Functional Language Systems Research Articles

Precision fMRI reveals that the language network exhibits adult-like left-hemispheric lateralization by 4 years of age.

Language is the most canonical function that shows a strong hemispheric asymmetry in adult brains. However, whether the language system is already lateralized to the left hemisphere early in development has long been debated, given that early left-hemisphere damage often leaves language processing unimpaired. We examined the developmental trajectory of language lateralization in two large-scale pediatric datasets using robust individual-subject fMRI approaches. We found that the language system exhibits adult-like left-hemispheric lateralization by age 4, although other aspects of the neural infrastructure for language show a clear change between age 4 and late childhood. These findings challengethe claim that the language system is bilateral during early development and call for alternative accounts of early hemispheric equipotentiality for language.

On the inertia of linguistic ideas: Revisiting the dichotomy between closed and open classes

This article revisits the long-standing linguistic dichotomy between closed and open classes. It is shown that the dichotomy is related to a number of difficulties and problems and must be reformulated in light of several distinctions, though even in its coherent formulation it remains of little scientific value. Specifically, three main points are made in this regard. First, a sharp distinction between closed and open linguistic classes can be drawn only on the basis of whether class expansion is possible without altering the basic structure of the functional language system, even if changes would necessarily occur at the level of the language norm. Second, even so understood, the distinction becomes irrelevant once a functional and structural point of view is adopted, since such a point of view can only lead to closed classes. Third, despite claims to the contrary, the distinction is of no use for differentiating lexis from the other structural levels of a language, as a strictly functional and structural treatment of this domain leads to closed paradigmatic structures analogous to those found in morphosyntax and phonology.

Computerized Writing and Reading Instruction for Students in Grades 4 to 9 With Specific Learning Disabilities Affecting Written Language.

Computer scientists and educational researchers evaluated effectiveness of computerized instruction tailored to evidence-based impairments in specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in students in grades 4 to 9 with persisting SLDs despite prior extra help. Following comprehensive, evidence-based differential diagnosis for dysgraphia (impaired handwriting), dyslexia (impaired word reading and spelling), and oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD), students completed 18 sessions of computerized instruction over about 3 months. The 11 students taught letter formation with sequential, numbered, colored arrow cues with full contours who wrote letters on lines added to iPAD screen showed more and stronger treatment effects than the 21 students taught using only visual motion cues for letter formation who wrote on an unlined computer monitor. Teaching to all levels of language in multiple functional language systems (by ear, eye, mouth, and hand) close in time resulted in significant gains in reading and writing skills for the group and in diagnosed SLD hallmark impairments for individuals; also, performance on computerized learning activities correlated with treatment gains. Results are discussed in reference to need for both accommodations and explicit instruction for persisting SLDs and the potential for computers to teach handwriting, morphophonemic orthographies, comprehension, and composition.

Trastornos del Lenguaje en el Adulto

The main purpose of the current review is to describe the language disorders in adult as a consequence of brain damage. The oral language disorders will be approached regarding the following topics: some basic linguistic concepts to describe language disturbances accurately; the functional language system involving perisylvian areas, right hemisphere and prefrontal areas; aphasia that represent a total or partial language impairment; the patient with aphasia, regarding their clinical background, their attitude towards the alteration, the cognitive impairment and other associated disorders; the aphasia treatment which has for purposes to achieve a functional communication and psychological and social adaptation considering their language impairment and, at last, the discourse impairment which affects their use and content. Regarding the reading and writing impairment, agraphia and alexia types will be described. Finally, it is important to mention two aspects: first, besides aphasia there are other language disorders and, second, language assessment is essential to the management and rehabilitation of the patient.

Trastornos del Lenguaje en el Adulto

The main purpose of the current review is to describe the language disorders in adult as a consequence of brain damage. The oral language disorders will be approached regarding the following topics: some basic linguistic concepts to describe language disturbances accurately; the functional language system involving perisylvian areas, right hemisphere and prefrontal areas; aphasia that represent a total or partial language impairment; the patient with aphasia, regarding their clinical background, their attitude towards the alteration, the cognitive impairment and other associated disorders; the aphasia treatment which has for purposes to achieve a functional communication and psychological and social adaptation considering their language impairment and, at last, the discourse impairment which affects their use and content. Regarding the reading and writing impairment, agraphia and alexia types will be described. Finally, it is important to mention two aspects: first, besides aphasia there are other language disorders and, second, language assessment is essential to the management and rehabilitation of the patient.

Early Development of Language by Hand: Composing, Reading, Listening, and Speaking Connections; Three Letter-Writing Modes; and Fast Mapping in Spelling

The first findings from a 5-year, overlapping-cohorts longitudinal study of typical language development are reported for (a) the interrelationships among Language by Ear (listening), Mouth (speaking), Eye (reading), and Hand (writing) in Cohort 1 in 1st and 3rd grade and Cohort 2 in 3rd and 5th grade; (b) the interrelationships among three modes of Language by Hand (writing manuscript letters with pen and keyboard and cursive letters with pen) in each cohort in the same grade levels as (a); and (c) the ability of the 1st graders in Cohort 1 and the 3rd graders in Cohort 2 to apply fast mapping in learning to spell pseudowords. Results showed that individual differences in Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression are stable developmentally, but each functional language system is only moderately correlated with the others. Likewise, manuscript writing, cursive writing, and keyboarding are only moderately correlated, and each has a different set of unique neuropsychological predictors depending on outcome measure and grade level. Results support the use of the following neuropsychological measures in assessing handwriting modes: orthographic coding, rapid automatic naming, finger succession (grapho-motor planning for sequential finger movements), inhibition, inhibition/switching, and phonemes skills (which may facilitate transfer of abstract letter identities across letter formats and modes of production). Both 1st and 3rd graders showed evidence of fast mapping of novel spoken word forms onto written word forms over 3 brief sessions (2 of which involved teaching) embedded in the assessment battery; and this fast mapping explained unique variance in their spelling achievement over and beyond their orthographic and phonological coding abilities and correlated significantly with current and next-year spelling achievement.

