The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology

Fodor, Jerry A.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511814273.046

Cited by 951 publications

(1,285 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The learning and use of the rules and operations of grammar are generally implicit (non-conscious). At least certain aspects of grammatical processing are fast as well as automatic (Fodor, 1983;Friederici and Mecklinger, 1996). Finally, although complex representations (e.g., the regular past-tense walked) could be composed anew each time (e.g., walk + -ed), and must be if they were not previously encountered (glicked), they could in principle also be stored in the mental lexicon.…”

Section: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The PDH is largely motivated by the Declarative/Procedural model of language, and evidence supporting the PDH also supports this perspective. The PDH predicts that SLI is associated with non-linguistic functions that are subserved by the same brain system that also underlies grammar; this outcome is clearly not expected by the view that domain-specific modules subserve distinct aspects of grammar (Chomsky, 1995;Fodor, 1983;Frazier and Fodor, 1978;Grodzinsky, 2000).Likewise, at least previously proposed "single-mechanism" models of grammatical and lexical phenomena (Bates and MacWhinney, 1989; Joanisse and Seidenberg, 1999;MacDonald et al, 1994;Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986) do not appear to be compatible with the PDH, or with the grammatical/lexical dissociations found in SLI (see Pinker and Ullman, 2002a;Ullman and Gopnik, 1999;van der Lely and Ullman, 2001). However, it must be noted that the single-mechanism 43 (connectionist) computational perspective is not in principle incompatible with the PDH and the findings described above, since distinct declarative and procedural systems can and have been modeled by connectionist simulations (Dominey et al, 2003;McClelland et al, 1995).…”

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Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

Ullman

Pierpont

2005

Cortex

703

751

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Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has been explained by two broad classes of hypotheses, which posit either a deficit specific to grammar, or a non-linguistic processing impairment. Here we advance an alternative perspective. According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), SLI can be largely explained by the abnormal development of brain structures that constitute the procedural memory system. This system, which is composed of a network of inter-connected structures rooted in frontal/basal-ganglia circuits, subserves the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills.Crucially, recent evidence also implicates this system in important aspects of grammar. The PDH posits that a significant proportion of individuals with SLI suffer from abnormalities of this brain network, leading to impairments of the linguistic and non-linguistic functions that depend on it. In contrast, functions such as lexical and declarative memory, which depend on other brain structures, are expected to remain largely spared. Evidence from an in-depth retrospective examination of the literature is presented. It is argued that the data support the predictions of the PDH, and particularly implicate Broca's area within frontal cortex, and the caudate nucleus within the basal ganglia. Finally, broader implications are discussed, and predictions for future research are presented. It is argued that the PDH forms the basis of a novel and potentially productive perspective on SLI. INTRODUCTIONSpecific Language Impairment (SLI) is generally defined as a developmental disorder of language in the absence of frank neurological damage, hearing deficits, severe environmental deprivation, or mental retardation (for diagnostic definitions and prevalence of SLI, see Bishop, 1992;Leonard, 1998;Tomblin et al., 1997). Other terms have also been used to label such children, including developmental dysphasia, language impairment, language learning disability, developmental language disorder, delayed speech and deviant language (Leonard, 1998;Ahmed et al., 2001). Several factors have complicated attempts to provide a unified theory of SLI, or even of subgroups of SLI. First, despite the standard use of exclusionary criteria to diagnose SLI, the disorder is clearly not limited to language.Rather the linguistic impairments co-occur with a number of non-linguistic deficits, including impairments of motor skills and working memory, and with other disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Hill, 2001;Leonard, 1998;Tirosh and Cohen, 1998). Second, even though SLI must be a consequence of some sort of neural dysfunction, the neural correlates of the disorder have been largely ignored. This potentially valuable information could provide important constraints on explanatory accounts of the disorder. Third, SLI is a classification that is quite heterogeneous (Leonard, 1998;Stromswold, 2000). Surveys document variation within and across subgroups in the particular aspects of language that are affected and in the types of co-occurring no...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

Ullman

Pierpont

2005

Cortex

703

751

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“…It can be argued, however, that it is a mandatory process (cf. Fodor, 1983) and as such is a standard part of the task performance during lexical decision. The stronger the semantic overlap between prime and target, the better the match, and the more reduced the amplitude of the N400 will be.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Target Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Event-Related Brain Potential Analysis of Visual Word Priming Effects

Brown

Hagoort

Chwilla³

2000

Brain and Language

102

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Two experiments are reported that provide evidence on task-induced effects during visual lexical processing in a prime-target semantic priming paradigm. The research focuses on target expectancy effects by manipulating the proportion of semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task was used and reaction times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were obtained. In Experiment 2, subjects silently read the stimuli, without any additional task demands, and ERPs were recorded. The RT and ERP results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that an expectancy mechanism contributed to the priming effect when a high proportion of related word pairs was presented. The ERP results of Experiment 2 show that in the absence of extraneous task requirements, an expectancy mechanism is not active. However, a standard ERP semantic priming effect was obtained in Experiment 2. The combined results show that priming effects due to relatedness proportion are induced by task demands and are not a standard aspect of online lexical processing.

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“…Young children, but not adults with most integral dimensions, behave differently when stimulus sets are organized around the axes that define the dimensions of the stimulus space rather than around arbitrary axes (Kemler, 1982a;Smith & Kemler, 1978). Furthermore, if young children respond only in terms of the overall similarity relationships of integral units, they should perform a of modules (Fodor, 1983), that is, of highly specialized and autonomous systems, characterized among other properties by limited central access. This means that no intermediate stage of coding would be available for introspection, strategic modification or control behaviour.…”

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confidence: 99%

The development of separability in visual perception

Kolinsky

1989

Cognition

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Kolinsky, R., 1989. The development of separability in visual perception. Cognition, Under conditions that do not allow focused attention, reports of illusory conjunctions (i.e. errors that wrongly recombine the features of different objects) constitute evidence of the separate registering of features at an early processing level. The occurrence of illusory conjunctions was used to determine whether there is preattentive analysis of component dimensions (colour and form) and of parts of shapes (triangles and arrows) in young children aged 5 to 8 years. Evidence of yreattentive analysis was found, even for the youngest children, for colour and form but not for parts of shapes. Although developrxdntal effects hardly reached significance, inspection of abilities assumed to affect the illusory conjunctions phenomenon suggests that at the preattentive stage children can integrate spatially separate segments but lack the crrpaci[y to fully analyse connected segments.A central question in the study of perception is the nature of the units into which the sensory world is analysed. Given that in a hierarchy of processing operations different units may be extracted at different stages, the question of whether perception is analytic or integral must be asked separately for the

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The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology

Cited by 951 publications

References 42 publications

Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

An Event-Related Brain Potential Analysis of Visual Word Priming Effects

The development of separability in visual perception

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