AGRAMMATIC PATIENT’S DUAL CODING PROCESS IN SENTENCE COMPREHENSION

Abstract

This paper reports on a study on the dual coding process involved in an agrammatic patient when comprehending sentences using a sentence to picture matching test. The test was undertaken at The National Stroke Association of Malaysia (NASAM), Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The current study employs the theory of Paivio’s (1991) Dual Coding Theory (DCT) as an explanation for the agrammatic patient’s ability to comprehend active and passive sentences and adopts an influential hypothesis by Grodzinsky’s (1990) Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) concerning agrammatism that characterises agrammatic patients as a good comprehender of Subject Verb Object (SVO) sentence structure, the active sentence but as bad comprehenders of Object Verb Subject (OVS) sentence structure, the passive sentences. A comprehension test, the Sentence to Picture Matching Test designed by Christensen (2001) has been adopted in this study to examine the suitability of dual coding theory as an explanation for the agrammatic patient’s comprehension ability. The performance of the patient’s comprehension pattern in this study supports the account of TDH and in general, the findings of this study suggest that sentence to picture matching test could be used to investigate the dual coding process of the agrammatic patient.