Purpose: Two new treatments, 1 based on sentence to picture matching (SPM) and the other on object manipulation (OM), that train participants on the thematic roles of sentences using pictures or by manipulating objects were piloted. Method: Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design, sentence comprehension was trained on the affected sentence…

We reanalyzed the data in Drai and Grodzinksy (2005), considering individual patients' responses to different sentence types to be non-independent events. The analyses revealed effects of two of the three factors identified by Drai and Grodzinsky-constituent movement and passive mood. The result is inconsistent with the trace deletion hypothesis;…

Two studies used sentence-picture matching tests of sentence comprehension in 69 adults with aphasia. Clustering analysis yielded groups of patients whose performance steadily deteriorated and was affected by sentence types that were harder for the overall group. Results provide data relevant to the determinants of the complexity of a sentence in…

Three French-speaking agrammatic aphasics and three French-speaking Conduction aphasics were tested for comprehension of Active, Passive, Cleft-Subject, Cleft-Object, and Cleft-Object sentences with Stylistic Inversion using an object manipulation test. The agrammatic patients consistently reversed thematic roles in the latter sentence type, and…

Investigates the age effects on the abilities of older and younger adults in Canada to use contextual information to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Findings reveal that both groups were equally influenced by the contextual information available, although older adults responded more slowly and were less accurate than the younger adults. (50…

The functional architecture of the verbal processing resource system was studied by testing aphasic patients in Canada and Boston for their abilities to use syntactic structure in sentence comprehension in isolation and under dual-task conditions. Results indicate that the processing resource system underlying syntactic processing is separate from…

Reports five experiments; the first two assessed the effect of the selectional restriction requirements of verbs and the animacy of nouns on sentence comprehension, the third determined the cause of the interaction found in the first set of studies, and the fourth and fifth were self-paced reading experiments. (52 references) (Author/CK)