Investigating the Impact of Semantic Operations on Persian-Speaking Aphasics: Further Evidence on the Localization View
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Abstract
Introduction: Broca and Wernicke’s patients perform satisfactorily regarding the processing of canonical syntactic structures, as maintained by previous studies; however, there has been a gap in the literature because no particular research has yet investigated the performance of these patients in the Persian circumstances once they were required to analyze sentences which would demand extra-semantic processing. This study clarifies the role of two critical semantic operations demanding extra-semantic processing at the sentential level: Aspectual coercion. It complements to provide some evidence on the localist view of the brain. Our rationale for selecting these operations was their pure semantic nature, not relying on morphosyntactic properties.
Materials and Methods: Having recruited two age- and education-matched Broca, two Wernicke, and four healthy controls, we conducted a semantic judgment task in which the participants were asked to express their correct semantic judgment in the two coercion and two normal conditions.
Results: Our results showed an approximately above-chance performance of the Broca group for all conditions; however, in the Wernicke group, the same result was not observed due to their poor performance in coercion conditions, though in ordinary sentences, they performed much better.
Conclusion: Our findings, along with similar off-line and imaging studies, corroborate the view of localism, based on which Wernicke’s area is mainly responsible for the primary semantic operations while Broca’s area predominantly takes over syntactic parsing.
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31. Page M. Connectionist modelling in psychology: A localist manifesto. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2000; 23(4):443-67; discussion 467-512. [DOI:10.1017/S0140525X00003356] [PMID]
32. Catani M, Dell’Acqua F, Vergani F, Malik F, Hodge H, Roy P, et al. Short frontal lobe connections of the human brain. Cortex. 2012; 48(2):273-91. [DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2011.12.001] [PMID]
33. Schwartz MF. Theoretical analysis of word production deficits in adult aphasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2014; 369(1634):20120390. [DOI:10.1098/rstb.2012.0390] [PMID]
2. Kuperberg GR, Kreher DA, Sitnikova T, Caplan DN, Holcomb PJ. The role of animacy and thematic relationships in processing active English sentences: Evidence from event-related potentials. Brain and Language. 2007; 100(3):223-37 [DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2005.12.006] [PMID]
3. McElree B, Griffith T. Syntactic and thematic processing in sentence comprehension: Evidence for a temporal dissociation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1995; 21(1):134-57. [DOI:10.1037/0278-7393.21.1.134]
4. Taraban R, McClelland JL. Constituent attachment and thematic role assignment in sentence processing: Influences of content-based expectations. Journal of Memory and Language. 1988; 27(6):597-632. [DOI:10.1016/0749-596X(88)90011-3]
5. Thomas MS, Redington M. Modelling atypical syntax processing. Proceedings of the Workshop on Psycho-Computational Models of Human Language Acquisition. 2004; 87-94. [Link]
6. Grodzinsky Y, Finkel L. The neurology of empty categories: Aphasics’ failure to detect ungrammaticality. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 1998; 10(2):281-92. [DOI:10.1162/089892998562708] [PMID]
7. Saffran EM, Schwartz MF, Linebarger MC. Semantic influences on thematic role assignment: Evidence from normals and aphasics. Brain and Language. 1998; 62(2):255-97. [DOI:10.1006/brln.1997.1918] [PMID]
8. Su YC, Lee SE, Chung YM. Asyntactic thematic role assignment by Mandarin aphasics: A test of the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis and the Double Dependency Hypothesis. Brain and Language. 2007; 101(1):1-18. [DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.12.001] [PMID]
9. Wassenaar M, Hagoort P. Thematic role assignment in patients with Broca’s aphasia: Sentence-picture matching electrified. Neuropsychological. 2007; 45(4):716-40. [DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.08.016] [PMID]
10. Wulfeck BB. Grammaticality judgments and sentence comprehension in agrammatic aphasia. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 1988; 31(1):72-81. [DOI:10.1044/jshr.3101.72] [PMID]
11. Dick F, Bates E, Wulfeck B, Utman JA, Dronkers N, Gernsbacher MA. Language deficits, localization, and grammar: Evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals. Psychological Review. 2001; 108(4):759-88. [DOI:10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.759] [PMID]
12. Martins IP, Ferro JM. Recovery of acquired aphasia in children. Aphasiology. 1992; 6(4):431-8. [DOI:10.1080/02687039208248613]
