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Verb-argument structure processing in complex sentences in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia
L P Shapiro1, B Gordon, N Hack
1Florida Atlantic University.
Brain and Language
|October 1, 1993
Summary
Normal adults and Broca's aphasia patients access verb-argument structures in real-time. Wernicke's aphasia patients, however, show no on-line sensitivity to verb thematic properties during sentence processing.
Area of Science:
- Neurolinguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Understanding real-time language processing is crucial for diagnosing and treating language disorders.
- Verb-argument structure access is fundamental to sentence comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate real-time verb-argument structure access in healthy individuals and patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.
- To determine if sentence type affects thematic role assignment in different patient groups.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted involving normal control subjects, Broca's aphasic patients, and Wernicke's aphasic patients.
- Subjects' real-time access of verb-argument structures was examined across various sentence constructions (active, passive, cleft-subject, cleft-object).
Main Results:
- Normal controls and Broca's aphasic patients demonstrated sensitivity to verb thematic properties irrespective of sentence structure.
- Wernicke's aphasic patients failed to exhibit on-line sensitivity to verb thematic properties.
Conclusions:
- Findings suggest distinct processing deficits in Wernicke's aphasia, potentially involving semantic processing.
- A double-dissociation is proposed between accessing verb thematic properties and computing trace-antecedent relations in sentence processing.