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Hwang J, Lee SJ, Sung JE. Eye-movement reveals word order effects on comparative sentences in older adults using a verb-final language. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1335536. [PMID: 38596326 PMCID: PMC11002905 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1335536] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2023] [Accepted: 03/06/2024] [Indexed: 04/11/2024] Open
Abstract
Objectives This study aimed to examine age-related differences in the comprehension of Korean comparative sentences with varying word orders by employing both offline and online measures, and to investigate how variations in word order affect sentence processing across different age groups. Methods A total of 52 monolingual native Korean speakers, 26 young adults, and 26 older adults, completed a sentence-picture-matching task under two word order conditions: comparative-first and nominative-first. Offline measures included accuracy and response time, while an online method involved eye-tracking within the Visual World Paradigm. Data analyses were performed using linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results Older adults demonstrated lower accuracy and longer response times compared to younger individuals. Distinctive fixation patterns were observed, particularly in the sentential-final phrase, across different age groups. Specifically, nominative-first sentences elicited greater target advantage scores among younger adults, whereas older adults showed higher scores in comparative-first sentences. Conclusion The study highlights the potential of comparative sentences in elucidating age-related changes in sentence comprehension. These differences were evident not only in offline tasks but also in real-time processing, as evidenced by eye-tracking data. The findings suggest distinct processing strategies employed by young and older adults and underscore the importance of considering both syntactic and semantic cues in sentence comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jihyun Hwang
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Seunghun J. Lee
- Department of Psychology and Linguistics, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
- Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, India
| | - Jee Eun Sung
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Barbieri E, Alessio V, Zanobio E, Scola I, Luzzatti C, Thompson CK. Assessment of verb and sentence processing deficits in stroke-induced aphasia: the Italian version of the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS-I). APHASIOLOGY 2023; 38:510-543. [PMID: 38694546 PMCID: PMC11060747 DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2023.2215494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/23/2022] [Accepted: 05/12/2023] [Indexed: 05/04/2024]
Abstract
Background The Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS) assesses verb and sentence production and comprehension in aphasia. Results from the original English version and from its adaptation to German have shown that the NAVS is able to capture effects of verb-argument structure (VAS) complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for two- and three-argument vs. one-argument verbs) and syntactic complexity (i.e., lower accuracy for non-canonical vs. canonical sentences) in both agrammatic participants and individuals with mild (residual) forms of aphasia. The NAVS has been recently adapted to Italian (NAVS-I) and tested on a group of healthy participants, with results showing longer reaction times to complex vs. simple verbs and sentences. Aims The present study aimed to test the ability of NAVS-I to i) capture verb/sentence production and comprehension deficits in Italian-speaking individuals with agrammatism or with fluent aphasia, and ii) differentiate individuals with aphasia from healthy age-matched participants, with the overall goal to validate its use in clinical practice. Methods & Procedures Forty-four healthy participants and 28 individuals with aphasia (10 with agrammatic speech production) were administered the NAVS-I, which includes tasks assessing production and comprehension of verbs requiring one, two or three arguments, as well as production and comprehension of canonical and non-canonical sentences. Outcomes & Results On the Verb Naming Task (VNT), better production of one- (vs. two- and three-) argument verbs was found in the agrammatic group, whereas, verb production in the fluent group was solely predicted by word length and imageability. No effects of argument optionality (i.e., greater difficulty for optionally transitive verbs than for 1-argument verbs) were found. Sentence-level tasks found no differences between the agrammatic and the fluent group in production or comprehension of both canonical and non-canonical sentences; rather, sentence comprehension accuracy was predicted by demographic variables and by aphasia severity. At the individual level, performance on the NAVS-I was significantly different from that of healthy speakers in 26/28 patients. Conclusions Data show that the NAVS-I is able to capture effects of argument structure complexity in verb production, and effects of syntactic complexity in sentence production and comprehension. In addition, our results point to verb production as the task with greater capability to differentiate agrammatism from other (fluent) forms of aphasia. The study provides support for the use of the NAVS-I in the diagnosis of aphasia, as it is able to detect language deficits at the individual level, even in participants with mild (residual) forms of aphasia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Barbieri
- Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
| | | | - Ester Zanobio
- Fondazione la Nostra Famiglia, Language Rehabilitation Unit, Sesto San Giovanni (MI), Italy
| | - Ilaria Scola
- IRCCS Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri, Neuromotor Rehabilitation Unit, Montescano Institute, Montescano (PV), Italy
| | - Claudio Luzzatti
- Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
- Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMI)
| | - Cynthia K. Thompson
- Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
- Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
- Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
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Pregla D, Vasishth S, Lissón P, Stadie N, Burchert F. Can the resource reduction hypothesis explain sentence processing in aphasia? A visual world study in German. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2022; 235:105204. [PMID: 36435153 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105204] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2022] [Revised: 10/21/2022] [Accepted: 11/07/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Resource limitation has often been invoked as a key driver of sentence comprehension difficulty, in both theories of language-unimpaired and language-impaired populations. In the field of aphasia, one such influential theory is Caplan's resource reduction hypothesis (RRH). In this large investigation of online processing in aphasia in German, we evaluated three key predictions of the RRH in 21 individuals with aphasia and 22 control pparticipants. Measures of online processing were obtained by combining a sentence-picture matching task with the visual world paradigm. Four sentence types were used to investigate the generality of the findings, and two test phases were used to investigate RRH's predictions regarding variability in aphasia. The processing patterns were consistent with two of the three predictions of the RRH. Overall, our investigation shows that the RRH can account for important aspects of sentence processing in aphasia.
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Azad O. Canonicity Effect on Sentence Processing of Persian-speaking Broca's Patients. Basic Clin Neurosci 2022; 13:865-874. [PMID: 37323957 PMCID: PMC10262290 DOI: 10.32598/bcn.2021.2777.1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2020] [Revised: 11/06/2021] [Accepted: 11/21/2021] [Indexed: 06/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction Fundamental notions of mapping hypothesis and canonicity were scrutinized in Persian-speaking aphasics. Methods To this end, the performance of four age-, education-, and gender matched Persian-speaking Broca's patients and eight matched healthy controls in diverse complex structures were compared via the conduction of two tasks of syntactic comprehension and grammaticality judgment. Results The tested structures included subject agentive, agentive passive, object experience, subject experience, subject cleft, and object cleft constructions. Our results, while corroborating the predictions of the mapping hypothesis, showed that in structures, in which linguistic elements were substituted and dislocated out of their canonical syntactic positions, namely, agentive passive, subject experiencer, object experiencer, and object cleft constructions, Broca's problems escalated. In contrast, in those structures whose constituent concatenations were aligned with canonical syntactic structures, namely subject agentive, and cleft structures, patients had above the chance performance. Ultimately, the theoretical and clinical implications of the study were discussed. Conclusion The number of predicates in a sentence, predicate types (psychological and agentive), as well as semantic heuristics and canonicity all by all could be regarded as the major culprits for aphasics' poor performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Omid Azad
- Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, University of Gonabad, Gonabad, Iran
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Oh SJ, Sung JE, Lee SE. What Eye Movement Reveals Concerning Age-Related Dissociation in Syntactic Prediction: Evidence From a Verb-Final Language. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2022; 65:2235-2257. [PMID: 35476960 DOI: 10.1044/2022_jslhr-21-00338] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE How older adults engage in predictive processing compared to young adults during sentence processing has been a controversial issue in psycholinguistic research. This study investigated whether age-related differences in predictive processing emerge and how they influence young and older adults' construction of sentential representations in a verb-final language using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm. METHOD Twenty-five young adults and 24 older adults participated in this study. They were administered a sentence-picture matching task under active and passive conditions during which their eye movements were recorded. RESULTS Older adults showed a stronger reliance on predictive processing based on probabilistic constraints compared to young adults at the second noun phrase (NP2) for both active and passive sentences. Specifically, older adults showed significantly greater target advantage looks in actives but greater distractor advantage looks in passives before encountering the verb compared to young adults, revealing older adults' stronger preference for active sentence representations. This stronger predictive processing at the NP2 among older adults engendered greater reduction in fixation proportion on the target picture at the verb only under the passive condition, suggesting that older adults experienced greater difficulties with syntactic revision and integration in passives compared to young adults. CONCLUSION The current findings support that older adults more strongly rely on predictive processing based on probabilistic constraints denoted by case markers when constructing sentential representation compared to young adults, and this processing pattern increases processing difficulties when their prediction is incongruent with linguistic input.
