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Biomedical subjects

B Butterworth

Publications and source records attributed to B Butterworth.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Selective impairment in manipulating Arabic numerals.

This paper describes an acalculic patient (B.A.L.) with an unusual selective deficit in manipulating arabic numerals. The patient was unimpaired in reading aloud letters, words and written number names but unable to read aloud single arabic numerals. Furthermore, his ability to produce the next number in the sequence and his ability to produce answers to simple addition and subtraction was relatively spared when the stimuli were presented as number names but impaired when the stimuli were presented as arabic numerals. Using magnitude comparison tasks it was demonstrated that his knowledge of cardinal values of arabic numerals was preserved. His impairment in manipulating arabic numerals was interpreted in terms of a deficit in the connection between format specific number codes and the verbal numeral production system.

Agraphia↗
PubMed1992

Disorders of phonological encoding.

Studies of phonological disturbances in aphasic speech are reviewed. It is argued that failure to test for error consistency in individual patients makes it generally improper to draw inferences about specific disorders of phonological encoding. A minimalist interpretation of available data on phonological errors is therefore proposed that involves variable loss of information in transmission between processing subsystems. Proposals for systematic loss or corruption of phonological information in lexical representations or in translation subsystems is shown to be inadequately grounded. The review concludes with some simple methodological prescriptions for future research.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1991

The universality of two routines for reading: evidence from Chinese dyslexia.

A study of 11 Chinese neurological patients with reading disorders indicates that reading aloud a non-alphabetic script, like reading alphabetic scripts, can be accomplished using two distinct routines: one that associates a whole written word with its complete pronunciation, and one that utilizes parts of the written word. Each routine can be selectively impaired by brain damage, resulting in different patterns of reading disability. These data are consistent with the independent neural organization of each routine, and the generality of the two-routine model for reading alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

A specific deficit for numbers in a case of dense acalculia.

In this study we investigated the acalculic condition of a patient, C.G., with the classical signs of Gerstmann's Syndrome: finger agnosia; right-left disorientation; a profound agraphia (but with an equally profound alexia) and a remarkably dense acalculia. Using a series of number processing and number knowledge tasks, a selective impairment for numbers was demonstrated. Within the category of numbers C.G. showed a largely preserved ability to deal with numbers below 4, in all tasks and in all modalities, while she was totally unable to deal with numbers above 4. The consistency of responses and the ineffectiveness of cueing indicated that numbers above 4 were lost, rather than hard to access. Further testing showed that this impairment did not result from a more general semantic memory problem, a difficulty in understanding quantities or a deficit in reasoning abilities thought to underlie the concept of numbers. Difficulty with some other ordinal structures was also present, but appeared unrelated to those affecting numbers.

Female↗
PubMed1990

Word formation: new evidence from aphasia.

Three aphasic patients are described whose speech contains invented word-forms which are legal combinations of meaningful parts of real words, like "fratellismo" (brother + ness) instead of "fratellanza" (brother + hood), and from combinations of meaningless and meaningful parts, like "terness + ico" (where "ico" is a real adjectival ending). These phenomena are previously unreported. On the assumption that brain-damaged patients use residual rather than novel abilities, these forms, along with the patients' predominant use of real compound words, indicate that speakers have a procedure for composing polymorphemic words online, but this is employed just when trying to find a whole word fails.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Gesture, speech, and computational stages: a reply to McNeill.

McNeill (1985) claimed that speech and its accompanying gestures "share a common computational stage" that is located early in the speech production process. This position depends on two crucial arguments that we believe are unsound: first, that gestures "are synchronized with linguistic units in speech" and, second, that gestures "have semantic and pragmatic functions that parallel those of speech." Careful analysis of the relevant data indicated that although the processes underlying gestural production are globally autonomous, they are linked to speech production at more than just one computational stage. An account is offered that explicates these links.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1987

Paragrammatisms.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

The semantic deficit in aphasia: the relationship between semantic errors in auditory comprehension and picture naming.

Thirty aphasic subjects were asked to point to pictures on auditory command both when the distractors came from the same semantic category as the target and when the distractors were unrelated to the target picture. The aphasics made significantly more semantic errors than non-aphasic brain-damaged controls; the incidence of semantic comprehension errors was unrelated to aphasic diagnostic groups but was related to the overall severity of aphasia. The subjects were subsequently asked to name the pictures from the comprehension task; pictures that had elicited semantic errors in comprehension were no less likely to be named than those that had not, but the incidence of semantic errors in comprehension correlated significantly with their incidence in naming. The implications of a semantic deficit common to both auditory comprehension and naming that is not specific to particular lexical items is discussed in relation to a number of information processing models of the lexicon.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Monoclonal antibody to human cytotrophoblast cross-reacts with basal layers of some fetal epithelial surfaces.

A monoclonal antibody (I8B/A5) was generated towards human first-trimester purified trophoblast plasma membrane which, unlike others reported in the literature, reacted only against cytotrophoblast but not against syncytiotrophoblast. However, this antibody cross-reacted with certain fetal epithelial and endothelial surfaces in a well-defined manner. On such stratified epithelium as fetal skin, only the basal layers of cells were stained, and this was therefore analogous to the pattern observed in chorionic villi where only underlying cytotrophoblast and not superficial syncytiotrophoblast reacted with I8B/A5. These observations suggest that the target antigen either could be a component of certain structures at these sites, such as basement membrane, or it is a marker for proliferating and undifferentiated cells, which would make it an interesting molecule for developmental biologists.

Antibodies, Monoclonal↗