Biological Studies of Mental Processes

These contributions by well-known linguists, psychologists, and neuroscientists explore the new concepts and themes that extend and revise previously held ideas about the biology of cognition. They present outstanding and timely research on the biological mechanisms underlying and correlating with linguistic and developmental processes. The fifteen chapters consider cognitive systems, particularly language, as biological entities. These systems are studied according to a model that makes use of three levels of description: the level of phenomena,including a representation of a domain of knowledge and a theory of utilization of this knowledge; the neurallevel, characterized by anatomical, biochemical, physiological, and other organic information; and the geneticlevel, describing the hereditarily transmitted constraints on neural and phenomenological function. In each of these domains environmental and intrinsic factors interact to determine the system's operation. Contents: Preface; Part I, Studies of the Maturational Component of Cognitive Development:Maturational Factors in Human Development, Susan Carey;Maturation: Thoughts on Renewing an Old Acquaintanceship, Deborah P. Waber;Some Functional Correlates of the Maturation of Neural Systems, David Rose;The Development of a Spatial Orientation Skill in Normal, Learning-Disabled, and Neurologically Impaired Children, Martha Bridge Denckla, Rita G. Rudel,and Melinda Broman;Maturational Determination of the Developmental Course of Face Encoding, Susan Careyand Rhea Diamond. Part II, Studies of Language Development:Linguistic Perspectives on Language Development, David Caplanand Noam Chomsky;On the Biology of Language Acquisition, John C. Marshall;Observations on the Neurological Basis for Initial Language Acquisition, Bryan T. Woods;Language Acquisition in a Single Hemisphere: Semantic Organization, Maureen Dennis;Broca and Lashley Were Right: Cerebral Dominance Is an Accident of Growth, T. G. Beyer. Part III, Studies of Neural Mechanisms Underlying Language in the Adult:Changing Models of the Neuropsychology of Language, David Caplan;Grammatical Representations and the Description of Language Processing, Mary Louise Kean;Syntactic Deficits in Broca's Aphasia, Dianne C. Bradley, Merrill F. Garrett,and Edgar B. Zurif;Brain Structure and Language Production: A Dynamic View, Jason W. Brown;Some Comments on the Neurology of Language, Norman Geschwind.Index.Caplan, David is the author of 'Biological Studies of Mental Processes', published 1982 under ISBN 9780262530415 and ISBN 0262530414.