Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, 1978
A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noti... more A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noticeably of the arms and hands. It is a matter of common observation that a subclass of these hand and arm movements appear intimately linked with the process of speech production: they are rhythmically timed with the speech, and often seem to reflect the meaning which the speech expresses. We call these movements Speech Focussed Movements (SFMs). These can be distinguished from other movements which accompany speech, scratches, twitches and the like, since the latter are not timed with speech, and do not in any apparent way reflect the meaning of what is said.
This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in... more This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in reading, writing and understanding musical notation. After sustaining a left posterior temporal lobe lesion and a small right occipito-temporal lesion in an episode of haemorrhagic encephalitis, the patient showed a specific deficit in reading music. She retained the ability to read aloud letters,
How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space rel... more How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space relate to each other? Recent evidence suggests that these abilities share common magnitude processing and neural resources, although other findings also highlight the role of dimension-specific processes. To further characterize the relation between number, time, and space, we first examined them in a population with a developmental numerical dysfunction (developmental dyscalculia) and then assessed the extent to which these abilities correlated both behaviorally and anatomically in numerically normal participants. We found that (1) participants with dyscalculia showed preserved continuous quantity processing and (2) in numerically normal adults, numerical and continuous quantity abilities were at least partially dissociated both behaviorally and anatomically. Specifically, gray matter volume correlated with both measures of numerical and continuous quantity processing in the right TPJ; in ...
Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) hig... more Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) highlighted, in instrumental musicians, a preferential mapping of pitches onto a vertical spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with upper/lower response keys, and onto a horizontal spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with the right/left response keys. We called this effect Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes SMARC).
Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, 1978
A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noti... more A characteristic of human talk is that it is typically accompanied by bodily movements, most noticeably of the arms and hands. It is a matter of common observation that a subclass of these hand and arm movements appear intimately linked with the process of speech production: they are rhythmically timed with the speech, and often seem to reflect the meaning which the speech expresses. We call these movements Speech Focussed Movements (SFMs). These can be distinguished from other movements which accompany speech, scratches, twitches and the like, since the latter are not timed with speech, and do not in any apparent way reflect the meaning of what is said.
This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in... more This paper is a single case study of a professional musician, PKC, with a selective impairment in reading, writing and understanding musical notation. After sustaining a left posterior temporal lobe lesion and a small right occipito-temporal lesion in an episode of haemorrhagic encephalitis, the patient showed a specific deficit in reading music. She retained the ability to read aloud letters,
How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space rel... more How do our abilities to process number and other continuous quantities such as time and space relate to each other? Recent evidence suggests that these abilities share common magnitude processing and neural resources, although other findings also highlight the role of dimension-specific processes. To further characterize the relation between number, time, and space, we first examined them in a population with a developmental numerical dysfunction (developmental dyscalculia) and then assessed the extent to which these abilities correlated both behaviorally and anatomically in numerically normal participants. We found that (1) participants with dyscalculia showed preserved continuous quantity processing and (2) in numerically normal adults, numerical and continuous quantity abilities were at least partially dissociated both behaviorally and anatomically. Specifically, gray matter volume correlated with both measures of numerical and continuous quantity processing in the right TPJ; in ...
Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) hig... more Background A previous study (Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà, & Butterworth, Cognition, 2005) highlighted, in instrumental musicians, a preferential mapping of pitches onto a vertical spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with upper/lower response keys, and onto a horizontal spatial dimension, high/low pitches being associated with the right/left response keys. We called this effect Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes SMARC).
Uploads
Papers by Brian Butterworth