Talk:Neurolinguistics/GA1

GA Review

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I'll be doing this GA review. Will need a few days to read the article carefully, but plan to be done by Wednesday. Sasata (talk) 23:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok finally done the review. I came up with a fairly detailed list of nit-picky items (as requested by the nom), hopefully these suggestions will help to improve the article to GA-status (and beyond...). Sasata (talk) 06:22, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   Difficult reading. Some concepts and language needs to be defined or clarified more obviously for the average reader. MOS fixes needed. See comments. Unclear/difficult passages have been clarified or simplified.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c(OR):

   Well-referenced, with a good proportion of secondary sources.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   Having little knowledge of the subject area, I'll take it on faith that the subject area is well-covered. One thing that had me wondering after reading the article, was what cool things has this fledgling science figured out so far? There's bit's and pieces, in the form of examples for the various experimental techniques, but nothing really amazing stood out (to me). Any research finding that might blow my socks off?

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Images have appropriate licenses. Some more justification need for the inclusion of a couple, see specifics below.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Pending improvements.

After making substantial improvements to the article, it now fully meets GA standards. Article passed. Sasata (talk) 15:49, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• Regarding the first image, there is no mention of Brodmann's areas in the text, so I don't know the relevance of that image unless I click the Brodmann link and read another article, where I find out that Brodmann areas 44 and 45 are Broca's area, which is mentioned in the text. The second image is interesting brainy eye candy, but I can find no reference to it in the article, nor is the use of the specific brain imaging technique (DTI) mentioned.
  • I wanted to avoid putting the Broca's/Wernicke's picture in the lead just because I don't want to add to the pop-culture idea that Broca's and Wernicke's area are the only things relevant to language. I'll try to work on adding mention of Brodmann's areas somewhere in the text (I did add a bit about DTI in the Hemodynamic imaging section); would it help if I edited the captions of these images to include links to the subsections where they're discussed, or would that be too self-reference-y? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I think just a brief mention of Brodmann and his areas in the history section would be sufficient justification for inclusion of the first image. Perhaps the caption for the DTI image should read: "An image of neural pathways in the brain taken using diffusion tensor imaging". Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
      • Ok, I added him to the end of the first paragraph of History, and edited the caption of the DTI image. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Lead

• "Neurolinguistics is the science concerned with the neural mechanisms that control the comprehension, production and abstract knowledge of language." Question: would a less accurate meaning be imparted if the sentence read instead "... control the understanding, use and knowledge of language."?
  • No problems there; those words are sort of the common buzzwords in the field, but your wording is probably a little easier to read. (I've kept "comprehension," though, as I feel "understanding" is just a bit too general; the other two words, though, I switched per your suggestion.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Actually, User:Mattisse found that wording a bit too vague, so to avoid being vague/confusing I have changed it to "comprehension, production, and acquisition of language." ("abstract knowledge of language" is really part of the other three; I think "comprehension" and "production" are more specific than "understanding" and "use," which could mean lots of other things.) I also change "neural mechanicms" to "neural mechanisms in the human brain" because it seems like that may not have been clear enough before. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:15, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. As a humorous aside, it seems particularly fitting to discuss meta-semantics for an article on linguistics :) Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Can it be clarified what the difference is between psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics? The Wiki article on the former states "Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language." which to me sounds pretty close to what NL is about.

Ok now I see a clarification at the end of the history section, which might be good enough. I'll think about it some more.

Yeah, they are quite closely related. I tried to clarify it a bit in the History section and the brief section after it. Another way of describing the difference (although I don't have a source saying this just yet...there is an article I know of that I bet says something like this, but I haven't read it closely yet) is that a lot of psycholinguists take linguistic theory and talk about how the mind might use it in real-life...whereas a lot of neurolinguists take physical phenomena (ERP components, brain regions that "light up" on fMRI, etc.) and talk about how those physical components reflect language processes. In actuality, though, there's a lot of overlap between the two fields, and most people in either field do a little bit of both. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It's much clearer now. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• "Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on investigating how the biological structures in the brain can physically implement the cognitive and computational thought processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language." This sentence is a mouthful, and makes me feel slightly aphasic when I read it. I interpret it as "Neurolinguistics tests the theories of psycholinguistics." Am I correct? Please reword for a broader audience. Is this essentially what is said in the next sentence?
• "Neurolinguists attempt to elucidate how the brain physiologically handles language information," how about "Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes information related to language, and to evaluate the plausibility of linguistic and psycholinguistic theories,"
  • Both of your above rewordings sound good. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

History

• I'm not sure why reference #1 (Phillips and Sakai) is given both in the notes and the references.
  • I've been instructed in the past to list book references in long form in a separate References section, and then in the footnotes just give a short-form citation of them...would it help if I changed the title of the References section to Bibliography?
    • I can only see the logic of that if you're giving the specific page #'s in the book, and doing so (the double listing) would avoid having to repeat giving the full book citation info every time. But in this case it's a chapter in a book (correct?), so there's no need for specific page #'s (small page range, more like a journal article), so should be listed in the notes, but not also in the References. But I admit I don't know the specific MOS guideline... Sasata (talk) 07:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I think you're right. It's also a very short book chapter (more like an encyclopedia entry); I'll move it into the footnote. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 14:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "Aphasiology attempts to make predictions about what linguistic functions are carried out in which parts of the brain by analyzing what language abilities are affected when an individual incurs brain damage to a specific localization in the brain." Another mouthful. How about something like "Aphasiology attempts to correlate structure to function by analyzing the effect of brain injuries on language processing."
  • That sounds good to me. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "... Broca's research was possibly the first to to offer..."
• "...a French surgeon who conducted autopsies on numerous individuals who had had speaking deficiencies..." I don't think two "had"s are required, as an autopsy by definition is performed on a dead person, so no need for the second "had" which changes the case to the past perfect form.
  • Both of the above points fixed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:37, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Neurolinguistics as a discipline

• ..."and neurolinguists analyze physical activity in the brain to see how biological structures" - Physical activity doesn't sound right to me, how about just "brain activity". Also perhaps change "see" to "understand".
  • How about "infer"? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• "Neurolinguistics research investigates several topics, including issues of where language information is processed,"
• "Another area of neurolinguistics literate involves the use of..." I don't understand what this means.
  • Oops, should have been "literature". Fixed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Brain imaging

• In the top PET figure, it might be useful to mention that areas in red have higher activity.
  • Added to the image caption. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• Is there a page # for ref #25?
  • I'll have to see if we have that book in our library....I was originally just using a pdf of that one chapter, and the pdf cut off the page numbers, and I don't have it anymore anyway. I can probably take a look tomorrow. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "...consequently, these techniques are used primarily to inform theories of the cognitive/computational architecture of language, without regard to their precise neurobiological implementation." Please reword this complex sentence in simpler terms.
  • Reworded to "this technique is used primarily to how language processes are carried out, rather than where". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "Some important and commonly ERP components..."
  • Fixed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Experimental design