13. Piñango MM. Canonicity in Broca’s sentence comprehension: The case of psychological verbs. In: Grodzinsky Y, Shapiro LP, Swinney D, editors. Language and the brain.Massachusetts: Academic Press; 2000. [DOI:10.1016/B978-012304260-6/50019-0]
14. Piñango MM, Zurif E, Jackendoff R. Real-time processing implications of enriched composition at the syntax-semantics interface. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 1999; 28(4):395-414. [DOI:10.1023/A:1023241115818] [PMID]
15. Zurif E, Swinney D, Prather P, Love T. Functional localization in the brain with respect to syntactic processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 1994; 23(6):487-97. [DOI:10.1007/BF02146687] [PMID]
16. Kibort A, Maling J. Modelling the syntactic ambiguity of the active vs. passive impersonal in LFG. Proceedings of the LFG15 Conference. 2015. [Link]
17. Marshall J. The mapping hypothesis and aphasia therapy. Aphasiology. 1995; 9(6):517-39. [DOI:10.1080/02687039508248712]
18. Schwartz MF, Linebarger MC, Saffran EM, Pate DS. Syntactic transparency and sentence interpretation in aphasia. Language and Cognitive Processes. 1987; 2(2):85-113. [DOI:10.1080/01690968708406352]
19. Sweetser E. Compositionality and blending: Semantic composition in a cognitively realistic framework. In: Janssen T, Redeker G, editors. Cognitive linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton; 2010. [DOI:10.1515/9783110803464.129]
20. Caramazza A, Capasso R, Capitani E, Miceli G. Patterns of comprehension performance in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia: A test of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis. Brain and Language. 2005; 94(1):43-53. [DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2004.11.006] [PMID]
21. Grodzinsky Y. The neurology of syntax: Language use without Broca’s area. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2000; 23(1):1-21. [DOI:10.1017/S0140525X00002399] [PMID]
22. Meyer AM, Mack JE, Thompson CK. Tracking passive sentence comprehension in agrammatic aphasia. Journal of Neurolinguistics. 2012; 25(1):31-43. [DOI:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2011.08.001] [PMID]
23. Thompson CK, Tait ME, Ballard KJ, Fix SC. Agrammatic aphasic subjects’ comprehension of subject and object extracted Wh Questions. Brain and Language. 1999; 67(3):169-87. [DOI:10.1006/brln.1999.2052] [PMID]
24. Azad O. Comprehension of complex structures by Persian-speaking aphasics: The role of cognitive load. Journal of Modern Rehabilitation. 2021; 15(4). [DOI:10.18502/jmr.v15i4.7743]
25. Piñango MM, Zurif EB. Semantic operations in aphasic comprehension: Implications for the cortical organization of language. Brain and Language. 2001; 79(2):297-308. [DOI:10.1006/brln.2001.2492] [PMID]
26. Pustejovsky J. The syntax of event structure. Cognition. 1991; 41(1-3):47-81. [DOI:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90032-Y] [PMID]
27. Talmy L. The relation of grammar to cognition: A synopsis. Proceedings of the 1978 workshop on Theoretical issues in natural language processing. 1978; 14-24. [DOI:10.3115/980262.980266]
28. Chierchia G. Topics in the syntax and semantics of infinitives and gerunds. London: Routledge; 2016.[DOI:10.4324/9781315459097]
29. Borod JC, Goodglass H, Kaplan E. Normative data on the Boston diagnostic aphasia examination, parietal lobe battery, and the Boston naming test. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. 1980; 2(3):209-15. [DOI:10.1080/01688638008403793]
30. Kiefer M, Pulvermüller F. Conceptual representations in mind and brain: Theoretical developments, current evidence and future directions. Cortex. 2012; 48(7):805-25. [DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2011.04.006] [PMID]
31. Page M. Connectionist modelling in psychology: A localist manifesto. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2000; 23(4):443-67; discussion 467-512. [DOI:10.1017/S0140525X00003356] [PMID]
32. Catani M, Dell’Acqua F, Vergani F, Malik F, Hodge H, Roy P, et al. Short frontal lobe connections of the human brain. Cortex. 2012; 48(2):273-91. [DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2011.12.001] [PMID]
33. Schwartz MF. Theoretical analysis of word production deficits in adult aphasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2014; 369(1634):20120390. [DOI:10.1098/rstb.2012.0390] [PMID]
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| Issue | Vol 18 No 1 (2024) | |
| Section | Research Article(s) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.18502/jmr.v18i1.14727 | |
| Keywords | ||
| Aphasia Coercion Localization | ||
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How to Cite
1.
Azad O, Ghonchepour M. Investigating the Impact of Semantic Operations on Persian-Speaking Aphasics: Further Evidence on the Localization View. jmr. 2024;18(1):33-40.
