摘要：Case studies of typical adults with brain injuries have demonstrated consistent lesion-site to cognitive deficitassociations, suggesting a modular organization of language, such that specific regions are required for specificcognitive functions. Findings from children with focal lesions, however, are more variable. Some investigationscorroborate a modular organization similar to the adult model such that children with left hemisphere damage showmore deficits on language tasks, and children with right hemisphere damage show more visuo-spatial deficits. Otherfindings from children with early focal lesions emphasize the role of development in forming the adult cognitivestructure, and do not predict a specific lesion-site to cognitive deficit mapping. Such results support aneuroconstructivist account and suggest that the modular structure observed in adults is not set early indevelopment, and thus deviant patterns of brain development may lead to largely typical language functioning. Thecontrasting results described may be partially due to differences in measurement. Results consistent with aneuroconstructivist framework are found more often with less restrictive language use measures, and findingssubstantiating a modular account tend to be identified using standardized language measures that probe isolatedlanguage components. We present a case study that includes both standardized and naturalistic language usemeasures, in tandem with quantitative morphological and diffusion measures acquired with magnetic resonanceimaging (MRI). Two school-aged females (aged 9;3 and 11;2) with non-overlapping perinatal focal lesions(encephalomalacia in left parietal lobe, affecting perisylvian regions, and right frontal porencephalic cyst,respectively) are compared to typically developing children (N = 20) aged 7-12. Since the two cases show nonoverlapping, non-homotopic lesions, any similarities in cognitive deficits would provide evidence for aneuroconstructivist view. On the other hand, disparate cognitive deficits between the two cases, and cognitivedeficits that mirror the adult model (i.e. more severe language deficits in the child with LHD), would substantiate amodular view of cognitive organization.
