Sentence Comprehension Impairments in Aphasia

描述（由申请人提供）：超过一百万美国人患有失语症，他们中的大多数人在句子理解方面遇到一些困难。这些障碍可能会限制完全参与日常活动的能力，如对话和阅读。虽然已经获得了相当多的知识，关于句法结构如何影响失语症患者的句子理解，但对潜在缺陷的充分理解仍然难以捉摸。因此，评估和治疗句子理解障碍的最佳方法仍然未知。这项建议借鉴了未受损句子处理的理论，提出了关于使失语症患者难以理解的句子的变量的新问题。拟议的实验使用实时句子处理的措施，以测试的假设，（1）影响失语症的人如何快速访问单词有助于句子理解障碍和（2）失语症的人的口语和书面句子理解的措施的表现将是相似的，除非有实验操作，有不同的影响口语和书面单词访问。为了验证这些假设，两种方法，通常用于研究实时书面句子处理在未受损的人群，自定进度的阅读和眼动跟踪在阅读，将扩展到失语症的句子理解障碍的研究。两组人的表现，失语症和健康的年龄和教育匹配的控制，将比较两个措施的实时书面句子处理和自定进度的听力，一种方法，是敏感的实时听觉句子处理。 目前，候选人精通失语症患者听觉句子理解障碍的群体研究。然而，她需要额外的职业发展培训，以加深她的书面语言和词汇处理的内容知识，并发展在使用眼动跟踪研究阅读，以及结构MRI数据的采集和分析所涉及的方法的专业知识。亚利桑那大学在神经性沟通障碍（包括失语症的研究）以及单词和句子处理的心理语言学研究方面有着非常强大的研究传统。亚利桑那大学的神经影像学研究和病变分析也非常发达，因此使其成为有针对性的技能发展和进行拟议研究的理想场所。这些培训机会将帮助候选人启动一个产品和独立的研究计划，旨在了解失语症中句子理解障碍的基本性质，以便开发更有效的方法来评估和治疗这些障碍。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): More than one million Americans have aphasia, and most of them experience some difficulty with sentence comprehension. These impairments may limit the ability to fully participate in everyday activities such as conversations and reading. Whereas considerable knowledge has been gained regarding how syntactic structure affects sentence comprehension in people with aphasia, a full understanding of the underlying deficit remains elusive. As a result, the best approaches for evaluation and treatment of sentence comprehension disorders remain unknown. This proposal draws on theories of unimpaired sentence processing to formulate new questions about the variables that make sentences difficult for people with aphasia to understand. The proposed experiments use measures of real-time sentence processing to test the hypotheses that (1) impairments affecting how quickly people with aphasia access words contribute to sentence comprehension disorders and (2) performance on measures of spoken and written sentence comprehension in people with aphasia will be similar unless there are experimental manipulations that have different effects on spoken and written word access. To test these hypotheses, two methods that are commonly used to study real-time written sentence processing in unimpaired populations, self-paced reading and eye-tracking during reading, will be extended to the study of sentence comprehension impairments in aphasia. Performance of two groups, people with aphasia and healthy age- and education- matched controls, will be compared on the two measures of real-time written sentence processing and on self-paced listening, a method that is sensitive to real-time auditory sentence processing. At present, the candidate is proficient in group studies of auditory sentence comprehension impairments in people with aphasia. However, she requires additional career development training to deepen her content knowledge of written language and lexical processing, and to develop expertise in the methods involved in using eye-tracking to study reading, and acquisition and analysis of structural MRI data. The University of Arizona has an exceptionally strong research tradition in neurogenic communication disorders (including the study of aphasia), as well as psycholinguistic studies of word and sentence processing. Neuroimaging research and lesion analysis is also highly developed at the University of Arizona, thus making it an ideal setting for the targeted skill development and conduct of the proposed research. The training opportunities will help the candidate launch a product-ive and independent research program that aims to understand the underlying nature of sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia in order to develop more effective methods for the evaluation and treatment of these impairments.