Deck 13: Biological Foundations of Language

Question 1

Wernicke's aphasia is characterized by:

A) injury to the left frontal lobe
B) deficits of comprehension and semantics
C) difficulty of repeating what is heard
D) pragmatically inappropriate speech

Answer 1

deficits of comprehension and semantics

Question 2

Aphasics who display category-specific dissociations:

A) are unable to read or write
B) are unable to recognize faces
C) are unable to process certain types of words or word categories
D) cannot perform tasks that have a spatial component

Answer 2

are unable to process certain types of words or word categories

Question 3

Despite considerable language deficits, Wernicke's patients are surprisingly easily able to process:

A) idioms, such as as easy as pie
B) axial commands, such as turn around
C) slang, such as buzz off
D) metaphors, such as she was a ray of sunshine

Answer 3

axial commands, such as turn around

Question 4

The visual centers are located in the back of the brain in the:

A) occipital lobe
B) temporal lobe
C) parietal lobe
D) cortical lobe

Question 5

Aphasia refers to:

A) any type of brain damage
B) any language disorder resulting from brain damage
C) any type of language disorder
D) any language disorder resulting specifically from stroke

Question 6

The main functional area for auditory processing is in the:

A) occipital lobe
B) temporal lobe
C) parietal lobe
D) cortical lobe

Question 7

Gestures that in normal speech are used to highlight an aspect of a conversation are called:

A) interactive
B) receptive
C) paragrammatic
D) referential

Question 8

Patients who can process visual language but not auditory language are said to have:

A) conduction aphasia
B) pure-word deafness
C) alexia
D) aggrammatism

Question 9

Geschwind's model of language processing comes from:

A) anthropological data
B) studies of animal vocalizations
C) studies of aphasia
D) studies of normal brain function

Question 10

In split brain patients, the corpus callosum was surgically severed:

A) to study how each hemisphere operates independently
B) to relieve severe depression
C) to control severe epilepsy
D) to control Parkinson's disease

Question 11

The bundle of fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres is called the:

A) angular gyrus
B) association cortex
C) arcuate fasciculus
D) corpus callosum

Question 12

Broca's aphasia is characterized by:

A) injury to the left occipital lobe
B) deficits of comprehension but not production
C) agrammatic speech
D) all of the above

Question 13

The inability to write is called:

A) aphasia
B) alexia
C) agraphia
D) pure word deafness

Question 14

The tendency for a psychological function to be located in one hemisphere is referred to as:

A) dissociation
B) displacement
C) lateralization
D) conduction

Question 15

Holding up one finger to express that a speaker is not finished speaking is an example of a(n) ___________ gesture.

A) interactive
B) receptive
C) paragrammatic
D) referential

Question 16

Caramazza and Zurif (1976) tested Broca's, Wernicke's, and conduction aphasics on reversible and irreversible sentences. They found that:

A) Wernicke's patients were able to process both types of sentences most accurately
B) Wernicke's patients processed the reversible sentences but not the irreversible sentences.
C) Broca's aphasics were able to process both types of sentences most accurately
D) Broca's aphasics did well on irreversible sentences but not on reversible sentences

Question 17

Conduction aphasia is due to damage to the:

A) corpus callosum
B) arcuate fasciculus
C) angular gyrus
D) left cerebral hemisphere

Question 18

__________refers to a dissociation between the brain's visual regions and language areas.

A) Agraphia
B) Pure word deafness
C) Alexia
D) Aggrammatism

Question 19

Agrammatic speech is characterized by:

A) the omission of articles, conjunctions and grammatical inflections
B) fluent speech that has little informational values
C) speech that is neither grammatic nor fluent
D) speech that is initially agrammatic and disfluent, but which can be self-corrected by the patient with minimal coaching.

Question 20

Patients with conduction aphasia:

A) have trouble producing grammatical sentences
B) have trouble choosing the correct word for an object
C) are unable to write
D) cannot repeat what was said to them

Question 21

Criticism of chimp language studies focus on:

A) how well chimps were able to sign, given the shape and mobility of their hands
B) the period of time that chimps could remember particular signs
C) the point at which the chimps would be able to switch to spoken language
D) how much of the chimps' signing was imitative

Question 22

Which is not a specialty of the right hemisphere?

A) visuospatial functions
B) facial recognition
C) holistic tasks
D) language processing

Question 23

The Gardners used American Sign Language with Washoe because:

A) it is easier to videotape than English
B) chimpanzees are better equipped, physiologically, to handle a manual language than an oral language
C) it is simpler than English, and thus a good place to begin language training
D) ASL is more iconic than English

Question 24

Wood's (1975) study of evoked potentials found right-ear advantages when speech stimuli were presented and:

A) the stimuli were semantically meaningful
B) the stimuli were familiar
C) the task was linguistic in nature
D) the stimuli were processed holistically

Question 25

Individuals who have undergone removal of the left hemisphere prior to speech:

A) never develop language at all
B) show very subtle language deficits
C) eventually develop normal language
D) show deficits in semantic processing

Question 26

Information from the _______ is sent first to the right cerebral hemisphere.