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Affiliation(s)
- Se Jin Oh
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Jee Eun Sung
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Sung Eun Lee
- Department of German Language and Literature, Seoul National University, South Korea
- Brain and Humanities Lab, Seoul National University, South Korea
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Chapman LR, Hallowell B. The Unfolding of Cognitive Effort During Sentence Processing: Pupillometric Evidence From People With and Without Aphasia. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2021; 64:4900-4917. [PMID: 34763522 PMCID: PMC9150667 DOI: 10.1044/2021_jslhr-21-00129] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2021] [Revised: 05/18/2021] [Accepted: 08/05/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Arousal and cognitive effort are relevant yet often overlooked components of attention during language processing. Pupillometry can be used to provide a psychophysiological index of arousal and cognitive effort. Given that much is unknown regarding the relationship between cognition and language deficits seen in people with aphasia (PWA), pupillometry may be uniquely suited to explore those relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine arousal and the time course of the allocation of cognitive effort related to sentence processing in people with and without aphasia. METHOD Nineteen PWA and age- and education-matched control participants listened to relatively easy (subject-relative) and relatively difficult (object-relative) sentences and were required to answer occasional comprehension questions. Tonic and phasic pupillary responses were used to index arousal and the unfolding of cognitive effort, respectively, while sentences were processed. Group differences in tonic and phasic responses were examined. RESULTS Group differences were observed for both tonic and phasic responses. PWA exhibited greater overall arousal throughout the task compared with controls, as evidenced by larger tonic pupil responses. Controls exhibited more effort (greater phasic responses) for difficult compared with easy sentences; PWA did not. Group differences in phasic responses were apparent during end-of-sentence and postsentence time windows. CONCLUSIONS Results indicate that the attentional state of PWA in this study was not consistently supportive of adequate task engagement. PWA in our sample may have relatively limited attentional capacity or may have challenges with allocating existing capacity in ways that support adequate task engagement and performance. This work adds to the body of evidence supporting the validity of pupillometric tasks for the study of aphasia and contributes to a better understanding of the nature of language deficits in aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16959376.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Roche Chapman
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
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Sung JE, Ahn H, Choi S, Lee K. Age and Education Effects on a Novel Syntactic Assessment Battery for Elderly Adults. Front Psychol 2021; 12:639866. [PMID: 34220611 PMCID: PMC8249940 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.639866] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2020] [Accepted: 05/11/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to delineate the properties of a novel syntactic assessment battery and to present descriptive data on normal elderly individuals. We administered the Syntactic Assessment Battery (hereinafter SAB) using a sentence-picture paradigm to 195 normal elderly adults in three age groups (60-69, 70-79, and 80-90) and five educational levels (No formal education, Elementary School Graduation, Middle School Graduation, High School Graduation, College Graduation and Above). A multiple linear regression model was applied to verify the age and education effects. A summary of results indicated that the SAB effectively detected age and education effects. People generally demonstrated worse performance as they aged but better performance as their educational levels increased. People with high school education and above generally demonstrated stronger performance on the test, although educational effects were not significantly different between elementary and middle school graduation groups. The current novel syntactic assessment battery can serve as a screening measure that sensitively detects age and education effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jee Eun Sung
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Heekyung Ahn
- Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
| | - Sujin Choi
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Kiseop Lee
- Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
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Sharma S, Kim H, Harris H, Haberstroh A, Wright HH, Rothermich K. Eye Tracking Measures for Studying Language Comprehension Deficits in Aphasia: A Systematic Search and Scoping Review. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2021; 64:1008-1022. [PMID: 33606952 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00287] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Aim The aim of this scoping review is to identify the eye tracking paradigms and eye movement measures used to investigate auditory and reading comprehension deficits in persons with aphasia (PWA). Method MEDLINE via PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, OTseeker, Scopus, Google Scholar, Grey Literature Database, and ProQuest Search (Dissertations & Theses) were searched for relevant studies. The Covidence software was used to manage the initial and full-text screening process for the search. Results and Discussion From a total of 1,803 studies, 68 studies were included for full-text screening. In addition, 418 records from gray literature were also screened. After full-text screening, 16 studies were included for this review-12 studies for auditory comprehension in PWA and four studies for reading comprehension in PWA. The review highlights the use of common eye tracking paradigms used to study language comprehension in PWA. We also discusse eye movement measures and how they help in assessing auditory and reading comprehension. Methodological challenges of using eye tracking are discussed. Conclusion The studies summarized in this scoping review provide evidence that the eye tracking methods are beneficial for studying auditory and reading comprehension in PWA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Saryu Sharma
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
| | - Hana Kim
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
| | - Havan Harris
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
| | | | - Heather Harris Wright
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
| | - Kathrin Rothermich
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
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Chapman LR, Hallowell B. Expecting Questions Modulates Cognitive Effort in a Syntactic Processing Task: Evidence From Pupillometry. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2021; 64:121-133. [PMID: 33375842 PMCID: PMC8608151 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2020] [Revised: 07/23/2020] [Accepted: 09/27/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Purpose Pupillary responses captured via pupillometry (measurement of pupillary dilation and constriction during the performance of a cognitive task) are psychophysiological indicators of cognitive effort, attention, arousal, and resource engagement. Pupillometry may be a promising tool for enhancing our understanding of the relationship between cognition and language in people with and without aphasia. Interpretation of pupillary responses is complex. This study was designed as a stepping-stone for future pupillometric studies involving people with aphasia. Asking comprehension questions is common in language processing research involving people with and without aphasia. However, the influence of comprehension questions on pupillometric indices of task engagement (tonic responses) and cognitive effort (task-evoked responses of the pupil [TERPs]) is unknown. We tested whether asking comprehension questions influenced pupillometric results of adults without aphasia during a syntactic processing task. Method Forty adults without aphasia listened to easy (canonical) and difficult (noncanonical) sentences in two conditions: one that contained an explicit comprehension task (question condition) and one that did not (no-question condition). The influence of condition and canonicity on pupillary responses was examined. Results The influence of canonicity was only significant in the question condition: TERPs for difficult sentences were larger than TERPs for easy sentences. Tonic responses did not differ between conditions. Conclusions Although participants had similar levels of attentiveness in both conditions, increases in indices of cognitive effort during syntactic processing were significant only when participants expected comprehension questions. Results contribute to a body of evidence indicating the importance of task design and careful linguistic stimulus control when using pupillometry to study language processing. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13480368.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Roche Chapman
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
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Walenski M, Mack JE, Mesulam MM, Thompson CK. Thematic Integration Impairments in Primary Progressive Aphasia: Evidence From Eye-Tracking. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 14:587594. [PMID: 33488370 PMCID: PMC7815820 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.587594] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2020] [Accepted: 11/09/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a degenerative disease affecting language while leaving other cognitive facilities relatively unscathed. The agrammatic subtype of PPA (PPA-G) is characterized by agrammatic language production with impaired comprehension of noncanonical filler-gap syntactic structures, such as object-relatives [e.g., The sandwich that the girl ate (gap) was tasty], in which the filler (the sandwich) is displaced from the object position within the relative clause to a position preceding both the verb and the agent (the girl) and is replaced by a gap linked with the filler. One hypothesis suggests that the observed deficits of these structures reflect impaired thematic integration, including impaired prediction of the thematic role of the filler and impaired thematic integration at the gap, but spared structure building (i.e., creation of the gap). In the current study, we examined the on-line comprehension of object-relative and subject-relative clauses in healthy controls and individuals with agrammatic and logopenic PPA using eye-tracking. Eye-movement patterns in canonical subject-relative clause structures were essentially spared in both PPA groups. In contrast, eye-movement patterns in noncanonical object-relative clauses revealed delayed thematic prediction in both agrammatic and logopenic PPA, on-time structure building (i.e., gap-filling) in both groups, and abnormal thematic integration in agrammatic, but not logopenic, PPA. We argue that these results are consistent with the hypothesis that agrammatic comprehension deficits reflect impaired thematic integration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Walenski
