Problem: Inferential reasoning in language involves the ability to deduce information based on context and prior experience. This ability has been generally studied as a right-hemisphere function. Recent research, however, has suggested that inferencing involves anterior regions of both the left and right hemispheres.
Methods: We further explored this idea by testing a group of non-aphasic, focal frontal patients (right and left hemisphere) on a new test of inferencing, the Word Context Test. The Word Context Test requires examinees to identify the meaning of a made-up word (e.g., prifa) based on its use in a series of sentences.
Findings: Patients with frontal lobe lesions were significantly impaired on this task relative to a group of age- and education-matched controls. Contrary to earlier research focusing on a special role for the right hemisphere in inferencing, there was considerable overlap in performance of right- and left-frontal patients, with right-frontal patients performing better.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that inferencing is disrupted following focal frontal injury and have implications for discourse comprehension in non-aphasic patients.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Context-dependent similarity analysis of analogue series for structure-activity relationship transfer based on a concept from natural language processing.
J Cheminform
January 2025
Department of Life Science Informatics and Data Science, B-IT, LIMES Program Unit Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, University of Bonn, Friedrich-Hirzebruch-Allee 5/6, 53115, Bonn, Germany.
Analogue series (AS) are generated during compound optimization in medicinal chemistry and are the major source of structure-activity relationship (SAR) information. Pairs of active AS consisting of compounds with corresponding substituents and comparable potency progression represent SAR transfer events for the same target or across different targets. We report a new computational approach to systematically search for SAR transfer series that combines an AS alignment algorithm with context-depending similarity assessment based on vector embeddings adapted from natural language processing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impact of talker variability and individual differences on word learning in adults.
Brain Res
January 2025
Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
Studies have shown that exposure to multiple talkers during learning is beneficial in a variety of spoken language tasks, such as learning speech sounds in a second language and learning novel words in a lab context. However, not all studies find the multiple talker benefit. Some studies have found that processing benefits from exposure to multiple talkers depend on factors related to the linguistic profile of the listeners and to the cognitive demands during learning (blocked versus randomized talkers).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpeech Production of Mandarin Lexical Tones Among Canadian Elementary Students Enrolled in Mandarin-English Bilingual Schools.
J Speech Lang Hear Res
January 2025
Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
Purpose: This study investigates how Mandarin-English bilingual students in Canada produce Mandarin tones and how this is influenced by factors such as tone complexity, cross-linguistic influences, and speech input.
Method: Participants were 82 students enrolled in a Chinese bilingual program in Western Canada. Students were recruited from Grades 1, 3, and 5 and divided into two groups based on their home language backgrounds: The heritage language group had early and strong input in Mandarin, and the second language (L2) group received mostly English input at home.
Lexicosemantic prediction in native speakers of English and Swedish-speaking learners of english: An event-related potential study.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
December 2024
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language.
The present study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate lexicosemantic prediction in native speakers (L1) of English and advanced second language (L2) learners of English with Swedish as their L1. The main goal of the study was to examine whether learners recruit predictive mechanisms to the same extent as L1 speakers when a change in the linguistic environment renders prediction a useful strategy to pursue. The study, which uses a relatedness proportion paradigm adapted from Lau et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhonetic retuning to idiosyncrasies in word onsets: The interplay of lexical context and prediction.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
December 2024
University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Listeners can use both lexical context (i.e., lexical knowledge activated by the word itself) and lexical predictions based on the content of a preceding sentence to adjust their phonetic categories to speaker idiosyncrasies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!