@article{PatilHanneBurchertetal.2016, author = {Patil, Umesh and Hanne, Sandra and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {A Computational Evaluation of Sentence Processing Deficits in Aphasia}, series = {Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society}, volume = {40}, journal = {Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0364-0213}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.12250}, pages = {5 -- 50}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia experience difficulty when processing reversible non-canonical sentences. Different accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. The Trace Deletion account (Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000, 2006) attributes this deficit to an impairment in syntactic representations, whereas others (e.g., Caplan, Waters, Dede, Michaud, \& Reddy, 2007; Haarmann, Just, \& Carpenter, 1997) propose that the underlying structural representations are unimpaired, but sentence comprehension is affected by processing deficits, such as slow lexical activation, reduction in memory resources, slowed processing and/or intermittent deficiency, among others. We test the claims of two processing accounts, slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, and two versions of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH), in a computational framework for sentence processing (Lewis \& Vasishth, 2005) implemented in ACT-R (Anderson, Byrne, Douglass, Lebiere, \& Qin, 2004). The assumption of slowed processing is operationalized as slow procedural memory, so that each processing action is performed slower than normal, and intermittent deficiency as extra noise in the procedural memory, so that the parsing steps are more noisy than normal. We operationalize the TDH as an absence of trace information in the parse tree. To test the predictions of the models implementing these theories, we use the data from a German sentence—picture matching study reported in Hanne, Sekerina, Vasishth, Burchert, and De Bleser (2011). The data consist of offline (sentence-picture matching accuracies and response times) and online (eye fixation proportions) measures. From among the models considered, the model assuming that both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency are present emerges as the best model of sentence processing difficulty in aphasia. The modeling of individual differences suggests that, if we assume that patients have both slowed processing and intermittent deficiency, they have them in differing degrees.}, language = {en} } @article{SidiropoulosDeBleserAblingeretal.2015, author = {Sidiropoulos, Kyriakos and De Bleser, Ria and Ablinger, Irene and Ackermann, Hermann}, title = {The relationship between verbal and nonverbal auditory signal processing in conduction aphasia: behavioral and anatomical evidence for common decoding mechanisms}, series = {Neurocase : the neural basis of cognition}, volume = {21}, journal = {Neurocase : the neural basis of cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {1355-4794}, doi = {10.1080/13554794.2014.902471}, pages = {377 -- 393}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The processing of nonverbal auditory stimuli has not yet been sufficiently investigated in patients with aphasia. On the basis of a duration discrimination task, we examined whether patients with left-sided cerebrovascular lesions were able to perceive time differences in the scale of approximately 150ms. Further linguistic and memory-related tasks were used to characterize more exactly the relationships in the performances between auditory nonverbal task and selective linguistic or mnemonic disturbances. All examined conduction aphasics showed increased thresholds in the duration discrimination task. The low thresholds on this task were in a strong correlative relation to the reduced performances in repetition and working memory task. This was interpreted as an indication of a pronounced disturbance in integrating auditory verbal information into a long-term window (sampling disturbance) resulting in an additional load of working memory. In order to determine the lesion topography of patients with sampling disturbances, the anatomical and psychophysical data were correlated on the basis of a voxelwise statistical approach. It was found that tissue damage extending through the insula, the posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the supramarginal gyrus causes impairments in sequencing of time-sensitive information.}, language = {en} } @article{HanneBurchertDeBleseretal.2015, author = {Hanne, Sandra and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Sentence comprehension and morphological cues in aphasia: What eye-tracking reveals about integration and prediction}, series = {Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience}, volume = {34}, journal = {Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0911-6044}, doi = {10.1016/j.jneuroling.2014.12.003}, pages = {83 -- 111}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Comprehension of non-canonical sentences can be difficult for individuals with aphasia (IWA). It is still unclear to which extent morphological cues like case marking or verb inflection may influence IWA's performance or even help to override deficits in sentence comprehension. Until now, studies have mainly used offline methods to draw inferences about syntactic deficits and, so far, only a few studies have looked at online syntactic processing in aphasia. We investigated sentence processing in German-speaking IWA by combining an offline (sentence-picture matching) and an online (eye-tracking in the visual-world paradigm) method. Our goal was to determine whether IWA are capable of using inflectional morphology (number-agreement markers on verbs and case markers in noun phrases) as a cue to sentence interpretation. We report results of two visual-world experiments using German reversible SVO and OVS sentences. In each study, there were eight IWA and 20 age-matched controls. Experiment 1 targeted the role of unambiguous case morphology, while Experiment 2 looked at processing of number-agreement cues at the verb in caseambiguous sentences. IWA showed deficits in using both types of morphological markers as a cue to non-canonical sentence interpretation and the results indicate that in aphasia, processing of case-marking cues is more vulnerable as compared to verbagreement morphology. We ascribe this finding to the higher cue reliability of agreement cues, which renders them more resistant against impairments in aphasia. However, the online data revealed that IWA are in principle capable of successfully computing morphological cues, but the integration of morphological information is delayed as compared to age-matched controls. Furthermore, we found striking differences between controls and IWA regarding subject-before-object parsing predictions. While in case-unambiguous sentences IWA showed evidence for early subjectbefore-object parsing commitments, they exhibited no straightforward subject-first prediction in case-ambiguous sentences, although controls did so for ambiguous structures. IWA delayed their parsing decisions in case-ambiguous sentences until unambiguous morphological information, such as a subject-verbnumber-agreement cue, was available. We attribute the results for IWA to deficits in predictive processes based on morphosyntactic cues during sentence comprehension. The results indicate that IWA adopt a wait-and-see strategy and initiate prediction of upcoming syntactic structure only when unambiguous case or agreement cues are available. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{TsegayeDeBleserIribarren2011, author = {Tsegaye, Mulugeta Tarekegne and De Bleser, Ria and Iribarren, Carolina}, title = {The effect of literacy on oral language processing implications for aphasia tests}, series = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, volume = {25}, journal = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, number = {6-7}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {London}, issn = {0269-9206}, doi = {10.3109/02699206.2011.567348}, pages = {628 -- 639}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Most studies investigating the impact of literacy on oral language processing have shown that literacy provides phonological awareness skills in the processing of oral language. The implications of these results on aphasia tests could be significant and pose questions on the adequacy of such tools for testing non-literate individuals. Aiming at examining the impact of literacy on oral language processing and its implication on aphasia tests, this study tested 12 non-literate and 12 literate individuals with a modified Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (Paradis and Amberber, 1991, Bilingual Aphasia Test. Amharic version. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.). The problems of phonological awareness skills in oral language processing in non-literates are substantiated. In addition, compared with literate participants, non-literate individuals demonstrated difficulties in the word/sentence-picture matching tasks. This study has also revealed that the Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test may be viable for testing Amharic-speaking non-literate individuals with aphasia when modifications are incorporated.}, language = {en} } @article{KadyamusumaDeBleserMayer2011, author = {Kadyamusuma, McLoddy R. and De Bleser, Ria and Mayer, J{\"o}rg}, title = {Perceptual discrimination of Shona lexical tones and low-pass filtered speech by left and right hemisphere damaged patients}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {25}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {5}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hove}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2010.540336}, pages = {576 -- 592}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Background: While the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in prosodic processing is prominent, research on the perception of lexical tones has shown that left hemisphere damaged (LHD) patients are more impaired than right hemisphere damaged (RHD) patients. Dichotic listening and imaging studies with healthy speakers of tone languages demonstrate that at least at the phonemic and lexical level, prosody is processed in the left hemisphere (LH) when the variations in pitch are phonemically distinctive. There is no report available yet on the perceptual discrimination