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
| | - Jennifer E. Mack
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
| | - M. Marsel Mesulam
- Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Cynthia K. Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
- Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
- Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
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Bogolepova A, Vasenina E, Gomzyakova N, Gusev E, Dudchenko N, Emelin A, Zalutskaya N, Isaev R, Kotovskaya Y, Levin O, Litvinenko I, Lobzin V, Martynov M, Mkhitaryan E, Nikolay G, Palchikova E, Tkacheva O, Cherdak M, Chimagomedova A, Yakhno N. Clinical Guidelines for Cognitive Disorders in Elderly and Older Patients. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova 2021. [DOI: 10.17116/jnevro20211211036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
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The role of the l-IPS in the comprehension of reversible and irreversible sentences: an rTMS study. Brain Struct Funct 2020; 225:2403-2414. [PMID: 32844277 PMCID: PMC7544754 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-020-02130-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/01/2020] [Accepted: 08/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Thematic roles can be seen as semantic labels assigned to who/what is taking part in the event denoted by a verb. Encoding thematic relations is crucial for sentence interpretation since it relies on both syntactic and semantic aspects. In previous studies, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left inferior intraparietal sulcus (l-IPS) selectively influenced performance accuracy on reversible passive (but not active) sentences. The effect was attributed to the fact that in these sentences the assignment of the agent and theme roles requires re-analysis of the first-pass sentence parsing.
To evaluate the role of reversibility and non-canonical word order (passive voice) on the effect, rTMS was applied over l-IPS during a sentence comprehension task that included reversible and irreversible, active and passive sentences. Participants were asked to identify who/what was performing the action or who/what the action was being performed on.
Stimulation of the l-IPS increased response time on reversible passive sentences but not on reversible active sentences. Importantly, no effect was found on irreversible sentences, irrespective of sentence diathesis. Results suggest that neither reversibility nor sentence diathesis alone are responsible for the effect and that the effect is likely to be triggered/constrained by a combination of semantic reversibility and non-canonical word order. Combined with the results of previous studies, and irrespective of the specific role of each feature, these findings support the view that the l-IPS is critically involved in the assignment of thematic roles in reversible sentences.
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Kyriacou M, Conklin K, Thompson D. Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up? LANGUAGE AND SPEECH 2020; 63:404-435. [PMID: 31106699 DOI: 10.1177/0023830919847691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
A growing number of studies support the partial compositionality of idiomatic phrases, while idioms are thought to vary in their syntactic flexibility. Some idioms, like kick the bucket, have been classified as inflexible and incapable of being passivized without losing their figurative interpretation (i.e., the bucket was kicked ≠ died). Crucially, this has never been substantiated by empirical findings. In the current study, we used eye-tracking to examine whether the passive forms of (flexible and inflexible) idioms retain or lose their figurative meaning. Active and passivized idioms (he kicked the bucket/the bucket was kicked) and incongruous active and passive control phrases (he kicked the apple/the apple was kicked) were inserted in sentences biasing the figurative meaning of the respective idiom (die). Active idioms served as a baseline. We hypothesized that if passivized idioms retain their figurative meaning (the bucket was kicked = died), they should be processed more efficiently than the control phrases, since their figurative meaning would be congruous in the context. If, on the other hand, passivized idioms lose their figurative interpretation (the bucket was kicked = the pail was kicked), then their meaning should be just as incongruous as that of both control phrases, in which case we would expect no difference in their processing. Eye movement patterns demonstrated a processing advantage for passivized idioms (flexible and inflexible) over control phrases, thus indicating that their figurative meaning was not compromised. These findings challenge classifications of idiom flexibility and highlight the creative nature of language.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Kathy Conklin
- University of Nottingham, UK
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
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Sung JE, Choi S, Eom B, Yoo JK, Jeong JH. Syntactic Complexity as a Linguistic Marker to Differentiate Mild Cognitive Impairment From Normal Aging. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2020; 63:1416-1429. [PMID: 32402217 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00335] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Purpose In this study, we sought to identify critical linguistic markers that can differentiate sentence processing of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from the sentence processing of normal-aging populations by manipulating sentences' linguistic complexity. We investigated whether passive sentences, as linguistically complex structures, can serve as linguistic markers that can contribute to diagnoses that distinguish MCI from normal aging. Method In total, 52 participants, including 26 adults with amnestic MCI and 26 cognitively unimpaired adults, participated in the study. All participants were native speakers of Korean. We administered the two subsets of active and passive conditions using a sentence-picture paradigm with semantically reversible sentences to both groups. Results A mixed-effects model using PROC NLMIXED demonstrated that the MCI group exhibited differentially greater difficulty in processing passive than active sentences compared to the normal-aging group. A logistic regression fitted with the PROC LOGISTIC model identified the sum of the passive sentences, with age and education effects as the best models to distinguish individuals with MCI from the normal-aging group. Conclusion Sentence comprehension deficits emerged in the MCI stage when the syntactic complexity was increased. Furthermore, a passive structure was the best predictor for efficiently distinguishing the MCI group from the normal-aging group. These results are clinically and theoretically important, given that linguistic complexity can serve as a critical behavioral marker in the detection of early symptoms associated with linguistic-cognitive decline.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jee Eun Sung
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Sujin Choi
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Bora Eom
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jae Keun Yoo
- Department of Statistics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jee Hyang Jeong
- Department of Neurology, Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, Ewha Womans University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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LaCroix AN, Blumenstein N, Tully M, Baxter LC, Rogalsky C. Effects of prosody on the cognitive and neural resources supporting sentence comprehension: A behavioral and lesion-symptom mapping study. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2020; 203:104756. [PMID: 32032865 PMCID: PMC7064294 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104756] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2019] [Revised: 12/03/2019] [Accepted: 01/19/2020] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
Non-canonical sentence comprehension impairments are well-documented in aphasia. Studies of neurotypical controls indicate that prosody can aid comprehension by facilitating attention towards critical pitch inflections and phrase boundaries. However, no studies have examined how prosody may engage specific cognitive and neural resources during non-canonical sentence comprehension in persons with left hemisphere damage. Experiment 1 examines the relationship between comprehension of non-canonical sentences spoken with typical and atypical prosody and several cognitive measures in 25 persons with chronic left hemisphere stroke and 20 matched controls. Experiment 2 explores the neural resources critical for non-canonical sentence comprehension with each prosody type using region-of-interest-based multiple regressions. Lower orienting attention abilities and greater inferior frontal and parietal damage predicted lower comprehension, but only for sentences with typical prosody. Our results suggest that typical sentence prosody may engage attention resources to support non-canonical sentence comprehension, and this relationship may be disrupted following left hemisphere stroke.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arianna N LaCroix
- College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; College of Health Sciences, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ, USA
| | | | - McKayla Tully
- College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
| | | | - Corianne Rogalsky
- College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
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He W, Bi X. Perspective-shifting are helpful for children in Chinese passive sentence comprehension. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2020; 205:103059. [PMID: 32199245 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2018] [Revised: 03/06/2020] [Accepted: 03/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Passive sentences have been shown to be more difficult than active sentences for young children in English, German, Italian, Turkish, as well as Japanese, Korean. Many factors, such as syntactic structure, lexical-semantic, language experience, have been proved to affect passive sentence processing. In this paper, two experiments were carried out to investigate the role of perspective-shifting and animacy characteristics of agents and patients in processing passive sentences by 5~6 year-old Chinese children, using a sentence-picture matching task. The results were as follows: (1) Passive sentences were more difficult to comprehend than active sentences in Mandarin Chinese; (2) The ability of perspective-shifting played an important role in processing passive sentences. In sum, addressing sentences involving syntactic transformation is a complex cognitive activity for young children. Many factors, such as syntactic structure, lexical-semantic, language experience, and cognitive flexibility should be given full consideration.
