Grammatical encoding and learning in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from structural priming

Publication date: Available online 21 March 2016 Source:Journal of Memory and Language Author(s): Soojin Cho-Reyes, Jennifer E. Mack, Cynthia K. Thompson The present study addressed open questions about the nature of sentence production deficits in agrammatic aphasia. In two structural priming experiments, 13 aphasic and 13 age-matched control speakers repeated visually- and auditorily-presented prime sentences, and then used visually-presented word arrays to produce dative sentences. Experiment 1 examined whether agrammatic speakers form structural and thematic representations during sentence production, whereas Experiment 2 tested the lasting effects of structural priming in lags of two and four sentences. Results of Experiment 1 showed that, like unimpaired speakers, the aphasic speakers evinced intact structural priming effects, suggesting that they are able to generate such representations. Unimpaired speakers also showed reliable thematic priming effects in all conditions; agrammatic speakers did so as well in most experimental conditions, suggesting that access to thematic representations may be intact. Results of Experiment 2 showed structural priming effects of comparable magnitude for aphasic and unimpaired speakers. In addition, both groups showed lasting structural priming effects in both lag conditions, consistent with implicit learning accounts. In both experiments, aphasic speakers with more severe language impairments exhibited larger priming effects...
Source: Journal of Memory and Language - Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research