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Rains, Principles of Human Neuropsychology Book Cover
Principles of Human Neuropsychology
G. Dennis Rains, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

Language

agrammatism  Impairment in the syntactic elements of speech production. Patients with agrammatism make many grammatical errors in their speech.
agraphia  Inability to write. This term may also be used to specify specific disorders of spelling.
alexia  Inability to read.
amnesic aphasia  Impairment in word retrieval.
anomia  Inability to come up with a desired word (word-finding problem).
anomic aphasia  Impairment in word retrieval.
apraxia  A disorder of learned, voluntary movement not due to sensory or elementary motor impairment.
apraxia of speech  See kinetic disorder of speech.
aprosodia (expressive/receptive)  Severe impairment in the processing of prosody.
attentional dyslexia  A word-form dyslexia characterized by an inability to read words and letters when they appear with other written material, coexisting with preserved ability to read isolated words and letters.
auditory perceptual analysis  The process of perceiving the phonemes of a word.
auditory temporal acuity  The processes underlying the detection of the elementary acoustic features of a word's sound.
central dyslexias  Dyslexias that involve interference with late stages in the reading process, as opposed to visual word-form dyslexias, which involve the disruption of earlier stages in the reading process.
color anomia  Inability to name colors, usually associated with aphasia.
critical period  The period of time during development during which a particular function must be acquired if it is ever to be acquired. For example, the critical period for language acquisition is between age 2 and puberty. If normal language is not acquired during that period, it will never be acquired.
deep dyslexia  Impairment in reading along semantic dimensions, as exemplified by reading leap for jump.
disorders of spelling assembly  Specific impairments in the sequencing of letters. People with this disorder retrieve the correct letters of a target word but not in the correct order.
dysarthria  Impairment in the articulation of speech sounds due to dysfunction of peripheral structures involved in the mechanisms of speech production, such as the face, jaw, tongue, and larynx.
dysarthria  Impairment in the articulation of speech sounds due to dysfunction of peripheral structures involved in the mechanisms of speech production, such as the face, jaw, tongue, and larynx.
dysgraphia  Impairment in writing. This term may also be used to specify specific disorders of spelling.
dyslexia  Impairment in the ability to read.
dysprosodia  Impairment in the ability to produce tonal fluctuations in spoken language.
foreign language syndrome  Disruption of the production of the tonal aspects of language in a way that produces a distortion of articulation.
grammar  See syntax.
hyperprosodia  Disruption in prosody that takes the form of exaggerated variations in the tonal and rhythmic features of spoken language.
isolation of the speech area  An unusual syndrome characterized by severe impairment in the ability to spontaneously produce and to understand speech, together with preserved ability to repeat heard speech, including sentences. This may be conceptualized as an extreme form of transcortical aphasia.
jargon aphasia  Aphasic symptoms characterized by the pervasive use of neologisms. Frequently seen in Wernicke's aphasia.
kinetic disorder of speech  A central language disturbance in which the ability to organize movements of the speech musculature to produce previously learned phonemes is impaired, even though the speech musculature and the peripheral nerves activating it are intact. This impairment has also been termed apraxia of speech.
mixed transcortical aphasia  An aphasia characterized by the symptoms of global aphasia (i.e., both spontaneous speech and comprehension are impaired), but the ability to repeat is retained.
morphological agrammatism  Speech characterized by impairment in the use of function words (i.e., conjunctions, articles, and prepositions) and word endings, together with preservation of correct word order.
morphology  The rules describing how phonemes can be combined into words.
neglect dyslexia  A word-form dyslexia in which the initial or terminal part of a word is misread.
neologism  A novel or meaningless word (i.e., a nonword).
paragraphias  Errors in writing.
paraphasias  Distorted speech productions.
pars opercularis  The posterior portion of the inferior frontal gyrus. In the left hemisphere, together with other portions of the pars triangularis, Broca's area.
perseveration  Maintenance of a behavior despite continuing feedback that it is not adaptive.
phonemes  The smallest significant sound elements (units) of a language.
phonemic disorder of speech  A central language processing impairment in which the production of individual phonemes is unimpaired but the capacity to program rapid sequences of phonemes to produce fluent speech is disrupted. This is the central impairment in Broca's aphasia.
phonemic jargon  A type of jargon aphasia characterized by speech that contains many nonwords (neologisms).
phonemic paraphasias  Distorted speech productions in which the person cannot come up with a desired (appropriate) phoneme and instead substitutes one with a similar sound (e.g., mulsuple for multiple).
phonological dyslexia (reading by sight vocabulary)  Impaired ability to read by sound (by phonological decoding), with preserved reading by sight vocabulary. Also called reading by sight vocabulary.
planum temporale  An area just posterior to the primary auditory area on the lower lip of the Sylvian fissure in the temporal lobe.
pragmatics  The study of the relationship between linguistic meaning and knowledge of the world.
prosody  The tonal aspects of spoken language (resulting from variations in parameters such as emphasis, pitch, rhythm, and timbre).
pure agraphia  Selective impairment in the ability to write.
pure word deafness  A selective inability to understand heard speech in the absence of impaired comprehension of linguistic input presented in the visual and tactual modalities.
pure word dumbness  A specific impairment in the production of spoken language in the absence of disturbance in other forms of language output, including writing.
semantic jargon  A type of jargon aphasia characterized by speech containing real words that are combined inappropriately.
semantic paraphasias  Distorted speech productions in which the person makes errors that have a semantic similarity to the desired word (e.g., ship for boat).
semantic processing  The process of assigning meaning to a word.
semantics  The study of meaning.
spatial agraphia  Impairment in spelling or writing secondary to an impairment in spatial processing.
spelling by sound  A central disorder of spelling in which the individual spells according to the most common letter-to-phoneme correspondences in the language.
spelling dyslexia  A word-form dyslexia characterized by an inability to recognize words as coherent visual units.
surface dyslexia (phonological reading or reading by sound)  Reading by sound (phonological analysis), following the most common print-to-sound rules of the language, without the ability to read words that do not follow the standard rules (i.e., phonologically irregular words). Also called phonological reading or reading by sound.
syntactic agrammatism  Speech characterized by disruption in word order and word choice, together with intact use of function words (conjunctions, articles, and prepositions) and word endings.
syntax  The rules describing how words can be combined into phrases and sentences.
tactile aphasia  Specific impairment in the comprehension of language that is delivered through somatosensory input (i.e., touch).
transcortical aphasia  Aphasia due to damage to cortical areas outside Broca's area and Wernicke's area.
transcortical motor aphasia  An aphasia characterized by the symptoms of Broca's aphasia, with the exception that the ability to repeat heard language is unimpaired.
transcortical sensory aphasia  An aphasia characterized by the symptoms of Wernicke's aphasia, with the exception that the ability to repeat heard language is unimpaired.
visual word-form dyslexias  Dyslexias conceptualized as disruptions in the initial processing of a word as a visual unit, as opposed to central dyslexias, which involve interference with later stages of the reading process.
vocabulary-based spelling (phonological agraphia)  A central disorder of spelling in which spelling relies on an established vocabulary of word-spelling correspondences, while knowledge of letter-phoneme correspondences is impaired. Also called phonological agraphia.