Ovid J. L. Tzeng

The Noun−Verb problem in Chinese aphasia

Previous studies have shown that Brocas aphasics experience a selective difficulty with action naming inside or outside of a sentence context. Conversely, it has been suggested that Wernickes aphasics are particularly impaired in object naming. A number of explanations have been offered to account for this double dissociation, including grammatical accounts according to which the main verb problem in agrammatic Brocas aphasics is viewed as a by-product of their syntactic and/or morphological impairment, due perhaps to the greater morphological load carried by verbs (compared with nouns). In the Chinese language, there are no verb conjugations and no declensions. Hence there is no reason to expect a relationship between morphological impairment and deficits in action naming. We examined comprehension and production of object and action names, outside of a sentence context, in a sample of Chinese-speaking Brocas and Wernickes aphasics. There was an interaction between patient group and object/action naming, but no corresponding interaction on the comprehension task. We conclude that action-naming deficits in Brocas aphasia (and/or the corresponding sparing of action names in Wernickes aphasia) cannot be attributed to morphological differences between nouns and verbs. We also found a sublexical variant of the noun/verb dissociation applied to the internal structure of compound words made up of a verbal and a nominal element: Brocas aphasics tended to lexicalize the verbal portion of these words more often than the nominal compound, while Wernickes showed the opposite pattern. These sublexical effects are difficult to explain in syntactic terms nor do they fit the standard lexical view. A modified lexical account is proposed, emphasizing semantic/conceptual effects in a distributed lexicon.

Cerebral lateralization of function and bilingual decision processes: Is thinking lateralized? ☆

Abstract Four experiments utilizing tachistoscopic presentation of verbal and spatial stimuli to visual half-fields are presented. Three experiments failed to find any cerebral lateralization effect of the type predicted from existing models of cerebral lateralization processes. One experiment found marked lateralization effects. Since the experiments differ only in the ratio of trials to experimental stimuli, it is argued that cerebral lateralization experiments are detecting only a memory process occurring after subjects have learned all the stimuli to be presented. When new stimuli are presented on each trial, no cerebral lateralization effects are found, suggesting that active ongoing cognitive processing is independent of lateralization.

The classifier problem in Chinese aphasia

In recent years, research on the relationship between brain organization and language processing has benefited tremendously from cross-linguistic comparisons of language disorders among different types of aphasic patients. Results from these cross-linguistic studies have shown that the same aphasic syndromes often look very different from one language to another, suggesting that language-specific knowledge is largely preserved in Brocas and Wernickes aphasics. In this paper, Chinese aphasic patients were examined with respect to their (in)ability to use classifiers in a noun phrase. The Chinese language, in addition to its lack of verb conjugation and an absence of noun declension, is exceptional in yet another respect: articles, numerals, and other such modifiers cannot directly precede their associated nouns, there has to be an intervening morpheme called a classifier. The appropriate usage of nominal classifiers is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of Chinese grammar. Our examination of Chinese aphasic patients revealed two essential points. First, Chinese aphasic patients experience difficulty in the production of nominal classifiers, committing a significant number of errors of omission and/or substitution. Second, two different kinds of substitution errors are observed in Brocas and Wernickes patients, and the detailed analysis of the difference demands a rethinking of the distinction between agrammatism and paragrammatism. The result adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that grammar is impaired in fluent as well as nonfluent aphasia.

Intralanguage vs. interlanguage Stroop effects in two types of writing systems

The relation between word processing strategy and the orthographic structure of a written language was explored in the present study. Three experiments were conducted using Chinese-English, Spanish-English, and Japanese-English bilinguals, respectively. Each subject was asked to perform a modified Stroop color-naming task in which the stimulus and the response language were either the same or different. The magnitude of the Stroop effect was greater in the intralanguage condition than in the interlanguage condition. When the magnitude of reduction of Stroop interference from the intra- to the interlanguage condition was compared across all bilingual groups, an inverse relationship was found between the magnitude of reduction and the degree of similarity between the orthographic structures of the two written languages. It is concluded that reading logographic and reading phonetic symbols entail different processing mechanisms and that controversial issues in bilingual processing cannot be resolved without taking into account the effect of orthographic variations on the information processing system.

Role of cerebral hemispheric processing in the visual half-field stimulus-response compatibility effect.

Two experiments were conducted to test theories of the stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility effect. Stimuli presented above and below a fixation point in the left and right visual field signaled choice responses in the midsagittal plane. Even though the duration of stimulus presentation in Experiment 1 was sufficiently brief, such that the possibility of eye movements was precluded, a visual half-field S-R compatibility effect was still obtained. That such an effect is found when it can be adequately specified to which hemisphere stimulus information is presented suggests that an explanation in terms of cerebral laterality factors be considered. The second experiment employed arbitrary symbols to represent the spatial property of stimuli used in prior experiments, and a similar pattern of results was obtained. These results are discussed in terms of a functional view of cerebral organization.

