Aphasia - Sentence Processing Presentation

Question 1

PWA present a range of difficulties linked with sentence processing and verbs, including…

Answer 1

Verb semantics
Verb retrieval
Retrieval of predicate argument structures
Assignment of thematic roles
Mapping between syntactical and thematic structures

Question 2

Garrets Model

Answer 2

Message level - determining what to say, pre-verbal, initiates a search for appropriate words.
Functional level - semantic structure, predicate argument structure, assignment of thematic roles.
Positional level - phrase structure, words are explicitly ordered, function words are selected grammatical morphology is specified, phonologies of words retrieved.

Question 3

Word exchanges occur at

Answer 3

the Functional level - between phrases and words of same syntactical category.

Question 4

Sound exchanges occur at

Answer 4

Positional level.

Question 5

Type of sentence level problems in Aphasia

Answer 5

thinking for speaking
Omission of verbs (or errors) - use of light verbs
Word order errors - don’t assume positional, can be functional.
Lack of sentence structure/reduced phrase length.
Agrammatism vs Paragrammatism .

Question 6

Agrammatism

Answer 6

Group of symptoms - omission of grammatical morphology, simplified syntactical structures, reduced verb production, difficulties with sentence comprehension.
Typically seen in Broca’s aphasia, telegrammatic speech - likely to be reflected in writing.

Question 7

Paragrammatism

Answer 7

Grammatical elements are present but anomalous. Substitution of grammatical morphology.
Structural errors
Lexical (semantic) errors
Associated with Wernickes.

Question 8

Message level deficit

Answer 8

Difficulty with perceiving event roles, recognising distinctions in verb meaning, extracting predicate info from pictures.
May observe: problems with story content, poor sequencing and timing of events, not focusing on main event, hypernaming (Marshall 2009), unlinked nouns.

Question 9

Functional level deficit

Answer 9

Difficulty with accessing the semantic representation of words (esp. verbs).
Difficulty assembling the predicate argument structure, and assigning thematic roles and mapping these onto the syntactical structure.
Word finding deficit - omit arguments in sentences.
Suspect deficit if naming in isolation > word finding in CSP.
Might observe: word-retrieval deficits for nouns/verbs, reliance on light verbs, low production of sentences, reliance on 1 or 2 arguments and omission of the subject, word order problems.

Question 10

Positional level deficit

Answer 10

Unusual to find someone with specific deficit here.

May observe: word finding difficulties, reduced phrasal complexity, omission of errors in the use of function words.