Jurriaan Witteman

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Leiden University

According to Levelt’s language production model, in order to name an object, speakers must first conceptualize and lexicalize the object before its name can be articulated. Conceptualization is conducted through the semantic network that exists at the conceptual level, with the highly activated concept(s) activating lexical items at the lemma-level...

It has been suggested that individual variation in vowel compactness of the native language (L1) and the distance between L1 vowels and vowels in the second language (L2) predict successful L2 vowel acquisition. Moreover, general articulatory skills have been proposed to account for variation in vowel compactness. In the present work, we conceptual...

In the last decades, parenting researchers increasingly focused on the role of fathers in child development. However, it is still largely unknown which factors contribute to fathers’ beliefs about their child, which may be crucial in the transition to fatherhood. In the current randomized within-subject experiment, the effect of nasal administratio...

The underlying mechanisms of paternal responses to infant signals are poorly understood. Vasopressin has previously been proposed to affect these responses. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design (N = 25 expectant fathers), we examined the effect of vasopressin administration on the use of excessive handgrip force during ex...

Perceiving potential threat to an infant and responding to it is crucial for offspring survival and parent-child bonding. Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi-informant reports, this longitudinal study explores the neural basis for paternal responses to threat to infants pre-natally (N = 21) and early post-natally...

Self-perceived word-finding difficulties are common in aging individuals as well as in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Language deficits are difficult to objectify with neuropsychological assessments. We therefore aimed to investigate whether amyloid, an early AD pathological hallmark, is associated with speech-derived semantic complexity. We included 63...

Previous work suggests that infant cry perception is supported by an evolutionary old neural network consisting of the auditory system, the thalamocingulate circuit, the frontoinsular system, the reward pathway and the medial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, gender and parenthood have been proposed to modulate processing of infant cries. The present...

Adult native Dutch speakers tend to have difficulty learning the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast because both English vowels can be assimilated to Dutch /ε/. Two experiments examined how this contrast is acquired by Dutch adults and the relationship between perception and production in this process. In Experiment 1, a four-day perceptual training protocol...

Perceiving potential threat to an infant and responding to it is crucial for offspring survival and parent-child bonding. Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi- informant reported data, this longitudinal study explores the neural basis for paternal protective behavior in fathers prenatally (N = 21) and early postnat...

In a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined the effect of 20 IU intranasal vasopressin on the neural processing of infant crying in 25 fathers-to-be. We explored whether familial background modulates vasopressin effects, and whether vasopressin differentially affects cry processing...

The present study will examine whether individual variation in ERP components during L2 perception predicts subsequent L2 pronunciation proficiency. We will investigate this by examining perception and production of L2 while measuring ERPs, once in the beginning of the first academic year (T1) of Dutch students' classes in English, and once at the...

This poster offers an overview of my current research project and it's results so far. Since we've only been able to analyze a small portion of the entire dataset, the findings in this poster should be considered as preliminary.

This poster offers an overview of my current research project and it's process so far. Since only a small portion of the entire dataset has been analyzed, the data reported in this poster should be considered preliminary.

The vowel quality of Javanese and Sundanese is influenced by phonation types. The acoustic measurements of the differences in phonation between all Javanese and Sundanese vowels have not been instrumentally examined. Evidence suggests that F1 lowering is a common characteristic of vowel quality correlated with the phonation after the slack-voiced s...

In natural languages, two negating elements that cancel each other out (as in not impossible) are logically equivalent to the non-negated word form (in this case, possible). It has been proposed that the function of sentential double negation is to create coherence between sentences containing opposing information. Thus, not impossible is functiona...

Second language (L2) learners encounter difficulties perceiving L2 vowels that are not exhibited in their first language (L1). A growing body of literature has investigated the causes of the perceptual difficulties involving L2 learners from L1 Western languages. The present study, however, mainly concerns with the L2 learners from non-Western lang...

Drugs of abuse stimulate striatal dopamine release and activate reward pathways. This study examined the impact of alcohol and cannabis marketing on the reward circuit in alcohol and cannabis users while sober and intoxicated. It was predicted that alcohol and cannabis marketing would increase striatal activation when sober and that reward sensitiv...

How Javanese (L1) learners of English (L2) produce durational features of vowels has received increasing interest in the study of second language acquisition because the vowel systems are very disparate. The present production experiment attempts to shed light on the interference by Javanese (L1) on English vowel production (L2). The results are di...

The present study investigated the nature of physiological cue reactivity and craving in response to alcohol cues among alcohol-dependent patients (N = 80) who were enrolled in detoxification treatment. Further, the predictive value with regard to future drinking of both the magnitude of the physiological and craving response to alcohol cues while...

Prosody stimuli used for Goerlich et al (2013) in SCAN. Stimuli are disyllabic pseudowords with emotional prosody (sad, neutral, surprise) and linguistic prosody (metric stress). -'Neu' means neutral -'Boo' means anger -'Ver' means suprise. -'1Syl' means stress on the first syllable. -'2syl' means stress on the second syllable.

Prosody stimuli used for Witteman et al. (2014) Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience Explanation of stimulus names: The stimuli are disyllabic pseudowords with emotional prosody (anger, sadness) and linguistic prosody (metric stress on the first or second syllable). - 'boo' means angry prosody; 'Dro' means sad prosody; '1syl' means str...

ALICE-RAP Deliverable D11.3 - "Marketing and Brain Activity"

Recent evidence suggests a relative right-hemispheric specialization for emotional prosody perception, whereas linguistic prosody perception is under bilateral control. It is still unknown, however, how the hemispheric specialization for prosody perception might arise. Two main hypotheses have been put forward. Cue-dependent hypotheses, on the one...

How we perceive emotional signals from our environment depends on our personality. Alexithymia, a personality trait characterized by difficulties in emotion regulation has been linked to aberrant brain activity for visual emotional processing. Whether alexithymia also affects the brain’s perception of emotional speech prosody is currently unknown....

The phenomenon of affective priming has caught scientific interest for over 30 years, yet the nature of the affective priming effect remains elusive. This study investigated the underlying mechanism of cross-modal affective priming and the influence of affective incongruence in music and speech on negativities in the N400 time-window. In Experiment...

It is unclear whether there is hemispheric specialization for prosodic perception and, if so, what the nature of this hemispheric asymmetry is. Using the lesion-approach, many studies have attempted to test whether there is hemispheric specialization for emotional and linguistic prosodic perception by examining the impact of left vs. right hemisphe...

Alexithymia, a condition characterized by deficits in interpreting and regulating feelings, is a risk factor for a variety of psychiatric conditions. Little is known about how alexithymia influences the processing of emotions in music and speech. Appreciation of such emotional qualities in auditory material is fundamental to human experience and ha...