Cognitive ability and communicative disability

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1998, 39, 125– 129

Cognitive ability and communicative disability ¨ NNBERG JERKER RO Department of Education and Psychology, Linko¨ping Uni6ersity, Sweden

Ro¨nnberg, J. (1998). Cognitive ability and communicative disability. Scandina6ian Journal of Psychology, 39, 125 – 129. The area of cognitive ability and communicative disability is introduced and delineated in this special issue of Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. A set of 13 chapters is included in the issue to illustrate the theoretical and methodological advances in the areas of memory and amnesia, reading and dyslexia, speech-reading, tactile speech and objects, and de6elopmental disorders. Theoretical communalities among the different subspecialities are emphasized. Key words: Cognitive ability, communicative disability, communicative handicap. Jerker Ro¨nnberg, Department of Education and Psychology, Linko¨ping Uni6ersity, S-581 83 Linko¨ping, Sweden. Email: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION This special issue on ‘‘cognitive ability and communicative disability’’, including thirteen papers, has come about because the editorial board of the Scandina6ian Journal of Psychology has deemed it important to present research areas to the readership which are (a) of thematic nature such that their complexity and quality can not easily be found in one journal only, (b) under Scandinavian and international development, and (c) of general theoretical interest. Furthermore, psychological concepts and their applications should be important to the further development of the area. One research area that satisfies the above criteria is by definition a multidisciplinary area which can be subsumed under the heading ‘‘cognitive ability and communicative disability’’. The area has undergone a rapid development during the last 10 years. To get the flavour of this theoretically challenging area, and with the hope of inspiring scientific endeavours and debate, we have invited a group of researchers with high international standing from Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian countries. Hopefully, the task that we proposed was challenging: Write about your most important contribution to the area. Since all contributors were invited, ‘‘publish’’ was the only option. Nevertheless, constructive reviews by independent reviewers have been implemented. In addition, we did not ask the contributors to review all of their work, but to be selective in what they regarded as their most important contribution. The general area, as we conceive it, typically has combined the development of cognitive, neuroscience and cognitiveperceptual analyses with a wide array of communicative forms and demands. The area of cognitive psychology has been successful in applying some of its conceptual repertoire to the domain of communication and communication psychology. Early signs of this development was found in Broadbent (1958) in his filter theory of attention as related to perception and communication. Subsequent research has made it clear that the integration of cognition and commu-

nication has proceeded and now makes a substantial impact in the literature (Berry, 1995). This integration can be observed in textbooks with chapters on cognitive processes in speech and reading (e.g., Best, 1995; Reed, 1996), specific texts focusing on reading (e.g., Snowling, 1994; Pollatsek & Rayner, 1989), writing (e.g., Wise Berninger, 1996), cognitive models of speech processing (Altman & Shillcook, 1993), speechreading (e.g., Campbell et al., 1998), and comparative cognitive aspects of speech and reading (de Gelder & Morais, 1995), in books on cognition and language disorders (e.g., Bishop & Mogford, 1993) and cognitive processes in applied settings (Berry, 1995). The journal Language and Cogniti6e Processes (first issue in 1985) also testifies to the development of the area. A further case in point is when the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Beha6ior revised its name (in 1985) to Journal of Memory and Language. The approach that cognition is not, and should not be, viewed as an entity which is isolated from the overarching communicative needs of the individual, has finally come close to a definite realization and scientific expression. The profound impact of Cartesian mind-body dualism on cognitive psychology can, thereby, be alleviated when one starts asking questions about what cognitive functions are for, tightly linking cognition to action and communication (cf. Baddeley, 1988; Berry, 1995; Nilsson, 1994; Smyth et al., 1987). However, joining cognitive and communicative research into one whole is not an easy enterprise, and it is perhaps not always the most fruitful way to proceed. Problems arise as to the nature of what is primary: is communication to be seen through the lens of cognitive psychology, or is it the other way around: what is embedded in what? Problems also arise as to differing conceptualizations regarding distinctions between and the rivalry of the concepts of cognition and perception (Ro¨nnberg & Archer, 1992). The contributions in the current issue will certainly reflect these features of the field.

© 1998 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564.

126

J. Ro¨nnberg

PRESENTATION AND SHORT DISCUSSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS We believe that when cognitive concepts are applied to the domain of communicative disability, which makes this special issue unique, the problem-oriented nature of disability research sharpens the competition among concepts (Hjelmquist & Nilsson, 1986). One aspect of the competition is the utility of conceptual application to a given communicative problem: Is the concept useful as a predictor variable, is the concept useful to build remediation programs on, or is the concept useful for generating new perspectives on the communicative process, and, is it beneficial for the communicatively disabled individual? Another aspect is the extent to which conceptual application promotes theoretical development, i.e., is there a theoretical growth to be acknowledged as a function of a series of applications to a certain communicative disorder? In this vein, I think that much can be learned from the example of amnesia research. Amnesia research has imported many concepts from cognitive psychology, and the clinical realities of amnesia have promoted several conceptual improvements (e.g., Squire & Butters, 1992). Hence, the successive fractionation and competition of memory concepts have come about as a function of the systematic exploration of the amnesic syndrome, and more recently even further pushed forward by the acknowledgement of se6eral amnesic syndromes (Parkin & Leng, 1994: Reinvang, this issue). However, other areas of enquiry, for example memory deterioration in Alzheimer’s disease, suggest a rather continuous, as opposed to subsystem oriented, view of memory impairment (Ba¨ckman, this issue). One important methodological development in this context is the rapid development of functional brain measurement techniques. Here, the researcher has potential instruments to further disentangle the assumptions with respect to whether the same or different neural systems or networks are activated. Such techniques allow the researcher to study cognition and communication in action as it occurs in the brain. New theoretical developments in cognitive research, based on neurofunctional techniques, have rapidly been made visible on the research arena, for example, in the areas of memory (Shallice et al., 1996; Nyberg et al., 1996; Wheeler et al., 1997), attention (Stuss et al., 1995), and basic learning mechanisms (Hugdahl et al., 1995). The drive for conceptual precision (i.e., decomposition into cognitive subsystems) or conceptual generality is presumably due to a constant interplay among assumptions about what cognitive systems are tapped by what tasks, the informational constraints of the tasks per se, and whether behavioral dissociations exist or not for a given pair of tasks (Ro¨nnberg & Ba¨ckman, 1995). A further methodological and conceptual constraint is voiced by Caramazza (1984, 1986), who argues that it is in principle hard, if not © 1998 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Scand J Psychol 39 (1998)

impossible, to progress with respect to neurocognitive functions involved, unless one focuses on detailed analyses of single cases (cf. Campbell, 1992). As we review the communicative disability research area, we think that a similar conceptual development can be seen for several communicative disability domains of enquiry. The area of cognitive neuropsychology represents one general example. This domain of research has started to articulate and carefully model the system(s) of cognitive modules involved in different communicative forms (Ellis & Young, 1988; McCarthy & Warrington, 1990). Moreover, functional neuroimaging techniques seem to deepen the theoretical understanding of several communicative forms: speech perception and cochlear implants (Ito et al., 1993), tactually mediated speech communication (Levanen, 1997), and sign language (Neville et al., 1997; So¨derfeldt et al., 1994). Conceptual development in the reading research area builds on the well-established work by many authors, it is multi-faceted and draws on several sources of evidence, including neuroimaging data (e.g., Peterson et al., 1988). Lundberg (this issue) has made significant contributions to the understanding of the role of phonological awareness in reading, dyslexia, and reading acquisition, as well as the anatomical correlates of dyslexia. Nevertheless, the dominating phonological hypothesis is now being re-evaluated from the perspective of individual differences, and from re-appraisals of the literature on phonological intervention (Gustafsson et al., 1997; Niemi et al., this issue; Olsson et al., 1997). The hypothesis is also being pursued in terms of conceptual refinement. Elbro (this issue) argues that indistinct phonological representations in long-term memory may constitute a unifying cause to dyslexia and unresponsiveness to teaching of phoneme awareness. It is hard at this point to determine which way the theoretical development of decoding concepts will take with respect to mastering of the alphabetical code. A similar multi-level approach is currently finding its forms in the area of speech-reading (or lipreading). Neurocognitive aspects of speech-reading and cognitive prerequites for speech understanding with different alternative communication methods and devices are some of the prominent features of this area (Arnold, 1997; Campbell et al., 1998; Ro¨nnberg et al., in press). Campbell (this issue) shows that the main lesson to be learned from work on stimulus suffix effects is that speechread suffixes also leave ‘‘echo’’-like representations, a notion that has received some neurophysiological confirmation (Calvert et al., 1997). Skilled speechreaders may have an advantage of recruiting the right hemisphere to a greater extent — cortical areas that are activated when we try to make sense of a silent face in action, areas that also overlap with those activated for born-deaf signers performing attentional or sign perception tasks (Neville et al., 1997; So¨derfeldt et al., 1997). Skilled speechreaders may also be those individuals who are better at achieving amodal representa-


