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Daniel Swingley - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Young Infants' Word Comprehension Given An Unfamiliar Talker or Altered Pronunciations
Child Development, 2017Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:To understand spoken Words, listeners must appropriately interpret co-occurring talker characteristics and speech sound content. This ability was tested in 6- to 14-months-olds by measuring their looking to named food and body part images. In the new talker condition (n = 90), pictures were named by an unfamiliar voice; in the mispronunciation condition (n = 98), infants’ mothers “mispronounced” the Words (e.g., nazz for nose). Six- to 7-month-olds fixated target images above chance across conditions, understanding novel talkers, and mothers’ phonologically deviant speech equally. Eleven- to 14-months-olds also understood new talkers, but performed poorly with mispronounced speech, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Between these ages, performance was mixed. These findings highlight the changing roles of acoustic and phonetic variability in early Word Comprehension, as infants learn which variations alter meaning.
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Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension
Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development, 2014Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:A handful of recent experimental reports have shown that infants of 6–9 months know the meanings of some common Words. Here, we replicate and extend these findings. With a new set of items, we show that when young infants (age 6–16 months, n = 49) are presented with side-by-side video clips depicting various common early Words, and one clip is named in a sentence, they look at the named video at above-chance rates. We demonstrate anew that infants understand common Words by 6–9 months and that performance increases substantially around 14 months. The results imply that 6- to 9-month-olds’ failure to understand Words not referring to objects (verbs, adjectives, performatives) in a similar prior study is not attributable to the use of dynamic video depictions. Thus, 6- to 9-month-olds’ experience of spoken language includes some understanding of common Words for concrete objects, but relatively impoverished Comprehension of other Words.
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Young toddlers' Word Comprehension is flexible and efficient.
PloS one, 2013Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:Much of what is known about Word recognition in toddlers comes from eyetracking studies. Here we show that the speed and facility with which children recognize Words, as revealed in such studies, cannot be attributed to a task-specific, closed-set strategy; rather, children’s gaze to referents of spoken nouns reflects successful search of the lexicon. Toddlers’ spoken Word Comprehension was examined in the context of pictures that had two possible names (such as a cup of juice which could be called “cup” or “juice”) and pictures that had only one likely name for toddlers (such as “apple”), using a visual world eye-tracking task and a picture-labeling task (n = 77, mean age, 21 months). Toddlers were just as fast and accurate in fixating named pictures with two likely names as pictures with one. If toddlers do name pictures to themselves, the name provides no apparent benefit in Word recognition, because there is no cost to understanding an alternative lexical construal of the picture. In toddlers, as in adults, spoken Words rapidly evoke their referents.
David Barner - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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partial color Word Comprehension precedes production
Language Learning and Development, 2018Co-Authors: Katherine Wagner, Jill Jergens, David BarnerAbstract:Previous studies report that children use color Words haphazardly before acquiring conventional, adult-like meanings. The most common explanation for this is that children do not abstract color as ...
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Partial color Word Comprehension precedes production
2016Co-Authors: Katherine Wagner, Jill Jergens, David BarnerAbstract:Previous studies report that children use color Words haphazardly beforeacquiring adult-like meanings. The most common explanation is that childrendo not abstract color as a domain of linguistic meaning until severalmonths after they begin producing color Words, resulting in a stage duringwhich children produce but do not comprehend color Words. Contrary to thisaccount, the current study provides converging evidence from multiplemeasures that toddlers (N=55; 18-33 mos) acquire partial but systematiccolor Word meanings often before production, although adult meanings areacquired much later. These data support the idea that inductive processesof category formation, rather than problems abstracting color, explain thedelay between children’s first production of color Words and mastery ofadult meanings.
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partial color Word Comprehension precedes production
Cognitive Science, 2014Co-Authors: Katherine Wagner, Jill Jergens, David BarnerAbstract:Partial color Word Comprehension precedes production Katie Wagner kgwagner@ucsd.edu Jill Jergens jillmjergens@gmail.com David Barner barner@ucsd.edu Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Abstract Previous studies report that children use color Words in a haphazard manner before acquiring adult-like meanings. The most common explanation for this is that children struggle to abstract color as a domain of linguistic meaning, and that this results in a stage in which children produce but do not comprehend color Words. However, recent evidence suggests that children’s early usage of color Words is not random, and that they acquire partial but systematic meanings prior to acquiring adult-like meanings. Here we employ parent report, a color Word production task and an eye-tracking Comprehension task to provide further support for this conclusion and show for the first time that toddlers often acquire color Word meanings even before beginning to produce them. KeyWords: Word learning; adjectives; color; receptive language; expressive language Introduction Color Words pose a difficult problem for children learning language (Sandhofer & Smith, 1999; Kowalski & Zimiles, 2006; O’Hanlon and Roberson, 2006). As noted in a number of previous reports, children produce color Words for many months before converging on adult-like meanings (Pitchford & Mullen, 2003; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999; Soja, 1994), a pattern also found in other domains of Word learning, such as time and number (Brooks, Audet, & Barner, 2012; Busby Grant & Suddendorf, 2011; Shatz, Tare, Nguyen, & Young, 2010; Wynn, 1992). Many previous studies have argued that this delay between production and adult-like Comprehension is due to children’s difficulty identifying color as the relevant domain of linguistic meaning, and thus that children initially produce color Words despite lacking meanings for them (Franklin, 2006; Kowalksi & Zimiles, 2006; O’Hanlon & Roberson, 2006; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999). Challenging this, the present study shows that children often acquire partial meanings for color Words before beginning to produce them. This suggests that the delay between production and the acquisition of adult-like meanings cannot stem from problems abstracting color, but instead is best explained by a gradual inductive process of determining the boundaries of individual color Words. In most domains of vocabulary acquisition, past studies have found that children acquire basic meanings of Words before they begin to produce them in speech, such that in infancy and early childhood the number of Words that children comprehend far exceeds the number of Words that they produce (Goldin-Meadow, Seligman & Gelman, 1976; Harris, Yeeles, Chasin & Oakley,1995). However, according to some accounts there are important exceptions to this pattern. For example, children learn to count and produce number Words many months before they acquire their meanings (Wynn, 1990, 1992; Carey, 2009). Also, similar claims have been made in the domains of time (Shatz et al., 2010; Friedman; Tillman & Barner, 2013), and emotion (Widen & Russell, 2003). In each of these lexical domains, when children are asked a question – e.g., “What color is this?” or “How many are there?” they respond with domain-appropriate Words (e.g., red, seven) but often select the Word incorrectly (e.g., responding red when asked about a purple object; for discussion see Shatz et al., 2010). Across these domains, children often produce Words for months – or in some cases for several years – before they acquire their adult-like meanings. In the case of color Words, the most common explanation for this lag between production and adult-like Comprehension is that children struggle to abstract color as the relevant dimension of linguistic meaning. In other Words, although children quickly learn to produce and form a category of color Words that are associated with one another, they struggle to identify color as the aspect of experience that this category of Words encodes (e.g., Franklin, 2006; Kowalksi & Zimiles, 2006; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999). Critically, on this account, children’s difficulty is specific to abstracting color, rather than with mapping individual color Words to particular hues and identifying category boundaries. As evidence for this view, proponents note that preverbal infants possess perceptual color categories that are similar to those of English-speaking adults (Franklin, Pilling & Davies, 2005; Bornstein, Kessen & Weiskopf, 1976). For example, according to Shatz, Behrend, Gelman, and Ebeling (1996), “on perceptual tasks, infants treat the continuous dimension of hue categorically much as adults do. . . Thus, the apparent difficulty children have with color term acquisition cannot be primarily because the perceptual domain is continuous whereas the lexical domain is discontinuous” (p. 178). Accordingly, these accounts argue that once children identify color as the relevant dimension of meaning, they acquire color Word meanings quickly, since they can easily map new color Words onto pre-existing perceptual color categories: “Children seem to struggle with their first color Word yet learn most of the other basic terms fairly rapidly over the next several months . . . This seems to suggest that there is some kind of ‘switch’ for children’s ability to learn and map color Words correctly” (p. 324 Franklin, 2006).
