TY - JOUR
T1 - Grammatical encoding and learning in agrammatic aphasia
T2 - Evidence from structural priming
AU - Cho-Reyes, Soojin
AU - Mack, Jennifer E.
AU - Thompson, Cynthia K.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Dr. Jiyeon Lee, Jim Kloet, and other members of the Aphasia & Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory for their comments and help with this study. Special thanks go to the individuals with aphasia who participated in the study and their families and caregivers. This research was supported by NIH-NIDCD , United States, R01DC001948 (Thompson) and was the first author’s doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University.
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - The present study addressed open questions about the nature of sentence production deficits in agrammatic aphasia. In two structural priming experiments, 13 aphasic and 13 age-matched control speakers repeated visually- and auditorily-presented prime sentences, and then used visually-presented word arrays to produce dative sentences. Experiment 1 examined whether agrammatic speakers form structural and thematic representations during sentence production, whereas Experiment 2 tested the lasting effects of structural priming in lags of two and four sentences. Results of Experiment 1 showed that, like unimpaired speakers, the aphasic speakers evinced intact structural priming effects, suggesting that they are able to generate such representations. Unimpaired speakers also showed reliable thematic priming effects in all conditions; agrammatic speakers did so as well in most experimental conditions, suggesting that access to thematic representations may be intact. Results of Experiment 2 showed structural priming effects of comparable magnitude for aphasic and unimpaired speakers. In addition, both groups showed lasting structural priming effects in both lag conditions, consistent with implicit learning accounts. In both experiments, aphasic speakers with more severe language impairments exhibited larger priming effects, consistent with the “inverse preference” prediction of implicit learning accounts. The findings indicate that agrammatic speakers are sensitive to structural priming across levels of representation and that such effects are lasting, suggesting that structural priming may be beneficial for the treatment of sentence production deficits in agrammatism.
AB - The present study addressed open questions about the nature of sentence production deficits in agrammatic aphasia. In two structural priming experiments, 13 aphasic and 13 age-matched control speakers repeated visually- and auditorily-presented prime sentences, and then used visually-presented word arrays to produce dative sentences. Experiment 1 examined whether agrammatic speakers form structural and thematic representations during sentence production, whereas Experiment 2 tested the lasting effects of structural priming in lags of two and four sentences. Results of Experiment 1 showed that, like unimpaired speakers, the aphasic speakers evinced intact structural priming effects, suggesting that they are able to generate such representations. Unimpaired speakers also showed reliable thematic priming effects in all conditions; agrammatic speakers did so as well in most experimental conditions, suggesting that access to thematic representations may be intact. Results of Experiment 2 showed structural priming effects of comparable magnitude for aphasic and unimpaired speakers. In addition, both groups showed lasting structural priming effects in both lag conditions, consistent with implicit learning accounts. In both experiments, aphasic speakers with more severe language impairments exhibited larger priming effects, consistent with the “inverse preference” prediction of implicit learning accounts. The findings indicate that agrammatic speakers are sensitive to structural priming across levels of representation and that such effects are lasting, suggesting that structural priming may be beneficial for the treatment of sentence production deficits in agrammatism.
KW - Agrammatic aphasia
KW - Sentence production
KW - Structural priming
KW - Thematic mapping
KW - Thematic priming
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jml.2016.02.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jml.2016.02.004
M3 - Article
C2 - 28924328
AN - SCOPUS:84961263073
VL - 91
SP - 202
EP - 218
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
SN - 0749-596X
ER -