Automatic processing of wh- and NP-movement in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking

Individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia show deficits in comprehension of non-canonical wh-movement and NP-movement sentences. Previous work using eyetracking has found that agrammatic and unimpaired listeners show very similar patterns of automatic processing for wh-movement sentences. The current study attempts to replicate this finding for sentences with wh-movement (in object relatives in the current study) and to extend it to sentences with NP movement (passives). For wh-movement sentences, aphasic and control participants' eye-movements differed most dramatically in late regions of the sentence and post-offset, with aphasic participants exhibiting lingering attention to a salient but grammatically impermissible competitor. The eye-movement differences between correct and incorrect trials for wh-movement sentences were similar, with incorrect trials also exhibiting competition from an impermissible interpretation late in the sentence. Furthermore, the two groups exhibited similar eye-movement patterns in response to passive NP-movement sentences, but showed little evidence of gap-filling for passives. The results suggest that aphasic and unimpaired individuals may generate similar representations during comprehension, but that aphasics are highly vulnerable to interference from alternative interpretations (Ferreira, 2003).