tions of speech, a function which is beneficial to cochlear implantees (Campbell, this issue). Lyxell (this issue) addresses the issue of cognitive prerequisites for cochlear implant success from the perspective of cognitive architecture necessary for becoming a skilled speechreader. Typically, lexical access speed, working memory capacity and intact phonological representations are important after a 6 month follow-up, and particularly the quality of phonological representation after a 12 month follow-up. Leybaert (this issue) scrutinizes the problem of phonological representation from the perspective of perception of cued speech, suggesting that it is not the modality per se that carries speech information crucial for phonological development, but rather the informational contrasts conveyed. Timing is also important for cued speech such that early users develop phonology much more efficiently. Bernstein (this issue) has provided further data bearing on the issue of neural reorganization and speech perception. She has tested congenitally hearing-impaired subjects with severe impairment who have used high-powered hearing aids for tactile stimulation. Word decoding proficiency seems to be proportional to the time of onset of hearingaid use, suggesting that early, as opposed to late, tactile stimulation contributes to reorganization of brain functions relevant for speech percpetion. One general inference that can be made from the work by Lyxell, Leybaert, and Bernstein is that phonological contrasts can come in different ways, without relying on audition only. The brain has the capacity of phonological processing with a variety of sources of input, and this capacity is also amenable to change during development. Marschark and Meyer (this issue) take a further step by empirically showing that the phonological loop is equally large for signed information as it is for heard information (i.e., when articulation rate is accounted for). This is a crucial demonstration, and leads Marschark and Meyer to postulate a general, amodal working memory model for language (cf. Wilson & Emmorey, 1997). Although one information source (e.g., tactual information, Bernstein this issue) may seem to carry very little linguistic information, it can be very effective in combination with the visual modality (Ro¨nnberg, 1993, in press). Presumably, these complementarities become even more important if the multimodal linguistic exposures are systematic from infancy, enabling the individual brain to become attuned to certain modes of processing, e.g., phonological information (Leybaert, this issue; Locke, 1997; Mayberry & Eichen, 1993). The congenitally blind have been investigated by D’Angiulli et al. (this issue) and found to be superior in identification of raised-line drawings compared to blindfolded sighted controls. This holds true only in an active exploration condition, whereas guided passive exploration of the sighted gives similar performance levels in the two © 1998 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Cognition, communication & disability

127

groups. The correlation between recognition by the blind and sighted for objects that are easy or hard to recognize, suggests that similar principles are used by the blind and the sighted individuals. Thus, there is here a case of object recognition which reveals similar processing by the blind and sighted. Obviously, early tactual mediation of object processing affords sufficient information for successful perceptual processing, once again demonstrating the amodal powers of the perceiving brain. Included in this issue are also two papers on developmental disorders, but with a very different theoretical stance. The paper by Frith makes a strong case for neuroanatomical, cognitive and behavioral analyses of dyslexia and autism, with a core phonological deficit being responsible for dyslexia and a core mentalizing deficit being responsible for autism. With a different approach towards description of a unifying (core) source for children with specific language disorders (including dyslexia and aphasia), Tallal et al., (this issue) argue that the main problem lies in a general deficit in temporal integration— a deficit that can be remediated by means of intense training. Their argument is also empirically applicable to other developmental disorders, where language is related to another focal problem (e.g., central auditory processing disorder or autism), but is still dependent on the conspicuous feature of processing speed. One general theme that may be seen across all contributions is the strive for cognitive core functions, not seldom tied to representational aspects of the disabling condition. For example, abstract, amodal, and input-independent linguistic and object processing, amodal working memory, processing speed (amodal), as well as representational codes (e.g., memory systems) and their interactions, all point to theoretical communalities and advance. We do not believe that these advances would be possible, had it not been for the duality of the area. The nature of the cognitive and communicative disability puts clinical and social constraints on theory; at the same time, theoretical development is important for the application of concepts to the cognitive and communicative realities of an individual. In all, we are confident that the contributions will help to establish the area of Cogniti6e Ability and Communicati6e Disability on the Scandinavian map of research. We also believe that the contributions will stimulate research in ways which we have been unable to hint at in this brief introduction. This is the endless fascination of science. As can be inferred from this presentation and the brief discussion of the contributions, the papers can be organized into the following subthemes: Memory and Amnesia (Ba¨ckman; Reinvang; Marschark & Mayer), Reading and Dyslexia (Elbro; Lundberg; Niemi et al.), Speech-reading (Campbell; Leybaert; Lyxell et al.), Tactile Speech and Objects (Bernstein et al.; D’Angiulli), and Developmental Disorders (Frith; Tallal et al.).

128

J. Ro¨nnberg

AUTHOR NOTES The paper has benefitted from the comments by Kenneth Hugdahl, Tomas Karlsson, Bjo¨rn Lyxell, Lars-Go¨ran Nilsson, and Stefan Samuelsson. The writing of the paper was supported by a programme grant to Jerker Ro¨nnberg from the Swedish Council for Social Research (95-0908:3C). REFERENCES Altman, G. & Shillcock, R. (Eds.) (1993). Cogniti6e models of speech processing. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Arnold, P. (1997). The structure and optimization of speechreading. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2, 199 – 211. Baddeley, A. D. (1988). But what the hell is it for? In M. M. Gruneberg, P. E. Morris & R. N. Sykes (Eds.), Practical aspects of memory: Current research and issues (pp. 3 – 18). London: Wiley. Berry, D. C. (1995). Donald Broadbent and applied cognitive psychology. Applied Cogniti6e Psychology, 9, 1–4. Best, J. B. (1995). Cogniti6e psychology (4th ed.). New York: West Publishing Co. Bishop, D. & Mogford, K. (Eds.) (1993). Language de6elopment in exceptional circumstances. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and communication. New York: Pergamon Press. Campbell, R. (1992). Mental Li6es: Case Studies in Cognition. London: Blackwell Publishers. Campbell, R., Dodd, B. & Burnham, D. (1998). Hearing by eye: The psychology of speechreading and audio6isual speech. Hove: Psychology Press. Calvert, G., Bullmore, E., Brammer, M., Campbell, R., Woodruff, P., McGuire, P., Williams, S. & Iversen, S. D. (1997). Activation of auditory cortex during silent speechreading. Science, 276, 5312 593 – 596. Caramazza, A. (1984). The logic of neuropsychological research and the problem of patient classification in aphasia. Brain and Language, 21, 9 – 20. Caramazza, A. (1986). On drawing inferences about the structure of normal cognitive systems from the analysis of patterns of impaired performance: The case for single patient studies. Brain and Cognition, 5, 41–66. de Gelder, B. & Morais, J. (1995). Speech and reading: A comparati6e approach. Hove: Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis. Ellis, A. W. & Young, A. W. (1988). Human cogniti6e neuropsychology. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Gustavson, S., Samuelsson, S. & Ro¨nnberg, J. (1998). Why do some resist phonological intervention? A Swedish longitudinal study of poor readers in grade 4. Subm. Ms. Hjelmquist, E. & Nilsson, L.-G. (Eds.) (1986). Communication and handicap. Ad6ances in Psychology (34). Amsterdam: North-Holland. Hugdahl, K., Berardi, A., Thompson, W. L., Kosslyn, S. M., Macy, R., Baker, D. P., Alpert, N. M. & Ledoux, J. E. (1995). Brain mechanisms in human classical conditioning: a PET blood flow study. Neuroreport, 6, 1723–1728. Ito, J., Iwasaki, Y., Sakakibara, J. & Yonekura, Y. (1993). Positron emission tomography of auditory sensations in deaf patients and patients with cochlear implants. Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, 102, 797–801. Levanen, S. (1997, November). Neuromagnetic recordings of the human auditory cortex. Paper presented at the Linko¨ping¨ rebro workshop on Communication in the hearing impaired O and deaf: From signal to dialogue. Linko¨ping, Sweden. © 1998 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.


