Verb production in agrammatic aphasia: The influence of semantic class and argument structure properties on generalisation

Abstract

Background-Some individuals with agrammatic aphasia have difficulty producing verbs when naming and generating sentences (Miceli,

Verb use in aphasic and non-aphasic personal discourse: What is normal?

“…The findings of this study suggest that in this context, the linguistic deficit is structural and complexity based, and therapy to enhance aphasic individuals' ability to discuss their QoL should address this deficit. Research suggests that various verb treatments improve verb retrieval, as well as argument structure and sentence production (Schneider & Thompson, 2003;Webster, Morris, & Franklin, 2005). Finally, the collective findings of this research indicate the importance of using multiple discourse samples, rather than drawing inferences and basing clinical decision-making on one sample of one genre in isolation.…”

Structurally well-formed narrative production in the face of severe conceptual deterioration: A longitudinal case study of a woman with semantic dementia

“…Within the aphasic literature, verbs have traditionally been seen as primarily syntactic entities with the paucity of verbs interpreted as a sign of a grammatical disorder (e.g., Berndt et al, 1997;Schneider & Thompson, 2003). Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that a verb deficit could either be the outcome of an underlying syntactic deficit or the result of a lexical-semantic impairment (Kim & Thompson, 2004).…”

Effect of Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST) in Persons With Aphasia: Extension and Replication of Previous Findings

“…Thus, about a third of participants showed no improvement on discourse, a third showed improvement in either informativeness or complete utterances, and a third showed improvement to both informativeness and sentence production. Variable improvement on discourse within and across participants is commonly reported in verb treatments studies (e.g., Edwards, Tucker, & McCann, 2004;Fink et al, 1992;Links et al, 2010;Schneider & Thompson, 2003;Webster et al, 2005) and is not surprising, given that discourse requires the integration of cognitive (e.g., attention), micro-linguistic skills (e.g., lexical retrieval, syntax), and macro-linguistic skills (e.g., coherence and cohesion). Thus, the persistent finding of variable outcomes in connected speech across studies is likely a reflection of the diversity and complexity of participant impairment patterns, the scope and focus of treatment protocols, and the outcome measures used to evaluate improvement (see Conroy et al, 2006;Webster & Whitworth, 2012).…”

“…For the studies that examined potential generalization to sentence production, some observed improvement only with sentences containing trained verbs (Kim et al, 2007;Schneider & Thompson, 2003), while others saw improvement with untrained verbs as well (Webster & Gordon, 2009;Webster et al, 2005). Of the studies that examined connected speech, only a few reported improvement on lexical retrieval and/or improved syntax or structure (Fink et al, 1992;Kim et al, 2007;Webster et al, 2005).…”

“…Promoting semantic relationships between verbs and their thematic roles could potentially promote more generalized improvement to sentence production and discourse (e.g., Edmonds & Babb, 2011;Edmonds, Nadeau, & Kiran, 2009). Some studies have attempted this with tasks such as identifying agents and themes in pictures and picture description (Fink, Martin, Schwartz, Saffran, & Myers, 1992), story production with an emphasis on verb-noun associations (Kim, Adingono, & Revoir, 2007), descriptions of a verb's semantics and thematic roles (Schneider & Thompson, 2003), semantic feature analysis (SFA) with verbs (which focuses on single verbs but includes thematic roles) (Faroqi-Shah & Graham, 2011 [modified SFA]; Wambaugh & Ferguson, 2007;Wambaugh, Mauszycki, & Wright, 2014), and tasks targeting associations between verbs and nouns, sometimes in conjunction with sentence production (Webster & Gordon, 2009;Webster et al, 2005).…”