Word-category violations in patients with Broca's aphasia: an ERP study.
An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line syntactic processing in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were visually presented with sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of word-category. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N = 11), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N = 9), and healthy aged-matched controls (N = 15). Both control groups appeared sensitive to the violations of word-category as shown by clear P600/SPS effects. The Broca patients displayed only a very reduced and delayed P600/SPS effect. The results are discussed in the context of a lexicalist parsing model. It is concluded that Broca patients are hindered to detect on-line violations of word-category, if word class information is incomplete or delayed available.
Wassenaar
Marlies
M
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. marlies.wassenaar@fcdonders.kun.nl
Hagoort
Peter
P
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires