Biomedical subjects

Alessia Granà

Publications and source records attributed to Alessia Granà.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Transcoding zeros within complex numerals.

This paper describes a patient (LD) showing a selective syntactic deficit in the production of Arabic numerals. Unlike in previously reported cases, LD's syntactic difficulties result in deletions rather than insertions of zeros, with a reduction of the number magnitude. The pattern of errors highlighted a distinction between "lexical zeros", i.e. the zeros in tens, that are semantically derived, and "syntactic zeros" that are syntactically produced as the result of specific production rules. In LD, only syntactic zeros were affected. Furthermore, the processing of numerals with final zeros was found to be easier than the processing of numerals with internal zeros. This pattern of errors is compatible with the lexical-semantic model of Power and Dal Martello. In this model, in fact, lexical zeros originate from a numerical concept, while syntactic zeros originate from a concatenation operation, plus an overwriting operation leaving one or more intermediary zeros. Thus, lexical zeros may be easier to manipulate than syntactic zeros that merely represent a null quantity associated to a specific power of 10.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Writing and rewriting arabic numerals: dissociated processing pathways?

The present paper describes two patients, AB and FS, whose deficit in transcoding verbal to Arabic numerals was greatly affected by the format of the input. Despite intact comprehension of written verbal numerals and otherwise intact production of Arabic numerals they both transcode inefficiently the former into the latter. Yet, their ability to write the same Arabic numerals on dictation was fully preserved. Moreover, in both patients' performance, a systematic error pattern emerged reflecting the influence of the lexico-syntactic structure of the input numerals in the transcoding processes. Current models of number transcoding may not easily account for this pattern of dissociation without postulating different code-dependent pathways for verbal to Arabic transcoding. Within a more parsimonious approach, it is tentatively suggested that spoken and written verbal codes activate with different efficiency the same transcoding algorithm.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Patterns of phonological errors as a function of a phonological versus an articulatory locus of impairment.

We present the case of two aphasic patients: one with fluent speech, MM, and one with dysfluent speech, DB. Both patients make similar proportions of phonological errors in speech production and the errors have similar characteristics. A closer analysis, however, shows a number of differences. DB's phonological errors involve, for the most part, simplifications of syllabic structure; they affect consonants more than vowels; and, among vowels, they show effects of sonority/complexity. This error pattern may reflect articulatory difficulties. MM's errors, instead, show little effect of syllable structure, affect vowels at least as much as consonants and, and affect all different vowels to a similar extent. This pattern is consistent with a more central impairment involving the selection of the right phoneme among competing alternatives. We propose that, at this level, vowel selection may be more difficult than consonant selection because vowels belong to a smaller set of repeatedly activated units.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Proper names and noun-to-determiner movement in aphasia: a case study.

Proper names (PN) have properties that are different from those of common names (CN) and as such underlie different syntactic rules. According to one of these rule, in many languages, PN, unlike CN, do not take the determiner. It has been suggested that this happens because PN move themselves from noun position to determiner position. The present study addressed the question of whether noun to determiner movement should be just considered a formal description or rather reflects actual processing. A single aphasia case study and a group study on Alzheimer's patients provide experimental support to the view that movement from nominal to determiner position reflects some psychological computation.

Aged↗