Baker Carolyn, Love Tracy
SDSU/UCSD Joint Ph.D. Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, San Diego, USA.
SDSU, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego, USA.
J Neurolinguistics. 2023 Aug;67. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2023.101142. Epub 2023 Apr 28.
Processing deficits at the lexical level, such as delayed and reduced lexical activation, have been theorized as the source of breakdowns in syntactic operations and thus contribute to sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia (IWA). In the current study, we investigate the relationship between lexical and syntactic processing in object-relative sentences using eye-tracking while listening in IWA. We explore whether manipulating the time available to process a critical lexical item (the direct-object noun) when it is initially heard in a sentence has an immediate effect on lexical access as well as a downstream effect on syntactic processing. To achieve this aim, we use novel temporal manipulations to provide additional time for lexical processing to occur. In addition to exploring these temporal effects in IWA, we also seek to understand the effect that additional time has on sentence processing in neurotypical age-matched adults (AMC). We predict that the temporal manipulations designed to provide increased processing time for critical lexical items will 1) enhance lexical processing of the target noun, 2) facilitate syntactic integration, and 3) improve sentence comprehension for both IWA and AMC. We demonstrate that strengthening lexical processing via the addition of time can affect lexical processing and facilitate syntactic retrieval of the target noun and lead to enhanced interference resolution in both unimpaired and impaired systems. In aphasia, additional time can mitigate impairments in spreading activation thereby improving lexical access and reducing interference during downstream dependency linking. However, individuals with aphasia may require longer additions of time to fully realize these benefits.
词汇层面的加工缺陷，如词汇激活延迟和减弱，已被理论化为句法操作崩溃的根源，从而导致失语症患者（IWA）的句子理解缺陷。在本研究中，我们使用眼动追踪技术，在IWA听宾语关系句时，研究词汇和句法加工之间的关系。我们探究在句子中首次听到关键词汇项（直接宾语名词）时，操纵其可用于加工的时间，是否会对词汇通达产生即时影响，以及对句法加工产生下游效应。为实现这一目标，我们采用新颖的时间操纵方法，为词汇加工提供额外时间。除了在IWA中探究这些时间效应外，我们还试图了解额外时间对年龄匹配的神经典型成年人（AMC）句子加工的影响。我们预测，旨在为关键词汇项提供更多加工时间的时间操纵将：1）增强目标名词的词汇加工；2）促进句法整合；3）改善IWA和AMC的句子理解。我们证明，通过增加时间来加强词汇加工，可以影响词汇加工，促进目标名词的句法检索，并在未受损和受损系统中增强干扰解决能力。在失语症中，额外的时间可以减轻扩散激活中的损伤，从而改善词汇通达，并减少下游依存关系链接过程中的干扰。然而，失语症患者可能需要更长时间的额外时间才能充分实现这些益处。
