Dorit Ben Shalom

Functional Anatomic Models of Language: Assembling the Pieces

In the past few years, a series of influential review articles have summarized the state of the art with respect to cortical models of language organization. The present article is a mini-review and conceptual meta-analysis of several of the most prominent recent contributions. Based on the models, the authors extract some generalizations to arrive at a more robust model that 1) does justice to the range of neurological data, 2) is more connected to research in linguistics and psycholinguistics, and 3) stimulates hypothesis-driven research in this domain. In particular, the article attempts to unify a few of the current large-scale models of the functional neuroanatomy of language in a more principled manner. First, the authors argue that the relevant type of processing in a given cortical area, that is, memorizing (temporal cortex) versus analyzing (parietal) versus synthesizing (frontal), lies at the basis of local neuronal structure and function. Second, from an anatomic perspective, more dorsal regions within each of these (temporal, parietal, and frontal) systems specialize more in phonological processing, middle areas in syntactic processing, and more ventral areas in semantic processing. NEUROSCIENTIST 14(1):119—127, 2008.

Memory in autism: review and synthesis.

Much research about memory in autism concerns the hypothesis that autism is similar to adult-onset amnesia. Initial support for the hypothesis came from post-mortem studies of individuals with autism showing abnormalities in the hippocampus and related brain structures, as well as behavioral studies finding contrasts between intact cued recall and impaired free recall and recognition in autism. The hypothesis was later brought into question by the finding of intact performance in individuals with autism on explicit memory tasks typically impaired in adult-onset amnesia. The present paper proposes a possible reconciliation of these contradictory findings, suggesting that there is selective damage to the limbic-prefrontal episodic memory system, sparing the limbic-only perceptual representation system, and the semantic memory system. This view is consistent with other evidence for early selective damage to other systems involving cooperation between the limbic system and the medial prefrontal cortex in autism.

The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Integration in Autism

This article offers a unifying theoretical interpretation of known abnormalities in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in four psychological domains, namely emotion, memory, sensation-perception, and motor skills. It proposes that in all four domains three levels of processing can be identified: a basic level, an integrative level, and a “logical” or higher-order level. It also notes that in typically developing people, there is evidence that the integrative level is subserved by subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex. The major argument of the article is to propose and argue that the integrative level in all four domains is responsible for common atypicalities in people with ASDs.

The effect of spectral manipulations on the identification of affective and linguistic prosody.

We investigated the effect of various spectral manipulations on the identification of sentential prosody. Two main categories of prosody--affective (happy, angry, sad) and linguistic (statement, question, continuation)--were studied. Thirty-six subjects were presented with stimuli that were recorded by a female native speaker of American English. The stimuli were digitally manipulated to create synthesized, band-pass filtered (F0-range and F2/F3-range) and re-entrant (pitch only version of stimulus is convolved with a steady-state signal) conditions. Results of a forced-choice discrimination paradigm showed that, in general, performance is remarkably robust despite spectral manipulation, even when there is relatively little spectral information. However, performance was significantly degraded in the low band-pass and re-entrant conditions. These observations are discussed in light of the relevance of the fundamental frequency as well as syllabification for the analysis of prosodic information.

Developmental Depersonalization: The Prefrontal Cortex and Self-Functions in Autism☆

The human self model suggests that the construct of self involves functions such as agency, body-centered spatial perspectivity, and long-term unity. Vogeley, Kurthen, Falkai, and Maieret (1999) suggest that agency is subserved by the prefrontal cortex and other association areas of the cortex, spatial perspectivity by the prefrontal cortex and the parietal lobes, and long-term unity by the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobes and that all of these functions are impaired in schizophrenia. Exploring the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the construct of self, the present article extends the application of the self model to autism. It suggests that in contrast to schizophrenia, agency and spatial perspectivity are probably preserved in autism, but that, similarly to schizophrenia, long-term unity is probably impaired. This hypothesis is compatible with a model of neuropsychological dysfunction in autism in a neural network including parts of the prefrontal cortex, the temporal lobes, and the cerebellum.

