DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 33
ter is to introduce these theoretical ideas, so far as is possible in a
2 D. A. Allport
Distributed memory, modular
subsystems and dysphasia
INTRODUCTION
I take it as self-evident that the dysphasias-acquired disorders of
language-are a class of memory disorder. Of course, this is not to
say that they are, primarily, impairments of 'episodic' memory, that
is, of memory for particular experiences or events; but they are
impairments, nonetheless, of memory, or memory-retrieval, for the
previously familiar patterns of language. Dysphasic memory
impairments are seen, for example, in the difficulty of retrieving
the spoken form of a word, given some specification of its meaning;
or in retrieving a meaning, given the spoken form; in recovering
the orthographic (written) form of a word, given its spoken form;
and so on.l Let us call the ability that is needed for such tasks and
which is evidently disturbed in dysphasic impairments 'language
memory', to distinguish it both from the more general (non-episodic
and non-linguistic) knowledge of the world-and from memory for
particular, experienced (non-linguistic) events or episodes, both of
which may be well preserved in many forms of dysphasia (Allport,
1983a).
If this is granted, that the dysphasias represent a class of memory
disorders, it must be equally evident that we shall need a theory of
memory retrieval and memory interference-a theory of the nature
and origin of confused or incomplete or inaccurate retrieval-as an
essential tool in the understanding of dysphasia. In spite of this,
there have been surprisingly few attempts to apply such theoretical
understanding as we have of the psychology of memory to the phe-
nomena of dysphasia.
Certain recent developments in the fundamental conception of
memory processes, and of their possible embodiment in physical
structures like the brain, now make this a more promising enter-
~rise than it has appeared hitherto. The key developments here are
m models of 'distributed' memory and of parallel-associative pro-
cesses of retrieval (Hinton & Anderson, 1981). My aim in this chap-
32
non-technical way, and to consider some of their implications for
our understanding of the nature of dysphasic difficulties. Before
doing so, however, it will be worthwhile, by way of contrast, to
consider the currently dominant approach in cognitive neuropsy-
chology to the understanding of language and language disorders,
namely the identification of isolable 'processing components'
(modular subsystems), and to review, briefly, the strengths and
limitations of this approach (Section I). In Section II I outline
various different levels of explanation, as applied to neuropsycho-
logical data. I shall then be in a position to introduce, in Section III,
some of the essential ideas of distributed memory in a way that, I
hope, may make them intuitively accessible to the non-mathemat-
ical reader. Finally, in Section IV, I consider how these ideas apply
to aspects of brain-injured, dysphasic performance and to what are,
or are not, valid neuropsychological 'components'.
1. NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL 'FUNCTIONAL
COMPONENTS' AND LEVELS OF DESCRIPTION
Despite the immense and rapidly growing quantity of information
available on the anatomy and physiology of the brain, we still know
almost nothing about the processes in the nervous system respon-
sible for language or other higher-level cognitive abilities. The
traditional aphasiological approach-the correlation of behavioural
deficit with anatomical lesion site-has yielded somewhat slender
dividends in terms of insights into the disordered processes. Mean-
while, independent of the neurosciences, the psychological inves-
tigation of normal cognitive abilities has developed in a number of
important ways. In the 'information-processing' approach to
cognitive psychology, or 'cognitive science' (Norman, 1981), a key
idea has been that the mechanisms of behaviour can be described
at an abstract, or process level, without any reference to the physical
or biological hardware involved, much as a computer program can
be written without explicit reference to the physical machine on
which it will run. In this tradition, information-processing models
of cognitive processes are often expressed in flow-chart form, that
is as blueprints for a set of computable processes, where the long-
term goal is the complete specification of these processes in a work-
ing computer program. (In the psychology of language, McClelland
& Rumelhart's (1981) model of written word recognition provides
an elegant, representative example of this kind of theory-building.)

34 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
If the flow-chart model is seen as a step towards formulating a
fully-specified, computable model, a still more preliminary step is
to try to identify the in-principle-separable components-the build-
ing blocks-of the system as a whole, components which may then
be studied and modelled in an intelligible way, at least partly in
isolation from the rest of the system. There is increasing support
for the view that the staggering complexity of human behaviour is
the product of interaction among many different, semi-independent
subsystems each performing a unique, specialist role in the overall
organization (e.g. Allport, 1977, 1980; Minsky, 1979; Fodor, 1983).
An analogy is often drawn with a 'society of experts', a large organ-
ization-the CIA provides a favourite example-in which differ-
ent units of the organization have different skills and are in
possession of different pieces of information; in which no single
member of the organization can possibly possess all the knowledge,
or all the expertise, contained in the organization as a whole. The
analogy between individual minds, and societies, has a number of
interesting features. For the present, the essential idea is that the
functional components of mind are, in general, special-purpose rather
than general-purpose elements in the working of the whole
system (Allport, 1980). If this general view is correct, then to char-
acterize in outline any of these separable subsystems-to discover
broadly what it does and with what other subsystems it communicates-
becomes an essential preliminary to constructing a detailed, infor-
mation-processing model of how that subsystem computes the
specialized functions that have been ascribed to it.
In the light of this preliminary but essential goal, the recent surge
of interest among cognitive psychologists in the phenomena of
dysphasia, and other behavioural consequences of brain injury, is
easily understood. Cognitive psychologists have come to recognize
the potential of the individual, neuropsychological case-study to
reveal dissociable behavioural deficits, and hence to provide clues
about the functional separability of the underlying component
mechanisms (e.g. Marin et aI, 1976; Patterson, 1981; Shallice,
1979). Equally ambitiously, it is hoped, selective impairment of
some components may permit a uniquely privileged view of the
working of the remaining, intact systems.
The most convincing defence of this research strategy is its ability
to produce consistent interpretations of dysphasic performance,
converging on the same functional components as can be inferred
from experiments using normal subjects. Much recent research,
particularly that concerned with the processing of written language,
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 3S
can claim to provide successful illustrations (e.g. Coltheart et aI,
1980; Patterson & Coltheart, 1984). A particularly influential exam-
ple, to which we shall need to return, is Morton's logogen n;t0del,
a model of normal lexical organization which has been apphed to
several varieties of dysphasic and dyslexic performance (e.g.
Morton, 1980; Ellis, 1982).
