THE REEDUCATION OF APHASICS: THE PROBLEM OF THE REEDUCATION STRATEGIES

Aside from the different schools of therapy in reeducational neuropsychology, an overview of the main strategies used by therapists allows us to distinguish three principal techniques: reestablishing strategies, reorganisation strategies, and the use of mental prothèses. It seems to us less a question of choosing the correct strategy than of carefully considering the different pathological contexts in which they will be applied. The concern with strategies indicates, of course, that there is a certain contradiction in wishing to combine their use in the treatment of the same problem. Reestablishing strategies are undoubtedly adequate in pathological contexts with rapidly evolving semiology and where the qualitative analysis of the recovery seems to indicate that there is in fact a progressive renewal of conditions prior to the cerebral attack. The reorganisation strategies are indicated where it seems possible to circumvent the defective processes in the midst of a functional network with clearly defined contours. Their effectiveness is, it seems, subordinate to the selective nature of the problems. Finally, the strategies involving the use of prothèses should not be attempted except as a last resort where no progress can be expected by direct intervention.     

Emotional face expressions recognition in childhood: developmental markers,age and sex effect

Cognitive Processing - Recognizing emotional face expressions in others is a valuable non-verbal communication and particularly relevant throughout childhood given that children’s language...     

Characterizing cognition in ADHD: beyond executive dysfunction

The hypothesis that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) reflects a primary inhibitory executive function deficit has spurred a substantial literature. However, empirical findings and methodological issues challenge the etiologic primacy of inhibitory and executive deficits in ADHD. Based on accumulating evidence of increased intra-individual variability in ADHD, we reconsider executive dysfunction in light of distinctions between 'hot' and 'cool' executive function measures. We propose an integrative model that incorporates new neuroanatomical findings and emphasizes the interactions between parallel processing pathways as potential loci for dysfunction. Such a reconceptualization provides a means to transcend the limits of current models of executive dysfunction in ADHD and suggests a plan for future research on cognition grounded in neurophysiological and developmental considerations.     

Finger-digit compatibility in Arabic numeral processing

Finger-digit response compatibility was tested by asking participants to identify Arabic digits by pressing 1 of 10 keys with all 10 fingers. The direction of the finger-digit mapping was varied by manipulating the global direction of the hand-digit mapping as well as the direction of the finger-digit mapping within each hand (in each case, from small to large digits, or the reverse). The hypothesis of a left-to-right mental number line predicted that a complete left-to-right mapping should be easier whereas the hypothesis of a representation based on finger counting predicted that a counting-congruent mapping should be easier. The results show that when all 10 fingers are used to answer, a mapping congruent with the prototypical finger-counting strategy reported by the participants leads to better performance than does a mapping congruent with a left-to-right oriented mental number line, both in palm-down and palm-up postures of the hands, and they demonstrate that finger-counting strategies influence the way that numerical information is mentally represented and processed.     

Coordination of voluntary and stimulus-driven attentional control in human cortex

Visual attention may be voluntarily directed to particular locations or features (voluntary control), or it may be captured by salient stimuli, such as the abrupt appearance of a new perceptual object (stimulus-driven control). Most often, however, the deployment of attention is the result of a dynamic interplay between voluntary attentional control settings (e.g., based on prior knowledge about a target's location or color) and the degree to which stimuli in the visual scene match these voluntary control settings. Consequently, nontarget items in the scene that share a defining feature with the target of visual search can capture attention, a phenomenon termed contingent attentional capture. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that attentional capture by target-colored distractors is accompanied by increased cortical activity in corresponding regions of retinotopically organized visual cortex. Concurrent activation in the temporoparietal junction and ventral frontal cortex suggests that these regions coordinate voluntary and stimulus-driven attentional control settings to determine which stimuli effectively compete for attention.     

Inferentialism,degrees of commitment,and ampliative reasoning

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to a practice-based characterization of scientific inference. We want to explore whether Brandom’s pragmatist–inferentialist framework can suitably accommodate several types of ampliative inference common in scientific reasoning and explanation (probabilistic reasoning, abduction and idealisation). First, we argue that Brandom’s view of induction in terms of merely permissive inferences is inadequate; in order to overcome the shortcoming of Brandom’s proposal, we put forward an alternative conception of inductive, probabilistic reasoning by appeal to the notion of degrees of commitment. Moreover, we examine the sorts of inferential commitments operative in other types of ampliative inferences, such as abduction or reasoning involving idealizations and assumptions. We suggest that agents engaging in these forms of reasoning often undertake restricted inferential commitments, whose scope and reach are more limited that in the case of the commitments associated with full beliefs.

     

Inhibition Efficiency in Highly Proficient Bilinguals and Simultaneous Interpreters: Evidence from Language Switching and Stroop Tasks

The present behavioral study aimed to examine the impact of language control expertise on two domain-general control processes, i.e. active inhibition of competing representations and overcoming of inhibition. We compared how Simultaneous Interpreters (SI) and Highly Proficient Bilinguals—two groups assumed to differ in language control capacity—performed executive tasks involving specific inhibition processes. In Experiment 1 (language decision task), both active and overcoming of inhibition processes are involved, while in Experiment 2 (bilingual Stroop task) only interference suppression is supposed to be required. The results of Experiment 1 showed a language switching effect only for the highly proficient bilinguals, potentially because overcoming of inhibition requires more cognitive resources than in SI. Nevertheless, both groups performed similarly on the Stroop task in Experiment 2, which suggests that active inhibition may work similarly in both groups. These contrasting results suggest that overcoming of inhibition may be harder to master than active inhibition. Taken together, these data indicate that some executive control processes may be less sensitive to the degree of expertise in bilingual language control than others. Our findings lend support to psycholinguistic models of bilingualism postulating a higher-order mechanism regulating language activation.