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Walenski M, Mack JE, Mesulam MM, Thompson CK. Thematic Integration Impairments in Primary Progressive Aphasia: Evidence From Eye-Tracking. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 14:587594. [PMID: 33488370 PMCID: PMC7815820 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.587594] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2020] [Accepted: 11/09/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a degenerative disease affecting language while leaving other cognitive facilities relatively unscathed. The agrammatic subtype of PPA (PPA-G) is characterized by agrammatic language production with impaired comprehension of noncanonical filler-gap syntactic structures, such as object-relatives [e.g., The sandwich that the girl ate (gap) was tasty], in which the filler (the sandwich) is displaced from the object position within the relative clause to a position preceding both the verb and the agent (the girl) and is replaced by a gap linked with the filler. One hypothesis suggests that the observed deficits of these structures reflect impaired thematic integration, including impaired prediction of the thematic role of the filler and impaired thematic integration at the gap, but spared structure building (i.e., creation of the gap). In the current study, we examined the on-line comprehension of object-relative and subject-relative clauses in healthy controls and individuals with agrammatic and logopenic PPA using eye-tracking. Eye-movement patterns in canonical subject-relative clause structures were essentially spared in both PPA groups. In contrast, eye-movement patterns in noncanonical object-relative clauses revealed delayed thematic prediction in both agrammatic and logopenic PPA, on-time structure building (i.e., gap-filling) in both groups, and abnormal thematic integration in agrammatic, but not logopenic, PPA. We argue that these results are consistent with the hypothesis that agrammatic comprehension deficits reflect impaired thematic integration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Walenski
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
| | - Jennifer E. Mack
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
| | - M. Marsel Mesulam
- Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Cynthia K. Thompson
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
- Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
- Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
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Sung JE, Choi S, Eom B, Yoo JK, Jeong JH. Syntactic Complexity as a Linguistic Marker to Differentiate Mild Cognitive Impairment From Normal Aging. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2020; 63:1416-1429. [PMID: 32402217 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00335] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Purpose In this study, we sought to identify critical linguistic markers that can differentiate sentence processing of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from the sentence processing of normal-aging populations by manipulating sentences' linguistic complexity. We investigated whether passive sentences, as linguistically complex structures, can serve as linguistic markers that can contribute to diagnoses that distinguish MCI from normal aging. Method In total, 52 participants, including 26 adults with amnestic MCI and 26 cognitively unimpaired adults, participated in the study. All participants were native speakers of Korean. We administered the two subsets of active and passive conditions using a sentence-picture paradigm with semantically reversible sentences to both groups. Results A mixed-effects model using PROC NLMIXED demonstrated that the MCI group exhibited differentially greater difficulty in processing passive than active sentences compared to the normal-aging group. A logistic regression fitted with the PROC LOGISTIC model identified the sum of the passive sentences, with age and education effects as the best models to distinguish individuals with MCI from the normal-aging group. Conclusion Sentence comprehension deficits emerged in the MCI stage when the syntactic complexity was increased. Furthermore, a passive structure was the best predictor for efficiently distinguishing the MCI group from the normal-aging group. These results are clinically and theoretically important, given that linguistic complexity can serve as a critical behavioral marker in the detection of early symptoms associated with linguistic-cognitive decline.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jee Eun Sung
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Sujin Choi
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Bora Eom
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jae Keun Yoo
- Department of Statistics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jee Hyang Jeong
- Department of Neurology, Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, Ewha Womans University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Salis C. Short-term memory treatment: Patterns of learning and generalisation to sentence comprehension in a person with aphasia. Neuropsychol Rehabil 2012; 22:428-48. [DOI: 10.1080/09602011.2012.656460] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/14/2022]
