Abstract

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line syntactic processing in patients with Broca’s aphasia. Subjects were visually presented with sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of word-category. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients ( N=11), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion ( N=9), and healthy aged-matched controls ( N=15). Both control groups appeared sensitive to the violations of word-category as shown by clear P600/SPS effects. The Broca patients displayed only a very reduced and delayed P600/SPS effect. The results are discussed in the context of a lexicalist parsing model. It is concluded that Broca patients are hindered to detect on-line violations of word-category, if word class information is incomplete or delayed available.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call