左侧额下回在句子语义整合加工中的作用

语义整合帮助人们在阅读理解中将小信息块整合成一个完整、连贯的句子意义表达, 是阅读理解中非常重要的认知过程。通过对比40多篇句子加工相关的脑机制研究, 发现左侧额下回在fMRI研究中是参与语义整合加工激活概率最高的区域, 而颞叶及后部是MEG研究中激活概率最高的区域。另外, 左侧额下回是如何参与语义整合、它在内隐和外显语义整合中的机制是否相同、以及这种整合加工与一般的控制性加工、词汇启动的关系都是研究者广泛关注的问题。本文对上述问题进行了详细的综述和讨论。     

Cognitive control and parsing: Reexamining the role of Broca’s area in sentence comprehension

A century of investigation into the role of the human frontal lobes in complex cognition, including language processing, has revealed several interesting but apparently contradictory findings. In particular, the results of numerous studies suggest that left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), which includes Broca’s area, plays a direct role in sentence-level syntactic processing. In contrast, other brain-imaging and neuropsychological data indicate that LIFG is crucial for cognitive control—specifically, for overriding highly regularized, automatic processes, even when a task involves syntactically undemanding material (e.g., single words, a list of letters). We provide a unifying account of these findings, which emphasizes the importance of general cognitive control mechanisms for the syntactic processing of sentences. On the basis of a review of the neurocognitive and sentence-processing literatures, we defend the following three hypotheses: (1) LIFG is part of a network of frontal lobe subsystems that are generally responsible for the detection and resolution of incompatible stimulus representations; (2) the role of LIFG in sentence comprehension is to implement reanalysis in the face of misinterpretation; and (3) individual differences in cognitive control abilities in nonsyntactic tasks predict correlated variation in sentence-processing abilities pertaining to the recovery from misinterpretation.     

What artificial grammar learning reveals about the neurobiology of syntax

In this paper we examine the neurobiological correlates of syntax, the processing of structured sequences, by comparing FMRI results on artificial and natural language syntax. We discuss these and similar findings in the context of formal language and computability theory. We used a simple right-linear unification grammar in an implicit artificial grammar learning paradigm in 32 healthy Dutch university students (natural language FMRI data were already acquired for these participants). We predicted that artificial syntax processing would engage the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) and that this activation would overlap with syntax-related variability observed in the natural language experiment. The main findings of this study show that the left inferior frontal region centered on BA 44/45 is active during artificial syntax processing of well-formed (grammatical) sequence independent of local subsequence familiarity. The same region is engaged to a greater extent when a syntactic violation is present and structural unification becomes difficult or impossible. The effects related to artificial syntax in the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) were essentially identical when we masked these with activity related to natural syntax in the same subjects. Finally, the medial temporal lobe was deactivated during this operation, consistent with the view that implicit processing does not rely on declarative memory mechanisms that engage the medial temporal lobe. In the context of recent FMRI findings, we raise the question whether Broca’s region (or subregions) is specifically related to syntactic movement operations or the processing of hierarchically nested non-adjacent dependencies in the discussion section. We conclude that this is not the case. Instead, we argue that the left inferior frontal region is a generic on-line sequence processor that unifies information from various sources in an incremental and recursive manner, independent of whether there are any processing requirements related to syntactic movement or hierarchically nested structures. In addition, we argue that the Chomsky hierarchy is not directly relevant for neurobiological systems.     

LIFG-based attentional control and the resolution of lexical ambiguities in sentence context

The role of attentional control in lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in two patients with damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and one control patient with non-LIFG damage. Experiment 1 confirmed that the LIFG patients had attentional control deficits compared to normal controls while the non-LIFG patient was relatively unimpaired. Experiment 2 showed that all three patients did as well as normal controls in using biasing sentence context to resolve lexical ambiguities involving balanced ambiguous words, but only the LIFG patients took an abnormally long time on lexical ambiguities that resolved toward a subordinate meaning of biased ambiguous words. Taken together, the results suggest that attentional control plays an important role in the resolution of certain lexical ambiguities - those that induce strong interference from context-inappropriate meanings (i.e., dominant meanings of biased ambiguous words).     

