Chapter 11 Language

Question 1

The Mental Lexicon

Answer 1

1. Semantic information
   - the meaning of words
2. Syntactic information
   - how words are combined to create new meaning
3. Word forms
   - orthographic (visual) and phonological (sound) structure of words
   - mental lexicon as a dictionary
   - not born with this information; depends on the language you grow up speaking
   - the information is readily available; when people are speaking we can basically instantly understand them

Question 2

Semantic Network

Answer 2

• words are connected by associations; the more related the words the closer the connection
• when you think of the word car it partially activates the word street and truck
• helps us understand how we can think of words
• when you are trying to think of a word, for example truck, you may think of car and bus and eventually think of oh truck is the word I am looking for
  1. Consistent with the Semantic Priming Effect
• if the target is a real word and semantically related to prime, you are faster to recognize that flower is the real word
  2. Semantic paraphasia
• when people use the wrong word
• Wernicke’s aphasia
• the incorrect word is not a random word but is associated with the actual word you intend to use
• milk comes from horses rather than cows or milk comes from animals with cows
• in an attempt to activate the right word you activate the associated words
  3. People who speak multiple languages
• when people have damage to one area of the brain, the deficits don’t affect each language equally
• suggests they are kept separate
• you don’t get confusion between the mental lexicons of each language

Question 3

Anomia’s

Answer 3

Anomia
- inability to name objects, but can tell what they are used for
Category-Specific Anomia
- Animate vs. inanimate distinction

Question 4

Three Models for Anomia

Answer 4

1. Physical vs. Functional Properties
   - learning about animals vs learning about tools
   - animals are visual while tools are visual, motor, and tactile associations
   - where this semantic information is stored depends on how you learn about the objects
2. Fundamental Categorical Organization
   - the reason people can’t name animals but can name scissors is because they are stored in different parts of the brain
   - temporal lobe damage seems to have areas for persons, animals, and tools
   - problems: animate anomia is most common but this theory would mean there is an equal occurrence
3. Complexity of Features
   - when you are trying to find the word in the mental lexicon for animal it requires more complex activation than for non-animals
   - blade and cuts you are going to think of knife whereas with tiger you need more associations to identify it correctly
   - if the mental lexicon is damages you lose some of the associations which is why anomia for animals is more common

Question 5

Language Comprehension

Answer 5

• different mechanisms for spoken vs written word

- phonological input code vs. orthographic input code

Question 6

The Segmentation Problem

Answer 6

• if you look at the sound waves of a sentence, it looks like two words rather than four
• in captain there appears to be two words rather than one
• earlier model doesn’t account for this because it assumes mental lexicon does not get involved until later

Question 7

Top-Down Processing

Answer 7

• brain figures out what the words probably are before the actual word
• the brain perceives letters differently because it uses the mental lexicon to determine what the words are trying to say

Question 8

Top-Down Influences on Speech Comprehension

Answer 8

• you dropped your train ticket example
• you can understand when you have a comprehension of what it is trying to say
• if you don’t have a mental lexicon for a language it will al sound like mumble jumble; you can’t pick out individual words and meanings

Question 9

Brain areas for Speech Perception and Language Comprehension

Answer 9

• primary auditory cortex; high acoustic means they care a lot about the sound properties of what you are listening to
• acoustic sensitivity goes down when you move to other areas and are more focused on things like language content rather than high or low voices
• as you go from high to low acoustic you are going from low to high language sensitivity
• language sounds are phonemes; english uses 44
• when you grow up hearing english you lose sensitivity to phonemes of other languages like Chinese
• babies are sensitive to all phonemes
• superior temporal sulcus is where the brain starts to distinguish language sounds from other sounds
• inferior temporal lobes
• left frontal lobe has neurons with speech comprehension

Question 10

N400 Response

Answer 10

• where does the brain distinguish semantic information
• specific response to the word socks because it doesn’t make sense N400 response
• N400 response negative response 400 ms after the person read the word socks
• the brain goes hey this meaning doesn’t match the semantics
• the third sentence (capitalized) was used to test if the N400 was just due to a surprise rather than semantic mismatch; different response of P560

Question 11

Synaptic Positive Shift

Answer 11

• not a semantic mismatch
• throw and throws are the same lexeme; the idea behind a word or phrase
• results in P600
• suggests that the semantic analysis comes before the syntactic analysis

Question 12

ERPs & Language Deficits

Answer 12

• N400 response is shorter and delayed in low comprehenders
• the brain response to the oddness of socks suggesting the timing is very important, if you throw off the the timing of one step what happens?
• what if the semantic processing isn’t done yet when you are ready to analyze the syntactic information

Question 13

Speech Production

Answer 13

• shape of mouth, vocal cords, diaphragm, pauses between words, breaths, timing is crucial
• self-monitoring arrow; to make sure what you are saying matches the concept you are trying to convey, requires us to understand the language we are trying to put together
• lexical selection involves selecting lemmas; the default version of an idea even though there are different forms of the idea “to dance” “to run” “to climb”
• morphological encoding is changing something to fit the grammar of the sentence; changing run to ran or runs
• morpheme

