Structural Prediction in Aphasia: Evidence from either

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Neurolinguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Young adults predict upcoming words during language processing.
• The role of prediction in aphasia is not fully understood.
• Some studies suggest lexical and structural prediction may be preserved in people with aphasia (PWA).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate structural prediction in PWA compared to neurotypical controls.
• To examine how the presence of the lexical cue 'either' affects sentence comprehension.
• To explore differences in on-line adaptation to contextual patterns between PWA and controls.

Main Methods:

• A self-paced reading experiment was conducted.
• The experiment manipulated the presence of the word 'either' before a disjunction.
• Participants included PWA and age-matched neurotypical controls.

Main Results:

• Both PWA and controls showed faster reading times on the disjunction and second disjunct when 'either' was present, indicating structural prediction.
• The facilitatory effect of 'either' diminished over time for neurotypical controls.
• For PWA, there was a trend for the 'either' effect to increase with more experimental items.

Conclusions:

• PWA and neurotypical individuals can use lexical cues like 'either' for structural prediction.
• On-line adaptation to local contextual patterns during language comprehension may differ between PWA and neurotypical adults.