I share the enthusiasm and excitement over the 'modular subsys-
tems' approach. At the same time, it is important to recognize
certain potential limitations in its application to brain-injured
patients.
The strategy rests on two rather strong assumptions. The first
is that biological information-processing systems-human minds-
are indeed highly modular in organization, in the way suggested,
not only in their abstract or 'functional' organization but also, and
equivalently, in their anatomical embodiment, so that localized
anatomical lesions can selectively damage just one or a small
number of psychologically intelligible subsystems, leaving other
subsystems physically unimpaired. The second assumption is. that,
in this case, the ensuing behaviour reflects the normal operation of
the remaining, intact subsystems, minus the contribution ~f ~he
damaged components, without major compensating reorganIzation
on the part of the surviving components. This latter assumption,
in particular, appears threatened by the evident fact that, following
cerebral injury, at least some recovery of language, as of other
cognitive abilities, is almost always observed (cf. Newcombe and
Ratcliff, 1979; Finger and Stein, 1982). Indeed, this is surely the
aspect of dysphasia of principal interest to therapists, and to the
patients themselves. Yet contemporary analyses of language mech-
anisms at the level of 'separable functional components' (the box-and-
arrow notation of current cognitive neuropsychology) appear to
have nothing that they can say about it.
Functional components and cerebral lesions
There are, however, more serious problems at stake, all of which
reflect a mismatch with the level of description needed to accom-
modate the manifestations of brain injury in dysphasia. First, and
obviously threatening to this approach, Wood (1978, 1982) ~as
shown how in a distributed memory system, a clear 'double dls-
sociation' between behavioural deficits can be consistent with
complete overlap in the underlying representations. Of this subject,
however, more later. The inferred separable components (the
 36 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
'boxes' and 'arrows' of current information-processing models in
neuropsychology) are highly abstract entities, whose psychological
validity and interpretation, it is claimed (e.g. Morton, 1981), is
independent of any possible, physical implementation in the brain.
Applied to the behaviour of intact, normal subjects, this approach
seems reasonable enough. Directed towards the understanding of
the effects of neurological injury, it appears less obviously satisfac-
tory. What, specifically, might it mean to think of'lesioning' a compo-
nent in such an abstract, disembodied system?
It is, perhaps, straightforward enough to think of the simple dele-
tion of an entire component, a 'box' or an 'arrow', from such an
information-processing model. This option, however, lays itself
open to the objection raised by Freud (1891) against the earlier
'diagram makers', to the effect that theorizing in this form seems
to reflect dysphasic performance as though seen in silhouette, with-
out internal structure. For this level of analysis, the 'ideal' dysphasic
data should take the form of complete failure on one set of tasks,
normal (intact) performance on another set. In practice, such
complete functional dissociations are seldom, if ever, seen. On the
other hand, what is seen every day in the dysphasic clinic is reduced
efficiency of performance in one or more domains: slower and less
reliable word-finding; partial or incomplete retrieval of word-
meanings; increased confusability between similar items or similar
constructions; and so on and so on. How these all-too-familiar
phenomena of diminished, but not zero, performance within any
one processing domain are to be explained by theories at the level
of Independent Processing Components is far from obvious.
Of course, this is not to deny that focal head injury may result
in selective impairment of particular domains of language processing.
The point at issue is that, within anyone domain, the impairment is,
most commonly, partial-a general reduction of efficiency-not all-
or-none.
Another feature of the reduced efficiency of dysphasic perform-
ance deserves comment here. When the same tests designed to
probe receptive or expressive lexical knowledge are repeated over
a period, success on individual words typically fluctuates from one
occasion of testing to another, even though the overall test scores
may remain remarkably consistent. That is, particular classes of
words can be differentially affected, as a group, in a consistent way.
~o~~ver, what appears not to occur is the permanent loss of unique,
mdivldual written or spoken wordforms, leaving others in the same
class intact. The same applies to memory for other recurrent
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 37
patterns, such as faces or melodies. Whereas the recognition of
previously familiar faces can be impaired in general, what has never
been reported is an acquired, selective inability to recognize (say)
one's grandmother, while recognition of one's grandfather is
preserved. Brain lesions may have selective effects at the level of
whole processing components, but not, it appears, at the level of
individual words or objects in memory.
Clearly, none of the features of dysphasic performance that I have
mentioned show the analysis of psychological mechanisms in terms
of distinct, but interacting, subsystems to be in any sense wrong.
Far from it. They are, nonetheless, examples of very obvious and
general phenomena that theories, at that level of abstraction, simply
fail to engage at all. As I suggested earlier, if we are to get some
theoretical insight into them, we shall need to look for theories at
a different logical level of description.
II. LEVELS OF EXPLANATION
David Marr (1981) has put forward a theoretical framework for our
understanding of the processes of vision, a field in which infor-
mation-processing analysis is a long way ahead of the corresponding
research in language. In presenting this framework, and the prog-
ress within it so far achieved, Marr illustrates the point again and
again that, if one hopes to understand any complex information-
processing system, one will need different kinds of explanation at
several different levels of description, levels which may be, at first,
only very loosely linked. Some properties of a system's behaviour
will be most appropriately explained at one level, some at another.
To make matters harder, it is by no means always obvious in
advance which level of explanation will be the most appropriate,
or tractable, for any given, behavioural phenomenon.
Marr & Nishihara (1978) distinguished four levels of description.
To begin with, there is the analysis of basic components and their
local circuitry: how do transistors and diodes (neurons and synapses)
work? At another level -up, are questions about implementation:
how are assemblies of the basic components arranged to implement
particular mechanisms-the adders and multipliers of a pocket
calculator, for example? Most importantly, for our present purpose,
at this level arise questions about how the fundamental mechanisms
of memory-storage, comparison, retrieval-are implemented.
The third level is that of representation and algorithm, the level of
description at which most current work in artificial intelligence, and
38 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
much of cognitive psychology is aimed. Here the central questions
are: (a) what aspects of the information being handled by the system
are given explicit2 internal representation, so that they can be used
directly by a given process; (b) at what 'stage' in the system, i.e.
from which other representations, can they be obtained; and (c) how
(i.e. by what computable procedures) are they derived? Cognitive
psychologists have tended to concern themselves more with the first
two of these questions, with identifying distinct or common
(shared) codes of representation, and with mapping their channels
of intercommunication, than with specifying computable proce-
dures for transforming one code into another. Examples of ques-
tions of types (a) and (b) in the cognitive psychology of language
would include, for example, many currently live issues about the
organization of the mental lexicon. (For instance, in the perception
or production of speech, is there any level of explicit representation
of systematic phonemes? In written word-recognition, is there a
stage of representation of abstract letter-identities? If so, what other
stages or subsystems can read from (have inputs from) this particu-
lar code? Are there distinct lexical and non-lexical coding systems
by which a skilled reader can derive pronunciation from print?
