Auditory Sentence Comprehension Research Articles

Lateralization of auditory language functions: A dynamic dual pathway model

Spoken language comprehension requires the coordination of different subprocesses in time. After the initial acoustic analysis the system has to extract segmental information such as phonemes, syntactic elements and lexical-semantic elements as well as suprasegmental information such as accentuation and intonational phrases, i.e., prosody. According to the dynamic dual pathway model of auditory language comprehension syntactic and semantic information are primarily processed in a left hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway including separate circuits for syntactic and semantic information whereas sentence level prosody is processed in a right hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway. The relative lateralization of these functions occurs as a result of stimulus properties and processing demands. The observed interaction between syntactic and prosodic information during auditory sentence comprehension is attributed to dynamic interactions between the two hemispheres.

Functional MR imaging exposes differential brain responses to syntax and prosody during auditory sentence comprehension

In two experiments using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging we studied healthy adults who listened to sentences that either focused on lexical, syntactic, or prosodic information. In the first experiment two sentence conditions were employed: normal speech which contained function and content words, and pseudo speech which contained function and pseudo words. Sentence processing generally activated the superior temporal region (STR) bilaterally. Relative to normal sentences hearing pseudo sentences corresponded to stronger brain responses in the anterior STR (planum polare) and in the fronto-opercular region bilaterally. A second experiment was designed to test whether right hemisphere activation can be explained by processing prosodic aspects of speech, i.e. sentence intonation. In addition to normal and pseudo speech the second study examined degraded speech that neither contained morphosyntactic nor lexical information but only prosodic information, i.e. intonation, amplitude, duration, and spectral tilt. Statistical analyses based on regions of interest found differential activation patterns for frontal and temporal areas in the brain. Relative to sentences, degraded speech produced generally stronger activation in frontal regions. Furthermore, the data pointed to a particular involvement of right fronto-lateral regions in processing sentence melody. For the STR an inverse pattern was found: relative to degraded speech sentence conditions produced stronger activation in anterior, mid, and posterior parts of the left supratemporal plane, particular in the planum polare and planum temporale. In sum, the results show that the left planum polare and the left planum temporale mediate syntactic and semantic processing, whereas right fronto-lateral areas seem to be more sensitive to prosodic cues available in spoken language.

Potato not Pope: human brain potentials to gender expectation and agreement in Spanish spoken sentences

Event-related potentials were used to examine the role of grammatical gender in auditory sentence comprehension. Native Spanish speakers listened to sentence pairs in which a drawing depicting a noun was either congruent or incongruent with sentence meaning, and agreed or disagreed in gender with the immediately preceding spoken article. Semantically incongruent drawings elicited an N400 regardless of gender agreement. A similar negativity to prior articles of gender opposite to that of the contextually expected noun suggests that listeners predict specific words during comprehension. Gender disagreements at the drawing also elicited an increased negativity with a later onset and distribution distinct from the canonical N400, indicating that comprehenders attend to gender agreement, even when one of the words is only implicitly represented by a drawing.

Magnetoencephalography evidence of semantic violations in auditory sentence comprehension by native speakers of Japanese

The present study examined whether both vowel-shortening and vowel-lengthening violations would elicit a semantic field component in native speakers of Japanese, and whether such a component would also be observed in phonemic violations. Stimuli contained semantically correct and incorrect versions of two types of vowel duration (shortening and lengthening), and semantically deviant words with phonemic violations. Five hundred Japanese sentences were aurally presented to each subject, while neuromagnetic fields were recorded using a dual 37-channel gradiometer system. A prominent magnetic field component, peaking at around 400 ms after the onset of the target word, was elicited by vowel-shortening and phonemic violations in the left hemisphere only, but not vowel-lengthening violations. This semantic field component was labeled the ‘SeF-M400’. The results suggest that auditory semantic mechanism is more sensitive to vowel-shortening violations than to vowel-lengthening violations.

Lexical access rate of closed-class elements during auditory sentence comprehension in adults with aphasia

Background: One hypothesis regarding the underlying impairment in agrammatic comprehension suggests that individuals with this disorder suffer from a reduction in lexical activation of closed-class words and therefore cannot appropriately construct a syntactic frame on which lexical semantic information can be applied (Friederici, 1988). Aims: Given the temporally based hypothesis, this investigation examined the effects of increased inter-word intervals (IWI) following closed-class words on auditory comprehension of various sentence types by individuals with agrammatic comprehension. It was hypothesised that providing a longer temporal window for access and processing of closedclass words would improve sentence structure comprehension. Methods & Procedures: Twelve adults with aphasia participated in an agent identification task given varying auditory sentence stimuli. Six sentence types and six IWI durations served as independent variable while accuracy and response times were measured. Outcomes & Results: Results indicated that auditory sentence comprehension performance improves when IWIs are increased. However, differences exist among individuals in response to specific IWI durations. Conclusions: Implications of delayed access rates of closed-class words in agrammatic comprehension are discussed.

