Categorical perception (CP) refers to the influence of category knowledge on perception and is revealed by a superior ability to discriminate items across categories relative to items within a category. In recent years, the finding that CP is lateralized to the left hemisphere in adults has been interpreted as evidence for a kind of CP driven by…

One of the most challenging tasks in neuroscience in language studies, is investigation of the brain's ability to integrate and process information. This task can only be successfully addressed by applying various assessment techniques integrated into a multimodal approach. Each of these techniques has its advantages and disadvantages, but help to…

In this study we explore listeners' sensitivity to vowel to vowel (VV) coarticulation, using both event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral methodologies. The stimuli used were vowels "colored" by the coarticulatory influence of other vowels across one, three or five intervening segments. The paradigm used in the ERP portion of the study was…

The papers in this special issue of "Language and Cognitive Processing" on the neural bases of language production illustrate two general approaches in current cognitive neuroscience. One approach focuses on investigating cognitive issues, making use of the logic of associations/dissociations or the logic of neural markers as key investigative…

The P600 is an event-related brain potential (ERP) typically associated with the processing of grammatical anomalies or incongruities. A similar response has also been observed in fully acceptable long-distance "wh"-dependencies. Such findings raise the question of whether these ERP responses reflect common underlying processes, and what…

The left inferior frontal cortex, the caudate and the anterior cingulate have been proposed as the neural origin of language switching, but most of the studies were conducted in low proficient bilinguals. In the present study, we investigated brain areas involved in language switching in a sample of 19 early, high-proficient Spanish-Catalan…

Studies about bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) have a long tradition within linguistic and psycholinguistic research. The contributions from psycholinguistic research are crucial to the improvement of neurolinguistic models. This importance stems from the fact that psycholinguistic research is posing more specific questions than…

Event-related potentials were recorded to substantiate the claim of a distinct psycholinguistic status of (a) pronouns vs. proper names and (b) ellipses vs. proper names. In two studies 41 students read sentences in which the number of intervening words between the anaphor and its antecedent was either small or large. Comparing the far with the…

Presents a tentative cognitive-psychological model of language attrition, which draws on information from studies in second language attrition, neurobiology and psychology. Notes that this model is presented to demonstrate that a model based on consideration of the brain has the potential of providing a plausible account of the process of language…

The brain is the organ of knowledge and the organizer of human abilities, the means of recognizing a face in a crowd, of conversing about experiences and images, of forming thoughts and developing ideas, and of instantly understanding words coming rapidly in conversation. This book seeks to explain how the brain accomplishes all that it does.…

Proposes a neurobiological model in which a greater number of brain structures than previously indicated are involved in language functions, with particular reference to second language learning. The study examines three areas of the brain rarely associated with language: the anterior cingulate gyrus, the prefrontal cortex, and the basal temporal…

Presents a neurobiologically inspired model of one aspect of adult second language acquisition: procedural linguistic skill acquisition. Notes that the proposed model crucially involves the neural circuitry of the neocerebellum, a brain structure implicated in higher cognitive and, potentially, linguistic functions. (69 references) (Author/CK)

Addresses, from a neurobiological perspective, the input-intake distinction commonly made in applied linguistics and the role of selective attention in transforming input to intake. The study places primary emphasis upon a neural structure (the nucleus reticularis thalami) that appears to be essential for selective attention. (79 references)…

This book brings together the contributions of individual language scholars, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and neurophysicians. Each chapter focuses on the human cognitive processes involved in language activity and the impact of language diversity on them. The basic issue is how to correlate language diversity with the universality…