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Kuperberg GR. Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: challenges to syntax. Brain Res 2006; 1146:23-49. [PMID: 17400197 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2006.12.063] [Citation(s) in RCA: 446] [Impact Index Per Article: 24.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2006] [Revised: 12/13/2006] [Accepted: 12/19/2006] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
In 1980, the N400 event-related potential was described in association with semantic anomalies within sentences. When, in 1992, a second waveform, the P600, was reported in association with syntactic anomalies and ambiguities, the story appeared to be complete: the brain respected a distinction between semantic and syntactic representation and processes. Subsequent studies showed that the P600 to syntactic anomalies and ambiguities was modulated by lexical and discourse factors. Most surprisingly, more than a decade after the P600 was first described, a series of studies reported that semantic verb-argument violations, in the absence of any violations or ambiguities of syntax can evoke robust P600 effects and no N400 effects. These observations have raised fundamental questions about the relationship between semantic and syntactic processing in the brain. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent studies that have demonstrated P600s to semantic violations in light of several proposed triggers: semantic-thematic attraction, semantic associative relationships, animacy and semantic-thematic violations, plausibility, task, and context. I then discuss these findings in relation to a unifying theory that attempts to bring some of these factors together and to link the P600 produced by semantic verb-argument violations with the P600 evoked by unambiguous syntactic violations and syntactic ambiguities. I suggest that normal language comprehension proceeds along at least two competing neural processing streams: a semantic memory-based mechanism, and a combinatorial mechanism (or mechanisms) that assigns structure to a sentence primarily on the basis of morphosyntactic rules, but also on the basis of certain semantic-thematic constraints. I suggest that conflicts between the different representations that are output by these distinct but interactive streams lead to a continued combinatorial analysis that is reflected by the P600 effect. I discuss some of the implications of this non-syntactocentric, dynamic model of language processing for understanding individual differences, language processing disorders and the neuroanatomical circuitry engaged during language comprehension. Finally, I suggest that that these two processing streams may generalize beyond the language system to real-world visual event comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gina R Kuperberg
- Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
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van Herten M, Chwilla DJ, Kolk HHJ. When Heuristics Clash with Parsing Routines: ERP Evidence for Conflict Monitoring in Sentence Perception. J Cogn Neurosci 2006; 18:1181-97. [PMID: 16839291 DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2006.18.7.1181] [Citation(s) in RCA: 148] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Monitoring refers to a process of quality control designed to optimize behavioral outcome. Monitoring for action errors manifests itself in an error-related negativity in event-related potential (ERP) studies and in an increase in activity of the anterior cingulate in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Here we report evidence for a monitoring process in perception, in particular, language perception, manifesting itself in a late positivity in the ERP. This late positivity, the P600, appears to be triggered by a conflict between two interpretations, one delivered by the standard syntactic algorithm and one by a plausibility heuristic which combines individual word meanings in the most plausible way. To resolve this conflict, we propose that the brain reanalyzes the memory trace of the perceptual input to check for the possibility of a processing error. Thus, as in Experiment 1, when the reader is presented with semantically anomalous sentences such as, “The fox that shot the poacher…,” full syntactic analysis indicates a semantic anomaly, whereas the word-based heuristic leads to a plausible interpretation, that of a poacher shooting a fox. That readers actually pursue such a word-based analysis is indicated by the fact that the usual ERP index of semantic anomaly, the so-called N400 effect, was absent in this case. A P600 effect appeared instead. In Experiment 2, we found that even when the word-based heuristic indicated that only part of the sentence was plausible (e.g., “…that the elephants pruned the trees”), a P600 effect was observed and the N400 effect of semantic anomaly was absent. It thus seems that the plausibility of part of the sentence (e.g., that of pruning trees) was sufficient to create a conflict with the implausible meaning of the sentence as a whole, giving rise to a monitoring response.