Morphological representation in an endangered,polysynthetic language

This article presents the results from an initial psycholinguistic study of patterns of morphological representation in Dene Suliné (Chipewyan), an indigenous and highly endangered language spoken in Northwestern Canada. Our investigation focused on how morphological knowledge in this polysynthetic language is affected across various levels of language attrition by employing a morphological segmentation task and an off-line lexical decision task. We discuss the manner in which these tasks target different aspects of morphological ability and then turn to methodological issues associated with conducting psycholinguistic studies with language users that differ in levels of age, education, literacy, and bilingualism (Dene- English). Finally, we report on the challenges of doing psycholinguistic research outside the confines of a university setting and make some recommendations to other researchers who might wish to undertake similar studies.     

The Role of the Syllable in the Segmentation of Cairene Spoken Arabic

The syllable as a perceptual unit has been investigated cross linguistically. In Cairene Arabic syllables fall into three categories, light CV, heavy CVC/CVV and superheavy CVCC/CVVC. However, heavy syllables in Cariene Arabic have varied weight depending on their position in a word, whether internal or final. The present paper investigates the role of the syllable in the segmentation of Cariene Arabic. It reports a psycholinguistic study; syllable monitoring that was conducted on 32 Egyptian Arabic native speakers to examine the perceptual role of the syllable in spoken connected language. Theoretical phonological studies have identified Cairene Arabic as a stress-timed language; however, psycholinguistic studies providing evidence for this theoretical finding are scarce. The present study which is a cross modal (visual and auditory) counterbalanced design, gives evidence for the role of the (CVC) syllable in the segmentation of Cairene spoken language.     

Why is that? Structural prediction and ambiguity resolution in a very large corpus of English sentences

Previous psycholinguistic research has shown that a variety of contextual factors can influence the interpretation of syntactically ambiguous structures, but psycholinguistic experimentation inherently does not allow for the investigation of the role that these factors play in natural (uncontrolled) language use. We use regression modeling in conjunction with data from the British National Corpus to measure the amount and specificity of the information available for disambiguation in natural language use. We examine the Direct Object/Sentential Complement ambiguity and the closely related issue of complementizer use in sentential complements, and find that both ambiguity resolution and complementizer use can be predicted from contextual information.     

惯用语理解的多种心理机制：不同的证据

惯用语的理解机制一直是心理语言学研究的热点问题。来自语言学和神经生理学的证据都表明,对惯用语的加工存在多样化趋势,而且加工策略和手段会随个体卷入社会生活的程度而变化。惯用语的加工受加工者自身的隐喻知识以及惯用语本身性质的影响。另外,惯用语加工激活的脑区表明句法和语义分析在惯用语理解中均发挥重要作用,惯用语并没有词汇化,但是不能使用统一的加工模型来整合惯用语的理解机制。惯用语自身性质的多样化导致惯用语理解的多种心理机制。     

A neuronal retuning hypothesis of sentence-specificity in Broca’s area

It is clear that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) contributes in some fashion to sentence processing. While neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence support a domain-general working memory function, recent neuroimaging data show that particular subregions of the LIFG, particularly the pars triangularis (pTri), show selective activation for sentences relative to verbal working memory and cognitive control tasks. These data suggest a language-specific function rather than a domain-general one. To resolve this apparent conflict, I propose separating claims of domain-generality and specificity independently for computations and representations—a given brain region may respond to a specific representation while performing a general computation over that representation, one shared with other systems. I hypothesize that the pTri underlies a language-specific working memory system, comprised of general memory retrieval/attention operations specialized for syntactic representations. There is a parallelism of top-down retrieval function among the phonological and semantic levels, localized to the pars opercularis and pars orbitalis, respectively. I further explore the idea of how such a system emerges in the human brain through the framework of neuronal retuning: the “borrowing” of domain-general mechanisms for language, either in evolution or development. The empirical data appear to tentatively support a developmental account of language-specificity in the pTri, possibly through connections to the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a region that is both anatomically distinct for humans and functionally essential for language. Evidence of representational response specificity obtained from neuroimaging studies is useful in understanding how cognition is implemented in the brain. However, understanding the shared computations across domains and neural systems is necessary for a fuller understanding of this problem, providing potential answers to questions of how specialized systems, such as language, are implemented in the brain.     

