This program of research is designed to chart language processing in neurologically- intact and brain-damaged populations as it unfolds moment by moment over time. The focus is on the examination of lexical representation, activation, and access of verb- and noun-argument structures, and on the nature of the integration of these structures into ongoing sentence processing. The proposed studies address issues of form-driven lexical access in sentences, on-line versus off-line processing, information encapsulation and interaction, resource capacity limitations, and syntactic and lexical-semantic deficits. Also included is an investigation of how prosodic information that unfolds within and across words, phrases, and clauses is used to determine first-pass analyses of sentences. These issues are relevant to both current processing theory and linguistic theory. Five sets of experiments (studies 1-5) are proposed that focus on lexical activation, and eight sets of experiments (studies 6-13) are proposed that focus on sentential integration; overall, 16 multiple condition experiments are proposed. The majority of these experiments will involve four subject populations: normal controls, 2 groups of Broca's aphasic patients, and one group of Wernicke's aphasic patients. The goal here is to investigate how lexical, syntactic, and prosodic information are used by these populations. To this end, each experiment employs multiple on-line techniques that probe the sentence processing system as it is operating under real-time constraints. From these proposed experiments, the researchers hope to provide evidence that allows for the development of fine-grained models of normal and disordered language processing. Such work has implications for the behavioral treatment of language deficits common to some of the aphasias.
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