Viganò Mauro, Barbieri Elena, Thompson Cynthia K, Vitali Chiara, Cecchetto Carlo
UMR 7023 Structures Formelles du Langage, CNRS & Université Paris 8, France.
Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 May 8;68(5):2399-2422. doi: 10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00305. Epub 2025 Apr 4.
Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF) is a training program grounded in linguistic theory and aiming to boost complex sentences production in people with agrammatism. Language treatment studies in aphasia confirmed TUF efficacy and led to the formulation of the Complexity Account of Treatment Efficacy (CATE). According to CATE, which relies on the primitive distinction between A- and A'-structures, training complex sentences induces an improvement on simpler structures, but no generalization occurs between different types of syntactic movement. This experiment provides the first adaptation of TUF in Italian and investigates the cross-linguistic validity of training efficacy and its generalization pattern.
Using a single-subject experimental design, five participants with chronic poststroke agrammatism underwent intensive training for object relatives. Performance on trained and untrained object relatives (A'-structures), object clefts (simpler A'-structures), and passive sentences (A-structures) was measured at multiple time points, that is, pre- and posttreatment, during the training, and at follow-up. A standardized assessment of aphasia was also administered pre- and posttreatment.
The results reported a robust improvement in the production of trained and untrained object relatives in all five participants, a generalization to object clefts in four participants, and, unexpectedly, a generalization to passives in three participants. All participants showed improved comprehension on all these structures. A general linguistic improvement was also found in the standardized testing of aphasia, especially in morphosyntactic abilities.
The findings confirmed the efficacy of the Italian adaptation of TUF for object relatives supporting its use in the clinical practice. To explain the generalization to passives in Italian but not in the English version of TUF, we propose an amendment of CATE that takes the syntactic operation of as a primitive (keeping the A vs. A' distinction as a modulating factor).
基础句式治疗（TUF）是一项基于语言理论的训练项目，旨在提高语法缺失患者的复杂句子生成能力。失语症的语言治疗研究证实了TUF的有效性，并促成了治疗效果的复杂性解释（CATE）的形成。根据CATE，它依赖于A结构和A'结构之间的原始区别，训练复杂句子会使较简单结构得到改善，但不同类型的句法移动之间不会发生泛化。本实验首次将TUF改编为意大利语版本，并研究训练效果的跨语言有效性及其泛化模式。
采用单受试者实验设计，对五名患有慢性中风后语法缺失的参与者进行了宾语关系从句的强化训练。在多个时间点测量训练和未训练的宾语关系从句（A'结构）、宾语分裂句（较简单的A'结构）和被动句（A结构）的表现，即治疗前、治疗后、训练期间和随访时。治疗前后还进行了失语症的标准化评估。
结果显示，所有五名参与者在训练和未训练的宾语关系从句生成方面都有显著改善，四名参与者的改善泛化到了宾语分裂句，出乎意料的是，三名参与者的改善泛化到了被动句。所有参与者在所有这些结构上的理解能力都有所提高。在失语症的标准化测试中也发现了总体语言能力的提高，尤其是在形态句法能力方面。
研究结果证实了意大利语版TUF对宾语关系从句训练的有效性，支持其在临床实践中的应用。为了解释在意大利语版TUF中出现向被动句的泛化而在英语版中未出现的现象，我们提出对CATE进行修正，将“的句法操作作为一个原始要素（将A与A'的区别作为一个调节因素保留）。
