90 Questions
The Cohort Model suggests that speech recognition involves competition between similar sounding words.
True
Phonemes are universally accepted as the access units in spoken word recognition.
False
The Cohort Model explains how a sentence is recognized.
False
Imageability of a word has no influence on word recognition.
False
Frequency of a word has no effect on how quickly it is recognized.
False
The Uniqueness Point is reached when multiple words are still possible candidates.
False
The Cohort Model proposes that only one word is considered at a time during speech recognition.
False
Alex the parrot is an example of an animal with language abilities similar to those of humans.
True
EEG studies show that in a sentence, out of context words induce a P600 response.
False
Aphasia is a disorder of language due to brain damage on the right hemisphere.
False
Broca's area is located in the temporal lobe.
False
Wernicke's area is responsible for speech production.
False
Patients with Broca's aphasia have trouble with fluent speaking but their speech is coherent.
False
Syntax is related to the meaning of words in a sentence.
False
Broca's aphasia is related to a loss of vocabulary.
False
Syntax and semantics are completely independent in language processing.
False
Lexicalization involves the selection of a word based on its grammatical properties.
False
Freudian slips are a type of speech error where the speaker intentionally substitutes one word for another.
False
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is a permanent speech error associated with brain damage.
False
Anomia is a speech error characterized by difficulties in retrieving proper names.
True
Damage to the basal ganglia results in apraxia for speech.
False
People with apraxia for speech have difficulties with the production of consonants due to abnormal muscle tone.
False
Malapropisms are a type of speech error where the speaker intentionally uses a word with a similar meaning to the intended word.
False
Articulation is the first stage of speech production.
False
Literacy is a recent invention that is developed on a societal level.
False
We process letter strings one by one when recognizing words.
False
The Visual Word Form Area is only dedicated to visual lexicon.
False
The Word Superiority Effect suggests that it is easier to detect a letter in a random letter string.
False
The Visual Lexicon is a temporary storage for how words are written.
False
The Visual Word Form Area is located in the right mid fusiform gyrus.
False
Reading uses different brain regions across different languages.
False
Central dyslexia is a disruption of reading that arises before computation of a visual word form.
False
Deep dysgraphia is a type of dysgraphia where real word spelling is prone to phonological error.
False
Pure alexia is a difficulty in reading words that leads to whole-word reading.
False
FMRI studies show that literacy is predominantly right-lateralized.
False
Numeracy is limited to maths.
False
Dysgraphia is typically unimodal, patients tend to produce different kinds of errors in writing and oral spelling.
False
Peripheral dyslexia is a disruption of reading arising after computation of a visual word form.
False
Non-symbolic number processing is unique to humans
False
We can subitize exact quantities of up to 10 items without counting
False
The distance effect occurs when the distance between two numbers is small
False
The number system only processes countable quantities
False
The SNARC effect is a cultural phenomenon specific to Western cultures
False
The Triple Code Model proposes that there is only one representation of numbers in the brain
False
The ability to process symbolic numbers is innate in humans
False
Dyscalculia is a rare condition that affects only a small percentage of the population
False
Task switching is related to the prefrontal cortex
True
Patients with lesions to the anterior prefrontal cortex are not impaired at multi-tasking
False
The Somatic Marker Hypothesis states that somatic markers are stored in the amygdala
False
The Iowa Gambling Test is related to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)
True
Delay discounting is related to the lateral prefrontal cortex
True
The Multiple Demand Network is a subdivision of the occipital lobe
False
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is involved in decision-making
True
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in somatic markers only in emotional situations
False
The lateral PFC is specialized in task monitoring while the right lateral PFC is for problem solving
False
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is only involved in error detection
False
The dorsal ACC is involved in the affective division
False
Humans are less lateralized compared to other primates
False
The lateral PFC and the ACC are not involved in cognitive control
False
The error+1 trial tends to be faster and less accurate than the correct+1 trial
False
Executive functions are tied to a particular domain such as memory, language, or perception.
False
The Tower of London is a test used to assess problem-solving abilities.
True
The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in overcoming habitual responses.
True
Task switching involves discarding a previous schema and establishing a new one.
True
Switch cost refers to an improvement in response time due to task switching.
False
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions.
True
Lesions to the prefrontal cortex can lead to improved problem-solving abilities.
