Grammaticality Judgments and Sentence Comprehension in Agrammatic Aphasia

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly B. Wulfeck

The relationship between sentence comprehension and grammaticality judgment was examined for both neurologically intact and agrammatic aphasic subjects. Aphasic subjects were able to make grammaticality judgments and comprehension judgments, but were less accurate than healthy control subjects. However, the tasks appeared dissociated for the aphasic subjects: Both the effects of semantic cues and the hierarchy of difficulty of sentence types differed across the two tasks. Further, the findings suggest that not all aspects of morpho-syntactic processing may be equally disrupted in aphasia. The results argue against both a central deficit view of agrammatic aphasia, and a view suggesting that syntactic processing is intact whereas semantic or thematic mapping is not. Instead, the results indicate that the respective performance domains of comprehension and grammaticality judgment may draw on different processes and/or operate on different aspects of the language input.

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 393-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN CROOT ◽  
JOHN R. HODGES ◽  
KARALYN PATTERSON

We investigated sentence comprehension in 46 patients with probable minimal (very mild), mild, or moderate dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), comparing their performance on the Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG), with that of 20 age- and education-matched controls. Performance on the TROG was generally related to dementia severity, independent of lexicosemantic and working memory (digit span) impairments, but related to at least 1 measure of attention. Some patients in the minimal group showed sentence comprehension deficits while others in the moderate group did not, indicating that DAT may impair sentence comprehension at the very earliest stages of disease, but that its effects are heterogeneous. Patients were most impaired on sentences with 2 propositions and noncanonical word order, suggesting difficulties with both interpretative and postinterpretative stages of sentence processing. Further investigation is needed into the relationship between attentional processes, interpretative and postinterpretative stages of syntactic processing in DAT. (JINS, 1999, 5, 393–404.)


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Siegelman ◽  
Zachary Mineroff ◽  
Idan Blank ◽  
Evelina Fedorenko

AbstractDoes processing the meanings of individual words vs. assembling words into phrases and sentences rely on distinct pools of cognitive and neural resources? Many have argued for such a dissociation, although the field is lacking a consensus on which brain region(s) support lexico-semantic vs. syntactic processing. Although some have also argued against such a dissociation, the dominant view in the field remains that distinct brain regions support these two fundamental components of language. One of the earlier and most cited pieces of evidence in favor of this dissociation comes from a paper by Dapretto & Bookheimer (1999, Neuron; DB). Using a sentence meaning comparison task, DB observed two distinct peaks within the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG): one more active when comparisons relied on lexico-semantic cues, and another – when they instead relied on syntactic cues. Although the paper has been highly cited over the years, no attempt has been made, to our knowledge, to replicate the original finding. We here report an fMRI study that attempts to do so. Using a combination of three approaches – whole-brain, group-level ROIs, and individual functional ROIs – we fail to replicate the originally reported dissociation. In particular, parts of the LIFG respond reliably more strongly during lexico-semantic than syntactic processing, but no part of the LIFG (including in the region defined around the peak reported by DB) shows the opposite response pattern. We hypothesize that the original result was a false positive, possibly driven by one participant or item given the use of a fixed-effects analysis and a small number of items (8 per condition) and participants (n=8).


2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Wilson ◽  
Ayşe Pınar Saygın

We examined the abilities of aphasic patients to make grammaticality judgments on English sentences instantiating a variety of syntactic structures. Previous studies employing this metalinguistic task have suggested that aphasic patients typically perform better on grammaticality judgment tasks than they do on sentence comprehension tasks, a finding that has informed the current view that grammatical knowledge is relatively preserved in agrammatic aphasia. However, not all syntactic structures are judged equally accurately, and several researchers have attempted to provide explanatory principles to predict which structures will pose problems to agrammatic patients. One such proposal is Grodzinsky and Finkel's (1998) claim that agrammatic aphasics are selectively impaired in their ability to process structures involving traces of maximal projections. In this study, we tested this claim by presenting patients with sentences with or without such traces, but also varying the level of difficulty of both kinds of structures, assessed with reference to the performance of age-matched and young controls. We found no evidence that agrammatic aphasics, or any other subgroup, are selectively impaired on structures involving traces: Some judgments involving traces were made quite accurately, whereas other judgments not involving traces were made very poorly. Subgroup analyses revealed that patient groups and agematched controls had remarkably similar profiles of performance across sentence types, regardless of whether the patients were grouped based on Western Aphasia Battery classification, an independent screening test for agrammatic comprehension, or lesion site. This implies that the pattern of performance across sentence types does not result from any particular component of the grammar, or any particular brain region, being selectively compromised. Lesion analysis revealed that posterior temporal areas were more reliably implicated in poor grammaticality judgment performance than anterior areas, but poor performance was also observed with some anterior lesions, suggesting that areas important for syntactic processing are distributed throughout the left peri-sylvian region.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 1922-1929 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Mirault ◽  
Joshua Snell ◽  
Jonathan Grainger

