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Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Dementia, Medicine, and 15 moreNature, Temporal Lobe, Humans, Male, Reading and writing, Nat Neurosci, Nature Neuroscience, Verbal behavior, Atrophy, Reading Aloud, Dictation, Neurosciences, Reading Process, Psychomotor Performance, and Language tests
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A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noticeably of the arms and hands. It is a matter of common observation that a subclass of these hand and arm movements appear intimately linked... more
A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noticeably of the arms and hands. It is a matter of common observation that a subclass of these hand and arm movements appear intimately linked with the process of speech production: they are rhythmically timed with the speech, and often seem to reflect the meaning which the speech expresses. We call these movements Speech Focussed Movements (SFMs). These can be distinguished from other movements which accompany speech, scratches, twitches and the like, since the latter are not timed with speech, and do not in any apparent way reflect the meaning of what is said.
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Psychology and Education
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Dementia, Cognition, Aphasia, Independent Component Analysis, Medicine, and 15 moreKnowledge, Humans, Articles, Female, Male, Aged, Middle Aged, Alzheimer Dementia, Mathematical Concepts, Adult, Frontotemporal Dementia, Degenerative Disorder, Alzheimer Disease, Frontal Lobe, and Case Control Studies
This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in reading, writing and understanding musical notation. After sustaining a left posterior temporal lobe lesion and a small right... more
This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in reading, writing and understanding musical notation. After sustaining a left posterior temporal lobe lesion and a small right occipito-temporal lesion in an episode of haemorrhagic encephalitis, the patient showed a specific deficit in reading music. She retained the ability to read aloud letters,
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Psychology, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Neurology, Semantics, and 15 moreDementia, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medicine, Humans, Case Study, Male, Verbal behavior, Clinical Neurology, Semantic Processing, Clinical Sciences, Aged, Mental Health and Psychiatry Nursing, Memory Disorders, Semantic Dementia, and Neuropsychological Tests
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How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space relate to each other? Recent evidence suggests that these abilities share common magnitude processing and neural resources, although other... more
How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space relate to each other? Recent evidence suggests that these abilities share common magnitude processing and neural resources, although other findings also highlight the role of dimension-specific processes. To further characterize the relation between number, time, and space, we first examined them in a population with a developmental numerical dysfunction (developmental dyscalculia) and then assessed the extent to which these abilities correlated both behaviorally and anatomically in numerically normal participants. We found that (1) participants with dyscalculia showed preserved continuous quantity processing and (2) in numerically normal adults, numerical and continuous quantity abilities were at least partially dissociated both behaviorally and anatomically. Specifically, gray matter volume correlated with both measures of numerical and continuous quantity processing in the right TPJ; in ...
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Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Numerical Cognition, and 15 moreCognitive Neuroscience, Medicine, Temporal Lobe, Humans, Dyscalculia, Female, Male, Number sense, Mathematical Concepts, Adult, Parietal Lobe, Bf, Neurosciences, Psychomotor Performance, and photic stimulation
Home; About; Submit; Advertise & PR. Register; Login. Science: Cell Science: Biochemical Genetics; Bioinformatics; Cell Networks; Cellular and Molecular Immunology; Cellular and Molecular Toxicology; Cellular Differentiation; Cellular... more
Home; About; Submit; Advertise & PR. Register; Login. Science: Cell Science: Biochemical Genetics; Bioinformatics; Cell Networks; Cellular and Molecular Immunology; Cellular and Molecular Toxicology; Cellular Differentiation; Cellular ...
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Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) highlighted, in instrumental musicians, a preferential mapping of pitches onto a vertical spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated... more
Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) highlighted, in instrumental musicians, a preferential mapping of pitches onto a vertical spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with upper/lower response keys, and onto a horizontal spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with the right/left response keys. We called this effect Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes SMARC).
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Whether high-level properties of stimuli rendered invisible by interocular competition can influence perception and behavior remains controversial. We studied whether suppressed and invisible symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical stimuli can... more
Whether high-level properties of stimuli rendered invisible by interocular competition can influence perception and behavior remains controversial. We studied whether suppressed and invisible symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical stimuli can elicit priming. First, we established that participants were objectively unable to discriminate numerical prime stimuli when interocular suppression rendered them invisible. Next, we asked participants to enumerate a visible target set of items after being exposed to a suppressed, invisible (nonsymbolic or symbolic) prime set. Both symbolic and nonsymbolic unconsciously perceived numerical primes induced robust priming effects that were specific to the numerical distance between the target and prime. Comparison with a no-prime condition revealed that primes larger than targets interfered with target enumeration and primes the same as or smaller than targets facilitated target enumeration. Taken together, our findings provide clear evidence for high...
