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- Title
LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT OF ACTION/VERB PROCESSING IN PATIENTS WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS THROUGH THE MULTILEVEL MODEL.
- Authors
Carthery-Goulart, Maria Teresa; Silva, Henrique Salmazo da; Machado, Juliana Bruno; Baradel, Roberta Roque; de Mattos Pimenta Parente, Maria Alice
- Abstract
Verbs are the best lexical items to verify the effects of motor learning in language processing. However, compared to nouns, this category has received less attention in studies about lexical disturbances in neurological diseases. Difficulties in verb/action processing have been found in patients with Parkinson's disease, suggesting that frontoestriatal and subcortical areas contribute to the semantic processing of verbs. This finding highlights the possibility of verifying the assumptions of the Embodied Cognition (EC). According to this theory, language processing of action verbs would engage areas involved in planning and execution of the actions represented by those verbs in the motor cortex. The literature in this field has pointed to conflicting results and action/verb cerebral representation, and its impact in language difficulties in Parkinson's disease have been intensively debated. These controversies may be studied in terms of the multilevel model (Kemmerer, 2014) that predicts that the design of the task will require differential access to the motor features of the verb meaning and that areas related to visual perception, particularly the lateral posterior temporal cortex play a role in semantic processing. The type of task and psycholinguistic variables need to be taken into account since they can measure different levels of semantic processing. In addition, in order to check EC assumptions, studies must contrast distinct types of verbs, for instance action vs. emotional/psychological; biological vs. non-biological; verbs requiring and not requiring tools. Another semantic feature of concern is specificity. Kim and Thompson (2004) distinguish light and heavy verbs and discuss their different speed of deterioration in neurodegenerative diseases. Considering this panorama, this chapter will present, a summary of the different approaches about action/verbs semantics, current debates about verb neural representation and an analysis of the evaluation directed to patients with Parkinson's disease. A Pubmed and Scopus search was conducted in December/2014 using the terms "action verb" OR "verb" OR "verbs" AND "Parkinson's disease" with no time restriction. We retrieved 35 studies and selected 22 for analysis, excluding reviews and studies not related to action/verb semantics in PD. The methodology and findings of those 22 studies were analyzed and contrasted with theories that explain the neural representation of action/verb semantics, in particular the multilevel model and Embodied Cognition accounts. The challenge for new studies is to identify those semantic properties, understand how they are related to cortical processing and develop suitable tools to analyze these features in different profiles of Parkinson's disease.
- Subjects
PARKINSON'S disease patients; VERBS; SEMANTICS; COGNITIVE grammar; PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
- Publication
Journal of Communications Research, 2015, Vol 7, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1935-3537
- Publication type
Article