Mismatch paradigm

• Regarding the MMN, it's unclear to me if the example sequences of letters is supposed to be heard or read ("...when a subject hears or sees...").
  • I think both are possible, but now that I think about it, all the studies I know of were auditory...so I changed it to just "hears." rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• Why is the phenomenon referred to both as mismatch paradigm and mismatch sensitivity?
  • "Mismatch paradigm" refers to the kind of experiment you set up; "mismatch negativity" refers to the brain response that the experiment elicits (hopefully!). I'll try to see if I can make the distinction less confusing in this section. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "For example, one study presented speakers with numerous /t/ and /d/ stimuli, keeping the ratio of /t/s and /d/s constant to achieve a standard-deviant ratio but varying the voice onset time of all the stimuli within each category; the subjects still showed an MMN, suggesting that even though all the /d/ tokens (and all the /t/ tokens) were physically different in terms of their acoustic properties, the subjects perceptually organized them into the abstract phonemic categories of /d/ and /t/."
• I may just be dense, but the logic of the statement is hard for me to follow; I don't see how the appearance of the MMN leads to the suggested perceptual organization. To put it another way, it could have said instead said that the subjects didn'tshow an MMN and the statement would make the same amount of sense to me. What's the significance of changing the voice onset time? The word "token" is used to describe the stimulus, which I would suppose is standard linguistics jargon, but is not defined nor is used prior in the article.
  • The basic idea is that all the sounds were phonetically different (some had 10ms voice onset time, others 20, etc.), so if the person perceived them as just sounds then there would be no standard/deviant ratio, there would just be a random mish-mash. It was only by grouping a bunch of sounds (such as all the ones with less than 40ms voice onset) into a phoneme /d/, and all the others into /t/, that the subjects would have been able to have the right ratio to elicit an MMN...so the logic was that, if they got an MMN, they must have been perceiving abstract phonemes rather than specific sounds. But I agree that it's a tough argument to explain (for that particular article, I remember having to read it a couple times before I totally got it), so it might be better just to lose it; I did want to mention some experiment to give an example of how the MMN is used in research, but I could probably do that without going into so much detail about the experimental design. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I tried rewording it to this: "For example, a landmark study by Colin Phillips and colleagues used the mismatch negativity as evidence that subjects, when presented with a series of speech sounds that all differed on various acoustic parameters, perceived all the sounds as either /t/ or /d/ in spite of the acoustic variability, suggesting that the human brain has representations of abstract phonemes." Does that make more sense? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Suggested tweak: "...when presented with a series of speech sounds that all differed on variouswith different acoustic parameters". Could "acoustic parameters" be expressed more simply? I still don't quite get the conclusion "...the human brain has representations of abstract phonemes." Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Tweaked that, and I added a little bit to try to make it simpler: "in other words, the subjects were "hearing" not the specific acoustic features, but only the abstract phonemes". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• "In addition, the mismatch paradigm has been used to study syntactic processing..." What exactly is syntactic processing? The phrase is used several times in the text, but no clear definition is given (nor what "syntax" means in the context of neurolinguistics). For that matter, a clear definition of "semantic" somewhere early in the article would also be very helpful.
  • I'll try adding a sentence or two in one of the early sections—when talking about what things neurolinguistics studies, that would probably be a good place to work in something along the lines of "neurolinguistic techniques are used to investigate how the brain processes all aspects of language, including..." and then a bulleted list with phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics (and a brief appositive description after each). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • In the Interaction with other fields section, I added a bullet list of linguistic subfields. But I'm wondering if it would be useful or not to organize it into a table instead, something like this (I just threw this together really quickly, I know the third column isn't very good right now):

Subfield	Description	Research questions in neurolinguistics
Phonetics	the study of speech sounds	how the brain extracts speech sounds from an acoustic signal
Phonology	the study of how sounds are organized in a language	how the phonological system of a particular language is represented in the brain
Morphology and lexicology	the study of how words are structured and stored in the mental lexicon	how the brain accesses words that a person knows
Syntax	the study of how multiple-word utterances are constructed	how the brain combines words into constituents and sentences; how structural and semantic information is used in understanding sentences
Semantics	the study of how meaning is encoded in language

I like the table, it presents these terms nicely and adds greatly to the accessibility of the article. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

All right, stuck it in there! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Violation-based

• "... a brain response called the Early Left Anterior Negativity...." No need to capitalize.
• "For example, sentences beginning with phrases..."
  • Fixed those two. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• The y-axis of the event-related potential graph needs a label.
  • I just put in a request at Graphic Labs to get a label added. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The label has been added, does it look ok? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Priming

