TY - JOUR A1 - Bos, Laura S. A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Time reference decoupled from tense in agrammatic and fluent aphasia JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Aims: The goal of this study is twofold. First, it aims to untangle tense problems from problems with past time reference through verb morphology in people with aphasia. Second, this study aims to compare the production of time reference inflection by people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: A sentence completion task was used to elicit reference to the non-past and past in Dutch. Reference to the past was tested through (1) a simple verb in past tense and (2) a verb complex with an auxiliary in present tense + participle (the present perfect). Reference to the non-past was tested through a simple verb in present tense. Fourteen agrammatic aphasic speakers, sixteen fluent aphasic speakers, and twenty non-brain-damaged speakers (NBDs) took part in this study. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Outcomes & Results: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. Agrammatic speakers performed worse than fluent speakers, but the pattern of performance in both aphasic groups was similar. Reference to the past through past tense and [present tense auxiliary + participle] was more impaired than reference to the non-past. An error analysis revealed differences between the two groups. Conclusions: People with agrammatic and fluent aphasia experience problems with expressing reference to the past through verb inflection. This past time reference deficit is irrespective of the tense employed. The error patterns between the two groups reveal different underlying problems. KW - Fluent aphasia KW - Time reference KW - Agrammatic aphasia KW - Tense Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2014.886322 SN - 0268-7038 SN - 1464-5041 VL - 28 IS - 5 SP - 533 EP - 553 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Groenewold, Rimke A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Nickels, Lyndsey A1 - Wieling, Martijn A1 - Huiskes, Mike T1 - The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Background: Research on language comprehension in aphasia has primarily focused on comprehension of isolated words and sentences. Even though previous studies have provided insights into comprehension abilities of individuals with aphasia at the word and grammatical level, our understanding of the nature and extent of their language comprehension (dis)abilities is not yet complete. In contrast to the highly restricted semantic and syntactic interpretation of sentences, discourse comprehension requires additional pragmatic and non-linguistic skills.Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess language comprehension in individuals with and without aphasia at the discourse level. In particular, it addressed the question of whether the use of direct speech, compared to indirect speech, affects comprehension of narrative discourse in Dutch aphasic and non-brain-damaged (NBD) listeners.Methods & Procedures: The Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed to examine the effects of manipulating direct vs. indirect speech on discourse comprehension. Twenty-three individuals with aphasia and 20 NBD participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech reports. The narratives were presented audio-visually on an iPad, and comprehension was assessed with yes/no questions.Outcomes & Results: The performance of the participants with aphasia was significantly poorer than that of the NBD participants. Moreover, a main effect for condition type was found, indicating that narratives with direct speech reports were better understood than narratives with indirect speech reports by listeners with and without aphasia. There was no interaction between group and condition type indicating that this main effect held for both the aphasic and the NBD listeners. However, for the participants with aphasia, there was an interaction between condition and Token Test error score indicating that the positive effect of direct speech constructions diminishes for individuals with poorer comprehension.Conclusions: Direct speech constructions facilitate language comprehension in listeners with and without aphasia. One explanation for this finding is the occurrence of additional layers of communication, such as intonation and facial expression, often accompanying direct speech constructions. An alternative account is the degree of grammatical complexity: In Dutch, the syntactic construction of indirect speech requires embedding, whereas in direct speech the introductory sentence and the quote are both main clauses. The finding that the beneficial effect of direct speech on language comprehension diminishes for individuals with severe aphasia may indicate that the DISCO is too difficult for them to reveal an effect of a subtle manipulation such as that of condition type. KW - Aphasia KW - Discourse comprehension KW - Direct speech KW - Indirect speech Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2014.902916 SN - 0268-7038 SN - 1464-5041 VL - 28 IS - 7 SP - 862 EP - 884 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bos, Laura S. A1 - Hanne, Sandra A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Losing track of time? Processing of time reference inflection in agrammatic and healthy speakers of German JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Background: Individuals with agrammatic aphasia (IWAs) have problems with grammatical decoding of tense inflection. However, these difficulties depend on the time frame that the tense refers to. Verb morphology with reference to the past is more difficult than with reference to the non-past, because a link needs to be made to the past event in discourse, as captured in the PAst Discourse Linking Hypothesis (PADILIH; Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673). With respect to reference to the (non-discourse-linked) future, data so far indicate that IWAs experience less difficulties as compared to past time reference (Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673), supporting the assumptions of the PADILIH. Previous online studies of time reference in aphasia used methods such as reaction times analysis (e.g., Faroqi-Shah, Y., Dickey, M. W., 2009. On-line processing of tense and temporality in agrammatic aphasia. Brain Lang. 108, 97-111). So far, no such study used eye-tracking, even though this technique can bring additional insights (Burchert, F., Hanne, S., Vasishth, S., 2013. Sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia: the concept of chance performance revisited. Aphasiology 27, 112-125, doi:10.1080/02687038.2012.730603). Aims: This study investigated (1) whether processing of future and past time reference inflection differs between non-brain-damaged individuals (NBDs) and IWAs, and (2) underlying mechanisms of time reference comprehension failure by IWAs. Results and discussion: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the IWAs. IWAs had below-ceiling performance on the future condition, and both participant groups were faster to respond to the past than to the future condition. These differences are attributed to a pre-existing preference to look at a past picture, which has to be overcome. Eye movement patterns suggest that both groups interpret future time reference similarly, while IWAs show a delay relative to NBDs in interpreting past time reference inflection. The eye tracking results support the PADILIH, because processing reference to the past in discourse syntax requires additional resources and thus, is problematic and delayed for people with aphasia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Visual-world paradigm KW - Spoken language comprehension KW - Time reference KW - Morphology KW - Agrammatism KW - Eye-tracking KW - Aphasia KW - Discourse linking Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.10.026 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 65 SP - 180 EP - 190 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Arslan, Seçkin A1 - Aksu-Koc, Ayhan A1 - Mavis, Ilknur A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Finite verb inflections for evidential categories and source JF - Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies KW - Agrammatic aphasia KW - Evidentiality KW - Source identification KW - Discourse-linking KW - Time reference KW - Tense and aspect Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.002 SN - 0378-2166 SN - 1879-1387 VL - 70 SP - 165 EP - 181 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Alter, Kai T1 - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language N2 - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Language KW - Rapid learning KW - Hebbian learning KW - Event-related potential KW - Novel word KW - Mismatch Negativity (MMN) KW - Oddball paradigm KW - Lexical tone KW - Mandarin Chinese Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 139 SP - 10 EP - 22 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER -