Csaba Pleh - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Csaba Pleh

Schizophrenia Research, 2008

A feature of schizophrenia is disrupted executive function leading to learning difficulties and m... more A feature of schizophrenia is disrupted executive function leading to learning difficulties and memory problems. In two experiments we measured the ability of patients with schizophrenia to suppress irrelevant parts of acquired information by intentional (executive) and autonomic (non-executive) strategies. In the first experiment using directed forgetting by lists patients were found to be unable to intentionally suppress recently acquired episodic memories. In a second experiment using a procedure that induces inhibition automatically schizophrenic patients showed levels of inhibition comparable to those of normal controls. These findings indicate that in schizophrenia memory is most impaired in tasks that load heavily on control or executive processes.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2003

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2006

Thirteen male patients with schizophrenia and thirteen male normal control subjects were compared... more Thirteen male patients with schizophrenia and thirteen male normal control subjects were compared by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on volumes of the straight gyrus (SG), anterior cingulate gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, hippocampus, third ventricle, cavum septi pellucidi, total brain volume and intracranial volume. In addition, neuropsychological tasks were used to measure working memory and executive functions. Healthy volunteers and schizophrenic patients showed no significant differences in mean values for volumes of regions of interests. In the case of the SG, we found a significant difference in laterality: the tendency toward left dominance in healthy volunteers changed to significant right dominance in patients. The schizophrenic patients showed lower performance in working memory tasks, and strongly significant group differences were observed in measures of neurological signs assessed by the Neurological Evaluation Scale (NES). Negative symptoms correlated with the level of spatial working memory and executive functions. Negative symptoms also correlated with the volume of the right hippocampus, while the rate of anhedonia negatively correlated with the relative volume of the left SG.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2004

Picture naming is a widely used technique in psycholinguistic studies. Here, we describe new on-l... more Picture naming is a widely used technique in psycholinguistic studies. Here, we describe new on-line resources that our project has compiled and made available to researchers on the world wide web at http://crl.ucsd.edu/~aszekely/ipnp/. The website provides access to a wide range of picture stimuli and related norms in seven languages. Picture naming norms, including indices of name agreement and latency, for 520 black-and-white drawings of common objects and 275 concrete transitive and intransitive actions are presented. Norms for age-of-acquisition, word-frequency, familiarity, goodness-of-depiction, and visual complexity are included. An on-line database query system can be used to select a specific range of stimuli, based on parameters of interest for a wide range of studies on healthy and clinical populations, as well as studies of language development.

Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 2004

One accepted and straightforward approach to understand the genesis of social cognition-as of any... more One accepted and straightforward approach to understand the genesis of social cognition-as of any particular human neoformation-is to look for specific developmental disorders in the hope to find clear double dissociations. In this regard, contrasting subjects with autistic spectrum disorders on the one hand and subjects with Williams syndrome on the other has gained large acceptance. Subjects with autistic spectrum disorders have been interpreted as being impaired specifically in social cognition, while in WS subjects social cognition is interpreted to be spared. Detailed studies, however, indicate that the situation is by far not that simple and straightforward. The seemingly simple term "social cognition" covers several aspects from gaze contact through different facets of theory of mind ability to social inferencing in language pragmatics. In this paper a survey of the different tasks and results will be presented that all seem to challenge the simplicity of the implied "social cognition" module. Our own empirical data also indicate that (1) in individuals with autistic spectrum disorders theory of mind ability, as a central aspect of social cognition, shows a highly heterogeneous pattern, as manifested in their ability to understand written irony; and that (2) in WS subjects the unfolding of the social mind can be differentiated into more specific social skills, as manifested in various tasks related to pragmatics of word meaning acquisition.

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2009

Two numerical systems-the analogue magnitude system and verbal retrieval-were investigated in Wil... more Two numerical systems-the analogue magnitude system and verbal retrieval-were investigated in Williams syndrome (WS) with three numerical tasks: simple addition, simple multiplication, and number comparison. A new matching technique was introduced in selecting the proper control groups. The WS group was relatively fast in the addition and multiplication tasks, but was slow in number comparison. No reverse numerical effect was observed in the comparison task, and the distance effect was stronger than that in the control groups. The findings indicate a profile with an impaired analogue magnitude system and less impaired verbal retrieval in Williams syndrome.

European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 2009

Symptomatologic differences between the clusters …………………………. Secondary cognitive differences betw... more Symptomatologic differences between the clusters …………………………. Secondary cognitive differences between the clusters ………………………. Primary executive functions in the clusters …………………………………. Neurological alterations in the clusters ……………………………………… Morphogenetic alterations in the clusters …………………………………… Smell identification alterations in the clusters ………………………………. Eletrophysiological alterations in the clusters ………………………………. Discussion ………………………………………………………………………………………. The incongruence between the S-Z clusters and the deficit-nondeficit division …………. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………... Statistical analytic methods ……………………………………………………………………... Results ………………………………………………………………………………………….. Discussion of results of the statistical analysis …………………………………………………. A mathematical grasping of the difference of the clusters and the deficit-nondeficit syndromes Pilot structural MRI findings as indirect evidences of the partly different neural substrates in the background of the S-Z clusters ……………………………...........

