Article
Роль жестикуляции в преодолении трудностей лексического доступа у пациентов с моторной афазией
The present work is dedicated to the role of gestures in overcoming lexical access problems in patients with motor aphasia. The study is based on a corpus of narratives by brain-damaged individuals – «Russian CliPS» (Clinical Pear Stories), the videos from which were annotated in the linguistic annotator «ELAN», with the gestural layout included in the analysis. The results suggest that most often the difficulties with lexical access were related to the search for nouns and verbs, and gestures (deictic and rhythmic gestures, beats) facilitated lexical access in patients.
The frontal aslant tract (FAT) is a white-matter tract connecting the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the supplementary motor complex (SMC). Damage to either component of the network causes spontaneous speech dysfluency, indicating its critical role in language production. However, spontaneous speech dysfluency may stem from various lower-level linguistic deficits, precluding inferences about the nature of linguistic processing subserved by the IFG-SMC network. Since the IFG and the SMC are attributed a role in conceptual and lexical selection during language production, we hypothesized that these processes rely on the IFG-SMC connectivity via the FAT. We analysed the effects of FAT volume on conceptual and lexical selection measures following frontal lobe stroke. The measures were obtained from the sentence completion (SC) task, tapping into conceptual and lexical selection, and the picture-word interference (PWI) task, providing a more specific measure of lexical selection. Lower FAT volume was not associated with lower conceptual or lexical selection abilities in our patient cohort. Current findings stand in marked discrepancy with previous lesion and neuroimaging evidence for the joint contribution of the IFG and the SMC to lexical and conceptual selection. A plausible explanation reconciling this discrepancy is that the IFG-SMC connectivity via the FAT does contribute to conceptual and/or lexical selection but its disrupted function undergoes reorganisation over the course of post-stroke recovery. Thus, our negative findings stress the importance of testing the causal role of the FAT in lexical and conceptual selection in patients with more acute frontal lobe lesions.
Currently there is a need for standardized language assessment test in Russian. Our group has developed Russian Aphasia Test (RAT) based on modern psycholinguistic models and psychometric principles, taking into account existing standardized tests in other languages. RAT allows to separately assess each level of linguistic processing: from phonemic perception to discourse. Here we present the design of the test and the first results of its approbation in groups of neurologically healthy participants and individuals with aphasia. Preliminary results demonstrated that the test is sensitive to language deficits and their severity. Thus, RAT is a practical instrument for language assessment in aphasia which can be used both in clinical practice and for research purposes. At present test standardization in a large group of participants with and without aphasia is on-going with the goal of developing appropriate clinical and age norms.
The present study employed the visual-world paradigm with eyetracking to discriminate between two versions of the reordered access model - namely, whether meaning frequency and context affect (a) speed of lexical access or (b) the relative weight of simultaneously accessed meanings. The time course of lexical access and meaning integration were studied in 3 groups of Russian speaking participants: 36 individuals in control group as well as 16 individuals with non-fluent and 8 with fluent aphasia. The results allow to confirm psychological reality of the first version, since in balanced ambiguous words contextual bias influences the speed of lexical access. In addition, it was found that healthy population and participants with non-fluent aphasia are affected by the contextual bias even after processing information that resolves ambiguity.
RaPID-3 aims to be an interdisciplinary forum for researchers to share information, findings, methods, models and experience on the collection and processing of data produced by people with various forms of mental, cognitive, neuropsychiatric, or neurodegenerative impairments, such as aphasia, dementia, autism, bipolar disorder, Parkinson's disease or schizophrenia. Particularly, the workshop's focus is on creation, processing and application of data resources from individuals at various stages of these impairments and with varying degrees of severity. Creation of resources includes e.g. annotation, description, analysis and interpretation of linguistic, paralinguistc and extra-linguistic data (such as spontaneous spoken language, transcripts, eyetracking measurements, wearable and sensor data, etc). Processing is done to identify, extract, correlate, evaluate and disseminate various linguistic or multimodal phenotypes and measurements, which then can be applied to aid diagnosis, monitor the progression or predict individuals at risk.
Review of the book by Elena A. Grishina "Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective". Moscow, 2017. 744 p.
The article regards the way in which the deictic gestures with the active index finger are executed in Russian body language and focuses on the role of the tension of the index finger (slightly curved vs. extended). Using the data retrieved from the Russian Multimedia Corpus, we discover the dependency between the tension of the index finger and the tension of the arm, which is engaged in executing the deictic gestures. We also reveal correlations between the tension of the index finger and (a) the primary / secondary reference to the pointed object, (b) the closest and the farthest distance between the speaker and the pointed object. We examine the difference in meaning and usage of the deictic gestures with the slightly curved vs. extended index finger. We argue that the choice between these types of pointing may be influenced both by physical and pragmatic factors.
The paper is focused on the study of reaction of italian literature critics on the publication of the Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Jivago". The analysys of the book ""Doctor Jivago", Pasternak, 1958, Italy" (published in Russian language in "Reka vremen", 2012, in Moscow) is given. The papers of italian writers, critics and historians of literature, who reacted immediately upon the publication of the novel (A. Moravia, I. Calvino, F.Fortini, C. Cassola, C. Salinari ecc.) are studied and analised.
In the article the patterns of the realization of emotional utterances in dialogic and monologic speech are described. The author pays special attention to the characteristic features of the speech of a speaker feeling psychic tension and to the compositional-pragmatic peculiarities of dialogic and monologic text.