of a Bantu language in patients after unilateral brain damage. Aims: We addressed the question of how well Shona aphasic patients and right hemisphere damaged patients perceive pitch contrasts in Shona lexical words and also in their homologous low-pass filtered counterparts. We also sought to discover the validity of the current hypotheses on hemispheric lateralisation particularly the hypothesis on hemispheric lateralisation based on language function to account for the Shona data. Methods Procedures: A total of 7 LHD and 7 RHD patients and 14 healthy controls participated in two discrimination tasks that examined perception of lexical tone in (a) bisyllabic Shona words and (b) low-pass filtered stimuli. In both tasks the participants were tasked with judging the pitch as the same or different in 120 bisyllabic words and 120 low-pass filtered stimuli. Outcomes Results: The results demonstrated that the tonal discrimination of the LHD group was more reduced in comparison to the RHD group and control participants. However, the performance of the RHD patients was not error free relative to the control participants, although significantly better than the LHD patients in both tasks. Conclusions: At least for the phonemic and lexical levels, brain damage to the dominant hemisphere results in lexical tone impairment for LHD patients, and cognitive load processing results in a subdued but good performance for RHD patients. The LH is therefore dominant for processing tone when it is lexically distinctive.}, language = {en} } @article{KadyamusumaDeBleserMayer2011, author = {Kadyamusuma, McLoddy R. and De Bleser, Ria and Mayer, J{\"o}rg}, title = {Lexical tone disruption in Shona after brain damage}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {25}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {10}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hove}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2011.590966}, pages = {1239 -- 1260}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Background: The issue of production and perception of lexical tone in patients with brain lesions has been investigated mainly through East Asian languages and Norwegian. The present study investigated the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona, a Bantu language. Van Lancker (1980) proposed a continuum scale of the levels of functional pitch in the speech signal. According to the functional lateralisation account (FLH), the left hemisphere (LH) is associated with highly structured pitch contrasts, such as phonological tone, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) is specialised for the least structured pitch functions cueing emotional and personal information. The extant data show that the ability to produce and identify lexical tone is frequently more impaired as a result of lesions to the LH than RH lesions. Aims: The present investigation focused on the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona speakers. The study sought to validate if the scale of hemispheric lateralisation as proposed by Van Lancker (1980) is also valid for Shona, a Bantu language. Methods \& Procedures: We examined five LH damaged (LHD) patients and five RH (RHD) damaged patients using a confrontational picture-naming task and a lexical tone identification task of Shona lexical tone. The first experiment investigated the ability of LHD patients and RHD patients to identify Shona lexical tone in 60 disyllabic minimal pairs. The second experiment examined the ability of Shona brain-damaged patients to produce lexical tone using a confrontational picture-naming task with 120 lexical items. Outcomes \& Results: We observed a dissociation in the performance of both the LHD and RHD patients in the two tasks. Both groups were impaired in the tone identification task relative to the non-brain-damaged controls. However, RHD patients performed significantly better than the LHD patients in the tone identification task. On the other hand, both LHD and RHD groups were equally impaired in the tone production task in comparison to the controls. Conclusions: The discrepancy in the production and perception of Shona lexical tone for this group of brain-damaged patients shows that, although the two modes are related, they do not always get disrupted at the same level after brain damage. The results from the tone identification task suggest to a certain extent that the FLH is also valid for Shona. In order to account for all the data there is need to carefully consider alternative accounts like the acoustic cue hypothesis (Van Lancker \& Sidtis, 1992).