We report a novel transposed-word effect in speeded grammaticality judgments made about five-word sequences. The critical ungrammatical test sequences were formed by transposing two adjacent words from either a grammatical base sequence (e.g., “The white cat was big” became “The white was cat big”) or an ungrammatical base sequence (e.g., “The white cat was slowly” became “The white was cat slowly”). These were intermixed with an equal number of correct sentences for the purpose of the grammaticality judgment task. In a laboratory experiment ( N = 57) and an online experiment ( N = 94), we found that ungrammatical decisions were harder to make when the ungrammatical sequence originated from a grammatically correct base sequence. This provides the first demonstration that the encoding of word order retains a certain amount of uncertainty. We further argue that the novel transposed-word effect reflects parallel processing of words during written sentence comprehension combined with top-down constraints from sentence-level structures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 328
Author(s):  
Michael Leutner ◽  
Nils Haug ◽  
Luise Bellach ◽  
Elma Dervic ◽  
Alexander Kautzky ◽  
...  

Objectives: Diabetic patients are often diagnosed with several comorbidities. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between different combinations of risk factors and complications in diabetic patients. Research design and methods: We used a longitudinal, population-wide dataset of patients with hospital diagnoses and identified all patients (n = 195,575) receiving a diagnosis of diabetes in the observation period from 2003–2014. We defined nine ICD-10-codes as risk factors and 16 ICD-10 codes as complications. Using a computational algorithm, cohort patients were assigned to clusters based on the risk factors they were diagnosed with. The clusters were defined so that the patients assigned to them developed similar complications. Complication risk was quantified in terms of relative risk (RR) compared with healthy control patients. Results: We identified five clusters associated with an increased risk of complications. A combined diagnosis of arterial hypertension (aHTN) and dyslipidemia was shared by all clusters and expressed a baseline of increased risk. Additional diagnosis of (1) smoking, (2) depression, (3) liver disease, or (4) obesity made up the other four clusters and further increased the risk of complications. Cluster 9 (aHTN, dyslipidemia and depression) represented diabetic patients at high risk of angina pectoris “AP” (RR: 7.35, CI: 6.74–8.01), kidney disease (RR: 3.18, CI: 3.04–3.32), polyneuropathy (RR: 4.80, CI: 4.23–5.45), and stroke (RR: 4.32, CI: 3.95–4.71), whereas cluster 10 (aHTN, dyslipidemia and smoking) identified patients with the highest risk of AP (RR: 10.10, CI: 9.28–10.98), atherosclerosis (RR: 4.07, CI: 3.84–4.31), and loss of extremities (RR: 4.21, CI: 1.5–11.84) compared to the controls. Conclusions: A comorbidity of aHTN and dyslipidemia was shown to be associated with diabetic complications across all risk-clusters. This effect was amplified by a combination with either depression, smoking, obesity, or non-specific liver disease.


2021 ◽  
pp. 154596832110010
Author(s):  
Margaret A. French ◽  
Matthew L. Cohen ◽  
Ryan T. Pohlig ◽  
Darcy S. Reisman

Background There is significant variability in poststroke locomotor learning that is poorly understood and affects individual responses to rehabilitation interventions. Cognitive abilities relate to upper extremity motor learning in neurologically intact adults, but have not been studied in poststroke locomotor learning. Objective To understand the relationship between locomotor learning and retention and cognition after stroke. Methods Participants with chronic (>6 months) stroke participated in 3 testing sessions. During the first session, participants walked on a treadmill and learned a new walking pattern through visual feedback about their step length. During the second session, participants walked on a treadmill and 24-hour retention was assessed. Physical and cognitive tests, including the Fugl-Meyer-Lower Extremity (FM-LE), Fluid Cognition Composite Score (FCCS) from the NIH Toolbox -Cognition Battery, and Spatial Addition from the Wechsler Memory Scale-IV, were completed in the third session. Two sequential regression models were completed: one with learning and one with retention as the dependent variables. Age, physical impairment (ie, FM-LE), and cognitive measures (ie, FCCS and Spatial Addition) were the independent variables. Results Forty-nine and 34 participants were included in the learning and retention models, respectively. After accounting for age and FM-LE, cognitive measures explained a significant portion of variability in learning ( R2 = 0.17, P = .008; overall model R2 = 0.31, P = .002) and retention (Δ R2 = 0.17, P = .023; overall model R2 = 0.44, P = .002). Conclusions Cognitive abilities appear to be an important factor for understanding locomotor learning and retention after stroke. This has significant implications for incorporating locomotor learning principles into the development of personalized rehabilitation interventions after stroke.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (8) ◽  
pp. 1561-1569 ◽  
Author(s):  
GÜNTHER KNOBLICH ◽  
FRANK STOTTMEISTER ◽  
TILO KIRCHER

