Speech pauses in speakers with and without aphasia: A usage-based approach.

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Bello-Lepe, S., Mahmood, S., Varley, R., Zimmerer, V. (2024). Speech pauses in speakers with and without aphasia: A usage-based approach. Cortex, 178, 287-298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2024.06.012

When we speak, we can make pauses to emphasize, to give the listener time to reflect, or for other pragmatic/conversational reasons. But most pauses in speech, whether filled (“um …”) or silent, are disruptions. We may struggle with finding a word, or with planning a sentence. We may even struggle to put together a thought. Most pauses happen when our cognition can’t keep pace with our speech rate.

For that reason, we investigate speech pauses to learn more about language as ias we produce it. The presence and duration of pauses reveal when we face additional processing demands, and can inform us about which properties of language matter. For example, we are more likely to make a pause before a complex sentence, or before a verb rather than a noun. Pauses also provide insights into language impairment, for example following stroke. This paper identifies a new relevant variable for understanding pauses in people with aphasia (a language disorder following brain damage) and healthy controls.

This is work carried out by Sebastián Bello-Lepe under my supervision. Putting the final touches on it after he died was extremely difficult for me. It also made me think more about the “bus factor”, about which I am going to talk later in this post.

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Automated profiling of spontaneous speech in primary progressive aphasia and behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia: An approach based on usage-frequency.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Hardy, C.J.D., Eastman, J., Dutta, S., Varnet, L., Bond, R.L., Russell, L., Rohrer, J.D., Warren, J.D., Varley, R.A. (2020). Automated profiling of spontaneous speech in primary progressive aphasia and behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia: An approach based on usage-frequency. Cortex, 133, 103-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.027

This one took ages to publish. Not only because we kept adding (post-hoc) analyses, but also because I thought the work should appeal to journals to which it ultimately did not.

We looked at language in rare dementias: Primary progressive aphasia, which mostly affects an individual’s ability to use language (we include the three major types, logopenic variant, semantic variant, and non-fluent variant), and behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia, which primarily causes behaviour and mood change. Data were provided by colleagues at UCL’s Dementia Research Centre.

The fascinating thing about dementia is that, ultimately, each kind has been associated with some language symptoms.

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For people with a language or cognitive impairment, the difference between "know" and "think" can be the difference between understanding and not understanding a sentence.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Varley, R.A., Deamer, F., Hinzen, W. (2019). Factive and counterfactive interpretation of embedded clauses in aphasia and its relationship with lexical syntactic and general cognitive capacities. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 49, 29-44.

Çokal, D., Zimmerer, V., Varley, R., Watson, S., Hinzen W. (2019). Comprehension of embedded clauses in schizophrenia with and without formal thought disorder. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 207(5), 384-392.

You and your friend get ready for a day trip to the coast. You see your friend pack light clothing and sunscreen. “I know that it is sunny over there,” she says. You check the weather forecast. It is all clouds and rain. “No,” you say. “You just think that it is sunny.”

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Automated analysis of language production in aphasia and right hemisphere damage: Frequency and collocation strength.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Newman, L., Thomson, R., Coleman, M., & Varley, R.A. (2018). Automated analysis of language production in aphasia and right hemisphere damage: Frequency and collocation strength. Aphasiology, 32(11), 1267-1283. DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2018.1497138

People with aphasia rely on more common words, and more strongly collocated word combinations, in spontaneous language production.

In aphasia, the effects that make a word or sentence easier or harder to process become intensified. Words that take milliseconds longer for a healthy speaker may become out of reach after brain damage. Sentences that are a bit more taxing for grammatical systems may become uninterpretable.

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Artificial grammar learning in Williams syndrome and in typical development: The role of rules, familiarity, and prosodic cues.

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Stojanovik, V., Zimmerer, V., Setter, J., Hudson, K., Poyraz-Bilgin, I., & Saddy, D. (2017). Artificial grammar learning in Williams syndrome and in typical development: The role of rules, familiarity, and prosodic cues. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1-27.

I heard about Williams syndrome (WS) for the first time when I was a linguistics student in Düsseldorf. The genetic disorder was interesting for one perceived dissociation: People with WS, so the view, had typical language capacities, but impairments of general cognitive abilities, demonstrating that the language system was independent, modular in the sense of (early) Chomsky and Jerry Fodor. Today we know this to be wrong. The language in WS may appear typical at a quick glance, but there are production as well as comprehension deficits, especially at a grammatical level. This study, led by Vesna Stojanovik at the University of Reading, aimed to understand what underlies the language profile in WS.

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Deictic and propositional meaning – new perspectives on language in schizophrenia.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Watson, S., Turkington, D., Ferrier, I.N., & Hinzen, W. (2017). Deictic and propositional meaning – new perspectives on language in schizophrenia. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 8, 1-5.

While schizophrenia is generally considered a thought disorder, its symptoms are to a large degree observable through language. We learn via language about a person's thought disorder and delusions, and most hallucinations in schizophrenia concern hearing voices. Negative symptoms (for example lethargy, aphathy) as well go with changes in communication.

One question that may turn out to be important for understanding schizophrenia, and possibly clinical practice, is whether people with schizophrenia only differ in what they say (for example, if they claim that the Queen is their aunt), but whether they also differ in how they say it.

