Attention and executive control during lexical processing in aphasia

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的目标是提高我们对失语症（PWA）患者所经历的认知沟通缺陷的理解。有越来越多的研究记录注意力和执行控制障碍PWA，但较少的工作已经做了表征这些障碍与特定的语言过程的方式。为了解决这个问题，拟议中的项目将实验性地研究执行注意（凯恩和恩格尔，2004年）和特定的语言和控制过程中的语言依赖任务之间的关系。我们假设，执行注意力障碍存在于至少一些PWA，这种损害的程度应该会影响个人的语言处理能力。 该项目将进行两个实验，将检查执行功能和注意力对PWA识别单词和处理其含义的能力的影响。第一个实验将描述PWA在单词识别过程中强调准确性或速度的能力，第二个实验将检查建立（"上传"）执行词汇任务所需过程的能力。该项目还将表征PWA中的执行功能和注意力，并研究它们与语言表现控制的关系。这两个实验将使用词汇决策任务，在该任务中，参与者表明刺激是真实的单词还是虚构的单词，执行功能和注意力的表征将使用一组专门的任务，旨在测量这些能力在语言和非语言领域的具体方面。我们将测试20名PWA和20名年龄匹配的对照。结果将使用已广泛应用于正常个体研究的词汇决策任务的数学模型进行解释（扩散模型：拉特克利夫，1978）。我们预测，PWA和控制的性能会有所不同，具体的扩散模型参数，这将涉及到他们如何处理语言和响应不同的任务约束。我们还预测，PWA将表现出更差的性能比控制在执行和注意力的任务，更大的递减性能在语言相比，非语言的措施，这些差异将是预测PWA性能的词汇决策任务。 该项目与健康相关，因为它将揭示执行和注意力功能与PWA中的语言处理之间的关系，使用严格且经过充分验证的建模方法。预计这将对这些人的治疗产生重要影响。该项目将是培训计划的一部分，该计划将涉及计算建模和统计学课程，以及失语症，词汇处理，执行控制和扩散建模领域专家的指导和直接培训。该项目所涉及的培训将帮助申请人准备成为一个独立的调查员，能够产生实验心理学和失语症之间的转化研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the cognitive-communication deficits experienced by persons with aphasia (PWA). There is a growing body of research documenting attention and executive control impairments in PWA, but less work has been done to characterize the way in which these impairments relate to specific linguistic processes. To address this, the proposed project will experimentally investigate the relationship between executive attention (Kane and Engle, 2004) and specific linguistic and control processes during language-dependent tasks. We hypothesize that executive attention impairments exist in at least some PWA, and that the degree of this impairment should affect an individual's ability to process language. The project will conduct two experiments that will examine the effect of executive function and attention on PWA's ability to recognize words and process their meanings. The first experiment will characterize the ability of PWA to place emphasis on accuracy or speed during word recognition, and the second will examine the ability to set up ("upload") the processes needed to perform a lexical task. The project will also characterize executive function and attention in PWA and examine their relationship to control of linguistic performance. The two experiments will use the lexical decision task, in which participants indicate whether stimuli are real words or made-up words, and the characterization of executive function and attention will use a battery of specialized tasks designed to measure specific aspects of these abilities in linguistic and nonlinguistic domains. We will test 20 PWA and 20 age-matched controls. Results will be interpreted using a mathematical model of the lexical decision task that has been widely applied in studies of normal individuals (diffusion modeling: Ratcliff, 1978). We predict that PWA and control's performance will differ on specific diffusion model parameters that will be related to how they process language and respond to different task constraints. We also predict that PWA will demonstrate worse performance than controls in the executive and attention tasks, with a greater decrement in performance in linguistic compared to nonlinguistic measures, and that these differences will be predictive of PWA performance on the lexical decision tasks. The project is relevant to health because it will reveal relationships between executive and attention functions and linguistic processing in PWA, using a rigorous and well-validated modeling approach. This is expected to have important implications for treatment of these individuals. This project will be part of a training program that will involve coursework in computational modeling and statistics, as well as mentorship and direct training from experts in the areas of aphasia, lexical processing, executive control, and diffusion modeling. The training entailed by this project will help prepare the applicant to become an independent investigator capable of generating translational research between experimental psychology and aphasiology.