Bara, Bruno Giuseppe

Bucciarelli, Monica

Geminiani, Giuliano Carlo

English

Institutional Research Information System University of Turin

TENNET X 21ACKNOWLEDGMENTThis study was supported by grants from the Fonds de la Recherche en Sante´ du Que´bec(Grant #961253-1040).REFERENCESAnzola, G. P., & Vignolo, L. A. 1992. Simple reaction time to lateralized visual stimuli isnot related to the hemispheric side of lesion. Cortex, 28, 401–409.Arrigoni, G., & De Renzi, E. 1964. Constructional apraxia and hemispheric locus of lesion.Cortex, 1, 170–197.Benson, D. F., & Barton, M. I. 1970. Disturbance in constructional ability. Cortex, 6, 19–46.Benton, A. L., & Joynt, J. 1958. Reaction time in unilateral cerebral disease. Confinia Neuro-logica, 19, 247–256.Bub, D., Audet, T., & Lecours, A. R. 1990. Re-evaluating the effect of unilateral brain damageon simple reaction time to auditory stimulation. Cortex, 26, 227–237.Dee, H. L., & Van Allen, M. W. 1971. Simple and choice reaction time and motor strengthin unilateral cerebral disease. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 47, 315–323.Dee, H. L., & Van Allen, M. W. 1973. Speed of decision-making processes in patients withunilateral cerebral disease. Archives of Neurology, 28, 163–166.De Renzi, E., & Faglioni, E. 1965. The comparative efficiency of intelligence and vigilancetests in detecting hemispheric cerebral damage. Cortex, 1, 410–433.Forthought 1993. Vigil. Software for testing concentration and attention. Nashua, NH:Forthought, Ltd.Howes, D., & Boller, F. 1975. Simple reaction time: Evidence for focal impairment fromlesions of the right hemisphere. Brain, 98, 317–332.Mercier, L., Audet, T., He´bert, R., Rochette, A., & Dubois, M.-F. 1998. L’impact des troublesperceptuels sur l’autonomie fonctionnelle suite a` un accident vasculaire ce´re´bral. Rap-port de recherche, Fonds de la recherche en sante´ du Que´bec, Montre´al.Sturm, W., & Willmes, K. 1991. Efficacy of a reaction training on various attentional andcognitive functions in stroke patients. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 1, 259–280.Sturm, W., Willmes, D., & Orgas, B. 1997. Do specific attention need specific training? Neuro-psychological Rehabilitation, 7, 81–103.Tartaglione, A., Bino, G., Mansino, M., Spadavecchia, L., & Favale, E. 1986. Simple reaction-time changes in patients with unilateral brain damage. Neuropsychologia, 24, 649–658.Van Zomeran, A. H., & Brouwer, W. H. 1994. Clinical neuropsychology of attention. NewYork: Oxford University Press.Development and Decay of Extra-Linguistic CommunicationBruno G. Bara, Monica Bucciarelli, and Giuliano C. GeminianiDipartimento di Psicologia and Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita` di Torino, ItalyCognitive Pragmatics theory is concerned with analyzing the cognitive processesunderlying communication. In previous works we have explained the emergence22 TENNET Xof communication in context, as revealed by very young children, and the communi-cative deficits shown by closed head injury patients. The aim of the present workis an extension of Cognitive Pragmatics to the emergence and the decay of extra-linguistic communication. In particular, we investigate the performance of 2- to 7-year-old children and that of Alzheimer’s patients in standard and nonstandard(irony and deceit) pragmatic tasks. The predictions derived by Cognitive Pragmaticsare confirmed. Comprehension of pragmatic phenomena which are more complexaccording to the theory emerges later in the development (Experiment 1), and theirdecay is most severe in Alzheimer’s patients (Experiment 2). We conclude that theframework provided by Cognitive Pragmatics can accommodate both the develop-ment and the decay of extra-linguistic communication. © 2000 Academic PressIntroductionPragmatic competence is the ability to communicate in context. Withinthe framework provided by Speech Act theory, Airenti, Bara, and Colombetti(1993a) propose Cognitive Pragmatics theory, which is concerned with thecognitive processes underlying human communication. The theory can ex-plain differences in difficulty among different communicative acts in termsof the complexity of the mental representations and the chain of inferencesinvolved.In this paper we are concerned with both standard and nonstandard com-munication, in particular, with irony and deceit (Airenti, Bara, & Colombetti,1993b).Cognitive PragmaticsA major assumption of Cognitive Pragmatics theory is that a cognitiveanalysis of dialogue should distinguish between its conversational and be-havioral