Sensory modality and the word-frequency effect

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the word-frequency effect in recognition memory is primarily a modality-dependent phenomenon. In the first experiment, the presentation modality of a target word was varied orthogonally during the input of the test phases. In the second, the subjects were forced to process each input word at the letter-byo letter level, thus minimizing the orthographical differences between the high- and low-frequency words. The word-frequency effect was found in every experimental condition and should be considered a modality-independent phenomenon. A semantically based interpretation of this effect was proposed.

Local-level and global-level form characteristics in apparent-motion correspondence.

This study addressed the ‘correspondence’ problem of apparent-motion (AM) perception in which parts of a scene must be matched with counterparts separated in time and space. Given evidence that AM correspondence can be mediated by two distinct processes—one based on a low-level motion-detection mechanism (the Reichardt process), the other involving the tracking of objects by visual attention (the attention-based process)—the present study explored how these processes interact in the perception of apparent motion between hierarchically structured figures. In three experiments, hierarchical figures were presented in a competition motion display so that, across frames, figures were identical at either the local or the global level. In experiment 1 it was shown that AM occurred between locally identical figures. Furthermore, with the Reichardt AM component eliminated in experiments 3 and 4, no preference was obtained for either level. While evidence from previous studies suggests that form extraction for hierarchically structured figures proceeds from the global to the local level, the present results indicate the irrelevance of such a global precedence in AM correspondence. In addition, it is suggested that Reichardt AM correspondence between local elements constrains attention-based AM correspondence between global figures so that both components move in the same direction. It is argued that this constraining process represents an elegant means of achieving AM correspondence between objects undergoing complex transformations.

The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics: Introduction: new frontiers in Chinese psycholinguistics

A large body of knowledge has accumulated, especially in the last three decades, on the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying language use, language acquisition, and language disorders. Much of this knowledge has come from studies of Indo-European languages, in particular, English. This is no surprise, given the long tradition of scholarly work in these languages and the linguistic and psycholinguistic theories that are produced therein. Some researchers believe that because of the universal principles of language, theories of language and language processing should apply in the same way to all languages even if they are built on facts from specific languages. This universality perspective, reflected most clearly in Chomsky’s theories of language, has dominated much of linguistics and psycholinguistics for the last fifty years. Others, however, think that language-specific variations are sufficiently strong to warrant different conceptualizations of linguistic principles and cognitive underpinnings for different languages. Unlike generative theories of language, this second perspective itself is a mixed bag, from the strongest form of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis that argues for linguistic determinism to modern-day psycholinguistic theories that emphasize language variation and competition. The tension between these two perspectives has yieldedmuch debate in the cognitive and psycholinguistic studies of language, and it is against this backdrop that we see a surge of research interest in recent years in the study of non-IndoEuropean languages. Our handbook provides a timely synthesis of the debates emerging out of this research interest, in particular, of the psycholinguistic study of the Chinese language.

The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics: Name index

A large body of knowledge has accumulated in recent years on the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying language. Much of this knowledge has come from studies of Indo-European languages, in particular English. Chinese, spoken by one-fifth of the world’s population, differs significantly from most Indo-European languages in its grammar, its lexicon, and its written and spoken forms – features which have profound implications for the learning, representation, and processing of language. This handbook, the first in a three-volume set on East Asian psycholinguistics, presents a state-of-theart discussion of the psycholinguistic study of Chinese. With contributions by over fifty leading scholars, it covers topics in first and second language acquisition, language processing and reading, language disorders in children and adults, and the relationships between language, brain, culture, and cognition. It will be invaluable to all scholars and students interested in the Chinese language, as well as cognitive psychologists, linguists, and neuroscientists.

The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics: Language and the brain

A large body of knowledge has accumulated in recent years on the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying language. Much of this knowledge has come from studies of Indo-European languages, in particular English. Chinese, spoken by one-fifth of the world’s population, differs significantly from most Indo-European languages in its grammar, its lexicon, and its written and spoken forms – features which have profound implications for the learning, representation, and processing of language. This handbook, the first in a three-volume set on East Asian psycholinguistics, presents a state-of-theart discussion of the psycholinguistic study of Chinese. With contributions by over fifty leading scholars, it covers topics in first and second language acquisition, language processing and reading, language disorders in children and adults, and the relationships between language, brain, culture, and cognition. It will be invaluable to all scholars and students interested in the Chinese language, as well as cognitive psychologists, linguists, and neuroscientists.