Neuropsychology and neurolinguistics : selected papers

Weigl, the author and co-author of this collection of papers, one of the pioneers of what might be called the neurolinguistic branch of neuropsychology, died on June 4th, 1979 aged 78. the Introduction to this volume, which he had finished only few days before, was the very last of a huge number of studies he could bring to an end. The brief Foreword that A. R. Luria, the world-renowned Soviet neuropsychologist, added to the Selected Papers of his colleague and close friend of many years was written shortly before his own death in 1977. The book thus turned into a memorial volume for two grand old men of our century's neuropsychology. A large amount of material has had to remain unpublished. It may be hoped, however, that at least part of it will appear in the future after being prepared for publication by some of Weigl's closest collaborators and friends. Unfortunately, Egon Weigl was not allowed the time to give this collection of papers the final shape he had intended to. We are therefore left with the fact that in its present form the volume lacks the unification of terminology the author wanted to make before submitting the final version to the publishers. Since the English versions of the papers collected here have been prepared by different translators at different times, certain terminological inconsistencies were unavoidable. Nevertheless, we are confident that this will be no obstacle to the understanding of the main tenets. I am indebted to Ewald Lang, one of Egon Weigl's younger friends and linguistic co-workers, for his invaluable help in proof-reading and other editorial matters. ## Berlin, December 1980 Irina Weigl X Foreword nents and reintegrating them into the system of preserved speech functions. The general idea of "deblocking" aphasically disturbed components as well as the detailed elaboration of the various specific procedures that constitute the "deblocking method" belong to the most important achievements of this creative scholar. Neurologists and psychologists, neuropsychologists and psycholinguists will gain many important insights and stimulating ideas when reading this book. I can only congratulate the author and the Mouton Publishers for opening to the readers the possibility to enter this field, which is of equal import for psychology, medicine, and linguistics. ## Moscow, May 1976 A. R. L. productive advice and cooperation. Yet his work and his ideas will be with us for a long time. Berlin, December 1979 M. B. •a Q 00 £ ## Semantic, syntactic and functional radiation Research into semantic fields did not only lead to the statements made above, but also proved the radiability of deblocking effects. As soon as a number of words from a certain field (e.g. clothing, food) are deblocked, a whole list of further, non-deblocked words from the same sphere can be released as a result of a process in which the retrievability brought about by the stimulation of partial areas of the semantic memory extends to ever larger lexically organized areas. The deblocking method proved capable of stimulating analogous processes of radiation also on the semantic-syntactic level. When this was happening, patients did not only manage to provide an oral and written reproduction of a deblocked sentence, but also to subject it to spontaneous syntactic transformations (e.g. to turn a declarative sentence into an interrogative sentence, etc.) (see Bierwisch and I. Weigl [16], I. Weigl [202]). This semantic radiation is matched by functional radiation. As mentioned above, chain deblocking is marked by intact and disturbed speech functions that relate to one and the same item following each other in this order (e.g. the correct auditory language comprehension, simultaneous oral repetition and writing to dictation of the word "skirt" is followed by the disturbed functions of the lexical comprehension, reading aloud and image naming of the word). In certain cases it is possible for blocked functions that have not been part of the chain before to share in the deblocking (e.g. the spontaneous reproduction of the word). In other words, the deblocking effect has in the particular patients radiated within the speech functional system because of existing interconnections in this system (functional radiation). ## Forms of neurolinguistic interdependence The handicap of patients vis-à-vis certain linguistic word classes (such as function words and particles) -an issue that already classic research workers in the field of aphasia, like A. Pick, hit upon when they were studying agrammatism, and that has never stopped being examined to this day (see Goodglass et al. [57], Marshall and Newcombe [119], 1. In this respect Lenneberg's work, Biological Foundations of Language [98], for instance, represents a contribution to genetic neuropsychology. 2. At the beginning of the present century important brain researchers such as Pick, Binswanger, Goldstein, Isserlin, Lotmar, and others, already strongly supported the view that proper linguistic knowledge was indispensable for the understanding of aphasically caused speech disturbance. Contents Editorial Note Foreword Prefatory Note Introduction Part One. Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics 1. On the Future of Neuropsychology 2. Contributions to Neuropsychological Basic Research 3. Neuropsychology and Linguistics: Topics of Common Research Part Two. Neuropsychological methods 4. On the Psychology of So-called Processes of Abstraction 5. On the Construction of Standard Psychological Tests in Cases of Brain Damage 6. Neuropsychological Methods for Analysing the Functions and Components of Speech-Functional Partial Systems 7. The Importance of Afferent, Verbo-Kinaesthetic Excitation of the Speech Apparatus for Expressive and Receptive Speech in Normal Subjects and Subjects with Speech Disturbances Part Three Experimental Studies on Neuropsychological Mechanisms of Aphasie Disturbances of Speech Perception and Production 8. Contributions to the Interpretation of Certain Aphasic Disturbances as Blocking Phenomena 9. The Phenomenon of Temporary Deblocking in Aphasia 10. On the Problem of Cortical Syndromes: Experimental Studies 11. Neuropsychological Approach to the Problem of Transcoding 12. Neuropsychological Experiments on Transcoding between Spoken and Written Language Structures 13. The Transcoding Processes in Patients with Agraphia to Dictation 14. Performance in Aphasics at Conceptual and Operational Words used Single or within Syntagms 15. Neuropsychological Studies of Structure and Dynamics of Semantic Fields with the Deblocking Method 16. Neurolinguistic Research on Semantic Memory 17. On Written Language: Its Acquisition and Its Alexic-Agraphic Disturbances Bibliography Sources

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Egon Weigl ; In Collaboration With M. Bierwisch ... [et Al.]. Bibliography: P. [346]-358.