The Neuropsychology Of Language

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of new developments in the study of the relationship between the brain and language, from the perspectives of both basic research and clinical neuroscience. Includes contributions from an international team of leading figures in brain-language research Features a novel emphasis on state-of-the-art methodologies and their application to the central questions in the brain-language relationship Incorporates research on all parts of language, from syntax and semantics to spoken and written language Covers a wide range of issues, including basic level and high level linguistic functions, individual differences, and neurologically intact and different clinical populations

Neuropsychology of Language, Reading, and Spelling explores the many neural systems and subsystems that contribute to the production and comprehension of oral and written language. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 12 chapters that emerged from the 1980 International Conference on the Neuropsychology of Language, Reading, and Spelling, sponsored by the Program in Neurosciences and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. This conference highlights the neurological and behavioral interrelatedness of language, reading, and spelling. After briefly dealing with the cognitive and language development, as well as learning to read and to spell as instances of acquiring skill, this book goes on discussing the activity of the learner in the development skill, the influence of interacting forces in the developing nervous systems, and the role of peripheral mechanisms in the development of speech and language. A chapter examines the central integrative mechanisms, specifically the electrophysiological research with infants on the dependence of language perception on multidimensional, complexes processes, and not solely as a left- or right-hemisphere task. This chapter also provides evidence of discrete localization of language processes within the dominant hemisphere at both cortical and subcortical levels. The final four chapters are devoted to an analysis of developmental disorders from the varied perspectives of neurology, linguistics, neuropsychology, and education. This book will be of value to neuropsychologists and developmental biologists.

The essays in this volume have been gathered together to honor Eric H. Lenneberg. Together they represent the broad range of topics in which he took some interest. For one of the distinguishing features of Eric Lenneberg's theoretical work was its synthesizing quality. He was interested in all of the scientific domains that might touch on the study of the mind and brain, and he carefully prepared himself in each of the pertinent disciplines. Beginning with his M. A. degree in linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1951, he went on to complete his doctoral studies in both linguistics and psychology at Harvard in 1955. This was followed by three years of postdoctoral specialization at Harvard Medical School in both neurology and chil dren's developmental disorders. This preparation and additional expe rience at the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston led directly to his now-classic monograph on the neuropsychology of language, The Biological Foundations of Language, which was published in 1967. It is interesting to note that while each of the essays grows out of empirical evidence, all without exception attempt to attain a level of theoretical explanation and generalization which is frequently missing from experimental work per se. Here again Lenneberg's work was no table for the vigor with which he sought out explanations and theories from neuropsychological data. In particular, hjs thesis that "language is the manifestation of species-specific cognitive propensities" was a hypothesis which he drew from necessarily indirect evidence.

Damage to the brain can impair language in many different ways, severely harming some linguistic functions whilst sparing others. To achieve some understanding of the apparently bewildering diversity of language disorders, it is necessary to interpret impaired linguistic performance by relating it to a model of normal linguistic performance. Originally published in 1987, this book describes the application of such models of normal language processing to the interpretation of a wide variety of linguistic disorders. It deals with both the production and the comprehension of language, with language at both the sentence and the single-word level, with written as well as with spoken language and with acquired as well as with developmental disorders.

The study of language has increasingly become an area of interdisciplinary interest. Not only is it studied by speech specialists and linguists, but by psychologists and neuroscientists as well, particularly in understanding how the brain processes meaning. This book is a comprehensive look at sentence processing as it pertains to the brain, with contributions from individuals in a wide array of backgrounds, covering everything from language acquisition to lexical and syntactic processing, speech pathology, memory, neuropsychology, and brain imaging.

This volume is mainly based upon contributions presented at a workshop on the relationships between cognitive neuropsychology and aphasia rehabilitation.

This book explores the contributions that cognitive linguistics and psychology, including neuropsychology, have made to the understanding of the way that second languages are processed and learnt. It examines areas of phonology, word recognition and semantics, examining 'bottom-up' decoding processes as compared with 'top-down' processes as they affect memory. It also discusses second language learning from the acquisition/learning and nativist/connectionist perspectives. These ideas are then related to the methods that are used to teach second languages, primarily English, in formal classroom situations. This examination involves both 'mainstream' communicative approaches, and more traditional methods widely used to teach EFL throughout the world. The book is intended to act both as a textbook for students who are studying second language teaching and as an exploration of issues for the interested teacher who would like to further extend their understanding of the cognitive processes underlying their teaching.Mick Randall is currently Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Head of the Institute of Education at the British University in Dubai. He has taught courses in second language learning and teaching, applied linguistics and psychology in a number of different contexts. He has a special interest in the cognitive processing of language and in the psycholinguistics of word recognition, spelling and reading.