Nonverbal Functions Research Articles

Electrode placement in ECT: cognitive effects

Forty patients suffering from a major depressive disorder, for whom electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was clinically indicated, were assigned to one of three electrode placement groups: bitemporal (BT), right unilateral (RU) or bifrontal (BF). Comparisons of these groups in terms of cognitive status showed that the BF placement, which avoided both temporal regions, spared both verbal and nonverbal functions. These differential effects, which were independent of the degree of clinical depression, were not, however, evident three months after the last ECT.

Sex Differences in Neuropsychological Performance for Children with Reading Deficits

This study examined sex differences in neuropsychological functioning for a large sample of public school children with reading deficits. Specifically, scores on the Weschsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (Wechsler, 1974), the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery for older children (Reitan, 1969) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (Jastak and Jastak, 1978) were compared for males and females in a multivariate fashion. Significant sex differences were found in motor, verbal and nonverbal functioning. Females seemed to be more aberrant than males in expected neuropsychological performance.

Thalamic Mechanisms in Language and Rhythm (Temporal Perception and Expression)-Comparison of Cortical and Thalamic Damaged Patients from the Neurobehavioral Aspect

We investigated the relationship between language disturbances and the impairment of rhythmic capabilities (temporal perception & expression) in the patients with thalamic hemorrhage and compared them to patients with cortical lesions to probe the relationship of the thalamus to the mechanism of aphasic symptoms. 101 right-handed individuals, including 12 with thalamic hemorrhage, were studied to analyze language (verbal) and rhythmic (non-verbal) functions. Comparison of left- and right-hemisphere damaged patients revealed significant hypofunction of language and rhythmic capabilities in the group with lesions of left hemisphere. Some correlation could be seen between the rhythm disturbance and the language impairments in terms of severity and types. In contrast, the patients with thalamic hemorrhage showed a dissociation between the severely abnormal rhythm (non-verbal) and milder language (verbal) impairments. The language function values were constantly higher in the cases with thalamic hemorrhage than with cortical damages, while rhythmic capabilities were reduced, a tendency unlike that of the group with cortical damages. These findings suggest that language is primarily a function of the cerebral cortex of the dominant hemisphere, and that the thalamic area, necessary for the timing mechanism (rhythmic function), plays a part in the overall mechanism of aphasic symptomatology.

Adaptation of a Screening Test for Bilingual and Bidialectal Populations

Screening for language problems in minority preschool children is not straight-forward because of these children's diverse cultural, economic, and linguistic backgrounds. Over 68% of the 540 preschool English-speaking children in the Fort Worth Head Start program obtained scores at least one standard deviation below the mean on the Hannah-Gardner Test of Verbal and Nonverbal Language Functioning. This high failure rate suggested that a local adaptation was needed for language screening. The procedures used to calculate local norms and other issues involved in screening minority population are discussed.

Neuropsychological Improvement Following Endarterectomy as a Function of Outcome Measure and Reconstructed Vessel

30 patient receiving right or left carotid reconstruction and 15 medically matched controls were compared pre- and post-surgically on measures of motor speed, sustained vigilance, verbal memory and verbal and nonverbal intellectual function. The group receiving right sided vessel reconstruction demonstrated the largest post-operative gains on the attention/speed battery. Relative to controls, left carotid patients demonstrated improvement only on motor speed measures. There was no post-operative improvement in intellectual function in any of the groups. The findings suggest that increased blood perfusion following right sided endarterectomy facilitates the right hemisphere's exclusive control of bilateral attention/arousal responses. In addition, findings suggest that detection of post-endarterectomy improvement may be dependent on the specific task dimension sampled, e.g., speed vs. cognitive ability and verbal-graphic vs. nonverbal symbol manipulation.

Non-verbal disturbances in crossed aphasia

Abstract Aphasia is generally accompanied by signs of non-verbal dysfunction. The study of crossed aphasia can help to clarify the relationship between the two orders of phenomena. Four personal cases are reported and the relevant literature is reviewed concerning disorders of non-verbal function which accompany crossed aphasia. Left-sided neglect and constructional apraxia are common findings. Limb apraxia is a rarity among the cases reported, but bucco-facial apraxia is as frequent as in left hemisphere lesioned aphasics. In the light of these observations, the role of each hemisphere for verbal and non-verbal behaviour is reconsidered.

Some cognitive correlates of affective disorders.

Seventy-one men completed a battery of cognitive tests which were designed to reflect verbal analytic and non-verbal holistic functioning. Interest centred around pattern of response. Thirty men were suffering from an affective disorder and forty-one were well. All the men were in prison, the majority awaiting trial. The affective disorder group was subdivided into three categories: men who had a history of manic-depressive illness; a group of unipolar, psychotically depressed men; and men who were regarded as being depressed in reaction to circumstances. All three groups showed specific difficulty in dealing with spatial/holistic tasks, other factors being held constant. They were also found to differ in a number of other respects. The possible significance of these differences is discussed.

