Dickey Michael Walsh, Choy JungWon Janet, Thompson Cynthia K
Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory, Northwestern University, USA.
Brain Lang. 2007 Jan;100(1):1-22. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2006.06.004. Epub 2006 Jul 17.
Sentences with non-canonical wh- movement are often difficult for individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia to understand (, inter alia). However, the explanation of this difficulty remains controversial, and little is known about how individuals with aphasia try to understand such sentences in real time. This study uses an eyetracking while listening paradigm to examine agrammatic aphasic individuals' on-line comprehension of movement sentences. Participants' eye-movements were monitored while they listened to brief stories and looked at visual displays depicting elements mentioned in the stories. The stories were followed by comprehension probes involving wh- movement. In line with previous results for young normal listeners [Sussman, R. S., & Sedivy, J. C. (2003). The time-course of processing syntactic dependencies: evidence from eye movements. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 143-161], the study finds that both older unimpaired control participants (n=8) and aphasic individuals (n=12) showed visual evidence of successful automatic comprehension of wh- questions (like "Who did the boy kiss that day at school?"). Specifically, both groups fixated on a picture corresponding to the moved element ("who," the person kissed in the story) at the position of the verb. Interestingly, aphasic participants showed qualitatively different fixation patterns for trials eliciting correct and incorrect responses. Aphasic individuals looked first to the moved-element picture and then to a competitor following the verb in the incorrect trials. However, they only showed looks to the moved-element picture for the correct trials, parallel to control participants. Furthermore, aphasic individuals' fixations during movement sentences were just as fast as control participants' fixations. These results are unexpected under slowed-processing accounts of aphasic comprehension deficits, in which the source of failed comprehension should be delayed application of the same processing routines used in successful comprehension. This pattern is also unexpected if aphasic individuals are using qualitatively different strategies than normals to comprehend such sentences, as under impaired-representation accounts of agrammatism. Instead, it suggests that agrammatic aphasic individuals may process wh- questions similarly to unimpaired individuals, but that this process often fails to facilitate off-line comprehension of sentences with wh- movement.
具有非规范wh-移位的句子对于患有语法缺失型布洛卡失语症的个体来说往往难以理解（尤其如此）。然而，对于这种困难的解释仍存在争议，而且对于失语症患者如何实时理解此类句子知之甚少。本研究采用听时眼动追踪范式来考察语法缺失型失语症个体对移位句的在线理解。在参与者听简短故事并观看描绘故事中提到的元素的视觉展示时，监测他们的眼动。故事之后是涉及wh-移位的理解测试题。与先前针对年轻正常听众的研究结果一致[Sussman, R. S., & Sedivy, J. C. (2003). 句法依存关系加工的时间进程：来自眼动的证据。《语言与认知过程》，18, 143 - 161]，该研究发现，年龄较大的未受损对照组参与者（n = 8）和失语症个体（n = 12）都显示出成功自动理解wh-疑问句（如“那天在学校那个男孩吻了谁？”）的视觉证据。具体而言，两组都在动词位置注视了与移位元素（“谁”，故事中被吻的人）相对应的图片。有趣的是，失语症参与者在引发正确和错误回答的测试中表现出质的不同的注视模式。在错误测试中，失语症个体先看向移位元素图片，然后看向动词之后的竞争项。然而，对于正确测试，他们只看向移位元素图片，这与对照组参与者相似。此外，失语症个体在移位句期间的注视速度与对照组参与者的注视速度一样快。在关于失语症理解缺陷的加工减缓理论中，这些结果是出乎意料的，在该理论中，理解失败的根源应该是成功理解中使用的相同加工程序的延迟应用。如果失语症个体在理解此类句子时使用的策略与正常人在质上不同，就像在语法缺失的受损表征理论中那样，这种模式也是出乎意料的。相反，这表明语法缺失型失语症个体可能与未受损个体类似地处理wh-疑问句，但这个过程往往无法促进对带有wh-移位句子的离线理解。
