UALL 2004

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

WEEK 3

Language and the brain

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 Learning Outcomes
At the end of this lecture, students will be able to:-
• Define and identify some causes of brain
damage.
• Determine the common types of speech
disorders.
– Aphasias
– Acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia
• Explain the language circuit in human brain.
• Explain some methods of investigating brain and
language.
– Traditional methods
– High-Tec methods
– Psycholinguistics methods
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Cognitive NeuroPsychology (CNP)
• The Basic aims of CNP are:
– To explain the patterns of impaired and
intact cognitive performance seen in the
brain injured patients in terms of damage
to one or more of the components of a
theory or model of normal cognitive
functioning.
– To draw conclusions about normal, intact
cognitive processes from the patterns of
impaired and intact capabilities seen in
brain injured patients. (Ellis & Young,
1988) 3
 Brain damage
• According to the Brain Injury Association of America
(2016), brain damage is an injury that causes the
destruction or deterioration of brain cells.
• Some causes of brain damage:
a. Stroke
b. Trauma, tumours and hydrocephalus
c. Some diseases like multiple sclerosis.

V.DEEPA (201901) 4
 Aphasia
• A language deficit caused by damage to the
brain is called aphasia (i.e. without language
function).
• The term dysphasia means ‘impairment of
language function’.
• The term aphasia is now used almost
synonymously with dysphasia.
• The study of aphasia is the most important tool
in the investigation of language in the brain.
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• By observing and documenting the varieties of
aphasic symptoms, neurolinguists have the best
chance of identifying the major components of
language in the brain.
• The amount and type of aphasic disturbance that a
patient will exhibit depends on:
– How much the brain is damaged?
– Where it is damaged?

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 Broca’s Aphasia

Paul Broca

• Also known as non fluent or motor aphasia.

• Broca’s area is an important part of frontal lobe
which is concerned with motor activity and is
responsible for the articulation of speech.
• Non-fluent patients normally show slow effortful
speech production.
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• The most severe form of non-fluent
aphasia is global aphasia. In this type of
aphasia, the patient is completely mute.
• The less severe form of Broca’s aphasia
is very halting. Patients normally produce
the needed phonemes to say a word.

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 Phonological Disorder
• A patient who wishes to produce the sentence in 1a, would
likely to produce the utterance in 1b.
– 1a. ‘it’s hard to eat with a spoon’
– 1b. ‘[…. har i:t ….wit … pun]
• The ellipsis dot ( … ) between the words in 1b. indicate
hesitation – periods of silence in the production of the
utterance.
• This is a common characteristic of the speech of broca’s
aphasics and it is called Dysprosody.
• The patient simplifies the consonant clusters at the end
of the word ‘hard’ by dropping the [d]. Similarly, in the word
‘spoon’, the word initial cluster is simplified by deleting the
[s]. The patient also changes the /ᶱ/ to /t/ in the word ‘with’.
• The speech errors which results from these sorts of
phonemic error are called Phonemic Paraphasias.

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 Syntactic Disorders.
• In the patient’s utterance in 1b. the patient omits a
number of words that would normally be used in
this utterance. The words that are omitted are: it, is,
to, a - these words are function words.
• Their omission in the speech of Broca’s aphasic
has been referred to as telegraphic speech –
agrammatism .
• In addition to omitting function words, Broca’s
aphasics tend to omit inflectional affixes as – ing,
-ed, -en.
• They also show difficulty judging the grammaticality
of sentences.

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The Loss of Syntactic Competence.
• A close examination of the comprehension of Borca’s
aphasics offers further support to the view that there is a
syntactic component to the disorder.
– 3a. The mouse was chased by the cat.
– 3b. The dog was chased by the ostrich.
– 3c. The cat was chase by the mouse.
• Broca’s aphasics tend to interpret sentences such as 3a
correctly.
• In a sentence such as this, knowledge about typical
behaviour of cats and mice helps the patient to guess
correctly at the meaning of the sentence.
• For sentence 3b., however, in which knowledge of the
world is not a reliable guide to comprehension, patients
are unsure about the meaning.
• Broca’s aphasics tend to interpret sentence 3c. as
though it had the same meaning as 3a.
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• Broca’s aphasics are acutely aware of their
language deficit and are typically frustrated by it.
They have complete understanding of what they
say but unable to say it.
• Broca’s area of the frontal lobe plays extremely
important role in language.

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Broca’s Aphasia Example

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 Wernicke’s Aphasia

Carl Wernicke

• Also known as Fluent or sensory aphasia.

• This type of aphasia was associated with a lesion in the
temporal lobe just below the posterior (rear) portion of
the lateral fissure.
• In severe cases, the lesion could also extend upwards
into the lower portion of the parietal lobe. This area of the
brain is known as Wernicke's Area.
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• The following is the conversation between an examiner (E)
and a Wernicke’s patient (P).
– E: How are you today, Mrs A?
– P: Yes.
– E: Have I tested you before?
– P: No. I mean I haven’t.
– E: Can you tell me what your name is?
– P: No, Don’t I ….. right now there.
– E: What is your address?
– P: Cud I if I can help these this like you know… To make it. We are
seeing fro him. That is my father.
• The structures are totally irrelevant to the examiner’s
questions. It appears that the patient has no
understanding of the question being asked. Her speech
appears to results from a semi-random selection of words
and short phrases.
• In very severe case of this syndrome, phonemes are also
randomly selected and the result is speech that has the
intonational characteristics of English but actually contains
very few real words of the language. This is termed as
jargonaphasia.
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• The type of deficit found in Wernicke’s aphasia
leads us to a greater understanding of the role of
the temporal-parietal areas of the brain known
as Wernicke’s area and to a deeper
consideration of the nature of language
comprehension.
• Wernicke’s Aphasia is primarily a
comprehension deficit. When comprehension
breaks down, most of language ability breaks
down with it.
• Patients cannot express themselves because
they cannot understand what they just said and
use that understanding in the planning of what to
say next.

