Language 2

Question 1

Aphasia is

Answer 1

defined as a loss of language processing ability after brian damage
Nb: people with aphasia
PWA not aphasics

Question 2

aphasia is not

Answer 2

• An impairment of intellectual functioning
• A psychiatric disturbance
• A primary motor or sensory deficit
• A developmental disorder

Question 3

classic views of aphasia

Answer 3

three principles underlying classic aphasia syndrome :
1: localization of language processors
2: Damage to single processor can produce multiple deficits
3:Language processors localized because of relationship to primary sensory/motor functions

Question 4

Brocas aphasia

Answer 4

difficulty forming complete sentences. omitting certain words, such as “the,” “an,” “and,” and “is” (a person with Broca’s aphasia may say something like “Cup, me” instead of “I want the cup”)

Question 5

wernickes aphasia

Answer 5

Major disturbance of auditory comprehension
* Fluent speech, normal rate, rhythm, intonation
* Disturbances of sounds, structures of words
* Semantic substitutions or paraphasias
* Poor repetition, naming

Someone with Wernicke’s aphasia may have difficulty processing the meaning of spoken words. Regarding speech and comprehension, people with Wernicke’s aphasia may: deliver words in a normal melodic line, even though the content may not make any sense

Question 6

Conduction aphasia

Answer 6

• failure to repeat words
  say words which sound like they should be producing but the word is still wrong (paraphasias - phonemic)

Disconnection syndrome: disruption of arcuate fasciculus (dorsal white matter tract
between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)

Question 7

lichtheiems house model

Answer 7

able to predict existence of new aphasic syndroms from developing his framework

brocas aphasia model = lesion to motor area
wernickes aphasia =lesion to auditory area

Question 8

Transcortical sensory aphasia

Answer 8

cannot comprehend what others say but can speak fluently

• understand whats she wants to say and cant get words out

symptoms:
- disturbance of auditory comprehension
- semantic paraphasias
- fluent grammatical speech
- good repetition

Question 9

Transcortical motor aphasia

Answer 9

dissconnection syndrome: disconection from concept centre from motor and auditory language centres

symptoms:
- good repetition
- severe disturbance in intiating a response

Question 10

classic aphasia syndromes have limitations:

Answer 10

• poor classification of patients
• lesions overlap/variability
• little assistance for treatment planning

Question 11

psycholinguistics and aphasia

Answer 11

• psycholinguistics does not view language in terms of production and comprehension

emphasis language processing operations:
phonology, semantics and syntax

Question 12

phonology is

Answer 12

sounds that conpose language and the rules that govern their combination

Question 13

semantics are

Answer 13

words and their meanings

Question 14

syntax is

Answer 14

methods for combinding indivudal words to convey propositional meaning

Question 15

Phonology - two ways to represent sound in speech

Answer 15

1: Phonemes: smallest unit of sounf that can distinguish one word from another e.g. b in bat and p in pat
allophones are different representations of the swame phoneme e.g. p in pill vs spill

2: phoentic: how phonemes are produced in different contexts i.e. select correct allophone
- international phonetic alphabet
e.g. the difference between english and frnech prononciation of cave

Question 16

psycholinguistic: phonology : people with brocas aphasia have difficulty producing allophone of a phoneme

Answer 16

misspronunciation of a phoneme
poor phonetic ability and phonemic selection/ discrioination

Question 17

psycholinguistic: phonolgy

Answer 17

peo0ple with wernickes aphasia select the wrong phoeneme
substitute phonemes (e.g p for b)
poor phonemic selection/ discrimination BUT presernved phonetic ability

Question 18

psycholinguistics: syntax and brocas aphasia have difficulty with syntax production

Answer 18

Few function words (e.g., verbs) are produced
* Content words preserved (telegraphic speech)
* Evident in spontaneous speech, repetition and writing.
* We now know that these anterior lesions are also associated with comprehension deficits…

Question 19

Psycholinguistics: syntax - agrammatic aphasia

Answer 19

grammatic aphasia (a graded impairment)
* Production and comprehension are impaired, although deficits are
dissociable
* “agrammatism” first coined by Adolf Kussmaul (1877)
* Sentence: “The girl the boy is chasing is tall”
Question: “Who is being chased?”
- Broca’s patients have trouble answering
* Wernicke’s aphasia patients usually do not have difficulties with syntax

Question 20

psycholinguistics:
Word meaning considered separate to lexical (surface) form
* Nb. Simplistic distinction

Answer 20

Lesions resulting in “double dissociation” of lexical and semantic
representations of words:
* Intact semantic knowledge, impaired naming = ‘Tip of-the-
tongue’ & anomic deficits
* Intact naming, impaired semantics = knowledge loss; semantic
dementia/primary progressive aphasia.

