Antoine Tremblay

Dalhousie University; Saint Mary's University; NovaScape Data Analysis and Consulting · Psychology & Neuroscience; Linguistics

EEG hyperscanning refers to recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data from multiple participants simultaneously. Many hyperscanning experimental designs seek to mimic naturalistic behavior, relying on unpredictable participant-generated stimuli. The majority of this research has focused on neural oscillatory activity that is quantified over hund...

EEG hyperscanning refers to recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data from multiple participants simultaneously. Many hyperscanning experimental designs seek to mimic naturalistic behavior, relying on unpredictable participant-generated stimuli. The majority of this research has focused on neural oscillatory activity that is quantified over hund...

Our goal was to determine the feasibility of using EEG hyperscanning techniques during face-to-face conversation, to detect ERPs time-locked to individual words. Specifically, we aimed to replicate the modulation of the N400 ERP component by lexical frequency as prior studies have consistently reported larger N400s in response to low than high freq...

While much work has investigated brain activity in different language production and perception contexts, practical constraints have meant little is known about brain activity during natural conversation. Yet, conversation is the most fundamental mode of language use — it is how we first learn language, and represents a significant proportion of mo...

Poster to be presented at the neurobiology of language meeting, Quebec City

This study examines processing of native- and Chinese-accented English words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for a set of spoken English words varying in degree of foreign accentedness. Waveform differences emerge for the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) component across the continuum of foreign accentedness. Moreover, these dif...

Procedural memory, which is rooted in the basal ganglia, plays an important role in the implicit learning of motor and cognitive skills. Few studies have examined procedural learning in either Tourette syndrome (TS) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), despite basal ganglia abnormalities in both of these neurodevelopmental disorders....

Neurofeedback training teaches individuals to modulate brain activity by providing real-time feedback and can be used for brain-computer interface control. The present study aimed to optimize training by maximizing engagement through goal-oriented task design. Participants were shown either a visual display or a robot, where each was manipulated us...

Healthy aging has been associated with a global reduction in white matter integrity, which is thought to reflect cognitive decline. The present study aimed to investigate this reduction over a broad range of the life span, using diffusion tensor imaging analyzed with conditional inference random forest modeling (CForest). This approach is sensitive...

A large literature documenting facilitative effects for high frequency complex words and phrases has led to proposals that high frequency phrases may be stored in memory rather than constructed on-line from their component parts (similarly to high frequency complex words). To investigate this, we explored language processing during a novel picture...

Description The main function of the package is to perform backward selection of fixed effects, forward fitting of the random effects, and post-hoc analysis using parallel capabilities. Other func-tionality includes the computation of ANOVAs with upper-or lower-bound p-values and R-squared values for each model term, model criticism plots, data tri...

The present vignette shows how to remove blink and eye-movement artifacts using the icaOcularCorrection version 3.010 or greater. Worked examples are provide as well as the data to run them (available for download from http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/63070/icaOcularCorrection_vignette.zip?sequence=2&isAllowed=y).

Supplementary material for Tremblay & Newman (2015). Modeling nonlinear relationships in ERP data using mixed-effects regression with R examples. Psychophysiology, 52 (2015), 124–139. DOI: 10.1111/psyp.12299. Here we provide a variety of supplementary material related to Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression...

This vignette documents the steps in performing Independent Components Analysis (ICA) based eye-movement correction (HEOG and VEOG) and correction of other known (i.e., recorded) sources of noise (e.g., EMG, ECG, and GSR) in EEG and MEG recordings using package icaOcularCorrection. Please note that the vignette is still under construction. Therefor...

Make file to compile file "eeg_nonlinear_v4.Rnw", which is the Latex file containing R code to produce paper "Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression with R Examples".

In the analysis of psychological and psychophysiological data, the relation-ship between two variables is often assumed to be a straight line. This may be due to the prevalence of the general linear model in data analysis in these fields, which makes this assumption implicitly. However, there are many problems for which this assumption does not hol...

R package EEGLMERdata is available for download from http://hdl.handle.net/10222/22146. Package: EEGLMERdata Version: 0.5 Date: 2013-11-14 Title: Data sets for paper Tremblay & Newman (2013) ``Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression with R Examples'' Author: Antoine Tremblay, Department of Psychology, Dalhousi...

Bibtex file for citations in paper "Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression with R Examples".

Source code for paper "Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression with R Examples" written in LaTeX using Sweave and R. It contains the R code used to generate all of the analyses, tables, and figures presented here (you'll need the data available in package EEGLMERdata for that though). Package EEGLMERdata is ava...

An mp4 movie of the scalp topographies through time for paper "Modelling Non-linear Relationships in ERP Data Using Mixed-effects Regression with R Examples" (can also be downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10222/22146).

