Discounting and Augmentation in Causal Conditional Reasoning: Causal Models or Shallow Encoding?

Recent research comparing mental models theory and causal Bayes nets for their ability to account for discounting and augmentation inferences in causal conditional reasoning had some limitations. One of the experiments used an ordinal scale and multiple items and analysed the data by subjects and items. This procedure can create a variety of problems that can be resolved by using an appropriate cumulative link function mixed models approach in which items are treated as random effects.

Where, when and why brain activation differs for bilinguals and monolinguals during picture naming and reading aloud.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that when bilinguals named pictures or read words aloud, in their native or nonnative language, activation was higher relative to monolinguals in 5 left hemisphere regions: dorsal precentral gyrus, pars triangularis, pars opercularis, superior temporal gyrus, and planum temporale. We further demonstrate that these areas are sensitive to increasing demands on speech production in monolinguals. This suggests that the advantage of being bilingual comes at the expense of increased work in brain areas that support monolingual word processing.

Parallel recovery in a trilingual speaker: the use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test as a diagnostic complement to the Comprehensive Aphasia Test.

We illustrate the value of the Bilingual Aphasia Test in the diagnostic assessment of a trilingual speaker post-stroke living in England for whom English was a non-native language. The Comprehensive Aphasia Test is routinely used to assess patients in English, but only in combination with the Bilingual Aphasia Test is it possible and practical to provide a full picture of the language impairment. We describe our test selection and the assessment it allows us to make.

The mental representation of causal conditional reasoning: mental models or causal models.

In this paper, two experiments are reported investigating the nature of the cognitive representations underlying causal conditional reasoning performance. The predictions of causal and logical interpretations of the conditional diverge sharply when inferences involving pairs of conditionals-such as if P(1)then Q and if P(2)then Q-are considered. From a causal perspective, the causal direction of these conditionals is critical: are the P(i)causes of Q; or symptoms caused byQ.

Language control and parallel recovery of language in individuals with aphasia.

Background: The causal basis of the different patterns of language recovery following stroke in bilingual speakers is not well understood. Our approach distinguishes the representation of language from the mechanisms involved in its control. Previous studies have suggested that difficulties in language control can explain selective aphasia in one language as well as pathological switching between languages.

The role of the left head of caudate in suppressing irrelevant words.

Suppressing irrelevant words is essential to successful speech production and is expected to involve general control mechanisms that reduce interference from task-unrelated processing. To investigate the neural mechanisms that suppress visual word interference, we used fMRI and a Stroop task, using a block design with an event-related analysis. Participants indicated with a finger press whether a visual stimulus was colored pink or blue.

Structural correlates of semantic and phonemic fluency ability in first and second languages.

Category and letter fluency tasks are commonly used clinically to investigate the semantic and phonological processes central to speech production, but the neural correlates of these processes are difficult to establish with functional neuroimaging because of the relatively unconstrained nature of the tasks. This study investigated whether differential performance on semantic (category) and phonemic (letter) fluency in neurologically normal participants was reflected in regional gray matter density. The participants were 59 highly proficient speakers of 2 languages.