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Aleman, A., Formisano, E., Koppenhagen, H., Hagoort, P., De Haan, E. H. F., & Kahn, R. S. (2005). The functional neuroanatomy of metrical stress evaluation of perceived and imagined spoken words. Cerebral Cortex, 15(2), 221-228. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhh124.
We hypothesized that areas in the temporal lobe that have been implicated in the phonological processing of spoken words would also be activated during the generation and phonological processing of imagined speech. We tested this hypothesis using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a behaviorally controlled task of metrical stress evaluation. Subjects were presented with bisyllabic words and had to determine the alternation of strong and weak syllables. Thus, they were required to discriminate between weak-initial words and strong-initial words. In one condition, the stimuli were presented auditorily to the subjects (by headphones). In the other condition the stimuli were presented visually on a screen and subjects were asked to imagine hearing the word. Results showed activation of the supplementary motor area, inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) and insula in both conditions. In the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) strong activation was observed during the auditory (perceptual) condition. However, a region located in the posterior part of the STS/STG also responded during the imagery condition. No activation of this same region of the STS was observed during a control condition which also involved processing of visually presented words, but which required a semantic decision from the subject. We suggest that processing of metrical stress, with or without auditory input, relies in part on cortical interface systems located in the posterior part of STS/STG. These results corroborate behavioral evidence regarding phonological loop involvement in auditory–verbal imagery.
Andrieu, C., Figuerola, H., Jacquemot, E., Le Guen, O., Roullet, J., & Salès, C. (2005). Parfum de rose, odeur de sainteté: Un sermon Tzeltal sur la première sainte des Amériques. Ateliers du LESC, 29, 11-67. Retrieved from http://ateliers.revues.org/document174.html.
Baayen, R. H., & Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2005). Semantic density and past-tense formation in three Germanic languages. Language, 81(3), 666-698. doi:10.1353/lan.2005.0112.
it is widely believed that the difference between regular and irregular verbs is restricted to form. This study questions that belief. We report a series of lexical statistics showing that irregular verbs cluster in denser regions in semantic space. Compared to regular verbs, irregular verbs tend to have more semantic neighbors that in turn have relatively many other semantic neighbors that are morphologically irregular. We show that this greater semantic density for irregulars is reflected in association norms, familiarity ratings, visual lexical-decision latencies, and word-naming latencies. Meta-analyses of the materials of two neuroimaging studies show that in these studies, regularity is confounded with differences in semantic density. Our results challenge the hypothesis of the supposed formal encapsulation of rules of inflection and support lines of research in which sensitivity to probability is recognized as intrinsic to human language.
Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Van der Linden, M., Ter Keurs, M., Dijkstra, T., & Hagoort, P. (2005). Theta responses are involved in lexico-semantic retrieval during language processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 530-541. doi:10.1162/0898929053279469.
Oscillatory neuronal dynamics, observed in the human electroencephalogram (EEG) during language processing, have been related to the dynamic formation of functionally coherent networks that serve the role of integrating the different sources of information needed for understanding the linguistic input. To further explore the functional role of oscillatory synchrony during language processing, we quantified event-related EEG power changes induced by the presentation of open-class (OC) words and closed-class (CC) words in a wide range of frequencies (from 1 to 30 Hz), while subjects read a short story. Word presentation induced three oscillatory components: a theta power increase (4–7 Hz), an alpha power decrease (10–12 Hz), and a beta power decrease (16–21 Hz). Whereas the alpha and beta responses showed mainly quantitative differences between the two word classes, the theta responses showed qualitative differences between OC words and CC words: A theta power increase was found over left temporal areas for OC words, but not for CC words. The left temporal theta increase may index the activation of a network involved in retrieving the lexical–semantic properties of the OC items.
Belke, E., Brysbaert, M., Meyer, A. S., & Ghyselinck, M. (2005). Age of acquisition effects in picture naming: Evidence for a lexical-semantic competition hypothesis. Cognition, 96, B45-B54. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2004.11.006.
In many tasks the effects of frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) on reaction latencies are similar in size. However, in picture naming the AoA-effect is often significantly larger than expected on the basis of the frequency-effect. Previous explanations of this frequency-independent AoA-effect have attributed it to the organisation of the semantic system or to the way phonological word forms are stored in the mental lexicon. Using a semantic blocking paradigm, we show that semantic context effects on naming latencies are more pronounced for late-acquired than for early-acquired words. This interaction between AoA and naming context is likely to arise during lexical-semantic encoding, which we put forward as the locus for the frequency-independent AoA-effect.
Belke, E., Meyer, A. S., & Damian, M. F. (2005). Refractory effects in picture naming as assessed in a semantic blocking paradigm. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 58, 667-692. doi:10.1080/02724980443000142.
In the cyclic semantic blocking paradigm participants repeatedly name sets of objects with semantically related names (homogeneous sets) or unrelated names (heterogeneous sets). The naming latencies are typically longer in related than in unrelated sets. In we replicated this semantic blocking effect and demonstrated that the effect only arose after all objects of a set had been shown and named once. In , the objects of a set were presented simultaneously (instead of on successive trials). Evidence for semantic blocking was found in the naming latencies and in the gaze durations for the objects, which were longer in homogeneous than in heterogeneous sets. For the gaze-to-speech lag between the offset of gaze on an object and the onset of the articulation of its name, a repetition priming effect was obtained but no blocking effect. showed that the blocking effect for speech onset latencies generalized to new, previously unnamed lexical items. We propose that the blocking effect is due to refractory behaviour in the semantic system.
Bien, H., Levelt, W. J. M., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Frequency effects in compound production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(49), 17876-17881.
Four experiments investigated the role of frequency information in compound production by independently varying the frequencies of the first and second constituent as well as the frequency of the compound itself. Pairs of Dutch noun-noun compounds were selected such that there was a maximal contrast for one frequency while matching the other two frequencies. In a position-response association task, participants first learned to associate a compound with a visually marked position on a computer screen. In the test phase, participants had to produce the associated compound in response to the appearance of the position mark, and we measured speech onset latencies. The compound production latencies varied significantly according to factorial contrasts in the frequencies of both constituting morphemes but not according to a factorial contrast in compound frequency, providing further evidence for decompositional models of speech production. In a stepwise regression analysis of the joint data of Experiments 1-4, however, compound frequency was a significant nonlinear predictor, with facilitation in the low-frequency range and a trend toward inhibition in the high-frequency range. Furthermore, a combination of structural measures of constituent frequencies and entropies explained significantly more variance than a strict decompositional model, including cumulative root frequency as the only measure of constituent frequency, suggesting a role for paradigmatic relations in the mental lexicon.
Bonte, M. L., Mitterer, H., Zellagui, N., Poelmans, H., & Blomert, L. (2005). Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology. Clinical Neurophysiology, 16(12), 2765-2774. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2005.08.012.
Objective: Ample behavioral evidence suggests that distributional properties of the language environment influence the processing of speech. Yet, how these characteristics are reflected in neural processes remains largely unknown. The present ERP study investigates neurophysiological correlates of phonotactic probability: the distributional frequency of phoneme combinations. Methods: We employed an ERP measure indicative of experience-dependent auditory memory traces, the mismatch negativity (MMN). We presented pairs of non-words that differed by the degree of phonotactic probability in a codified passive oddball design that minimizes the contribution of acoustic processes. Results: In Experiment 1 the non-word with high phonotactic probability (notsel) elicited a significantly enhanced MMN as compared to the non-word with low phonotactic probability (notkel). In Experiment 2 this finding was replicated with a non-word pair with a smaller acoustic difference (notsel–notfel). An MMN enhancement was not observed in a third acoustic control experiment with stimuli having comparable phonotactic probability (so–fo). Conclusions: Our data suggest that auditory cortical responses to phoneme clusters are modulated by statistical regularities of phoneme combinations. Significance: This study indicates that the language environment is relevant in shaping the neural processing of speech. Furthermore, it provides a potentially useful design for investigating implicit phonological processing in children with anomalous language functions like dyslexia.
Borgwaldt, S. R., Hellwig, F. M., & De Groot, A. M. B. (2005). Onset entropy matters: Letter-to-phoneme mappings in seven languages. Reading and Writing, 18, 211-229. doi:10.1007/s11145-005-3001-9.
Broeder, D., Brugman, H., & Senft, G. (2005). Documentation of languages and archiving of language data at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Linguistische Berichte, no. 201, 89-103.
Broersma, M. (2005). Perception of familiar contrasts in unfamiliar positions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(6), 3890-3901. doi:10.1121/1.1906060.
Brown, A. (2005). [Review of the book The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language by Susan Goldin-Meadow]. Linguistics, 43(3), 662-666.
Brown, P. (2005). What does it mean to learn the meaning of words? [Review of the book How children learn the meanings of words by Paul Bloom]. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14(2), 293-300. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1402_6.
Cho, T., & McQueen, J. M. (2005). Prosodic influences on consonant production in Dutch: Effects of prosodic boundaries, phrasal accent and lexical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 33(2), 121-157. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2005.01.001.
Prosodic influences on phonetic realizations of four Dutch consonants (/t d s z/) were examined. Sentences were constructed containing these consonants in word-initial position; the factors lexical stress, phrasal accent and prosodic boundary were manipulated between sentences. Eleven Dutch speakers read these sentences aloud. The patterns found in acoustic measurements of these utterances (e.g., voice onset time (VOT), consonant duration, voicing during closure, spectral center of gravity, burst energy) indicate that the low-level phonetic implementation of all four consonants is modulated by prosodic structure. Boundary effects on domain-initial segments were observed in stressed and unstressed syllables, extending previous findings which have been on stressed syllables alone. Three aspects of the data are highlighted. First, shorter VOTs were found for /t/ in prosodically stronger locations (stressed, accented and domain-initial), as opposed to longer VOTs in these positions in English. This suggests that prosodically driven phonetic realization is bounded by language-specific constraints on how phonetic features are specified with phonetic content: Shortened VOT in Dutch reflects enhancement of the phonetic feature {−spread glottis}, while lengthened VOT in English reflects enhancement of {+spread glottis}. Prosodic strengthening therefore appears to operate primarily at the phonetic level, such that prosodically driven enhancement of phonological contrast is determined by phonetic implementation of these (language-specific) phonetic features. Second, an accent effect was observed in stressed and unstressed syllables, and was independent of prosodic boundary size. The domain of accentuation in Dutch is thus larger than the foot. Third, within a prosodic category consisting of those utterances with a boundary tone but no pause, tokens with syntactically defined Phonological Phrase boundaries could be differentiated from the other tokens. This syntactic influence on prosodic phrasing implies the existence of an intermediate-level phrase in the prosodic hierarchy of Dutch.
Cho, T. (2005). Prosodic strengthening and featural enhancement: Evidence from acoustic and articulatory realizations of /a,i/ in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(6), 3867-3878. doi:10.1121/1.1861893.
Coombs, P. J., Graham, S. A., Drickamer, K., & Taylor, M. E. (2005). Selective binding of the scavenger receptor C-type lectin to Lewisx trisaccharide and related glycan ligands. The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 280, 22993-22999. doi:10.1074/jbc.M504197200.
The scavenger receptor C-type lectin (SRCL) is an endothelial receptor that is similar in organization to type A scavenger receptors for modified low density lipoproteins but contains a C-type carbohydrate-recognition domain (CRD). Fragments of the receptor consisting of the entire extracellular domain and the CRD have been expressed and characterized. The extracellular domain is a trimer held together by collagen-like and coiled-coil domains adjacent to the CRD. The amino acid sequence of the CRD is very similar to the CRD of the asialoglycoprotein receptor and other galactose-specific receptors, but SRCL binds selectively to asialo-orosomucoid rather than generally to asialoglycoproteins. Screening of a glycan array and further quantitative binding studies indicate that this selectivity results from high affinity binding to glycans bearing the Lewis(x) trisaccharide. Thus, SRCL shares with the dendritic cell receptor DC-SIGN the ability to bind the Lewis(x) epitope. However, it does so in a fundamentally different way, making a primary binding interaction with the galactose moiety of the glycan rather than the fucose residue. SRCL shares with the asialoglycoprotein receptor the ability to mediate endocytosis and degradation of glycoprotein ligands. These studies suggest that SRCL might be involved in selective clearance of specific desialylated glycoproteins from circulation and/or interaction of cells bearing Lewis(x)-type structures with the vascular endothelium.