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CogSci - Partial color Word Comprehension precedes production.
Cognitive Science, 2014Co-Authors: Katherine Wagner, Jill Jergens, David BarnerAbstract:Partial color Word Comprehension precedes production Katie Wagner kgwagner@ucsd.edu Jill Jergens jillmjergens@gmail.com David Barner barner@ucsd.edu Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego Abstract Previous studies report that children use color Words in a haphazard manner before acquiring adult-like meanings. The most common explanation for this is that children struggle to abstract color as a domain of linguistic meaning, and that this results in a stage in which children produce but do not comprehend color Words. However, recent evidence suggests that children’s early usage of color Words is not random, and that they acquire partial but systematic meanings prior to acquiring adult-like meanings. Here we employ parent report, a color Word production task and an eye-tracking Comprehension task to provide further support for this conclusion and show for the first time that toddlers often acquire color Word meanings even before beginning to produce them. KeyWords: Word learning; adjectives; color; receptive language; expressive language Introduction Color Words pose a difficult problem for children learning language (Sandhofer & Smith, 1999; Kowalski & Zimiles, 2006; O’Hanlon and Roberson, 2006). As noted in a number of previous reports, children produce color Words for many months before converging on adult-like meanings (Pitchford & Mullen, 2003; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999; Soja, 1994), a pattern also found in other domains of Word learning, such as time and number (Brooks, Audet, & Barner, 2012; Busby Grant & Suddendorf, 2011; Shatz, Tare, Nguyen, & Young, 2010; Wynn, 1992). Many previous studies have argued that this delay between production and adult-like Comprehension is due to children’s difficulty identifying color as the relevant domain of linguistic meaning, and thus that children initially produce color Words despite lacking meanings for them (Franklin, 2006; Kowalksi & Zimiles, 2006; O’Hanlon & Roberson, 2006; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999). Challenging this, the present study shows that children often acquire partial meanings for color Words before beginning to produce them. This suggests that the delay between production and the acquisition of adult-like meanings cannot stem from problems abstracting color, but instead is best explained by a gradual inductive process of determining the boundaries of individual color Words. In most domains of vocabulary acquisition, past studies have found that children acquire basic meanings of Words before they begin to produce them in speech, such that in infancy and early childhood the number of Words that children comprehend far exceeds the number of Words that they produce (Goldin-Meadow, Seligman & Gelman, 1976; Harris, Yeeles, Chasin & Oakley,1995). However, according to some accounts there are important exceptions to this pattern. For example, children learn to count and produce number Words many months before they acquire their meanings (Wynn, 1990, 1992; Carey, 2009). Also, similar claims have been made in the domains of time (Shatz et al., 2010; Friedman; Tillman & Barner, 2013), and emotion (Widen & Russell, 2003). In each of these lexical domains, when children are asked a question – e.g., “What color is this?” or “How many are there?” they respond with domain-appropriate Words (e.g., red, seven) but often select the Word incorrectly (e.g., responding red when asked about a purple object; for discussion see Shatz et al., 2010). Across these domains, children often produce Words for months – or in some cases for several years – before they acquire their adult-like meanings. In the case of color Words, the most common explanation for this lag between production and adult-like Comprehension is that children struggle to abstract color as the relevant dimension of linguistic meaning. In other Words, although children quickly learn to produce and form a category of color Words that are associated with one another, they struggle to identify color as the aspect of experience that this category of Words encodes (e.g., Franklin, 2006; Kowalksi & Zimiles, 2006; Sandhofer & Smith, 1999). Critically, on this account, children’s difficulty is specific to abstracting color, rather than with mapping individual color Words to particular hues and identifying category boundaries. As evidence for this view, proponents note that preverbal infants possess perceptual color categories that are similar to those of English-speaking adults (Franklin, Pilling & Davies, 2005; Bornstein, Kessen & Weiskopf, 1976). For example, according to Shatz, Behrend, Gelman, and Ebeling (1996), “on perceptual tasks, infants treat the continuous dimension of hue categorically much as adults do. . . Thus, the apparent difficulty children have with color term acquisition cannot be primarily because the perceptual domain is continuous whereas the lexical domain is discontinuous” (p. 178). Accordingly, these accounts argue that once children identify color as the relevant dimension of meaning, they acquire color Word meanings quickly, since they can easily map new color Words onto pre-existing perceptual color categories: “Children seem to struggle with their first color Word yet learn most of the other basic terms fairly rapidly over the next several months . . . This seems to suggest that there is some kind of ‘switch’ for children’s ability to learn and map color Words correctly” (p. 324 Franklin, 2006).
Elika Bergelson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Semantic Specificity in One-Year-Olds' Word Comprehension.
Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development, 2017Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Richard N. AslinAbstract:The present study investigated infants' knowledge about familiar nouns. Infants (n = 46, 12-20-month-olds) saw two-image displays of familiar objects, or one familiar and one novel object. Infants heard either a matching Word (e.g. "foot' when seeing foot and juice), a related Word (e.g. "sock" when seeing foot and juice) or a nonce Word (e.g. "fep" when seeing a novel object and dog). Across the whole sample, infants reliably fixated the referent on matching and nonce trials. On the critical related trials we found increasingly less looking to the incorrect (but related) image with age. These results suggest that one-year-olds look at familiar objects both when they hear them labeled and when they hear related labels, to similar degrees, but over the second year increasingly rely on semantic fit. We suggest that infants' initial semantic representations are imprecise, and continue to sharpen over the second postnatal year.
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Young Infants' Word Comprehension Given An Unfamiliar Talker or Altered Pronunciations
Child Development, 2017Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:To understand spoken Words, listeners must appropriately interpret co-occurring talker characteristics and speech sound content. This ability was tested in 6- to 14-months-olds by measuring their looking to named food and body part images. In the new talker condition (n = 90), pictures were named by an unfamiliar voice; in the mispronunciation condition (n = 98), infants’ mothers “mispronounced” the Words (e.g., nazz for nose). Six- to 7-month-olds fixated target images above chance across conditions, understanding novel talkers, and mothers’ phonologically deviant speech equally. Eleven- to 14-months-olds also understood new talkers, but performed poorly with mispronounced speech, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Between these ages, performance was mixed. These findings highlight the changing roles of acoustic and phonetic variability in early Word Comprehension, as infants learn which variations alter meaning.
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Early Word Comprehension in Infants: Replication and Extension
Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development, 2014Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:A handful of recent experimental reports have shown that infants of 6–9 months know the meanings of some common Words. Here, we replicate and extend these findings. With a new set of items, we show that when young infants (age 6–16 months, n = 49) are presented with side-by-side video clips depicting various common early Words, and one clip is named in a sentence, they look at the named video at above-chance rates. We demonstrate anew that infants understand common Words by 6–9 months and that performance increases substantially around 14 months. The results imply that 6- to 9-month-olds’ failure to understand Words not referring to objects (verbs, adjectives, performatives) in a similar prior study is not attributable to the use of dynamic video depictions. Thus, 6- to 9-month-olds’ experience of spoken language includes some understanding of common Words for concrete objects, but relatively impoverished Comprehension of other Words.
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Young toddlers' Word Comprehension is flexible and efficient.
