Sentence Comprehension Impairments in Aphasia

描述（由申请人提供）：超过一百万的美国人患有失语症，他们中的大多数人在理解句子方面有一定的困难。这些损伤可能会限制他们充分参与日常活动的能力，比如对话和阅读。尽管关于句法结构如何影响失语症患者的句子理解已经获得了相当多的知识，但对潜在缺陷的全面理解仍然难以捉摸。因此，评价和治疗句子理解障碍的最佳方法仍然是未知的。这一建议借鉴了未受损的句子处理理论，提出了关于使失语症患者难以理解句子的变量的新问题。本文提出的实验采用实时句子处理的方法来验证以下假设：(1)影响失语症患者获取单词速度的障碍会导致句子理解障碍；(2)失语症患者在口语和书面句子理解方面的表现是相似的，除非有不同的实验操作对口语和书面单词的获取产生不同的影响。为了验证这些假设，我们将两种常用的研究非失语症人群实时书面句子处理的方法——自定节奏阅读和阅读过程中的眼动追踪——扩展到失语症患者句子理解障碍的研究中。两组失语症患者和健康的年龄和教育程度相匹配的对照组的表现将在实时书面句子处理和自定节奏听力两项指标上进行比较，自定节奏听力是一种对实时听觉句子处理敏感的方法。目前，候选人精通失语症患者听觉句子理解障碍的小组研究。然而，她需要额外的职业发展培训，以加深她在书面语言和词汇处理方面的内容知识，并在使用眼动追踪研究阅读以及获取和分析结构MRI数据方面发展专业知识。亚利桑那大学在神经源性交流障碍（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高度发达，因此为目标技能的发展和拟议研究的开展提供了理想的环境。培训机会将帮助候选人开展一个富有成效和独立的研究项目，旨在了解失语症中句子理解障碍的潜在本质，以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. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects one million people in the United States (NIDCD). The proposed research focuses on disorders of sentence comprehension in people with aphasia. Sensitive tests reveal that even people with mild aphasia, who appear to have good comprehension, frequently have deficits affecting the speed and accuracy of sentence processing. As a result, they may not fully understand conversations, written or spoken directions, and other daily interactions. The proposed research will investigate whether deficits affecting how quickly people with aphasia access words contribute to sentence comprehension impairments. These studies will provide a deeper understanding of the underlying nature of sentence comprehension impairments, which is an important step on the road to developing more effective tools for diagnosis and evaluation.