Human language and our reptilian brain. The subcortical bases of speech, syntax, and thought.

For the past 200 years, virtually all attempts to account for the neural bases and the evolution of human language have focused on the neocortex. And in the past 40 years, linguists adhering to Noam Chomsky's theories have essentially equated language with syntax, hypothetically specified by an innate, genetically transmitted "universal grammar." In Human Language and our Reptilian Brain (2000), I attempt to shift the focus. My premise is that speech is the central element of human linguistic ability and both speech and syntax are learned skills, based on a neural "functional language system" (FLS). Although neither the anatomy nor the physiology of the FLS can be specified with certainty at the present time, converging behavioral and neurobiological data point to language being regulated by a distributed network that crucially involves subcortical structures, the basal ganglia, often associated with reptilian brains though they derive from amphibians.

Development of Language by Hand and Its Connections with Language by Ear, Mouth, and Eye

Contrary to popular conception, language is not a unitary ability. Four functional language systems—(1) aural, (2) oral, (3) reading, and (4) writing—develop on independent trajectories that are interconnected to varying degrees at different stages of development. These interconnected, yet independe

Children's Language Learning: An Interactionist Perspective

This review of children's language learning considers historical accounts of acquisition and individual variation, recent advances in methods for studying language learning, research on genetic and environmental input that have contributed to the interactionist perspective, and the relevance of cross-disciplinary work on language disorders and the biology of learning to future theories. It concludes that the study of children's language development is converging on an interactionist perspective of how children learn to talk, incorporating the contributions of both nature and nurture to emergent, functional language systems. Language learning is viewed as an integration of learning in multiple domains.

Towards a conceptualization of language and cognitive impairment in closed-head injury: use of clinical measures

Language deficits following closed head injury (CHI) are widely considered as impairments secondary to the cognitive disruptions common to closed-head injury. In addition, the use of standardized measures to assess the functioning of the language system in closed-head injury has mostly been limited to aphasia test batteries which examine primary language functions only. This has resulted in generalizations as to the integrity of the language system following closed-head injury, and as a consequence, consideration of the contribution of the language system to the achievement of com municative competence in this population has been minimized. This paper presents a framework in which the functional language system is identified as a hierarchical system containing primary and higher-order language processes involved in reciprocal relationships with cognitive functions at each level. A group of 25 closed-head injury subjects and 23 demographically matched control subjects were examined for linguistic proficiency using a battery of standardized tests which investigated the language system across a hierarchy of complexity, structure and predicability. In addition, 23 of the closed-head subjects were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery in order to determine the nature and extent of concomitant impairments in cognitive processes and their relation ship with impairments in the language system. The language battery was found to consistently dis criminate between the control and clinical groups indicating that the linguistic system is significantly impaired following CHI, with the lexical-semantic system being the most vulnerable to disruption. A strong influential relationship between language and cognitive processes was statistically confirmed and the nature of the relationship between aspects of language and cognition further delineated.

Compiler‐Enforced Cache Coherence Using a Functional Language

The cost of hardware cache coherence, both in terms of execution delay and operational cost, is substantial for scalable systems. Fortunately, compiler‐generated cache management can reduce program serialization due to cache contention; increase execution performance; and reduce the cost of parallel systems by eliminating the need for more expensive hardware support. In this article, we use the Sisal functional language system as a vehicle to implement and investigate automatic, compiler‐based cache management. We describe our implementation of Sisal for the IBM Power/4. The Power/4, briefly available as a product, represents an early attempt to build a shared memory machine that relies strictly on the language system for cache coherence. We discuss the issues associated with deterministic execution and program correctness on a system without hardware coherence, and demonstrate how Sisal (as a functional language) is able to address those issues.

Matching, unification and complexity

Pattern matching and unification are two key primitive operations used in many inference based systems including theorem provers, term rewriting systems, computer algebra systems, deductive data bases, Prolog, logic programming systems, functional language systems, systems for analysis of specifications and program synthesis, and program verification systems. In this note, we give results recently obtained in studying the complexity of matching and unification problems for first-order terms especially when some function symbols are interpreted. For further details and proofs, the reader may wish to refer to a forthcoming paper by the authors.

A Sign in the Right Direction: Language Development for the Non-Verbal Child

Within the population of moderately to severely handicapped children is a sub-population of non-verbal children who fail to develop a functional language system and do not appear to profit from the traditional therapeutic methods that concentrate on oral production. Research is reviewed which uses sign language coupled with the spoken word to facilitate the development of receptive and expressive language for the non-verbal child. Procedures for using sign language with the non-verbal child are outlined with specific goals focused on: (a) development of receptive vocabulary, (b) development of quality and quantity of expressive language, (c) development of sentence structure and length, and (d) development of a major means of communication. A brief summary focuses on the use of sign language as a multi-sensory approach to language development.