@phdthesis{Linnik2016,
  author    = {Linnik, Anastasia},
  title     = {Coherence and structure in aphasic and non-aphasic spoken discourse},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-42320},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-423202},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xii, 106},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Discourse production is crucial for communicative success and is in the core of aphasia assessment and treatment. Coherence differentiates discourse from a series of utterances/sentences; it is internal unity and connectedness, and, as such, perhaps the most inherent property of discourse. It is unclear whether people with aphasia, who experience various language production difficulties, preserve the ability to produce coherent discourse. A more general question of how coherence is established and represented linguistically has been addressed in the literature, yet remains unanswered. This dissertation presents an investigation of discourse production in aphasia and the linguistic mechanisms of establishing coherence.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Zakarias2018,
  author    = {Zakari{\´a}s, Lilla},
  title     = {Transfer effects after working memory training in post-stroke aphasia},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-42360},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-423600},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {178},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Background: Individuals with aphasia after stroke (IWA) often present with working memory (WM) deficits. Research investigating the relationship between WM and language abilities has led to the promising hypothesis that treatments of WM could lead to improvements in language, a phenomenon known as transfer. Although recent treatment protocols have been successful in improving WM, the evidence to date is scarce and the extent to which improvements in trained tasks of WM transfer to untrained memory tasks, spoken sentence comprehension, and functional communication is yet poorly understood. Aims: We aimed at (a) investigating whether WM can be improved through an adaptive n-back training in IWA (Study 1-3); (b) testing whether WM training leads to near transfer to unpracticed WM tasks (Study 1-3), and far transfer to spoken sentence comprehension (Study 1-3), functional communication (Study 2-3), and memory in daily life in IWA (Study 2-3); and (c) evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in IWA (Study 3). To address these goals, we conducted two empirical studies - a case-controls study with Hungarian speaking IWA (Study 1) and a multiple baseline study with German speaking IWA (Study 2) - and a systematic review (Study 3). Methods: In Study 1 and 2 participants with chronic, post-stroke aphasia performed an adaptive, computerized n-back training. 'Adaptivity' was implemented by adjusting the tasks' difficulty level according to the participants' performance, ensuring that they always practiced at an optimal level of difficulty. To assess the specificity of transfer effects and to better understand the underlying mechanisms of transfer on spoken sentence comprehension, we included an outcome measure testing specific syntactic structures that have been proposed to involve WM processes (e.g., non-canonical structures with varying complexity). Results: We detected a mixed pattern of training and transfer effects across individuals: five participants out of six significantly improved in the n-back training. Our most important finding is that all six participants improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., far transfer effects). In addition, we also found far transfer to functional communication (in two participants out of three in Study 2) and everyday memory functioning (in all three participants in Study 2), and near transfer to unpracticed n-back tasks (in four participants out of six). Pooled data analysis of Study 1 and 2 showed a significant negative relationship between initial spoken sentence comprehension and the amount of improvement in this ability, suggesting that the more severe the participants' spoken sentence comprehension deficit was at the beginning of training, the more they improved after training. Taken together, we detected both near far and transfer effects in our studies, but the effects varied across participants. The systematic review evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in stroke IWA (Study 3) showed poor internal and external validity across the included 17 studies. Poor internal validity was mainly due to use of inappropriate design, lack of randomization of study phases, lack of blinding of participants and/or assessors, and insufficient sampling. Low external validity was mainly related to incomplete information on the setting, lack of use of appropriate analysis or justification for the suitability of the analysis procedure used, and lack of replication across participants and/or behaviors. Results in terms of WM, spoken sentence comprehension, and reading are promising, but further studies with more rigorous methodology and stronger experimental control are needed to determine the beneficial effects of WM intervention. Conclusions: Results of the empirical studies suggest that WM can be improved with a computerized and adaptive WM training, and improvements can lead to transfer effects to spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication in some individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia. The fact that improvements were not specific to certain syntactic structures (i.e., non-canonical complex sentences) in spoken sentence comprehension suggest that WM is not involved in the online, automatic processing of syntactic information (i.e., parsing and interpretation), but plays a more general role in the later stage of spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., post-interpretive comprehension). The individual differences in treatment outcomes call for future research to clarify how far these results are generalizable to the population level of IWA. Future studies are needed to identify a few mechanisms that may generalize to at least a subpopulation of IWA as well as to investigate baseline non-linguistic cognitive and language abilities that may play a role in transfer effects and the maintenance of such effects. These may require larger yet homogenous samples.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Raeling2016,
  author    = {R{\"a}ling, Romy},