Etc., etc.)
Finally, the top level of description contains the abstract theory
of the computation or process being performed, that is, the theory
in the broadest sense of what is being done, and why; and what are
the constraints provided by the world in which it operates that
make it possible? As regards language, the level of 'computational
theory' perhaps corresponds most nearly to that of abstract the-
oretical linguistics.
In terms of these four levels of analysis it is not immediately
obvious, to which level the cognitive neuropsychologists' 'function-
ally separable components', inferred from dissociable behavioural
deficits, should be assigned. Arguably, the most global of these
component distinctions, such as, for example, the distinction
between 'logogen system' in general and 'cognitive system', belong
properly to the level of the abstract 'computational' (linguistic?)
theory. Similarly, linguistic intuitions regarding the broad decom-
position of the language faculty into syntactic, semantic, phono-
logical (etc) domains, and which have claimed support from the
major categories of dysphasic impairment (e.g. Caramazza &
Berndt, 1978; Lesser, 1978), belong at this level. There is a parallel
here with Marr's use of neuropsychological dissociations in the
perception of three-dimensional objects (Taylor & Warrington,
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 39
1973) as the basis for certain fundamental choices, at the 'compu-
tational theory' level, about the overall organization of the visual
process (Marr, 1981).
Equally, it can be argued that the neuropsychologists' separable
functional components correspond-or at least ought to corre-
spond-one for one with distinct representation systems, i.e.
distinct attribute codes (e.g. Allport, 1980; Monsell, 1983). Hence
they belong to the next level of analysis, the level of 'representation
and algorithm'.
At either of these levels of analysis, however, we find little help
in understanding what it might mean to 'lesion' -to injure rather
than to eliminate-one of these abstract components. Where physi-
cal injury results not in the total abolition of some function (or
representational ability) but in a reduction of its scope and effi-
ciency-for example in diminished vocabulary, slower, unreliable
and errorful retrieval, etc.-then the box-and-arrow notation of
current functional-component models (e.g. Morton, Ch. 9) offers
no obvious way to accommodate these changes.
To understand these behavioural effects we need also to have a
model of functionally separable components at the (neural) imple-
mentation level. The principal aim of this paper is to motivate, and
to provide at least an introduction to such a model.
Even to suggest such an enterprise evokes responses of dismay,
even of abrupt dismissal, on the part of many cognitive psychol-
ogists. Clearly there is a yawning theoretical gulf here. On one side
of the gap there is a vigorous, even flourishing cognitive psychol-
ogy, applied to both normal and pathological language processes,
operating almost exclusively at Marr's third level (symbolic repre-
sentations). On the other side of the gap there are dramatic and
continuing advances in the neurosciences-, almost entirely at the
'basic components' level. Between these two, however, questions
at what Marr called the implementation level appear to have been
very largely ignored by those on either side3 •
In spite of this, if we are to press our question To which level
of description does the analysis of modular sub-systems or 'sepa-
rable functional components' properly belong? the correct answer
appears to be: All levels, down to and including that of fundamental
mechanism or 'implementation'. That is, the way in which psycho-
logical processes emerge from interactions among modular subsys-
tems has strong implications for, and is in turn illuminated by,
analysis at each of Marr's three levels of description-the top level,
computational (linguistic) theory, the level of symbolic represen-
40 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
tation and process, and at the level of physical implementation.
Indeed, it is because questions about the modular decomposition of
the mind/brain arise at each of these levels, and because their solu-
tions have important implications for other questions at each level,
that the identification of modular subsystems represents such a
primary and essential goal for the sciences of cognition-theoretical
and computational linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuropsychol-
ogy-and for the understanding of language pathology.
III. DISTRIBUTED ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY
Semantic nets and neural nets
A widely accepted notation for representing the structure of lexical
and semantic knowledge, adopted both in psychology and in
computer science, takes the form of a 'semantic net'-a network of
concept nodes and labelled, directed relational links (e.g. Collins
& Loftus, 1975). Most discussions of semantic nets are confined to
the abstract level of 'representation and algorithm', without refer-
ence to their possible embodiments in (neuronal) hardware. Iri
neuropsychology and the study of dysphasia, however, if we are to
understand the disorders of lexical and semantic memory that result
from physical injury we shall undoubtedly need an explicit theory
of the relationship between the abstract representation level and the
level of its physical implementation.
One obvious possibility is to suppose that different concept nodes
in a semantic network correspond to different physical elements in
the hardware (neurons, cell-assemblies, etc.), and that the relational
links between concepts (and between concepts and word-forms)
similarly correspond to particular physical linkages. Evidently, this
is a possibility that many people take quite seriously, both in
neurophysiology (e.g. Barlow, 1972) and, mutatis mutandis, in arti-
ficial intelligence (e.g. Fahlman, 1979). However, it is not the only
one. Another possibility is that each 'concept node' corresponds not
to a distinct part, or component, of the hardware but to a particular
pattern of activity in it. Different concept nodes, in this sort of
~plementation, can be represented by different patterns of activity
m the same set of physical units, the same network. That is, the
representation of concepts is 'distributed'.
Distributed memory
To get a better idea of what this might mean, consider the following
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 41
simplified example, for which I am indebted-as throughout this
section-to Hinton (1981). Imagine a network of simple hardware
elements (switches) and their physical interconnections, as illus-
trated in Figure 2.la. Each element has two possible activity states,
either 'on' or 'off, which can be represented symbolically by a 1 or
a O. Figure 2.1b shows a sequence of activity states of five hard-
ware elements, resulting from an initial input and mutual interac-
tions within the network.
