Chapter 11: Language Flashcards
What is prosody and where is it processed?
Prosody = rhythm of language
- processed in superior temporal gyrus
What is anomia?
Inability to find words to label things = tip of the tongue effect
Happens with left hemisphere strokes
What is aphasia?
Broad term of deficits in language comprehension/production
What is dysarthria?
Loss of control of articulatory muscles
What is apraxia?
Deficits in motor planning of articulations. Related to Broca’s aphasia
What is Broca’s / non-fluent aphasia? Name 4 symptoms. And what is possible?
- Slow speech with lack of functional words
- Difficult speech articulation
- No understanding reversible sentences
- Poor syntax/grammar
Sometimes can sing, recite, count. They are aware of their deficits
What is agrammatic aphasia?
Deficit in comprehending grammar. Only most basic forms are comprehended/produced
What is wernicke’s / receptive aphasia?
Normal speech with good grammar and prosdy, but it makes no sense.
Lack of language comprehension
What is the arcuate fasciculus and how does it relate to Broca and Wernicke’s areas? What is conduction aphasia?
Neural fiber tract that connects Broca and Wernicke’s areas
Conduction aphasia = if arcuate fasciculus is damaged, Broca and Wernicke can’t communicate.
- Problems with spontaneous speech, repeating and use of words
- Understand words and can hear own errors, but can’t repair them
What are the fundamentals in spoken language (2) and in written language (2)?
Spoken:
1: phonological form: sound
2: meaning
Written:
1: orthographic form: vision
2: meaning
What is the mental lexicon? Name 3 types of information it holds.
Mental storage of word information
1. Semantics: meanings
2. Syntactics: how to make sentences
3. Word forms: spelling/sound patterns
Name 3 functions of the mental lexicon
- Lexical access: perceptual analysis activates word representations (semantic + syntactic)
- Lexical selection: best match is selected
- Lexical integration: words integrated into sentence and larger context to facilitate understanding
What are 4 principles of organization of the mental lexicon?
- Morphemes (frost - defrost)
- Frequently used words are accessed more quickly
- Phonemes (cat - hat)
- Representations are organized according to semantic relationships
What is semantic paraphasias? What is deep dyslexia?
Errors in word meanings (meaning horse when saying cow)
Deep dyslexia is the same, but then for reading
Why is it for people with aphasia harder to identify features for living things than for non-living things?
Living things are represented by many things that aren’t distinct
Non-living things can be described very specifically
What is the topographic organization of specifying less complex categories vs. very specific individual things?
Non-specific: posterior occipitotemporal
Specific: anteromedial occipitotemporal
What is the segmentation problem and how is it solved?
How we differentiate auditory sound into separate words
- Prosody helps: rhythm/accents of language
From what age do infants start babbling in phonemes of their native language?
Between 6-12 months
Where is spoken word processed? Name the three areas
Heschl’s gyri: main auditory input
Superior temporal sulcus (STS): sound perception
Middle temporal gyrus, angular gyrus: distinguish words from non-words
What is the hierarchical organization of spoken word processing?
Acoustic input: at A1/hesch’s gyri
Word input: spreads from A1 to STS, premotor cortex, parietal regions
The further away from A1, the more sensitive it gets for specific language
What is the main impact of CLSM (connectome based symptom lesion mapping) on language studying?
Has lead to inferring causal relationships between spoken language and the brain areas involved
What are 3 types of visual patterns in written language?
- Alphabetic (western)
- Syllabic (japanese)
- Logographic (chinese)
What is the selfridge model of letter recognition?
Bottum-up and serial process:
- Recognize features and integrate them in a letter
No parallel processing of letters
What is the McClelland model of letter recognition?
Top-down and bottum-up parallel processing on word level
- explains word superiority effect
What is the word superiority effect?
Faster response to words than to non-words. Words are processed as a whole
Where is the VWFA (visual word form area) located and what is alexia?
In occipitotemporal cortex
Alexia = can’t read words, but other language aspects are normal
What are 3 models of word comprehension? For what model is the most evidence available?
- Modular:
- High-level representations can’t influence lower-level ones (bottum-up) - Interactive:
- Context can influence before sensory information is available - Hybrid:
- Lexical access is autonomous and is not influenced by high-level info
- Lexical selection can be influenced by high-level contextual info
Evidence for interactive model
What is syntactic parsing?
Brains assigns syntactic structure to words in a sentence. It doesn’t rely on retrieval of representations of sentences
What is the N400 response related to? What happens with N400 when words are inconsistent with meaning of the sentence? And when there is surprise?
Related to linguistic processes concerning meaning
- High response when inconsistent with meaning
- No response when surprised
What is the relationship between N400 and severe aphasia?
Reduced and delayed N400
What is the P600 response related to? When is there a high response in P600?
Syntactic positive shift (SPS)
- High response in P600 happens when there is a grammatically incorrect sentence
Lesions to what region results in defective syntactic processing?
Lesions in anterior superior temporal cortex and left inferior frontal cortex
What are the three elements of Hagoorts neural model for language comprehension? Where are they located and what is their function?
- Memory
- in temporal lobe
- linguistic knowledge that is encoded in memory systems - Unification
- area just above sylvian fissure
- integration of lexically retrieved information into overall representation
- parallel processing - Control
- Broca, frontal lobe
- relates language to social interactions (conversations)
What are the functions of the 4 pathways of the spoken-sentence comprehension model?
1/2: ventral: comprehending words
3: Dorsal: posterior temporal to frontal: speech preparation
4: Dorsal: Broca to ST gyrus and STS: syntactic processing
What are the 8 steps for word production for a picture of goats according to serial processing (Levelt)?
- Perceive picture
- Concept of goat is activated
- Concept activates representations in mental lexicon + accesses syntactic info
- Lexical selection
- Morphological encoding (put +s for plural)
- Word contains phonological/metrical info for stress pattern/syllables
- Phonological encoding maps phonologic info onto metrical info
- Articulation and sound production
What is the difference between word production models of Levelt and Hickok?
Levelt: serial processing
Hickok: parallel processing in sensory and motor systems
How did language began in human species? Why do humans have language and other species don’t?
It started with gestures.
Humans had a huge change in connectivity between fronto, parietal and temporal areas, which made it possible to have complex language
Does a chimp also have communication specialization in the brain?
Yes, his left hemisphere is dominant in communication, but he doesn’t have the amount of connections to other lobes as humans have