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Thompson CK. Neurocognitive Recovery of Sentence Processing in Aphasia. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2019; 62:3947-3972. [PMID: 31756151 PMCID: PMC7203523 DOI: 10.1044/2019_jslhr-l-rsnp-19-0219] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2019] [Revised: 08/20/2019] [Accepted: 09/09/2019] [Indexed: 05/04/2023]
Abstract
Purpose Reorganization of language networks in aphasia takes advantage of the facts that (a) the brain is an organ of plasticity, with neuronal changes occurring throughout the life span, including following brain damage; (b) plasticity is highly experience dependent; and (c) as with any learning system, language reorganization involves a synergistic interplay between organism-intrinsic (i.e., cognitive and brain) and organism-extrinsic (i.e., environmental) variables. A major goal for clinical treatment of aphasia is to be able to prescribe treatment and predict its outcome based on the neurocognitive deficit profiles of individual patients. This review article summarizes the results of research examining the neurocognitive effects of psycholinguistically based treatment (i.e., Treatment of Underlying Forms; Thompson & Shapiro, 2005) for sentence processing impairments in individuals with chronic agrammatic aphasia resulting from stroke and primary progressive aphasia and addresses both behavioral and brain variables related to successful treatment outcomes. The influences of lesion volume and location, perfusion (blood flow), and resting-state neural activity on language recovery are also discussed as related to recovery of agrammatism and other language impairments. Based on these and other data, principles for promoting neuroplasticity of language networks are presented. Conclusions Sentence processing treatment results in improved comprehension and production of complex syntactic structures in chronic agrammatism and generalization to less complex, linguistically related structures in chronic agrammatism. Patients also show treatment-induced shifts toward normal-like online sentence processing routines (based on eye movement data) and changes in neural recruitment patterns (based on functional neuroimaging), with posttreatment activation of regions overlapping with those within sentence processing and dorsal attention networks engaged by neurotypical adults performing the same task. These findings provide compelling evidence that treatment focused on principles of neuroplasticity promotes neurocognitive recovery in chronic agrammatic aphasia. Presentation Videohttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10257587.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cynthia K. Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Department of Neurology and Mesulam Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, Evanston/Chicago, IL
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Sheppard SM, Love T, Midgley KJ, Shapiro LP, Holcomb PJ. Using prosody during sentence processing in aphasia: Evidence from temporal neural dynamics. Neuropsychologia 2019; 134:107197. [PMID: 31542361 PMCID: PMC6911311 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2018] [Revised: 04/17/2019] [Accepted: 09/18/2019] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Shannon M Sheppard
- San Diego State University, USA; University of California, San Diego, USA.
| | - Tracy Love
- San Diego State University, USA; University of California, San Diego, USA
| | | | - Lewis P Shapiro
- San Diego State University, USA; University of California, San Diego, USA
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Barbieri E, Mack J, Chiappetta B, Europa E, Thompson CK. Recovery of offline and online sentence processing in aphasia: Language and domain-general network neuroplasticity. Cortex 2019; 120:394-418. [PMID: 31419597 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.06.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2018] [Revised: 04/09/2019] [Accepted: 06/13/2019] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
This paper examined the effects of treatment on both offline and online sentence processing and associated neuroplasticity within sentence processing and dorsal attention networks in chronic stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia. Twenty-three neurotypical adults and 19 individuals with aphasia served as participants. Aphasic individuals were randomly assigned to receive a 12-week course of linguistically-based treatment of passive sentence production and comprehension (N = 14, treatment group) or to serve as control participants (N = 5, natural history group). Both aphasic groups performed two offline tasks at baseline and three months following (at post-testing) to assess production and comprehension of trained passive structures and untrained syntactically related and unrelated structures. The aphasic participants and a healthy age-matched group also performed an online eyetracking comprehension task and a picture-verification fMRI task, which were repeated at post-testing for the aphasic groups. Results showed that individuals in the treatment, but not in the natural history, group improved on production and comprehension of both trained structures and untrained syntactically related structures. Treatment also resulted in a shift toward more normal-like eye movements and a significant increase in neural activation from baseline to post-testing. Upregulation encompassed right hemisphere regions homologs of left hemisphere regions involved in both sentence processing and domain-general functions and was positively correlated with treatment gains, as measured by offline comprehension accuracy, and with changes in processing strategies during sentence comprehension, as measured by eyetracking. These findings provide compelling evidence in favor of the contribution of both networks within the right hemisphere to the restoration of normal-like sentence processing patterns in chronic aphasia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Barbieri
- Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
| | - Jennifer Mack
- Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
| | - Brianne Chiappetta
- Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
| | - Eduardo Europa
- Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
| | - Cynthia K Thompson
- Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
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Anjum J, Hallowell B. Validity of an eyetracking method for capturing auditory-visual cross-format semantic priming. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 2019; 41:411-431. [PMID: 30727826 PMCID: PMC6428604 DOI: 10.1080/13803395.2019.1567692] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/03/2018] [Accepted: 01/03/2019] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Semantic priming paradigms are important for understanding lexical-semantic processing and the nature of linguistic deficits accompanying language performance in neurologically impaired individuals such as people with aphasia. Reaction-time-(RT)-based traditional semantic priming tasks entail potential confounds, especially problematic when applied to people with aphasia, who may have concomitant neurocognitive challenges that limit task performance. Some of these confounds include requirements of following complex instructions, making metalinguistic judgments, and using speech or limb-based motor actions to indicate overt responses. Eyetracking methods have great potential for avoiding some of these confounds. We tested the validity of an eyetracking method in capturing semantic priming in an auditory-visual cross-format priming paradigm (auditory word prime-visual image target). METHOD A total of 72 neurologically unimpaired adults participated in two phases: a stimulus development phase using traditional priming (n = 32) and an experimental eyetracking phase (n = 40). Each phase included two conditions, representing distinct levels of prime-target semantic relatedness: unrelated and related. Mean RT data from the traditional priming (stimuli development) phase guided image selection for the eyetracking experiment. Eyetracking indices of fixation duration and latency of fixation were recorded to capture semantic priming in the eyetracking experiment. RESULTS Eye fixation data indicated that images related to auditory primes were attended to earlier and attracted significantly greater visual attention than unrelated images. These results mirrored RT data from the traditional priming method, which showed faster RT latencies and more accurate naming performance for related images than for unrelated images. CONCLUSIONS Results support the validity of eyetracking indices of semantic priming and offer a robust testing protocol for future studies in this line of research. Current clinical relevance for people with aphasia is highlighted. Further empirical testing of the psychometric properties of the eyetracking measures in various semantic priming contexts is recommended.