}, language = {en} } @article{HanneSekerinaVasishthetal.2011, author = {Hanne, Sandra and Sekerina, Irina A. and Vasishth, Shravan and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria}, title = {Chance in agrammatic sentence comprehension what does it really mean? Evidence from eye movements of German agrammatic aphasic patients}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {25}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {2}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hove}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2010.489256}, pages = {221 -- 244}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Background: In addition to the canonical subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, German also allows for non-canonical order (OVS), and the case-marking system supports thematic role interpretation. Previous eye-tracking studies (Kamide et al., 2003; Knoeferle, 2007) have shown that unambiguous case information in non-canonical sentences is processed incrementally. For individuals with agrammatic aphasia, comprehension of non-canonical sentences is at chance level (Burchert et al., 2003). The trace deletion hypothesis (Grodzinsky 1995, 2000) claims that this is due to structural impairments in syntactic representations, which force the individual with aphasia (IWA) to apply a guessing strategy. However, recent studies investigating online sentence processing in aphasia (Caplan et al., 2007; Dickey et al., 2007) found that divergences exist in IWAs' sentence-processing routines depending on whether they comprehended non-canonical sentences correctly or not, pointing rather to a processing deficit explanation. Aims: The aim of the current study was to investigate agrammatic IWAs' online and offline sentence comprehension simultaneously in order to reveal what online sentence-processing strategies they rely on and how these differ from controls' processing routines. We further asked whether IWAs' offline chance performance for non-canonical sentences does indeed result from guessing. Methods Procedures: We used the visual-world paradigm and measured eye movements (as an index of online sentence processing) of controls (N = 8) and individuals with aphasia (N = 7) during a sentence-picture matching task. Additional offline measures were accuracy and reaction times. Outcomes Results: While the offline accuracy results corresponded to the pattern predicted by the TDH, IWAs' eye movements revealed systematic differences depending on the response accuracy. Conclusions: These findings constitute evidence against attributing IWAs' chance performance for non-canonical structures to mere guessing. Instead, our results support processing deficit explanations and characterise the agrammatic parser as deterministic and inefficient: it is slowed down, affected by intermittent deficiencies in performing syntactic operations, and fails to compute reanalysis even when one is detected.}, language = {en} } @article{StahnHoerningBurchertetal.2010, author = {Stahn, Corinna and H{\"o}rning, Robin and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria}, title = {Die aphasische Verarbeitung r{\"a}umlicher Relationen}, year = {2010}, language = {de} } @article{StahnHoernigBurchertetal.2010, author = {Stahn, Corinna and H{\"o}rnig, Robin and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria}, title = {Die aphasische Verarbeitung r{\"a}umlicher Relationen}, series = {Spektrum Patholinguistik}, volume = {3}, journal = {Spektrum Patholinguistik}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1866-9433}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-47025}, pages = {151 -- 154}, year = {2010}, language = {de} } @misc{AichertStaigerSchulteMaeteretal.2010, author = {Aichert, Ingrid and Staiger, Anja and Schulte-M{\"a}ter, Anne and Becker-Redding, Ulrike and Stahn, Corinna and Peschke, Claudia and Heide, Judith and Ott, Susan and Herrmann, Heike and V{\"o}lsch, Juliane and Mayer, J{\"o}rg and Rohnke, Lucie and Frank, Ulrike and Stadie, Nicole and Jentsch, Nadine and Blech, Anke and Kurtenbach, Stephanie and Thieke, Johanna and Schr{\"o}der, Astrid and Stahn, Corinna and H{\"o}rnig, Robin and Burchert, Frank and De Bleser, Ria and Heister, Julian and Bartels, Luise and W{\"u}rzner, Kay-Michael and B{\"o}hme, Romy and Burmester, Juliane and Krajewski, Melanie and Nager, Wido and Jungeh{\"u}lsing, Gerhard Jan and Wartenburger, Isabell and J{\"o}bges, Michael and Schwilling, Eleonore and Lidzba, Karen and Winkler, Susanne and Konietzko, Andreas and Kr{\"a}geloh-Mann, Ingeborg and Rilling, Eva and Wilken, Rainer and Wismann, Kathrin and Glandorf, Birte and Hoffmann, Hannah and Hinnenkamp, Christiane and Rohlmann, Insa and Ludewigt, Jacqueline and Bittner, Christian and Orlov, Tatjana and Claus, Katrin and Ehemann, Christine and Winnecken, Andreas and Hummel, Katja and Breitenstein, Sarah}, title = {Spektrum Patholinguistik = Schwerpunktthema: Von der Programmierung zur Artikulation : Sprechapraxie bei Kindern und Erwachsenen}, number = {3}, editor = {Wahl, Michael and Stahn, Corinna and Hanne, Sandra and Fritzsche, Tom}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, organization = {Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e. V. (vpl)}, isbn = {978-3-86956-079-3}, issn = {1869-3822}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-4578}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45470}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Das 3. Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik fand am 21. November 2009 an der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam statt. Der vorliegende Tagungsband enth{\"a}lt die drei Hauptvortr{\"a}ge zum Schwerpunktthema „Von der Programmierung zu Artikulation: Sprechapraxie bei Kindern und Erwachsenen". Dar{\"u}ber hinaus enth{\"a}lt der Band die Beitr{\"a}ge aus dem Spektrum Patholinguistik, sowie die Abstracts der Posterpr{\"a}sentationen.}, language = {de} }