Although there is strong evidence that Broca's area is important for syntax, this may simply be a by-product of greater working memory and/or cognitive control demands for more complex syntactic structures. Here we report an experiment with event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether Broca's area plays a causal…

There exists an increasing body of research demonstrating that language processing is aided by context-based predictions. Recent findings suggest that the brain generates estimates about the likely physical appearance of upcoming words based on syntactic predictions: words that do not physically look like the expected syntactic category show…

Minimally verbal children with autism commonly demonstrate language dysfunction, including immature syntax acquisition. We hypothesised that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) should facilitate language acquisition in a cohort (n = 10) of children with immature syntax. We modified the English version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT)…

Artificial grammar learning constitutes a well-established model for the acquisition of grammatical knowledge in a natural setting. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that Broca's area (left BA 44/45) is similarly activated by natural syntactic processing and artificial grammar learning. The current study was conducted to investigate the…

The paper describes methods of natural language enhancement which both teachers and parents can use with young children who have language delays. The importance of connecting language to meaningful, functional communication is stressed. The reinforcement for the child becomes the adult's natural and spontaneous response. Adults, then, must prove…