PloS one, 2013Co-Authors: Elika Bergelson, Daniel SwingleyAbstract:Much of what is known about Word recognition in toddlers comes from eyetracking studies. Here we show that the speed and facility with which children recognize Words, as revealed in such studies, cannot be attributed to a task-specific, closed-set strategy; rather, children’s gaze to referents of spoken nouns reflects successful search of the lexicon. Toddlers’ spoken Word Comprehension was examined in the context of pictures that had two possible names (such as a cup of juice which could be called “cup” or “juice”) and pictures that had only one likely name for toddlers (such as “apple”), using a visual world eye-tracking task and a picture-labeling task (n = 77, mean age, 21 months). Toddlers were just as fast and accurate in fixating named pictures with two likely names as pictures with one. If toddlers do name pictures to themselves, the name provides no apparent benefit in Word recognition, because there is no cost to understanding an alternative lexical construal of the picture. In toddlers, as in adults, spoken Words rapidly evoke their referents.
Argye E. Hillis - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Temporal lobe networks supporting the Comprehension of spoken Words
Brain : a journal of neurology, 2017Co-Authors: Leonardo Bonilha, Argye E. Hillis, Chris Rorden, Gregory Hickok, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Julius FridrikssonAbstract:Auditory Word Comprehension is a cognitive process that involves the transformation of auditory signals into abstract concepts. Traditional lesion-based studies of stroke survivors with aphasia have suggested that neocortical regions adjacent to auditory cortex are primarily responsible for Word Comprehension. However, recent primary progressive aphasia and normal neurophysiological studies have challenged this concept, suggesting that the left temporal pole is crucial for Word Comprehension. Due to its vasculature, the temporal pole is not commonly completely lesioned in stroke survivors and this heterogeneity may have prevented its identification in lesion-based studies of auditory Comprehension. We aimed to resolve this controversy using a combined voxel-based-and structural connectome-lesion symptom mapping approach, since cortical dysfunction after stroke can arise from cortical damage or from white matter disconnection. Magnetic resonance imaging (T1-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging-based structural connectome), auditory Word Comprehension and object recognition tests were obtained from 67 chronic left hemisphere stroke survivors. We observed that damage to the inferior temporal gyrus, to the fusiform gyrus and to a white matter network including the left posterior temporal region and its connections to the middle temporal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and cingulate cortex, was associated with Word Comprehension difficulties after factoring out object recognition. These results suggest that the posterior lateral and inferior temporal regions are crucial for Word Comprehension, serving as a hub to integrate auditory and conceptual processing. Early processing linking auditory Words to concepts is situated in posterior lateral temporal regions, whereas additional and deeper levels of semantic processing likely require more anterior temporal regions.10.1093/brain/awx169_video1awx169media15555638084001.
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Important considerations in lesion-symptom mapping: Illustrations from studies of Word Comprehension.
Human brain mapping, 2017Co-Authors: Hinna Shahid, Rajani Sebastian, Tatiana T. Schnur, Taylor Hanayik, Amy Wright, Donna C. Tippett, Julius Fridriksson, Chris Rorden, Argye E. HillisAbstract:Lesion-symptom mapping is an important method of identifying networks of brain regions critical for functions. However, results might be influenced substantially by the imaging modality and timing of assessment. We tested the hypothesis that brain regions found to be associated with acute language deficits depend on (1) timing of behavioral measurement, (2) imaging sequences utilized to define the "lesion" (structural abnormality only or structural plus perfusion abnormality), and (3) power of the study. We studied 191 individuals with acute left hemisphere stroke with MRI and language testing to identify areas critical for spoken Word Comprehension. We use the data from this study to examine the potential impact of these three variables on lesion-symptom mapping. We found that only the combination of structural and perfusion imaging within 48 h of onset identified areas where more abnormal voxels was associated with more severe acute deficits, after controlling for lesion volume and multiple comparisons. The critical area identified with this methodology was the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, consistent with other methods that have identified an important role of this area in spoken Word Comprehension. Results have implications for interpretation of other lesion-symptom mapping studies, as well as for understanding areas critical for auditory Word Comprehension in the healthy brain. We propose that lesion-symptom mapping at the acute stage of stroke addresses a different sort of question about brain-behavior relationships than lesion-symptom mapping at the chronic stage, but that timing of behavioral measurement and imaging modalities should be considered in either case. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2990-3000, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Longitudinal imaging and deterioration in Word Comprehension in primary progressive aphasia: Potential clinical significance
Aphasiology, 2014Co-Authors: Andreia V. Faria, Rajani Sebastian, Melissa Newhart, Susumu Mori, Argye E. HillisAbstract:Background: Three variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), distinguished by language performance and supportive patterns of atrophy on imaging, have different clinical courses and the prognoses for specific functions. For example, semantic variant PPA alone is distinguished by impaired Word Comprehension. However, sometimes individuals with high education show normal performance on Word-Comprehension tests early on, making classification difficult. Furthermore, as the condition progresses, individuals with other variants develop Word-Comprehension deficits and other behavioural symptoms, making distinctions between variants less clear. Longitudinal brain imaging allows identification of specific areas of atrophy in individual patients, which identifies the location of disease in each patient.Aims: We hypothesised that the areas of atrophy in individual PPA participants would be closely correlated with the decline in Word Comprehension over time. We propose that areas where tissue volume is correlate...
