Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
218
result(s) for
"Rothman, Jason"
Sort by:
Third language acquisition and linguistic transfer
\"Is acquiring a third language the same as acquiring a second? Are all instances of non-native language acquisition simply one and the same? In this first book-length study of the topic, the authors systematically walk the reader through the evidence to answer these questions. They suggest that acquiring an additional language in bilinguals (of all types) is unique, and reveals things about the links between language and mind, brain, and cognition, which are otherwise impossible to appreciate. The patterns of linguistic transfer and what motivates it when there are choices (as can only be seen starting in third language acquisition) underscores a key concept in linguistic and psychological sciences: Economy. Overviewing the subfields examining multilingual acquisition and processing, this book offers an expanded systematic review of the field of multilingual morphosyntactic transfer, as well as providing recommendations for the future emerging field\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages
In this introduction to the special issue on Romance languages as heritage languages, I aim to contextualize the scope of this issue and the contribution it makes to the emerging field of linguistic studies to heritage language bilingualism. Key issues pertaining to the empirical study and epistemology of heritage language bilingualism are presented as well as a critical introduction to the individual articles that comprise this issue.
Journal Article
NeuroMatic: An Integrated Open-Source Software Toolkit for Acquisition, Analysis and Simulation of Electrophysiological Data
Acquisition, analysis and simulation of electrophysiological properties of the nervous system require multiple software packages. This makes it difficult to conserve experimental metadata and track the analysis performed. It also complicates certain experimental approaches such as online analysis. To address this, we developed NeuroMatic, an open-source software toolkit that performs data acquisition (episodic, continuous and triggered recordings), data analysis (spike rasters, spontaneous event detection, curve fitting, stationarity) and simulations (stochastic synaptic transmission, synaptic short-term plasticity, integrate-and-fire and Hodgkin-Huxley-like single-compartment models). The merging of a wide range of tools into a single package facilitates a more integrated style of research, from the development of online analysis functions during data acquisition, to the simulation of synaptic conductance trains during dynamic-clamp experiments. Moreover, NeuroMatic has the advantage of working within Igor Pro, a platform-independent environment that includes an extensive library of built-in functions, a history window for reviewing the user's workflow and the ability to produce publication-quality graphics. Since its original release, NeuroMatic has been used in a wide range of scientific studies and its user base has grown considerably. NeuroMatic version 3.0 can be found at http://www.neuromatic.thinkrandom.com and https://github.com/SilverLabUCL/NeuroMatic.
Journal Article
Duration and extent of bilingual experience modulate neurocognitive outcomes
The potential effects of bilingualism on executive control (EC) have been heavily debated. One possible source of discrepancy in the evidence may be that bilingualism tends to be treated as a monolithic category distinct from monolingualism. We address this possibility by examining the effects of different bilingual language experiences on brain activity related to EC performance. Participants were scanned (fMRI) while they performed a Flanker task. Behavioral data showed robust Flanker effects, not modulated by language experiences across participants. However, differences in duration of bilingual experience and extent of active language use predicted activation in distinct brain regions indicating differences in neural recruitment across conditions. This approach highlights the need to consider specific bilingual language experiences in assessing neurocognitive effects. It further underscores the utility and complementarity of neuroimaging evidence in this general line of research, contributing to a deeper understanding of the variability reported in the literature.
•We examined effects of bilingual language experiences on executive control (EC).•Bilinguals of varied experiences were scanned (fMRI) while completing a Flanker task.•Neural recruitment related to EC were modulated by different language experiences.•This was in the absence of equivalent modulations in participants’ task performance.•Specific language experiences lead to distinct domain-general neurocognitive outcomes.
Journal Article
Linguistic immersion and structural effects on the bilingual brain: a longitudinal study
Learning and using additional languages can result in structural changes in the brain. However, the time course of these changes, as well as the factors the predict them, are still not well understood. In this longitudinal study we test the effects of bilingual immersion on brain structure of adult sequential bilinguals not undergoing any language training, who were scanned twice, three years apart. We observed significant increases in grey matter volume in the lower left cerebellum, mean white matter diffusivity in the frontal cortex, and reshaping of the left caudate nucleus and amygdala and bilateral hippocampus. Moreover, both prior length of immersion and L2 age of acquisition were significant predictors of volumetric change in the cerebellum. Taken together, these results indicate that bilingualism-induced neurological changes continue to take place across the lifespan and are strongly related to the quantity and quality of bilingual immersion, even in highly-immersed adult bilingual populations.
