CHAPTER 8 || Psycholinguistics: Language, the Mind and the Brain Flashcards
ANOMIC APHASIA
A type of aphasia in which the patient shows inability to find words.
ARCULATE FASCICULUS
The bundle of neurons connecting Broca’s area with Wernicke’s area.
BROCA’S AREA
An area of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain that is believed to play a role in language production.
It is named after Paul Broca, a 19th century French scientist, who first observed its role in language.
BROCA’S APHASIA
A language disorder often resulting from damage to Broca’s area, which is characterized by problems in speech production and the use of grammatical morphemes.
CATEGORICAL PERCEPTION
The perception of speech sounds in terms of phonemic categories, disregarding their physical differences.
CEREBRAL CORTEX
The thin layer of neurons forming an outside covering of the two hemispheres.
CONDUCTION APHASIA
A type of aphasia that may result from damage to the arculate fasciculus.
Patients often experience difficulties in repeating words spoken to them, and in monitoring their own speech.
CONTRALATERAL CONTROL
Refers to the control of one side (left/right) of the body by the opposite hemisphere (right/left) of the brain.
Many bodily sensations are also experienced contralaterally.
DICHOTIC LISTENING TEST
An experimental method used in neurolinguistics in which subjects hear different sounds in the left and right ears.
ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAMS
(EEG)
A record of the electrical activity in the brain resulting from the firing of neurons as detected by electrodes placed on the scalp.
EXCHANGE ERRORS
A speech error in which two elements switch places in the utterance, as in slicely thinned for thinly sliced, where the two lexical items thin and slice have exchanged places.
FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING
(fMRI)
Unlike PET scanning, fMRI is a non-invasive technique.
The brain activity is measured indirectly through changes in oxygen levels in the bloodstream, measure via different magnetic properties of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood.
It is faster, cheaper, provides better spatial resolution, and does not suffer from such severe restrictions on the amount of time, or number of times, a patient can be in the scanner.
GARDEN PATH SENTENCES
A sentence the beginning of which suggests a particular analysis, but by the end this analysis can’t work.
A well known example is The horse raced past the barn fell.
GLOBAL APHASIA
A type of aphasia involving disturbance to all language functions.
LATERALIZATION
The tendency for certain cognitive functions to be performed in one or the other hemisphere of the brain.
LEXICAL LOOKUP
LOCALIZATION
The theory that different areas of the brain are responsible for different cognitive functions.
MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAM
(MEG)
A record of brain activity by the measurement of magnetic fields.
MEGs provide better spatial resolution than EEGs.
NEUROLINGUISTICS
The study of the neurobiology of language.
It is concerned with the brain functions underlying speech and the acquisition of language.
NEURON
A nerve cell, the type of cell found in the brain and nervous system.
POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY
(PET)
A brain scanning technology used to detect the location of brain activity in which a radioactive isotope is injected in the bloodstream.
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
The branch of linguistics concerned with the mental processes involved in production and comprehension of speech, and in the acquisition of language.
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
A hypothesis about the relation between language and thought that was stated in its most explicit form by the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf.
It is sometimes referred to as simply the Whorfian hypothesis since Whorf adopted the most extreme version of the hypothesis.
SLIPS OF THE TONGUE
An unintended divergence from the intended utterance, also called speech error.
SPLIT-BRAIN PATIENTS
Someone whose corpus callosum has been surgically severed to separate the two hemispheres of the brain.
This medical procedure used to be used in the treatment of epilepsy, but is no longer practiced.
SPOONERISMS
A type of speech error involving the exchange (metathesis) of initial segments of lexical words in a sequence, as in our very queer dean when our very dear queen was meant.
Spoonerisms are named after the 19th century Oxford don Reverend William Spooner who is said to have regularly produced such errors.
WADA TEST
A test for determining which hemisphere is dominant in language processing by injecting sodium amytal into the carotid arteries of the neck.
The ipsilateral hemisphere is deactivated, and if this is the language dominant one, speech is affected.
WERNICKE’S AREA
A classic language area of the brain located in the posterior (back) portion of the left hemisphere.
This area is named after Carl Wernicke, the German neurologist who showed that damage to this area gives rise to certain language disorders.
WERNICKE’S APHASIA
The type of aphasia normally resulting from damage to Wernicke’s area, and usually characterized by difficulties in comprehension of speech.
