It is the goal of this research to explore speech and language processing deficits in aphasia. A number of speech and language dimensions will be investigated including speech production and speech perception, lexical access, and sentence processing, with the broad goal of delineating the nature of language deficits in aphasia, and ultimately of developing a model of language-brain relations. In speech production, acoustic analysis of aphasic speech will be conducted to determine whether the production deficit of anterior aphasics (and particularly Broca's aphasics) reflects a global impairment in the coordination of articulatory movements or more specifically reflects an impairment in coordination only when tow independent articulators are involved. Acoustic analysis of the speech production of Wernicke's aphasics will also be conducted to investigate whether, contrary to accepted doctrine, Wernicke's aphasics display a subtle phonetic impairment that is not clinically evident and that is different in kind from the phonetic impairment of Broca's aphasics. In speech perception, a series of perception experiments using synthetic speech continua, computer-edited natural speech continua, and naturally produced exemplars will be conducted to explore the extent to which aphasic patients display speech perception deficits as a function of lexical processing demands. These studies will investigate the extent to which acoustic manipulations and phonological factors affect lexical access, and conversely, the extent to which lexical access affects the perception of the phonetic dimensions of speech. With respect to lexical access, a series of lexical decision experiments will be conducted to investigate the nature of the processing deficits involved in lexical access. It is the goal of this research to determine whether the automatic-controlled processing dichotomy elaborated in the normal literature is an appropriate characterization of lexical deficits in aphasia and to explore the extent to which the lexical access system of aphasics is sensitive to the meanings of lexical items and to the syntactic role that these words may play. Finally, on-line sentence processing in aphasia will be explored with a series of auditory and cross-modal lexical decision studies to determine whether the processing operations contributing to normal sentence comprehension are compromised. A number of dimensions shown to be sensitive to on-line processing demands in normals will be investigated including morphological, syntactic, and semantic constraints.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01NS022282-02
Application #
3404531
Study Section
Communication Sciences and Disorders (CMS)
Project Start
1985-06-01
Project End
1992-05-31
Budget Start
1986-06-01
Budget End
1987-05-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
1986
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Brown University
Department
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
001785542
City
Providence
State
RI
Country
United States
Zip Code
02912
Behrens, S J (1989) Characterizing sentence intonation in a right hemisphere-damaged population. Brain Lang 37:181-200
Baum, S R (1989) On-line sensitivity to local and long-distance syntactic dependencies in Broca's aphasia. Brain Lang 37:327-38
Milberg, W; Blumstein, S (1989) Reaction time methodology and the aphasic patient: a reply to Hagoort (1988). Brain Lang 36:349-53
Katz, W F (1988) Anticipatory coarticulation in aphasia: acoustic and perceptual data. Brain Lang 35:340-68
Berndt, R S; Salasoo, A; Mitchum, C C et al. (1988) The role of intonation cues in aphasic patients' performance of the grammaticality judgment task. Brain Lang 34:65-97
Milberg, W; Blumstein, S; Dworetzky, B (1988) Phonological processing and lexical access in aphasia. Brain Lang 34:279-93
Katz, W F (1988) An investigation of lexical ambiguity in Broca's aphasics using an auditory lexical priming technique. Neuropsychologia 26:747-52
Behrens, S J (1988) The role of the right hemisphere in the production of linguistic stress. Brain Lang 33:104-27
Baum, S R; Blumstein, S E (1987) Preliminary observations on the use of duration as a cue to syllable-initial fricative consonant voicing in English. J Acoust Soc Am 82:1073-7
Milberg, W; Blumstein, S E; Dworetzky, B (1987) Processing of lexical ambiguities in aphasia. Brain Lang 31:138-50

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