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21
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Özge D, Küntay A, Snedeker J. Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension. Cognition 2019; 183:152-180. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2015] [Revised: 10/19/2018] [Accepted: 10/29/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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Smith KG, Schmidt J, Wang B, Henderson JM, Fridriksson J. Task-Related Differences in Eye Movements in Individuals With Aphasia. Front Psychol 2018; 9:2430. [PMID: 30618911 PMCID: PMC6305326 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02430] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2018] [Accepted: 11/19/2018] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Background: Neurotypical young adults show task-based modulation and stability of their eye movements across tasks. This study aimed to determine whether persons with aphasia (PWA) modulate their eye movements and show stability across tasks similarly to control participants. Methods: Forty-eight PWA and age-matched control participants completed four eye-tracking tasks: scene search, scene memorization, text-reading, and pseudo-reading. Results: Main effects of task emerged for mean fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and standard deviations of each, demonstrating task-based modulation of eye movements. Group by task interactions indicated that PWA produced shorter fixations relative to controls. This effect was most pronounced for scene memorization and for individuals who recently suffered a stroke. PWA produced longer fixations, shorter saccades, and less variable eye movements in reading tasks compared to controls. Three-way interactions of group, aphasia subtype, and task also emerged. Text-reading and scene memorization were particularly effective at distinguishing aphasia subtype. Persons with anomic aphasia showed a reduction in reading saccade amplitudes relative to their respective control group and other PWA. Persons with conduction/Wernicke’s aphasia produced shorter scene memorization fixations relative to controls or PWA of other subtypes, suggesting a memorization specific effect. Positive correlations across most tasks emerged for fixation duration and did not significantly differ between controls and PWA. Conclusion: PWA generally produced shorter fixations and smaller saccades relative to controls particularly in scene memorization and text-reading, respectively. The effect was most pronounced recently after a stroke. Selectively in reading tasks, PWA produced longer fixations and shorter saccades relative to controls, consistent with reading difficulty. PWA showed task-based modulation of eye movements, though the pattern of results was somewhat abnormal relative to controls. All subtypes of PWA also demonstrated task-based modulation of eye movements. However, persons with anomic aphasia showed reduced modulation of saccade amplitude and smaller reading saccades, possibly to improve reading comprehension. Controls and PWA generally produced stabile fixation durations across tasks and did not differ in their relationship across tasks. Overall, these results suggest there is potential to differentiate among PWA with varying subtypes and from controls using eye movement measures of task-based modulation, especially reading and scene memorization tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kimberly G Smith
- Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, United States.,Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States
| | - Joseph Schmidt
- Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, United States
| | - Bin Wang
- Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, United States
| | - John M Henderson
- Department of Psychology, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States
| | - Julius Fridriksson
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States
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Mack JE, Thompson CK. Recovery of Online Sentence Processing in Aphasia: Eye Movement Changes Resulting From Treatment of Underlying Forms. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2017; 60:1299-1315. [PMID: 28474086 PMCID: PMC5755549 DOI: 10.1044/2016_jslhr-l-16-0108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/18/2016] [Revised: 09/06/2016] [Accepted: 11/07/2016] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Purpose The present study tested whether (and how) language treatment changed online sentence processing in individuals with aphasia. Method Participants with aphasia (n = 10) received a 12-week program of Treatment of Underlying Forms (Thompson & Shapiro, 2005) focused on production and comprehension of passive sentences. Before and after treatment, participants performed a sentence-picture matching task with active and passive sentences as eye movements were tracked. Twelve age-matched controls also performed the task once each. Results In the age-matched group, eye movements indicated agent-first predictive processing after hearing the subject noun, followed by rapid thematic reanalysis after hearing the verb form. Pretreatment eye movements in the participants with aphasia showed no predictive agent-first processing, and more accurate thematic analysis in active compared to passive sentences. After treatment, which resulted in improved offline passive sentence production and comprehension, participants were more likely to respond correctly when they made agent-first eye movements early in the sentence, showed equally reliable thematic analysis in active and passive sentences, and were less likely to use a spatially based alternative response strategy. Conclusions These findings suggest that treatment focused on improving sentence production and comprehension supports the emergence of more normal-like sentence comprehension processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer E Mack
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
| | - Cynthia K Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, ILCognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, ILDepartment of Neurology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
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Huck A, Thompson RL, Cruice M, Marshall J. The influence of sense-contingent argument structure frequencies on ambiguity resolution in aphasia. Neuropsychologia 2017; 100:171-194. [PMID: 28392303 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.03.031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2016] [Revised: 03/14/2017] [Accepted: 03/31/2017] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
Verbs with multiple senses can show varying argument structure frequencies, depending on the underlying sense. When acknowledge is used to mean 'recognise', it takes a direct object (DO), but when it is used to mean 'admit' it prefers a sentence complement (SC). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether people with aphasia (PWA) can exploit such meaning-structure probabilities during the reading of temporarily ambiguous sentences, as demonstrated for neurologically healthy individuals (NHI) in a self-paced reading study (Hare et al., 2003). Eleven people with mild or moderate aphasia and eleven neurologically healthy control participants read sentences while their eyes were tracked. Using adapted materials from the study by Hare et al. target sentences containing an SC structure (e.g. He acknowledged (that) his friends would probably help him a lot) were presented following a context prime that biased either a direct object (DO-bias) or sentence complement (SC-bias) reading of the verbs. Half of the stimuli sentences did not contain that so made the post verbal noun phrase (his friends) structurally ambiguous. Both groups of participants were influenced by structural ambiguity as well as by the context bias, indicating that PWA can, like NHI, use their knowledge of a verb's sense-based argument structure frequency during online sentence reading. However, the individuals with aphasia showed delayed reading patterns and some individual differences in their sensitivity to context and ambiguity cues. These differences compared to the NHI may contribute to difficulties in sentence comprehension in aphasia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anneline Huck
- Division of Language and Communication Science, School of Health Sciences, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK.
