Syntactic priming effects in aphasia: an investigation of local syntactic dependencies.
This study explored on-line processing of local syntactic dependencies in normal subjects and in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics using a lexical decision paradigm. In addition, subjects performed a grammatically judgement task on the real word pairs used in the lexical decision tasks. Results of two experiments for normal subjects indicated different syntactic priming effects as a function of the type of local syntactic dependency. Word pairs that formed a single constituent phrase, i.e., a verb phrase, showed both facilitory and inhibitory effects, whereas word pairs that reflected local syntactic dependencies across a phrase boundary, i.e., pronoun verb, showed only inhibitory effects. Broca's aphasics failed to show facilitory effects when presented with word pairs forming a single constituent phrase but, similar to normals, did show inhibition when presented with word pairs that reflected local syntactic dependencies across a phrase boundary. In contrast, Wernicke's aphasics failed to show inhibitory effects in both experiments. The implications of these results for theories of language processing deficits in aphasia are considered.
Blumstein
S E
SE
Brown University, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Providence, RI 02912.
Milberg
W P
WP
Dworetzky
B
B
Rosen
A
A
Gershberg
F
F
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001041:Aphasia, Wernicke / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception