Presentation Type
Poster
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Danielle Fahey
Faculty Mentor’s Department
SLHOS
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Purpose: Simple syntactic structures are often difficult to produce correctly for people with aphasia (PWA). There has been variability in the literature about how lexical syntax (i.e., ‘parts of speech’) correlates to production of grammatical errors. We aimed to assess verb and object pronoun errors in English-speaking PWA while reducing working memory demands, using a modified replication of Rossi et. al. (2013).
Methods: We used a scripted dialogue paradigm to assess how (a) declarative (“the man wants to eat the cookies”) and imperative (“eat the cookies”) sentence structures, (b) verbs, and (c) object pronouns differentially affected accuracy of sentence completion. The paradigm provides a sentence fragment to prime the sentence structure, then asks participants to complete the sentence. Sixteen verbs were tested, each presented in dialogue scripts twice. Verb-object pairs were counterbalanced for number (singular vs. plural). Physical props aided object recall, while proctors acted out verbs.
Results: Data collection is ongoing, but 9 participants’ errors have been coded. Participants varied greatly in overall accuracy (M=71%; min=24%; max=100%) with less errors in verb accuracy than pronoun accuracy approaching significance (min=56%; max=87%; t(16)=-1.87, p=.080). Although overall verb errors were low, there was some variability in individual verb accuracy (max accuracy: 92%, min accuracy 77%). There were no significant differences in pronoun number (i.e., singular vs. plural; t(16)=.50, p=.626) nor sentence structure (i.e., declarative versus imperative; t(16)=-.03, p=.977).
Significance: Though participants varied in the structures they had difficulty with as well as the types of errors, only differences between verb and pronoun production accuracy were significant. Interestingly, verb and pronoun productions have similar grammatical complexity, but only pronoun production was significantly impaired. This difference could be due to differential working memory requirements. Future directions include lesion-symptom mapping and cross-language comparisons.
Category
Social Sciences
Scripted Dialogue Task for People with Aphasia: Effects of Verb, Object Pronoun, and Sentence Structure Differences
UC South Ballroom
Purpose: Simple syntactic structures are often difficult to produce correctly for people with aphasia (PWA). There has been variability in the literature about how lexical syntax (i.e., ‘parts of speech’) correlates to production of grammatical errors. We aimed to assess verb and object pronoun errors in English-speaking PWA while reducing working memory demands, using a modified replication of Rossi et. al. (2013).
Methods: We used a scripted dialogue paradigm to assess how (a) declarative (“the man wants to eat the cookies”) and imperative (“eat the cookies”) sentence structures, (b) verbs, and (c) object pronouns differentially affected accuracy of sentence completion. The paradigm provides a sentence fragment to prime the sentence structure, then asks participants to complete the sentence. Sixteen verbs were tested, each presented in dialogue scripts twice. Verb-object pairs were counterbalanced for number (singular vs. plural). Physical props aided object recall, while proctors acted out verbs.
Results: Data collection is ongoing, but 9 participants’ errors have been coded. Participants varied greatly in overall accuracy (M=71%; min=24%; max=100%) with less errors in verb accuracy than pronoun accuracy approaching significance (min=56%; max=87%; t(16)=-1.87, p=.080). Although overall verb errors were low, there was some variability in individual verb accuracy (max accuracy: 92%, min accuracy 77%). There were no significant differences in pronoun number (i.e., singular vs. plural; t(16)=.50, p=.626) nor sentence structure (i.e., declarative versus imperative; t(16)=-.03, p=.977).
Significance: Though participants varied in the structures they had difficulty with as well as the types of errors, only differences between verb and pronoun production accuracy were significant. Interestingly, verb and pronoun productions have similar grammatical complexity, but only pronoun production was significantly impaired. This difference could be due to differential working memory requirements. Future directions include lesion-symptom mapping and cross-language comparisons.