Dynamics of Spoken Word Comprehension in Aphasia

描述（由申请人提供）：失语症是一种与中风相关的语言处理障碍，在美国影响着大约100万人。人类活动是如此依赖于口头交流，以致于口头语言处理的损伤，如失语症，可能是毁灭性的。除了丧失工作能力等功能障碍外，语言障碍还可能导致社会孤立，并由此对身心健康产生负面影响。因为语言处理需要许多不同的认知能力，失语症可能有许多不同的潜在原因，每个失语症患者可能有细微不同的损伤。设计有效的康复策略取决于我们对障碍本质的理解，因此，本文的重点是利用行为实验和计算建模方法来建立失语口语理解的形式化理论。本实验将采用行为和眼动追踪的方法，在大量不同的失语症患者和未受损的对照组中研究文字处理的语音、语义和认知控制方面。这些措施将为失语症中文字处理的动态提供新的见解。计算模型将用于开发和测试失语症中文字处理缺陷的正式描述。随着对失语症语言障碍的潜在原因和失语症的正式模型的更好理解，可以制定更有效的康复策略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Aphasia is a stroke-related disability of language processing that affects about one million people in the United States. Human activity is so dependent on spoken communication that impairments of spoken language processing, such as aphasia, can be devastating. In addition to functional impairments such as inability to work, language impairments can also cause social isolation and its consequent negative outcomes on mental and physical health. Because language processing calls on many different cognitive faculties, aphasia may have many different underlying causes and each aphasic individual may have a subtly different impairment. Designing effective rehabilitation strategies depends on our understanding of the nature of the impairment, thus, the focus of this proposal is on using behavioral experiments and computational modeling methods to develop a formal theory of aphasic spoken word comprehension. The proposed experiments will investigate phonological, semantic, and cognitive control aspects of word processing in a large and diverse set of aphasic individuals and unimpaired control participants using behavioral and eye tracking measures. These measures will provide new insights into the dynamics of word processing in aphasia. Computational modeling will be used to develop and test formal accounts of word processing deficits in aphasia. With a better understanding of the underlying causes of aphasic language impairments and a formal model of aphasia, more effective rehabilitation strategies can be developed. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project will apply innovative behavioral, eye-tracking, and computational modeling techniques to better understand word processing in aphasic patients. The investigations are likely to contribute substantially to the understanding of language impairments in aphasia and to the development of novel rehabilitation strategies for aphasia.