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Kok P, Kolk H, Haverkort M. Agrammatic sentence production: is verb second impaired in Dutch? BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2006; 96:243-54. [PMID: 16087224 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.05.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2004] [Revised: 05/03/2005] [Accepted: 05/15/2005] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
This study investigates effects of verb movement in nine Dutch-speaking agrammatic aphasics. According to linguistic theory, in verb second languages such as Dutch and German, the verb remains in its clause-final base position in embedded clauses, whereas it moves to second position in main clauses. In recent linguistic accounts of agrammatic sentence production, it has been suggested that the production of sentences with moved verbs is relatively difficult. However, we argue that evidence provided by previous studies on this matter is inconclusive. An experiment is reported in which the production of both types of clauses is compared. No evidence is found that sentences with moved verbs are relatively difficult to produce. In fact, there was a tendency for the base order sentences to be harder. Implications of these findings for theories of normal and agrammatic sentence production are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter Kok
- NICI, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
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Hartsuiker RJ, Barkhuysen PN. Language production and working memory: The case of subject-verb agreement. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2006. [DOI: 10.1080/01690960400002117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
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Dickey MW, Thompson CK. The resolution and recovery of filler-gap dependencies in aphasia: evidence from on-line anomaly detection. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2004; 88:108-127. [PMID: 14698736 DOI: 10.1016/s0093-934x(03)00283-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
This study examines the on-line processing of sentences with movement using an auditory anomaly detection task (after Borland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlson, 1995). Eight agrammatic aphasic participants (four of whom had undergone treatment focused on comprehension and production of filler-gap sentences) and 24 young normal participants listened to sentences and pressed a button when the sentences "stopped making sense." Critical sentences contained an anomaly in object relative clauses or conjoined clauses. Results showed that both young normals and aphasic participants were able to reject anomalous sentences of both types. In addition, both groups showed evidence of filler-gap resolution on-line. Importantly, however, there was evidence of a treatment effect for the aphasic patients: those who received treatment showed better performance than those who had not. Treated patients were more successful than the untreated patients in detecting the anomaly in filler-gap conditions, rejecting the anomalous filler-gap sentences reliably more often than the non-anomalous ones, like the young normals. This effect was not noted for untreated participants, i.e., there was no statistical difference between their rejection of anomalous and non-anomalous filler gap sentences. Further, the reaction time data showed that the treated aphasic patients' rejections came before sentence's end (within 2000 ms), while the majority of responses made by untreated patients did not. These results indicate that individuals with agrammatic aphasia appear to retain some gap-filling capacity and that treatment can improve their ability to make use of this capacity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael Walsh Dickey
- Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
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Friedmann N, Gvion A. Sentence comprehension and working memory limitation in aphasia: a dissociation between semantic-syntactic and phonological reactivation. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2003; 86:23-39. [PMID: 12821413 DOI: 10.1016/s0093-934x(02)00530-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
The relation between working memory (WM) limitation and sentence comprehension was assessed in Hebrew-speaking aphasics, three conduction aphasics and three agrammatics. The study compared sentences that required different types of reactivation-syntactic-semantic reactivation, in relative clauses, and word form/phonological reactivation, in sentences with reanalysis of lexical ambiguity. The effect of phonological memory load, manipulated by number of words intervening between the activation and the reactivation, on comprehension of the two sentence types was examined. The findings were that agrammatic aphasics failed in the comprehension of object relatives but not on subject relatives irrespective of their antecedent-gap distance. Conduction aphasics, on the other hand, who showed severe WM limitation, comprehended well all types of relative clauses and were unaffected by antecedent-gap distance. The conduction aphasics failed to understand the sentences that required phonological reactivation when the phonological distance was long. These results suggest that the type of reactivation required by the sentence, as well as the type of memory overload are crucial in determining the effect of WM limitation on sentence comprehension.
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Webster J, Franklin S, Howard D. An investigation of the interaction between thematic and phrasal structure in nonfluent agrammatic subjects. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2001; 78:197-211. [PMID: 11500069 DOI: 10.1006/brln.2001.2460] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
Garrett (1982) developed a model of normal sentence production which has been used in the description of aphasic language (Schwartz, 1987). This study investigated the effects of the thematic representation specified at the functional level on the complexity of the phrases produced at the positional level. A group of 14 nonfluent, agrammatic subjects were compared to 20 normal controls in their production of the story of Cinderella. The agrammatic subjects produced fewer argument structures than the normal control subjects. Their phrasal realization of the arguments, however, was not qualitatively different from that of the normal subjects. In both cases, with an increase in the number of arguments, there was a concurrent increase in the mean complexity of the phrases used to realize those arguments and in the total phrasal complexity of the utterances. The complexity of noun phrases differed according to the thematic roles expressed; this seemed to be a consequence of their different locations in the sentence. Preverbal noun phrases were much less complex than postverbal noun phrases. There was no evidence to suggest that there was a trade-off between the production of thematic structure and subsequent phrasal production. Neither was there evidence to suggest that production differed according to whether the phrase was an argument of the verb or a nonargument. The complexity of a phrase was determined by the type of information it conveyed.