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Wernicke’s Aphasia Example

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 Acquired Dyslexia and
Dysgraphia
• The impairment of reading ability is called
acquired dyslexia (or acquired alexia).
• The impairment of writing ability is called
acquired dysgraphia (or acquired
agraphia)
• The term acquired indicates that the
patient possessed normal reading and/or
writing ability prior to brain damage.

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 Reading and writing disturbances
in aphasia
• Acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia typically
accompany the aphasic syndromes.
• Broca’s aphasics show writing disturbances that are
comparable to their speaking deficits.
• A patient who cannot pronounce the word spoon will
also not be able to write it correctly. (The resulting
error in writing e.g., poon) is called a paragraphia.
• Wernicke’s aphasics also show reading and writing
deficits that match their deficits in speaking and
listening.
• The writing of Wernicke’s aphasics is formally very
good – typically retain good spelling and handwriting
– what they write, however, like their speaking,
makes little sense.
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 Acquired dyslexia as the
dominant language deficit
• The disruption of reading and writing ability is the
dominant symptom. This typically follows
damage in and around angular gyrus of the
parietal lobe.
• Many theories believe that readers maintain a
set of spelling-to-sound rules that enables
them to read new words aloud – important in the
development of reading ability.
• Phonological dyslexia is a type of acquired
dyslexia in which patient seems to have lost the
ability to use spelling-to-sound rules – they can
read word that they have seen before.
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Language Circuit

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What happens when you say
a word?
To produce a spoken word, the person first chooses a word
from the mental lexicon. This process of accessing the
lexicon activates Wernicke’s area, which then interprets the
lexical entry, identifying the meaning of the word, how to
pronounce it, and so on. The phonetic information for the
word is sent via the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area.
Then this area determines what combination of the various
articulators is necessary to produce each sound in the word
and instructs the motor cortex which muscles to move.

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 What happens when you
read a word?
To read a word, you first take the stimulus into the
visual cortex via the eyes. The angular gyrus
then associates the written form of the word with an
entry in the mental dictionary, which releases
information about the word into Wernicke’s area.
Wernicke’s area then interprets the entry and
gives you the meaning of the word.

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 What happens when you
understand and repeat a word?
First, the stimulus is brought into the auditory cortex through the
ears. Wernicke’s area is activated and the auditory stimulus is
matched to a word in your mental lexicon. If you have an image or
written form associated with the word, the angular gyrus will
activate the visual cortex and you will have a picture of the item and
its spelling available to you. Meanwhile, Wernicke’s area interprets
the entry from the dictionary and sends the phonetic information
about the word to Broca’s area, which coordinates the necessary
articulatory commands and gives them to the motor cortex to
direct movement of muscles to pronounce the word.

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 Methods of Investigating
Brain and Language
1. Traditional Methods

Post-Mortem
• Post-mortem examination of the brains of patients who had
displayed language disorders while they were alive.
Brain-Injured People
• Observing the language of patients who have had brain
operations – the study of the language of living patients with
severe brain damage caused by accidents.
Electrical Stimulation
• Pioneered by Penfield in the 1950s, involves the electrical
stimulation of cerebral cortex in patients who are conscious
during brain surgery – on being stimulated, patients would
report fro example, childhood events or old songs.
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2. High-Tech Methods

Computerized • Involves using an X-ray source to as o make

Axial Tomography numerous slice scans – to construct 3D image
(CAT) of the whole brain.

• Involves injecting a mildly radioactive substance into the

Positron Emission blood and then tracing the blood-flow patterns within the
Tomography brain – areas of the brain light up in different colors when
(PET) there is an increase in blood flow (increased brain activity)

Magnetic • Measure brain function by taking advantage of

Resonance the increased blood flow in areas of the brain
Imaging (MRI, that are active.
FMRI)

• Measure voltage changes in the brains by

Event-Related electroencephalogram (EEG) where such
Potentials (ERPs) changes are related to sensory, motor or
cognitive events.

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3. Psycholinguistic methods
• Can be used in a wide variety of behavioral
Reaction-time experiments – minimal hardware requirements (a
studies personal computer with some special software such
as E-prime)

• Focuses on the mental mechanisms underlying

Priming cognitive functioning indirectly, without participants of
an experiment being aware of what is being examined.

• Used to examine language processing – using a

Self-paced personal computer, subjects are asked to read a
reading sentence in a word-by-word by pressing a button to
request the next word to appear on the screen.

• Eye movement can be measures accurately – to

Eye tracking identify the point of gaze relative to what a person is
looking at – special instrument (eye tracker)

• To investigate mental representations and functions –

Computational summarizing a certain cognitive operation/setting up a
modeling model of this operation in the form of computer
program.

Thank you  27
 Research Methods Research Methods in Psycholinguistics
and The Neurobiology of Language: A Practical Guide

• 1. Habituation Techniques
• 2. Visual Preference Techniques
• 3. Assessing Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary in Child
Language
• 4. Eye Movement Tracking During Reading
• 5. The Visual World Paradigm
• 6. Word Priming and Interference Paradigms
• 7. Structural Priming
• 8. Conversation Analysis
• 9. Virtual Reality
• 10. Studying Psycholinguistics out of the Lab
• 11. Computational Modeling
• 12. Corpus Linguistics
• 13. Electrophysiological Methods
• 14. Hemodynamic Methods: fMRI and fNIRS
• 15. Structural Neuroimaging
• 16. Lesion Studies
• 17. Molecular Genetic Methods
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