ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Language Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1558540
Prosodic Cue Use for Identifying Interrogative and Declarative Structures with Wide and Narrow Focus in Individuals with and without Aphasia
Provisionally accepted
- University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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Introduction: Prosody plays a critical role in linguistic processing at both sentential and information-structural levels, while prosodic impairments in individuals with aphasia can lead to difficulties in sentence comprehension and everyday communication. Despite its importance, prosodic processing in aphasia and its relationship to inter-individual variability within this highly heterogeneous population remain underexplored. This study examined prosodic cue use for structural prediction in individuals with and without aphasia, exploring individual differences in prosodic impairments. Methods: Sixteen individuals with aphasia and thirty neurotypical control participants completed a sentence type identification task using string-identical (i.e., structurally ambiguous) German sentences (statements vs. questions) presented under two focus conditions (wide vs. narrow). Response accuracy and reaction times were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. To explore variability among individuals with aphasia, a clustering analysis was conducted based on task performance.Results: Individuals with aphasia demonstrated significant difficulties in prosodic processing, particularly in identifying questions under wide focus conditions. Wide focus posed challenges for structural prediction due to deficient prosodic cue use, while narrow focus facilitated task performance by providing more salient prosodic cues. The level of speech fluency and abilities in global pitch detection emerged as potential sources of variability. Clustering analysis identified distinct subgroups of individuals with aphasia, each of which was characterized by unique patterns of task performance, suggesting differential underlying mechanisms potentially linked to cognitive abilities and overall processing demands. Discussion: These findings emphasize challenges and resources of prosodic cue use for structural prediction, advancing the understanding of prosodic impairments and their effects on communication. This study underscores the importance of considering individual differences in prosodic processing for developing targeted diagnostic tools and therapeutic approaches tailored to the needs of individuals with aphasia.
Keywords: Prosody, Sentence type identification, Focus marking, prediction, Aphasia, individual differences, variability
Received: 10 Jan 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schneider, Tuomainen, Wartenburger and Hanne. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kathleen Schneider, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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