Working memory and online syntactic processing in Alzheimer's disease: studies with auditory moving window presentation.

Twenty patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) and 20 controls were tested on six tests of working memory and a test of online auditory sentence comprehension in which listening times for each phrase in the sentence, as well as the time required for an end-of-sentence plausibility judgment, were measured. The sentences differed in syntactic complexity. Patients had lower working memory scores than controls and performed more poorly on the plausibility judgments. However, patients were not more affected than controls by the syntactic complexity of a sentence in these judgments, and both groups showed similar effects of syntactic structure in the listening-time data. The increase in listening times at syntactically capacity-demanding points in complex sentences, compared with comparable points in matched simpler sentences, did not correlate with measures of working memory. The results indicate that early-stage DAT patients are not impaired in their ability to assign syntactic structure and to use it to determine aspects of sentence meaning, despite their reduced working memories. This provides evidence for a specialization within working memory for syntactic processing.

Interdependence of Nonoverlapping Cortical Systems in Dual Cognitive Tasks

One of the classic questions about human thinking concerns the limited ability to perform two cognitive tasks concurrently, such as a novice driver's difficulty in simultaneously driving and conversing. Limitations on the concurrent performance of two unrelated tasks challenge the tacitly assumed independence of two brain systems that seemingly have little overlap. The current study used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure cortical activation during the concurrent performance of two high-level cognitive tasks that involve different sensory modalities and activate largely nonoverlapping areas of sensory and association cortex. One task was auditory sentence comprehension, and the other was the mental rotation of visually depicted 3-D objects. If the neural systems underlying the two tasks functioned independently, then in the dual task the brain activation in the main areas supporting the cognitive processing should be approximately the conjunction of the activation for each of the two tasks performed alone. We found instead that in the dual task, the activation in association areas (primarily temporal and parietal areas of cortex) was substantially less than the sum of the activation when the two tasks were performed alone, suggesting some mutual constraint among association areas. A similar result was obtained for sensory areas as well.

Role of anterior temporal cortex in auditory sentence comprehension: an fMRI study

Recent neuropsychological and functional imaging evidence has suggested a role for anterior temporal cortex in sentence-level comprehension. We explored this hypothesis using event-related fMRI. Subjects were scanned while they listened to either a sequence of environmental sounds describing an event or a corresponding sentence matched as closely as possible in meaning. Both types of stimuli required subjects to integrate auditory information over time to derive a similar meaning, but differ in the processing mechanisms leading to the integration of that information, with speech input requiring syntactic mechanisms and environmental sounds utilizing non-linguistic mechanisms. Consistent with recent claims, sentences produced greater activation than environmental sounds in anterior superior temporal lobe bilaterally. A similar speech > sound activation pattern was noted also in posterior superior temporal regions in the left. Envirornmental sounds produced greater activation than sentences in right inferior frontal gyrus. The results provide support for the view that anterior temporal cortex plays an important role in sentence-level comprehension.

What’s left if the Jabberwock gets the semantics? An ERP investigation into semantic and syntactic processes during auditory sentence comprehension

This study examined auditory ERP responses to syntactic phrase structure violations occurring either in sentences containing regular words or in sentences in which content words had been replaced by pseudowords while retaining morphological markers (so-called jabberwocky sentences). Syntactic violations were found to elicit an early anterior negativity followed by a P600 for both types of sentences, suggesting that the syntactic processes in question are independent of the presence of lexical-semantic information. In syntactically correct sentences, content words in regular sentences elicited an N400 component while their pseudoword place-holders in jabberwocky sentences did not. By contrast, in syntactically incorrect sentences neither sentence type showed an N400 for the word creating the syntactic violation, indicating that the detection of a syntactic error at an early stage blocks semantic integration processes in regular sentences. We discuss these results and findings from related studies in the light of a timing hypothesis of syntactic and semantic information processing and propose that syntactic information extracted particularly early can affect semantic processes while syntactic information extracted relatively late cannot.

