Deficit-lesion correlations in syntactic comprehension in aphasia.

The effects of lesions on syntactic comprehension were studied in thirty-one people with aphasia (PWA). Participants were tested for the ability to parse and interpret four types of syntactic structures and elements - passives, object extracted relative clauses, reflexives and pronouns - in three tasks - object manipulation, sentence picture matching with full sentence presentation and sentence picture matching with self-paced listening presentation. Accuracy, end-of-sentence RT and self-paced listening times for each word were measured.

Mechanisms underlying syntactic comprehension deficits in vascular aphasia: new evidence from self-paced listening.

Sixty-one people with aphasia (pwa) and 41 matched controls were tested for the ability to understand sentences that required the ability to process particular syntactic elements and assign particular syntactic structures. Participants paced themselves word-by-word through 20 examples of 11 spoken sentence types and indicated which of two pictures corresponded to the meaning of each sentence. Sentences were developed in pairs such that comprehension of the experimental version of a pair required an aspect of syntactic processing not required in the corresponding baseline sentence.

Dissociations and associations of performance in syntactic comprehension in aphasia and their implications for the nature of aphasic deficits.

Sixty-one pwa were tested on syntactic comprehension in three tasks: sentence-picture matching, sentence-picture matching with auditory moving window presentation, and object manipulation. There were significant correlations of performances on sentences across tasks. First factors on which all sentence types loaded in unrotated factor analyses accounted for most of the variance in each task.

Short-term memory, working memory, and syntactic comprehension in aphasia.

Sixty-one people with aphasia were tested on 10 tests of short-term memory (STM) and for the ability to use syntactic structure to determine the meanings of 11 types of sentences in three tasks-object manipulation, picture matching, and picture matching with self-paced listening. Multilevel models showed relationships between measures of the ability to retain and manipulate item and order information in STM and accuracy and reaction time (RT), and a greater relationship between these STM measures and accuracy and RT for several more complex sentence types in individual tasks. There were no effects of measures of STM that reflect the use of phonological codes or rehearsal on comprehension.