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Auditory Word Comprehension impairment in acute stroke: Relative contribution of phonemic versus semantic factors
Brain and language, 2008Co-Authors: Corianne Rogalsky, Argye E. Hillis, Eleanor Pitz, Gregory HickokAbstract:Auditory Word Comprehension was assessed in a series of 289 acute left hemisphere stroke patients. Participants decided whether an auditorily presented Word matched a picture. On different trials, Words were presented with a matching picture, a semantic foil, or a phonemic foil. Participants had significantly more trouble with semantic foils across all levels of impairment.
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Neural networks essential for naming and Word Comprehension.
Cognitive and behavioral neurology : official journal of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, 2007Co-Authors: Melissa Newhart, Lynda Ken, Jonathan T. Kleinman, Jennifer Heidler-gary, Argye E. HillisAbstract:Lesion/deficit association studies of aphasia commonly focus on one brain region as primarily responsible for a particular language deficit. However, functional imaging and some lesion studies indicate that multiple brain regions are likely necessary for any language task. We tested 156 acute stroke patients on basic language tasks (naming and spoken and written Word Comprehension) and magnetic resonance diffusion and perfusion imaging to determine the relative contributions of various brain regions to each task. Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that the error rate on each task was best predicted by dysfunction in several perisylvian regions, with both common and distinct regions for the 3 tasks.
Elizabeth K. Warrington - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Different patterns of spoken and written Word Comprehension deficit in aphasic stroke patients.
Cognitive neuropsychology, 2011Co-Authors: Sebastian J. Crutch, Elizabeth K. WarringtonAbstract:This study presents neuropsychological evidence for differences in the semantic representations underpinning spoken and written Word Comprehension. Potential modality-based discrepancies in the semantic system were examined by testing whether spoken Word (auditory–verbal input) and written Word (visual–verbal input) Comprehension exhibited the same effect profile on variables typically used to distinguish so-called access and storage disorders (e.g., response consistency, sensitivity to item frequency). The study was based on the premise that damage to a common set of semantic representations should have an equivalent impact upon Comprehension performance irrespective of input modality, whereas damage to partially dissociable semantic representations may give rise to different qualities of deficit (access/storage) in the Comprehension of stimuli presented in different input modalities (spoken/written). The study involved two patients with global aphasia following left middle cerebral artery stroke (F.B.I....
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Semantic memory and reading abilities: a case report.
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 1995Co-Authors: Lisa Cipolotti, Elizabeth K. WarringtonAbstract:We document the unexpected dissociation of preserved reading skills in a patient with severely impaired semantic memory. The common co-occurrence between impairment of Word meaning and surface dyslexia has not been observed. The patient (hereafter called DRN) had marked naming and Word Comprehension difficulties. A strong Word frequency effect was observed on tests of Word Comprehension but was absent in a test of Word reading. DRN's ability to read both regular and exception Words that he failed to comprehend was remarkably well preserved. We will argue that these findings provide further support for the independence of semantic and phonological processing.
