Explore the vast range of titles available.

Determining the location of rare proteins in cells typically requires the use of on-sample amplification. Antibody based recognition and enzymatic amplification is used to produce large amounts of visible label at the site of protein expression, but these techniques suffer from the presence of nonspecific reactivity in the biological sample and from poor spatial control over the label. Polymerization based amplification is a recently developed alternative means of creating an on-sample amplification for fluorescence applications, while not suffering from endogenous labels or loss of signal localization. This manuscript builds upon polymerization based amplification by developing a stable, archivable, and colorimetric mode of amplification termed Polymer Dye Labeling. The basic concept involves an interfacial polymer grown at the site of protein expression and subsequent staining of this polymer with an appropriate dye. The dyes Evans Blue and eosin were initially investigated for colorimetric response in a microarray setting, where both specifically stained polymer films on glass. The process was translated to the staining of protein expression in human dermal fibroblast cells, and Polymer Dye Labeling was specific to regions consistent with desired protein expression. The labeling is stable for over 200 days in ambient conditions and is also compatible with modern mounting medium.

Syntactic parsing plays a central role in the interpretation of sentences, but it is unclear to what extent non-native speakers can deploy native-like grammatical knowledge during online comprehension. The current eye-tracking study investigated how Chinese–English bilinguals and native English speakers respond to syntactic category and subcategorization information while reading sentences with object-subject ambiguities. We also obtained measures of English language experience, working memory capacity, and executive function to determine how these cognitive variables influence online parsing. During reading, monolinguals and bilinguals showed similar garden-path effects related to syntactic reanalysis, but native English speakers responded more robustly to verb subcategorization cues. Readers with greater language experience and executive function showed increased sensitivity to verb subcategorization cues, but parsing was not influenced by working memory capacity. These results are consistent with exposure-based accounts of bilingual sentence processing, and they support a link between syntactic processing and domain-general cognitive control.

Deaf readers may have larger perceptual spans than ability-matched hearing native English readers, allowing them to read more efficiently (Belanger & Rayner, 2015). To further test the hypothesis that deaf and hearing readers have different perceptual spans, the current study uses eye-movement data from two experiments in which deaf American Sign Language–English bilinguals, hearing native English speakers, and hearing Chinese–English bilinguals read semantically unrelated sentences and answered comprehension questions after a proportion of them. We analyzed skip rates, fixation times, and accuracy on comprehension questions. In addition, we analyzed how lexical properties of words affected skipping behavior and fixation durations. Deaf readers skipped words more often than native English speakers, who skipped words more often than Chinese–English bilinguals. Deaf readers had shorter first-pass fixation times than the other two groups. All groups’ skipping behaviors were affected by lexical frequency. Deaf readers’ comprehension did not differ from hearing Chinese–English bilinguals, despite greater skipping and shorter fixation times. Overall, the eye-tracking findings align with Belanger’s word processing efficiency hypothesis. Effects of lexical frequency on skipping behavior indicated further that eye movements during reading remain under cognitive control in deaf readers.

We recorded eye movements during natural reading to explore the influence of sentence context on bilingual word recognition. English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals read sentences in English that biased either the English or the Spanish meaning of interlingual homographs. Shortly after encountering the homograph, the groups showed equivalent implausibility effects when its English meaning was incongruent with the preceding sentence context. No evidence for immediate homograph interference emerged during this period in the bilingual group. Only in later processing measures did group and congruency interact. Bilinguals may have initially accessed and selected the language appropriate meaning of the homograph to integrate into the sentence. Later, bilinguals accessed their first language lexicon and integrated the Spanish meaning into the sentence when semantically appropriate. Rather than always experiencing cross-language competition, proficient bilinguals may dynamically adapt to contextual cues and selectively access information associated with the contextually cued language under certain conditions.