Some cognitive correlates of schizophrenic illnesses.

A battery of tests was developed to assess verbal, non-verbal and mixed cognitive functions. Interest was based on pattern of response rather than absolute scores. The subjects were 167 men held in prison on criminal charges or in a maximum security hospital after conviction. The present paper deals exclusively with two subgroups: the 61 schizophrenic men and the 41 men with no psychiatric disorder. The schizophrenic group as a whole presented a very different cognitive pattern from the 'normal' men. First, with the exception of the vocabulary subtest of the WAIS, the schizophrenics were inferior on all tests, whether verbal, non-verbal or mixed function. Secondly, they showed considerably more variation within subtests. The schizophrenic sample was therefore subdivided into four clinical groups. Each showed a distinctive cognitive profile. It is argued that these cognitive differences reflect real differences in the disorder and type of illness being experienced by members of these subgroups.

Reliability and validity characteristics of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB).

The reliability and validity characteristics of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) are described. High internal consistency measures and high test-retest reliability argue for stability of the test both because its parts contribute to the composite index and because of its temporal reliability. Inter- and intrajudge reliability are both very high, suggesting consistent scoring within and between scorers. The WAB satisfies face- and content-validity criteria. Results from the WAB and the Neurosensory Center Comprehensive Examination for Aphasia (NCCEA) highly correlate, indicating good construct validity. WAB AQ scores and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices scores significantly correlate, suggesting that the language portions of the WAB are not totally independent from nonverbal functioning. WAB AQ scores reliably differentiate between aphasic and control groups, with only a small overlap for high functioning anomic aphasic subjects.

Sex differences in human brain asymmetry: a critical survey

AbstractDual functional brain asymmetry refers to the notion that in most individuals the left cerebral hemisphere is specialized for language functions, whereas the right cerebral hemisphere is more important than the left for the perception, construction, and recall of stimuli that are difficult to verbalize. In the last twenty years there have been scattered reports of sex differences in degree of hemispheric specialization. This review provides a critical framework within which two related topics are discussed: Do meaningful sex differences in verbal or spatial cerebral lateralization exist? and, if so, Is the brain of one sex more symmetrically organized than the other? Data gathered on right-handed adults are examined from clinical studies of patients with unilateral brain lesions; from dichotic listening, tachistoscopic, and sensorimotor studies of functional asymmetries in non-brain-damaged subjects; from anatomical and electrophysiological investigations, as well as from the developmental literature. Retrospective and descriptive findings predominate over prospective and experimental methodologies. Nevertheless, there is an impressive accummulation of evidence suggesting that the male brain may be more asymmetrically organized than the female brain, both for verbal and nonverbal functions. These trends are rarely found in childhood but are often significant in the mature organism.

Cerebral lateralization in young children as measured by dichotic listening and finger tapping tasks

Evidence of cerebral lateralization was found in children of 3, 4, and 5 yr of age, A dichotic listening experiment revealed a right ear advantage for verbal stimuli and a left ear advantage for nonverbal stimuli in children at these ages. During the finger tapping experiment, secondary tasks (reciting and humming) reduced both left and right index finger tapping rates. However, reciting disproportionately reduced tapping on the right while humming disproportionately reduced tapping on the left finger in each of the three age groups. The asymmetry of function revealed in both experiments suggests that the left hemisphere is in some sense specialized for verbal functions, and the right hemisphere for nonverbal functions by the age of 3.

Benign epilepsy of children with centrotemporal EEG foci: intelligence, behavior, and school adjustment.

Sixteen children aged 7-12 years with benign epilepsy of childhood and centrotemporal (Rolandic) EEG foci were investigated as regards intelligence, visuomotor coordination, behavior, and school adjustment. They were compared with partly the same-sex class-population, partly randomly selected class controls of the same sex and age. There were no differences between the children and their class controls regarding intelligence, behavior, and school adjustment. The epileptic seizures did not influence the children's intelligence. The visuomotor coordination was impaired in most children (tested by Bender's test), but this was not true for their verbal and nonverbal functions.

Can linguistic competence be dissociated from natural language functions?

