Comprehension strategies determining reference in aphasia: A study of reflexivization*1
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To the Editor.—
The report of Kertesz et al in the October 1977 issue of theArchives(34:590-601, 1977) was of special interest for the inclusion of the mean ages of patients in specific categories of aphasia. Analysis of the authors' data demonstrates the mean age of patients with Broca's aphasia to be nine years younger than the mean ages of patients within any other group of aphasia. Children with aphasia are known to have almost exclusively nonfluent aphasia. Moreover, clinicians dealing with adult aphasia have noted that patients with Broca's aphasia tend to be younger than patients with Wernicke's aphasia. The first systematically obtained evidence regarding this clinical observation was reported at the 1977 meeting of the Academy of Aphasia.1Albert and colleagues compared the ages and types of aphasia of 167 right-handed patients seen in the Neurobehavioral Unit of the Aphasia Research Center at the BostonAphasiology
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Background: One of the major impacts of aphasia is the social isolation of spouses and their partners with aphasia over time. This consequence may be related to a couple's discomfort in conversing with a third party. In an interview situation, spouses support their partner with aphasia in order to allow him/her to be included in the talk. It is likely that the participation of both members of couples depended on the degree to which the aphasia interfered. Aims: The general aim of this research was to describe the influence of aphasia severity on the contributions of each member of a couple, one of them who had aphasia, in an interview situation. Methods & Procedures: The twenty‐six couples with a member with aphasia were divided into three groups of different aphasia severities. Five couples constituted the control group. All couples were filmed in an interview. Number and types of spouses' contributions, their solicitation by the person with aphasia and their reaction and participation following the contributions were analyzed. Outcomes & Results: Results showed that the severity of aphasia had a significant effect on both members of the couple participating in the interview. Groups of couples with aphasia and especially those with moderate and severe aphasia differed from groups of milder forms of aphasia and couples without communication limitations. The number of “speaking for” and “repair” behaviours produced by spouses and the reactions and participation of people with aphasia following these contributions also varied significantly with aphasia severity. Conclusions: The results help us better understand how both couples with and without a member with aphasia engage in an interview. Moreover, these results may be clinically useful to support the development of treatment methods that include the spouse of people with aphasia.
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Abstract Knowledge of the frequency and remission of aphasia is essential for the rehabilitation of stroke patients and provides insight into the brain organization of language. We studied prospectively and consecutively an unselected and community‐based sample of 881 patients with acute stroke. Assessment of aphasia was done at admission, weekly during the hospital stay, and at a 6‐months follow‐up using the aphasia score of the Scandinavian Stroke Scale. Thirty‐eight percent had aphasia at the time of admission; at discharge 18% had aphasia. Sex was not a determinant of aphasia in stroke, and no sex difference in the anterior‐posterior distribution of lesions was found. The remission curve was steep: Stationary language function in 95% was reached within 2 weeks in those with initial mild aphasia, within 6 weeks in those with moderate, and within 10 weeks in those with severe aphasia. A valid prognosis of aphasia could be made within 1 to 4 weeks after the stroke depending on the initial severity of aphasia. Initial severity of aphasia was the only clinically relevant predictor of aphasia outcome. Sex, handedness, and side of stroke lesion were not independent outcome predictors, and the influence of age was minimal.
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Variability in children's language acquisition is likely due to a number of cognitive and social variables. The current study investigated whether individual differences in statistical learning (SL), which has been implicated in language acquisition, independently predicted 6‐ to 8‐year‐old's comprehension of syntax. Sixty‐eight ( N = 68) English‐speaking children completed a test of comprehension of four syntactic structures, a test of SL utilizing nonlinguistic visual stimuli, and several additional control measures. The results revealed that SL independently predicted comprehension of two syntactic structures that show considerable variability in this age range: passives and object relative clauses. These data suggest that individual differences in children's capacity for SL are associated with the acquisition of the syntax of natural languages.
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In recent publications, Grodzinsky, 1984, Grodzinsky, 1986, Grodzinsky, 1990 has offered a new theory of the disruption of sentence comprehension in so-called agrammatic aphasics. In these works Grodzinsky contends that his account, which is based in various ways on the formal apparatus of current syntactic theory (Chomsky, 1981), is an accurate and explanatory characterization of the preserved language of all those who present with both agrammatic sentence production and asyntactic sentence comprehension. We argue that this claim is not in accord with the facts. We present a detailed case study of the sentence comprehension performance of a patient who is clinically categorized as agrammatic. This patient's performance on full and truncated passives, and on subject- and object-cleft sentences fails each of Grodzinsky's predictions for these sentence types. We argue that whether there exists any patient who does exhibit the predicted performance pattern is also in serious doubt.
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Researchers have attempted to unravel the mechanisms individuals use to comprehend language throughout the 20th century. Specifically, researchers have debated as to whether individuals use heuristic shortcuts or a complete syntactic analysis when processing an incoming sentence. This study aims to build upon previous research by exploring the roles of syntax and plausibility in a sentence in order to untangle these language comprehension mechanisms.
After presenting 24 participants with sentences of either active or passive syntactic forms that are either plausible or implausible, a systematic evaluation of comprehension accuracy and latencies comprehension responses was conducted. We found that when syntax is difficult, plausibility overrides syntax. This suggests that individuals tend not to undergo a complete syntactic analysis and instead opt for a more efficient heuristic shortcut. This study lays promising foundation for future studies involving the effect of perceptual difficulties on this phenomenon.
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Syntactic structure
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