Chapter 11 Human Processing: Brain, Mind and Language

The Human Brain composed of approximately 10 billion nerve cells neurons Axons: take information
away from cell body Dendrites: bring information to cell body

Sourse: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/cells.html

Pyramidal neuron in the cerebral cortex.

Cerebral cortex

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/functional.html

The Cerebral Hemispheres

Source: http://designweb.otago.ac.nz/grant/psyc/TWOBRAIN.HTML

The Corpus Callosum bundle of nerve fibres that serves as connection between the 2 hemispheres.

Source: http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Split_Brain/Corpus%20Callosum.html

Contralateral Organization of Brain

in general, the left hemisphere controls movement on right side of body, and the right hemisphere controls movement on left side of body

In 95% of right-handers, the left side

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/split.html

Contralateral Organization of the Visual Field

Source: http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/psych9a/lectures/lec2notes.html

Ipsilateral Organization Ipsilateral connections are same side connections Some ipsilateral connections are found in the auditory cortex

Brain Imaging Techniques 1. CT Scans 2. PET Scans 3. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 4. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 5. Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs)

1. Computed Tomography (CT) Scan uses a series of x-ray beams passed through head creates cross-sectional images of the brain shows the structure of the brain, not the function

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/image.html

2. Positron Emisssion Tomography (PET) Scans ? radioactive material is injected or inhaled ? a scanner detects this material when it breaks down ? provides a functional view of the brain

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/image.html

3. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) uses detection of radio frequency signals produced by displaced radio waves in a magnetic field a scanner detects this material when it breaks down provides an anatomical view of the brain

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/image.html

4.functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) detects changes in blood flow to particular areas of brain provides both anatomical and functional view of the brain
Source: http://www.fmri.org/fmri.htm

5. Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs) record electrical signals emitted from different areas of the brain reflect brain activity that is specifically related to some stimulus or other event

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/losterho/erplab.htm

Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs)

Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/losterho/erps.htm

Evidence for Modularity 1. Split brain studies 2. Dichotic Listening studies 3. Aphasia 4. The autonomy of language Plasticity

1. Split Brain Studies corpus callosum severed as treatment for epilepsy visual stimuli are presented simultaneously to the right and left half of a screen, and the physical objects are placed within reach of either the left or right hand of the subject subject fixates on centre of visual display key ring example: key reaches right hemisphere ring reaches only left hemisphere

Split Brain Study Tasks 1.Report what they saw: Subjects within intact corpus callosum: Report seeing key ring Subject with split corpus callosum: Report only seeing word ring v key projected to mute half of brain, and cant be transferred to left (speaking) side of brain 2. Reach out and touch what they saw with left hand Subject with split corpus callosum: touches key v contrast in response if language is used

Split Brain Study Tasks

Source: http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/psych9a/lectures/lec2notes.html

New Developments keep the back of corpus callosum the splenium, in tact seizures relieved, but retains some interhemispheric communication

2. Dichotic Listening Test two different auditory stimuli are presented simultaneously
through earphones to the left and right ears the listeners must report what they hear

Source: http://grove.ufl.edu/~tomomi/Intro/Lecture26/sld005.htm

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2. Dichotic Listening Test (contd) linguistic stimuli are more accurately reported when presented to the right ear eg. boy to right ear; girl to left ear Right-ear advantage non-linguistic stimuli are more accurately reported when presented to the left ear eg. coughing to right ear; laughing to left ear Left-ear advantage

2. Dichotic Listening Test (contd) processing of acoustic signal dependent upon it being perceived as a linguistic or non-linguistic stimuli eg. Syllables contrasting in tone (pitch contours) Thai: a tone language Speakers show a right-ear advantage English: not a tone language Speakers do not show a right-ear advantage

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Speaking a written word

Source:http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html#speak

Speaking a heard word

Source:http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html#speak

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3. Aphasia Brocas Area involved in speech production and syntactic analysis

Brocas Area

Source:http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html Images: Courtesy of Sice of Life

Brocas Aphasia often referred to as agrammatic problems with production: slow, slurred speech difficulty with syntax interpretation requiring syntactic analysis can also be be problematic The dog chased the car. (okay) The cat chased the dog. (confusing)

Brocas Aphasia Speech Sample

Hudson, Grover. 2000. Essential introductory linguistics.Blackwell. Oxford.

Yes ah Monday ah Dad and Peter Hogan, and Dan ah hospital and, ah Wednesday Wednesday, nine oclock And ah Thursday ten oclock ah doctors two two and Doctors and ah teeth

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Wernickes Aphasia comprehension difficulties characterized by verbal fluency without coherence

Source:http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html Images: Courtesy of Sice of Life

Wernickes Aphasia Speech Sample

Hudson, Grover. 2000. Essential introductory linguistics.Blackwell. Oxford.

Well, I had trouble with oh, almost everything that happened form the eh, eh Golly, the word I can remember you know is ah When I had the ah biggest ah that I had trouble with, you that the trouble with, and I still have a the ah different The things I want to say ah..

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Jargon Aphasia substitution of one phoneme for another sable for table some produce long sequences of uninterpretable jargon show that knowledge of sound sequences can be disassociated from meaning Acquired Dyslexia patients who could read prior to lesion substitute when reading word lists may not always substitute same word S-applaud R1-laugh R2-cheers some only have trouble with grammatical morphemes S-which R-no! S-witch R-witch such substitutions indicators of lexical organization

4. The Autonomy of Language Specific Language Impairment (SLI) acquisition of language is impaired, but general intelligence develops normally Contrast development of language, despite delays in other cognitive areas

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5. Plasticity originally thought that connections between neurons developed early, became fixed and could not be changed now some strategies have been developed to overcome language processing problems by modifying brain networks

Learning a New Language Task (PET)

Unpracticed

Task: knows the task, is spelling out Highest brain activity Brocas area - responsible for the motor control of voice,
Source: http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n01/pet/pet.htm

Practiced

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Teaching Reading Strategies : Brain Activity Prior to Intervention

Brain activity of 10 year old boy as he identifies sounds of words reading level: 8 years old

After Intervention

Brain activity after 8 weeks of specialized training reading level increased by 3 years images indicate brain activity changed as well
Source:http://web.sfn.org/content/Publications/BrainBriefings/brain_lang_reading.html

Language Processing Psycholinguistics area of linguistics associated with linguistic performance The Speech Signal problem of segmentation study of spectrograms to learn about acoustic components that reflect articulatory features of speech sounds

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Spectrogram
bead bid bade bed bad

bod

bawd

bode

buhd

booed

Source: http://depts.washington.edu/phonlab/mystery/ Robert Hagiwara

Speech Perception and Comprehension The Mental Lexicon information about sound, spelling, syntactic category and meaning Lexical Access period when information about lexical representation is made available Word Recognition outcome of selection phase

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Top-Down Processing uses semantic and syntactic information to process sensory input subjects make fewer identification errors on word recognition tasks if words occur in: a) sentences rather than in isolation b) meaningful sentences rather than nonsense ones c) grammatical sentences rather than ungrammatical ones subjects understand words even if with missing phonemes Hear wheel in a sentence even if wh is missing Bottom-Up Processing comprehension is based solely on incoming sensory input

Factors Affecting Word Recognition Frequency higher frequency faster recognition Priming Faster recognition for semantically related words doctor nurse recognized faster than flower Real Words Recognized faster than nonsense words Recency more recently used words accessed more quickly

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Syntactic Processing Garden Path Sentences harder to process; require back-tracking 1. The bus driven past the school stopped. 2. The horse raced past the barn fell. 3. The horse that was raced past the barn fell.

Speech Production Planning Unit speech errors demonstrate that the planning unit is greater than phonetic segments or individual words There are many churches in our minister There are many ministers in our church Application and Misapplication of Rules an istem for a system a b urly bird for an early bird for

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