title: Syntactic and thematic components of sentence processing in progressive nonfluent aphasia and nonaphasic frontotemporal dementia.
abstract: We used an online word-monitoring paradigm to examine sentence processing in healthy seniors and frontotemporal dementia patients with progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) or a nonaphasic disorder of social and executive functioning (SOC/EXEC). Healthy seniors were sensitive to morphosyntactic, major grammatical subcategory, and selection restriction violations in a sentence. PNFA patients were insensitive to grammatical errors, but showed reasonable sensitivity to thematic matrix violations, consistent with a differential grammatical processing impairment. By contrast, SOC/EXEC patients showed partial sensitivity to grammatical errors but were insensitive to thematic violations. These findings support a dissociation between grammatical and thematic components of sentence processing. Specifically, they are consistent with a grammatical processing deficit in PNFA patients, and impairment in the formation of a coherent thematic matrix in SOC/EXEC patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Jonathan E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Peelle
authors.forename: Ayanna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cooke
authors.forename: Peachie
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Vesely
authors.forename: Murray
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grossman