As I have already emphasized, the same physical system can be
described at more than one level of analysis. Thus, the behaviour
of our hypothetical network could be described either in terms of
the activities of the individual hardware elements (as in Figure
1.1 b) or, alternatively, at a higher level, in terms of the activity of
the network as a whole. That is, recurring patterns of activity across
all five elements now become the units of analysis, the basic descrip-
tive elements to which particular names could be assigned. In this
way, Figure 2.1c depicts the sequential relationships between
patterns of activity of the hardware elements in Figure 2.1a. It is
important to see that, while the diagrams in Figures 2.1a and 2.k
are superficially similar, their interpretation is radically different.
In Figure 2.1a the nodes represent physically distinct parts of the
machine; arrows represent individual hardware connections; and
many different nodes can be 'on' at the same time, In Figure 2.1c
none of these things are true. Here the nodes stand for mutually
exclusive states of the network as a whole; the arrows represent
possible transitions between these states.
Diagrams 2.1a and 2.1c both describe the same physical system,
but in diagram 2.1c the descriptive elements stand for distributed
states; there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between these
elements and particular physical parts of the network.
This illustration of Hinton's makes a good starting-point for
understanding the idea of 'distributed' memory. In that example,
however, a whole lot of important questions were (temporarily)
sidestepped. To begin with, one might ask, in what sense should
any partiCUlar pattern of activity in the network be treated as a
'unit', rather than the merely accidental co-occurence of activities
among its constituent hardware elements? In Figure 2.1c, the
arrows assert something about the sequential constraints among
particular activity states, i.e. they refer to the (past or future) history
of the network. 'Units', in this notation, are thus activity-patterns
that stably recur in the system's history. If the network is to act
as a memory, we want it to distinguish patterns or events that are
42 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 43

already familiar (Le. that stably recur), and thus can have potential
significance, from unknown or arbitrary configurations. Our intitial
question thus gives rise to two, more specific questions:
1. How might such a network be arranged so that each of a number
of different activity-patterns can be stably reinstated at different
times?
2. How might new, reinstatable activity-patterns (new 'units') be
learnt?
To begin to answer these questions, imagine now a network of
hardware elements, in which every element is connected to every
other, including itself, as in Figure 2.2a. Assume also that each
element can be active in a graded amount, rather than simply 'on'
or 'off'. Each interconnection transmits excitation (inhibition) from
one element to another, with a given positive (negative) weighting,
or 'strength' of transmission. The same weightings can be shown
also in the form of a matric of interconnections, as in Figure 2.2b.
(Naturally for any psychologically plausible application to human
time -> memory we shall need to think about a matrix of many more than
just four elements.)
wi 00 00 00 00 <::> <::> <::>
Most of the suggestions about learning within such a matrix of
DI~ 00 00 00 <::> 00
interconnected active elements are variants of an idea put forward
ul = 00
= C>
= 00
originally by Hebb (1949). The idea is that the strength of connec-
001 00 00 00 00 tivity between any two elements (neurons) changes as a function of
<I ~ 00 00 00 00 the amount of concurrent ('pre- and post-synaptic') activity in that
pair of elements. For example in Anderson's (1977) matrix memory
model, the basic learning assumption is that the weightings of each
interconnection are changed in proportion to the product of the

receiving units
A B ( 0
A aa ab ac ad
Source ba bb be bd
B
units
( ca cb cc cd
0 da db de dd
(a)

(bl
Fig. 2.2 (a) A completely interconnected network of physical elements. (b) The
same system shown as a matrix of interconnections. Each interconnection may
have a different variable weighting.
44 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
activity level in each of the corresponding pairs of source and
receiving units. If the inputs to such a system cause the same
pattern of activity to occur repeatedly, the set of active elements
constituting that pattern will become increasingly strongly inter-
associated. That is, each element will tend to turn on every other
element in the inter-associated pattern and (with negative weights)
to turn off the elements that do not form a part of the pattern. To
put it another way, the pattern as a whole will become 'auto-
associated' -it will come to cause itself as its own successor. It thus
becomes a (one of a set of) stable states of the system. We may call
a learned (auto-associated) pattern an 'engram'.
The establishment of an auto-associated pattern will have a
number of interesting consequences.
1. Stability
Once evoked, a learned pattern-but not an unlearned one-will
tend to maintain itself.
2. Part-to-whole retrieval
The activation of only some elements of the learned pattern will
tend to evoke each of the remaining elements of that pattern, since
all of its missing elements receive positive connections from each
of the elements already present, while currently active elements that
are not part of the learned pattern are inhibited. As more of the
missing elements are activated, they also begin to assist the recruit-
ment of the remainder of the auto-associated pattern, until the
network settles into the completed pattern. Some dramatic illustra-
tions of this auto-associative forcing of missing pattern-parts are
given by Kohonen (1977; Kohonen et aI, 1981).
3. Retrieval dynamics
The process of reinstatement of the complete learned pattern is thus
extended over time. Where the input is related, in some degree, to
several different engrams (see below), the network will take longer
to 'settle' into one, stable pattern of activity. Ratcliff (1978) has
put forward a mathematical model of memory retrieval dynamics
that is formally equivalent, in several important respects, to that
of Anderson (1977), and which provides an impressive fit to a range
of experimental data on memory retrieval times.
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 4S
4. Categorical perception and 'capture'
Input patterns that are similar to (i.e. that share many elements
with) a strongly auto-associated pattern, but which are not them-
selves already-learned patterns, or are less strongly learned, will
tend to recruit the more strongly learned pattern and thus be
replaced by it. That is, they get 'captured' by the stronger pattern.
With some quite reasonable assumptions about feedback within
such a system, and a maximum and minimum (zero) activity level
in individual elements, it can be shown that such systems will tend
to settle into stable, learned activity-patterns in which some units
are maximally active while the remainder are not responding at all
(Anderson, 1977). In effect, that is, such systems will tend to
exhibit a strong form of 'categorical perception'.
5. Many engrams
Suppose, now, that the input forces a different activity-pattern in
the same population of interconnected elements. If this pattern
recurs, or is sustained, it too will come to be auto-associated.
However, the-at first sight-really surprising feature of matrix
memories of this kind is that the learning of this new pattern need
not disturb the memory for (i.e. the recoverability of) the previ-
ously learned pattern, even though both patterns are stored in the
same matrix of interconnections. So long as the different patterns
are orthogonal-that is, so long as they are not correlated with one
another-then many different patterns (engrams) can be literally
superimposed on the same matrix of interconnected elements, with-
out mutual inteference. 4 The requirement for interference-free
recovery of stored patterns, that the different patterns should be
uncorrelated, is intuitively obvious when it is appreciated that the
process of retrieval of any stored pattern is essentially a process of
correlating a given input-vector (a 'retrieval cue') against the matrix
as a wholes. To the extent that the retrieval pattern correlates
with-overlaps with, resembles-more than one engram that has
been stored in the matrix, retrieval will inevitably be distorted by,
or suffer 'interference' from these other, related patterns.
The same principles apply to associations between activity-
patterns in different sets of hardware elements. Imagine that the
group of elements, <x, in Figure 2.3, is completely connected to a
second group of elements, ~: every element in the first group is
connected to every element in the second group. Suppose further,
-- 46 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 47

MATRIX OF tunable filter, responding only to learned ('tuned') input patterns.

INTERCONNECTIONS The response of the system to a novel input-pattern, i.e. one
completely unrelated (orthogonal) to any previously stored pattern,

I
o will be damped to zero. Similarly, an orthogonal activity-pattern in
the elements of (X that has not been associated with an activity-
U
N pattern in another set of elements, {3, will give rise to zero activity
T in {3. That is, a novel input will not be 'seen' by higher levels of
P P the system until it is learned. This must have the result, as Ander-
U U son points out, that such a system will be agonizingly difficult to
T T teach. Once some learned patterns are established, however, further
associative learning can be increasingly rapid, the larger-or more
multi-dimensional-are the already learned patterns involved. For
SET OF the same reasons, initial biases in the network will have a profound
SET OF
influence on later learning (cf. Edelman, 1981).
ELEMENTS ex ELEMENTS
Fig. 2.3 Two groups of physical elements, a: and ~, representing two different f Some properties of distributed, matrix memories
domains of attributes (after Anderson, 1977). Every element in a: projects to every !
element in ~. Every element in ~ receives an input from every element in a:. The foregoing is intended to give an entirely informal and intuitive
introduction to the basic ideas of distributed representation and
matrix memory systems. The theory of distributed representation
that whenever the activity-pattern A is excited by inputs to (x, other
has been developed over the past dozen years or so by a number
inputs ('forcing' inputs) excite the activity-pattern B in the second
of people, notably, with application to the psychol~gy ~f memory,
set of elements, {3. (For a discussion of the role of 'forcing stimuli'
by James Anderson and his colleagues at Brown Uruverslty (Ander-
in associative learning see Kohonen et aI, 1981.) As before, our
son, 1973, 1977), and by Kohonen in Helsinki (Kohonen, 1~77;
assumption is that the strength of each interconnection is changed
Kohonen et aI, 1981). Hinton & Anderson (1981) have compiled
as a function of the product of the activity in each interconnected
an outstanding collection of papers on distributed memory models
pair of elements in (X and {3, respectively. Now, after this learning
by many different authors including themselves, and the interested
has occurred, whenever pattern A recurs in the elements of (x,
reader is very strongly advised to consult this collection for a fuller
pattern B will be reinstated in the elements of {3. Again, many
and, of course, more technical introduction. It should be empha-
different associations between different activity-patterns in (X and
sized that the presentation here has been kept to some of the ~ost
{3 can be stored within the same matrix of interconnections; and
basic, qualitative features of parallel, distribute~ represent~t~~n.
again, of course, the same limitations will be observed due to inter-
Almost nothing has been said about the computauonal capab1l1ues
ference from similar, or related, patterns and their stored associ-
of such parallel, network systems, which have in fact begun to be
ations. The effective 'strength' or recoverability of an engram will
used extensively in modelling the complex processes of human
be a joint function of (1) the strength of auto-association among the
vision (Ballard et al, 1983). Their application to theories of higher
elements of the stored pattern, and (2) the strength of association
mental function is also being actively explored (Fahlman et aI,
between the retrieval cue and the to-be-recovered engram, relative
1983).
to its overlapping associations with all other stored engrams-in
Even with the very informal account to which we have confined
other words its distinctiveness or 'uniqueness' as a retrieval cue
ourselves here, however, a number of the important properties of
(cf. Cermak & Craik, 1979).
such distributed memory systems should be apparent.
As Anderson and others have frequently pointed out, memory
First, 'retrieval' is not a matter of fetching information from
in this kind of system is, formally as well as intuitively, a form of
some storage location and transferring or copying it into another
48 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
location where it can be 'read', as it is in almost all other kinds of
conventional memory-systems, from current general-purpose
computers to libraries. Retrieval, in a distributed, matrix memory
consists in the re-activation of a specific activity pattern in a
specific-i.e. code-specific or content-specific-subset of elements.
The activation of that pattern, in that set of elements, can give rise
in turn to the activation of an associated pattern, in a different set
of elements, and so on. The essential character of the information-
processing that occurs in such a system thus consists in 'mapping'
or transcoding patterns of activity from one set of elements to
another. Radically unlike other kinds of memory, however, there
is no distinction between the 'processor' that operates on the avail-
able information and the 'store' in which it is held. The memory
is not a passive container, in which, in principle, any information-
content can be placed, but an active, content-specific pattern-recog-
nizer and pattern-transcoder.
Second, among any set of engrams or learned patterns that have
been superimposed on the same population of hardware elements,
only one can be fully retrieved-re-activated-at a time. That is to
say, within anyone set (or 'domain') of pattern-feature elements,
a distributed memory system must be 'single-channel' in operation.
In order that one pattern can be fully realized, other, potentially
competing patterns on the same set of elements must be
suppressed.
Third, learning is automatically generalized to new input patterns
in proportion to their resemblance (correlation) to patterns already
learned, a property of the very greatest importance in dealing with
a world in which events seldom, if ever, recur exactly as before; a
property, also, that appears to be omnipresent in biological
memories, and whose absence is perhaps the single most severe
limitation on the use or recovery of information from large-scale
conventional (man-made) memory systems. (The latter, in default
of true similarity-based content-addressing abilities, must fall back
on elaborate methods of indexing and searching to locate the
desired information, such as the pattern-matching and back-tracking
procedures of list processing languages, that have formed the
indispensable apparatus of contemporary Artificial Intelligence.) In
distributed, matrix memories the 'interference' resulting from
similarity among stored patterns is the price that is paid for the
enormous advantage of automatic transfer of learning to similar but
novel configurations.