Journal Article
Microbiome of the wasp Vespula pensylvanica in native and invasive populations, and associations with Moku virus
Invasive species present a worldwide concern as competition and pathogen reservoirs for native species. Specifically, the invasive social wasp, Vespula pensylvanica , is native to western North America and has become naturalized in Hawaii, where it exerts pressures on native arthropod communities as a competitor and predator. As invasive species may alter the microbial and disease ecology of their introduced ranges, there is a need to understand the microbiomes and virology of social wasps. We used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize the microbiome of V . pensylvanica samples pooled by colony across two geographically distinct ranges and found that wasps generally associate with taxa within the bacterial genera Fructobacillus , Fructilactobacillus , Lactococcus , Leuconostoc , and Zymobacter , and likely associate with environmentally-acquired bacteria. Furthermore, V . pensylvanica harbors—and in some cases were dominated by—many endosymbionts including Wolbachia , Sodalis , Arsenophonus , and Rickettsia , and were found to contain bee-associated taxa, likely due to scavenging on or predation upon honey bees. Next, we used reverse-transcriptase quantitative PCR to assay colony-level infection intensity for Moku virus (family: Iflaviridae), a recently-described disease that is known to infect multiple Hymenopteran species. While Moku virus was prevalent and in high titer, it did not associate with microbial diversity, indicating that the microbiome may not directly interact with Moku virus in V . pensylvanica in meaningful ways. Collectively, our results suggest that the invasive social wasp V . pensylvanica associates with a simple microbiome, may be infected with putative endosymbionts, likely acquires bacterial taxa from the environment and diet, and is often infected with Moku virus. Our results suggest that V . pensylvanica , like other invasive social insects, has the potential to act as a reservoir for bacteria pathogenic to other pollinators, though this requires experimental demonstration.
Journal Article
The direct and indirect effects of environmental toxicants on the health of bumblebees and their microbiomes
Bumblebees ( Bombus spp.) are important and widespread insect pollinators, but the act of foraging on flowers can expose them to harmful pesticides and chemicals such as oxidizers and heavy metals. How these compounds directly influence bee survival and indirectly affect bee health via the gut microbiome is largely unknown. As toxicants in floral nectar and pollen take many forms, we explored the genomes of bee-associated microbes for their potential to detoxify cadmium, copper, selenate, the neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid, and hydrogen peroxide—which have all been identified in floral nectar and pollen. We then exposed Bombus impatiens workers to varying concentrations of these chemicals via their diet and assayed direct effects on bee survival. Using field-realistic doses, we further explored the indirect effects on bee microbiomes. We found multiple putative genes in core gut microbes that may aid in detoxifying harmful chemicals. We also found that while the chemicals are largely toxic at levels within and above field-realistic concentrations, the field-realistic concentrations—except for imidacloprid—altered the composition of the bee microbiome, potentially causing gut dysbiosis. Overall, our study shows that chemicals found in floral nectar and pollen can cause bee mortality, and likely have indirect, deleterious effects on bee health via their influence on the bee microbiome.
Journal Article
Floral and Foliar Source Affect the Bee Nest Microbial Community
Managed pollinators such as the alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata, are essential to the production of a wide variety of agricultural crops. These pollinators encounter a diverse array of microbes when foraging for food and nest-building materials on various plants. To test the hypothesis that food and nest-building source affects the composition of the bee-nest microbiome, we exposed M. rotundata adults to treatments that varied both floral and foliar source in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We used 16S rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequencing to capture the bacterial and fungal diversity of the bee nests. We found that nest microbial communities were significantly different between treatments, indicating that bee nests become inoculated with environmentally derived microbes. We did not find evidence of interactions between the fungi and bacteria within our samples. Furthermore, both the bacterial and fungal communities were quite diverse and contained numerous exact sequence variants (ESVs) of known plant and bee pathogens that differed based on treatment. Our research indicates that bees deposit plantassociated microbes into their nests, including multiple plant pathogens such as smut fungi and bacteria that cause blight and wilt. The presence of plant pathogens in larval pollen provisions highlights the potential for bee nests to act as disease reservoirs across seasons. We therefore suggest that future research should investigate the ability of bees to transmit pathogens from nest to host plant.
Journal Article
Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives
Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature of monolingual comparative normativity has historically contributed to inequalities in many facets of bilingualism research and continues to impede progress on multiple levels. Beyond framing our views on the matter, we offer some epistemological considerations and methodological alternatives to this standard practice that improve empirical rigor while fostering increased diversity, inclusivity, and equity in our field.
Journal Article
Intensity of Nosema ceranae infection is associated with specific honey bee gut bacteria and weakly associated with gut microbiome structure
The honey bee,
Apis mellifera
, pollinates a wide variety of essential crops in numerous ecosystems around the world but faces many modern challenges. Among these, the microsporidian pathogen
Nosema ceranae
is one of the primary detriments to honey bee health.
Nosema
infects the honey bee gut, which harbors a highly specific, coevolved microbiota heavily involved in bee immune function and nutrition. Here, we extend previous work investigating interactions between the honey bee gut microbiome and
N
.
ceranae
by studying experimentally infected bees that were returned to their colonies and sampled 5, 10, and 21 days post-infection. We measured
Nosema
load with quantitative PCR and characterized microbiota with 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. We found significant colony level variation in infection levels, and subtle differences between the microbiota of colonies with high infection levels versus those with low infection levels. Two exact sequence variants of
Gilliamella
, a core gut symbiont that has previously been associated with gut dysbiosis, were significantly more abundant in bees from colonies with high
Nosema
loads versus those with low
Nosema
loads. These bacteria deserve further study to determine if they facilitate more intense infection by
Nosema ceranae
.
Journal Article