Language deficits, localization, and grammar: Evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals
F. Dick et al., Language deficits, localization, and grammar: Evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals, PSYCHOL REV, 108(4), 2001, pp. 759-788
Selective deficits in aphasic patients' grammatical production and comprehe
nsion 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 morph
osyntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurological
ly intact populations. They present new data showing that receptive agramma
tism 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-gen
eral account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic
distributions with the properties of an associative processor working unde
r normal or suboptimal conditions.