Mack Jennifer E, Nerantzini Michaela, Thompson Cynthia K
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University Evanston, IL, USA.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern UniversityEvanston, IL, USA; Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern UniversityEvanston, IL, USA; Department of Neurology, Northwestern UniversityEvanston, IL, USA.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2017 Mar 13;11:101. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00101. eCollection 2017.
Sentence production impairments in aphasia often improve with treatment. However, little is known about how cognitive processes supporting sentence production, such as sentence planning, are impacted by treatment. The present study used eyetracking to examine changes in sentence production resulting from a 12-week language treatment program focused on passive sentences (Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF); Thompson and Shapiro, 2005). In two pre-treatment and two post-treatment sessions, nine participants with mild-to-moderate agrammatic aphasia performed a structural priming task, which involved repeating primed sentences (actives or passives) and then, using the same verb, producing sentences describing pictured events. Two individuals with aphasia performed the eyetracking task on the same schedule without intervening language treatment. Ten unimpaired older adults also performed the task to identify normal performance patterns. Sentence production accuracy and speech onset latencies were examined, and eye movements to the pictured Agent and Theme characters were analyzed in the first 400 ms after picture onset, reflecting early sentence planning, and in the regions preceding the production of the sentence subject and post-verbal noun, reflecting lexical encoding. Unimpaired controls performed with high accuracy. Their early eye movements (first 400 ms) indicated equal fixations to the Agent and Theme, consistent with structural sentence planning (i.e., initial construction of an abstract structural frame). Subsequent eye movements occurring prior to speech onset were consistent with encoding of the correct sentence subject (i.e., the Agent in actives, Theme in passives), with encoding of the post-verbal noun beginning at speech onset. In participants with aphasia, accuracy improved significantly with treatment, and post-treatment (but not pre-treatment) eye movements were qualitatively similar to those of unimpaired controls, indicating correct encoding of the Agent and Theme nouns for both active and passive sentences. Analysis of early eye movements also showed a treatment-induced increase in structural planning. No changes in sentence production accuracy or eye movements were found in the aphasic participants who did not receive treatment. These findings indicate that treatment improves sentence production and results in the emergence of normal-like cognitive processes associated with successful sentence production, including structural planning.
失语症患者的句子生成障碍通常会随着治疗而改善。然而，对于支持句子生成的认知过程，如句子规划，如何受到治疗的影响，我们知之甚少。本研究使用眼动追踪技术来检查一个为期12周、专注于被动句的语言治疗项目（底层形式治疗（TUF）；汤普森和夏皮罗，2005年）所导致的句子生成变化。在两次治疗前和两次治疗后阶段，九名轻度至中度语法缺失性失语症患者执行了一项结构启动任务，该任务包括重复启动句（主动句或被动句），然后使用相同的动词生成描述图片事件的句子。两名失语症患者按照相同的时间表执行眼动追踪任务，不进行干预性语言治疗。十名未受损的老年人也执行了该任务，以确定正常的表现模式。检查了句子生成的准确性和言语起始潜伏期，并分析了图片呈现后前400毫秒内对图片中施事和受事角色的眼动，这反映了早期句子规划，以及在句子主语和动词后名词生成之前区域的眼动，这反映了词汇编码。未受损的对照组表现出高准确性。他们早期的眼动（前400毫秒）表明对施事和受事的注视相等，这与句子结构规划一致（即抽象结构框架的初始构建）。言语起始前发生的后续眼动与正确句子主语的编码一致（即主动句中的施事，被动句中的受事），动词后名词的编码在言语起始时开始。在失语症患者中，治疗后准确性显著提高，治疗后的眼动（但不是治疗前的）在质量上与未受损对照组相似，表明主动句和被动句中施事和受事名词的编码正确。对早期眼动的分析还显示，治疗导致结构规划增加。未接受治疗的失语症参与者在句子生成准确性或眼动方面没有发现变化。这些发现表明，治疗改善了句子生成，并导致出现与成功句子生成相关的类似正常的认知过程，包括结构规划。
