Gayle Dede1. 1. Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Studies of sentence comprehension in non-disordered populations have convincingly demonstrated that probabilistic cues influence on-line syntactic processing. One well-studied cue is verb argument structure bias, which refers to the probability that a verb will occur in a particular syntactic frame. According to the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, people with aphasia have difficulty understanding sentences in which the verb's argument structure bias conflicts with the sentence structure (e.g., a transitively biased verb in an intransitive sentence). This hypothesis may provide an account of why people with aphasia have difficulty understanding both simple and complex sentences. AIMS: The purpose of this study was to test the Lexical Bias Hypothesis using an on-line measure of written sentence comprehension, self-paced reading. METHODS PROCEDURES: The participants were ten people with aphasia and ten non-brain-damaged controls. The stimuli were syntactically simple transitive and intransitive sentences that contained transitively- or intransitively-biased verbs. For example, the transitively-biased verb "called" appeared in sentences such as "The agent called (the writer) from overseas to make an offer." The intransitively-biased verb "danced" appeared in sentences such as "The couple danced (the tango) every Friday night last summer." OUTCOMES RESULTS: Both groups' reading times for critical segments were longer when the verb's transitivity bias did not match the sentence structure, particularly in intransitive sentences. CONCLUSIONS: The results were generally consistent with the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, and demonstrated that lexical biases affect on-line processing of syntactically simple sentences in people with aphasia and controls.
BACKGROUND: Studies of sentence comprehension in non-disordered populations have convincingly demonstrated that probabilistic cues influence on-line syntactic processing. One well-studied cue is verb argument structure bias, which refers to the probability that a verb will occur in a particular syntactic frame. According to the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, people with aphasia have difficulty understanding sentences in which the verb's argument structure bias conflicts with the sentence structure (e.g., a transitively biased verb in an intransitive sentence). This hypothesis may provide an account of why people with aphasia have difficulty understanding both simple and complex sentences. AIMS: The purpose of this study was to test the Lexical Bias Hypothesis using an on-line measure of written sentence comprehension, self-paced reading. METHODS PROCEDURES: The participants were ten people with aphasia and ten non-brain-damaged controls. The stimuli were syntactically simple transitive and intransitive sentences that contained transitively- or intransitively-biased verbs. For example, the transitively-biased verb "called" appeared in sentences such as "The agent called (the writer) from overseas to make an offer." The intransitively-biased verb "danced" appeared in sentences such as "The couple danced (the tango) every Friday night last summer." OUTCOMES RESULTS: Both groups' reading times for critical segments were longer when the verb's transitivity bias did not match the sentence structure, particularly in intransitive sentences. CONCLUSIONS: The results were generally consistent with the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, and demonstrated that lexical biases affect on-line processing of syntactically simple sentences in people with aphasia and controls.