This study was designed to determine the feasibility of using self-paced reading methods to study deaf readers and to assess how deaf readers respond to two syntactic manipulations. Three groups of participants read the test sentences: deaf readers, hearing monolingual English readers, and hearing bilingual readers whose second language was English. In Experiment 1 , the participants read sentences containing subject-relative or object-relative clauses. The test sentences contained semantic information that would influence online processing outcomes (Traxler, Morris, & Seely Journal of Memory and Language 47: 69–90, 2002 ; Traxler, Williams, Blozis, & Morris Journal of Memory and Language 53: 204–224, 2005 ). All of the participant groups had greater difficulty processing sentences containing object-relative clauses. This difficulty was reduced when helpful semantic cues were present. In Experiment 2 , participants read active-voice and passive-voice sentences. The sentences were processed similarly by all three groups. Comprehension accuracy was higher in hearing readers than in deaf readers. Within deaf readers, native signers read the sentences faster and comprehended them to a higher degree than did nonnative signers. These results indicate that self-paced reading is a useful method for studying sentence interpretation among deaf readers.

The human language system is remarkable in many respects, not least of which is the ability to accommodate more than one system of lexical and syntactic knowledge in the same individual. In fact, it is estimated that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual. However, the cognitive processes that these individuals use to monitor and select the appropriate language for comprehension and production remain unclear. The goal of this dissertation was to asses different theories regarding bilinguals’ ability to control retrieval of linguistic information from long-term memory during language processing. Specifically, the studies described examined how and when bilinguals use language membership information during the activation and selection of lexical representations from each language for integration into sentence context. Chapter 1 describes an experiment that used the temporal precision of event-related potentials (ERPs) to answer two research questions: when language membership information is accessed relative to semantic access (i.e., conceptual retrieval) during word recognition and whether it can be used to modulate the degree of processing in the target and nontarget languages. Results demonstrated that language membership information becomes available prior to animacy information, which allows the bilingual brain to reduce the depth of processing in the nontarget language. A follow-up experiment described in Chapter 2 extended these results, also using the fine-grained temporal information offered by ERPs to establish the time course of influence of language membership information derived from sublexical sources in particular. Results confirmed that bilinguals are sensitive to orthographic regularities that distinguish between languages, even in the absence of lexical information. Furthermore, orthographic language membership information was available prior to lexical access, which may enable the restriction of lexical candidates to the target language early during word recognition. Finally, Chapter 3 describes an experiment designed to investigate the relative influences of semantic and language context on bilingual visual word recognition during reading. Eye movement data were used to determine the time course of activation of target and nontarget language meanings of interlingual homographs (IHs) when embedded in sentences. In a uniform monolingual language context, no influence of the nontarget language meaning of the IH was found early during lexical access. When the semantic context allowed for the integration of the nontarget but not the target language meaning, bilinguals seem to have accessed the nontarget meaning later during lexical access, only after integration of the target language meaning failed. These results suggest that language context may have allowed participants to ‘zoom in’ to the target language such that the nontarget language was less accessible under these conditions. Together, these experiments demonstrate the potential for partially selective lexical access. According to this perspective, the nontarget language is neither inaccessible nor fully active at all times. While the bilingual word recognition system is permeable to nontarget language representations, representations from target and nontarget languages are activated to different degrees according to their relevance to the global language context. In other words, the bilingual language control system is both flexible and dynamic in adjusting the gain of each language according to a particular context.

Syntactic parsing in humans is carried out by mental processes that establish dependencies between words in sentences. Combinatorial processes allow humans to express and understand meanings that go beyond default meaning relationships determined by conceptual world knowledge. In other words, syntax allows us to say things that are surprising. This chapter reviews classical and modern approaches to parsing. These include modular views, under which parsing reflects stages of processing that take place independently of other mental activities, interactive accounts, which posit a closer relationship between different mental processes, and dual‐streams approaches, which suggest that interpretations can be derived simultaneously in different ways by different sub‐processors. The chapter also shows how event‐related potentials and research on bilingual speakers have led to the refinement of theories that were built on the basis of behavioral data from monolinguals.