The Connection between Sentence Comprehension and Motor Representations

Often, we understand what is communicated to us, not by what we hear, but by what we see. This can be demonstrated in Albert Mehrebian’s Three Elements of Communication, that only 7% of what we understand comes from the words which are being used. 38 % is understood by the voice of the sender but an incredible 55 % of communication is done by body language. A tapping of the

The effect of Teaching Kinesthetic letter sound symbols to formulate an oral or written response to CVC words or pseudo words

RL.9-10.1.1-7 Reading closely informational texts and viewing multimedia to determine how meaning is conveyed and explicit and implicit through language.

Interpreting and mental processing. Cokely (1992), Taylor (1993), and later Russell (2002) illustrate in their research dissertations that the interpreting process, from the source message to producing an equivalent interpretation in the target language (ASL or English), occurs in nanoseconds. Researchers who assess the impact on message accuracy within an interpretation further support the need for preparation to assist in the production of a dynamic equivalent interpreted message. The less an ASLI/TiE knows about a subject results in more time spent on attempting to understand the content and meaning, thus impacting the target language message. Napier and Barker (2004), explain ASLI/TiE’s “decontextualize each original utterance to a certain extent so that it is a separate unit and can be recontextualized as a new utterance in the ‘flow of talk’” (p. 373) as part of the mental interpreted process. In doing so effectively the

A human being’s capacity to articulate and deduce arbitrary sounds and symbols into something of which conveys meaning, may indeed be one of the most remarkable characteristics of brain. Research presented in Flinker et al., (2015) infer that there are two areas of the brain that are imperative for both the understanding and production of both verbal and written communication. Broca’s area, located in the left frontal lobe of the brain is primarily responsible for the production of speech, that is, the movements required to produce fluent speech and language (Flinker et al., 2015). The second region of the brain associated with language is known as Wernicke’s area, of which is located on the border between

As for the evidence of the working memory system, two British researches, Alan Baddley and Graham Hitch, have proposed a model in how to explain the working memory system. They have suggested that the system contains many different parts, and that the main working part of the system is the central executive. This central part is able to delegate tasks for the low-level “assistants” to handle, since these assistants are not able to actually analyze a situation on their own. The articulatory rehearsal loop is one of the assistances that allows a person to remember, and is the most beneficial in many ways. This assistant allows you to recall information that is previously stated by repetitively stating the information in our head, which is known as subvolcalization, or silent speech. Furthermore, Baddley and Hitch’s model suggest that we are able to see the existence of this working memory through “sound-alike” errors, because our bodies rely on this rehearsal loop or memory to recall information. In a study, there was a control group which was given a normal digit-span test. In the other group, people were asked to perform concurrent articulation when they took the test. Although this concurrent articulation is not difficult, it does affect the use of the articulatory loop and decreases the memory. With that being said, manipulation of a

Using paired wordlists of nouns, Bower and Gordon demonstrated this in their 1970 experiment. In their study, they had undergraduate students learn paired wordlists by one of four methods – rehearsal of the two words; reading a sentence in which one of the words acted upon the other (i.e. “The boy hit the ball.”); creating a sentence which linked the two words (i.e. “Nancy threw her bag on the table.”) or creating a mental image of the two words together (i.e. imagining a basket of flowers) (Bower & Gordon, 1970). Results found that students who employed imagery did better on recalling the word pairs in comparison to other methods and those who utilized rehearsal had the lowest recall rate out of the four groups (Bower & Gordon, 1970).

Elsner and Hommel (2004), test the hypothesis that learning of relationships between actions and perceptual consequences is accomplished by using associative learning. Stage one of the studies on action-affect learning, required participants to respond to arrows with key presses that were followed by a distractor tone at a period of either 50, 1000, or 2000ms. In stage two, respondents were required to respond to the previously irrelevant tone. Condition one highlights consistencies between tone-key press relationships and the learning phase. Whereas the other condition portrays inconsistencies. In terms of contiguity, they concluded that temporal contiguity is an important mechanism in both animal and human associative learning, (Elsner &Hommel, 2004). However, they argue that relying solely on contiguity would not obtain valid results – supporting Rescorla’s argument that contiguity is not sufficient enough in explaining associative learning. Although, Rescorla concludes that contiguity is not an adequate explanation of associative learning, more modern research suggests it is a collaborative factor. Elsner and Hommel (2004) conclude that action-effect acquisition is dependent on temporal proximity of action and effect on the contingency or frequency of their co-occurrence.

