Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
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eflect syntactic computations. An example of the non-linguistic procedural memory<br />
process that elicits LAN was an experiment in which incorrect positioning of tools was<br />
used as a stimulus (Bach et al., 2002).<br />
Ullman’s DP model also accounts <strong>for</strong> data obtained from children with developmental<br />
language impairments, in particular with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (about SLI<br />
as a procedural memory deficit, see Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). He claims that the deficit<br />
involves structures of procedural memory. Lexical knowledge is relatively spared in SLI,<br />
but lexical retrieval (word finding) is impaired in children with SLI. In addition, SLI is<br />
associated with impairments of procedural memory and motor deficits. Ullman claims<br />
that his model is corroborated by the evidence provided by research in developmental<br />
"non-language" disorders, such as dyslexia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder<br />
(ADHD). Findings that cerebellum has been implicated in dyslexia, co-morbidity of<br />
dyslexia and SLI, as well as abnormalities in function of basal ganglia, especially nucleus<br />
caudatus in ADHD corroborate the claim that language supervenes on brain structures<br />
that are involved in other, primarily memory and motor functions.<br />
Ullman claims that his model is not consistent with some connectionist models, '…in<br />
particular connectionist models that deny grammatical composition' (Ullman, 2004:249)<br />
since these models do not predict associations between grammatical domains and<br />
procedural memory, as well as their dissociation with lexical and declarative memory.<br />
His model is consistent with many dual-route models that make distinction between<br />
lexical knowledge and computational mental grammar that consists of several separable<br />
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