 ackground
Attention and language play a key role in everyday life.
Attention allows our perceptions, thoughts, and actions to be accurate and
speeded in the face of distraction, whereas language is our most important
vehicle for symbolic communication. Although speaking is one of our most
highly exercised skills—with one hour talking per day, we produce some four
million words per year, which seems to happen automatically and effortlessly—it
may require some attention, as is perhaps most evident from the effort associated
with talking while driving a car in heavy traffic or talking in a foreign
language. The amount of attention we have to pay to word production thus
sheds light on the limits of automaticity in general.
Wilhelm
Wundt was the first psychologist to study attention and language production
more than a century ago. Following his lead, many psychologists (e.g.,
Cattell, Pillsbury) took interest in attention as well as language and used
tasks critically combining attention and word production (e.g., Stroop).
Research on attention and language has progressed dramatically
in recent years. With the advent of functional brain imaging using
hemodynamic techniques and recent advances in electrophysiology, eyetracking,
genetics, and computational modeling, there are now many new ways of studying
how we are able to select and enhance some aspects for processing while
ignoring others and how we are able to speak. These technical advances were
especially important for language: Whereas researchers have the whole animal
kingdom available for studying attention, humans are the only species that
speaks. With the new techniques, we are now finally able to assess what
happens in our brains when we produce words. This research has made clear
that both attention and spoken word production are enabled by functionally
dedicated systems, associated with separate networks of brain areas. Also,
evidence suggests that speakers usually attend and plan one word at a time,
with little look-ahead. Attempting to divide attention and plan words in
parallel seems to lead to cross-talk and errors. Moreover, research has
revealed that separate networks of anatomical areas underlie such central
aspects of attention as alerting, spatial and temporal orienting, and
executive control. The executive attention network seems highly heritable,
and we are beginning to unravel its genetic basis.
Understanding the relationship between attention and language is
not only of academic interest. Attention and language deficits may have major
consequences for someone's daily functioning. Forms of psychopathology such
as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's
disease, autism-spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and borderline personality
disorder appear to involve attentional networks. Impairments of the
interaction between attention and language may give rise to, for example,
hearing voices in schizophrenia. Impairments of language may lead to aphasia
or dyslexia. The success of language therapy in aphasia or remedial teaching
may depend on an individual's ability to exert control over language processes.
The executive control network is also of great importance in acquiring school
subjects such as literacy.
Despite the
great practical relevance of studying attention and language, and the
enormous range of techniques that has become available, a major impediment to
understanding the interplay of attention and language is that the two topics
are studied in separate research traditions (Attention and Performance, on
the one hand, and Psycholinguistics and Linguistics, on the other), with very
little communication across boundaries. However, to understand the interplay
between attention and language, researchers have to understand both language
and attention. Moreover, understanding the complexity of attention and
language and their interplay requires advanced computational modeling.
However, researchers often do not use computer simulations in their
investigations, so that they may miss potential benefits of modeling
exercises.
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