Cronin, K. A., Kurian, A. V., & Snowdon, C. T. (2005). Cooperative problem solving in a cooperatively breeding primate. Animal Behaviour, 69, 133-142. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2004.02.024.
We investigated cooperative problem solving in unrelated pairs of the cooperatively breeding cottontop tamarin, Saguinus oedipus, to assess the cognitive basis of cooperative behaviour in this species and to compare abilities with other apes and monkeys. A transparent apparatus was used that required extension of two handles at opposite ends of the apparatus for access to rewards. Resistance was applied to both handles so that two tamarins had to act simultaneously in order to receive rewards. In contrast to several previous studies of cooperation, both tamarins received rewards as a result of simultaneous pulling. The results from two experiments indicated that the cottontop tamarins (1) had a much higher success rate and efficiency of pulling than many of the other species previously studied, (2) adjusted pulling behaviour to the presence or absence of a partner, and (3) spontaneously developed sustained pulling techniques to solve the task. These findings suggest that cottontop tamarins understand the role of the partner in this cooperative task, a cognitive ability widely ascribed only to great apes. The cooperative social system of tamarins, the intuitive design of the apparatus, and the provision of rewards to both participants may explain the performance of the tamarins.
Cutler, A. (2005). Why is it so hard to understand a second language in noise? Newsletter, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, 48, 16-16.
Cutler, A., Smits, R., & Cooper, N. (2005). Vowel perception: Effects of non-native language vs. non-native dialect. Speech Communication, 47(1-2), 32-42. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2005.02.001.
Three groups of listeners identified the vowel in CV and VC syllables produced by an American English talker. The listeners were (a) native speakers of American English, (b) native speakers of Australian English (different dialect), and (c) native speakers of Dutch (different language). The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). The identification performance of native listeners was significantly better than that of listeners with another language but did not significantly differ from the performance of listeners with another dialect. Dialect differences did however affect the type of perceptual confusions which listeners made; in particular, the Australian listeners' judgements of vowel tenseness were more variable than the American listeners' judgements, which may be ascribed to cross-dialectal differences in this vocalic feature. Although listening difficulty can result when speech input mismatches the native dialect in terms of the precise cues for and boundaries of phonetic categories, the difficulty is very much less than that which arises when speech input mismatches the native language in terms of the repertoire of phonemic categories available.
Dahan, D., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2005). Looking at the rope when looking for the snake: Conceptually mediated eye movements during spoken-word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), 453-459.
Participants' eye movements to four objects displayed on a computer screen were monitored as the participants clicked on the object named in a spoken instruction. The display contained pictures of the referent (e.g., a snake), a competitor that shared features with the visual representation associated with the referent's concept (e.g., a rope), and two distractor objects (e.g., a couch and an umbrella). As the first sounds of the referent's name were heard, the participants were more likely to fixate the visual competitor than to fixate either of the distractor objects. Moreover, this effect was not modulated by the visual similarity between the referent and competitor pictures, independently estimated in a visual similarity rating task. Because the name of the visual competitor did not overlap with the phonetic input, eye movements reflected word-object matching at the level of lexically activated perceptual features and not merely at the level of preactivated sound forms.
Davis, M. H., Johnsrude, I. S., Hervais-Adelman, A., Taylor, K., & McGettigan, C. (2005). Lexical information drives perceptual learning of distorted speech: Evidence from the comprehension of noise-vocoded sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology-General, 134(2), 222-241. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.134.2.222.
Speech comprehension is resistant to acoustic distortion in the input, reflecting listeners' ability to adjust perceptual processes to match the speech input. For noise-vocoded sentences, a manipulation that removes spectral detail from speech, listeners' reporting improved from near 0% to 70% correct over 30 sentences (Experiment 1). Learning was enhanced if listeners heard distorted sentences while they knew the identity of the undistorted target (Experiments 2 and 3). Learning was absent when listeners were trained with nonword sentences (Experiments 4 and 5), although the meaning of the training sentences did not affect learning (Experiment 5). Perceptual learning of noise-vocoded speech depends on higher level information, consistent with top-down, lexically driven learning. Similar processes may facilitate comprehension of speech in an unfamiliar accent or following cochlear implantation.
Dijkstra, T., Moscoso del Prado Martín, F., Schulpen, B., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). A roommate in cream: Morphological family size effects on interlingual homograph recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 7-41. doi:10.1080/01690960444000124.
Dimroth, C., & Lindner, K. (2005). Was langsame Lerner uns zeigen können: der Erwerb der Finitheit im Deutschen durch einsprachige Kinder mit spezifischen Sprachentwicklungsstörung und durch Zweit-sprach-lerner. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 140, 40-61.
Dunn, M., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., Foley, R. A., & Levinson, S. C. (2005). Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science, 309(5743), 2072-2075. doi:10.1126/science.1114615.
Eisner, F., & McQueen, J. M. (2005). The specificity of perceptual learning in speech processing. Perception & Psychophysics, 67(2), 224-238.
We conducted four experiments to investigate the specificity of perceptual adjustments made to unusual speech sounds. Dutch listeners heard a female talker produce an ambiguous fricative [?] (between [f] and [s]) in [f]- or [s]-biased lexical contexts. Listeners with [f]-biased exposure (e.g., [witlo?]; from witlof, "chicory"; witlos is meaningless) subsequently categorized more sounds on an [εf]–[εs] continuum as [f] than did listeners with [s]-biased exposure. This occurred when the continuum was based on the exposure talker's speech (Experiment 1), and when the same test fricatives appeared after vowels spoken by novel female and male talkers (Experiments 1 and 2). When the continuum was made entirely from a novel talker's speech, there was no exposure effect (Experiment 3) unless fricatives from that talker had been spliced into the exposure talker's speech during exposure (Experiment 4). We conclude that perceptual learning about idiosyncratic speech is applied at a segmental level and is, under these exposure conditions, talker specific.