A) right visual field
B) left retina
C) right half of each retina
D) corpus callosum

Question 27

When presented with a picture of a spoon in her left visual field, the split brain patient:

A) saw the spoon, but could not name it
B) named the spoon but was unable to pick it up
C) saw the spoon and named it accurately
D) saw the spoon, but called it a pencil

Question 28

The system of communication used by vervet monkeys:

A) is generally considered equivalent in complexity to human language
B) includes separate calls to signal the presence of different kinds of predators
C) displays displacement and duality of patterning, two hallmarks of human language
D) is taken as evidence that the vervets possess a theory of mind

Question 29

Hominids split from the chimpanzee and bonobo lines approximately:

A) 2,000,000 years ago
B) 150,000 years ago
C) 2,000 years ago
D) 6,000,000 years ago

Question 30

The right hemisphere appears to be better than the left at:

A) interpreting conversational remarks in a pragmatically appropriate manner
B) automatically activating lexical information
C) preserving discourse coherence
D) all of the above

Question 31

At the 1863 conference of the Linguistic Society of Paris, research on the evolution of language was:

A) the main topic of debate
B) protested by religious groups
C) protested by animal rights activists
D) banned because of the unscientific theories presented in the contributed papers

Question 32

Lennenberg (1967) hypothesized that hemispheric differences did not exist at birth (i.e., developed throughout childhood) based on evidence that:

A) damage to the right hemisphere in the first two years of life resulted in as much disruption of speech development as damage to the left hemisphere
B) isolated and feral children were eventually able to learn some language
C) infant brains are better able to reorganize function after injury
D) removal of the right hemisphere results in less language disruption than removal of the right hemisphere.

Question 33

In dichotic listening studies, split-brain patients show _____ right-ear advantages for speech stimuli compared with normal individuals.

A) exaggerated
B) equal
C) diminished
D) intermittent

Question 34

Gazzaniga and Hillyard (1971) found that the right hemisphere of split-brain patients adequately dealt with which grammatical distinction?

A) present versus future
B) singular versus plural
C) affirmative versus negative
D) all of the above

Question 35

____________ pathways enable each half of the brain to control the opposite side of the body.

A) Ipsilateral
B) Contralateral
C) Dichotic
D) Dissociation

Question 36

Studies of comprehension of humor have shown that:

A) patients with either right- or left-hemisphere damage have difficulty processing humor
B) patients with right-hemisphere damage have greater difficulty than those with left-hemisphere damage
C) patients with left-hemisphere damage have greater difficulty than those with right-hemisphere damage
D) the ability to process humor remains intact despite damage to either hemisphere

Question 37

According to Bever (1980), experienced musicians have a greater tendency than novices to show _____ advantages for _____.

A) left-ear, music
B) right-ear, music
C) left-ear, speech
D) right-ear, speech

Question 38

Hemispheric lateralization of species-specific vocalizations appears to be:

A) uniquely human
B) present in humans and primates, but absent in all other species
C) present in humans, primates and many other species, including birds
D) present in every species on the earth

Question 39

Evoked potentials are measures of:

A) how well a patient will recover from stroke
B) muscle activity anywhere in the human body
C) brain activity after presentation of a stimulus
D) the true linguistic abilities of patients who have difficulty producing speech

Question 40

According to the text, studies of dichotic listening, evoked potentials, and anatomical studies ___________ that hemispheric lateralization is present at birth.

A) strongly suggest
B) provide extremely weak evidence
C) neither refute nor support
D) clearly refute

Question 41

The ability to understand other people's viewpoints and intentions is referred to as:

A) social psychology
B) theory of mind
C) metacognition
D) situational awareness

Question 42

Which of the following points support the theory that gestural language preceded the evolution of speech?

A) children who are bilingual in speech and sign generally are more advanced in speech
B) it is generally believed that hominid brain size increased long before the human vocal tract evolved
C) children deprived of a language model invent spoken languages more readily than signed languages
D) present-day humans still use gesture to accompany speech

Question 43

Later chimp language studies focused on:

A) teaching chimps a simpler form of signing
B) whether chimps could teach signs to younger chimps without human intervention
C) socializing chimps so that they have a more natural need for communication
D) teaching chimps to sign in the wild

Question 44

In the discussion of the evolution of language, the continuity position holds that:

A) there is no distinction between language and other forms of animal communication
B) language evolved gradually in a series of steps
C) language evolved abruptly, in a single step
D) language evolved even though it did not have survival value initially

Question 45

Anatomical studies of vocal tracts have indicated that:

A) the vocal tracts of humans and chimpanzees are structurally identical
B) chimpanzees are incapable of producing vowel sounds such as [a], [i], and [u]
C) the Neanderthal did not have a larynx
D) the Neanderthal were capable of producing the full range of speech sounds of present-day humans.

Question 46

Which of the following has not been proposed to explain language origins?

A) Spoken language evolved from gestures
B) Spoken language evolved from primitive vocalizations, such as grunts and danger calls
C) Spoken language evolved from birdsong
D) Spoken language evolved as a byproduct of developing non-linguistic cognitive processes