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Verb-argument integration in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from event-related potentials

Matthew Walenski1*, Elena Barbieri1, Brianne Chiappetta1 and Cynthia K. Thompson1
  • 1 Northwestern University, United States

Introduction. Individuals with agrammatic aphasia typically have deficient comprehension of non-canonically ordered sentences. On one view, these comprehension deficits reflect impaired thematic integration and difficulty interpreting thematic relations (e.g., agent, theme) between a verb and its arguments (e.g., subject, direct object) (Thompson & Choy, 2009). We used event-related potentials to examine argument integration in sentences containing violations of a verb’s selection restrictions (requirements that verbs place on their arguments; e.g., that a theme argument be animate or inanimate). Prior studies of selection restriction violations in healthy individuals report a biphasic N400/P600 pattern for subject-verb violations (in active and in passive sentences), but only P600 effects for verb-object violations (Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2011; Wang, Mo, Xiang, Xu, & Chen, 2013; Yang, Wu, & Zhou, 2015). We expected participants with aphasia to show weakened or absent P600 effects for subject-verb and verb-object violations, consistent with an impairment of thematic integration (Mack & Thompson, 2017; Thompson & Choy, 2009). Method. We tested 8 participants with agrammatic aphasia and 8 healthy control participants. All participants completed an auditory end-of-sentence acceptability judgment task with four sentence types (plus additional filler sentences not described here). 1. Subject-verb integration (passive sentences) a. Grammatical: The monk was watched by the priest after the morning meeting. b. Violation: The monk was emptied by the priest after the morning meeting. 2. Verb-object integration (active sentences) a. Grammatical: The monk was watching the priest after the morning meeting. b. Violation: The monk was emptying the priest after the morning meeting. ERPs were time-locked to verb onset (e.g., ‘watched’ vs. ‘emptied’) for the subject-verb condition and to the direct object (e.g., ‘priest’) in the verb-object condition. For each, we analyzed mean amplitude voltage in two time windows: 400-700 ms for N400 effects, and 800-1100 ms for P600 effects. Results (Figure 1). For the subject-verb violations the healthy controls showed a biphasic N400/P600 pattern to the violations relative to the grammatical sentences. The participants with agrammatic aphasia showed an N400 effect similar to that of the healthy controls, but showed no P600 effect, contrary to controls. For the verb-object integration violations the healthy controls showed only a P600 effect. Contrary to controls, the participants with aphasia showed an N400 effect, and showed a P600 effect as well, though it was significantly weaker than that for controls. Discussion. The results from the healthy controls are consistent with previous studies, for both the subject-verb and verb-object violations. For the individuals with aphasia, the absent and reduced P600 effects for both the subject-verb and verb-object violations are consistent with the thematic integration deficit account. For the N400 effects, we propose that an increased processing cost to assign accusative case to an animate direct object (Nieuwland, Martin, & Carreiras, 2013) leads the parser to skip over the selection restriction violation in healthy controls (no N400 effect). In individuals with aphasia, impaired case assignment (Ruigendijk, van Zonneveld, & Bastiaanse, 1999) avoids the increased processing cost for animate objects, allowing the selection restriction violation to be detected (N400 effect).

Figure 1
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References

Mack, Jennifer E., & Thompson, Cynthia K. (2017). Recovery of Online Sentence Processing in Aphasia: Eye Movement Changes Resulting from Treatment of Underlying Forms. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 60, 1299-1315.

Nieuwland, Mante S., Martin, Andrea E., & Carreiras, Manuel. (2013). Event-related brain potential evidence for animacy processing asymmetries during sentence comprehension. Brain and Language, 126, 151-158.

Paczynski, Martin, & Kuperberg, Gina R. . (2011). Electrophysiological evidence for use of the animacy hierarchy, but not thematic role assignment, during verb-argument processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26(9), 1402-1456.

Ruigendijk, E., van Zonneveld, R., & Bastiaanse, R. (1999). Case assignment in agrammatism. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42(4), 962-971.

Thompson, C. K., & Choy, J. J. (2009). Pronominal resolution and gap filling in agrammatic aphasia: evidence from eye movements. J Psycholinguist Res, 38(3), 255-283. doi: 10.1007/s10936-009-9105-7

Wang, Suiping , Mo, Deyuan, Xiang, Ming , Xu, Ruiping , & Chen, Hsuan-Chih (2013). The time course of semantic and syntactic processing in reading Chinese: Evidence from ERPs. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28(4), 577-596.

Yang, Yang, Wu, Fuyun , & Zhou, Xiaolin (2015). Semantic Processing Persists despite Anomalous Syntactic Category: ERP Evidence from Chinese Passive Sentences. PloS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131936

Keywords: agrammatism, ERPs, semantic P600, Thematic roles, sentence comprehension

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018.

Presentation Type: poster presentation

Topic: not eligible for a student prize

Citation: Walenski M, Barbieri E, Chiappetta B and Thompson CK (2019). Verb-argument integration in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from event-related potentials. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00077

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Received: 30 Apr 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Matthew Walenski, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States, mwalenski@gmail.com