• Morphological makeup , lexical entry, and "trace" seem to be complex linguistics concepts that make this paragraph difficult to truly understand without going to those linked articles and doing background reading. Any chance of adding a definition or two or simplifying a bit?
  • I've simplified the section, saying less about particular studies and keeping it more general. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• The last sentence uses "investigate" three times; there's also a stranded right parenthesis.
  • Cleaned up with the above. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Stimulation

• "Among newer noninvasive techniques to study the workings of the brain, including how language works" The underlined part sounds weak to me. How about changing to something like "... language processing by the brain"
  • I agree that the current wording is a bit iffy. TMS, though, is not used only for language stuff (in fact, its most well-known use is for treating depression...and even when it comes to experiments rather than treatment, I'm pretty sure it's used for experiments in stuff that's not about language) so I'll try to think about other ways to word it without making it seem as if it's only used for linguistic experiments. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Ok, I cleaned it up and just called it a "technique for studying brain activity." rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• "... thus is able to imitate aphasic symptoms without and giving gives the researcher more control..." Without what?
  • Fixed...not sure where that typo came from :S rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "...surgery for epilepsy[52])." Put the reference # outside the punctuation, per MOS.
  • Done. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• "The logic behind TMS and direct cortical stimulation is similar to the logic behind aphasiology." Please remind me of the logic, so I don't have to search through the article and find it again.
  • Added "if a particular language function is impaired when a specific region of the brain is knocked out, then that region must be somehow implicated in that language function." rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Better, one small tweak: "...have been used with macaque monkeys to make predictions about the behavior of human brains." or something like that. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Subject tasks

• I think it should be clarified that the subject tasks are used in conjunction with the experimental/brain imaging techniques described above (at least I assume that's how its done in practice).
  • Added a sentence on that. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Active distraction and double-task

• "For example, one study had subjects listen to non-linguistic tones in one ear and speech in the other ear, and instructed subjects to press a button when they perceived an attenuation in the tone" What's a non-linguistic tone? A musical note? Please clarify. While you're there, might as well briefly define attenuation.
  • Ok, defined "non-linguistic tone" as a beep or buzz, and replaced "attenuation" with "change." rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

References

Refs need a copyedit to standardize formatting. Check comma/semicolon usage, presence/absence of quote marks around journal article titles, capitalization in article titles (eg. ref #29), ndashes for page ranges (eg. ref#16), consistency of author name abbreviation, placement of "and" before final author name, missing page #'s (ref #61), etc., etc.

I've tried to go through and clean them up as well as I can—used ndashes for page ranges, removed "and"s, changed commas to semicolons, and put all journal article titles in lowercase (but left book titles and website titles as they were wherever I found them, which was uppercase for all or most). As for the author name abbreviation, I have used full first names wherever possible, but some of these journal articles (especially the older ones) only give initials for first names; would it be better for me to leave those couple exceptions here and there, or to convert everything to initials even where I have full names available? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:27, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it's most important that the formatting remain consistent throughout. For example, I see that some refs have a period after the final author name (eg. #22) while others don't. That being said, I won't hold the article back from GA for reference formatting, but you'll probably want to get that all cleaned up before taking it to FAC. Sasata (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I went through and made sure there are periods on all middle and first initials. That does make it so that refs like #22 have a period right before the year whereas others don't, just because in that ref the author has a middle initial with a period (Friederici, Angela D. (2002)). I'm not sure why, some people just always have their name like that. Anyway, I didn't want to get rid of all periods on initials, because some of the references would look really bad that way (for example, "Dronkers, N.F.; O. Plaisant; M.T. Iba-Zizen; E.A. Cabanis (2007)" would be "Dronkers, NF; O Plaisant; MT Iba-Zizen; EA Cabanis (2007)"). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll put the article on hold for the standard seven days to address the suggestions above. Have fun! Sasata (talk) 06:22, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments; this is all very helpful! I have gone through and taken some of the low-hanging fruit (addressing the quick & easy copyediting things you raised); I'm going to have to respond to the more in-depth stuff tomorrow or Saturday, hopefully. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)