| | - Robin L Thompson
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
| | - Madeline Cruice
- Division of Language and Communication Science, School of Health Sciences, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK
| | - Jane Marshall
- Division of Language and Communication Science, School of Health Sciences, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK
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Warren T, Dickey MW, Liburd TL. A rational inference approach to group and individual-level sentence comprehension performance in aphasia. Cortex 2017; 92:19-31. [PMID: 28391038 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.02.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2015] [Revised: 02/12/2017] [Accepted: 02/21/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
The rational inference, or noisy channel, account of language comprehension predicts that comprehenders are sensitive to the probabilities of different interpretations for a given sentence and adapt as these probabilities change (Gibson, Bergen & Piantadosi, 2013). This account provides an important new perspective on aphasic sentence comprehension: aphasia may increase the likelihood of sentence distortion, leading people with aphasia (PWA) to rely more on the prior probability of an interpretation and less on the form or structure of the sentence (Gibson, Sandberg, Fedorenko, Bergen & Kiran, 2015). We report the results of a sentence-picture matching experiment that tested the predictions of the rational inference account and other current models of aphasic sentence comprehension across a variety of sentence structures. Consistent with the rational inference account, PWA showed similar sensitivity to the probability of particular kinds of form distortions as age-matched controls, yet overall their interpretations relied more on prior probability and less on sentence form. As predicted by rational inference, but not by other models of sentence comprehension in aphasia, PWA's interpretations were more faithful to the form for active and passive sentences than for direct object and prepositional object sentences. However contra rational inference, there was no evidence that individual PWA's severity of syntactic or semantic impairment predicted their sensitivity to form versus the prior probability of a sentence, as cued by semantics. These findings confirm and extend previous findings that suggest the rational inference account holds promise for explaining aphasic and neurotypical comprehension, but they also raise new challenges for the account.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Michael Walsh Dickey
- VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Pittsburgh, USA; University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
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26
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Mack JE, Wei AZS, Gutierrez S, Thompson CK. Tracking sentence comprehension: Test-retest reliability in people with aphasia and unimpaired adults. JOURNAL OF NEUROLINGUISTICS 2016; 40:98-111. [PMID: 27867260 PMCID: PMC5113948 DOI: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2016.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Visual-world eyetracking is increasingly used to investigate online language processing in normal and language impaired listeners. Tracking changes in eye movements over time also may be useful for indexing language recovery in those with language impairments. Therefore, it is critical to determine the test-retest reliability of results obtained using this method. METHODS Unimpaired young adults and people with aphasia took part in two eyetracking sessions spaced about one week apart. In each session, participants completed a sentence-picture matching task in which they listened to active and passive sentences (e.g., The [N1+Auxwoman was] [Vvisiting/visited] [NP/PP2(by) the man]) and selected between two pictures with reversed thematic roles. We used intraclass correlations (ICCs) to examine the test-retest reliability of response measures (accuracy, reaction time (RT)) and online eye movements (i.e., the likelihood of fixating the target picture in each region of the sentence) in each participant group. RESULTS In the unimpaired adults, accuracy was at ceiling (thus ICCs were not computed), with moderate ICCs for RT (i.e., 0.4 - 0.58) for passive sentences and low (<0.4) for actives. In individuals with aphasia, test-retest reliability was strong (0.590.75) for RT for both sentence types. Similarly, for the unimpaired listeners, reliability of eye movements was moderate for passive sentences (NP/PP2 region) and low in all regions for active sentences. But, for the aphasic participant group, eye movement reliability was excellent for passive sentences (in the first second after sentence end) and strong for active sentences (V and NP/PP2 regions). CONCLUSION Results indicated moderate-to-low reliability for unimpaired listeners; however, reliable eye movement patterns were detected for processes specific to passive sentences (e.g., thematic reanalysis). In contrast, individuals with aphasia exhibited strong and stable performance across sentence types in response measures and online eye movements. These findings indicate that visual-world eyetracking provides a reliable measure of online sentence comprehension, and thus may be useful for investigating sentence processing changes over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer E Mack
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University
| | - Andrew Zu-Sern Wei
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University
| | | | - Cynthia K Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University; Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University; Department of Neurology, Northwestern University
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Schuchard J, Nerantzini M, Thompson CK. Implicit learning and implicit treatment outcomes in individuals with aphasia. APHASIOLOGY 2016; 31:25-48. [PMID: 28603329 PMCID: PMC5461970 DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2016.1147526] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Implicit learning is a process of learning that occurs outside of conscious awareness and may be involved in implicit, exposure-based language training. However, research shows that implicit learning abilities are variable among individuals with aphasia, and it remains unknown whether individuals who show basic implicit learning abilities also benefit from implicit language training. AIMS The aims of this series of experiments were to test implicit learning in individuals with agrammatic aphasia, examine the effects of a novel implicit language treatment, and investigate whether individuals with aphasia who show implicit learning ability also benefit from implicit treatment focused on passive sentence comprehension. METHODS & PROCEDURES Nine participants with chronic agrammatic aphasia and 21 neurologically intact participants completed a visuomotor serial reaction time test of implicit learning (Experiment 1). The participants with aphasia also completed a short-term novel implicit sentence comprehension treatment (Experiment 2) that consisted of five sessions of repeated exposure to grammatically correct passive sentences and matching photographs. Sentence comprehension was tested in multiple baseline sessions and on each day of training using a sentence-picture matching task. The relation between participants' learning patterns across experiments was also examined. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Individuals with agrammatic aphasia as well as neurologically intact adults demonstrated significant implicit sequence learning in the serial reaction time task. However, the participants with aphasia did not show concomitant improvement in sentence comprehension as a result of the implicit treatment protocol. CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that individuals with agrammatic aphasia demonstrate implicit learning ability; however, this ability does not necessarily promote successful outcomes in treatment that is based solely on implicit training methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julia Schuchard
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University
| | | | - Cynthia K Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University
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28
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Sung JE. Age-related Decline in Case-Marker Processing and its Relation to Working Memory Capacity. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 2016; 72:813-820. [DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbv117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2015] [Accepted: 12/02/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Caplan D, Michaud J, Hufford R, Makris N. Deficit-lesion correlations in syntactic comprehension in aphasia. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2016; 152:14-27. [PMID: 26688433 PMCID: PMC4713299 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2014] [Revised: 09/09/2015] [Accepted: 10/24/2015] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
The effects of lesions on syntactic comprehension were studied in thirty-one people with aphasia (PWA). Participants were tested for the ability to parse and interpret four types of syntactic structures and elements - passives, object extracted relative clauses, reflexives and pronouns - in three tasks - object manipulation, sentence picture matching with full sentence presentation and sentence picture matching with self-paced listening presentation. Accuracy, end-of-sentence RT and self-paced listening times for each word were measured. MR scans were obtained and analyzed for total lesion volume and for lesion size in 48 cortical areas. Lesion size in several areas of the left hemisphere was related to accuracy in particular sentence types in particular tasks and to self-paced listening times for critical words in particular sentence types. The results support a model of brain organization that includes areas that are specialized for the combination of particular syntactic and interpretive operations and the use of the meanings produced by those operations to accomplish task-related operations.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Caplan
- Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States.