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 49
Fourth, matrix memory systems automatically respond to the
common elements, or prototypes, from a set of related, learned
instances where the 'prototype' is the pattern having the highest
correlati~n with (sharing the largest number of microfeatures with)
the entire set of instances, even though the prototype pattern itself
was never previously encountered-a property that is evidently
possessed by biological, human memory (e.g. Posner & Keele,
1970', Sol so & McCarthy, 1981). To put the same point. ,in a slightly
different way, matrix memory systems extract 'semantlc memory-
in the sense of the long-term-invariant or common features and
relationships of many encoded events and their associations-as a?
automatic by-product of the encoding of particular, related, 'epl-
sodic' instances. However, there is no explicit encoding of these
common features and relations distinct from the encoding of each
particular instance. 'Episodic' and 'se~antic: me~ory (Tulving,
1983) are thus not separate 'components ~f mmd: It ~ho~d ?ot ~
possible to lose 'semantic' memory while preservmg eplsodiC
memory for the same classes of encoded ,events;, thoug~ t~e
converse, one-way dissociation-failure to retneve umque, eplsodlc
'context' information-may occur (Kinsbourne & Wood, 1982),
IV. NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL 'FUNCTIONAL
COMPONENTS', DISTRIBUTED MEMORY AND
DYSPHASIA
Word forms and word-meanings
Can we now identify, in terms of these ideas about distri~uted,
matrix memory systems, what would count as the separable func-
tional components' of neuropsychology (Section I). We know from
a very wide range of neurophysiological research, (C?wey, 1981;
Mountcastle, 1978) that individual neural elements m dlfferent loc~l
regions of brain are responsive to differe~t cla~ses of senso,ry at:n-
butes: in vision, to colour, movement, onentatlOn, stereo dispanty,
and so on; in hearing, to pitch, glide, duration, etc., etc .. , . ~ore­
over in some regions individual units are found to be selectively
resp~nsive to highly complex configurnations, such as faces
(Perrett et aI, 1982). Let us call the class of attri~utes encod~d by
each of these sets of specialist elements an attnbute domam. It
appears very natural, then, to propose that the neu~opsychologists'
separable 'functional components', identified behavwurally through
50 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
doubly-dissociable deficits in performance, correspond to sets of
auto-associated patterns, or engrams, defined over a common population
of feature-elements, hence over the same attribute domain. Different
attribute domains, different 'components'.
Consider the store of spoken word-forms as one such hypothetical
component (Allport & Funnell, 1981). It seems reasonable to
assume a representational domain in which the individual elements
are responsive to acoustic spectra and to the temporal modulation
of sound patterns (Kay, 1982). Possibly, we may need to envisage
also a more abstract attribute domain, in which the elements encode
phonetic or even phonemic properties, though the evidence does
not seem particularly to favour it (Klatt, 1979). A neural dictionary
of spoken word-forms might then be realized as a set of auto-
associated patterns superimposed on the same acoustic (or phonetic)
attribute domain, hence on the same population of feature elements,
the same neuronal network. In a system of this kind, individual
word-units, therefore, could not be identified with particular sets
of neural elements; on the contrary, the entire vocabulary of spoken
word-forms would be physically superimposed on the same neural
network.
An immediate consequence of this kind of distributed represen-
tation is that physical injury should not result in the loss of par-
ticular word-forms while others remained unimpaired. Rather we
should expect the destruction of any proportion of the neural
network underlying the vocabulary of spoken word-forms to have
the effect of reducing the discriminability of many or all these
learned patterns; the larger the lesion, the greater the effect. Wood
(1978, 1981) has constructed a simulation model, based on Ander-
son's matrix memory ideas, which exhibits precisely these proper-
ties of local 'mass-action': decreasing overall retrieval accuracy as
increasing numbers of elements in the matrix are disabled. Further,
the failure or inaccuracy of retrieval should be most apparent in
respect of those word-forms (or other engrams) that are least strong-
ly auto-associated; thus, uncommon words will be more impaired
than those that have been encountered often (or also, perhaps, more
recently). Moreover, the errors in retrieval will take the form of
increased confusability among acoustically (or phonetically) similar
word-forms, including the 'capture' of less familiar words by their
stronger neighbours within the attribute-space. Finally, since the
word-units in such a system exist only as sequential compositions
of (acoustic/phonetic) feature-elements, it must follow that degra-
dation of information at the word level should always be accom-
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 51
panied by loss of discriminability at the sub-lexical feature level.
My contention is that all of these properties are precisely to be
found in dysphasic, lexical impairment.
_ Slower, less distinctive (errorful) retrieval or recognition of
spoken word-forms.
_ In word-finding, incomplete and/or misordered retrieval in the
form of phonemic paraphasias.
_ Capture of less familiar word-forms by their acoustic neigh-
bours, both in production, as in so-called 'verbal paraphasias'
(malapropisms), and in recognition (Allport, 1983b, c).
_ Impairment of spoken word-forms in perception and production
appears to be associated with impaired discrimination of speech
sounds at a sub-lexical level (e.g. Allport, 1983c). The discovery
of even a single case in which the word-form store was clearly
impaired, without any corresponding sub-lexical impairment,
would threaten one of the central assumptions put forward here,
about lexical (word-form) representation.
_ Finally, what (I maintain) is not observed is the permanent loss
of particular spoken word-forms, leaving their acoustic neigh-
bours available and unimpaired. Again, the unambiguous
demonstration of even one such case would be sufficient to
falsify the model. (Note: Wood (1981) has shown how the
retrieval of particular engrams may be selectively impaired, even
in a fully distributed memory; this can occur if two, nearly iden-
tical engrams differ from one another only by a few microfea-
tures-all of which have been lesioned-and if no other engrams
are critically dependent for their differentiation on the same
microfeatures. Clearly this type of effect in no way alters the
statement, above, nor its openness to empirical falsification.)