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2001

We propose that Bloom's focus on cognitive factors involved in word learning still lacks a br... more We propose that Bloom's focus on cognitive factors involved in word learning still lacks a broader perspective. We emphasize the crucial relevance of working memory in learning elements of language. Specifically, we demonstrate through our data that in impaired populations knowledge of some linguistic elements can be dissociated according to the subcomponent of working memory (visual or verbal) involved in a task. Further, although Bloom's concentration on theory of mind as a precondition for word learning is certainly correct, theory of mind being a necessary condition does not make it a sufficient one. On the basis of our studies we point out the importance of a theory of mind related goal preference in acquiring spatial language. In general, we claim that more specific cognitive preferences and constraints should be outlined in detail for the preconditions of acquiring linguistic elements.

Center for Research in Language Newsletter, 2000

Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2011

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between verbal short-term memory a... more The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between verbal short-term memory and the morphological complexity of words. Hungarian, as an agglutinative language, is of special interest for psycholinguistic inquiries in morphology. The authors presented two word-list recall experiments. The recall of the word list was measured by the classical span design. The item lists consisted of two-syllable stems (base words) and twosyllable morphologically complex words (stem + suffix). Within each list the words were of the same length, the same phonological structure (CVCVC), the same frequency and the same concreteness. The same experimental design was used with three-syllable words as well. Results indicated that morphological complexity had a significant negative effect on shortterm memory span, and that memory was better for derived words (e.g., boy + hood) than inflected words (e.g., boy + s), and regular than irregular words.

Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2011

The underlying motivation for this special issue of Acta Linguistica Hungarica came from the rath... more The underlying motivation for this special issue of Acta Linguistica Hungarica came from the rather traditional recognition that, in languages that have a rich morphological structure, morphology certainly plays a crucial role in processing decisions. Morphology can be decisive in packaging word units into syntactically organized phrases. For an illustration from a language where surface constituency does not help a listener in relating parts of the sentence that belong together, take a Latin example: Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit.. . human.dat head.dat neck.acc painter horse.acc to paint if wanted 'If the painter wanted to paint a human head to a horse neck.. . '

Brain and Language, 2003

Williams syndrome (WMS), a rare neurogenetic disorder, has been in the forefront of research in c... more Williams syndrome (WMS), a rare neurogenetic disorder, has been in the forefront of research in cognitive psychology for the last 10 years. Studies of grammatical development in 14 Hungarian WMS children are presented: they were examined on tasks testing regular and irregular morphology; measures of digit span were also obtained. Results on the production of accusative and plural forms confirmed for Hungarian that regardless of the frequency of the item, inflected forms of irregulars are harder to produce, and often regularized in WMS, revealing a dissociation between the rules of grammar vs. the mental lexicon. Overall performance on the morphology task is associated with the capacity of phonological short-term memory: subjects with higher span perform better on both tasks. The specification of the surprisingly close relation of phonological short-term memory with the linguistic measures awaits further study.

Magyar Pszichológiai Szemle, 2012

Amikor a generatív nyelvtan az 1950-es évek közepén megjelenik (Chomsky 1957), az amerikai szelle... more Amikor a generatív nyelvtan az 1950-es évek közepén megjelenik (Chomsky 1957), az amerikai szellemi életet többé-kevésbé a behaviorizmus és a ma például Pinker 1 A tanulmány TÁMOP-4.2.2.C-11/1/KONV-2012-0008 azonosító számú projekt keretében készült. A projekt az Európai Unió támogatásával és az Európai Szociális Alap társfinanszírozásával valósult meg.

Pedagógusképzés, 2010

Előadásomban két vízióból indulok ki az emberi életút hajlékonyságát és meghatározóit illetően. E... more Előadásomban két vízióból indulok ki az emberi életút hajlékonyságát és meghatározóit illetően. Ezt a két víziót az 1. táblázat mutatja. 1. táblázat: Két felfogás az ember hajlékonyságáról és életútjáról Nyitottság Korlátok Az életen át való tanulás az emberi elme újdonságra való nyitottságától függ. Az emberi elme nem teljesen hajlékony, számos korlátja van. Elménk és agyunk egész életünkben nyitva van. Az agy és az elme csak bizonyos életkorban nyitottak. Az életkor előrehaladtával különösen jók vagyunk a tanulás stratégiai megközelítésében és a kontrollban. Egyfolytában lassulunk és emlékeink halványulnak. Az új IKT forradalmi értékű mind a tanulást, mind a tanítást megváltoztatja. Az új IKT felszínes feldolgozást képvisel és a tartalmat felületes pásztázással váltja fel. Az utcai tanulás és a tanítás Általában úgy képzeljük el-a tudásalapú társadalom retorikája közepette is-, hogy a tanulás és a tudás elsajátítása intézményes keretek között történik, legfeljebb azon vitatkozunk, hogy ezek az intézmények és keretek úgymond poroszosak vagy kompetenciaalapúak legyenek-e. Érdemes azonban szem előtt tartanunk azt, s ez érvényes filozófiai és tapasztalati pszichológiai szempontból is, hogy az ismeretelsajátítás és az ismeretszervezés két igen eltérő közegben él a modern világban. Ezt az eltérő közeget mutatja a 2. táblázat.