Week 7 language Flashcards
What is the diff between adult cog neuro and dev cog neuro?
adult cog neuro contructs models based on damage to pre-existing systems, dev psych constructs models based upon damage to developing systems
Describe acquired vs developmental disorder
acquired indicates a deficit in skill consequent of a neurological injury following a period of normal development, development indicates the deficit was never learned or developed
Describe Marr’s (1976) theory of modularity.
Posited that it would make evolutionary sense that cognitive processes are composed of subparts with mutual independence, that way, if improvement were made through evolution, to one part of the system, there would be no need for consequences throughout the rest of the system. Thus, each module could carry out it’s processing without communicating or overlapping with other modules
What are Fodor’s (1983) fix properties of modules?
(MIMFIF)
Domain specificity: module accepts only a specific input
Information encapsulation: modules operate independently
Mandatory processing: processing is beyond voluntary control, happens automatically
Fast processing is quick
Innately specified: modules though to be part of our genetic endowment
Fixed neural architecture: information is processed by a specific area of the brain
What do more contemporary discussion about modularity add to Fodors theory?
Modules are regarded as semi-independent, with some degree of communication between the modules - evidenced by cross modal priming.
Furthermore, semi-independent acquisition of cognitive skills is also argued. Similar benefits in that abnormalities to one component would not necessarily lead to comprise to the entire system.
Fodor argued that modules are innate. What are some conclusion that can be drawn from this, and what are some arguments against it?
If innate, there should be parrallels between adult and child disorders, and models would apply across the lifespan.
Karmiloff-Smith (1992) argues tha pre-specification of modules might be less than this - argues that we have the blueprint for modules, which the final shape of are determined by environment and genes. aka “Gradual Modularisation”.
Talk about the downstream effects during the acquisition of skills.
Downstream effect may take the appearance of double dissociations. E.g. language deficits may be as a result of early auditory processing. However, can still be informative. E.g. a child that has early auditory impairment but no language deficits may indicate that auditory processing is not required for language dev.
Name some prominent signs of aphasia
paraphasia - substitution for a word by a sound, an incorrect word, or an unintended word
neologism - entirely novel word
nonfluent speech - talking with considerable effort
What is meant by the mental lexicon?
A repository of information about word including semantic (meaning, properties and uses) and syntactic information (how words combine.
What are some differences between fluent and non-fluent aphasia
Fluent: well articulated, normal phrase length, intact syntactic structures, deficits in recognising sounds and verbs, no problems with grammatical markers, damage to left temporal and temporo-parietal regions
Non-fluent: agrammatic speech, effortful and reduced grammatical complexity and phrase length, deficit in supplying grammatical markers, problems in comprehension, damage to left frontal structures
Wernickies =
auditory
Broca =
speech
describe the pathway for speaking a heard word
Primary aud cortex, wernickes, arcuate fasciculus (lesions here have trouble repeating spoken words, but retain comprehension), brocas, motor cortex
describe the pathway for speaking a written word
visual cortex, angular gyrus (lesions has difficulty saying words seen, but no trouble with words heard), wernicke, arcuate fasciculus, brocas, motor cortex
Describe Broca’s aphasia
Usually left inferior frontal lesion (Broac’s area), damage to memory traces of movements required to produce speech, slow effortful, deliberate speech, very simple speech “make dinner”, difficulty in repeating auditory information, perseveration, automatic speech preserved, insight ok, language comprehension is ok, confusion with complex problems e.g. this is the sister of my aunts brother, is that a man or a woman?
Describe Wernicke’s aphasia
“Fluent aphasia”, injury to left superior temporal cortex, region for memory for the constituent sounds of speech - linking of auditory representation of words with their meanings,fluent grammatical but jargon-ish speech. Impaired ability to repeat words and sentences, impaired reading comprehension, impaired writing, intact facial recognition, poor insight
Describe Conduction aphasia
Normal speech comprehension and production, impaired naming ability, intact phonological processing - thus problem is related to process of retrieval, deficits in repetition of non-meaningful words and word sequences, preserved ability to repeat colloquial phrases. Damage to connection between Brocas and Wernicke’s (arcuate fascilulus). When patient hears word, they get a mental image which is sent to Broca’s bypassing the damaged AF, non-word fails to produce mental image, thus patient is unable to reproduce word.
Anomia without semantic impairment
Spared knowledge of meaning, able to give precise information about objects they can’t name - “saw”, phonological output lexicon is impaired
Semantic anomia
spared knowledge of form, able to give name when cued with letter, but result had error, error’s occur with word from similar category (tiger for lion), imprecise semantic analysis, semantic system impaired
Discuss research investigating as to whether the semantic system is organised into categories.
Evidence of category specific deficits in meaning, patients show difficulties in naming ‘living’ things, understanding pictures, and hearing words of living things also. Hypothesis - living things are more complex - BUT opposite dissociation has been found, hypothesis - animate things defined by visual features, inanimate defined by functional properties, BUT - patients have been found that struggle with food and vege, whilst other food and animals e.t.c. were ok, TAKE HOME - Yes, system is organised into semantic categories, but how this works is tricky
Discuss evidence for category specific organisation of grammatical meaning
evidence of selective deficits in specific category in one modality - e.g. oral naming of verbs, vs written naming of verbs, shows that grammatical category may function as one means of organising orthographic and phonological systems, TAKE HOME, yes, system is organised into grammatical categories
