Sentence comprehension in multiple sclerosis.

INTRODUCTION

Explanations of sentence processing difficulty in aphasia have implicated slowed information processing speed. We tested this hypothesis by evaluating sentence comprehension in multiple sclerosis (MS), and relating comprehension performance to measures of information processing speed.

MATERIAL & METHODS: Twenty right-handed, high school-educated, non-demented, native English speakers with clinically definite MS and 16 age- and education-matched control subjects were examined on 3 different sentence comprehension measures that stress grammatical appreciation. Performance was related to quantitative assessments of mental information processing speed.

RESULTS

Group-wide analyses demonstrated a trend toward sentence comprehension difficulty in MS. Analyses of individual patient profiles identified a subgroup of MS patients who were consistently impaired to a significant extent across all sentence comprehension tasks. Their sentence comprehension difficulty was associated with selectively compromised mental information processing speed.

CONCLUSION

Sentence comprehension difficulty in MS is associated with slowed information processing speed. This finding supports the claim that information processing speed contributes to sentence processing.