The goal of this research is to understand the nature of language deficits displayed by aphasic patients and to characterize the mechanisms responsible for them. The research focuses on on-line processing impairments. Both speech production and speech perception will be studied. The interface between speech perception and lexical access and syntactic processing also will be investigated. Speech production studies will explore whether anterior aphasic patients have impairments in the timing of two independent articulators, studying the nasal manner of articulation and the timing relation between release of oral closure and lowering the velum. To determine whether other properties of speech are spared, spectral properties of place of articulation for nasal consonants in the vicinity of nasal release, are studied. Whether aphasic patients can implement phonetic parameters of speech in larger contexts, the effects of regressive assimilation on phonetic patterns of voicing in fricative consonants will be investigated. In the speech production studies, acoustic analyses will investigate the vocal tract gestures for particular acoustic patterns. In speech perception, a new method will be used to study patients perceptions of temporal, spectral and amplitude parameters. These parameters will be studied using computer editing of natural speech or via speech synthesis, with subjects using reaction times measurements in a discrimination task. Further studies will investigate the extent to which acoustic/ phonetic variants of a phonetic category affect word recognition. An auditory repetition priming paradigm will be used, as well as a lexical decision paradigm. Finally, using lexical decision tasks, the investigators will conduct a series of on-line experiments to assess whether aphasic individuals assign the correct antecedent to an anaphor.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC000314-14
Application #
2872123
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-CMS (03))
Project Start
1985-06-01
Project End
2001-01-31
Budget Start
1999-02-01
Budget End
2000-01-31
Support Year
14
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Brown University
Department
Miscellaneous
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
001785542
City
Providence
State
RI
Country
United States
Zip Code
02912
Luthra, Sahil; Fox, Neal P; Blumstein, Sheila E (2018) Speaker information affects false recognition of unstudied lexical-semantic associates. Atten Percept Psychophys 80:894-912
Ostrand, Rachel; Blumstein, Sheila E; Ferreira, Victor S et al. (2016) What you see isn't always what you get: Auditory word signals trump consciously perceived words in lexical access. Cognition 151:96-107
Kurowski, Kathleen; Blumstein, Sheila E (2016) Phonetic basis of phonemic paraphasias in aphasia: Evidence for cascading activation. Cortex 75:193-203
Theodore, Rachel M; Blumstein, Sheila E; Luthra, Sahil (2015) Attention modulates specificity effects in spoken word recognition: Challenges to the time-course hypothesis. Atten Percept Psychophys 77:1674-84
Blumstein, Sheila E; Amso, Dima (2013) Dynamic Functional Organization of Language: Insights From Functional Neuroimaging. Perspect Psychol Sci 8:44-8
Bullock-Rest, Natasha; Cerny, Alissa; Sweeney, Carol et al. (2013) Neural systems underlying the influence of sound shape properties of the lexicon on spoken word production: do fMRI findings predict effects of lesions in aphasia? Brain Lang 126:159-68
Mirman, Daniel; Yee, Eiling; Blumstein, Sheila E et al. (2011) Theories of spoken word recognition deficits in aphasia: evidence from eye-tracking and computational modeling. Brain Lang 117:53-68
Apfelbaum, Keith S; Blumstein, Sheila E; McMurray, Bob (2011) Semantic priming is affected by real-time phonological competition: evidence for continuous cascading systems. Psychon Bull Rev 18:141-9
Myung, Jong-yoon; Blumstein, Sheila E; Yee, Eiling et al. (2010) Impaired access to manipulation features in Apraxia: evidence from eyetracking and semantic judgment tasks. Brain Lang 112:101-12
Blumstein, Sheila E (2009) Auditory word recognition: evidence from aphasia and functional neuroimaging. Lang Linguist Compass 3:824-838

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