A Computational Evaluation of Sentence Processing Deficits in Aphasia

Individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia experience difficulty when processing reversible non‐canonical sentences. Different accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. The Trace Deletion account (Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000, 2006) attributes this deficit to an impairment in syntactic representations, whereas others (e.g., Caplan, Waters, Dede, Michaud, & Reddy, 2007; Haarmann, Just, & Carpenter, 1997) propose that the underlying structural representations are unimpaired, but sentence comprehension is affected by processing deficits, such as slow lexical activation, reduction in memory resources, slowed processing and/or intermittent deficiency, among others. We test the claims of two processing accounts, slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, and two versions of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH), in a computational framework for sentence processing (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) implemented in ACT‐R (Anderson, Byrne, Douglass, Lebiere, & Qin, 2004). The assumption of slowed processing is operationalized as slow procedural memory, so that each processing action is performed slower than normal, and intermittent deficiency as extra noise in the procedural memory, so that the parsing steps are more noisy than normal. We operationalize the TDH as an absence of trace information in the parse tree. To test the predictions of the models implementing these theories, we use the data from a German sentence—picture matching study reported in Hanne, Sekerina, Vasishth, Burchert, and De Bleser (2011). The data consist of offline (sentence‐picture matching accuracies and response times) and online (eye fixation proportions) measures. From among the models considered, the model assuming that both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency are present emerges as the best model of sentence processing difficulty in aphasia. The modeling of individual differences suggests that, if we assume that patients have both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, they have them in differing degrees.     

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF WESLEYAN SOTERIOLOGY: THE DYNAMIC OF BOTH INSTANTANEOUS AND GRADUAL CHANGE

In his work Rewired: Exploring Religious Conversion, dealing with Wesleyan soteriology and neuroscience, Paul Markham claims that when one incorporates biology as an epistemic restriction in theologies of conversion, doctrines of instantaneous conversion are invalidated. He asserts that conversion must always be gradual, because the mechanism by which the brain changes in response to experience does not occur instantaneously; rather change is initiated and consolidated over an often lengthy span of time. I argue, however, that doctrines of instantaneous conversion are maintained when taking neuroscience into account. First, for doctrines of conversion that hold to the imputation of Christ's righteousness, neuroscience is irrelevant, because statements of instantaneous change are in terms of a relational status and not biological. Rapid conversion is maintained as a metaphysical position. Second, an embodied and neurologically realized change is expected in theologies of conversion that hold to impartation and, contrary to Markham, immediate change is neurologically possible in a variety of ways.     

An Invitation to Behavior Analysts: Review of in Search of Memory: The Emergence of A New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel

This fascinating autobiography and multifaceted case history in neuroscience research is accessible to laymen and potentially instructive to working scientists. Kandel takes the reader through his thought processes as he describes experiments that led to some of the past decades'' major neuroscience discoveries (some highlights of which are summarized in the review''s Appendix), and eventually to his Nobel Prize. The review analyzes some of the terminological and conceptual issues that have often inhibited communication between behavior analysts and neuroscientists, with special attention to some of Bennett and Hacker''s admonitions viewed from the perspective of language evolution and linguistics. The review then discusses opportunities for behavior analysts to collaborate with neuroscientists by applying behavioral contingency analysis to help specify the independent variables of neuroscience experiments described by Kandel. Finally, it examines Kandel''s provocative heuristics for locating important research problems, and the lessons that can be gleaned from the book regarding the attributes of potentially great achievers.     

The Neural Basis of Implicit Attitudes

ABSTRACT— Evidence that human preferences, beliefs, and behavior are influenced by sources that are outside the reach of conscious awareness, control, intention, and self-reflection is incontrovertible. Recent advances in neuroscience have enabled researchers to investigate the neural basis of these implicit attitudes, particularly attitudes involving social groups. From this research, a model with three identified neural components related to the automatic activation and regulation of implicit attitudes is beginning to emerge. The amygdala is implicated in the automatic evaluation of socially relevant stimuli, while the anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices are involved in the detection and regulation, respectively, of implicit attitudes. Further support for this model comes from the inclusion of these regions in current models concerning the cognitive regulation of emotion and the detection of conflict. The identification of a putative neural substrate for implicit attitudes has had a direct impact on psychological research into their nature and operational characteristics. We discuss how this emerging neural model has influenced current research on implicit attitudes and describe the importance of such models for directing future research.     

