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The relationship between object manipulation and language development in Broca's area: A connectionist simulation of Greenfield's hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2003

Ronan G. Reilly
Ronan G. Reilly
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, [email protected] http://www.cs.may.ie/staff/ronan.html
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Abstract

In her Behavioral and Brain Sciences target article, Greenfield (1991) proposed that early in a child's development Broca's area may serve the dual function of coordinating object assembly and organizing the production of structured utterances. As development progresses, the upper and lower regions of Broca's area become increasingly specialized for motor coordination and speech, respectively. This commentary presents a connectionist simulation of aspects of this proposal. The results of the simulation confirm the main thrust of Greenfield's argument and suggest that an important impetus for the developmental differentiation in Broca's area may be the increasing complexity of the computational demands made upon it.

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 2002 , pp. 145 - 153
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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