| | - Jennifer Michaud
- Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
| | - Rebecca Hufford
- Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
| | - Nikos Makris
- Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
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Schumacher R, Cazzoli D, Eggenberger N, Preisig B, Nef T, Nyffeler T, Gutbrod K, Annoni JM, Müri RM. Cue Recognition and Integration - Eye Tracking Evidence of Processing Differences in Sentence Comprehension in Aphasia. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0142853. [PMID: 26562795 PMCID: PMC4642964 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142853] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/14/2015] [Accepted: 10/26/2015] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose We aimed at further elucidating whether aphasic patients’ difficulties in understanding non-canonical sentence structures, such as Passive or Object-Verb-Subject sentences, can be attributed to impaired morphosyntactic cue recognition, and to problems in integrating competing interpretations. Methods A sentence-picture matching task with canonical and non-canonical spoken sentences was performed using concurrent eye tracking. Accuracy, reaction time, and eye tracking data (fixations) of 50 healthy subjects and 12 aphasic patients were analysed. Results Patients showed increased error rates and reaction times, as well as delayed fixation preferences for target pictures in non-canonical sentences. Patients’ fixation patterns differed from healthy controls and revealed deficits in recognizing and immediately integrating morphosyntactic cues. Conclusion Our study corroborates the notion that difficulties in understanding syntactically complex sentences are attributable to a processing deficit encompassing delayed and therefore impaired recognition and integration of cues, as well as increased competition between interpretations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rahel Schumacher
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Dario Cazzoli
- Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation Group, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Noëmi Eggenberger
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Basil Preisig
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Tobias Nef
- Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation Group, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Thomas Nyffeler
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Neurology and Neurorehabilitation Center, Luzerner Kantonsspital, Luzern, Switzerland
| | - Klemens Gutbrod
- Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Marie Annoni
- Neurology Unit, Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
| | - René M. Müri
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Gerontechnology and Rehabilitation Group, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- * E-mail:
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Finocchiaro C, Capasso R, Cattaneo L, Zuanazzi A, Miceli G. Thematic role assignment in the posterior parietal cortex: A TMS study. Neuropsychologia 2015; 77:223-32. [PMID: 26318240 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.08.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2015] [Revised: 08/04/2015] [Accepted: 08/24/2015] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Verbs denote relations between entities acting a role in an event. Thematic roles are essential to the correct use of verbs and involve both semantic and syntactic aspects. We used repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to study the involvement of three different left parietal sites in the understanding of thematic roles. In a sentence-to-picture matching task, twelve participants were asked to judge whether or not a given picture matched with a written sentence. Pictures represented simple reversible actions, and sentences were in the active or passive diathesis. Whereas both active and passive sentences require the correct encoding of thematic roles, passives also imply thematic reanalysis, as the canonical order of thematic roles is systematically reversed. The experiment was divided in three sessions. In each session a different parietal site (anterior, middle, posterior) was stimulated at 5 Hz in an event-related fashion, time-locked to the presentation of visual stimuli. Results showed increased accuracy for passive sentences following posterior parietal stimulation. The effect appeared to be (a) TMS-related, as no effect was observed in a control, no-TMS experiment with eighteen new participants; (b) independent from semantic processes involved in word-picture association, as no TMS-related effects were observed in a picture-word matching task. We interpret the results as showing that the posterior parietal site is specifically involved in the assignment of thematic roles, in particular when the correct interpretation of a sentence requires reanalysis of temporarily encoded thematic roles, as in passive reversible sentences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chiara Finocchiaro
- Dipartimento di Psicologia e Scienze Cognitive, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy.
| | | | | | | | - Gabriele Miceli
- Dipartimento di Psicologia e Scienze Cognitive, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy; Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), Trento, Italy
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Caplan D, Michaud J, Hufford R. Mechanisms underlying syntactic comprehension deficits in vascular aphasia: new evidence from self-paced listening. Cogn Neuropsychol 2015; 32:283-313. [PMID: 26165856 DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2015.1058253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Sixty-one people with aphasia (pwa) and 41 matched controls were tested for the ability to understand sentences that required the ability to process particular syntactic elements and assign particular syntactic structures. Participants paced themselves word-by-word through 20 examples of 11 spoken sentence types and indicated which of two pictures corresponded to the meaning of each sentence. Sentences were developed in pairs such that comprehension of the experimental version of a pair required an aspect of syntactic processing not required in the corresponding baseline sentence. The need for the syntactic operations required only in the experimental version was triggered at a "critical word" in the experimental sentence. Listening times for critical words in experimental sentences were compared to those for corresponding words in the corresponding baseline sentences. The results were consistent with several models of syntactic comprehension deficits in pwa: resource reduction, slowed lexical and/or syntactic processing, abnormal susceptibility to interference from thematic roles generated non-syntactically. They suggest that a previously unidentified disturbance limiting the duration of parsing and interpretation may lead to these deficits, and that this mechanism may lead to structure-specific deficits in pwa. The results thus point to more than one mechanism underlying syntactic comprehension disorders both across and within pwa.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Caplan
- a Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Laboratory , Massachusetts General Hospital , 175 Cambridge Street, Suite 340, Fruit Street, Boston , MA 02114 , USA
| | - Jennifer Michaud
- a Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Laboratory , Massachusetts General Hospital , 175 Cambridge Street, Suite 340, Fruit Street, Boston , MA 02114 , USA
| | - Rebecca Hufford
- a Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Laboratory , Massachusetts General Hospital , 175 Cambridge Street, Suite 340, Fruit Street, Boston , MA 02114 , USA
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Patil U, Hanne S, Burchert F, De Bleser R, Vasishth S. A Computational Evaluation of Sentence Processing Deficits in Aphasia. Cogn Sci 2015; 40:5-50. [PMID: 26016698 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12250] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2012] [Revised: 03/06/2014] [Accepted: 06/09/2014] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia experience difficulty when processing reversible non-canonical sentences. Different accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. The Trace Deletion account (Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000, 2006) attributes this deficit to an impairment in syntactic representations, whereas others (e.g., Caplan, Waters, Dede, Michaud, & Reddy, 2007; Haarmann, Just, & Carpenter, 1997) propose that the underlying structural representations are unimpaired, but sentence comprehension is affected by processing deficits, such as slow lexical activation, reduction in memory resources, slowed processing and/or intermittent deficiency, among others. We test the claims of two processing accounts, slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, and two versions of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH), in a computational framework for sentence processing (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) implemented in ACT-R (Anderson, Byrne, Douglass, Lebiere, & Qin, 2004). The assumption of slowed processing is operationalized as slow procedural memory, so that each processing action is performed slower than normal, and intermittent deficiency as extra noise in the procedural memory, so that the parsing steps are more noisy than normal. We operationalize the TDH as an absence of trace information in the parse tree. To test the predictions of the models implementing these theories, we use the data from a German sentence-picture matching study reported in Hanne, Sekerina, Vasishth, Burchert, and De Bleser (2011). The data consist of offline (sentence-picture matching accuracies and response times) and online (eye fixation proportions) measures. From among the models considered, the model assuming that both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency are present emerges as the best model of sentence processing difficulty in aphasia. The modeling of individual differences suggests that, if we assume that patients have both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, they have them in differing degrees.
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Affiliation(s)
- Umesh Patil
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam
| | - Sandra Hanne
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam
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Losing track of time? Processing of time reference inflection in agrammatic and healthy speakers of German. Neuropsychologia 2014; 65:180-90. [PMID: 25447377 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.10.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2014] [Revised: 10/03/2014] [Accepted: 10/07/2014] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Individuals with agrammatic aphasia (IWAs) have problems with grammatical decoding of tense inflection. However, these difficulties depend on the time frame that the tense refers to. Verb morphology with reference to the past is more difficult than with reference to the non-past, because a link needs to be made to the past event in discourse, as captured in the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH; Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673). With respect to reference to the (non-discourse-linked) future, data so far indicate that IWAs experience less difficulties as compared to past time reference (Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673), supporting the assumptions of the PADILIH. Previous online studies of time reference in aphasia used methods such as reaction times analysis (e.g., Faroqi-Shah, Y., Dickey, M. W., 2009. On-line processing of tense and temporality in agrammatic aphasia. Brain Lang. 108, 97-111). So far, no such study used eye-tracking, even though this technique can bring additional insights (Burchert, F., Hanne, S., Vasishth, S., 2013. Sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia: the concept of chance performance revisited. Aphasiology 27, 112-125, doi:10.1080/02687038.2012.730603). AIMS This study investigated (1) whether processing of future and past time reference inflection differs between non-brain-damaged individuals (NBDs) and IWAs, and (2) underlying mechanisms of time reference comprehension failure by IWAs. METHODS AND PROCEDURES A visual-world experiment combining sentence-picture matching and eye-tracking was administered to 12 NBDs and 6 IWAs, all native speakers of German. Participants heard German sentences with periphrastic future ('will+V') or periphrastic past ('has+V-d') verb forms while they were presented with corresponding pictures on a computer screen. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the IWAs. IWAs had below-ceiling performance on the future condition, and both participant groups were faster to respond to the past than to the future condition. These differences are attributed to a pre-existing preference to look at a past picture, which has to be overcome. Eye movement patterns suggest that both groups interpret future time reference similarly, while IWAs show a delay relative to NBDs in interpreting past time reference inflection. The eye tracking results support the PADILIH, because processing reference to the past in discourse syntax requires additional resources and thus, is problematic and delayed for people with aphasia.
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Schuchard J, Thompson CK. Implicit and explicit learning in individuals with agrammatic aphasia. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2014; 43:209-24. [PMID: 23532578 PMCID: PMC3766481 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-013-9248-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/09/2023]
Abstract
Implicit learning is a process of acquiring knowledge that occurs without conscious awareness of learning, whereas explicit learning involves the use of overt strategies. To date, research related to implicit learning following stroke has been largely restricted to the motor domain and has rarely addressed implications for language. The present study investigated implicit and explicit learning of an auditory word sequence in 10 individuals with stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia and 18 healthy age-matched participants using an adaptation of the Serial Reaction Time task. Individuals with aphasia showed significant learning under implicit, but not explicit, conditions, whereas age-matched participants learned under both conditions. These results suggest significant implicit learning ability in agrammatic aphasia. Furthermore, results of an auditory sentence span task indicated working memory deficits in individuals with agrammatic aphasia, which are discussed in relation to explicit and implicit learning processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julia Schuchard
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Room 3-380, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA,
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Mack JE, Ji W, Thompson CK. Effects of verb meaning on lexical integration in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking. JOURNAL OF NEUROLINGUISTICS 2013; 26:619-636. [PMID: 24092952 PMCID: PMC3786589 DOI: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.04.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Relatively little is known about the time course of access to the lexical representations of verbs in agrammatic aphasia and its effects on the prediction and integration of the verb's arguments. The present study used visual-world eyetracking to test whether verb meaning can be used by agrammatic aphasic individuals to predict and facilitate the integration of a subsequent noun argument. Nine adults with agrammatic aphasia and ten age-matched controls participated in the study. In Experiment 1, participants viewed arrays of four objects (e.g., jar, plate, stick, pencil) while listening to sentences containing either a restrictive verb that was semantically compatible only with the target object or an unrestrictive verb compatible with all four objects (e.g., Susan will open/break the jar). For both participant groups, the restrictive condition elicited more fixations to the target object immediately after the verb. Experiment 2 differed from Experiment 1 in that the auditory sentences presented were incomplete (e.g., Susan will open/break the…). For controls, restrictive verbs elicited more target fixations immediately after the verb; however, the effects of verb type were noted downstream from the verb for the aphasic listeners. The results suggest that individuals with agrammatic aphasia have preserved ability to use verb information to facilitate integration of overt arguments, but prediction of upcoming arguments is impaired. Impaired lexical-semantic prediction processes may be caused by damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus, which has been argued to support higher-level lexical processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer E. Mack
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Corresponding author. Tel.: + 1 847 467 7591., (J.E. Mack)
| | - Woohyuk Ji
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208, USA
| | - Cynthia K. Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208, USA
- Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, USA
- Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Northwestern University, USA
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Menn L, Duffield CJ. Aphasias and theories of linguistic representation: representing frequency, hierarchy, constructions, and sequential structure. WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2013; 4:651-663. [PMID: 26304270 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1257] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2012] [Revised: 08/12/2013] [Accepted: 08/18/2013] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
Error and preservation patterns in aphasic speech show that the brain makes use of the frequencies of words, constructions, and collocations, as well as category membership and hierarchical structure, during language processing. Frequency effects are evident along two quasi-independent axes: syntagmatic (the sequential context, e.g., deploying correct functors, categories, and utterance-level intonation) and paradigmatic (the choice at any given linguistic level, e.g., selecting content words and modifying structures). Frequency along the syntagmatic axis is shown to play a role in errors involving idioms, constructions, and collocations that cross major phrasal boundaries. Along the paradigmatic axis, frequency affects errors involving lexical selection, competing functors and inflected forms (e.g., using plural where singular is required). An account of language representation and processing that encompasses frequency as well as categorization and structure is compatible with what we know about how the brain works: increased experience with a linguistic structure results in increased activation-and strengthening-of the neural networks involved in processing that structure. These claims are supported by the literature on experimental work in normal speakers. Parsimony, plus the unexamined assumption that mental representation is like a written record (entries either present or absent, structure displayable in two dimensions), has been a misleading guide to modeling language representation. The substantial redundancy in representations and processing that is introduced by incorporating both frequency-based and hierarchy-based information is in fact appropriate for the brain as a fast, reliable, massively parallel error-correcting network with very large storage capacity and gradient representation strength. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:651-663. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1257 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lise Menn
- Department of Linguistics, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
| | - Cecily Jill Duffield
- Department of Linguistics, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
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Neural correlates of processing passive sentences. Brain Sci 2013; 3:1198-214. [PMID: 24961525 PMCID: PMC4061884 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci3031198] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2013] [Revised: 07/16/2013] [Accepted: 07/19/2013] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous research has shown that comprehension of complex sentences involving wh-movement (e.g., object-relative clauses) elicits activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left posterior temporal cortex. However, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of processing passive sentences, which differ from other complex sentences in terms of representation (i.e., noun phrase (NP)-movement) and processing (i.e., the time course of syntactic reanalysis). In the present study, 27 adults (14 younger and 13 older) listened to passive and active sentences and performed a sentence-picture verification task using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Passive sentences, relative to active sentences, elicited greater activation in bilateral IFG and left temporo-occipital regions. Participant age did not significantly affect patterns of activation. Consistent with previous research, activation in left temporo-occipital cortex likely reflects thematic reanalysis processes, whereas, activation in the left IFG supports processing of complex syntax (i.e., NP-movement). Right IFG activation may reflect syntactic reanalysis processing demands associated with the sentence-picture verification task.
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