  title     = {Age of acquisition and semantic typicality effects},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-95943},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {x, 133},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Age of acquisition (AOA) is a psycholinguistic variable that significantly influences behavioural measures (response times and accuracy rates) in tasks that require lexical and semantic processing. Its origin is - unlike the origin of semantic typicality (TYP), which is assumed at the semantic level - controversially discussed. Different theories propose AOA effects to originate either at the semantic level or at the link between semantics and phonology (lemma-level). The dissertation aims at investigating the influence of AOA and its interdependence with the semantic variable TYP on particularly semantic processing in order to pinpoint the origin of AOA effects. Therefore, three studies have been conducted that considered the variables AOA and TYP in semantic processing tasks (category verifications and animacy decisions) by means of behavioural and partly electrophysiological (ERP) data and in different populations (healthy young and elderly participants and in semantically impaired individuals with aphasia (IWA)). The behavioural and electrophysiological data of the three studies provide evidence for distinct processing levels of the variables AOA and TYP. The data further support previous assumptions on a semantic origin for TYP but question the same for AOA. The findings, however, support an origin of AOA effects at the transition between the word form (phonology) and the semantic level that can be captured at the behavioural but not at the electrophysiological level.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{ClahsenSiegmuellerPenkeetal.2013,
  author    = {Clahsen, Harald and Siegm{\"u}ller, Julia and Penke, Martina and Schr{\"o}der, Astrid and Hofmann, Janine and Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Skerra, Antje and Adani, Flavia and Gagarina, Natalʹja Vladimirovna and Schr{\"o}ter, Carolin and Frieg, Hendrike and Belke, Eva and Schwab, Susanne and Seifert, Susanne and Watko, Petra and Obendrauf, Tanja and Trauntschnig, Mike and Gasteiger-Klicpera, Barbara and Adelt, Anne and Hanne, Sandra and Burchert, Frank and Swietza, Romy and Doppelbauer, Lea and Dralle, Jenny and Purat, Patricia and Webersinke, Dorothea and Schwytay, Jeannine and Stadie, Nicole and Hoppe, Carina and Heide, Judith and Marusch, Tina and von der Malsburg, Titus Raban and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Schultheiss, Corinna and Nahrstaedt, Holger and Schauer, Thomas and Seidl, Rainer Ottis and Rath, Elisa},
  title     = {Spektrum Patholinguistik = Schwerpunktthema: Labyrinth Grammatik: Therapie von syntaktischen St{\"o}rungen bei Kindern und Erwachsenen},
  number    = {6},
  editor    = {Fritzsche, Tom and Meyer, Corinna B. and Adelt, Anne and Roß, Jennifer},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  organization    = {Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e. V. (vpl)},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-270-4},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-6612},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-67659},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Das Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik wird seit 2007 j{\"a}hrlich vom Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e.V. (vpl) durchgef{\"u}hrt. Das 6. Herbsttreffen mit dem Schwerpunktthema "Labyrinth Grammatik: Therapie von syntaktischen St{\"o}rungen bei Kindern und Erwachsenen" fand am 17.11.2012 in Potsdam statt. Im vorliegenden Tagungsband finden sich alle Beitr{\"a}ge der Veranstaltung: die vier Hauptvortr{\"a}ge zum Schwerpunkthema, die Vortr{\"a}ge aus Praxis und Forschung von vier Patholinguistinnen in der Reihe Spektrum Patholinguistik sowie die Abstracts der Posterpr{\"a}sentation.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Lorenz2004,
  author    = {Lorenz, Antje},
  title     = {Die Behandlung von Wortabrufst{\"o}rungen bei Aphasie : eine methodenvergleichende Studie zum Bildbenennen},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-0001747},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {In einer multiplen Einzelfallstudie mit zehn aphasischen Patienten wurde die Wirksamkeit eines semantischen und eines phonologischen Therapieansatzes zur Behandlung von Wortabrufst{\"o}rungen verglichen. Detaillierte Einzelfalluntersuchungen erm{\"o}glichten die Diagnose der zugrundeliegenden funktionalen St{\"o}rungen bei jedem Patienten. Auf diese Weise konnten die erzielten Therapieeffekte auf die individuellen kognitiv-neurolinguistischen St{\"o}rungsmuster bezogen werden. Im Vordergrund der Therapie stand in beiden Ans{\"a}tzen das m{\"u}ndliche Benennen von Objektabbildungen mit unterschiedlichen Arten von Hilfen. W{\"a}hrend in der semantischen Therapie Teilaspekte des semantischen Zielkonzepts als Benennhilfen eingesetzt wurden, handelte es sich bei den phonologischen Hilfen um Teilinformationen der Zielwortform. Bei der Erhebung von spezifischen Therapieeffekten wurde zwischen itemspezifischen und item{\"u}bergreifenden Verbesserungen sowie kurz- und langfristigen Effekten auf die m{\"u}ndlichen Benennleistungen unterschieden. Dabei wurden neben den quantitativen Verbesserungen (\% korrekt) auch die qualitativen Effekte (Fehlertypen) der beiden Ans{\"a}tze ber{\"u}cksichtigt, und es wurden Transfereffekte in die Spontansprache der Patienten untersucht. Zus{\"a}tzlich wurden auch die Soforteffekte der verschiedenen Benennhilfen in den Therapiesitzungen erhoben. Im Methodenvergleich zeigte sich, dass die phonologische Therapiephase kurzfristig bei der Mehrzahl der Patienten signifikante Verbesserungen beim Bildbenennen bewirkte, diese Effekte haben sich jedoch {\"u}berwiegend als nicht stabil erwiesen. Im Gegensatz dazu erwies sich die semantische Therapiephase auch als langfristig effektiv. Im Unterschied dazu erwiesen sich die phonologischen Benennhilfen bei fast allen Patienten als unmittelbar effektiver als die semantischen Benennhilfen. Somit waren die Soforteffekte der Hilfetypen in den Therapiesitzungen kein sicherer Indikator f{\"u}r die Dauer der Gesamteffekte einer Therapiephase. Außerdem zeigte sich nicht bei allen Patienten ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen der Art ihrer zugrundeliegenden funktionalen St{\"o}rung und den erzielten Therapieeffekten. Einerseits profitierten Patienten mit erhaltenen semantischen Verarbeitungsleistungen von der semantischen Therapie, andererseits zeigten sich signifikante phonologische Therapieeffekte bei Patienten mit zentral-semantischen St{\"o}rungen. Die Wirkmechanismen der beiden Therapieans{\"a}tze werden unter Ber{\"u}cksichtigung unterschiedlicher kognitiv-neurolinguistischer Theorien zum m{\"u}ndlichen Wortabrufprozess beim Bildbenennen interpretiert.},
  language  = {de}
}