Understanding discourse-linked elements in aphasia: a threefold study in Russian

Abstract

Background: Agrammatic speakershaveproblemswithgrammaticalencodinganddecoding.However, not allsyntacticprocessesareequallyproblematic:presenttimereference, who questions,andreflexives can beprocessedbynarrowsyntaxaloneandarerelativelysparedcomparedtopasttimereference, which questions,andpersonalpronouns,respectively.Thelatterneedadditionalaccesstodiscourseand information structurestolinktotheirreferentoutsidetheclause(Avrutin,2006).Linguisticprocessing that requiresdiscourse-linkingisdifficult foragrammaticindividuals:verbmorphologywithreferenceto the pastismoredifficult thanwithreferencetothepresent(Bastiaanseetal.,2011).Thesameholdsfor which questionscomparedto who questionsandforpronounscomparedtoreflexives(Avrutin,2006). These resultshavebeenreportedindependentlyfordifferentpopulationsindifferentlanguages. The currentstudy,forthe first time,testedallconditionswithinthesamepopulation. Aims: Wehadtwoaimswiththecurrentstudy.First,wewantedtoinvestigatewhetherdiscourse- linking isthecommondenominatorofthedeficits intimereference, wh questions,andobjectpronouns. Second, weaimedtocomparethecomprehensionofdiscourse-linkedelementsinpeoplewith agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Methods andprocedures: Threesentence-picture-matchingtaskswereadministeredto10agrammatic, 10 fluent aphasic,and10non-brain-damagedRussianspeakers(NBDs):(1)theTestforAssessing ReferenceofTime(TART)forpresentimperfective(referencetopresent)andpastperfective(referenceto past), (2)theWhExtractionAssessmentTool(WHEAT)for which and who subject questions,and(3)the Reflexive-PronounTest(RePro)forreflexiveandpronominalreference. Outcomes andresults: NBDs scoredatceilingandsignificantly higherthantheaphasicparticipants.We found anoveralleffectofdiscourse-linkingintheTARTandWHEATfortheagrammaticspeakers,andin all threetestsforthe fluent speakers.ScoresontheReProwereatceiling. Conclusions: The resultsareinlinewiththepredictionthatproblemsthatindividualswithagrammatic and fluent aphasiaexperiencewhencomprehendingsentencesthatcontainverbswithpasttime reference, which questionwordsandpronounsarecausedbythefactthattheseelementsinvolve discourse linking.Theeffectisnotspecific toagrammatism,althoughitmayresultfromdifferent underlyingdisordersinagrammaticand fluent aphasia.