Written word-forms
The immediately preceding discussion has been in terms of a store
of spoken word-forms, as one possible example of a neuropsycho-
logically dissociable, functional component. A similar case can be
made in respect of a store of written word-forms. Allport & Funnell
(1981) reviewed a variety of evidence for the independence of these
two functional components, which they referred to, respectively,
as the phonological and the orthographic lexicon. Each one of the
empirical consequences, listed above, of injury to the phonological
lexicon, based on our assumptions regarding distributed represen-
tation, can be re-stated, mutatis mutandis, as consequences of injury
52 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 53

to the orthographic lexicon. Here, of course, the increased confus- in coding, say, the characteristic sounds of one particular object
ability in retrieval will be in terms of orthographic (letter by letter) (a telephone) will participate also in many other auto-associated
similarity. Again, according to the model of distributed represen- patterns representing other objects or events. Figure 2.4 gives a
tation advocated here, there are no orthographic word-units very rough sketch of the idea here, though the diagram fails to
physically distinct from the representations of (positional) letter- capture the hierarchical nature of object-concepts.
identities of which they are composed. The model, therefore,
predicts that impairment of the (receptive-expressive) orthographic attribute- domains
lexicon should be invariably accompanied by increased confusabil-
ity among (non-lexical) letter identities, and/or, perhaps, letter-
positions.
Most importantly, if this model is correct, what should never be
observed is the selective, permanent loss of orthographic knowledge
regarding any individual written word, while its orthographic
neighbours-sharing many of the same letters, in the same (approxi-
mate) relative positions-are unimpaired.

Word-meanings and object concepts

I assume that the distributed engrams representing particular word-
forms in the phonological and orthographic lexicons are associ-
atively linked with other auto-associated patterns representing
non linguistic word-meanings ('semantic memory'). For simplicity, let
us confine the discussion here to the representation of relatively
simple object-concepts. Following the general conception of distrib-
uted memory that I have put forward here, I shall further assume
that the auto-associated patterns representing physical objects are
distributed across a very wide range of attribute domains, encompassing
every class of sensory and motor (action-related) attributes pertain-
ing to the particular object-concept. The object-concept of tele-
phone, for example, must involve the convolution not only of many
different complex properties of shape, surface texture, size and so
forth that are codable in visual and tactile attribute domains, but
also properties specific to auditory and to action-coding domains of
representation, including manipulation and speech. Indeed, the full
object-concept for teiepmme, as for any other functional artefact,
must presumably embody a specification of the complete 'scripted'
routine of interactions with the object. The engrams specifying
complex action-routines-when and what to pick up, how to hold
it, etc., etc.-will no doubt share many of the (auto-associated) sub-
patterns, of which they are composed, with a vast number of other
learned action-routines that likewise involve grasping, picking up,
etc. Similarly in the sensory domains, the same elements involved
\\
--
Fig. 2.4 Schematic diagram to illustrate how object concepts might be
represented as auto-associated activity patterns (dotted outlines) distributed across
many different sensory and motor attribute domains. Spoken and written word-
forms are similarly represented as auto-associated patterns within their
corresponding ('phonological'/'orthographic') attribute domains. Mappings
between word-forms and word-meanings are embodied as distributed matrices of
interconnections between attribute domains.
The essential idea is that the same neural elements that are
involved in coding the sensory attributes of a (possibly unknown)
object presented to eye or hand or ear also make up the elements
of the auto-associated activity-patterns that represent familiar
object-concepts in 'semantic memory'. This model is, of course, in
radical opposition to the view, apparently held by many psychol-
ogists, that 'semantic memory' is represented in some abstract,
modality-independent, 'conceptual' domain remote from the mech-
anisms of perception and of motor organization.
54 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
Again, if we consider the possible effects of physical injury to
such a system, some consequences are immediately apparent:
- Since object-concepts are typically distributed over many differ-
ent attribute domains and hence, generally, over widely
dispersed brain regions, they will appear to be less vulnerable
to local brain injury than (for example) word-forms in the phono-
logical lexicon that are defined over only one-or very few-
attribute domains. Only very diffuse or widespread injury, as
in severe degenerative disease or toxicosis, is liable to result in
the clinically evident loss of entire classes of object-concept (e.g.
Warrington, 1975).
- Concepts defined over relatively few attribute domains-purely
visual objects, for example, such as clouds or colours-will be
more vulnerable to local cerebral injury (Gardner, 1973).
- Disorders of object-concepts could result either from degrada-
tion of the auto-associative linkages that bond components of the
engram together as a unit, or from more local injury to particu-
lar attribute domains. In the latter case, the loss of particular
attribute information in semantic memory should be accom-
panied by a corresponding perceptual (agnosic) deficit.
- It is important to distinguish loss or degradation within the
object-representations from the functional disconnection of
object-concepts and their corresponding spoken or written
word-forms. The associative links between word-forms and
object-concepts, embodied as a distributed matrix of intercon-
nections, will possess the same properties of graceful degrada-
tion (or 'mass action') as the engrams that they link. Effects of
this kind, resulting from partial disconnections between attrib-
ute domains (and relating to anomie and other dysphasic
syndromes), have been demonstrated by Gordon (1981) in a
simulation study of distributed representation. Since the associ-
ative mappings in each direction are distributed over quite
different populations of links 'synapses', the functional discon-
nections can of course be unidirectional (cf. Allport & Funnell,
1981).
The theory of distributed, associative memory has many funda-
mental implications for our understanding of neuropsychological
impairments, only a few of which have been even touched on here.
In particular, I have tried to suggest how these ideas may be
mapped onto neuropsychological conceptions of separable 'func-
tional components'. I conclude, now, with an illustration of how
the same theoretical orientation may help to clarify what perhaps
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 55
should not be considered as a functionally independent component.
Other examples could be given, but one must suffice.
Auditory-verbal short-term memory
I began by claiming that the dysphasias were, self-evidently, a kind
of memory disorder. (I hope that, by now, the sense in which this
claim was intended is sufficiently clear.) However, in the more
familiar sense of 'memory' as recall or recognition of particular
events, people, places-that is, episodic memory-there is little to
suggest that dysphasic patients have any necessarily accompanying
impairments of this kind. With one exception. This is in the
immediate, auditory-vocal repetition of spoken sequences: what
used to be called 'immediate memory span' (Miller, 1956). It is a
commonplace that virtually all dysphasic patients-certainly all
those whom it would be appropriate to classify as having impair-
ments of the phonological lexicon-have a greatly reduced span of
immediate repetition (e.g. Albert, 1976; Heilman et aI, 1976). The
majority of healthy adults can repeat back a sequence such as a
seven-digit telephone number, without error. For many dysphasic
patients the span is of three digits, or less.