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Formulaic language in people with probable Alzheimer's disease: a frequency-based approach.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Wibrow, M., & Varley, R.A. (2016). Formulaic language in people with probable Alzheimer's Disease: a frequency-based approach. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 53, 1145-1160.

The claim that "language is a window into the mind" has been made in so many contexts. We all use language to show what's in our minds. Steven Pinker and others argue that language shows how the human mind is structured. I focus much on the clinical side: We look at language to see if the mind of an individual is working as it should. Brain lesions, psychosis, intellectual disabilities, dementia - all are likely to have an effect on how we produce and understand language.

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The language profile of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.

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Hardy, C.J., Buckley, A.H., Downey, L.E., Lehmann, M., Zimmerer, V.C., Varley, R.A., Crutch, S.J., Rohrer, J.D., Warrington, E.K., & Warren, J.D. (2015). The language profile of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 50(2).

Dementia is still a new area for me. I approach it from a language perspective. While dementias, such as Alzheimer's or, in this case, behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are not primarily language impairments, they can be associated with particular language profiles. I am certain that with further research these profiles will end up looking unique to the respective pathology. Investigating language in dementias is not just a way to learn more about the pathologies or about how language is anchored in the brain. Linguistic behaviour, in particular naming, memorization and fluency, are substantial in diagnosis.

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Artificial grammar learning in individuals with severe aphasia

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Zimmerer, V.C., Cowell, P.E., & Varley, R.A. (2014). Artificial grammar learning in individuals with severe aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 53, 25-38.

"Syntactic disorder" can be defined as an impairment of sentence processing, in comprehension as well as production, in spoken language as well as written, despite relatively intact processing of individual words. It is a terrible disorder. Our communication is mostly about who did what to whom, and when. If we lose this ability the complexity of what we can say and understand suffers a lot. People with aphasia can have a complex mental life and above average intelligence, but can find themselves unable to share any of that.

This paper is based on my PhD project.

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Preservation of passive constructions in a patient with primary progressive aphasia.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Dąbrowska, E., Romanowski, C.A.J., Blank, C., & Varley, R.A. (2014). Preservation of passive constructions in a patient with primary progressive aphasia. Cortex, 50, 7-18.

"WR" had primary progressive aphasia, a type of dementia which starts out as a language disorder. His grammatical profile showed a pattern that, according to many theories of grammar and aphasia, should not exist: WR was good at understanding passive sentences, such as The lion is killed by the man, but very poor at actives such as The man kills the lion, which are considered easier and more resistant to brain damage. More importantly, many theories predict that if someone has difficulties with actives, that person should find passives at least as difficult.

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Individual behavior in learning of an artificial grammar.

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Zimmerer, V.C., Cowell, P.E., Varley, R.A. (2011). Individual behavior in learning of an artificial grammar. Memory & Cognition, 39(3), 491-501.

Artifical grammar learning is supposed to tap into processes so basic to human cognition that many seem to assume that they are "universal", the same for every human. As a result researchers focus too much on group averages and do not look at individual differences in performance. If you do you find out that even healthy individuals do very different things within the same experimental condition. My life would be easier if this were not the case.

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Recursion in severe aphasia.

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Zimmerer, V.C., & Varley, R.A. (2010). Recursion in severe aphasia. In H. van der Hulst (Ed.): Recursion and human language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 393-406.

The volume is the result from the first conference on recursion in language hosted by the fascinating Dan Everett at Illinois State University in 2006. About a hundred people got together trying to figure out what Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch were talking about in their seminal, but pretty vague Science paper.

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Intact and impaired fundamentals of syntax: Artificial grammar learning in healthy speakers and people with aphasia

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Zimmerer, V. (2010). Intact and impaired fundamentals of syntax: Artificial grammar learning in healthy speakers and people with aphasia. Doctoral thesis. University of Sheffield.

My time as a PhD student had too great an impact for a short post to do it justice. I lived in England for the first time, met incredible people and my experiences with persons with aphasia (language disorder resulting from brain damage or degeneration) changed the way I think about many things in life.

Artificial grammar learning is a fascinating empirical paradigm, but it my a project a tough sell to linguists and speech and language therapists alike. Why test grammar not using words, but nonsensical blobs on a computer screen? The answer is that the human mind is driven by pattern finding, and tapping into core pattern processing mechanisms reveals something about language in healthy speakers and pathologies.

I was supervised by Rosemary Varley and Patricia Cowell, who were simply optimal.

Herrschaft durch Sprachherrschaft (Control through language)

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Zimmerer, V. (2006). Herrschaft durch Sprachherrschaft? Was uns die Psycholinguistik über die „Macht der Wörter“ sagen kann. Aptum: Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 2, 137-156.

Zimmerer, V. (2006). Herrschaft durch Sprachherrschaft? Was uns die Psycholinguistik über die „Macht der Wörter“ sagen kann. Berlin: Weißensee Verlag.

These two publications are based on my Masters dissertation. Actually, the monograph is my dissertation with some edits. The project was supervised at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf by Martin Wengeler and Martina Penke.

I did my Masters degree in German linguistics (which for the most part mixed philosophy and sociolinguistics), with psycholinguistics and German literature as minors. Since I became increasingly interested in psycholinguistics, but did not want to change my major, I had to figure out a way to do psycholinguistics in the wrong department.

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