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Understanding discourse-linked elements in aphasia: a threefold study in Russian.
L S Bos1, O Dragoy2, S Avrutin3
1International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), Universities of Groningen (NL), Newcastle (UK), Potsdam (GE), Trento (IT) & Macquarie University, Sydney (AU), PO Box 716, 9700 AS, Groningen, The Netherlands; Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, PO Box 716, 9700 AS, Groningen, The Netherlands; University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, D-14476 Potsdam, Germany.
Neuropsychologia
|March 18, 2014
Summary
Discourse-linking challenges impact comprehension for individuals with agrammatic and fluent aphasia, particularly with past tense verbs, "which" questions, and pronouns. These difficulties stem from the need to connect linguistic elements to external information.
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Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Neurolinguistics
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Agrammatic speakers exhibit deficits in grammatical encoding and decoding.
- Specific linguistic elements like past time reference, 'which' questions, and pronouns require discourse-linking, proving more challenging than present reference, 'who' questions, and reflexives.
- Previous research indicated these challenges independently across populations; this study unified these conditions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if discourse-linking is the common factor underlying comprehension deficits in time reference, wh-questions, and object pronouns.
- To compare the comprehension of discourse-linked elements in individuals with agrammatic aphasia and fluent aphasia.
Main Methods:
- Three sentence-picture-matching tasks were used: Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART), Wh Extraction Assessment Tool (WHEAT), and Reflexive-Pronoun Test (RePro).
- Participants included 10 agrammatic speakers, 10 fluent aphasic speakers, and 10 non-brain-damaged Russian speakers (NBDs).
- Tasks assessed comprehension of present vs. past time reference, 'which' vs. 'who' questions, and reflexive vs. pronominal reference.
Main Results:
- Non-brain-damaged participants achieved ceiling scores, significantly outperforming aphasic groups.
- Agrammatic speakers showed discourse-linking effects in TART and WHEAT.
- Fluent speakers demonstrated discourse-linking effects across all three tests; RePro scores were at ceiling for all groups.
Conclusions:
- Comprehension difficulties with past time reference, 'which' questions, and pronouns in both agrammatic and fluent aphasia are linked to discourse-linking requirements.
- The observed effects are not exclusive to agrammatism but may arise from distinct underlying mechanisms in agrammatic and fluent aphasia.