Psycholinguistics

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Psycholinguistics
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Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics

• Psycholinguistics study of language acquisition,
  storage, comprehension, and production
• Neurolinguistics study of the neural and
  electrochemical bases of language development and
  use

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Brain Architecture

• Right and left hemispheres
• Hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum
• Brain is covered by a membrane called the cortex
• Bumps on the brain are called gyri, depressions
  are fissures

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Cortex Areas

• Auditory cortex receives and identifies auditory
  signals Converts them into forms understandable
  by other areas of the brain
• Visual cortex receives and interprets visual
  stimuli Storage site for pictoral images
• Motor cortex sends signals to muscles to make
  them move

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Language Centers of the Brain

• Brocas area
• Located at the base of the motor cortex
• Responsible for organising articulatory patterns
  of language
• Directs the motor cortex when talk is required
• Controls use of inflectional and function
  morphemes

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Language Centers of the Brain

• Wernickes area
• Located near the back of the auditory cortex
• Responsible for the comprehension of words
• Selects words when producing language

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Language Centers of the Brain

• Arcuate Fasciculus
• Nerve fibers connecting Brocas and Wernickes
  areas
• Allow the two areas to share information
• Required for accessing of the mental lexicon

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Language Centers of the Brain

• Angular Gyrus
• Located between Wernickes area and the visual
  cortex
• Converts visual stimuli into auditory stimuli and
  vice versa
• Allows matching of spoken and written forms to
  the objects they describe
• Crucial for reading and writing

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Language Disorders

• Aphasia
• An inability to perceive, process, or produce
  language because of physical damage to the
  brain, (p.62).

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Language Disorders

• Brocas aphasia
• Individuals suffer from an inability to plan the
  motor sequences for spoken or signed language
• Comprehension is not affected This is an
  expressive disorder
• Speech is halting, patients have a hard time
  forming words
• Sentences may lack inflection and/or function
  morphemes (e.G. To, the, etc.)

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Language Disorders

• Wernickes aphasia
• Individuals suffer from the inability to
  understand the speech of others
• This is a receptive disorder
• Patients may produce semantically incoherent
  speech, e.G. Use of circumlocutions
• Syntactic word order may be altered

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Language Disorders

• Conduction aphasia
• Results from damage to the arcuate fasciculus
• Individuals may sound like sufferers of
  Wernickes aphasia (fluent but meaningless
  speech)
• Sufferers will be able to understand speech, but
  not to repeat it
• Results from the inability to transmit
  information from Brocas to Wernickes areas and
  vice versa

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Language Disorders

• Alexia
• Caused by damage to the angular gyrus
• The inability to read and comprehend written
  words
• Caused by the inability of the angular gyrus to
  match the visual word to the phonetic form in
  Wernickes area
• Agraphia
• The inability to write words
• Caused by the inability of the angular gyrus to
  relate the phonetic form of a word to the written
  form
• (Not related to dyslexia, which is caused by a
  structural portion difference of the temporal
  lobe, and which may be overcome with proper
  training)