This study was designed to examine the impact of progressive aphasia on the multilingual brain. T... more This study was designed to examine the impact of progressive aphasia on the multilingual brain. The main objective was to verify the status of the first acquired language (L1; Tunisian Arabic) against the status of a lately acquired foreign language (L2; English). The study reports on the case of an elderly Tunisian patient presenting with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia caused by the onset of the Alzheimer disease. A set of picture-naming tasks was administred to the patient to examine his naming aptitude in L1 and L2 for the semantic categories of : Letters, Numbers, Plants, Animals, Body parts, Colors and Clothes. The case’s responses in L1 and L2 were qualitatively analysed and compared. Dissociation in performance was reported within the same linguistic system (L1/L2) as well as between both systems (L1 vs. L2) with L2 being the most affected after the neurodegenerative damage. An account was found in category-specificity of semantic knowledge. A difference in the grammatical gender of nouns between TA and English was suggested as a possible factor affecting the patient’s performance as well. The reported dissociations between L1 and L2 suggested their segregation at a cognitive level. This anatomical segregation could have important implications for the clinical and the teaching fields. Clinically, identifying the most deficient language after brain damage should direct the language pathologist towards treating it with a special care offering a better prognosis for the weaknesses. Pedagogically, foreign language teaching methods should focus on fortifing the anatomic segregation between languages while enhancing authenticity in the L2 learning environment. This will hopefully reduce the occurrence of negative language transfer from L1 to L2. Key words: categorical effect of semantic knowledge, multilingual brain, primary progressive aphasia
Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée/European Review of Applied Psychology, 2010
ABSTRACT Our work purpose was to study the impact of focal frontal lesions on the inhibitors proc... more ABSTRACT Our work purpose was to study the impact of focal frontal lesions on the inhibitors processes. We used two arabophone versions of Hayling task and the Stroop task with condition of flexibility. In comparison with 13 control subjects matched by age, gender and level of education, frontal patients were (1) significantly slower in both task without been disproportionately slower in the condition needed inhibition, (2) committed significantly more errors than control subjects in the second part of Hayling task showed inhibition deficit, (3) laterality of frontal lesions had no incidence on performance, (4) individual analysis showed multiples dissociated deficits but also showed correlations between scores of rapidity, flexibility and inhibition. In conclusion, among all of performances, scores of errors in the Stroop and the Hayling tasks seemed to be the more sensitive to the frontal damage. Patients with the lowest performance in both inhibition tasks were those who presented lesions involving both the medial and lateral frontal cortex, the anterior cingulated cortex and/or orbitofrontal cortex.
This study was designed to examine the impact of progressive aphasia on the multilingual brain. T... more This study was designed to examine the impact of progressive aphasia on the multilingual brain. The main objective was to verify the status of the first acquired language (L1; Tunisian Arabic) against the status of a lately acquired foreign language (L2; English). The study reports on the case of an elderly Tunisian patient presenting with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia caused by the onset of the Alzheimer disease. A set of picture-naming tasks was administred to the patient to examine his naming aptitude in L1 and L2 for the semantic categories of : Letters, Numbers, Plants, Animals, Body parts, Colors and Clothes. The case’s responses in L1 and L2 were qualitatively analysed and compared. Dissociation in performance was reported within the same linguistic system (L1/L2) as well as between both systems (L1 vs. L2) with L2 being the most affected after the neurodegenerative damage. An account was found in category-specificity of semantic knowledge. A difference in the grammatical gender of nouns between TA and English was suggested as a possible factor affecting the patient’s performance as well. The reported dissociations between L1 and L2 suggested their segregation at a cognitive level. This anatomical segregation could have important implications for the clinical and the teaching fields. Clinically, identifying the most deficient language after brain damage should direct the language pathologist towards treating it with a special care offering a better prognosis for the weaknesses. Pedagogically, foreign language teaching methods should focus on fortifing the anatomic segregation between languages while enhancing authenticity in the L2 learning environment. This will hopefully reduce the occurrence of negative language transfer from L1 to L2. Key words: categorical effect of semantic knowledge, multilingual brain, primary progressive aphasia
Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée/European Review of Applied Psychology, 2010
ABSTRACT Our work purpose was to study the impact of focal frontal lesions on the inhibitors proc... more ABSTRACT Our work purpose was to study the impact of focal frontal lesions on the inhibitors processes. We used two arabophone versions of Hayling task and the Stroop task with condition of flexibility. In comparison with 13 control subjects matched by age, gender and level of education, frontal patients were (1) significantly slower in both task without been disproportionately slower in the condition needed inhibition, (2) committed significantly more errors than control subjects in the second part of Hayling task showed inhibition deficit, (3) laterality of frontal lesions had no incidence on performance, (4) individual analysis showed multiples dissociated deficits but also showed correlations between scores of rapidity, flexibility and inhibition. In conclusion, among all of performances, scores of errors in the Stroop and the Hayling tasks seemed to be the more sensitive to the frontal damage. Patients with the lowest performance in both inhibition tasks were those who presented lesions involving both the medial and lateral frontal cortex, the anterior cingulated cortex and/or orbitofrontal cortex.
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Papers by Mohamed Riadh Ben Rejeb
Key words: categorical effect of semantic knowledge, multilingual brain, primary progressive aphasia
Key words: categorical effect of semantic knowledge, multilingual brain, primary progressive aphasia