Enfield, N. J. (2005). [Comment on the book Explorations in the deictic field]. Current Anthropology, 46(2), 212-212.
Enfield, N. J. (2005). [Review of the book Laughter in interaction by Philip Glenn]. Linguistics, 43(6), 1195-1197. doi:10.1515/ling.2005.43.6.1191.
Enfield, N. J. (2005). Areal linguistics and mainland Southeast Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, 181-206. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120406.
Enfield, N. J. (2005). Review of the book [The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda]. Linguistics, 43(6), 1191-1197. doi:10.1515/ling.2005.43.6.1191.
Enfield, N. J. (2005). The body as a cognitive artifact in kinship representations: Hand gesture diagrams by speakers of Lao. Current Anthropology, 46(1), 51-81.
Central to cultural, social, and conceptual life are cognitive arti-facts, the perceptible structures which populate our world and mediate our navigation of it, complementing, enhancing, and altering available affordances for the problem-solving challenges of everyday life. Much work in this domain has concentrated on technological artifacts, especially manual tools and devices and the conceptual and communicative tools of literacy and diagrams. Recent research on hand gestures and other bodily movements which occur during speech shows that the human body serves a number of the functions of "cognitive technologies," affording the special cognitive advantages claimed to be associated exclusively with enduring (e.g., printed or drawn) diagrammatic representations. The issue is explored with reference to extensive data from video-recorded interviews with speakers of Lao in Vientiane, Laos, which show integration of verbal descriptions with complex spatial representations akin to diagrams. The study has implications both for research on cognitive artifacts (namely, that the body is a visuospatial representational resource not to be overlooked) and for research on ethnogenealogical knowledge (namely, that hand gestures reveal speakers' conceptualizations of kinship structure which are of a different nature to and not necessarily retrievable from the accompanying linguistic code).
Ernestus, M., & Mak, W. M. (2005). Analogical effects in reading Dutch verb forms. Memory & Cognition, 33(7), 1160-1173.
Previous research has shown that the production of morphologically complex words in isolation is affected by the properties of morphologically, phonologically, or semantically similar words stored in the mental lexicon. We report five experiments with Dutch speakers that show that reading an inflectional word form in its linguistic context is also affected by analogical sets of formally similar words. Using the self-paced reading technique, we show in Experiments 1-3 that an incorrectly spelled suffix delays readers less if the incorrect spelling is in line with the spelling of verbal suffixes in other inflectional forms of the same verb. In Experiments 4 and 5, our use of the self-paced reading technique shows that formally similar words with different stems affect the reading of incorrect suffixal allomorphs on a given stem. These intra- and interparadigmatic effects in reading may be due to online processes or to the storage of incorrect forms resulting from analogical effects in production.
Ernestus, M., Mak, W. M., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Waar 't kofschip strandt. Levende Talen Magazine, 92, 9-11.
Fisher, S. E. (2005). Dissection of molecular mechanisms underlying speech and language disorders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 111-128. doi:10.1017/S0142716405050095.
Developmental disorders affecting speech and language are highly heritable, but very little is currently understood about the neuromolecular mechanisms that underlie these traits. Integration of data from diverse research areas, including linguistics, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, genetics, molecular neuroscience, developmental biology, and evolutionary anthropology, is becoming essential for unraveling the relevant pathways. Recent studies of the FOXP2 gene provide a case in point. Mutation of FOXP2 causes a rare form of speech and language disorder, and the gene appears to be a crucial regulator of embryonic development for several tissues. Molecular investigations of the central nervous system indicate that the gene may be involved in establishing and maintaining connectivity of corticostriatal and olivocerebellar circuits in mammals. Notably, it has been shown that FOXP2 was subject to positive selection in recent human evolution. Consideration of findings from multiple levels of analysis demonstrates that FOXP2 cannot be characterized as "the gene for speech," but rather as one critical piece of a complex puzzle. This story gives a flavor of what is to come in this field and indicates that anyone expecting simple explanations of etiology or evolution should be prepared for some intriguing surprises.
Fisher, S. E. (2005). On genes, speech, and language. The New England Journal of Medicine: NEJM / Publ. by the Massachusetts Medical Society, 353, 1655-1657. doi:10.1056/NEJMp058207.
Learning to talk is one of the most important milestones in human development, but we still have only a limited understanding of the way in which the process occurs. It normally takes just a few years to go from babbling newborn to fluent communicator. During this period, the child learns to produce a rich array of speech sounds through intricate control of articulatory muscles, assembles a vocabulary comprising thousands of words, and deduces the complicated structural rules that permit construction of meaningful sentences. All of this (and more) is achieved with little conscious effort.
Forkstam, C., & Petersson, K. M. (2005). Towards an explicit account of implicit learning. Current Opinion in Neurology, 18(4), 435-441.
Purpose of review: The human brain supports acquisition mechanisms that can extract structural regularities implicitly from experience without the induction of an explicit model. Reber defined the process by which an individual comes to respond appropriately to the statistical structure of the input ensemble as implicit learning. He argued that the capacity to generalize to new input is based on the acquisition of abstract representations that reflect underlying structural regularities in the acquisition input. We focus this review of the implicit learning literature on studies published during 2004 and 2005. We will not review studies of repetition priming ('implicit memory'). Instead we focus on two commonly used experimental paradigms: the serial reaction time task and artificial grammar learning. Previous comprehensive reviews can be found in Seger's 1994 article and the Handbook of Implicit Learning. Recent findings: Emerging themes include the interaction between implicit and explicit processes, the role of the medial temporal lobe, developmental aspects of implicit learning, age-dependence, the role of sleep and consolidation. Summary: The attempts to characterize the interaction between implicit and explicit learning are promising although not well understood. The same can be said about the role of sleep and consolidation. Despite the fact that lesion studies have relatively consistently suggested that the medial temporal lobe memory system is not necessary for implicit learning, a number of functional magnetic resonance studies have reported medial temporal lobe activation in implicit learning. This issue merits further research. Finally, the clinical relevance of implicit learning remains to be determined.
