On-line sensitivity to local and long-distance syntactic dependencies in Broca's aphasia.
Seven agrammatic Broca's aphasics and ten normal control subjects performed a word-monitoring task to determine the degree to which violations of syntax would affect word-monitoring performance. Both local and long-distance dependencies were explored, as well as the effects of additional interceding words. Results indicated that normal subjects' word-monitoring latencies were significantly slower to target words in ungrammatical contexts for both local and long-distance dependencies. Aphasic subjects showed a significant sensitivity to ungrammaticality in the local dependency condition; for the long-distance dependencies, however, no reaction time difference emerged between grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli. Results are discussed in relation to current theories of the nature of agrammatic deficits.
Department of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Brown University.
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D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001037:Aphasia / Q000523:psychology*; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception