Academy of Anthropology in 1861. Subsequent to Broca's early descriptions it was reported, first by the Pitres (1898), that there was a type of Broca's aphasia in which parts of speech were selectively omitted. In this condition, in addition to effortful, disfluent speech, verbs are almost always uttered in progressive form with no apparent use of inflectional morphology, derivational morphology appears to be retained but only in nominal or adjectival form, and functional elements -determiners, complementizers, modals, p...