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Nazbanou Nozari, 4:00pm Tuesday April 17th

Nozari

Nazbanou Nozari

Johns Hopkins University

    Tuesday, April 17th
    Swift 107
    4:00pm (Reception to follow)

Inhibitory control in language production: From single word production to discourse

More evidence is coming to light for the critical role of executive control processes in language production. In this talk, I will present converging evidence from studies of neurotypical adults, children, and individuals with brain-damage, as well as findings from brain stimulation research, to show that language production is dependent on inhibitory control at all levels. In the first part, I will show that impairment of inhibitory control impacts even the production of single words. In the second part, I present evidence for the role of inhibitory control in both lexical retrieval and syntactic computations at the level of sentence production.  In the third part, I will demonstrate how inhibitory control and its impairment can affect pragmatics, such as perspective taking in production. These findings suggest that (1) a complete theory of language production must integrate inhibitory control into all production processes which require selection between competing alternatives, and (2) disorders of language production may result directly from impaired inhibitory control, so treatment must be tailored accordingly.