Effects of pictures and picturability on sentence verification by aphasic and nonaphasic subjects.

Abstract

Ten aphasic and ten non-brain-damaged subjects were asked to judge the truth of falsity of spoken comparative sentences. In one condition, pictures which contained the items being compared were presented, and in the other condition sentences were presented without accompanying pictures. Some of the pictures which accompanied the sentences depicted the comparative adjectives contained in the sentences, while other pictures simply illustrated the items being compared and gave no information about the comparative adjectives. Results of the experiment suggest that presenting pictures along with spoken sentences improves aphasic subjects' ability to judge the truth or falsity of those sentences. This facilitation occurs even when the pictures do not depict the relationships expressed by the comparative adjectives in the sentences.