Recovery of sentence production following language treatment in aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking
-
1
Northwestern University, United States
Introduction. Sentence production impairments in aphasia are associated with abnormal online processes, e.g., impaired thematic mapping and reduced incrementality (Cho & Thompson, 2010; Lee, Yoshida, & Thompson, 2015). Little is known about how language treatment affects online sentence processing in people with aphasia, e.g., whether improved sentence production is associated with re-learning of normal processes and/or the use of alternative strategies.
Methods. The present study used eyetracking to examine changes in sentence production resulting from a 12-week language treatment program focused on passive sentences (Treatment of Underlying Forms; Thompson & Shapiro, 2005). In two pre-treatment and two post-treatment test sessions, nine participants with mild-to-moderate agrammatic aphasia repeated visually- and auditorily-presented prime sentences (active or passive, e.g., The chimp was lifting/lifted by the gorilla), and then used the same verb and sentence type to describe an event picture (e.g., a man lifting a woman). We examined effects of language treatment on picture description responses, specifically (1) accuracy, (2) speech durations for each sentence region (e.g., [PreN1 The [N1 man was] [V lifting/lifted by the] [N2 woman END]), and (3) eye movements to the pictured Agent and Theme during each sentence region, reflecting lexical and grammatical encoding processes. Ten unimpaired older adults also performed the task to identify normal performance patterns. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects regression.
Results. The unimpaired adults performed with high accuracy (Fig. 1A) and their eye movements indicated encoding of N1 during the PreN1 region (i.e., fixations on the Agent in actives and Theme in passives) and encoding of N2 during the N1 and V regions (Fig. 1B). In participants with aphasia, picture description accuracy improved significantly with treatment for passive sentences, but did not change for actives (Fig. 1A). No treatment-related changes in speech durations were observed for either structure. Pre-treatment eye movements were qualitatively abnormal, and did not differ between passive and active trials in any sentence region (Fig. 1C). Post-treatment, eye movements were qualitatively more similar to those of unimpaired controls, albeit on a protracted time scale, and indicated encoding of N1 during the PreN1 and N1 regions and N2 during the V and N2 regions (Fig. 1D). Stable performance was observed across measures for passive sentences within the two pre-treatment sessions, as well as the two post-treatment sessions.
Conclusion. These findings indicate that treatment supports re-learning of both offline and online sentence production, with the latter reflecting changes in cognitive strategies used to produce sentences. The emergence of normal-like sentence production processes in individuals with aphasia suggests that, rather than teaching compensatory strategies, treatment enhances access to normal processing routines. Post-treatment eye movements indicated relatively successful thematic mapping and encoding of sentence constituents. However, they were also suggestive of reduced incrementality as compared to unimpaired speakers (i.e., N2 was not encoded until production of N1 was complete), indicating residual deficits in sentence production planning. These results indicate that eyetracking is well-suited to detect change in sentence processes over time (cf. Mack & Thompson, submitted).
References
Cho, S., & Thompson, C. K. (2010). What goes wrong during passive sentence production in agrammatic aphasia: An eyetracking study. Aphasiology, 24(12), 1576-1592.
Lee, J., Yoshida, M., & Thompson, C. K. (2015). Grammatical planning units during real-time sentence production in agrammatic aphasia and healthy speakers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58, 1182-1194.
Mack, J. E., & Thompson, C. K. (submitted). Recovery of online sentence processing in aphasia: Eye movement changes resulting from Treatment of Underlying Forms.
Thompson, C. K., & Shapiro, L. (2005). Treating agrammatic aphasia within a linguistic framework: Treatment of Underlying Forms. Aphasiology, 19(10-11), 1021-1036.
Keywords:
Aphasia,
agrammatism,
Language treatment,
sentence production,
sentence processing,
eyetracking,
Eye Movements
Conference:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Platform Sessions
Topic:
Academy of Aphasia
Citation:
Mack
JE,
Nerantzini
M,
Walenski
M,
Liao
M and
Thompson
C
(2016). Recovery of sentence production following language treatment in aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00036
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
25 Apr 2016;
Published Online:
15 Aug 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Jennifer E Mack, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States, jemack@umass.edu