ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Rules and regularities are embedded in all the language structures. Extracting these helps in speech-language acquisition and processing. Sentence processing relies on transitional probability of the dependencies and its distance which are present within the sentence. AIM: To investigate the effect of distance between marker agreement dependencies on sentence comprehension in Persons with Aphasia (PWA) and Neuro- Typical Individuals (NTI). METHODS: Ten PWA and Ten NTI were recruited for the study. Participants whose native language was Kannada (a South Indian Language) and received formal education of minimum 10th grade were selected. MATERIALS: A total of 60 Kannada sentences were used and grouped into three categories i.e., short sentence (had short distance between dependencies) (SSD); Longer sentences (had long distance between dependencies) (LLD) and longer sentences (had short distance between dependencies) (LSD). The agreement markers in the sentence were manipulated w.r.t distance among them and grouped it as adjacent (short distance) and non-adjacent (long distance) type of sentences. PROCEDURE: The participants were instructed to read the sentence and judge whether it is grammatically correct or not by pressing the key corresponding to 'yes' or 'no' on the keyboard. In addition, modified N-back task was administered. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Accuracy and reaction time measures were derived for each sentence types. NTI showed better performance than PWA in sentence judgment task. Both the groups, performed poorly on LSD type of sentence when compared to other sentence types. LSD type was more complex due to the syntactic demands placed by the antecedent preposition, pronoun and adverb placed nearer to the verb and also longer distance between subject agreement to the verb.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Aphasia is an acquired condition affecting auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading, writing and word-finding abilities along with sensory-motor impairments. Anomia refers to difficulty in word retrieval or naming which is seen irrespective of the type of aphasia. However, if a patient shows word-finding difficulty, in specific, a diagnosis of Anomic aphasia is made. There are variations within anomic aphasia on which the management and recovery depend. The article provides one such case report. PURPOSE: Speech and language profiling in anomic aphasia, specific treatment strategies, the effect of bilingualism on recovery. METHODS: Mr S, a 38-year-old bilingual male reported 5 months post-stroke with difficulty in expressing, difficulty in writing and weakness in the right side of the body. Medical history was checked and speech and language evaluations including both formal and informal assessments were performed. After this, a diagnosis of Anomic aphasia with mild dysarthria was made. An appropriate speech-language therapeutic plan and specific activities were formulated for Mr S in his first language (L1) and he was given a therapy for a span of 3 months. A follow-up evaluation in both first and second language of the patient yielded differential recovery patterns. RESULTS: The diagnosis was affected by different variants of anomic aphasia; treatment was specific to the clinical profiling and followed life-participation approach of aphasia. The recovery was affected by differential recovery patterns between the languages. DISCUSSION: Factors pertaining to diagnosis, recovery, bilingualism and treatment of the client with anomic aphasia are discussed.
