How selective are selective word class deficits? Two case studies of action and object naming

Jonkers, Roel; Bastiaanse, Roelien

doi:10.1080/02687039808249453

Cited by 70 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…This was a main effect of word class, which did not interact with the presence of word class ambiguity or semantic ambiguity. This result is consistent with findings from studies of aphasia that report selective deficits for words from different grammatical categories that are independent of both noun/verb homophony and the relatedness of noun meanings and verb meanings (Caramazza and Hillis, 1991;Goldberg and Goldfarb, 2005;Jonkers and Bastiaanse, 1998;Kemmerer and Tranel, 2000). However, not all studies have found this kind of N400 difference between nouns and verbs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

Lee

Federmeier

2006

Brain Research

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The goal of this study was to jointly examine the effects of word class, word class ambiguity, and semantic ambiguity on the brain response to words in syntactically specified contexts. Four types of words were used: (1) word class ambiguous words with a high degree of semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'duck'); (2) word class ambiguous words with little or no semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'vote'); (3) word class unambiguous nouns (e.g., 'sofa'); and (4) word class unambiguous verbs (e.g., 'eat'). These words were embedded in minimal phrases that explicitly specified their word class: "the" for nouns (and ambiguous words used as nouns) and "to" for verbs (and ambiguous words used as verbs). Our results replicate the basic word class effects found in prior work (Federmeier, K.D., Segal, J.B., Lombrozo, T., Kutas, M., 2000. Brain responses to nouns, verbs and class ambiguous words in context. Brain, 123 (12), 2552-2566), including an enhanced N400 (250-450ms) to nouns compared with verbs and an enhanced frontal positivity (300-700 ms) to unambiguous verbs in relation to unambiguous nouns. A sustained frontal negativity (250-900 ms) that was previously linked to word class ambiguity also appeared in this study but was specific to word class ambiguous items that also had a high level of semantic ambiguity; word class ambiguous items without semantic ambiguity, in contrast, were more positive than class unambiguous words in the early part of this time window (250-500 ms). Thus, this frontal negative effect seems to be driven by the need to resolve the semantic ambiguity that is sometimes associated with different grammatical uses of a word class ambiguous homograph rather than by the class ambiguity per se.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

Lee

Federmeier

2006

Brain Research

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“…It has been suggested that verbs are generally more difficult to access, and that this difference is especially evident in naming tasks, in which the imageability of the word plays a significant role (Bird, Howard, & Franklin, 2000;Kohn, Lorch, & Pearson, 1989;Williams & Canter, 1987). This hypothesis is supported by findings of specific verb impairments in both fluent and non-fluent aphasics, while specific noun impairments have been reported less consistently, and primarily for fluent aphasics (e.g., Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1998;Luzzatti et al, 2002;Zingeser & Berndt, 1990). Others have hypothesized that verb deficits are related to the greater grammatical complexity of verbs relative to nouns (e.g., Lapointe, 1985;Miceli et al, 1984;Saffran, Schwartz, & Marin, 1980;Zingeser & Berndt, 1990), a factor which affects agrammatic speakers more strongly than anomic speakers.…”

Section: Dissociations In Aphasiasupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Certain symptoms tend to co-occur, but may not in all patients. These dissociations may not be observed in all agrammatics and anomics (Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1998), or may not constitute real double dissociations (Joanette & Goulet, 1991). In fact, Appelbaum and Bates (1999) point out that the incidence of double dissociations, as evidence for independence between functions, is overestimated because of the failure to consider correlations between measures.…”

Section: The Co-occurrence Of Symptoms In Aphasiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to divide the labor: an account of deficits in light and heavy verb production

2003

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Theories of sentence production that involve a convergence of activation from conceptual-semantic and syntactic-sequential units inspired a connectionist model that was trained to produce simple sentences. The model used a learning algorithm that resulted in a sharing of responsibility (or "division of labor") between syntactic and semantic inputs for lexical activation according to their predictive power. Semantically rich, or "heavy", verbs in the model came to rely on semantic cues more than on syntactic cues, whereas semantically impoverished, or "light", verbs relied more on syntactic cues. When the syntactic and semantic inputs were lesioned, the model exhibited patterns of production characteristic of agrammatic and anomic aphasic patients, respectively. Anomic models tended to lose the ability to retrieve heavy verbs, whereas agrammatic models were more impaired in retrieving light verbs. These results obtained in both sentence production and single-word naming simulations. Moreover, simulated agrammatic lexical retrieval was more impaired overall in sentences than in single-word tasks, in agreement with the literature. The results provide a demonstration of the division-of-labor principle, as well as general support for the claim that connectionist learning principles can contribute to the understanding of non-transparent neuropsychological dissociations.

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“…In this regard, Jonkers and Bastiaanse (1998) suggested that irrespective of the type of language disorder verbs and nouns dissociate in one direction only, as all aphasic patients have more difficulty retrieving verbs than nouns. To support this hypothesis the authors proposed that double dissociations were an artifact resulting from the fact that, when selecting the test items, either the (psycho-)linguistic variables relevant in determining word retrieval had not been considered or the appropriate comparison techniques had not been applied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Verb–Noun Double Dissociation in Aphasic Lexical Impairments: The Role of Word Frequency and Imageability

et al. 2002

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How selective are selective word class deficits? Two case studies of action and object naming

Cited by 70 publications

References 20 publications

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

Learning to divide the labor: an account of deficits in light and heavy verb production

Verb–Noun Double Dissociation in Aphasic Lexical Impairments: The Role of Word Frequency and Imageability

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