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Psychology, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Cognition, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and 15 moreMild Cognitive Impairment, Activities of Daily Living, Neurocognitive, Brain Mapping, Humans, Female, Male, Cortex, Aged, White matter, Neurosciences, Gray Matter, Predictive value of tests, Neuropsychological Tests, and Language tests
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Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Semantics, Humans, Concept Formation, and 13 moreAmnesia, Classification, Male, Cortex, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, British Broadcasting Corporation, Middle Aged, Neurosciences, Cognition disorders, Case Control Studies, Brain injuries, Personal Identification Number (PIN), and Arabic Numerals
In numerate societies, early arithmetic development is associated with visuospatial working memory, executive functions, nonverbal intelligence, and magnitude-comparison abilities. To what extent do these associations arise from cultural... more
In numerate societies, early arithmetic development is associated with visuospatial working memory, executive functions, nonverbal intelligence, and magnitude-comparison abilities. To what extent do these associations arise from cultural practices or general cognitive prerequisites? Here, we administered tests of these cognitive abilities (Corsi Blocks, Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices, Porteus Maze) to indigenous children in remote northern Australia, whose culture contains few counting words or counting practices, and to nonindigenous children from an Australian city. The indigenous children completed a standard nonverbal addition task; the nonindigenous children completed a comparable single-digit addition task. The correlation matrices among variables in the indigenous and nonindigenous children showed similar patterns of relationships, and parallel regression analyses showed that visuospatial working memory was the main predictor of addition performance in both groups. ...
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We assessed the degree to which the variability in the time children took to solve single digit addition (SDA) problems longitudinally, predicted their ability to solve more complex mental addition problems. Beginning at 5 years, 164... more
We assessed the degree to which the variability in the time children took to solve single digit addition (SDA) problems longitudinally, predicted their ability to solve more complex mental addition problems. Beginning at 5 years, 164 children completed a 12-item SDA test on four occasions over 6 years. We also assessed their (1) digit span, visuospatial working memory, and non-verbal IQ, and (2) the speed with which they named single numbers and letters, as well the speed enumerating one to three dots as a measure of subitizing ability. Children completed a double-digit mental addition test at the end of the study. We conducted a latent profile analysis to determine if there were different SDA problem solving response time (PRT) variability patterns across the four test occasions, which yielded three distinct PRT variability patterns. In one pattern, labeled a typical acquisition pathway, mean PRTs were relatively low and PRT variability diminished over time. In a second pattern, la...
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One specific cause of low numeracy is a deficit in a mechanism for representing and processing numerosities that humans inherited and which is putatively shared with many other species. This deficit is evident at each of the four levels... more
One specific cause of low numeracy is a deficit in a mechanism for representing and processing numerosities that humans inherited and which is putatively shared with many other species. This deficit is evident at each of the four levels of explanation in the 'causal modelling' framework of Morton and Frith (Morton and Frith 1995 In , vol. 1 (eds D Cichetti, D Cohen), pp. 357-390). Very low numeracy can occur in cognitively able individuals with normal access to good education: it is linked to an easily measured deficit in basic numerosity processing; it has a distinctive neural signature; and twin studies suggest specific heritability, though the relevant genes have not yet been identified. Unfortunately, educators and policymakers seem largely unaware of this cause, but appropriate interventions could alleviate the suffering and handicap of those with low numeracy, and would be a major benefit to society.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of...
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This study investigated the relationship between the contextual probability of lexical items in spontaneous speech, as measured by the Cloze procedure, and word frequency. It also attempted to determine the relative importance of the two... more
This study investigated the relationship between the contextual probability of lexical items in spontaneous speech, as measured by the Cloze procedure, and word frequency. It also attempted to determine the relative importance of the two variables in causing delay, in the form of hesitation, in the production of spontaneous speech. The analysis revealed that content words of low contextual probability tended to be more infrequent than other words, and that both contextual probability and word frequency were associated with hesitation in speech. Contextual probability had an effect on hesitation even when word frequency was held constant, but word frequency had no effect when contextual probability was controlled. Analysis of certain types of errors, also, revealed that word frequency may play an important role in the lexical selection process.
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In his recent critique of Educational Neuroscience, Bowers argues that neuroscience has no role to play in informing education, which he equates with classroom teaching. Neuroscience, he suggests, adds nothing to what we can learn from... more
In his recent critique of Educational Neuroscience, Bowers argues that neuroscience has no role to play in informing education, which he equates with classroom teaching. Neuroscience, he suggests, adds nothing to what we can learn from psychology. In this commentary, we argue that Bowers' assertions misrepresent the nature and aims of the work in this new field. We suggest that, by contrast, psychological and neural levels of explanation complement rather than compete with each other. Bowers' analysis also fails to include a role for educational expertise-a guiding principle of our new field. On this basis, we conclude that his critique is potentially misleading. We set out the well-documented goals of research in Educational Neuroscience, and show how, in collaboration with educators, significant progress has already been achieved, with the prospect of even greater progress in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record
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We report a study of a patient with selectively preserved sequence meaning of numbers, but impaired access to cardinal number meaning. This limited understanding of number meaning was associated with a severe impairment in calculation... more
We report a study of a patient with selectively preserved sequence meaning of numbers, but impaired access to cardinal number meaning. This limited understanding of number meaning was associated with a severe impairment in calculation tasks, with the inability to apply ...
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This study compares the tendency for numerals to elicit spontaneous perceptions of colour or taste (synaesthesia) with the tendency to visualise numbers as occupying particular visuo-spatial configurations (number forms). The prevalence... more
This study compares the tendency for numerals to elicit spontaneous perceptions of colour or taste (synaesthesia) with the tendency to visualise numbers as occupying particular visuo-spatial configurations (number forms). The prevalence of number forms was found to be significantly higher in synaesthetes experiencing colour compared both to synaesthetes experiencing taste and to control participants lacking any synaesthetic experience. This suggests that the presence of synaesthetic colour sensations enhances the tendency to explicitly represent numbers in a visuo-spatial format although the two symptoms may nevertheless be logically independent (i.e. it is possible to have number forms without colour, and coloured numbers without forms). Number forms are equally common in men and women, unlike previous reports of synaesthesia that have suggested a strong female bias. Individuals who possess a number form are also likely to possess visuo-spatial forms for other ordinal sequences (e.g. days, months, letters) which suggests that it is the ordinal nature of numbers rather than numerical quantity that gives rise to this particular mode of representation. Finally, we also describe some consequences of number forms for performance in a number comparison task.
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Transcoding numerals containing zero is more problematic than transcoding numbers formed by non-zero digits. However, it is currently unknown whether this is due to zeros requiring brain areas other than those traditionally associated... more
Transcoding numerals containing zero is more problematic than transcoding numbers formed by non-zero digits. However, it is currently unknown whether this is due to zeros requiring brain areas other than those traditionally associated with number representation. Here we hypothesize that transcoding zeros entails visuo-spatial and integrative processes typically associated with the right hemisphere. The investigation involved 22 right-brain-damaged patients and 20 healthy controls who completed tests of reading and writing Arabic numbers. As expected, the most significant deficit among patients involved a failure to cope with zeros. Moreover, a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) analysis showed that the most common zero-errors were maximally associated to the right insula which was previously related to sensorimotor integration, attention, and response selection, yet for the first time linked to transcoding processes. Error categories involving other digits corresponded to the so-called Neglect errors, which however, constituted only about 10% of the total reading and 3% of the writing mistakes made by the patients. We argue that damage to the right hemisphere impairs the mechanism of parsing, and the ability to set-up empty-slot structures required for processing zeros in complex numbers; moreover, we suggest that the brain areas located in proximity to the right insula play a role in the integration of the information resulting from the temporary application of transcoding procedures.
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... Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Chapter]. Information processing deficits in dyscalculia. Why is math so hard for some children? ... Abstract. The aim of this chapter is to identify the central information processing impairments in... more
... Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Chapter]. Information processing deficits in dyscalculia. Why is math so hard for some children? ... Abstract. The aim of this chapter is to identify the central information processing impairments in children with developmental dyscalculia. ...