Question 14

ECoG Recording During Speech Production

Answer 14

• electrodes are actually on the brain

- three fairly distinct phases as this person generates speech

Question 15

Lexical, Grammatical, and Phonological Processing 3 Phases

Answer 15

1. first phase 200 ms
   - lexical frequency, common everyday or one that is not used often but still understood
   - bigger response to rare word than the common word
   - it is easier to find a common word in your mental lexicon and harder to find a rare word
2. second phase 320 ms
   - asked the participant to do different things with the word
   - asked the person to read the word and did not get a big response
   - asked the person to read the word and insert it into the sentence to make it grammatically correct you get a much bigger response regardless if they did or did not have to modify the word
   - morphological encoding
3. third phase 450 ms
   - phonological encoding
   - they found the more syllables the more processing was required at the third phase
   - more to do with how the word sounded rather than the morphological form

Question 16

Aphasias

Answer 16

• any language disorder that is not attributed to some other non-language deficit
• Sarah, stroke survivor, 19
• struggles to get words into sentences and to get them out’- can comprehend what is being said but could not express
• when words were said they were pronounced correctly
• writing words down helps her speech production
• Broca’s expressive aphasia

Question 17

Broca’s (Expressive) Aphasia

Answer 17

1. the case of Leborgne
   - lost the ability to communicate when he was in his 30s
   - couldn’t talk or write but could understand everything
   - could only say one word
   - Hodor GoT had expressive aphasia
   - Broca was brought in to look at his infected leg but dissected his brain after death
   - damage to left inferior frontal lobe
   - we speak with the left hemisphere”
2. Symptoms of Broca’s Aphasia
   - non-fluent telegraphic speech “English class read tingle”
   - sometimes dysarthia; inability to control the muscles involved in articulating speech
   - comprehension normal
   
   • except for agramatism; difficulty in understanding usually complex grammar
   • Broca has a role in syntactic comprehension

Question 18

Where is Broca’s area + other structures implicated in the aphasia

Answer 18

• left inferior frontal lobe is Broca’s area

- most people who have damage in Broca’s typically have damage under that area as well producing expressive aphasia

Question 19

Wernicke’s Area

Answer 19

• found patients that could not comprehend language but did not have difficulty in getting speech out
• damage was in the posterior temporal gyrus in the left hemisphere
• arcuate fasciculus; bundle of white matter that contains axons from cells in Wernicke’s area that travel up and to Broca’s area
• this connection is super important for self monitoring and for repeating back words spoken to us quickly

Question 20

Conduction Aphasia

Answer 20

• Wernicke hypothesized that there was another aphasia resulting from disconnecting the two areas by damaging the arcuate fasciculus
• they do not have trouble understanding and their speech is fluent because there is nothing wrong with the individual areas
• repetition is severely impaired
• mistakes with self-monitoring, semantic paraphasia and pseudo words
• after awhile they are aware they said the wrong word

Question 21

Wernicke’s (Receptive) Aphasia

Answer 21

• if someone who spoke a language you did not understand you would not know there was anything wring with them rather in broca’s aphasia you could tell
• Wernicke’s aphasia patients do not have self-monitoring capabilities
• They can understand tone of voice like question, anger, happiness, this is usually attributed to the right hemisphere so testing for comprehension has to be very careful
• typical symptoms:
  Fluent speech
  Incorrect word use
  Unaware of mistakes
  Difficulty comprehending spoken and written language

Question 22

transcortical motor aphasia

Answer 22

• No problem with comprehension
• Can’t take an idea and express that by generating speech
• Non-fluent speech self-generated speech
• Basically Broca’s but repetition is intact with fluent speech
• loss of connection between motor/broca and b/concept

Question 23

transcortical sensory aphasia

Answer 23

• Can’t convert something heard into an idea in their own head
• Low comprehension
• Fluent speech is not affected
• Basically Wernicke’s but repetition is intact
• Tend to repeat words back
• loss of connection between wernicke/auditory and b/concept

Question 24

Language Network View

Answer 24

• a big chunk of the left hemisphere is a part of the circuitry
• two dorsal networks and two ventral networks can be broadly understood to carry out the language functions
• dorsal network repetition and self monitoring and complex syntax circuit Broca’s
• Ventral network involved in semantic processing and syntactic basic processing

Question 25

Variation in the Organization of Language Areas

Answer 25

• surgeon stimulated different areas of the brain before surgery
• areas where you get naming areas
• surgeon cut around naming error areas
• in Patient 2, cut around Wernicke’s area, but in Patient 1, the same are did no evoke any areas and was cut out
• makes sense that there is tremendous amount of variability in these systems
• not just about genetics but about experience