Question 21

psycholinguists: semantics:

Answer 21

Semantic processing is relatively spared in anterior lesioned (Broca’s) patients.
* Problems arise for anterior lesion patients when syntax is important in sentence
comprehension (e.g., “Place the blue circle on top of the big red square
* Posterior lesions (Wernickes) are more often characterized by semantic impairments
* Lesions to the anterior temporal lobes (semantic dementia) are also characterized by
semantic impairments, but affect spontaneous (fluent) speech and sentence comprehension
less (Ogar et al., 2011)

Question 22

psycholinguistic vs classical

Answer 22

Classical characterisation of aphasia deficits:
* Broca’s = poor speech production
* Wernicke’s = poor speech comprehension
* Dissociation: comprehension vs. production

Psycholinguistic characterisation:
* Anterior = syntactic processing
* Posterior = semantic processing
* Dissociation: syntax vs. semantics

Question 23

dysarthria and apraxia of speech are

Answer 23

both articulatory motor disorders
- they are not disturbances of language i.e. not aphasias

Question 24

dysarthria

Answer 24

is the disturbance of speech musculature in terms of speed, strength, streadiness, coordination, precision, tone and range of motion
- corticospinal tract is commonly affect
think cerebral paulsey, motor neuron disease

Question 25

apraxia of speech

Answer 25

Articulatory-motor disorder (rare)
* Characterised by
articulatory errors
increasing with increasing
word and phrase length.
* Impairment in the ability to
programme speech
movements
* Debate about the critical
lesion (but most strongly
associated with motor
cortex lesions)

Question 26

Alexia and agraphia

Answer 26

Alexia is the impairment in the ability to read, subtypes:
- surface
- phonological
- deep

agrpahia: impairment in the ability to write

Question 27

dissociable is

Answer 27

alexia without agraphia

Question 28

Jospeh Jules Dejerine

Answer 28

Two patients with left parietal lesions
* One with poor reading and writing
* Alexia with agraphia
* Disturbance to the ‘optical images for
words’
* Second patient with poor reading and
preserved writing
* Alexia without agraphia (i.e. pure alexia)

Question 29

alexia and dual routes to reading

Answer 29

1: phonologicsl route to reading - convert letter strings to sound -> understand the meaning (grapheme to phoneme)

2: direct route -printed words are directly linked to meaning in a visual form system
- when reading irregular words, such as “yacht” or “colonel” or
“pint”

Question 30

alexia subtypes:
surface alexia

Answer 30

surface alexia:
- read by sound, using grapeme to phoneme conversion
- no difficulty with regular words and non words
- difficulty with irregular words e.g. yacht

Question 31

alexia subtypes:
phonological alexia

Answer 31

Alexia subtypes
Phonological Alexia
*Able to read previously learned words (regular or irregular) via the direct route
* Extract the meaning directly from the visual form of the word
* Difficulty reading new words and nonwords (pseudowords)
both regular or irregular
* Associated with lesions to superior temporal lobe, parietal lobe
(supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus

Question 32

deep alexia

Answer 32

Deep Alexia
* Semantic substitutions (related to target word, e.g., “hot” for
“cold”)
* Influence of “imageability” of word: more difficulty with abstract
words
* Better with nouns than verbs (imageability?)
* Visual errors (e.g. skate for scale)
* Damage to both direct and phonological routes

Question 33

brain regions involved in reading are

Answer 33

The “Visual word form area” (VWFA)
* Left fusiform gyrus (lesions produce alexia)
* EEG shows N170 (100-200ms) response to letter vs
symbol strings
* Writing is only ~5000 years old, so how did our brain
evolve a specialised region for orthographic
processing so quickly?
* Reading requires coordinated activation in
areas responsible for visual word form
recognition, phonological and semantic
processing

Question 34

Agraphia is

Answer 34

inability to write or spell whilst writting

subtypes
- central dysgraphia refers to problems accessing orthographic info from lexical stores or from applying sound to spelling rules (dual rule)
- peripheral dysgraphia reflects distorians in written letter formatio spelling or typing (motor programs

Question 35

key features of dysgraphia

Answer 35

in pariatal lobes:

problem with spelling words - as words get longer spelling becomes more difficult