THE preservation of non-verbal intellective functions in spite of severe disruption of natural language has been well documented by studies of aphasia1. But are the cognitive functions specific to normal verbal communication also preserved in the absence of language? In addition to its theoretical significance, this question has practical importance with respect to both infra-human primates and severe aphasics2. These groups cannot use natural language because of the destruction or apparent absence of crucial cortical zones of the brain and effective communication may depend on their mastering an alternative symbol system which captures relevant cognitive properties of natural language. A crucial test of the hypothesised dissociation between natural language and its cognitive prerequisites is whether aphasic subjects can use arbitrarily designed symbols to represent elements of experience (events, properties, actions and so on); encode meaningful relationships in terms of the configurational properties, or syntax, of the symbol sequence; and have the capacity to encode such relationships in alternative syntactic forms3,4.

Cognitive Abilities Following Right and Left Hemispherectomy

Cognitive abilities were investigated in three patients with hemispherectomy for noninfantile disease. Two had the right and one had the left hemisphere removed. Results indicate that after right hemispherectomy in the mature brain the left hemisphere remains decidedly more proficient in verbal than nonverbal functions. In the developing younger brain, however, regardless of which hemisphere was removed, less difference exists between abilities in verbal and nonverbal functions, and level of performance is in general lower than in the adult case. Memory functions were impaired after hemispherectomy with removal of the left hemisphere producing the greater deficit.

The relation between cerebral speech laterality and spatial ability with special reference to sex and hand preference

Left- and right-handed normals of both sexes completed two visuospatial tasks along with a dichotic words test and a tachistoscopic dot enumeration test. The latter two tests yielded measures of verbal and nonverbal cerebral dominance, respectively. Contrary to earlier reports, not all left-handers were poorer than right-handers on spatial tasks. Such impairment was associated only with left-handers showing higher left-ear scores on the dichotic test (i.e. presumed right-hemisphere speech). Competition effects between verbal and nonverbal functions subserved by the same hemisphere, however, did not adequately account for these spatial deficits. Compared to males, females showed poorer spatial ability and a higher incidence of right-field superiority on the dot enumeration test, suggesting that left-hemisphere mediation of nonverbal ability may be disadvantageous.

Right and left handed reading of Braille.

IT is generally held that in right handed people the parietooccipital area of the left cortical hemisphere is important for the ability to read. It is also known that the right hemisphere contributes more to non-verbal, visual and spatial functions than does the left. A demonstration of this functional asymmetry was provided by Kimura1, who showed that subjects were more accurate in reporting the number of dots presented tachistoscopically the left than in the right visual field. Conversely, letters were identified better when they were presented to the right visual field; that is, the left hemisphere.

Hemispheric Lateralization of Visual Perception

The existence of hemispheric asymmetry of function with special reference to the function of the right temporal lobe was investigated. Two types of material (nonsense words and nonsense figures) were selected on the basis of low association (a’) value, to be presented to three groups of subjects, non-brain-damaged, left temporal and right temporal. The subjects were tested in a tachistoscopic like task in which the material to be identified was presented at varying exposure durations. Identifications were made by selecting the appropriate item from a visual array of test and non-test items. Prior to testing the subject was given some experience with half of the test items. Each subject was tested on two occasions, once with the words and once with the figures. The left temporal subjects displayed a deficit in the identification of the words and the right temporal subjects displayed a deficit in the identification of the figures. Both experimental groups were inferior to the non-brain-damaged group. Prior experience with some of the test material enhanced performance but contrary to that predicted this effect was not related to the type of material and the groups. These results indicated the probable existence of a hemispheric asymmetry of function independent of the sensory modality involved. This asymmetry was discussed in light of suggestions that the right temporal lobe is responsible for non-verbal functioning and the left temporal lobe for verbal functioning.

Psychology of the Scientist: XXVIII. Speculations on Nonverbal Creativity

A theory is presented to the effect that a necessary and sufficient condition for the appearance of nonverbal creative functioning is the occasion of a marginal dominance of hippocampal over reticular arousal in any individual with a repertoire of appropriate information in the form of a neuronal record to which attention is paid. This accounts for the well-known characteristics of the nonverbal creator, his taciturnity, epistemicity, withdrawal from other people, his possession of abnormal quantities of energy and reciprocal sensitivity to fatigue. A method of testing this theory is described.

EARLY SOCIAL CORRELATES OF COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING IN SIX-YEAR-OLD BOYS

30 boys, observed in a research nursery school setting and systematically rated at age 2%, were followed up at age 6% when a battery of cognitive measures was administered. Significant associations are reported between rating clusters of early social behavior and nonverbal intellectual functioning, conceptual style, and field dependence-independence. These relations generally corroborate previous findings which have been reported from cross-sectional studies with somewhat older subjects.

A longitudinal study of early social behavior and cognitive development.

Thirty boys who had been studied in a research nursery school when they were two and a half were re-evaluated when they were six and a half. Early social differences tended to correlate with later intellectual ones; children who were socially dependent in nursery school tended to show a less abstract cognitive style and lower nonverbal intellectual functioning when older. Four cases are presented.