Up to the early 1970s at least, it was thought appropriate to
attribute the (normal) immediate repetition span, or a large part of
it, to the capacity of a central short-term store (STS) that was either
(opinions differed) modality independent or in some way specialized
for spoken language (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971; Crowder, 1976).
Thus it was very natural for Shallice and Warrington (1970, 1977;
Warrington & Shallice, 1969) to represent STS as a separable 'func-
tional component', in the neuropsychological sense, and to suggest
that deficits in 'span' could be due to specific impairment of this
hypothetical, functional component, which they referred to as
'auditory-verbal short-term memory'. However, there are several
reasons why their hypothesis, formulated in this way, may be a
mistake.
First, the once-popular distinction between long-term and short-
term stores (even attribute-specific stores) as functionally separable
components has come under increasingly severe criticism. It is
probably fair to say that there is now no really convincing evidence
in favour of such a distinction, and much that is contrary (e.g. Hunt
& Elliott, 1980; Glenberg & Kraus, 1981; for extensive discussion
of this issue see Cermak & Craik, 1979).
Second, as is well known, serial 'span' in normal subjects is
56 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
massively affected by the acoustic similarity among the words in the
sequence. 'Bat, hat, rat, gnat, vat, cat' is harder to remember than
'bat, hood, shrew, midge, jar, dog'. Moreover, in normal as well
as in dysphasic subjects, span depends not only on the sounds of
the syllables but on their lexical familiarity and their meaningful-
ness. Thus, the typical span of seven digits drops to around five
common words, and to only about two or three nonsense-syllables;
sequences of common words result in a longer span than rare
words; names of concrete objects have a longer span than abstract
words (Brener, 1940).
All of these behavioural characteristics suggest that a mechanism
having the properties of the phonological lexicon is intimately
involved in-or, indeed, is the functional component responsible
for-repetition span. If this suggestion is correct, it would, of
course, follow that all those dysphasic patients who show impair-
ment of the phonological lexicon should also exhibit a reduced
auditory-verbal repetition span. The available evidence (current-
ly quite limited) suggests that they do (Allport, 1983b). If, on the
contrary, auditory-verbal short-term memory and the phonological
lexicon were functionally independent subsystems, there is no
obvious or compelling reason why these impairments should in fact
co-occur.
In the model I have put forward here, lesion of the phonological
lexicon must result in the reduced distinctiveness of the 'phono-
logical' attribute domain. Consequently, for all such patients,
spoken word-lists are more acoustically (phonologically) similar.
For the same reason, as the dimensionality of the attribute-space
is reduced, so will be the strength of all those auto-associated
patterns (word-forms) that are defined over it. The effect will be
that, for such patients, previously familiar words behave more like
uncommon words or even like nonsense-syllables; their stability and
recoverability is diminished. In the simplest kind of matrix model
of list memory (Murdock, 1979), the signal-to-noise ratio (d') for
item information is equal to kin, where k is the number of dimen-
sions or 'feature elements' in the attribute domain and n is the
number of items in the list. For a given d', the smaller (more
severely lesioned) the attribute-space, the fewer the list-items that
can be recalled. (Order information will show similar effects. The
coding of temporal sequence in distributed memory is briefly
discussed by Murdock, 1979, and by Kohonen et al, 1981.)
Traditionally, in psychology, the mechanisms of perception and
of memory have been studied in rather separate compartments. In
contrast, the way of thinking inspired by the conception of distrib-
DISTRIBUTED MEMORY, MODULAR SUBSYSTEMS AND DYSPHASIA 57
uted associative memory strongly discourages any such separation.
The case of auditory-verbal short-term memory perhaps provides
one example.
Concluding remarks
Few would claim that the currently available systems of classifying
dysphasic impairments are wholly adequate; still less that the
theoretical framework underlying such classification, and in terms
of which these impairments are to be understood-and remedi-
ated-is satisfactory; or even that there is a coherent theoretical
framework at all. The traditional objective, of assigning dysphasic
patients to one or another of a set of mutually exclusive categories,
in practice results in most patients being categorized-if one is
honest-as 'mixed', a category that is of singularly little use either
as regards decisions about, or evaluation of, therapy.
In contrast, the 'modular subsystems' approach adopted increas-
ingly by cognitive neuropsychologists, where it has been system-
atically applied, has shown the ability to provide not only a coherent
descriptive classification of impairments but to offer genuinely new
insights into the functional/causal relationships between them (e.g.
Patterson & Coltheart, 1984). Where the modular subsystems
approach, on its own, fails to provide insight, on the contrary, is
in the most commonplace character of dysphasic (and other neuro-
psychological) impairment: the so-called 'graceful degradation' of
performance, whereby particular linguistic functions are impover-
ished, slowed, subject to increased equivocation and error, rather
than simple, all-or-none loss of function.
Distributed associative memory provides a potential account of
these phenomena, as well as of many other fundamental properties
of normal memory retrieval. The claim of this paper is that these
two theoretical approaches precisely and necessarily complement
each other. We need to work on them both.
Since the potential of these approaches has, as yet, only begun
to be exploited, the future, for cognitive neuropsychology, of their
combined application is still wide open. The prospect, however,
looks encouraging.
FOOTNOTES
1. These examples are all lexical (Allport & Funnell, 1981). Acquired
disorders in other aspects of language-syntax, prosody) semantics-can similarly
be thought of as disorders of memory retrieval.
58 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES IN DYSPHASIA
2. In a representation such as a topographic map, for example, local contours
are shown explicitly, whereas (say) the visibility of one point from another is only
implicit in the representation: it must be derived by a further process of
inference. For further discussion on this and related issues of representation and
process, see Marr (1981), Chapter 1; Palmer (1978).
3. With notable exceptions, of course, including, e.g. Edelman &
Mountcastle, 1978; Schmitt et ai, 1981; Hinton & Anderson, 1981.
4. The number of completely orthogonal (unrelated) patterns that can be
represented within a matrix is, of course, limited by the dimensionality-the
number of independent elements-in the matrix. For discussion of capacity
limitation in linear and non-linear matrix memories, see Willshaw, 1981.
5. Strictly, in simple matrix-memories, taking the dot-product. For a helpful
introduction see Murdock, 1979; elementary matrix algebra required.
6. There may well be impairments in still lower-level auditory (or
articulatory) attribute domains that need not be accompanied by impairments at
the word-form level.
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61