Background. The present study investigated whether a failure of self-monitoring contributes to core syndromes of schizophrenia.Method. Three groups of patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia (n=27), with either prominent paranoid hallucinatory or disorganization syndrome, or without these symptoms, and a matched healthy control group (n=23) drew circles on a writing pad connected to a PC monitor. Subjects were instructed to continuously monitor the relationship between their hand movements and their visual consequences. They were asked to detect gain changes in the mapping. Self-monitoring ability and the ability to automatically correct movements were assessed.Results. Patients with either paranoid-hallucinatory syndrome or formal thought disorder were selectively impaired in their ability to detect a mismatch between a self-generated movement and its consequences, but not impaired in their ability to automatically compensate for the gain change.Conclusions. These results support the claim that a failure of self-monitoring may underlie the core symptoms of schizophrenia.


CNS Spectrums ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 956-965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Pallanti ◽  
Silvia Bernardi ◽  
Leonardo Quercioli ◽  
Concetta DeCaria ◽  
Eric Hollander

ABSTRACTObjectiveAcute administration of the partial serotonin (5-HT) agonist meta-chlorophenylpi-perazine (m-CPP), that is used also as a street drug, has been reported to induce a “high” and craving response in various impulsive and sub-stance addiction disorders.IntroductionTo clarify altered 5-HT metabolism in pathological gamblers and to explore the specific role of serotonergic system in non substance addictions, we assessed behavioral (“high” and “craving”) and neuroendocrine (prolactin and cortisol) responses to an oral single dose of m-CPP and placebo in pathological gamblers and matched controls. Moreover, the relationship between neuroendocrine outcome and clinical severity has been assessed.MethodTwenty-six pathological gamblers and 26 healthy control subjects enter a double-blind, placebo-controlled-crossed administration of orally dose m-CPP 0.5 mg/kg. Outcome measures included prolactin and cortisol levels, gambling severity, mood, craving and “high” scales.ResultsPathological gamblers had significantly increased prolactin response compared to controls at 180 minutes and at 210 minutes post–administration. Greater pathological gamblers severity correlated with increased neuroendocrine responsiveness to m-CCP, suggesting greater 5-HT dysregulation. Pathological gambling patients had a significantly increased “high” sensation after m-CPP administration compared with control.ConclusionThese results provide additional evidence for 5-HT disturbance in pathological gamblers and they support the hypotheses that the role of the 5-HT dysfunction related to the experience of “high” might represent the path-way that leads to dyscontrolled behavior in patho-logical gamblers. Furthermore, the “high” feeling induced by m-CPP in pathological subjects may represent a marker of vulnerability to both behav-ioral and substance addictions.


2022 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 101043
Author(s):  
Brianne Chiappetta ◽  
Aniruddh D. Patel ◽  
Cynthia K. Thompson

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 200-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abiodun O. Adeyinka ◽  
Jude U. Ohaeri ◽  
Benjamin O. Osuntokun

The prevalence of brain cortical sulci atrophy and central (subcortical) atrophy among Nigerian psychiatric patients is highlighted and compared with findings from developed countries. The relationship between these indices of brain atrophy and clinical parameters is also examined. Visual ratings of cortical sulci atrophy and central (subcortical) atrophy, assessed on the computed tomography (CT) image console, were compared among 50 patients with schizophrenia, 14 patients with mania and 41 healthy control subjects. The patients with schizophrenia and the patients with mania had a significantly higher prevalence of brain atrophy than normal subjects. Among the patients with schizophrenia, indices of brain atrophy were not significantly associated with disease outcome, and the presence of negative symptoms. In view of the findings from a parallel study of the same patients that psychiatric patient groups showed other evidence of CT abnormalities, the findings of this study indicate that the so-called functional psychiatric states in developing countries — as in developed countries — are probably associated with some diffuse neuropathological process.


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