The Neurology of Proverbs

Lancker, Diana Van

doi:10.1155/1990/261504

Cited by 60 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(58 reference statements)

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“…Some recent research has indicated that RH processes may be more important for understanding very unfamiliar and more complex metaphors (Bottini et al, 2007;Mashal et al, 2005;Schmidt, DeBuse, & Seger, 2007). It is also possible that greater RH involvement would occur with pictorial stimuli (Rinaldi, Marangolo, & Baldassarri, 2004;Winner & Gardner, 1977), with other Wgurative forms (Coulson & Williams, 2005;Kempler et al, 1999;Van Lancker, 1990), and in more naturalistic discourse situations involving higher-level inferences and pragmatic processing (Brownell, Gardner, Prather, & Martino, 1995;Sabbagh, 1999). Regardless of these limitations, the main strength of the present investigation involved the systematic study of normal participants with a large, carefully designed, and normed set of stimuli using the same basic paradigm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved?

Kacinik

Chiarello

2007

Brain and Language

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Two divided visual Weld priming experiments examined cerebral asymmetries for understanding metaphors varying in sentence constraint. Experiment 1 investigated ambiguous words (e.g., SWEET and BRIGHT) with literal and metaphoric meanings in ambiguous and unambiguous sentence contexts, while Experiment 2 involved standard metaphors (e.g., The drink you gave me was a meteor) with sententially consistent and inconsistent targets (i.e., POTENT vs COMET). Similar literal and metaphor priming eVects were found in both visual Welds across most experimental conditions. However, RH processes also maintained activation of sententially inconsistent literal meanings following metaphoric expressions. These results do not strongly support the RH as the preferred substrate for metaphor comprehension (e.g., Anaki, Faust, & Kravetz, 1998;Bottini et al., 1994), and suggest that processes in both hemispheres can support metaphor comprehension, although not via identical mechanisms. The LH may utilize sentence constraint to select and integrate only contextually relevant literal and metaphoric meanings, whereas the RH may be less sensitive to sentence context and can maintain the activation of some alternative interpretations. This may be potentially useful in situations where an initial understanding must be revised.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved?

Kacinik

Chiarello

2007

Brain and Language

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“…Engages abstract verbal reasoning (Lezak, 1995) and higher order cognitive processes of figurative language comprehension (Van Lancker, 1990). Students read beginnings of proverbs to see if participants knew the ending.…”

Section: Proverb Completion and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the sensitivity of a PI task to declines in abstract verbal reasoning (Van Lancker, 1990) and figurative language processing, we elected to use a proverb interpretation task as one of our discourse outcome measures. Chapman et al (1997) compared persons with fluent aphasia, persons with AD and healthy elders on their ability to interpret familiar and unfamiliar proverbs.…”

Section: Proverb Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that persons with AD performed well on interpretation of familiar proverbs but had difficulty with unfamiliar proverbs. Van Lancker (1990) suggests that familiar proverbs are stored in semantic memory as a single unit of meaning and are likely retrieved like lexical items. This may make them easier to interpret than unfamiliar proverbs, which require more inferencing.…”

Section: Proverb Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of four years of exercise, language, and social interventions on Alzheimer discourse

Mahendra

Arkin

2003

Journal of Communication Disorders

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This article describes a comprehensive cognitive-linguistic intervention program for mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients that provided communication skills practice in the context of health-enhancing and esteem-building community-based activities: physical fitness training and supervised volunteer work. The interventions were administered by undergraduate students who completed academic work, received faculty supervision, and earned three credits for one semester of participation. Effects of the interventions on the discourse of four participants who completed all 4 years of the program are reported in detail. The maintained or improved performance on multiple discourse outcome measures provides powerful rationale for making such interventions more widely available and preliminary support for their effectiveness in preserving communicative function. An additional role for speech-language pathologists (SLPs)-as trainers and supervisors of non-professional rehab partners for persons with dementia-is proposed. Learning outcomes: From this article, participants will be able to (1) list specific language tasks that can be used to assess discourse in individuals with AD; (2) identify several cognitive-linguistic interventions appropriate for use with AD patients; and (3) understand how long-term cognitive-linguistic interventions may affect the language performance of individuals with AD. #

