title: Language deficits, localization, and grammar: evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals.
abstract: Selective deficits in aphasic patients' grammatical production and comprehension are often cited as evidence that syntactic processing is modular and localizable in discrete areas of the brain (e.g., Y. Grodzinsky, 2000). The authors review a large body of experimental evidence suggesting that morpho-syntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurologically intact populations. They present new data showing that receptive agrammatism is found not only over a range of aphasic groups, but is also observed in neurologically intact individuals processing under stressful conditions. The authors suggest that these data are most compatible with a domain-general account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic distributions with the properties of an associative processor working under normal or suboptimal conditions.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Language and Department of Cognitive Science, 9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0526, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0526, USA. fdick@cogsci.ucsd.edu
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Dick
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bates
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wulfeck
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Utman
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dronkers
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Gernsbacher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000849:Anomia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D001041:Aphasia, Wernicke / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics