Brainstem Timing Deficits in Children with Learning Impairment May Result from Corticofugal Origins

from Audiology & Neuro-Otology

Abstract

A substantial proportion of children with language-based learning problems [learning disabilities (LD)] display abnormal encoding of speech at rostral levels of the auditory brainstem (i.e. midbrain) as measured by the auditory brainstem response (ABR). Of interest here is whether these timing deficits originate at the rostral brainstem or whether they reflect deficient sensory encoding at lower levels of the auditory pathway. We describe the early brainstem response to speech (waves I and III) in typically developing 8- to 12-year-old children and children with LD. We then focus on the early brainstem responses in children with LD found to show abnormal components of the rostral speech-evoked ABR (waves V and A). We found that wave I was not reliably evoked using our speech stimulus and recording parameters in either typically developing children or those with LD. Wave III was reliably evoked in the large majority of subjects in both groups and its timing did not differ between them. These data are consistent with the view that the auditory deficits in the majority of LD children with abnormal speech-evoked ABR originate from corticofugal modulation of subcortical activity.

Discourse metaphors: The link between figurative language and habitual analogies

from Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract:Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an analysis of metaphors in a corpus of newspaper texts support the prediction that regular analogies are form-specific, i.e., bound to particular lexical items. Implications of these results for assumptions about the generality of habitual analogies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving around: The role of the conceptualizer in semantic interpretation

from Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract:The first half of this article presents a fairly standard cognitive-semantic account of the semantic variants of the English path expression around. Then it is argued that this account needs to be expanded to include a much more explicitly central role for an active conceptualizer in a construal relation. To begin with, the schematic meaning of around is not an objective relation between a trajector and a landmark. It is a scanning pattern in which the conceptualizer’s attention moves in order to focus on the location of the trajector. That scanning pattern is the same whether the trajector is objectively moving or stationary. Another basic factor in the meaning of around is the conceptual viewpoint. That viewpoint is usually presumed tacitly to be synoptic and orthogonal to the plane of the trajector’s path, but there are actually many possible viewpoints, and there are potentially significant distinctions between one viewpoint and another. There is good reason to think that some distinct semantic variants of around are linked to the choice of defining viewpoint, and that its meaning can change in objectively significant ways depending on which conceptual viewpoint is chosen on a given occasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negativity bias in language: A cognitive-affective model of emotive intensifiers

from Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract:The repeated confirmation of the hypothesis of a negativity bias in cognitive psychology invited an assumption that the general asymmetry in the automatic processing of affective information should bear linguistic consequences, for language is inseparable from human cognition and emotion. This paper shows that the lexical semantics of emotive intensifiers in German, English and Chinese can be best explained in a cognitive-affective model of negativity bias. The parallel between a higher sensitivity to potentially threatening events at the neural level and the predominance of emotive intensifiers based on threat-relevant negative emotions at the linguistic level provides further evidence of the embodiment of linguistic conceptualisation. Ultimately, because the negativity bias is a vital component of our adaptive behaviour, the corresponding linguistic behaviour must be viewed as part of our dynamic system of adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of grammar in the verbalization of experience

from Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract:Why is there grammar? The verbalization of experience can provide an explanatory model of the function of grammatical categories and constructions. Chafe’s model of verbalization provides a model of how the unanalyzed, unique whole of experience is broken up into parts that are categorized into types, that is, the lexical roots of an utterance. We add further processes to Chafe’s model, because the speaker also must convert the types represented by the lexical roots back to the particulars of the experience, and put the parts back together into the original whole. These additional processes express the aspects of experience that become grammaticalized. A functional classification of grammatical categories and structures in terms of their role in verbalization is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain activity can reveal a person’s mother tongue, researchers say

from MedBroadcast.com

ROME – No one can read our thoughts, for now, but some scientists believe they can at least figure out in what language we do our thinking.

Before we utter a single word, experts can gauge our mother tongue and the level of proficiency in other languages by analyzing our brain activity while we read, scientists working with Italy’s National Research Council say.