Link to the University of Pittsburgh Homepage
Link to the University Library System Homepage Link to the Contact Us Form

THE EFFECTS OF LOCALITY ON SENTENCE COMPREHENSION IN PERSONS WITH APHASIA AND NORMAL INDIVIDUALS

Sung, Jee Eun (2010) THE EFFECTS OF LOCALITY ON SENTENCE COMPREHENSION IN PERSONS WITH APHASIA AND NORMAL INDIVIDUALS. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)

[img]
Preview
PDF
Primary Text

Download (559kB) | Preview

Abstract

The first aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of the distance manipulation on sentence comprehension in normal individuals (NI) and persons with aphasia (PWA). Consistent with Gibson¡¯s (1998; 2000) locality theory, when distance was manipulated by varying the syntactic dependency (subject-verb: SV and filler-gap: FG) and type of modifier (No, prepositional-phrase: PP, and relative-clause: RC), NI demonstrated an increase in the number of errors and response times to the yes/no questions as the distance increases. NI also exhibited a relatively systematic increase of reading times on the verb (RT-V) and response times (RT) as a function of distance manipulation except for the most complex condition (FG-RC) in which 77% of NI performed at chance-level. More than 60% of normal individuals performed at chance-level in sentences with FG-dependency. Consistent with the previous literature on syntactic comprehension in aging, older adults showed decreased performance on the filler-gap computations. PWA generated more errors in the FG- than SV-dependency. However, their sentence comprehension was not affected by the manipulation of the modifiers. Their RT-V data were difficult to interpret due to the very limited observations for FG-dependency conditions after chance-level performers were excluded from the analyses. One can argue that the high rate of chance-level performance in PWA, especially in the FG conditions, is consistent with the specific impairments hypotheses. However, chance-level performance was observed in majority of individuals with aphasia and even in normal individuals, which was not predicted by those hypotheses. The current results were more consistent with resource-related hypotheses which suggested that sentence comprehension deficits will manifest themselves regardless of the type of aphasia when their capacity is taxed to be exceeded. When distance-based integration cost was held constant between the two dependencies, FG-dependency generated more errors across the groups. However, the RT-V was not significantly different between the two conditions in older adults. These results are consistent with the locality theory. Considering the longer RT-V differences between FG- and SV-dependency in older adults than younger adults, the non-significant group results might be due to the large variability of older adults¡¯ performance and the limited sample size.


Share

Citation/Export:
Social Networking:
Share |

Details

Item Type: University of Pittsburgh ETD
Status: Unpublished
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Sung, Jee Eunjee311@gmail.com
ETD Committee:
TitleMemberEmail AddressPitt UsernameORCID
Committee ChairMcNeil, Malcolm R. mcneil@pitt.eduMCNEIL
Committee MemberTompkins, Connie A.tompkins@pitt.eduTOMPKINS
Committee MemberDickey, Michael Walsh mdickey@pitt.eduMDICKEY
Committee MemberWarren, Tessatessa@pitt.eduTESSA
Date: 11 January 2010
Date Type: Completion
Defense Date: 4 December 2009
Approval Date: 11 January 2010
Submission Date: 4 January 2010
Access Restriction: No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately.
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Schools and Programs: School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences > Communication Science and Disorders
Degree: PhD - Doctor of Philosophy
Thesis Type: Doctoral Dissertation
Refereed: Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords: aging; aphasia; locality; sentence comprehension
Other ID: http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-01042010-093339/, etd-01042010-093339
Date Deposited: 10 Nov 2011 19:30
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2016 13:35
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/6259

Metrics

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics


Actions (login required)

View Item View Item