Package: LMERConvenienceFunctions Type: Package Title: A suite of functions to back-fit fixed effects and forward-fit random effects, as well as other miscellaneous functions. Version: 2.4 Date: 2013-11-29 Author: Antoine Tremblay, Dalhousie University, and Johannes Ransijn, University of Copenhagen Maintainer: "Antoine Tremblay, Dalhousie Universi...

Package: icaOcularCorrection Type: Package Title: Independent Components Analysis (ICA) based artifact correction. Version: 3.0.0 Date: 2013-07-12 Depends: fastICA Author: Antoine Tremblay, NeuroCognitive Imaging Lab, Dalhousie University Maintainer: Antoine Tremblay <trea26@gmail.com> Description: Removes eye-movement and other types of known (i.e...

This package contains (1) event-related brain potential data recorded from 10 participants at electrodes Fz, Cz, Pz, and Oz (0–300 ms) in the context of Antoine Tremblay's PhD thesis (Tremblay, 2009); (2) ERP amplitudes at electrode Fz restricted to the 100 to 175 millisecond time window; and (3) plotting data generated from a linear mixed-effects...

In some languages more than in others, communicative considerations—such as what a message is about, what information is new or old, and whether this or that participant is in the Speaker's focus of atten-tion—constrain the structure of a sentence. The goal of the present paper is to describe how different Semantic Communicative Structures affect w...

Although Generative and Cognitive grammars both assume that some linguistic forms are stored as wholes while others are strung together from simpler parts, they differ with respect to the units that may be stored in the lexicon, and therefore in the rules that combine them. Within the Generative framework, the determining factor for storage is regu...

We investigated the influence of English proficiency on ERPs elicited by lexical semantic violations in English sentences, in both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers who learned English in adulthood. All participants were administered a standardized test of English proficiency, and data were analyzed using linear mixed effects (LME...

The present study investigates the processing and production of four-word sequences such as I don’t really know , at the age of , and I think it’s the . Specifically, we investigate the influence of families of probabilistic measures such as unigram, bigram, trigram, and quadgram frequency of occurrence, logarithmic (log) probability of occurrence,...

The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) posits that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can be largely explained by abnormalities of brain structures that subserve procedural memory. The PDH predicts impairments of procedural memory itself, and that such impairments underlie the grammatical deficits observed in the disorder. Previous studies have in...

This article examines the extent to which lexical bundles (LBs; i.e., frequently recurring strings of words that often span traditional syntactic boundaries) are stored and processed holistically. Three self-paced reading experiments compared sentences containing LBs (e.g., in the middle of the) and matched control sentence fragments (e.g., in the...

Empirical Evidence for an Inflationist Lexicon

This paper explores the tenability of the hypothesis that lexical bundles (i.e., frequently recurring strings of words that often span traditional syntactic boundaries) are stored and processed holistically. Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis, where sentences containing 4-and 5-word lexical bundles and their...

It is generally accepted that we store representations of words in a mental dictionary, which we call the lexicon. However, what exactly is stored in the mental lexicon remains an open question. For example, do we store the word dog as well as its plural form dogs, or do we only store dog and have a rule (NOUN + -s = plural) to compute the plural f...

Description Removes eye-movements artifacts as well as (a portion of) of other noise using the fastICA package. The correction methods is based on Flexer, Bauer, Pripfl, and Dorffner (2005).

Presentation of an ERP picture naming study in Dutch, looking at regular versus irregular verbs.

Lexical bundles (LBs) are high frequency continuous multi-word strings, which may span phrasal boundaries (e.g., I don’t know whether, don’t worry about it, and in the middle of the). Given their high frequency of use, many researchers have argued that such things are stored and processed as single units. In this thesis, I address the question of w...

Studies of spontaneous speech have shown frequency effects on the amount of reduction produced by speakers, demonstrating that predictability facilitates production of a target word [Shi et al. (2005); Jurafsky et al. (2001); Bell et al. (2003)]. This paper investigates the amount of reduction produced in laboratory recorded speech and considers th...

This work attempts to bridge the gap between descriptive and theoretically inclined accounts by focussing on four issues concerning Spanish –dor derivation, namely restrictions on the base, noun-based –dor erivations, the nature of the –dor, -tor, -sor, -or, and –dora forms, and the grammatical category of –dor derivations. It is shown that the Spa...

This paper discusses, from a Radical Construction Grammar perspective (Croft 2001), simple Mandarin Chinese SOV sentences, using terminology developed by Mel'čuk (2001) to account for the Semantic-Communicative Structure of sentences. It is argued here, contrary to what is traditionally thought, that there are three SOV constructions instead of one...

PACLIC 19 / Taipei, taiwan / December 1-3, 2005