Lexical Activation in Jargon Reading and Repetition
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1
University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, United Kingdom
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2
Sheffield Hallam University, Centre for Health and Social Care, United Kingdom
Introduction
Jargon aphasia is an acquired language disorder characterised by phonological deviations and nonword production, thought to occur when poor lexico-phonological processing allows non-target segments to compete and intrude (Marshall, 2006; Olson, Romani, & Halloran, 2007). Therefore, words with lower resting levels of lexical activation will be more susceptible to error (Martin & Dell, 2007). However, the dominance of phonological errors in the Jargon population suggests that increased phonological processing demands, for example multisyllabic words, would be most disruptive to phonological encoding. This study aimed to explore the effect of lexical variables on Jargon reading and repetition.
Methods
Seven individuals (five male) with fluent Jargon aphasia were recruited (age M = 71.57, σ = 9.81; months post stroke M = 20, σ = 10.5). For reading/repetition two separate lists of 60 words were selected from the MRC Psycholinguistic database. One contained “easy” words; higher frequency (M=86, σ = 80.0), imageability (M=563, σ = 48.75), concreteness (M=554, σ = 51) and familiarity (M=556, σ = 52.45) than the “hard” set (p ≤ .001). Lists were matched for phonological properties including phonemic length and syllable number.
Response accuracy was measured using the Phonological Overlap Index (POI): number of phonemes shared between response and target x 2 / total number of phonemes in target and response (Bose, 2013). This calculation assigns all responses a value between zero and one, with zero reflecting no phonological overlap between target-response and one indicating complete phonological overlap. Observed POI values on the easy and hard sets were compared using individual t-tests. Reading and repetition were analysed separately.
Results
Reading
Two individuals (1 and 9) produced greater phonologically accurate responses in the easy reading set (p ≤ .0268; see Figure 1 panel A). Individual 7 showed a similar trend (p= .078). The remaining four individuals (3, 4, 6 and 8) produced similar rates of phonological accuracy across sets (p ≥ .211).
Repetition
Individual 7 was more phonologically accurate in the easy repetition set (M = .947, σ = 0.018, p = .001). The remaining six individuals produced responses that were of equal phonological accuracy across easy and hard word sets (p ≥ .168; see Figure 1 panel B).
Figure 1: (A) Average Phonological Overlap Index (POI) score per individual in reading.
(B) Average Phonological Overlap Index (POI) score per individual in repetition.
Note. Error bars show standard error, stars denote significance: * = p≤.05; **= p≤.01; ***=p≤.001.
Discussion
The main hypothesis accounting for Jargon aphasia posits that weak target activation allows non-target phonology to compete and intrude during lexico-phonological encoding. Current results show that, for the most part, there was no difference in phonological accuracy on the easy and hard sets, suggesting that phonological encoding was equally disrupted across conditions, and indicating that lexical activation alone cannot account for Jargon production. This implies that phonological processing demands, on which current word sets were matched, is a significant source of Jargon nonword errors in modalities involving both lexical and sub-lexical processing.
References
Bose, A. (2013). Phonological therapy in jargon aphasia: effects on naming and neologisms. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48(5), 582-595. doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12038
Marshall, J. (2006). Jargon aphasia: What have we learned? Aphasiology, 20(5), 387-410. doi:10.1080/02687030500489946
Martin, N., & Dell, G. S. (2007). Common mechanisms underlying perseverative and non-perseverative sound and word substitutions. Aphasiology, 21(10-11), 1002-1017. doi:10.1080/02687030701198346
Olson, A. C., Romani, C., & Halloran, L. (2007). Localizing the deficit in a case of jargonaphasia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 24(2), 211-238. doi:10.1080/02643290601137017
Keywords:
word production,
reading,
repetition,
Lexical activation,
jargon aphasia
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.
Presentation Type:
oral presentation
Topic:
Consider for student award
Citation:
Pilkington
E,
Sage
K,
Saddy
J and
Robson
H
(2019). Lexical Activation in Jargon Reading and Repetition.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00050
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Received:
20 Apr 2017;
Published Online:
25 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Emma Pilkington, University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, Reading, RG6 7BE, United Kingdom, e.c.pilkington@pgr.reading.ac.uk