False
The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test is a task that assesses executive functions.
True
Emotions are critical for guiding social behavior.
True
According to the James-Lange Theory, emotions come before expression.
False
The Papez Circuit and Limbic Brain differentiate between different emotions.
False
Paul Ekman's theory suggests that there are six basic emotions.
True
The hypothalamus is not involved in emotions according to the Cannon-Bard Theory.
False
Emotions are solely associated with stimuli that are inherently rewarding or punishing.
False
Group living is not survivally advantageous.
False
Darwin's theory of emotion suggests that human emotions are unique to humans.
False
The fusiform face area is responsible for facial identity recognition.
True
Simulation theory proposes that we understand others by vicariously producing their current state in ourselves.
True
The Feldman-Barrett theory claims that all emotions tap into a core affect system that is organized along three dimensions.
False
The amygdala is involved in memory, especially emotional content of memories, and is important for fear learning and recognizing fear.
True
Capgras syndrome is characterized by an inability to recognize familiar faces.
False
The insula is involved in monitoring the external state of the body, but not interoception.
False
Eye gaze information is important for group communication.
False
Theory-of-mind is the ability to appreciate others' points of view and share their experiences.
False
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) computes current value of a stimulus based on its palatability.
False
The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in error monitoring and calculating whether an action will elicit a reward or punishment.
True
The mirror system is a neural circuit that maintains a clear distinction between self and other.
False
The ventral striatum is involved in punishment-related behaviors.
False
Kluver-Bucy syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects emotional regulation.
False
Lesions to the insula can affect recognition of all facial expressions, not just disgust.
False
Study Notes
Speech and Language
- Speech is a means of transferring ideas from one individual to another through the vibration of molecules in the air.
- Language is a social engagement that involves deducting what others know or believe.
- Animals may have language, as demonstrated by Washoe, Kanzi, and Golden seabrights.
Speech Production vs Comprehension
- Speech production involves the production of spoken words, while comprehension involves perceiving and understanding spoken words.
Spoken Word Recognition
- We match the acoustic form of spoken words to a stored set of words in our vocabulary, known as the phonological lexicon.
- The process of matching is called lexical access, and it involves competition between similar sounding words.
- The access units are debated, but the consensus is that speech recognition involves a cohort of words that are initially considered as candidates, with words getting eliminated as more evidence accumulates.
Cohort Model
- In lexical access, many spoken words are initially considered as candidates, but words get eliminated as more evidence accumulates.
- The uniqueness point is reached when the acoustic input unambiguously corresponds to only one known word.
- The time taken to recognize a word depends on how early or late the uniqueness point occurs.
- Linguistic factors that influence recognition include frequency of a word, imageability of a word, and contextual information.
Words in Context
- The cohort model explains how a single word is recognized, but words are normally spoken in the context of a discourse.
- EEG studies show that out-of-context words induce a N400 response, while grammatical errors induce a P600 response.
Aphasia
- Aphasia is a disorder of language due to brain damage on the left hemisphere, causing problems in speech perception, speech production, and writing.
Language Specialization
- Broca's area is located in the frontal lobe and is responsible for speech production, with damage causing Broca's aphasia.
- Wernicke's area is located in the temporal lobe and is responsible for language comprehension, with damage causing Wernicke's aphasia.
- Broca's aphasia patients have trouble with fluent speech, while Wernicke's aphasia patients have trouble with comprehending language.
Sentence Comprehension
- Words have meaning (semantics) and syntactic roles (grammatical classes such as nouns and verbs).
- Syntax enables the listener to figure out who is doing what to whom.
- Broca's aphasia is related to agrammatism, or the loss of grammar.
Broca's Area
- Broca's area has two functional sub-divisions: the posterior division (BA44) related to syntactic complexity, and the anterior division (BA45) related to working memory and meaning.
- Syntax and semantics are separable but not completely independent, and Broca's area can be viewed as an integration site.
Retrieval of Spoken Words
- When producing speech, three types of information need to be retrieved: lexicalization (the selection of a word based on meaning), grammatical properties, and form of the word (syllables, phonemes).
Speech Errors
- Speech errors include Freudian slips, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
- Anomia is a word-finding difficulty due to brain damage, resulting in a constant state of tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
- Proper name anomia is a severe difficulty in retrieving proper names.
Articulation
- Articulation is the final stage of speech, associated with the basal ganglia and insula.
- Damage to the insula results in apraxia for speech, or difficulties in shaping the vocal tract.
- Damage to the basal ganglia results in dysarthria, or impaired muscular contractions.
Literacy
- Literacy is the ability to read and write, enabling communication without face-to-face contact.
- It is an expert system derived from a core set of other skills such as visual recognition, manipulation of sounds, learning, and memory.
- Visual word recognition involves processing letter strings as a whole, rather than one by one.
- The visual lexicon is a storage for how words are written.
- The word superiority effect states that it is easier to detect a letter in the context of a word or nonsense letter string than in a random letter string or in isolation.
- The visual word form area is a dedicated cognitive mechanism for visual lexicon, located in the left mid-fusiform gyrus, and also responds to visual objects and Braille reading.
Acquired Reading Deficiencies
- Central dyslexia: disruption of reading arising after computation of a visual word form.
- Surface dyslexia: reading nonwords and regularly spelled words better than irregularly spelled words.
- Phonological dyslexia: reading real words better than nonwords.
- Deep dyslexia: real word reading prone to semantic errors.
- Peripheral dyslexia: disruption of reading arising up to the level of computation of a visual word form.
- Pure alexia: an acquired difficulty in reading words that leads to letter-by-letter reading.
fMRI Studies
- Multiple areas involved in literacy, predominantly left-lateralized.
- Inferior frontal lobe (Broca's area).
- Inferior parietal lobe (Wernicke's and angular gyrus – verbal working memory).
- Anterior and mid-temporal lobes (semantic memory).
- Reading uses similar brain regions across different languages, albeit to varying degrees.
Spelling and Writing
- Dysgraphia: difficulties in spelling, with similar deficiencies as central dyslexia.
- Deep dysgraphia: real word spelling prone to semantic errors.
- Dysgraphia is generally multimodal, with patients producing similar errors in writing, typing, or oral spelling.
- Evidence suggests separate written versus oral letter name output codes in spelling, indicating involvement of motor codes in writing.
Numeracy
Universal Numeracy
- Numeracy is not limited to math; humans and other species have numerical abilities that enable estimation of quantity and basic calculations.
- Infants, unschooled, cavemen, and non-human animals all possess numerical abilities.
- Fundamental sense of numeracy is universal, except for dyscalculia.
Numbers
- Non-symbolic number processing is universal.
- Ability to perform tasks becomes harder with increasing sets, even if the ratio remains the same.
- We can subitize (enumerate an exact quantity of objects without counting them) up to 4 items.
- Numbers above 4 can only be processed approximately rather than exactly in the absence of language.
Processing Symbolic Numbers
- Distance effect: faster decision-making when the distance between two numbers is large.
- Size effect: easier judgment of larger numbers when they are small.
Neural Subtrates
- Number meaning: not only countable quantities but also continuous and uncountable quantities are processed by the number system.
Numbers and Space
- SNARC effect (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes): cultural variations and other SNARC-like effects.
Triple Code Model
-
- Abstract (semantic) magnitude.
-
- Verbal store of numbers and operations.
-
- Visual representation for numerals (digits) and workbench for certain calculations.