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“…Less frequently examined in communication science are formulaic or familiar, nonliteral expressions (FNEs), variously labeled as slang, idioms, speech formulas, sayings, pause fillers, conventional expressions, automatic or overlearned speech, expletives, cliches, maxims, slogans, proverbs, and so on. Studies of brain-damaged subjects suggest that novel and formulaic language are processed by different neurological structures (Van Lancker, 1990 Van Lancker & Kempler, 1987). People with aphasia are sometimes better able to produce overlearned than novel expressions (Jackson, 1874;Van Lancker, 1988;Code, 1982;Blanken et al, 1990), possibly attributable to right hemisphere (Graves & Landis, 1985).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Poster Session 1

2001

Brain and Language

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We describe a patient with multiple brain lesions who presents with striking dissociations between verbal and manual responses in a variety of tasks, including visual extinction, recognition of digits and number words, and single-digit addition. Interpreted in light of other patient studies (e.g., Brion & Jedynak, 1972;Funnell et al., 2000;Baynes et al., 1997;Kamaki et al., 1993; Marchetti & Della Sala, 1998;Gazzaniga, 2000), these dissociations have implications for the understanding of righthemisphere language capacities, inter-hemispheric communication, and perhaps even consciousness. Case HistoryWS is a 63-year-old right-handed man with a master's degree in mathematics. He worked as a math instructor at a community college before suffering CVAs in 1998 and 2000. MRI following the more recent incident revealed a new left parietal infarct, older left occipital and anterior callosal lesions, and possible thinning of other callosal regions. A right homonymous hemianopia was present immediately after the earlier CVA, but cleared within six months. At the time of the present study WS had normal acuity and visual fields. Visual ExtinctionAsterisks were presented for 200 ms on a computer monitor. For Left stimuli, a single asterisk was presented to the left of fixation, and for Right stimuli an asterisk was presented to the right of fixation. For Both stimuli, an asterisk was presented both to the left and to the right of fixation.On each trial WS indicated where asterisks had appeared. In the Verbal Response condition he responded by saying ''left,'' ''right,'' or ''both.'' In the Manual Response condition he responded with his right hand, raising his index finger to indicate a Left stimulus, his middle finger for a Right stimulus, and both fingers for a Both stimulus.Results for the Verbal Response condition suggested left neglect with extinction. Whereas WS was 100% correct for Right stimuli (68/68), his accuracy was only 76% for Left stimuli (52/68), and 46% for Both stimuli (63/136). Virtually all of his errors involved failure to report asterisks presented on the left.In the Manual Response condition the results were quite different. Accuracy for Left stimuli (98% (51/52)-and Both stimuli-82% (85/104)) was much higher than in the Verbal Response condition (p Ͻ .001). Also, the majority of errors for Both stimuli (13/19) were failures to report the right stimulus, suggesting a mild right extinction. Accuracy for Right stimuli was 94% (49/52). Digit RecognitionOn each trial a single digit was presented for 200 ms to the left or right of fixation. On Left and Right trials only the digit was presented; on Left-with-X and Rightwith-X trials an X was also presented, on the opposite side of fixation from the digit (see Table 1).WS was instructed to report the digit, ignoring the X when it was present. In the Verbal condition he named the digit, whereas in the Manual condition he held up the appropriate number of fingers (using the left hand for the numbers 1-5, and both hands for 6-9).In the Verbal condition WS was ...

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The Neurology of Proverbs

Cited by 60 publications

References 45 publications

Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved?

Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved?

Effects of four years of exercise, language, and social interventions on Alzheimer discourse

Poster Session 1

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