Lecturer's Précis - Roeltgen
and Heilman (1985)
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First published online 08:59 BST 1st May 2002,
Copyright Derek J. Smith (Chartered Engineer). This version [2.0 - copyright] 09:00 BST 3rd July
2018.
An earlier version of this material appeared
in Smith (1998; Chapter 4). It is repeated here in simplified form and
supported with hyperlinks.
Roeltgen and Heilman (1985)
See firstly the supporting commentary for this material.
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Roeltgen and Heilman's (1985) Model of Writing: Here is a box-and-arrow representation of the
mental modules involved in spelling a heard word (a) aloud or (b) on paper.
It was derived from a large number of clinical observations going back to
Ogle (1867), and shows the presumed processing layout for a left hemisphere
dominant right-handed adult. It sees the stimulus word (top left) as being
decoded acoustically within (1) Heschl's Gyrus, and
then recognised as a particular word in (3) Wernicke's Area (see Wernicke, 1874).
Taken together, these two processes are therefore equivalent to Module
"A" in Lichtheim's "House"
Model (see Lichtheim, 1885). There are then three ways of
knowing how to spell the target word. Firstly, you can generate an associated set of auditory
word engrams in situ. Thus the words "see - ay - tee" spell
"cat", and would be easy to produce aloud (pathway 19-24) because
they would already be phonetically encoded. Such a response would, however,
need to be converted ("transcoded") into the equivalent graphemes
< c >, < a >, and < t > if being handwritten on paper
(pathway 7-8-9-14-27). Correct letter orientation is ensured by instructions
received from the non-dominant hemisphere (pathway 16-18), and totally
different motor programming would be required at (26) if the response were
being typed onto a keyboard (28). Secondly, you can activate an associated visual word image
(pathway 4-5). Again this could be used to produce either a spoken answer
(pathway 6-21-3-19-24), a handwritten answer (pathway 6-14-27), or a typed
answer (pathway 6-14-28). Thirdly, you can activate associated word meanings from the
Semantic Area (pathway 10-11). This is the equivalent of Lichtheim's
Module "B", and allows a contextually appropriate output to be
chosen (which would be the only way of doing the job if the stimulus
word were a homophone like "they're" / "their" /
"there"). Again this could be used to produce a spoken answer
(pathway 12-24), a handwritten answer (pathway 13-5-6-14-27), or a typewritten
answer (pathway 13-5-6-14-28). If this diagram fails to load
automatically, it may be accessed separately at |
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Redrawn from Roeltgen and Heilman (1985:210). "Component" numbering (1) - (21) from the original, (22) - (28) added. Brodmann's numbering and the typing option also added. This version Copyright © 2002, Derek J. Smith. |
References
Ogle, J.W. (1869). Aphasia and agraphia. Report of the MRC of St Georges
Hospital, London, 2:83-122.
Roeltgen, D.P. & Heilman, K.M.
(1985). Review of agraphia and a
proposal for an anatomically based neuropsychological model of writing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 6:205-230.
Smith, D.J. (1998).
Applied Cognitive Psychology. Cardiff: UWIC.
[ISBN: 1900666103]