Speech prosody in Broca's aphasia

Because speech prosody is thought to be impaired in Broca's aphasia, we conducted three experiments using Broca's aphasics and nonneurological control subjects in order to determine to what extent this statement is accurate. Using three acoustic measures of speech prosody—sentence-final fundamental frequency (F₀) fall, F₀ declination, and sentence-final lengthening—we found that some aspects of prosody were spared while others were abnormal. All Broca's aphasics, regardless of degree of impairment, exhibited sentence-final F₀ fall. F₀ declination was present in simple sentences but was absent over longer domains; moreover, the amount of declination was correlated with the degree of linguistic impairment. Sentence-final lengthening was clearly absent in Broca's aphasia; in fact, sentence-terminal words were actually shorter than their sentence-initial and medial counterparts.     

Hierarchical coding in speech timing

The analysis of syllable and pause durations in speech production can provide information about the properties of a speaker's grammatical code. The present study was conducted to reveal aspects of this code by analyzing syllable and pause durations in structurally ambiguous sentences. In Experiments 1–6, acoustical measurements were made for a key syllabic segment and a following pause for 10 or more speakers. Each of six structural ambiguities, previously unrelated, involved a grammatical relation between the constituent following the pause and one of two possible constituents preceding the pause. The results showed lengthening of the syllabic segments and pauses for the reading in which the constituent following the pause was hierarchically dominated by the higher of the two possible preceding constituents in a syntactic representation. The effects were also observed, to a lesser extent, when the structurally ambiguous sentences were embedded in disambiguating paragraph contexts (Experiment 7). The results show that a single hierarchical principle can provide a unified account of speech timing effects for a number of otherwise unrelated ambiguities. This principle is superior to a linear alternative and provides specific inferences about hierarchical relations among syntactic constituents in speech coding.     

A comparative study of later work experience among full-time,part-time,and unemployed male youth

This paper considers the unique contribution of prior labor market status, defined in terms of working time, on later work experience controlling for a number of demographic and work pattern variables. The labor market status variables are established on the basis of trends in a young man's early career experience. Part-time employment is found to be a viable early labor market alternative to the extent of later economic and occupational success. Early career unemployment is not a critical factor in retarding personal economic advancement, relative to educational background and first job experience, but does have negative job attitudinal consequences.     

Compliance to requests made by gazing and touching experimenters in field settings

Two experiments supported the hypothesis that gaze and touch would serve additive functions of increasing compliance to unambiguous requests. These and other experiments were integrated into Ellsworth and Langer's (1976) framework for interpreting gaze (and touch) as nonspecific activators. It was concluded that behavioral responses to gaze and touch are a function of the attention and arousal elicited by these stimuli, the meaning derived from the situation, and the attributes of the gazing and touching person. It was suggested that future research should study subjects' responses to gaze and touch in terms of attributions made by subjects about people who engage in these behaviors.     

Autumn leaves and old photographs: The development of metaphor preferences

In order to determine the development of preferences for different types of metaphors, a metaphor preferences task was designed. Subjects at seven ages, from 6 through 20 years, received incomplete sentences followed by metaphorical and literal completions, and were asked to select their preferred completions. The pattern of preferences shifted with age. Metaphors based on grounds involving color or shape were preferred by the youngest subjects; metaphors based on movement or sound were preferred by subjects of intermediate age; and metaphors based on nonperceptual, conceptual grounds were preferred by the oldest subjects. At all ages the most frequently chosen metaphors were those based on a combination of two grounds (e.g., color and shape). Preference for literal completions declined with age, but there was an increase in literal selections in the 8th and 10th grades. This study demonstrates the systematic development of aesthetic preferences in the domain of figurative language.     

The interaction of semantic memory with storage and retrieval processes

A procedure for separating storage from retrieval (R. Chechile & D. L. Meyer, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1976, 14, 430–437) lead to the conclusion that memory development involves changes in both storage and retrieval. Nevertheless, these changes resulted from the interaction of storage and retrieval mechanisms with the age-related elaboration of the semantic memory system. This study shows that the memory improvement with age, between kindergarten and second grade, vanished when the meaningfulness of the materials were equated. The most plausible interpretation of the results is the hardware invariance hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, the memory apparatus for information processing is constant across ages, but the hardware is used more effectively if there is a better-developed semantic memory system.     

Mechanisms underlying writing and speech in aphasia

As a parallel to the dual decoding concept for processing of written language we proposed that phonological encoding does not necessarily occur in writing and that the phonemic and graphemic subsystems can be independent on the one-word level. This hypothesis was tested by comparing oral and written performance in a picture-naming task in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. In addition, the residual tacit knowledge of the orthographic properties of the names of the pictures was examined with a multiple-choice recognition task. The principal finding is that Broca's aphasics who were better in written than in oral naming showed more graphemically and semantically motivated errors than aphasics who were better in oral than in written naming, the latter producing more phonemically motivated errors. This result supports the dual encoding concept for writing on the singleword level, implying a direct route from the mental lexicon to the graphemic system in parallel with a route mediated by the phonemic system. Multiple-choice recognition was found to be superior to both oral and written performance in both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics.     

The role of the right hemisphere in the apprehension of complex linguistic materials

To secure information on which aspects of linguistic functioning might be mediated by the nondominant hemisphere, a test battery assessing sensitivity to narrational and humorous materials was administered to a population of right-hemisphere-damaged patients, as well as relevant control groups of normal, aging, and aphasic individuals. While elementary linguistic functioning was adequate, the right-hemisphere-injured groups exhibited consistent difficulties in respecting the boundaries of a fictive entity, assessing the plausibility of elements within a story or joke, selecting the appropriate punch line for a joke, and integrating elements of a story into a coherent narrative. Certain elements—specifically emotional content and noncanonical facts injected into a narrative—also posed characteristic difficulties for these patients. The results suggest that, in contrast to the other populations, right-hemisphere patients exhibit special difficulties in processing complex linguistic entities and in utilizing the surrounding context as they assess linguistic messages.