Developmental and Lesion Effects in Brain Activation During Sentence Comprehension and Mental Rotation

The development of neurocognitive networks was examined in 2 cognitive paradigms: auditory sentence comprehension and mental rotation of alphanumeric stimuli. Patterns of brain activation were measured with whole brain echoplanar functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 Tesla in 5 adults (20-28 years old), 7 children (9-12 years old), and 6 pediatric patients (9-12 years old) with perinatal strokes or periventricular hemorrhages. Healthy children and adults activated similar neurocognitive networks, but there were developmental differences in the distribution of activity across these networks. In the sentence task, children showed more activation in the inferior visual area suggesting an imagery strategy rather than a linguistic strategy for sentence processing. Furthermore, consistent use of a sentence comprehension strategy, whether correct or incorrect as compared to chance performance, was associated with greater activation in the inferior frontal area (Broca's) in both children and pediatric patients. In the mental rotation task, healthy adults showed more activation in the superior parietal and middle frontal areas and less activation in the supramarginal gyrus, suggesting adults were primarily engaged in visual-spatial manipulation and less engaged in the recognition of noncanonical views of stimuli. The pediatric patients showed patterns of activation consistent with organization of cognitive processing into homologous areas of the contralateral hemisphere.

Neurocognition of auditory sentence comprehension: event related fMRI reveals sensitivity to syntactic violations and task demands

The present study investigates the sensitivity of distinct brain regions to the syntactic processing of running speech. Experimental conditions varied the grammaticality of sentence types (correct vs. incorrect). Moreover, two different groups of subjects listened to the same sentence material, but followed two different task instructions. All participants were asked to listen to the auditory stimuli and to perform in a grammaticality judgment-task, whereas only half of the subjects were instructed to additionally repair incorrect sentences covertly. Significantly increased brain responses occurred in several left temporal areas as a function of sentences’ grammaticality, particularly, in the ‘pure’ judgment-group. Spatial extent as well as the strength of focal brain activation changed as a function of grammaticality and task demand. A generally enhanced pattern of local blood supply to the right peri-sylvian cortex could be observed when individuals additionally realized the repair-task. In particular, the right inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis and pars triangularis) and the right temporal transverse gyrus (Heschl's gyrus) were more strongly affected by the repair-task demand. In contrast, an anterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus (planum polare) displayed increased activation bilaterally. Although left hemisphere activation varied clearly as a function of a sentence's grammaticality, the present findings demonstrate an involvement of the right peri-sylvian cortex, in particular, when task demands explicitly require an on-line repair. The results as a whole suggest a reconsideration of the notion that auditory language comprehension is restricted to the left hemisphere. The underlying mechanisms and the respective roles of both the left and the right hemisphere during speech processing are discussed.

Functional organization of activation patterns in children: Whole brain fMRI imaging during three different cognitive tasks

1. 1. Patterns of brain activation were measured with whole brain echo-planar functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3.0 Tesla in healthy children ( N = 6) and in one child with a left- hemisphere encephalomalacic lesion as sequellae from early stroke. 2. 2. Three cognitive tasks were used: auditory sentence comprehension, verb generation to line drawings, and mental rotation of alphanumeric stimuli. 3. 3. There was evidence for significant bilateral activation m all three cognitive tasks for the healthy children. Their patterns of activation were consistent with previous functional imaging studies with adults. 4. 4. The child with a left-hemisphere stroke showed evidence of homologous organization in the non- damaged hemisphere.

Language impairment in motor neurone disease.

Evidence from recent neuropsychological studies of patients with motor neurone disease (MND) has demonstrated that some patients have cognitive impairment. This challenges traditional teaching that MND is a disease with only motor symptoms. Language processing in MND patients has so far not been studied in any depth, but has only been touched upon as a part of general cognition. This study has assessed nine MND subjects on a range of standardised language assessments and compared their performance to that of nine control subjects. Although this is a small experimental sample of subjects, the results of this study indicate that language impairment is present in some patients with MND. The deficits are subtle and only exposed on formal testing. It is not possible to define the nature of the language impairment from this restricted set of data, but there was evidence of some deficits in a sub-group of MND patients on tasks involving naming, auditory comprehension of complex sentences, some semantic tests and spelling. The implications of these findings are discussed in relationship to the clinical management of patients with MND.

The influence of acoustic and semantic information on phoneme categorization in sentences

In spoken language, local acoustic information is frequently consistent with more than one phoneme. This study investigates the influence of acoustic and semantic information on phoneme categorization as a sentence unfolds in time. Ten target stimuli forming a Goat-to-Coat continuum were created from natural speech by manipulating the voice onset time of the initial consonant. These stimuli were embedded in biased sentences such as: Goat-biased: The busy dairyman forgot to milk the (Goat/Coat) in the drafty barn. Coat-biased: The careful tailor hurried to press the (Goat/Coat) in the cluttered attic. A cross-modal interference task showed immediate effects of acoustic information; effects of semantic information appeared 450 ms later. A cross-modal identification task showed immediate sentence context effects for ambiguous mid-range stimuli while identifications 450 ms later showed context effects for endpoint stimuli. A word monitoring study showed immediate context effects throughout the acoustic parameter range. These data support an account of auditory sentence comprehension in which semantic information does not immediately and automatically influence phonological analysis of an acoustic signal; contextual influences occur over time or when a task or situation requires explicit judgment about the identity of a stimulus. [Work supported by NIMH, Grant No. MH42900, and NIH, Grant No. DC00494.]

Auditory Sentence Comprehension: Different BOLD patterns modulated by task demands as revealed by a ‘single-trial’ fMRI-study

Auditory Sentence Comprehension: Different BOLD patterns modulated by task demands as revealed by a ‘single-trial’ fMRI-study

Treatment of thematic mapping in sentence comprehension: implications for normal processing

Abstract The inability of some aphasic patients to interpret semantically reversible sentences has been hypothesised to arise from failure to link the grammatical roles of nouns (e.g. subject, object) to their corresponding thematic roles (e.g. agent, patient). Several previous attempts to improve patients' thematic mapping abilities have demonstrated a range of treatment effects of considerable relevance to the development of cognitive models of sentence processing. This study reports a new treatment approach to thematic mapping impairment; it succeeded in improving auditory sentence comprehension in a chronic aphasic patient with a long-standing comprehension deficit. Generalisation of improvement to auditory comprehension of sentences with untreated verbs, to comprehension of written sentences, and to tests using pictorial and videotaped materials not used in treatment, place constraints on the range of possible interpretations of the functional locus of treatment effects. Two areas that did not show s...

Agreement of Assessment Profiles Used in Cognitive Referencing

Eligibility for speech-language pathology services often is based on the relation between the child’s cognitive ability and language performance. If cognitive ability is developed to a greater degree than language ability, the child is considered to be an appropriate candidate for speech-language pathology services under a cognitive referencing model. If cognition and language are both delayed to a similar degree, the child may be considered an inappropriate candidate for specific language services. The purpose of this study was to examine the agreement of the measurement practices used in the cognitive referencing model of service triage. We administered a battery of cognitive and language measures to 26 preschool children with delayed language ability and examined the agreement of combinations of cognitive-language profiles in determining service eligibility. Substantial disagreement was found among profiles with different measures. Eligibility for service ranged from a high of 22 out of 26 children for the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (Burgemeister, Blum, & Lorge, 1972)/ Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (Dunn & Dunn, 1981) profile, to 3 of 26 children for the McCarthy Scales of Children’s Abilities General Cognitive Index (McCarthy, 1972)/ Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-Elaborated Sentences (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1985) profile.

On the temporal course of gap-filling during comprehension of verbal passives

The work presented in this paper examines the time course of antecedent reactivation following movement gaps found in passive sentences. Using a cross-modal lexical priming technique, (re)activation of the subject noun phrase (NP) was examined at various critical points following the verb (near the posited gap) for verbal passive sentences and for active (control) sentences. Subjects made lexical decisions to visual targets that were presented at three locations during auditory sentence comprehension: immediately after the matrix verb, 500 msec after the verb, or 1000 msec after the verb. Responses to targets related to the subject NP were faster than those to controls during passive sentences (gap sentences), but not during active sentences (no-gap sentences), thus indicating that reactivation of the matrix subject did occur in the passive cases. Furthermore, the magnitude of the priming increased with distance and time from the verb, going from a nonsignificant trend at the verb to a highly significant effect at 1000 msec following the verb. These results are discussed in terms of both formal and processing models of language.

Contextual influences in reading comprehension in aphasia

Aphasic subjects' auditory comprehension of reversible passive sentences is faciliated by preceding predictive and nonpredictive narratives ( Hough, Pierce, & Cannito, 1989, Brain and Language, 36, 325–334). The present study found that aphasic subjects also comprehended written reversible passive sentences significantly more accurately when they were preceded by either predictive or nonpredictive five-sentence narratives than when they were presented in isolation. Also tested was the contention that predictive narratives do not improve aphasic subjects' ability to process target sentences but simply allow these sentences to be ignored. This contention was not supported. The aphasic subjects did not comprehend predictive narratives presented without the subsequent target sentences more accurately than they comprehended the target sentences presented in isolation. For comprehension to be enhanced, both the contextual narratives and the target sentences must be present.

伝導失語における聴覚的文理解の構造について

伝導失語における聴覚的文理解の構造について