aspects. When one communicates, her aim is to achieve a certaineffect on a partner, namely, to change the partner’s mental states and possiblyto induce him to perform some action. The choice of a communicative wayto attain this goal provides her with the subsidiary goal to follow the rulesof conversation. Behavioral and conversational goals have completely inde-pendent origins; thus, an agent’s behavior may be noncooperative, in spiteof his conversational cooperation:Ann: Would you please type this letter for me?Bernard: Sorry, but the director authorized me to go out now. (1)Behavioral cooperation requires that the agents act on the basis of a planthat is at least partially shared; we call this plan the behavior game of x andy (Airenti, Bara, & Colombetti, 1984). The behavior game in (1) is:[MAKE-A-FAVOR]x asks y a favory makes x the favor (2)TENNET X 23The actual actions performed by the agents realize the moves of the behav-ior game they are playing. The meaning of a communicative action (eitherlinguistic or extra-linguistic, or usually a mix of the two) is fully understoodonly when it is clear which move of the behavior game it realizes. Thus, wewill consider speech acts as moves of behavior games; conversely, eachmove of a behavior game has a communicative value, and can therefore beconsidered as a communicative act.Bara and Bucciarelli (1998) carried out a study on the acquisition of prag-matic competence by 2- to 7-year-old children. They confirm the predictionsof Cognitive Pragmatics: (i) standard communication is easier than nonstan-dard communication, (ii) there exists a trend of difficulty where, from theeasiest to the most difficult, the comprehension tasks have the followingorder: simple speech acts, complex speech acts, ironies, deceits.Bara, Tirassa, and Zettin (1997) have also used a similar linguistic protocolto test the predictions derived by the theory on closed head injuries patients.The same trend of difficulty has been observed.In order to extend our knowledge to nonverbal aspects of communication,we devised an extra-linguistic protocol to test the theory both on young chil-dren and on Alzheimer’s patients. A main consequence is that the predictedtrend of difficulty posits irony at a higher level of difficulty with respect todeceit. In fact, ironies are based essentially on the linguistic code, and theyare heavily penalized by the absence of language. Along with the new trendof difficulty, our aim was to confirm two further predictions: that thecomprehension of more complex phenomena according to Cognitive Prag-matics should emerge later in the development, and that such comprehen-sion should be the first one to decrease in case of decay of pragmatic perfor-mance.The pragmatic protocol involves the comprehension of three simplespeech acts presented in the wild. While the participants were introducedinto the experimental setting, the experimenter realized simple communica-tive acts through gestures like handing a glass of water (offering water) ora box of candies (offering candies). Then, the comprehension of a series ofcommunicative acts was tested with short video-typed fictions, three in eachof the following categories: simple acts, complex acts, deceits, and ironies.Participants had to comprehend the communicative intention of an actor ina fiction. An example of deceit is: two kids, A and B, are playing: A breaksa vase on the table. A woman enters the room looking at the disaster, andA points to B. An example of irony is: two girls, A and B, are sitting at atable. B takes two chocolates from a box, and eats one of them. A touchesher shoulder, opening her hand in a gesture of request. But, B eats also thesecond chocolate. A, with a smile, caresses B. The answers consisted inchoosing the correct representation of A’s intention among four possibledrawings.24 TENNET XTABLE 1Percentages of Correct Responses by Children in the Four Age Groupsin the Pragmatic TasksPragmatic tasksSimplein the wild Simple Complex Deceits Ironies Overall2;6–3 78 38 52 43 33 493;6–4 68 47 68 45 25 514;6–5;6 72 73 70 48 27 616–7 82 82 73 58 55 70Overall 75 60 66 48 35 58Experiment 1: Emergence of Extra-Linguistic CommunicationMethods. Eighty children belonging to the following age groups partici-pated in the experiment: 2;6–3, 3;6–4, 4;6–5;6, and 6–7 years. There were20 subjects in each group with an equal number of boys and girls. The experi-ment was conducted in a single session and lasted about 30 min. The orderof presentation of the pragmatic tasks was balanced according to age groupand gender of