Transcript New Employee Orientation - 銘傳大學-銘傳網頁

Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics: Language and the
brain
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The case of Phineas Gage
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He was a railroad construction
foreman in 1848.
An iron rod passed through his
head in an explosives accident.
He survived, and was back at
work within a few days.
His language ability was
unaffected
Major personality problems
ensued
He probably did not join a
circus: Fromkin is wrong!
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Modularity
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Before Gage: the brain just a big mass?
Now, evidence that different brain parts have
different functions
Early evidence was from autopsies
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Now, of course, we can use MRI and other
technologies
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Lateralization
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The brain is made up of two hemispheres
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Motor control
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Language and cognitive processing
Right hemisphere dominates in
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Right hemisphere controls left side of body…
Left hemisphere dominates in
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Left and right
Non-verbal processing, eg spatial relations
Handedness research (easy explanation here)
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Left hemisphere
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Broca’s area
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1860s
Damage here
» Affects speech production
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Wernicke’s area (1870s)
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Motor cortex
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Injury here leads to comprehension difficulties
Articulator controls close to Broca’s area
Arcuate fasciculus
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Discovered by Wernicke
Nerve bundle linking Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
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Dichotic listening
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The right ear
advantage
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The sound played
through the right ear
reaches Wernicke’s
area more directly
So, pa will more likely
be the sound perceived
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Aphasia
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Impairment of language function caused by
a stroke or head injuries
Broca’s aphasia: often
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Slow, distorted speech
Agrammatic
» Mostly lexical words
» Function words wrongly used, or not used
» “I eggs and eat and drink coffee breakfast”
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Wernicke’s aphasia
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Can include anomia (difficulty finding the
right word)
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Related to the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon,
which we all sometimes experience
Often difficult for the hearer to understand
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Even though the speech can be very fluent
“I can’t talk all of the things I do, and part of
the part I can go all right, but I can’t tell from
the other people”
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Slips of the tongue
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TOT
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It seems words can be accessed in the mental
lexicon by phonological, semantic or even
spelling (at least in English!)
You can think of a word with similar meaning,
or similar sound… but not the right word!
Malapropisms (choosing the wrong word)
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Good punctuation means not to be late.
He's a wolf in cheap clothing.
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Spoonerisms (Tips of the slongue)
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You have tasted three whole worms
You will leave Oxford by the town drain
You have hissed all my mystery lectures
Oscar Wilde (deliberate!)
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Work is the curse of the drinking classes
All sorts of similar stuff here (will not be in
the exam!)
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Language acquisition: the critical
period
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Language cannot be effectively learned after brain
lateralization is complete
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Some (eg Fromkin) say that Genie’s story proves the CP
hypothesis.
Yule make the opposite claim
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This may be around puberty
Genie had zero exposure to language until she was 13, but she did
acquire some language
She learnt words, but very limited syntax
Dichotic experiments showed that she had no lefthemisphere language facility
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It is possible to use the right hemisphere for restricted language
purposes.
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