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Affiliation(s)
- J Webster
- Department of Speech, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom.
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Hartsuiker RJ, Kolk HH, Huinck WJ. Agrammatic production of subject-verb agreement: the effect of conceptual number. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 1999; 69:119-160. [PMID: 10447988 DOI: 10.1006/brln.1999.2059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the deficit underlying agrammatic sentence production difficulties can be characterized as a limitation of computational resources and that these resources are not restricted to syntactic processing. This hypothesis was tested by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors in a sentence fragment completion paradigm. Sentence fragments were complex noun phrases, containing a subject (head) noun and a modifying prepositional phrase, containing a "local" noun. We varied the number of "tokens" a singular head noun referred to. Therefore, in one condition, grammatical and conceptual number of the head noun mismatched, whereas these numbers were the same in another condition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we observed an effect of this variable (i.e., more agreement errors when conceptual number was plural and grammatical number singular) in normal controls. Broca's aphasics, on the other hand, showed no effect. Experiment 3 consisted of a sentence/picture matching test. This test showed that the lack of effect with Broca's aphasics cannot be attributed to a comprehension deficit. We argue that these results are incompatible with the notion of a limitation in resources specific for syntactic processing. Instead, we interpret this as the result of a trade-off: Broca's aphasics lack computational resources to take into account both grammatical and conceptual information in morphosyntactic processing and rely on grammatical information only.
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Affiliation(s)
- R J Hartsuiker
- Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
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Miera G, Cuetos F. Understanding disorders in agrammatic patients: capacity or structural deficits? BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 1998; 64:328-338. [PMID: 9743546 DOI: 10.1006/brln.1998.1978] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
Several hypotheses have been advanced in recent years to understand difficulties in agrammatic patients. Some of them are of a structural kind, as the deficiency is said to lie in some of the linguistic system components. Others are of a functional type, as it is stated that the problem of these patients lies in the loss of processing capacity. Using the existence of a syntactic type of structure in Spanish, that active sentences do not follow the canonical S-V-O order, we will try to prove in this article whether agrammatic patients' problems are due to memory span loss or to one of the syntactic process mechanisms. To this end, the performances of three groups of patients are contrasted. Agrammatic, anomic, and normal Spanish speakers are given several tasks of sentence-picture matching and tests of memory span. Results show that agrammatic patients have specific difficulties processing certain syntactical structures; however, their memory deficiencies are not more pronounced than in other patients. It can be concluded, therefore, that the deficiencies of agrammatic patients are of a structural character rather than due to memory span loss.
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Saffran EM, Schwartz MF, Linebarger MC. Semantic influences on thematic role assignment: evidence from normals and aphasics. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 1998; 62:255-297. [PMID: 9576824 DOI: 10.1006/brln.1997.1918] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
We report two studies that examine the role of semantic influences in the assignment of thematic roles. Semantic factors were manipulated by contrasting sentences in which one noun argument was a plausible filler of only one thematic role (e.g., the painting in The artist disliked the painting) with sentences in which both noun arguments were plausible fillers of both thematic roles (e.g., The robin ate the insect). Subjects were required to make plausibility judgments to sentences presented auditorily. Experiment 1 examined RTs of normal subjects on the plausibility judgment task. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented to aphasic patients identified as "asyntactic" comprehenders. In Experiment 1, RTs were speeded by semantic constraints on thematic assignment, particularly when the role-constrained NP occurred early in the sentence (as in The painting was disliked by the artist). The aphasic performance patterns in Experiment 2 paralleled those of normal subjects, but in greatly exaggerated fashion. The patients exhibited high error rates on sentences where semantic constraints conflicted with the syntactically based assignments, even on sentences with canonical (S-V-O) word order (e.g., #The deer shot the hunter).
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Affiliation(s)
- E M Saffran
- Department of Neurology, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19140, USA.
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