Language and attention: a study with patients with brain lesions

THESES

Language and attention: a study with patients with brain lesions (abstract)^*. Thesis. Campinas, 2007.

Mara Lúcia Fabricio de Andrade^**

INTRODUCTION: As we consider Luria and Vigostski theories that states that the attention starts its development in the first period of life, socially and speaking as well. However, when we consider the reorganization of the attention of the individual, it can be reconstructed. This work studies the hypothesis that the attention, after the reorganization of the initial process, would be strongly involved in the linguistics task, which would result in a mutual constitutively: the language focus attention and attention turns back to the language. A basic guided Neurolinguistic (ND) was used as a theoric fundamentation. In the ND, the person is analyzed in relation to his social and historic life as the Lurian perspective. Also, in the ND the individual is not considered as a sample of the population as the statistics based in experimental tests but as an individual with a life story, reflecting on the methodology of the case. The attention, as a Lurian perspective, has a direct character and selective of mental process, being part of a complex functional system in which the attention and language are self related and also related to psycho process.

OBJECTIVE: The main scope of this work is to know which relations can be established between the language and attention, on the basis of signals presented in the speaking of those with injured brain.

METHOD: Transcriptions and selections of sections of the Aphasics Acquaintanceship Center - Group II (CCA-IEL/Unicamp) from the Neurolinguistic Data Bank (NDB/Integrated Project of Neuron Linguistic/CNPq 521773/95-4) were used (we focused five cases).

RESULTS: On chapter three, the analysis and discussion was based in each of the five individuals and on related themes to selectivity, reference system and specularity. The hypothesis of the mutual constitutionality guided us in the data analysis and following this hypothesis we reached three specific hypotheses being each one for each complete data. These hypotheses focus the work with the language through attention specifically linked to the language. On chapter four which still includes the hypothesis of the mutual constructivist, and we focused the case of JS to analyse some of his speaking, where he refers to himself on the third person and are directed for himself. Working with the hypothesis that theses talking show an "interior language", in this case we focus the language bringing attention.

CONCLUSION: The relations between the language and attention cannot be delimited only to the pathologic aspect. The work with injured brain individuals may conduct to some specific cases, but the many cases presented in this study, although been singular cases, we can say that they express some of the language phenomena that may be common to all speaking individuals. We finish this work considering that the study of the relations between language and attention, as we considered here, permitted us to stablish a relationship between the linguistic and psycological aspects and to focus, among others subjects, the aspects that may contribute to clarify all the work of the language.

Key words: neurolinguistic; attention; brain damage.

*

Linguagem e atenção: um estudo com sujeitos cérebro-lesados (Resumo). Tese de Doutorado. Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem da Universidade de Campinas (IEL-UNICAMP) (Área: Neurolingüística). Orientador:a: Maria Irma Hadler Coudry.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 June 2009
• Date of issue
  June 2009