Effect of name agreement on prefrontal activity during overt and covert picture naming

In recent neuroimaging studies, various tasks have been used to examine prefrontal cortex involvement in semantic retrieval and selection. One such task, picture naming, has yielded inconsistent results across studies. One potential explanation for this inconsistency is that the magnitude of prefrontal activity during picture naming depends on the extent to which a given picture evokes a single reliable meaning. To test this hypothesis, fMRI activity in the prefrontal cortex was measured while subjects named pictures with either high or low name agreement. In Experiment 1, subjects named black-andwhite line drawings, either covertly or overtly. Across both modalities, we found more left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) activity when the subjects named low-agreement pictures than when they named high-agreement pictures. No significant difference in head movement was detected between the two modalities. In Experiment 2, we replicated the effect of name agreement on LIFG activity during picture naming, using black-and-white photographs. These results provide further support for the idea that the LIFG mediates selection among competing alternatives and suggest a means for understanding the naming deficits observed in nonfluent aphasia.     

A Standardized Set of 380 Pictures for Lebanese Arabic: Norms for Name Agreement,Conceptual Familiarity,Imageability, and Subjective Frequency

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Research on language processing requires language-specific norms of pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli across different psycholinguistic variables....     

A psychophysical investigation of language priming effects in two english-french bwguals

Abstract

This paper attempts to apply psychophysical methodology, usually reserved for the study of low-level perceptual proocsses, to the study of language priming effects in bilingual subjects. Previous research using more traditional psycholinguistic techniques has demonstrated that bilinguals find words in one language harder to recognise when immediately preceded by a word of their other language. In the present experiments, this result was shown to remain robust even after the subjects had become very familiar with the experimental stimuli, thus suggesting that it is a highly automatised, irrepressible effect. The basic language priming effect was shown to be dependent on the neighbourhood characteristics (number of orthographically similar words in each language) of the prime words, but mainly at short prime exposures (>60 msec). At longer durations (428 msec), only the language of the prime (English or French) played a role.     

The role of orthography in speech production revisited

The language production system of literate adults comprises an orthographic system (used during written language production) and a phonological system (used during spoken language production). Recent psycholinguistic research has investigated possible influences of the orthographic system on the phonological system. This research has produced contrastive results, with some studies showing effects of orthography in the course of normal speech production while others failing to show such effects. In this article, we review the available evidence and consider possible explanations for the discrepancy. We then report two form-preparation experiments which aimed at testing for the effects of orthography in spoken word-production. Our results provide clear evidence that the orthographic properties of the words do not influence their spoken production in picture naming. We discuss this finding in relation to psycholinguistic and neuropsychological investigations of the relationship between written and spoken word-production.     

Syntactic reconstruction and reanalysis,semantic dead ends,and prefrontal cortex

The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is crucially has been found to be involved in syntactic processing of various kinds. This study investigates the cortical effects of two types of syntactic processes: (i) Reconstruction in ellipsis (recovery of left-out material given by context, More people have been to Paris than […] to Oslo), using pseudo-elliptical structures (‘dead ends’) as control (More people have been to Paris than I have). (ii) Reanalysis in the face of structural ambiguity in syntactic ‘garden paths’, where the parser initially assigns an incorrect structure and is forced to reanalyze. Reanalysis and reconstruction require additional syntactic processing and were predicted to increase activation in areas otherwise involved in structural computation: LIFG (BA 44, 45), premotor BA 6, and posterior temporal BA 21, 22. This was borne out. The results showed an interaction effect of the types of construction in all three areas reflecting syntactic processing.     

Deriving meaning: Distinct neural mechanisms for metaphoric, literal, and non-meaningful sentences

In this study, we used a novel cognitive paradigm and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates involved in processing three different types of sentences. Participants read either metaphoric (Some surgeons are butchers), literal (Some surgeons are fathers), or non-meaningful sentences (Some surgeons are shelves) and had to decide whether they made sense or not. We demonstrate that processing of the different sentence types relied on distinct neural mechanisms. Activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), BA 47, was shared by both non-meaningful and metaphoric sentences but not by literal sentences. Furthermore, activation of the left thalamus appeared to be specifically involved in deriving meaning from metaphoric sentences despite lack of reaction times differences between literals and metaphors. We assign this to the ad hoc concept construction and open-endedness of metaphoric interpretation. In contrast to previous studies, our results do not support the view the right hemispheric is specifically involved in metaphor comprehension.     