Executive Functions
- Executive functions: complex processes that optimize performance in situations requiring multiple cognitive processes
- Not tied to a specific domain (e.g., memory, language, perception) but have a meta-cognitive, supervisory, or controlling role
- Related to prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Problem-Solving
- Problem-solving involves generating a solution with a given endpoint (goal) and optional starting point (objects)
- Tests: Tower of London, FAS test, Cognitive Estimates Test
- PFC lesions often lead to poor problem-solving
Overcoming Habitual Responses
- Inhibition: reducing the likelihood of a particular thought/action
- Related to medial PFC, specifically anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and pre-SMA
- Example: Stroop task (name the color of the ink and ignore reading the color name)
Overcoming Potent Responses
- Inhibition: reducing the likelihood of a particular thought/action
- Related to medial PFC, specifically ACC and pre-SMA
- Example: Go/No-Go task (respond to frequent stimulus, but withhold response to another stimulus)
Task Switching
- Requires PFC activation and discarding a previous schema and establishing a new one
- PFC damage leads to perseveration (failure to shift)
- Example: Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (adjust responses to new rule)
- Switch cost: slowing of response time due to discarding a previous schema and setting up a new one
Multi-Tasking
- Carrying out several tasks in succession, requiring task switching and maintaining future goals
- Patients with anterior prefrontal cortex lesions may be impaired at multi-tasking
- Example: Six Element Test (patients with prefrontal lesions may fail to switch tasks)
Decision Making
- Decisions are not solely based on rationality, even without brain damage
- Framing or social justice perception can affect decisions
- Involves ACC and OFC
Somatic Marker Hypothesis
- Somatic markers link previous situations stored in the cortex and the "feeling" of those situations stored in emotional and bodily response regions
- Located in vmPFC, influencing ongoing behavior in situations where feelings are critical
Iowa Gambling Test and Delay Discounting
- Iowa Gambling Test: a decision-making task involving risks and rewards
- Delay discounting: choosing between current and future rewards
- OFC lesions lead to planning failure and impulsive behavior
Multiple Demand Network
- Lateral PFC, ACC, and intraparietal sulcus are involved in cognitive control
- Not separate subdivisions, but a single network
- Fluid vs crystallized intelligence
Hemispheric Differences
- Not found in other primates; humans have more lateralized brain function
- Left lateral PFC: specialized in problem-solving, right lateral PFC: task monitoring
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)
- Considered part of limbic system
- Functionally two different regions: dorsal ACC (cognitive division) and rostral ACC (affective division)
- Involved in error detection and recalibration of task performance
Emotions
- Emotions are states associated with stimuli that are rewarding or punishing, guiding behavior and social interactions.
- Emotions tag stimuli with emotional states, even if they are not naturally affective.
- Emotions are critical for guiding social behavior, including mentalizing and mirroring others' emotions and mental states.
Theories of Emotion
- Darwin's theory: human emotions possess continuity with their animal counterparts, with conserved expressions across species.
- James-Lange Theory: self-perception of bodily changes produces emotional experience, but contemporary views suggest bodily experiences modify emotional experiences.
- Cannon-Bard Theory: bodily responses occur after the emotion itself, with emotions coming before expression.
Papez Circuit and Limbic Brain
- Papez circuit: cingulate cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and anterior nucleus of the thalamus.
- Limbic brain: Papez circuit + amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex.
- Key regions are secondary to emotions, such as hippocampus and hypothalamus.
Paul Ekman's Basic Emotions
- Dr. Paul Ekman's work on expression and gesture and their role in emotion and deception.
Other Contemporary Approaches
- Feldman-Barrett theory: all emotions tap into a core affect system organized along two dimensions: pleasant-unpleasant and activation-deactivation.
- Rolls theory: constructionist approach, concerned with dimensions of reward and punishment, their presence/absence, and intensity.
Neural Substrates
- Amygdala: involved in memory, especially emotional content, fear learning, and recognizing fear.
- Insula: involved in bodily perception, pain and taste perception, disgust, and interoception.
- OFC (Orbitofrontal Cortex): computes current value of a stimulus, linked to subjective reports of pleasantness.
- Anterior Cingulate: involved in error monitoring, bodily responses to emotions, and social aspect, empathy, and exclusion.
- Ventral Striatum: reward-related, calculates difference between predicted and actual reward.
Reading Faces
- Facial Identity: fusiform face area.
- Expression Recognition & Gaze Processing: superior temporal sulcus.
- Expressions: involve the extended system, including amygdala and insula.
- Simulation Theory: we understand others by vicariously producing their current state in ourselves.
Reading Faces (continued)
- Social Referencing: emotional response of another person may lead to avoidance or interaction with a previously neutral stimulus.
- Capgras Syndrome: patients can consciously recognize the person but lack an emotional response to them, believing they were replaced with body doubles.
Eye Gaze Information
- Eyes Inform About Emotions: important for one-to-one communication.
- Eye Gaze: one can infer desire (next move) from eye gaze.
Reading Minds
- Theory-of-Mind: the ability to represent the mental states of others (e.g., their beliefs, desires, intentions).
- Empathy: the ability to appreciate others' points of view and share their experiences.
- Mirror System: neural circuits or regions that disregard the distinction between self and other.
This quiz covers the basics of speech and language, including the physical properties of sound waves and the cognitive processes involved in producing and comprehending language.
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