Sentence processing deficits in aphasia

Question 1

Define aggramatism

Answer 1

• deficit in semantic processing
• affects input and output processing
• asyntactic comp and production

Question 2

Describe the production of sentences in aggramatism

Answer 2

• short, simplified phrase length
• content words (mostly nouns and some high frequency words)
• few function words
• lack of inflectional morphology

Question 3

Describe verb impairments in aggrammatism

Answer 3

• verbs not available in output
• deficit in verb affixes and function words including auxillaries
• verb semantic impairments present in fluent aphasia
• deficit in verb argument info

Question 4

What makes sentences more difficult to process?

Answer 4

passive tense

Question 5

Define thematic roles

Answer 5

the meaning role that a word or phrase plays in each sentence

Question 6

What is Garrett (1984) model of sentence production?

Answer 6

• message level (outline of events)
• functional level ( identifies predicate argument structure, driven by syntactic processes
• positional levels - syntactic frame produced within phonological forms of a word inserted into frame
• phonetic level
• phonological forms are slotted into a phonological frame

Question 7

Where can sentence processing deficits occur?

Answer 7

• verb processing (including verb semantics and retrieval)
• assigning thematic roles
• integrating semantic and syntactic information
• generating an accurate syntactic structure

Question 8

What are the properties of verbs?

Answer 8

• Core meaning: specifies general aspects of the event
• Core meaning imposes selection restrictions over verb’s arguments

Question 9

What are the types of verbs?

Answer 9

• Transitive – requires obligatory argument(s) (e.g. John lifted -> John lifted the boy)
• Intransitive – does not require an argument
  (e.g. Ruby danced)

Question 10

What is thematic info?

Answer 10

• specifies the arguments that combine with the verb and their role in the event
• there are some obligatory and optional arguments

Question 11

What is the agent?

Answer 11

animate being (usually) causing an action or change of state

Question 12

What is the patient/theme/victim?

Answer 12

the entity which undergoes the effect of the action or change of state

Question 13

What do we need to assess to identify verb retreival impairment?

Answer 13

• single word production of verbs
• ability to produce sentences with no support and compare to production when verb is supplied

Question 14

What will impaired verb syntax knowledge present as?

Answer 14

• Lack of affixes, present 3rd person singular –s, and past tense –ed
• Difficulty with production of irregular past tense
• Can occur with an impairment in mapping thematic knowledge

Question 15

What are the characteristics of thematic knowledge impairment?

Answer 15

• Verb omission
• Incorrect ordering of nouns
• Relative preservation of function words and inflections
• More nouns than verbs in output
• Verb limited to base form ( -ing)
• Effect of number of verb arguments on production
• Giving a verb will not help
• Limited structural complexity
• Comprehension of verbs impaired
• Reverse role verbs especially difficult
• Poor comprehension of reversible sentences

Question 16

How might thematic knowledge and verbs be assessed?

Answer 16

• Picture description
• Comprehensive Aphasia Test verb naming/pic description
• Procedural narrative
• Story re-telling
• Thematic Roles in Production (TRIP)
• Object & Action
• Naming battery

Question 17

What types of sentences are more difficult to process with aphasia?

Answer 17

• reversible
• non-pragmatic

Question 18

What does research show about sentence processing in Brocas?

Answer 18

• syntactic deficit in aphasia with embedded clauses (Caramazza and Zurif, 1976)
• Difficulties with simple SVO sentence comprehension in aphasia (Schwartz et al., 1980)

Question 19

What do most tests of sentence comp include?

Answer 19

• reversible and non reversible sentences
• canonical structures such as SVO
• moved arguments
• embedded clauses

Question 20

What are the published assessments for sentence comp in aphasia?

Answer 20

• PALPA 55 and 56
• CAT
• Sentence processing resource pack

Question 21

Describe Synergistic Processing bottleneck model of aggrammatism (Faroqui-Shah, 2023)

Answer 21

These processes change as result of stroke
- morphosyntactic processes
- verb argument structure
- phrase structure
- verb morphology
- phonomotor encoding
Exaggerates processing bottleneck resulting in slowly uttered aggrammatic speech

Question 22

Give examples of therapy for aggrammatism

Answer 22

• verb naming at single word level
• therapies for assigning correct thematic roles
• mapping therapies
• verb-noun association therapy
• VNeST
• generating a response to a question form

Question 23

What are the ‘active’ ingredients in sentence therapies?

Answer 23

• producing verb as part of sentence
• using pictures to stimulate sentence production
• using written cues
• focus on thematic roles and how they map onto syntax