Article

A debated issue in the relationship between language and thought is how our
linguistic abilities are involved in understanding the intentions of others ('mentalizing'). The results of both theoretical and empirical work have been
used to argue that linguistic, and more specifically, grammatical, abilities are
crucial in representing the mental states of others. Here we contribute to this
debate by investigating how damage to the language system influences the
generation and understanding of intentional communicative behaviors. Four
patients with pervasive language difficulties (severe global or agrammatic
aphasia) engaged in an experimentally controlled non-verbal communication
paradigm, which required signaling and understanding a communicative message.
Despite their profound language problems they were able to engage in recipient
design as well as intention recognition, showing similar indicators of
mentalizing as have been observed in the neurologically healthy population. Our results show that aspects of the ability to communicate remain present even when
core capacities of the language system are dysfunctional.
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Langue : ANGLAIS