General cognitive functioning and psycholinguistic abilities in children with Smith-Magenis Syndrome

This study is a neuropsycholinguistic research of a rare genetic syndrome with microdeletion that co-occurs with intellectual disabilities and relatively good language abilities, the Smith-Magenis Syndrome (SMS). Nevertheless, there are no cognitive and psycholinguistic profile analyses performed with Spanish population. In this sense, we characterized the cognitive and psycholinguistic profile of a sample with 9 participants with SMS (7 to 11 years of age). The cognitive and psychological profile was assessed with diverse standardized tests: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - IV version, Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Results suggest a specific cognitive and psychological profile characterized by a low IQ and relative good abilities in integrating information, whereas attention problems and hyperactive behaviors were displayed when interacting with the child during the assessment. This work is the first evidence of the cognitive and psycholinguistic profile characterization in patients with SMS in Spain, and will help to guide a more accurate diagnosis and differential intervention in rare genetic diseases with similar cognitive and psycholinguistic profiles.     

The MRC psycholinguistic database

This paper describes a computerised database of psycholinguistic information. Semantic, syntactic, phonological and orthographic information about some or all of the 98,538 words in the database is accessible, by using a specially-written and very simple programming language. Word-association data are also included in the database. Some examples are given of the use of the database for selection of stimuli to be used in psycholinguistic experimentation or linguistic research.     

Fluency,phonology and morphology: a response to the commentaries on becoming literate in different languages

We are delighted at the range of issues raised in the commentaries. The breadth and scope of these serve to make obvious the need for an effective evidence base across languages if we are to optimize the teaching of reading. Our psycholinguistic grain size theory clearly did not pay sufficient attention to the role of morphology in decoding, nor to fluency. The commentaries also highlight the need for considering in more depth the intimate links between phonological and morphological development. All issues raised were highly germane to generating an adequate theoretical framework for the cross‐language collection of relevant evidence in different countries.     

Does simile comprehension differ from metaphor comprehension? A functional MRI study

Since Aristotle, people have believed that metaphors and similes express the same type of figurative meaning, despite the fact that they are expressed with different sentence patterns. In contrast, recent psycholinguistic models have suggested that metaphors and similes may promote different comprehension processes. In this study, we investigated the neural substrates involved in the comprehension of metaphor and simile using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate whether simile comprehension differs from metaphor comprehension or not. In the metaphor and simile sentence conditions, higher activation was seen in the left inferior frontal gyrus. This result suggests that the activation in both metaphor and simile conditions indicates similar patterns in the left frontal region. The results also suggest that similes elicit higher levels of activation in the medial frontal region which might be related to inference processes, whereas metaphors elicit more right-sided prefrontal activation which might be related to figurative language comprehension.     

Neglected Factors Bearing on Reaction Time in Language Production

The input to phonological reasoning are alternations, that is, variations in the pronunciation of related words, such as in electri[k] - electri[s]-ity. But phonologists cannot agree what counts as a relevant alternation: the issue is highly contentious despite a research record of over 50 years. We believe that the experimental setup presented may contribute to this debate based on a kind of evidence that was not brought to bear to date. Our experiment was thus designed to distinguish between alternations where phonological computation plays no role, and those where it has contributed to language production. The design manipulates two factors that to date have not been considered in experimental studies of language production: linguistic complexity and alternation specificity. The former is understood as extra processing demands issued by two types of linguistic activity, morphosyntactic and phonological. Our results show that reaction time latencies are longer when participants are burdened with both morphosyntactic and phonological tasks than when they carry out just a morphosyntactic task, and they are still shorter in absence of both types of demands. These results allowed us to address alternation specificity, that is, the fact that different alternations (within a language or across languages) may be driven by different production routines (an idea that is consensual among linguists but underdeveloped in the psycholinguistic literature). Our study shows that four different alternations in French produce alternation-specific signatures in reaction time latencies. These findings may thus redound to the advantage of psycholinguistic studies by identifying two new factors, as well as produce results that speak to the linguistic quarrels.