Auditory comprehension of control structures in German individuals with aphasia using self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking and an object manipulation task

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Auditory comprehension of control structures in German individuals with aphasia using self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking and an object manipulation task Dorothea Pregla1*, Nicole Stadie1, Shravan Vasishth1 and Frank Burchert1 1 Universität Potsdam, Germany Which factors influence sentence processing in individuals with aphasia (IWA)? One well studied factor is canonicity, inducing processing advantages for, e.g., subject compared to object relative clauses. We investigate the processing of control structures, i.e., structures in which the argument of a matrix clause has to be identified with the subject of an embedded clause (Stiebels, 2007) as indicated in (1) by the indices. Two factors are the focus of the present study: control type comparing subject (1a) and object control structures (1b), and argument similarity comparing pronoun resolution when two matrix arguments have the same (1c) or a different (1d) gender. (1) a. Peteri promises Thomasj PROi to read the abstract. b. Peteri allows Thomasj PROj to read the abstract. c. Peteri promises Thomasj that hei will read the abstract. d. Peteri promises Maryj that hei will read the abstract. So far, the influence of control type on the online sentence processing in healthy adults has only been investigated in a few studies (Kwon & Sturt, 2016). With respect to IWA, the evidence is limited to nine single cases that were reported by Caplan & Hildebrandt (1988, chap.5). For both participant groups, an advantage for object control structures compared to subject control structures is reported (Betancort, Carreiras & Acuña-Fariña, 2005; Caplan & Hildebrandt, 1988; Kwon & Sturt, 2016). The authors ascribe this result to a recency effect: At the subject position of the embedded clause, the recently encountered object of the matrix clause is easier to retrieve than the more distant subject (Kwon & Sturt, 2016). We aim to replicate and extent the findings of Caplan & Hildebrandt (1988) by testing German IWA and a group of control participants with an object manipulation task and by applying a visual world eye-tracking paradigm and a self-paced listening task. We hypothesize that the recency effect occurs in the region immediately following the embedded subject and is reflected in shorter processing times for object control structures (cf. Betancort et al., 2005). We will use subclauses with an overt embedded subject (a pronoun) to investigate the factor argument similarity. In healthy adults, pronoun resolution with two accessible arguments was found to be easier when the target argument and the intervening argument had a different grammatical gender than when they had the same gender (e.g. Stewart, Pickering & Sanford, 2000; Schroeder, 2007). IWA also produced fewer errors in pronoun resolution when the two matrix clause arguments differed in gender (Grober & Kellar, 1981).The effect of gender on pronoun resolution can be explained by interference effects that are higher if both arguments match the gender cue of the pronoun (Schroeder, 2007). We aim to replicate the results of Grober & Kellar (1981) and extend the findings with online processing data using the same participants and methods as described above. Data collection is currently going on. Results will be available by October and discussed on the poster. References Betancort, M., Carreiras, M., & Acuña-Fariña, C. (2006). Processing controlled PROs in Spanish. Cognition, 100, 217-282. Caplan, D., & Hildebrandt, N. (1988). Disorders of syntactic comprehension. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Grober, E., & Kellar, L. (1981). Semantic influences on pronoun assignment in aphasia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 253-268. Kwon, N., & Sturt, P. (2016). Processing control information in a nominal control construction: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45, 779-793. Schroeder, S. (2007). Interaktion gedächtnis- und erklärungs-basierter Verarbeitungsprozesse bei der pronominalen Auflösung. Analyse der Effekte von Impliziten Kausalitäts- und Gender-Informationen durch die Modellierung von Reaktionszeitverteilungen. Doctoral dissertation, Köln: University of Köln. Stewart, A. J., Pickering, M. J., & Sanford, A. J. (2000). The time course of the influence of implicit causality information: focusing versus integration accounts. Journal of Memory andLanguage, 42, 423-443. Stiebels, B. (2007). Towards a typology of complement control. ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 47, 1-59. Keywords: Online sentence processing, Control structures, pronoun resolution, auditory sentence comprehension deficit, self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018. Presentation Type: poster presentation Topic: Eligible for a student award Citation: Pregla D, Stadie N, Vasishth S and Burchert F (2019). Auditory comprehension of control structures in German individuals with aphasia using self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking and an object manipulation task. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00059 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Apr 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: Ms. Dorothea Pregla, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany, pregla@uni-potsdam.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Dorothea Pregla Nicole Stadie Shravan Vasishth Frank Burchert Google Dorothea Pregla Nicole Stadie Shravan Vasishth Frank Burchert Google Scholar Dorothea Pregla Nicole Stadie Shravan Vasishth Frank Burchert PubMed Dorothea Pregla Nicole Stadie Shravan Vasishth Frank Burchert Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.