My work pictured by AI – Kinkini Bhadra

What is this work about? This paper talks about a new way of thinking about how children learn to communicate. The idea is that when kids have different kinds of experiences talking with others, it affects how they communicate in the future. If they have lots of experiences where talking doesn’t work well, they will learn to use more ways to communicate and be more flexible when they talk. The authors use bilingual children as an example to explain this idea. They talk about how growing up with two languages affects how kids learn to communicate. Children who speak only one language and those who speak two or more languages communicate differently. Children who speak two languages are better at understanding what their communication partner is trying to say. They also adapt more easily to what the other person needs and use gestures to explain things more often. They are better at fixing misunderstandings and responding in a way that makes sense. The general idea is, however, not limited to bilingual communication but can also be applied to other challenge communicative situations.

The first word that came to mind when seeing the AI-generated picture? Confused.

What is this work about? Planning to speak is a challenge for the brain, and the challenge varies between and within languages. Yet, little is known about how neural processes react to these variable challenges beyond the planning of individual words. Here, we examine how fundamental differences in syntax shape the time course of sentence planning. Most languages treat alike (i.e., align with each other) the 2 uses of a word like “gardener” in “the gardener crouched” and in “the gardener planted trees.” A minority keeps these formally distinct by adding special marking in 1 case, and some languages display both aligned and nonaligned expressions. Exploiting such a contrast in Hindi, we used electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking to suggest that this difference is associated with distinct patterns of neural processing and gaze behavior during early planning stages, preceding phonological word form preparation. Planning sentences with aligned expressions induces larger synchronization in the theta frequency band, suggesting higher working memory engagement, and more visual attention to agents than planning nonaligned sentences, suggesting delayed commitment to the relational details of the event. Furthermore, plain, unmarked expressions are associated with larger desynchronization in the alpha band than expressions with special markers, suggesting more engagement in information processing to keep overlapping structures distinct during planning. Our findings contrast with the observation that the form of aligned expressions is simpler, and they suggest that the global preference for alignment is driven not by its neurophysiological effect on sentence planning but by other sources, possibly by aspects of production flexibility and fluency or by sentence comprehension. This challenges current theories on how production and comprehension may affect the evolution and distribution of syntactic variants in the world’s languages.

The first word that came to mind when seeing the AI-generated picture? Seeing into the mind.

What is this work about? We explored the connection between mandible length and the temporal dynamics of speech. Our study involved testing speakers with different mandible sizes and observing how their speech timing was affected. We found that mandible length can indeed influence the time it takes to open and close the mouth, which in turn can affect the length of syllables in speech. This finding is particularly important for language evolution, as the human jaw has undergone significant changes throughout human history. For example, the jaw has decreased in size due to softer diets since the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. By considering the movements of the mandible as similar to that of a pendulum, it becomes apparent that the duration of an oscillation, or period, should depend entirely on its length. This analogy suggests that humans in the distant past might have spoken more slowly due to slower mouth opening and closing movements, resulting in slower transmission of information. If this were true, it could also have had an impact on the evolution of the human brain, as humans would have to process linguistic information at lower frequencies (for example, previous studies have shown that the brain tracks the speech signal at frequencies that correspond to the lengths of syllables). It seems possible that, over time, the human brain has adapted to changes in human jaw anatomy, resulting in the speech and language patterns we observe today. Our research sheds light on the fascinating relationship between anatomy and speech, and how changes in our physical makeup can influence the way we communicate.

The first word that came to mind when seeing the AI-generated picture? Adaptation.