Broca’s Aphasia

Paul Broca

Language and the Brain

First connections drawn:

Phrenology: A failed attempt to localize cogntive functions in the brain.

Telegrammatic speech

But it is not simply a production deficit:

"The boy ate the cookie"

"Who ate the cookie?" "The boy"

"The boy hit the girl"

"Who kicked whom?" "?????"

Comprehension problems, when syntax is needed!

Meaning, but no syntax.

Meaning and syntax (lesion evidence)

Carl Wernicke

Wernicke’sAphasia

comprehensionlost

Patients with Wernicke's aphasia have problems with understanding and producing meaningful sentences.

However, their speech is fluent and obeys grammatical rules ("Jargon Aphasia").

Sometimes called “Jargon Aphasia”

Taken together, Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia suggest a double dissociation of the cognitive processes underlying:- the production and comprehension of language. - syntax and semantics of language

Language & Thought: Outline

• General Effects of Language on Thought

• Language Specific Effects– Appearance-Reality Distinction– Color Terms– Emotions

Language & Thought

• The way something is described can influence how we think about it.– Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)

• The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.

Language & Thought

• The way something is described can influence how we think about it.– Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)

• The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.

– Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)• The way a problem is described can influence the

salience of potential solutions.

Language & Thought

• The way something is described can influence how we think about it.– Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)

• The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.

– Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)• The way a problem is described can influence the

salience of potential solutions.

– Gelman & Coley (1990)• Children use labels to guide inductive inferences.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Linguistic determinism: Language provides speakers with habitual ways of expression. These influence how speakers perceive the world.– Language determines thought.

• Linguistic relativity: If two languages differ on how they express a concept, speakers of the languages will different on how they think about that concept.– Language differences => thought differences.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Languages carve up reality in different ways.

• Language differences are tacit.– Grammatical differences

• Language differences influence our world view.

Language & Thought: Conclusions

• Linguistic Relativity

Weak Strong

Linguistic Relativity: Evidence

• Hard to test. Need to– Identify a grammatical difference between

languages– Identify a cognitive difference that should

follow from the grammatical difference– Determine whether the cognitive difference

actually occurs

• Direction of causality– Language ==> Thought– Thought ==> Language

Linguistic Relativity: Evidence

• Sera, Bales, & Del Castillo Pintado (1997)

• Appearance-Reality task– Preschoolers fail to distinguish between

temporary and enduring properties

• English & Spanish-speaking children– English: is– Spanish: ser and estar

• Ser refers to permanent properties

• Estar refers to temporary properties

• Both given appearance-reality test– When you look at this lamb now through this

filter, what color is (estar) it?– What color is (ser) the lamb really and truly?

• Another study looked at bilingual children performing the task in English and Spanish

English- and Spanish-speakers

50

60

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80

90

100

Apparent Real

Question

EnglishSpanish

What does it

look like?What color is

it really?

Bilingual Children

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60

70

80

90

100

Apparent Real

Question

In EnglishIn Spanish

Linguistic Relativity: Basic Color Terms

Linguistic Relativity: Color Terms

• Rosch: Linguistic Difference– English: 11 basic color terms

• Black, White, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Brown, Purple, Pink, Orange, Gray

– Dani of New Guinea: 2 basic color terms• Milli, Mola

• Do lexical differences lead to conceptual or perceptual differences?

• Named each of 160 color chips.

Linguistic Relativity: Focal Colors

Memory for Focal Colors

• Dani memorized one chip– Focal (English)

– Non-Focal

• Whorfian Prediction?

Learning New Color Terms

• Dani taught new words for sets of colors– Within Focal Color (English) Groups

– Across Focal Color (English) Groups

• Whorfian Prediction?

Psycholinguists’ Question:

What is relationship of generativegrammar to comprehension andproduction?

Extremely controversial.

1. Early attempts to draw 1:1 mappingwith comprehension failed.

2. Generative grammar may have closer relationship to sentence productionthan to sentence comprehension.

Language and Thought

Q: Do we think in language?

Typical Layman’s response: “Yes”or “Often”.

Philosophers: “No”. (e.g., Fodor)

Additional, "context" information needs to be used.

The ambiguity of the speech stream

For example: Prosody.

Because the boy left the room seemed empty.

Because the boy left, the room seemed empty.

Prosody, the insertion of pauses or modulations of amplitude, provide additional

information to segment the speech stream.

In written language, this function is carried out by commas, question marks etc.

Language

Domain of the simple feature net with detectors for phonemes, morphemes, and words hierarchically arranged.

But there are some additional complexities...

Language

There is an infinite number of possible sentence structures and meanings to convey. Language is generative! Thus, there is no way there could be a "detector" for every possible sentence. Here we have reached the limits of a simple feature-net. We need to find a way of representing rules to generate and understand all possible sentences (next session!).