The influence of event-related knowledge on verb-argument processing in aphasia

Dickey, Michael Walsh; Warren, Tessa

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.12.003

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(134 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Although performance on conceptual-semantic measures and language-impairment measures dissociated in at least one previous sample of PWA (e.g. Dickey & Warren, 2015), in the current sample they were highly correlated (KDT vs. CAT Mean Modality T-Score: r=.78, p<.001; Event vs. CAT Mean Modality T-Score: r=.72, p<.005).…”

Section: Methodscontrasting

confidence: 54%

A rational inference approach to group and individual-level sentence comprehension performance in aphasia

Warren

Dickey

Liburd

2017

Cortex

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The rational inference, or noisy channel, account of language comprehension predicts that comprehenders are sensitive to the probabilities of different interpretations for a given sentence and adapt as these probabilities change (Gibson, Bergen & Piantadosi, 2013). This account provides an important new perspective on aphasic sentence comprehension: aphasia may increase the likelihood of sentence distortion, leading people with aphasia (PWA) to rely more on the prior probability of an interpretation and less on the form or structure of the sentence (Gibson, Sandberg, Fedorenko, Bergen & Kiran, 2015). We report the results of a sentence-picture matching experiment that tested the predictions of the rational inference account and other current models of aphasic sentence comprehension across a variety of sentence structures. Consistent with the rational inference account, PWA showed similar sensitivity to the probability of particular kinds of form distortions as age-matched controls, yet overall their interpretations relied more on prior probability and less on sentence form. As predicted by rational inference, but not by other models of sentence comprehension in aphasia, PWA’s interpretations were more faithful to the form for active and passive sentences than for direct object and prepositional object sentences. However contra rational inference, there was no evidence that individual PWA’s severity of syntactic or semantic impairment predicted their sensitivity to form versus the prior probability of a sentence, as cued by semantics. These findings confirm and extend previous findings that suggest the rational inference account holds promise for explaining aphasic and neurotypical comprehension, but they also raise new challenges for the account.

show abstract

Section: Methodscontrasting

confidence: 54%

A rational inference approach to group and individual-level sentence comprehension performance in aphasia

Warren

Dickey

Liburd

2017

Cortex

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Those studies typically report that linguistic impairments arise as a result of left hemisphere damage, whereas nonverbal semantic processing deficits are considered to be caused by either bilateral (Lambon Ralph et al, 2017) or rightlateralized lesions (Gainotti, 2011(Gainotti, , 2015. Our work contributes to this literature by showing that the language-semantics dissociation holds not only for single concepts but also for combinatorial event-level representations (see also Colvin et al, 2019;Dickey & Warren, 2015). Although we only test two individuals with global aphasia, these data provide an important contribution to the field because of the unique nature of the impairment in these individuals: large-scale disruption of multiple linguistic functions and relatively preserved nonverbal cognition.…”

Section: The Language Network Is Not Required For Nonverbal Event Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…Neuroimaging studies that explicitly compared verbal and nonverbal semantic processing of objects (e.g., Devereux et al, 2013;Fairhall & Caramazza, 2013;Handjaras et al, 2017;Shinkareva et al, 2011;Vandenberghe et al, 1996;Visser et al, 2012), actions (e.g., Wurm & Caramazza, 2019), and events (Baldassano et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2019;Jouen et al, 2015;Thierry & Price, 2006) often report overlapping activation in left-lateralized frontal and temporal areas, which may reflect the engagement of the language network. In contrast, neuropsychology studies have often reported dissociations between linguistic and semantic deficits in patients with aphasia (e.g., Antonucci & Reilly, 2008;Chertkow et al, 1997;Dickey & Warren, 2015;Jefferies & Lambon Ralph, 2006;Saygın et al, 2004;cf. Saygın et al, 2003), suggesting that verbal and nonverbal semantic processes rely on distinct neural circuits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Language Network Is Recruited but Not Required for Nonverbal Event Semantics

