Aphasics' perception of words in sentential context: Some real-time processing evidence

Abstract

The perception of words belonging to different grammatical classes was investigated in Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics. The experiment used a word monitoring task, which varied the target's word class, as well as the sentential context. The sensitivity to semantic context was very similar for both aphasic groups. Processing differences for the two groups were found, however, with respect to different word classes. It appears that Broca's aphasics are unable to process grammatical morphemes as features of a phrasal frame. Wernicke's aphasics, however, seem to retain the ability to process syntactic as well as some semantic information, at least, during sentence perception.