Locke, J. L. (1997). A theory of neurolinguistic development. Brain and Language, 58, 265 – 326. Mayberry, R. & Eichen, E. (1991). The long-lasting advantage of learning sign language in childhood: Another look at the critical period for language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 486 – 512. McCarthy, R. A. & Warrington, E. K. (1990). Cogniti6e neuropsychology: A clinical introduction. London: Academic Press. Neville, H. J., Coffey, S. A., Lawson, D. S., Fisher, A., Emmorey, K. & Bellugi, U. (1997). Neural systems mediating American sign language: effects of sensory experience and age of acquisition. Brain and Language, 57, 285 – 308. Nilsson, L.-G. (1984). New functionalism in memory research. In K. M. J. Lagerspetz & P. Niemi (Eds.), Psychology in the 1990s (pp. 185 – 224). Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co. Nyberg, L., Cabeza, R. & Tulving, E. (1996). PET studies of encoding and retrieval: The HERA model. Psychonomic Bulletin & Re6iew, 3, 135 – 148. Ohlsson, R. K., Wise, B. W., Ring, J. & Johnson, M. (1997). Computer-based remedial training in phoneme awareness and phonological decoding: Effects on the post-training development on word-recognition. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 235 – 253. Parkin, A. J. & Leng, N. R. C. (1994). Neuropsychology of amnesic syndrome. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Petersen, S. E., Fox, P. T., Posner, M. I., Mintun, M. & Raichle, M. E. (1988). Positron emission tomographic studies of the cortical anatomy of single-word processing. Nature, 331, 585– 588. Pollatsek, A. & Rayner, K. (1989). Reading. Foundations of cogniti6e science (pp. 401 – 436). In M. I. Posner (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reed, S. K. (1996). Cognition (4th ed.). New York: Brookd/Cole Publishing Company. Ro¨nnberg, J. (1993). Cognitive characteristics of skilled Tactiling: The case of GS. European Journal of Cogniti6e Psychology, 5, 19 – 33. Ro¨nnberg, J. & Archer, T. (1992). Purposive behavior in cognition and perception: Considerations of awareness in memory. Scandina6ian Journal of Psychology, 33, 86 – 91. Ro¨nnberg, J., Andersson, J., Andersson, U., Johansson, K., Lyxell, B. & Samuelsson, S. (in press). Cognition as a bridge between signal and dialogue: Communication in the hearing impaired and deaf. Scandina6ian Audiology (supplement). Ro¨nnberg, J. & Ba¨ckman, L. (1995). RASP: A system for the analysis of memory tasks. Scandina6ian Journal of Psychology, 36, 269 – 286. Ro¨nnberg, J., Samuelsson, S. & Lyxell, B. (1998). Conceptual constraints in sentence-based lipreading in the hearing-impaired. In R. Campbell, B. Dodd & D. Burnham (Eds.), Hearing by eye: The psychology of speechreading and audio6isual speech. Hove: Psychology Press. Shallice, T., Fletcher, P., Frith, C. D., Grasby, P., Frackowiak, R. S. J. & Dolan, R. J. (1994). Brain regions associated with acquisition and retrieval of verbal episodic memory. Nature, 368, 633 – 635. Smyth, M. M., Morris, P. E., Levy, P. & Ellis, W. (1987). Cognition in action. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Snowling, M. (1987). Dyslexia: A cogniti6e de6elopmental perspecti6e. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Stuss, D. T., Shallice, T., Alexander, M. P. & Picton, T. W. (1995). A multidisciplinary approach to anterior attentional functions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 769, 191 – 211. So¨derfeldt, B., Ro¨nnberg, J. & Risberg, J. (1994). Regional cerebral blood flow in sign language users. Brain and Language, 46, 59 – 68.


So¨derfeldt, B., Ingvar, M., Ro¨nnberg, J., Eriksson, L., Serrander, M. & Stone-Elander, S. (1997). Signed and spoken language perception studied by positron emission tomography. Neurology, 49, 82 – 87. Squire, L. R. & Butters, N. (Eds.) (1992). Neuropsychology of memory (2nd ed.). Guildford Press: New York, NY. Wheeler, M. A., Stuss, D. T. & Tulving, E. (1997). Toward a theory of episodic memory: The frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness. Psychological Bulletin, 121.

© 1998 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Cognition, communication & disability

129

Wilson, K. & Emmorey, K. (1997). Working memory for sign language: A window into the architecture of the working memory system. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2, 121 – 130. Wise Berninger, V. (1996). Reading and writing acquisition: A de6elopmental neuropsychological perspecti6e. Developmental psychology series (J. Wendell Ed.). Oxford: Westview Press. Accepted 20 January 1998