Automatic evaluation of syntactic learners in typologically-different languages

Human syntax acquisition involves a system that can learn constraints on possible word sequences in typologically-different human languages. Evaluation of computational syntax acquisition systems typically involves theory-specific or language-specific assumptions that make it difficult to compare results in multiple languages. To address this problem, a bag-of-words incremental generation (BIG) task with an automatic sentence prediction accuracy (SPA) evaluation measure was developed. The BIG–SPA task was used to test several learners that incorporated n-gram statistics which are commonly found in statistical approaches to syntax acquisition. In addition, a novel Adjacency–Prominence learner, that was based on psycholinguistic work in sentence production and syntax acquisition, was also tested and it was found that this learner yielded the best results in this task on these languages. In general, the BIG–SPA task is argued to be a useful platform for comparing explicit theories of syntax acquisition in multiple languages.     

The New Sacred Math

The individual soul is an ageless idea, attested in prehistoric times by the oral traditions of all cultures. But as far as we know, it enters history in ancient Egypt. I will begin with the individual soul in ancient Egypt, then recount the birth of the world soul in the Pythagorean community of ancient Greece, and trace it through the Western Esoteric Tradition until its demise in Kepler's writings, along with the rise of modern science, around 1600 CE. Then I tell of the rebirth of the world soul recently, in new branches of mathematics.     

Restructuring partitioned knowledge: the role of recoordination in category learning

Knowledge restructuring refers to changes in the strategy with which people solve a given problem. Two types of knowledge restructuring are supported by existing category learning models. The first is a relearning process, which involves incremental updating of knowledge as learning progresses. The second is a recoordination process, which involves novel changes in the way existing knowledge is applied to the task. Whereas relearning is supported by both single- and multiple-module models of category learning, only multiple-module models support recoordination. To date, only relearning has been directly supported empirically. We report two category learning experiments that provide direct evidence of recoordination. People can fluidly alternate between different categorization strategies, and moreover, can reinstate an old strategy even after prolonged use of an alternative. The knowledge restructuring data are not well fit by a single-module model (ALCOVE). By contrast, a multiple-module model (ATRIUM) quantitatively accounts for recoordination. Low-level changes in the distribution of dimensional attention are shown to subsequently affect how ATRIUM coordinates its modular knowledge. We argue that learning about complex tasks occurs at the level of the partial knowledge elements used to generate a response strategy.     

“ÁLL TRÁDES,THEIR GEAR AND TACKLE AND TRIM”: THEOLOGY,COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE,AND PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY IN TRANSVERSAL DIALOGUE

This third of three articles outlining a different approach to science/religion dialogue generally and to engagement between theology and the neurosciences specifically, gives a brief account of the model in practice. It begins by introducing the question to be investigated—whether the experience of relational connection can affect health outcomes by directly moderating immune function. Then, employing the same threefold heuristic of encounter, exchange, and expression used previously, it discusses how the transversal model set out in these articles has been used to investigate this question and to develop a theoretical physiological model for the proposed link between relationality and health.     

A PRESCRIPTION FOR GENERATING A NEW PARADIGM IN THE CONTEXT OF SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

Abstract. Many centers are now active in the study of the interaction between science on the one hand and theology on the other. Suggestions are made as to how such study might be furthered. The central proposal in this paper is based on the author's experience in founding and, over many years, operating the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP). The "faculty" of this group were highly competent in many fields of science and were able to deal with many of the major issues. It is here further suggested that if an NRP-like organization were established, capable of productively interacting with both science and theology, it might well generate new concepts and possibly a new paradigm in this context.