Ivanova

Mineroff

Zimmerer

et al. 2021

Neurobiology of Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ability to combine individual concepts of objects, properties, and actions into complex representations of the world is often associated with language. Yet combinatorial event-level representations can also be constructed from nonverbal input, such as visual scenes. Here, we test whether the language network in the human brain is involved in and necessary for semantic processing of events presented nonverbally. In Experiment 1, we scanned participants with fMRI while they performed a semantic plausibility judgment task vs. a difficult perceptual control task on sentences and line drawings that describe/depict simple agent-patient interactions. We found that the language network responded robustly during the semantic task performed on both sentences and pictures (although its response to sentences was stronger). Thus, language regions in healthy adults are engaged during a semantic task performed on pictorial depictions of events. But is this engagement necessary? In Experiment 2, we tested two individuals with global aphasia, who have sustained massive damage to perisylvian language areas and display severe language difficulties, against a group of age-matched control participants. Individuals with aphasia were severely impaired on the task of matching sentences to pictures. However, they performed close to controls in assessing the plausibility of pictorial depictions of agent-patient interactions. Overall, our results indicate that the left fronto-temporal language network is recruited but not necessary for semantic processing of nonverbally presented events.

show abstract

“…Dickey & Warren, 2015;Thompson & Choy, 2009). In the present study, effects of structural complexity emerged later in people with aphasia than in controls and at least partly reflect end-of-clause integration processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Sentence Reading in People With Aphasia: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Knilans

DeDe

2015

Am J Speech Lang Pathol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose: There is a lot of evidence that people with aphasia have more difficulty understanding structurally complex sentences (e.g., object clefts) than simpler sentences (subject clefts). However, subject clefts also occur more frequently in English than object clefts. Thus, it is possible that both structural complexity and frequency affect how people with aphasia understand these structures. Method: Nine people with aphasia and 8 age-matched controls participated in the study. The stimuli consisted of 24 object cleft and 24 subject cleft sentences. The task was eye tracking during reading, which permits a more fine-grained analysis of reading performance than measures such as self-paced reading.Results: As expected, controls had longer reading times for critical regions in object cleft sentences compared with subject cleft sentences. People with aphasia showed the predicted effects of structural frequency. Effects of structural complexity in people with aphasia did not emerge on their first pass through the sentence but were observed when they were rereading critical regions of complex sentences. Conclusions: People with aphasia are sensitive to both structural complexity and structural frequency when reading. However, people with aphasia may use different reading strategies than controls when confronted with relatively infrequent and complex sentence structures. P eople with aphasia often have difficulty understanding complex sentences, especially sentences that do not follow the canonical, or typical, word order for their language (e.g., Dick et al., 2001). In English, sentences typically follow subject-verb-object word order. Sentences with noncanonical word order are both more syntactically complex and less common than sentences with canonical word order (e.g., Roland, Dick, & Elman, 2007). Studies of sentence comprehension impairments in people with aphasia have focused on the contributions of structural complexity (e.g., Caplan, Waters, DeDe, Michaud, & Reddy, 2007;Dick et al., 2001;Grodzinsky, 2000;Thompson & Choy, 2009). However, research from adults without brain damage suggests that the relative frequency of syntactic structures also influences processing difficulty (e.g., Levy, 2008;Staub, 2010). Thus, it is possible that people with aphasia have trouble understanding sentences with noncanonical word order at least in part because such sentences occur relatively infrequently compared with sentences with canonical word order. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether sentence comprehension impairments in people with aphasia reflect sensitivity to the frequency of the structure as well as structural complexity.A lot of evidence regarding effects of structural complexity comes from studies investigating how people with aphasia process sentences with object and subject relative clauses, such as the object and subject clefts in examples 1 and 2: Sentences 1 and 2 both convey the idea "the boy hugged the girl," but object clefts such as in sentence 1 are more difficult to process than su...

show abstract

The influence of event-related knowledge on verb-argument processing in aphasia

Cited by 19 publications

References 56 publications

A rational inference approach to group and individual-level sentence comprehension performance in aphasia

A rational inference approach to group and individual-level sentence comprehension performance in aphasia

The Language Network Is Recruited but Not Required for Nonverbal Event Semantics

Online Sentence Reading in People With Aphasia: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About