Eye Tracking Measures for Studying Language Comprehension Deficits in Aphasia: A Systematic Search and Scoping Review

Sharma, Saryu; Kim, Hana; Harris, Havan; Haberstroh, Amanda; Wright, Heather Harris; Rothermich, Kathrin

doi:10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00287

Cited by 10 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…By comparing noun-verb homonym pairs with related meanings (e.g., to crash/the crash ) to noun-verb homonym pairs with unrelated meanings (e.g., to squash/the squash ), they found different noun/verb selection patterns but no effect of meaning relatedness. Lastly, studies using eye-tracking to investigate the processing of lexical ambiguity in individuals with aphasia suggested that they have intact lexical access processes, but have specific impairments in lexical integration and/or reanalysis processes ( Laurinavichyute et al, 2014 ; see Sharma et al, 2021 for a review). Specifically, individuals with non-fluent agrammatic aphasia have performed at chance when processing sentences that involved reanalysis (e.g., object relatives “ This is the man that the boy catches” and sentences with lexical ambiguity “ The PEN is always packed with wooly sheep” ) ( Friedmann and Gvion, 2003 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Lukic

Krauska

Yoshida

et al. 2023

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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IntroductionMany words are categorially ambiguous and can be used as a verb (to paint) or as a noun (the paint) due to the presence of unpronounced morphology or “zero morphology”. On this account, the verb “paint” is derived from the noun “paint” through the addition of a silent category-changing morpheme. Past studies have uncovered the syntactic and semantic properties of these categorially ambiguous words, but no research has been conducted on how people process them during normal or impaired lexical processing. Are these two different uses of “paint” processed in the same way? Does this morphosyntactic structure have an effect on online sentence processing?MethodsThis study presents two experiments that investigate the effect of morphosyntactic complexity in categorially ambiguous words presented in isolation (experiment 1) and in a sentential context (experiment 2). The first experiment tested the ability to process categorially unambiguous and ambiguous nouns and verbs in 30 healthy older adults and 12 individuals with aphasia, using a forced choice phrasal-completion task, in which individuals choose whether the or to is most compatible with target words.ResultsHealthy controls and individuals with fluent aphasia all showed: (1) a bias toward the base category in selection rates for the and to, where the was selected more frequently for words identified to be base nouns, and to was selected more frequently for base verbs, and (2) longer reaction times for ambiguous (over unambiguous) words. However, individuals with non-fluent agrammatic aphasia showed a base-category effect only for nouns, with chance performance for verbs. The second experiment, using an eye-tracking while reading paradigm with 56 young healthy adults, showed a reading time slowdown for derived forms (to paint) compared to their base-category counterparts (the paint) in sentence contexts.DiscussionThese findings suggest that categorially ambiguous words likely share a common root, and are related by zero-derivation, and that impaired access to the base-category (i.e., verbs like to visit) precludes associated morphological processes and therefore the retrieval of the derived-category (i.e., nouns like the visit) in non-fluent agrammatic aphasia. This study provides insights into the theory of zero morphology, and the principles that need to be accounted for in models of the lexicon.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Lukic

Krauska

Yoshida

et al. 2023

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…A last direction for future work in terms of methodological advances is the use of eye tracking for the investigation of morphosyntactic processing in AD. This technique has been implemented in the last fifteen years for the study of sentence comprehension in people with stroke‐induced aphasia and primary progressive aphasia, and it has proven to be a valuable method to uncover similarities and differences in sentence processing between patients and non‐brain damaged controls (see Sharma et al., 2021, for a scoping review). Research that has implemented eye tracking for the study of AD has focused on the investigation of cognitive decline in AD and on using it in the classification, diagnosis or early prediction of AD (see Readman et al., 2021, for a systematic review).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodologies for assessing morphosyntactic ability in people with Alzheimer's disease

Varlokosta

Fragkopoulou

Arfani

et al. 2023

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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BackgroundThe detection and description of language impairments in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease (AD) play an important role in research, clinical diagnosis and intervention. Various methodological protocols have been implemented for the assessment of morphosyntactic abilities in AD; narrative discourse elicitation tasks and structured experimental tasks for production, offline and online structured experimental tasks for comprehension. Very few studies implement and compare different methodological protocols; thus, little is known about the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology.AimsTo discuss and compare the main behavioral methodological approaches and tasks that have been used in psycholinguistic research to assess different aspects of morphosyntactic production and comprehension in individuals with AD at the word and sentence levels.MethodsA narrative review was conducted through searches in the scientific databases Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, MITCogNet, PubMed. Only studies written in English, that reported quantitative data and were published in peer‐reviewed journals were considered with respect to their methodological protocol. Moreover, we considered studies that reported research on all stages of the disease and we included only studies that also reported results of a healthy control group. Studies that implemented standardized assessment tools were not considered in this review.Outcomes & ResultsThe main narrative discourse elicitation tasks implemented for the assessment of morphosyntactic production include interviews, picture‐description and story narration, whereas the main structured experimental tasks include sentence completion, constrained sentence production, sentence repetition and naming. Morphosyntactic comprehension in AD has been assessed with the use of structured experimental tasks, both offline (sentence‐picture matching, grammaticality judgment) and online (cross‐modal naming,speeded sentence acceptability judgment, auditory moving window, word detection, reading). For each task we considered studies that reported results from different morphosyntactic structures and phenomena in as many different languages as possible.Conclusions & ImplicationsOur review revealed strengths and weaknesses of these methods but also directions for future research. Narrative discourse elicitation tasks as well as structured experimental tasks have been used in a variety of languages, and have uncovered preserved morphosyntactic production but also deficits in people with AD. A combination of narrative discourse elicitation and structured production tasks for the assessment of the same morphosyntactic structure has been rarely used. Regarding comprehension, offline tasks have been implemented in various languages, whereas online tasks have been mainly used in English. Offline and online experimental paradigms have often produced contradictory results even within the same study. The discrepancy between the two paradigms has been attributed to the different working memory demands they impose to the comprehender or to the different parsing processes they tap. Strengths and shortcomings of each methodology are summarized in the paper, and comparisons between different tasks are attempted when this is possible. Thus, the paper may serve as a methodological guide for the study of morphosyntax in AD and possibly in other neurodegenerative diseases.WHAT THIS PAPER ADDSWhat is already known on this subject For the assessment of morphosyntactic abilities in AD, various methodological paradigms have been implemented: narrative discourse elicitation tasks and structured experimental tasks for production, and offline and online structured experimental tasks for comprehension. Very few studies implement and compare different methodological protocols; thus, little is known about the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology.What this paper adds to existing knowledge The paper presents an overview of methodologies that have been used to assess morphosyntactic production and comprehension of people with AD at the word and sentence levels. The paper summarizes the strengths and shortcomings of each methodology, providing both the researcher and the clinician with some directions in their endeavour of investigating language in AD. Also, the paper highlights the need for further research that will implement carefully scrutinized tasks from various experimental paradigms and will explore distinct aspects of the AD patients’ morphosyntactic abilities in typologically different languages.What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The paper may serve as a reference point for (psycho‐)linguists who wish to study morphosyntactic abilities in AD, and for speech and language therapists who might need to apply morphosyntactic protocols to their patients in order to assess them or design appropriate therapeutic interventions for production and comprehension deficits.

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“…The left eye was recorded. The experimental stimuli were presented on a Display PC via Experiment Builder®, an object-oriented programming suite specifically designed to administer stimuli while recording eye movements (for details on eye-tracking procedures and measures, see Duchowski, 2017 ; Rayner, 1998 ; and Sharma et al, 2021 ). Sentence presentation was preceded by a fixation point and triggered manually by the experimenter.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency of Subjects and Eye Movements in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Pietro

Girolamo

Luzzatti

et al. 2022

J Psycholinguist Res

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People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) show anomalies in language processing with respect to “who is doing what” in an action. This linguistic behavior is suggestive of an atypical representation of the formal concepts of “Agent” in the lexical representation of a verb, i.e., its thematic grid. To test this hypothesis, we administered a silent-reading task with sentences including a semantic violation of the animacy trait of the grammatical subject to 30 people with SSD and 30 healthy control participants (HCs). When the anomalous grammatical subject was the Agent of the event, a significant increase of Gaze Duration was observed in HCs, but not in SSDs. Conversely, when the anomalous subject was a Theme, SSDs displayed an increased probability of go-back movements, unlike HCs. These results are suggestive of a higher tolerability for anomalous Agents in SSD compared to the normal population. The fact that SSD participants did not show a similar tolerability for anomalous Themes rules out the issue of an attention deficit. We suggest that general communication abilities in SSD might benefit from explicit training on deep linguistic structures.

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Eye Tracking Measures for Studying Language Comprehension Deficits in Aphasia: A Systematic Search and Scoping Review

Cited by 10 publications

References 70 publications

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Methodologies for assessing morphosyntactic ability in people with Alzheimer's disease

Agency of Subjects and Eye Movements in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

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