Gayán, J., Willcutt, E. G., Fisher, S. E., Francks, C., Cardon, L. R., Olson, R. K., Pennington, B. F., Smith, S., Monaco, A. P., & DeFries, J. C. (2005). Bivariate linkage scan for reading disability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder localizes pleiotropic loci. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46(10), 1045-1056. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01447.x.
BACKGROUND: There is a growing interest in the study of the genetic origins of comorbidity, a direct consequence of the recent findings of genetic loci that are seemingly linked to more than one disorder. There are several potential causes for these shared regions of linkage, but one possibility is that these loci may harbor genes with manifold effects. The established genetic correlation between reading disability (RD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suggests that their comorbidity is due at least in part to genes that have an impact on several phenotypes, a phenomenon known as pleiotropy. METHODS: We employ a bivariate linkage test for selected samples that could help identify these pleiotropic loci. This linkage method was employed to carry out the first bivariate genome-wide analysis for RD and ADHD, in a selected sample of 182 sibling pairs. RESULTS: We found evidence for a novel locus at chromosome 14q32 (multipoint LOD=2.5; singlepoint LOD=3.9) with a pleiotropic effect on RD and ADHD. Another locus at 13q32, which had been implicated in previous univariate scans of RD and ADHD, seems to have a pleiotropic effect on both disorders. 20q11 is also suggested as a pleiotropic locus. Other loci previously implicated in RD or ADHD did not exhibit bivariate linkage. CONCLUSIONS: Some loci are suggested as having pleiotropic effects on RD and ADHD, while others might have unique effects. These results highlight the utility of this bivariate linkage method to study pleiotropy.
Le Guen, O. (2005). Geografía de lo sagrado entre los Mayas Yucatecos de Quintana Roo: configuración del espacio y su aprendizaje entre los niños. Ketzalcalli, 2005(1), 54-68.
Gullberg, M. (2005). L'expression orale et gestuelle de la cohésion dans le discours de locuteurs langue 2 débutants. AILE, 23, 153-172.
Hagoort, P. (2005). De talige aap. Linguaan, 26-35.
Hagoort, P. (2005). On Broca, brain, and binding: A new framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(9), 416-423. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.07.004.
In speaking and comprehending language, word information is retrieved from memory and combined into larger units (unification). Unification operations take place in parallel at the semantic, syntactic and phonological levels of processing. This article proposes a new framework that connects psycholinguistic models to a neurobiological account of language. According to this proposal the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) plays an important role in unification. Research in other domains of cognition indicates that left prefrontal cortex has the necessary neurobiological characteristics for its involvement in the unification for language. I offer here a psycholinguistic perspective on the nature of language unification and the role of LIFG.
Hagoort, P. (1998). Hersenen en taal in onderzoek en praktijk. Neuropraxis, 6, 204-205.
Haun, D. B. M., Allen, G. L., & Wedell, D. H. (2005). Bias in spatial memory: A categorical endorsement. Acta Psychologica, 118(1-2), 149-170. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.10.011.
Hay, J. B., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Shifting paradigms: Gradient structure in morphology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(7), 342-348. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.002.
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. A vigorous ongoing debate surrounds the question of how such internal structure is best accounted for: by means of lexical entries and deterministic symbolic rules, or by means of probabilistic subsymbolic networks implicitly encoding structural similarities in connection weights. In this review, we separate the question of subsymbolic versus symbolic implementation from the question of deterministic versus probabilistic structure. We outline a growing body of evidence, mostly external to the above debate, indicating that morphological structure is indeed intrinsically graded. By allowing probability into the grammar, progress can be made towards solving some long-standing puzzles in morphological theory.
Huettig, F., & Altmann, G. T. M. (2005). Word meaning and the control of eye fixation: Semantic competitor effects and the visual world paradigm. Cognition, 96(1), B23-B32. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2004.10.003.
When participants are presented simultaneously with spoken language and a visual display depicting objects to which that language refers, participants spontaneously fixate the visual referents of the words being heard [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6(1), 84–107; Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268(5217), 1632–1634]. We demonstrate here that such spontaneous fixation can be driven by partial semantic overlap between a word and a visual object. Participants heard the word 'piano' when (a) a piano was depicted amongst unrelated distractors; (b) a trumpet was depicted amongst those same distractors; and (c), both the piano and trumpet were depicted. The probability of fixating the piano and the trumpet in the first two conditions rose as the word 'piano' unfolded. In the final condition, only fixations to the piano rose, although the trumpet was fixated more than the distractors. We conclude that eye movements are driven by the degree of match, along various dimensions that go beyond simple visual form, between a word and the mental representations of objects in the concurrent visual field.
Indefrey, P. (1998). De neurale architectuur van taal: Welke hersengebieden zijn betrokken bij het spreken. Neuropraxis, 2(6), 230-237.
Indefrey, P., Gruber, O., Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., Posse, S., & Kleinschmidt, A. (1998). Lexicality and not syllable frequency determine lateralized premotor activation during the pronunciation of word-like stimuli: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 7, S4.
Janse, E. (2005). Neighbourhood density effects in auditory nonword processing in aphasia. Brain and Language, 95, 24-25. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2005.07.027.
Janzen, G., & Hawlik, M. (2005). Orientierung im Raum: Befunde zu Entscheidungspunkten. Zeitschrift für Psychology, 213, 179-186.
Johnson, E. K. (2005). English-learning infants' representations of word-forms with iambic stress. Infancy, 7(1), 95-105. doi:10.1207/s15327078in0701_8.
Retaining detailed representations of unstressed syllables is a logical prerequisite for infants' use of probabilistic phonotactics to segment iambic words from fluent speech. The head-turn preference study was used to investigate the nature of English- learners' representations of iambic word onsets. Fifty-four 10.5-month-olds were familiarized to passages containing the nonsense iambic word forms ginome and tupong. Following familiarization, infants were either tested on familiar (ginome and tupong) or near-familiar (pinome and bupong) versus unfamiliar (kidar and mafoos) words. Infants in the familiar test group (familiar vs. unfamiliar) oriented significantly longer to familiar than unfamiliar test items, whereas infants in the near-familiar test group (near-familiar vs. unfamiliar) oriented equally long to near-familiar and unfamiliar test items. Our results provide evidence that infants retain fairly detailed representations of unstressed syllables and therefore support the hypothesis that infants use phonotactic cues to find words in fluent speech.
Jolink, A. (2005). Finite linking in normally developing Dutch children and children with specific language impairment. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 140, 61-81.
Kempen, G. (1973). [Review of the book Psycholinguïstiek by B. Tervoort et al.]. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, 28, 172-174.


This blog is established as part of a research exchange co-operation between VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and IBM Research – Almaden. The blog targets to capture the big picture of the research and development on the field of open artificial intelligence technology (Opentech AI), especially focusing on architecture, related ecosystems, progress and future directions. For more information, please see the first post.


Business Case Document - How And When It Is Prepared?
Business case document is a well structured formal document consisting of supporting information to get approval from some one in the senior management, for implementing a solution to resolve a specific problem or business need in the organization.
Each business case will be triggered from a specific problem or requirement. Hence it is essential to understand the problem from all perspectives.
A well written business case document consists of all possible alternative solutions to a specific problem along with effort, cost and resources required for each alternative solution, in order to enable senior management to choose optimum solution that will best fit the organization business need.
The problem or business need, which is the trigger for this business case.
Also we should record alternative solutions to resolve the problem. Also high level estimations for cost, effort and resources required for each of the alternative solutions. Based on different parameters a recommendation for optimum solution may also be provided.
Cost benefit analysis or project selection methodology used to select this project and writing the business case for the same.
A detailed analysis on how this business case implementation will help in achieving organization strategic goals and objectives.
Finally, other supportive information needs to capture from similar projects or historical data or from different teams in the organization to fine tune the business case document.
Most importantly business case should chart out the benefits in all aspects, the project is going to get to the organization.
The rest of the blog provides explanation on different sections of a typical business case document.
As an example I tried to take a typical and simple business case to traverse through the contents.
Most of us knows about this section as this is primarily to provide a very high level or business level summary to make the senior management to understand the summary of the business case.
As part of executive summary the first section would start with a high level problem statement describing the issue or the business need which triggered this business case.
Optionally alternative solutions will also be described, just in case if there more than one solution identified during the business case.
There may be multiple solutions to address the business need. However only one solution is finally chosen after analyzing several parameters.
So this section will also describe the finally chosen solution with the justification to choose this solution.
This includes the stakeholders identified and involved in making this business case. This typically would be a matrix and tabular format which will capture the stakeholder information.
Typical stakeholder would be the sponsor, project manager (if identified already), business analysts, senior management, and other technical members involved in the solution.
This is the section, you would define the business need or the problem at hand. This section should only talk about the problem or need, which triggered the business case, but not the solution.
Furthermore, this section also captures a high level impact analysis of the implementation of this business case.
This section starts with the overview of optimal or chosen solution. This section contains all technical information pertaining to the solution.
For example, this section will describe the scope undertaken as part of this project. Furthermore it may explain about the AS-IS architecture and TO-BE architecture of the technical implementation.
Also other technical details pertaining to the solution will go here. This is one of the input for the project team to start their technical activities.
Moreover this section also covers the assumptions pertaining to solution.
This section describes the organizations strategic objectives and how this project is going to align to the organization strategic objective and support them.
Here is the place where you provide you high level effort and cost estimates and also the benefits that the project is going to bring to the organization.
A cost benefit analysis would be documented to support the value proposition of the project.
This section contains a high level process of approvals from the relevant stakeholders to approve the business case. This section needs a formal sign-off on this document.
There is a quite a bit of debates on this topic "the differences between project statement of work and the business case".
So I thought of throwing some light on this topic.
First of all, the buyer prepares the project statement of work (SOW) towards the seller. The SOW describes about the work to be done as part of this project.
Seller takes the SOW as one of the primary input for the project to define the scope. More details about the SOW is available in the blog post procurement documents and procurement management process.
On the other hand, preparation of business case document happens much before the start of the project. And it primarily explains the problem or business need which triggered the business case.
A cost benefit analysis is the core component of the business case. Cost benefit analysis would support the value proposition of the project to address the business need.
Finally, we have traversed through the different section of a typical business case template. Also understood what a business case is all about.
Indeed this business case would help the project in understanding the benefits throughout the project duration. However the reality is once the project starts, in majority of the projects, we don't revisit the business case.
So as a best practice the project manager has to take this business case as an input for the project to validate the benefits that the project is going to bring to the organization as a whole.
Finally, we have seen the primary differences between the project statement of work (SOW) and the business case.


text:
12" All Is Wrong LP #44772
Purple Marble
From SPHC Records:
What is a "noisecore song" anyway? 10 songs, 100 songs, 1000 songs, everything blurs right by you as brief moments of expression. Our favorite Japanese grind crew threw two fingers in the air and wrote an 18-minute noisecore song a few years ago and released it as a tape. Granted the difference between 1000 songs in 18 minutes and one singular 18-minute song may be kinda superfluous in this context, but I have come to appreciate the nature of this epic noisecore narrative piece. It's a repetitive song that paints a certain kind of decay and 'falling apart' feeling that, yeah, really does just feel like musical destruction.
1. All Is Wrong 17:32
1. All Is Wrong (Accoustic Mix) 17:32
This limited 12" single is a vinyl re-release of this song that was originally seen as a tape and 3" CD. Normal version on the A-side, and acoustic remix on the B-side. Limited to 300 copies, 1 pressing. Currently out of print.
SPHC Records (2014)
More from Sete Star Sept
Dendritic Arbor Romantic Love LP (12")

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Ciabatta is an Italian white bread made from wheat flour and yeast. Ciabatta is somewhat elongated, broad and flat and is baked in many variations. A toasted sandwich made from small loaves of Ciabatta is known as a panino (plural panini).


Florida Institute of Technology > Dissertations.
Dissertations, Academic > Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Dissertation Proposal Guidebook How to Prepare a Research Proposal and Get It Accepted.
How Interculturally Competent am I? An Introductory Thesis Writing Course for International Students an Introductory Thesis Writing Course for International Students.
by: Florida Institute of Technology.
Florida Institute of Technology safety manual.
CARS, congregational alliances routing seniors a how-to guide.
Guide to NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology.
A short guide to writing a thesis what to do and what not to do.
The Canadian style a guide to writing and editing.


Big Tales fan I see. Cheers!
Rest of the page under construction.
Puzzle Agent - That was actually pretty good! Not a huge fan of the puzzles, but the story kept me invested, and I liked the characters.
Super Mario Bros. - unlocked star save file || Thanks, cuz!
Tekken 7 - added as a prize for winning a SaltyBet community tourney || Thanks, FatAkuma!
Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- - [71%] Replay with MotherKojiro. I'm really appreciating this game more, this time around. The 2.0 content was so worth it!
D2 - [Lv30 run: 480,601 EXP | Time: 145:05:34] Several months later: the most significant video game thing on planet Earth continues. No progress made.


text:
Ligament Injuries to the Knee
There are 4 major ligaments in the knee. Ligaments are elastic bands of tissue that connect bones to each other and provide stability and strength to the joint. The 4 main ligaments in the knee connect the femur (thighbone) to the tibia (shin bone), and include:
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The ligament, located in the center of the knee, that controls rotation and forward movement of the tibia (shin bone).
Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). The ligament, located in the back of the knee, that controls backward movement of the tibia (shin bone).
Medial collateral ligament (MCL). The ligament that gives stability to the inner knee.
Lateral collateral ligament (LCL). The ligament that gives stability to the outer knee.
How do ACL injuries occur?
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the most common ligaments to be injured. The ACL is often stretched and/or torn during a sudden twisting motion (when the feet stay planted one way, but the knees turn the other way). Skiing, basketball, and football are sports that have a higher risk of ACL injuries.
The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) is also a common ligament to become injured in the knee. However, the PCL injury usually occurs with sudden, direct impact, such as in a car accident or during a football tackle.
What are the symptoms of an ACL injury?
Often, a cruciate ligament injury does not cause pain. Instead, the person may hear a popping sound as the injury occurs, followed by the leg buckling when trying to stand on it, and swelling. However, each individual may experience symptoms differently.
The symptoms of a cruciate ligament injury may look like other conditions or medical problems. Always see your doctor for a diagnosis.
How is a knee ligament injury diagnosed?
In addition to a complete medical history and physical exam, diagnostic procedures for a knee ligament injury may include:
X-ray. A diagnostic test that uses invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs onto film to rule out an injury to bone instead of, or in addition to, a ligament injury.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A diagnostic procedure that uses a combination of large magnets, radiofrequencies, and a computer to produce detailed images of organs and structures within the body; can often determine damage or disease in bones and a surrounding ligament or muscle.
Arthroscopy. A minimally-invasive diagnostic and treatment procedure used for conditions of a joint. This procedure uses a small, lighted, optic tube (arthroscope) that is inserted into the joint through a small incision in the joint. Images of the inside of the joint are projected onto a screen; used to evaluate any degenerative and/or arthritic changes in the joint; to detect bone diseases and tumors; to determine the cause of bone pain and inflammation.
Treatment for knee ligament injuries
Medicaine such as ibuprofen
Muscle-strengthening exercises
Protective knee brace (for use during exercise)
Ice pack application (to reduce swelling)


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


These are a quick and easy breakfast treat that my kids love. They ask for them all the time. With only a few ingredients, they are the perfect way to start your morning when you don't have a lot of time. Or you have super hungry kids begging you for something tasty.
1. Mix cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl.
2. Unroll crescents and spoon one Tbsp. of mixture on top. Roll up from wide end to small end. Sprinkle with more cinnamon and sugar mixture.
3. Place on parchment paper lined (or lightly greased) cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes.
4. Mix together glaze ingredients and drizzle on top of crescents.
Thanks, Lena. They are a weekend favorite of ours!!
Hey Nichi! I found your link on Sugar Bee Crafts today! These look so tasty and it's actually something very easy to make! Rather than a main course, it's something easy to do for breakfast with eggs and as a side with dinner! Thanks so much for the idea! Come by Home | Styled anytime and follow me if you see anything you like!
I love cinnamon rolls but hate the mess of making them, these rolls rock and look so easy to assemble...I am going to make me some for sure, thanks for sharing your idea!!!
These look so good! Going to try them soon! Sharing on my Walking on Sunshine FB page tomorrow. Thanks for joining Foodie Friends Friday! Come back on Sunday to VOTE!
Oh how I wish I had some crescent rolls in the fridge, these would definitely be on the breakfast menu this morning. Thank you so much for sharing with Saturday Spotlight last week. I hope you come by today to share more of your awesome creations!
Yum! And so easy! Pinning!
Stuffed crescent rolls are wonderful! Thanks for sharing these at Two Cup Tuesday at Pint Sized Baker.
Thank you for sharing your recipe on Foodie Friends Friday Linky Party. Hope you come back and party with us again next week!
Thank you for sharing with the Clever Chicks Blog Hop, I'll be featuring you this week, so please feel free to grab my Featured button!
Thank you so much for the feature, Karren. I'm thrilled that you chose my recipe.
These look super easy for a quick morning breakfast. Thanks for sharing. Love reading your blog and search for new recipes.
These look delicious and so easy!! Which is right up my alley for breakfast recipes! Stopping by from Saturday Dishes. We, the gals at Coffee With Us 3, are the ones that will be taking over in January. Thanks for linking up and we hope you continue to do so.


Our field operations employees are the ones who make it happen: swinging a hammer, tying rebar, laying concrete, and providing the management necessary for successful projects. Our field operations team leads the performance of craft employees—scheduling, coordinating, and supervising field workers and collaborating with other departments to make sure the project stays on schedule and on budget.
Our carpenters typically build and erect formwork during structural operations and may do anything from installing blocking to hanging doors and hardware during finish operations.
Brasfield & Gorrie superintendents guide all on-site activities during construction. Their duties include staffing, planning, and coordinating all Brasfield & Gorrie and trade partner work. Superintendents work hand-in-hand with the overall project team.
Large and small equipment operators move materials throughout the duration of the project. Excavators, backhoes, dozers, skid steers, and graders are just a few of the types of equipment we use on our jobsites.
Brasfield & Gorrie foremen are exceptional craftspeople in their trades. Each foreman works with his or her specific trade in a leadership role, providing guidance and assistance throughout the project.
Concrete work is vital to our business as a self-perform contractor. Our concrete finishers place and finish large slabs, foundations, and vertical work and point and patch finished work.
Commercial pipefitters lay out, assemble, and install pipe systems. These tradespeople are particularly important on our utility and industrial projects.
Field engineers survey, measure, and lay out locations for structures prior to and during construction. Field engineers generally have a survey assistant (rodman) and may lead a crew of instrument assistants and survey assistants.
In 1997, we created our Field Training Center to offer free training to employees who are motivated to advance. The Field Training Program offers courses in a variety of subjects, including carpentry apprenticeship, field engineering, and foreman training. Field Training courses are offered at the Birmingham and Orlando Craft Training Centers.
Brasfield & Gorrie is accredited in a variety of subjects by the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). NCCER assists construction companies nationwide with training and development programs to help strengthen employees' trades. For more information about NCCER's mission, visit www.nccer.org.


Looking for an international phone card for overseas calling from France - Marseilles to Germany? Comfi sells the best international calling cards that will make your connection with friends, relatives or co-workers advantageous and first-class.
We provide a lot of international phone cards to call from France - Marseilles to Germany.
Partner calling card is a invulnerable, comfortable and simple way to contact recipient abroad. The pivotal trait is the option to refill it. Thus, you can add funds to the account without purchasing a new calling card.


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On the beautiful German North Sea Coast, in the municipality of Stadland, sits Maltbarn. If you're curious about the landscape, then check out the labels on the bottles (all available on the website, here). Sheep in the snow? Check. Waves crashing, autumn leaves and field under a night sky? Check, check and check. Squirrel foraging for nuts? You better believe it. Remote, unspoiled, idyllic—the perfect place to rebel (so to speak) against traditional independent bottlings.
Maltbarn is a family-run business that started with a move onto a farm with a "very big barn attached to it" (hence the name – the simplicity belies the marketing machine that churns perfect brands, catchphrases and other propaganda for other distilleries and bottlers). The family went hunting for casks and soon after, a dream was realised. If only it was that easy, right?
It's been said that "man serves the interest of no creature except himself". With Maltbarn, this appears not to be the case, as the bottles produced are the product of the purest passion for that liquid gold that we call whisky, which is to be commended. These smaller independent bottlers must have that drive to source casks since they lack the reach and buying power of the bigger, more recognised enterprises. Some see the rise of these upstarts as an indication of the demand for change, and a challenge to the established whisky world order. I just think people really want to bottle some great whisky and are ready to wade through the muck to get there. That also means that my quick summary will likely not do justice to the effort that the Maltbarn team put into searching out the casks they use for their bottlings.
All of this should only emphasise to you the dedication involved in putting out bottlings on a consistent basis. It's no easy task, especially while simultaneously running a farm. Keeping everything running smoothly is a massive effort, and don't get me started on the other threats… What if the pigs revolt? They could start planting barley and go into the whisky business for themselves. You laugh, but it's been discussed.
True to the cause, Maltbarn bottlings are produced in very small quantities and you would be hard-pressed to find these readily available, unless you know where to look (and the WhiskyBase online shop is a good start – see below). The 2006 12-year-old Aberlour and 2004 14-year-old Caol Ila, both ex-sherry casks, had an outturn of 155 and 149 bottles, respectively, so I was pretty lucky to be able to try some. Drams were purchased by yours truly in the comfort of a bar in London while plotting my next move—likely, what to have for dinner.
On the nose: Very light and sweet. Soft caramel and demerara sugar. A touch of smoke and cooked apple. However, the pervading element is the spirit, which overpowers the nose and detracts from the balance.
In the mouth: The spirit and light smoke first attract my attention. Some pears over a wood fire. Very dry and quite bitter. The texture and flavour are lacking, which leaves a lot to be desired—it is all rather empty. The finish is very short, but the lack of a cask influence might be a very real contributing factor.
On the nose: This has much more presence – the tobacco smoke is very clear. Musty leather furniture. Light seaweed and the smell of the harbour. There are also medicinal aromas as it breathes. This is like walking through an antique shop off the boardwalk with a grandparent.
In the mouth: Gentler in the mouth than expected. A nice texture with some more brine, but the seaweed is the forward note rather than the saltwater. A hint of sherry with some dry fruit. A medium and oaky finish. The medicinal aromas follow through as well, with a flavour of plasters or closing up an envelope.
Given the multitude of opinions we deal with on a daily basis, it is clear that, for most us, all whiskies are equal, but some whiskies are more equal than others. How we got to this place and whether you agree with the mantra is fodder for a whole other article, but it should provide enough motivation for you to go out and try some of these (and more) for yourself.
There is a lot to love about Maltbarn and you could get behind what they're doing. For me, these were some ways off what I expected of a typical Aberlour and Caol Ila; a great thing, in that I saw another side of the character of each distillery. Unfortunately, what the other side yielded was not particularly exciting.
I could not get over that empty feeling throughout tasting the Aberlour. Not to say I was expecting heaven and earth to move when I drank this, but I needed something more at every level. The lingering disappointment that followed the briefest moment of pleasure puts this in the very middle of the field. The Caol Ila had a bit more to it, some classic notes that hit me right away. There was of course a nice smoky element in the nose and taste. But it was the unexpected bit of extra complexity in the fruitiness and softness that meant this stuck with me a bit more.
So, the most breath-taking whiskies I have ever consumed? These were not. They are just another experience I have the pleasure of sharing with you, the readers of Malt. Yes, I would be disappointed, had I bought a bottle. Yet I will keep exploring until they tell me, "no animal shall drink alcohol". Or was that just "no animal shall drink alcohol to excess", Muriel?
Lead image can only be the work of Noortje. Second image kindly provided by WhiskyBase where you can purchase the Aberlour or the Caol Ila currently – note these are not commission links.