The neuropsychology of sentence processing: Where do we stand?

Abstract

In the early 1980s, sentence comprehension deficits were attributed to a loss of syntactic knowledge in agrammatic Broca's aphasics and to a short-term memory deficit in conduction aphasics. Findings in the remainder of the decade called both of these claims into question and presented general difficulties for the group study approach. Results from case studies support the representational independence of syntactic and semantic information but the interaction of these knowledge sources during processing. Working memory is still considered to provide critical constraints on sentence comprehension, but the capacity involved appears to be largely independent of the phonological storage involved in word list recall. Current computational approaches to sentence comprehension provide the means of accounting for the interaction of multiple sources of information and working memory requirements, but have yet to be tested against neuropsychological findings.

Working memory involvement in stuttering: Exploring the evidence and research implications

“…Regarding comprehension, although it is observed that phonological storage imposes constraints on sentence comprehension, such comprehension abilities are noted to have neuropsychological representations that are independent from phonological memory (Martin, 2006). Regarding speech planning, there are alternate views on how phonological entities are represented in memory and utilized in word formulations.…”

Cognitive Neuropsychologytwenty years on

“…This is not true just of neglect: It is true of every disorder that has been studied in any detail by cognitive neuropsychologists. Broca's aphasia is a classic example, as is very clearly documented by Martin (2006). Early work (Caramazza & Zurif, 1976) began with a hypothesis that attributed this disorder to a single cause: a defect of a syntactic processing system that is used both for understanding sentences and for constructing them.…”

Preservation of passive constructions in a patient with primary progressive aphasia

“…Agrammatic performance on sentence-picture matching tasks can be at or below chance when sentences are semantically reversible (Ansell & Flowers, 1982;Berndt, Mitchum, & Haendiges, 1996;Caramazza & Zurif, 1976;Schwartz, Saffran, & Marin, 1980). Syntactic comprehension impairment can be present in people with different neurological profiles, including patients with vascular aphasia and those with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) due to frontotemporal degeneration (Gorno-Tempini, Hillis, Weintraub, Kertesz, Mendez, Cappa, ... Grossman, 2011;Hanne, Sekerina, Vasishth, Burchert, & De Bleser, 2011;Martin, 2006;Thompson, Meltzer-Asscher, Cho, Lee, Wieneke, Weintraub, & Mesulam, 2013;Wilson, Galantucci, Tartaglia, & Gorno-Tempini, 2012). …”