On Root Infinitives in Child Hebrew

This squib attempts to make two contributions to the study of Root Infinitives (RIs) in child language. The first, and more important, contribution is to show that Hebrew-acquiring children older than the age of 2 do not show an extensive use of RIs, whereas before age 2, they do produce a fairly robust number of RIs. This phenomenon resembles the production of RIs in early Russian but differs from the typical RI languages such as early Dutch, German, French, and the Scandinavian languages, which show productive use of RIs until at least age 3. Our second goal is to shed some light on the theoretical underpinnings of these similarities and differences. The structure of the squib is as follows: Section 2 reviews the background for the issue of child RIs in general and child RIs in Hebrew in particular. Sections 3 and 4 describe the present study of child RIs in Hebrew-speaking children. Section 5 contains an empirical conclusion and a brief discussion in light of the theoretical claims made in Hoekstra and Hyams (1995).

A double dissociation between inattentive and impulsive traits, on tasks of visual processing and emotion regulation

Objective: To dissociate between inattentive and impulsive traits common in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using a non-dichotomous measurment of these traits. Method: 120 university students who completed the Conner’s adult ADHD rating scales (CAARS) were also tested on the Microgenesis task which requires visual attention and on the Cyber Cruiser task which requires emotion regulation. Results: Results show that a measure of inattention was specifically related to a measure of effortful visual processing condition. In addition, a measure of impulsivity was specifically related to the tendency to fail in refueling one’s car on time, although this relation was opposite to the predicted direction. Furthermore, by using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the CAARS’ factor structure was confirmed to be relevant to an Israeli population. Conclusion: The current experiment supports the idea that visual attention may play a part in inattentive symptoms, and that emotion regulation may play a part in impulsivity symptoms.

Autism Emotions without Feelings

The concept of autism is historically contingent. It did not exist, in any proper sense, before it was invoked by medical and mental health professionals in the twentieth century. This entry aims to shed light on this relatively recent concept. First, it contextualises autism within the broader social, epistemological, and political circumstances of its emergence and ongoing negotiation, showing autism to be a dynamic concept, whose meaning is constantly in flux. Second, it revisits some of the more insightful or influential analyses that autism has received over the years in anthropology and adjacent disciplines. And third, it illustrates that anthropologists have been particularly attuned to everyday experiences of autism, comparing it to other forms of human difference while occupying an ambivalent stance towards biomedical approaches to it. A discussion on how autism might matter for the discipline of anthropology features very briefly in the conclusion.

One Connection between Standard Invariance Conditions on ModalFormulas and Generalized Quantifiers

The language of standard propositional modal logic has one operator (□ or ♦), that can be thought of as being determined by the quantifiers ∀ or ∃, respectively: for example, a formula of the form □Φ is true at a point s just in case all the immediate successors of s verify Φ.This paper uses a propositional modal language with one operator determined by a generalized quantifier to discuss a simple connection between standard invariance conditions on modal formulas and generalized quantifiers: the combined generalized quantifier conditions of conservativity and extension correspond to the modal condition of invariance under generated submodels, and the modal condition of invariance under bisimulations corresponds to the generalized quantifier being a Boolean combination of ∀ and ∃.

A quantitative measure of JS’s memory

JS is a highly able, well-educated 37 year old man with Asperger syndrome. A recent qualitative paper (Boucher, 2007) described his self-report of verbal and visual memory difficulties. The present paper used the WMS-III to compare the memory profile of JS to that of the adults with HFA in the Williams et al. (2005) WMS-III paper. Results show that JS’s self-report of his memory difficulties can by and large be supported, that JS’s memory performance is at the lower end of the group examined in the Williams et al. (2005) paper, and that, unlike the group profile in Williams et al. (2005), JS shows reduced performance on both verbal and visual measures of memory. A qualitative analysis of JS’s performance raises the possibility that JS is using language to retain details he can generalize over, as a compensatory strategy for some reductions in episodic memory.