Morphosyntactic Production and Verbal Working Memory: Evidence From Greek Aphasia and Healthy Aging

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6024428.

Abstracts 20th International Science of Aphasia Conference, Rome, September 2019

“…What follows from this idea is that patterns of morphosyntactic production cannot be pathology-specific, meaning that the same or similar patterns should emerge in different neurological conditions. This prediction is largely borne out by the fact that the pattern reported here for MS is similar to the patterns reported for Greek aphasia (Fyndanis et al, 2012;Fyndanis et al, 2018a) and AD in that, in all three neurological conditions, Aspect was found to be more impaired than Agreement and Time Reference. Contrary to our prediction, the RRMS group did not differ significantly from the SPMS group in any of the three morphosyntactic conditions.…”

“…That the same pattern emerged not only in AD and aphasia but also in healthy speakers (e.g., Fyndanis et al, 2018a) is consistent with the idea that pathology only exacerbates patterns or trends observed in healthy speakers (e.g., Dick et al, 2001;Miyake et al, 1994). Furthermore, recent studies showed that WM is critically involved in verb-related morphosyntactic production (e.g., Fyndanis et al, 2018a;Kok et al, 2007). Given that MS is characterized by WM limitations (Brochet & Ruet, 2019) among other deficits , we expect individuals with MS to perform worse than healthy controls on tasks tapping into morphosyntactic production.…”

“…For instance, found that, in Greek AD, Aspect is more impaired than Time Reference/Tense and subject-verb Agreement, and Time Reference is more impaired than Agreement. Interestingly, the same pattern emerged in Greek aphasia and healthy aging (e.g., Fyndanis et al, 2012;2018a). That the same pattern emerged not only in AD and aphasia but also in healthy speakers (e.g., Fyndanis et al, 2018a) is consistent with the idea that pathology only exacerbates patterns or trends observed in healthy speakers (e.g., Dick et al, 2001;Miyake et al, 1994).…”

“…Given that MS is characterized by WM limitations (Brochet & Ruet, 2019) among other deficits , we expect individuals with MS to perform worse than healthy controls on tasks tapping into morphosyntactic production. We also expect them to exhibit a pattern of performance identical or similar to that emerged in Greek AD , aphasia (Fyndanis et al, 2012;2018a) and healthy aging (Fyndanis et al, 2018a) (i.e., Aspect<Time Reference<Agreement). Moreover, since individuals with SPMS have greater cognitive/WM limitations than individuals with RRMS (Brochet & Ruet, 2019), we expect the former to be more impaired than the latter in morphosyntactic production.…”

“…Participants were administered a sentence completion task (developed by Fyndanis et al, 2018a) tapping into the production of subject-verb Agreement, Time Reference/Tense, and Aspect. (Figure 1).…”