In the early 1900s, English physician Thomas Willis discovered a functional structure lying deep inside the forebrain. Through anatomical studies in patients with severe chorea and movement deficit, he found that damage to this particular subcortical structure was very common among these patients. He then termed the structure “corpus striatum” (the largest component of the basal ganglia) and linked its functional role with motor control (Parent, 2012). However, Willis also noticed that subcortical-lesion-associated motor deficit is often accompanied by various degrees of cognitive impairment. Despite such clinical observations, research emphasis was directed mainly toward the role of basal ganglia in motor control (Middleton & Strick, 2000). With increasing knowledge of the anatomical structures of the basal ganglia and its connectivity with cerebral cortex, scientists revealed several parallel loops between the basal ganglia and multiple non-motor regions of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex and temporal cortex. Such anatomical findings, along with the clinical observations from Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, demonstrated that the basal ganglia might play a critical role in cognitive function (Alexander et al., 1986; Middleton & Strick, 1994, 1996).

The target behavior was the emergence of vocal responses that consisted of three-letter, one-syllable names, corresponding to pieces of construction tasks, used as materials. A tact was documented every time the question “What is this?” or “What’s its name?” evoked the nonsense word that was suitable for the design piece that the experimenter had. A mand was documented every time one of the pieces required to complete a construction task was out of vision and the question, “what do you need?” evoked the equivalent nonsense word. The procedures employed included prerequisite skills assessment, preference assessment and token-based reinforcement, pre-training, tact and mand training, and finally testing. The aim was to transfer from one operant (mand) to another (tact). During training, the participants were trained to use autoclitic frames (e.g. “I need a-) and during testing the use of those autoclitic frames was assessed. The impact of training one verbal response on the emission of the other untrained verbal operant was investigated in a multiple probe design across tasks. The authors observed that three of the four participants showed functional dependence of tacts and mands, while the other participant demonstrated functional dependence solely on the second construction task, for which tacts emerged after

Language is important to the way we communicate. Semantic memory is acquired over the years and is vital to language. Language becomes second nature when we already know what, when and how to say something. We form sentences, phrases, paragraphs by planning what we say and how we will say it. Most people believe that when we speak, it is without thought and is done unconsciously. However, in this paper I will seek to explain the relationship between semantic memory and language production.

Kahneman’s theory of two systems develops the understanding of how the human brain functions in our daily lives. Priming–exposure to a stimulus influences your responses to a later stimulus–is a major factor in how the way people think differs. Events that have occurred in the past can change the way people perceive a word or a situation given. A Very familiar example of priming, and is also mentioned in this book is the fill-in-the-blank experiment. The scientist provides the word, “S _ _ P” to the subjects. If the subject is naturally or influenced to image a restaurant, they would say, “Soup.” However, if the subject is thinking of cleaning or bath, then they would answer,

perceiving the person, object, or action that is represented by a word or phrase. When one hears

Listening is to coherent speaking as reading is to effective writing. English and all other language irrespective of nation or dialect is a totality of four skills: Listening, reading, writing, speaking. Underwood (1989) simplified the definition of listening to "the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear" (p. 1). Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening comprehension as ―the ability to understand the spoken language of native speakers.''

No matter where you are in the world, you are taught about language. Whether it’s in your home learning your language or in school trying to learn a foreign language. Although while learning language the notion is never really thought about or brought up that the language and way we speak can influence the way we think and interact. Phycologist and neuroscientist alike have spent years, with multiple different tests to see if there is a connection between the various languages that are spoken and the way people not only think but also how they go about their daily lives. She writes to not only her colleagues and neuroscientists but also to anyone in the general public that is genuinely interested in the connection between