the subjects.Results. Table 1 shows the percentages of correct responses by childrenin the four age groups in the pragmatic tasks. Simple acts presented in thewild are the easiest tasks to deal with, even easier than simple acts in fictions(Wilcoxon test: z3112, p .002). As regards the pragmatic phenomenainvestigated through fictions, standard communication is easier than nonstan-dard communication (Wilcoxon test: z  5.29, p  .0001), and the pre-dicted trend of difficulty among pragmatic tasks is confirmed (Page’s L test:L  3895.5, p  .01).Experiment 2: Decay of Extra-Linguistic CommunicationMethods. Fourteen Alzheimer’s patients (according to NINCDS/ADRDAcriteria) and thirteen controls comparable for age and education took part inthe experiment. The age of the participants ranged from 60 to 80 years. Theywere selected according to the severity of dementia assessed by the GlobalDeterioration Scale (Reisberg et al. 1988): patients above the fourth level ofthe scale were discarded as they were potentially unable to understand thetasks.The experiment was conducted in two sessions: one for the neuropsycho-logical battery, and one for the pragmatic tasks. The neuropsychological bat-tery included the global assessment of dementia (MODA: Brazzelli et al.1994), the Block Design and Picture Arrangement subtests of the WAIS, andan assessment of the frontal lobe functions (Phonemic Fluency and ElithornLabyrinths).TENNET X 25TABLE 2Percentages of Correct Responses by Patients and Controls in the Pragmatic TasksPragmatic tasksSimplein the wild Simple Complex Deceits Ironies OverallPatients 79 79 64 52 19 59Controls 95 95 95 77 59 84Results. Table 2 shows the percentages of correct responses by Alzhei-mer’s patients and controls in the pragmatic tasks. For patients, simple actsin the wild were equivalent to simple acts in fictions. Further, as regards thepragmatic phenomena investigated through fictions, standard communicationwas easier than nonstandard communication (Wilcoxon test: z  2.94, p .003), and the predicted trend of difficulty among pragmatic tasks wasconfirmed (Page’s L test: L  392.5, p  .00005).The same pattern of results holds for the control group: simple acts in thewild are as easy as simple acts in fictions, and standard communication iseasier than nonstandard communication (Wilcoxon test: z  2.83, p .005). Although not significant, the trend of difficulty among pragmatic tasksis in the predicted direction.Overall, the global performance of Alzheimer’s patients was poorer thanthe performance of the controls (Mann-Whitney: z  3.81, p  .0001).Also, patients performed worse than controls both in standard communica-tion (Mann-Whitney test: z3.27, p .001), and in nonstandard commu-nication (Mann-Whitney: z  3.3, p  .001).The analytical results show that difference in performance between thetwo groups is due to difference in performance in the most complex tasks.In fact, patients did not differ from controls neither for simple acts in action(Mann-Whitney: z1.62, p .10), nor for simple acts in fictions (Mann-Whitney: z  1.04, p  .29). The two groups differ according to complexacts, deceits and ironies (Mann-Whitney test: z value ranging from 2.43to 2.93, p value ranging from .015 to.001). The results concerning theneuropsychological test are in Table 3.TABLE 3Mean Scores by Patients and Controls in the Neuropsychological TestsNeuropsychological testsWAIS WAISBlock Picture Phonemic ElithornMODA design arrangement Fluency LabyrinthsPatients 74.92 12.86 10 20.36 5.58Controls 92.60 27.15 21.53 29.23 11.3626 TENNET XPatients performed worse than controls in all the neuropsychological tests(Mann-Whitney test: z ranging from 2.5 to 4.44, p value ranging from.012 to  .0001). Only a few significant correlations were found betweenperformance in the neuropsychological tests and the pragmatic tasks. In thepatients’ group, Block design and simple acts (Fisher’s r .729, p .0034),and Picture arrangement and deceits (Fisher’s r  .662, p  .0117); in thecontrol group, complex acts and Phonemic Fluency (Fisher’s r  .554, p .048), and ironies and Phonemic Fluency (Fisher’s r  .705, p  .0056).ConclusionThe present work was based on an original extra-linguistic protocol thatwe constructed in order to extend Cognitive Pragmatics’ predictions to extra-linguistic communication. Experiment 1 represented the first systematic in-vestigation in the emergence of extra-linguistic communication. Children ba-sically follow the same path of the emergence of linguistic competence, withthe predicted inversion between irony and deceit. Regarding the decay con-text, the inverse trend was found in Experiment 2. We outline that in Alzhei-mer’s patients the decay in pragmatic tasks is not simply related to frontalfunctions (planning and problem solving). The hypothesis is that pragmaticcompetence is an autonomous domain of investigation in degenerative de-mentia. Cognitive Pragmatics attempts to explain in terms of mental rep-resentations and inferences the respective difficulty of different kinds ofcommunicative acts. In a diachronic perspective, we have investigated therelations between complexity of pragmatic phenomena and their appearance,development, and decay.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis research was supported by the Italian National Research Council (C.N.R. N.97.001%61.CT11, ‘‘Pianificazione e riconoscimento di piani nella comunicazione’’).REFERENCESAirenti, G., Bara, B. G., & Colombetti, M. 1984. Planning and understanding speech acts byinterpersonal games. In B. G. Bara & G. Guida (Eds.), Computational models of naturallanguage processing. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Airenti, G., Bara, B. G., & Colombetti, M. 1993a. Conversation and behavior games in thepragmatics of dialogue. Cognitive Science, 17, 197–256.Airenti, G., Bara, B. G., & Colombetti, M. 1993b. Failures, exploitations and deceits in com-munication. Journal of Pragmatics, 20, 303–326.Bara, B. G., & Bucciarelli, M. 1998. Language in context: The emergence of pragmatic compe-tence. In A. C. Quelhas & F. Pereira (Eds.), Cognition and context (pp. 317–345). Lisbon:Istituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada.Bara, B. G., Tirassa, M., & Zettin, M. 1997. Neuropragmatics: A formal theory of impairmentsin dialogue. Brain and Language, 59, 7–49.TENNET X 27Brazzelli, M., Capitani, E., Della Sala, S., Spinnler, H., & Zuffi, M. 1994. A neuropsychologi-cal instrument adding to description of patients with suspected cortical dementia: TheMilan Overall Dementia Assessment. Journal of Neurol. Neurosur. and Psychiatry, 59,1510–1517.Reisberg, B., Ferris, S. H., de Leon, M. J., & Crook, T. (1988). The global deterioration scale(GDS), Psychopharmacological Bulletin, 24, 661–663.Spatial Learning on the Morris Water Maze Test after a Short-TermParadoxical Sleep Deprivation in the RatIsabelle Beaulieu and Roger GodboutCentre de recherche, Hoˆpital du Sacre´-Cœur and De´partement de psychiatrie,Universite´ de Montre´alTwelve rats were deprived of paradoxical sleep (PS) for eight hours using thesmall platform method. PS-deprived and control rats then learned either the stan-dard allocentric version (using external cues) of the Morris Water Maze (MWM)or a delayed alternation version (changing the platform location between trials:MWMDA). Overall, rats learning the MWMDA made more quadrant entries than ratslearning the allocentric version. Compared to other rats, PS-deprived rats crossedmore quadrants only in the MWMDA. These results show that MWMDA is a morecomplex task to learn and is more vulnerable to PS deprivation than allocentricspatial orientation. Since delayed alternation is dependent upon frontal structures,we propose that tasks involving the frontal cortex are more sensitive to short-termPS deprivation than tasks related to hippocampal structures. © 2000 Academic PressIntroductionSeveral studies have shown in humans and animals the existence of arelationship between paradoxical sleep (PS) and cognition, particularly con-cerning memory (Smith, 1985; 1995). While most of these studies demon-strate the detrimental effect of PS deprivation on memory consolidation,much fewer studies have analysed the effects of PS deprivation precedingthe acquisition of a new task in order to evaluate the preparatory nature ofPS on learning itself. The literature suggests that complex tasks are morevulnerable to PS deprivation than simple tasks where the animal does nothave to manifest an important behavioral adaptation (Smith, 1985). In thepresent study, we measured the effects of short-term PS deprivation on learn-ing a simple and a complex version of the Morris Water Maze Test (MWM).MethodsThirty-six young male Sprague–Dawley rats (300–350 g) were dividedinto three equal groups and submitted to one of three sleeping conditionsfor eight hours, starting at the onset of the light period: 12 rats were PS

Development and decay of extra-linguistic communication

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Development and decay of extra-linguistic communication

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