Can a Morphological Feature of Dendritic Structure be Linked to Language Acquisition?

Biolinguistics · 2017-12-31

Can a Morphological Feature of Dendritic Structure be Linked to Language Acquisition? Authors Harvey Martin Sussman University of Texas at Austin Author Biography Harvey Martin Sussman, University of Texas at Austin I am a full professor in two departments: Linguistics & Communication Sciences & Disorders PDF Article info Impact Citations License Published at 31. December 2017 https://doi.org/10.5964/bioling.9099 Issue: Vol. 11 (2017): Special Issue—50 Years Later: A Tribute to Eric Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language Section: Briefs Keywords: critical period language acquisition neurodevelopment dendritic branching synaptogenesis Share: Z This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License. PlumX Dimensions Views: Total Abstract PDF 4 1 3

From Grapheme to Phonological Output: Performance of Adults Who Stutter on a Word Jumble Task

PLoS ONE · 2016-03-10 · 11 citations

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to extend previous research by analyzing the ability of adults who stutter to use phonological working memory in conjunction with lexical access to perform a word jumble task. METHOD: Forty English words consisting of 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-letters (n = 10 per letter length category) were randomly jumbled using a web-based application. During the experimental task, 26 participants were asked to silently manipulate the scrambled letters to form a real word. Each vocal response was coded for accuracy and speech reaction time (SRT). RESULTS: Adults who stutter attempted to solve fewer word jumble stimuli than adults who do not stutter at the 4-letter, 5-letter, and 6-letter lengths. Additionally, adults who stutter were significantly less accurate solving word jumble tasks at the 4-letter, 5-letter, and 6-letter lengths compared to adults who do not stutter. At the longest word length (6-letter), SRT was significantly slower for the adults who stutter than the fluent controls. CONCLUSION: Results of the current study lend further support to the notion that differences in various aspects of phonological processing, including vision-to-sound conversions, sub-vocal stimulus manipulation, and/or lexical access are compromised in adults who stutter.

A Functional Role for Neural Columns: Resolving F2 Transition Variability in Stop Place Categorization

Biolinguistics · 2016-08-28

Documented examples from neuroethology have revealed species-specific neural encoding mechanisms capable of mapping highly variable, but lawful, visual and auditory inputs within neural columns. By virtue of the entire column being the functional unit of both representation and processing, signal variation is collectively ‘absorbed’, and hence normalized, to help form natural categories possessing an underlying physically-based commonality. Stimulus-specific ‘tolerance ranges’ define the limits of signal variation, effectively shaping the functionality of the columnar-based processing. A conceptualization for an analogous human model utilizing this evolutionarily conserved neural encoding strategy for signal variability absorption is described for the non-invariance issue in stop place perception.

14 A Functional Role for Coarticulation: A Locus Equation Perspective

University of Toronto Press eBooks · 2016-12-31

Why the Left Hemisphere Is Dominant for Speech Production: Connecting the Dots

Biolinguistics · 2015-12-31

Evidence from seemingly disparate areas of speech/language research is reviewed to form a unified theoretical account for why the left hemisphere is specialized for speech production. Research findings from studies investigating hemispheric lateralization of infant babbling, the primacy of the syllable in phonological structure, rhyming performance in split-brain patients, rhyming ability and phonetic categorization in children diagnosed with developmental apraxia of speech, rules governing exchange errors in spoonerisms, organizational principles of neocortical control of learned motor behaviors, and multi-electrode recordings of human neuronal responses to speech sounds are described and common threads highlighted. It is suggested that the emergence, in developmental neurogenesis, of a hard-wired, syllabically-organized, neural substrate representing the phonemic sound elements of one’s language, particularly the vocalic nucleus, is the crucial factor underlying the left hemisphere’s dominance for speech production.

Neuroethology in the service of neurophonetics

Journal of Neurolinguistics · 2013-06-04 · 1 citations

Nonword repetition and phoneme elision in adults who do and do not stutter

Journal of Fluency Disorders · 2012-03-29 · 75 citations

CV Coarticulation in Yoruba - A Tonal Language.

ICPhS · 2011-01-01

Dissecting coarticulation: How locus equations happen

Journal of Phonetics · 2011-11-10 · 50 citations

The integrity of anticipatory coarticulation in fluent and non-fluent tokens of adults who stutter

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics · 2010-11-16 · 32 citations

This article analysed the acoustic structure of voiced stop + vowel sequences in a group of persons who stutter (PWS). This phonetic unit was chosen because successful production is highly dependent on the differential tweaking of right-to-left anticipatory coarticulation as a function of stop place. Thus, essential elements of both speech motor planning and execution can be parsimoniously assessed. Five adult PWS read three passages 3 times in a randomised order. These passages contained an overabundance of words beginning with initial [bV], [dV] and [gV] sequences. Digital audio and visual recordings were analysed to first identify fluent and stuttered target words, which were then spectrally analysed to yield locus equation (LE) regression plots. The slope of the LE regression function directly indexes the coarticulatory extent of the vowel's influence on the preceding stop consonant. The PWS revealed LE parameters falling within the normal ranges based on previously documented data obtained from fluent speakers. Theoretical considerations of possible underlying factors responsible for stuttering disfluencies are discussed relevant to these findings.