Speeded processing of grammar and tool knowledge in Tourette's syndrome

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 45; no. 11; pp. 2447 - 2460
• Main Authors: Walenski, Matthew, Mostofsky, Stewart H., Ullman, Michael T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2007; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Basal ganglia; Biological and medical sciences; Brain; Case-Control Studies; Child; Cognitive Processes; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Developmental Disabilities; Female; Humans; Inflection; Language Development; Language Tests; Linguistics; Male; Medical sciences; Morphology; Naming; Neurology; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Past tense; Picture naming; Procedural memory; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reaction Time - physiology; Recognition, Psychology - physiology; Reference Values; Regular inflection; Response Time; Semantic Categories; Statistics, Nonparametric; Tourette Syndrome; Tourette Syndrome - physiopathology; Verbal Learning - physiology; Past tense; Basal ganglia; Regular inflection; Procedural memory; Picture naming; Morphology; Human; Nervous system diseases; Central nervous system; Grammatical tense; Cognition; Basal ganglion; Grammar; Naming; Knowledge; Velocity; Cerebral disorder; Language; Central nervous system disease; Information processing; Gilles de la Tourette syndrome; Degenerative disease; Tool
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.04.001

Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a developmental disorder characterized by motor and verbal tics. The tics, which are fast and involuntary, result from frontal/basal-ganglia abnormalities that lead to unsuppressed behaviors. Language has not been carefully examined in TS. We tested the processing of two basic aspects of language: idiosyncratic and rule-governed linguistic knowledge. Evidence suggests that idiosyncratic knowledge (e.g., in irregular past tense formation; bring–brought) is stored in a mental lexicon that depends on the temporal-lobe-based declarative memory system that also underlies conceptual knowledge. In contrast, evidence suggests that rule-governed combination (e.g., in regular past tenses; walk + - ed) takes place in a mental grammar that relies on the frontal/basal-ganglia-based procedural memory system, which also underlies motor skills such as how to use a hammer. We found that TS children were significantly faster than typically developing control children in producing rule-governed past tenses ( slip–slipped, plim–plimmed, bring–bringed) but not irregular and other unpredictable past tenses ( bring–brought, splim–splam). They were also faster than controls in naming pictures of manipulated ( hammer) but not non-manipulated ( elephant) items. These data were not explained by a wide range of potentially confounding subject- and item-level factors. The results suggest that the processing of procedurally based knowledge, both of grammar and of manipulated objects, is particularly speeded in TS. The frontal/basal-ganglia abnormalities may thus lead not only to tics, but also to a wider range of rapid behaviors, including the cognitive processing of rule-governed forms in language and other types of procedural knowledge.