Verbal Production Research Articles

Describing (pre)linguistic oral productions in 3- to 5-year-old autistic children: A cluster analysis.

For most autistic children, spoken language emergence and development happen after the age of 3. Once they start developing and using spoken language, some eventually manage to reach typical levels of language abilities, while others remain minimally speaking into adulthood. It is therefore difficult to consider young autistic preschoolers as a homogeneous group in terms of spoken language levels. In our study, we breakdown a representative and inclusive group of children on the spectrum aged from 3 to 5 into five subgroups that correspond to different linguistic profiles. To do so, we qualitatively described children's (pre)verbal productions elicited during interactions with a parent and with an experimenter. We then used a type of statistical analysis called cluster analysis to group together the children that had a similar expressive (pre)linguistic behavior. Using this analysis, we were able to delineate five linguistic profiles with qualitatively different patterns of vocal production. Two of these profiles are composed of speaking children; the three others are composed of non- or minimally speaking children. Our findings show that traditional binary division of speaking versus nonspeaking autistic children is not precise enough to describe the heterogeneity of early spoken language in young autistic children. They also support the use of qualitative descriptions of vocal productions and speech to accurately document children's level of language, which could, in turn, help design very finely tailored language intervention specific to each child.

Explaining uncertainty and defectivity of inflectional paradigms

AbstractThe current study investigates how native speakers of a morphologically complex language (Finnish) handle uncertainty related to linguistic forms that have gaps in their inflectional paradigms. We analyze their strategies of dealing with paradigmatic defectivity and how these strategies are motivated by subjective contemporaneousness, frequency, acceptability, and other lexical and structural characteristics of words. We administered a verb production (inflection) task with Finnish native speakers using verbs from a small non-productive inflectional type that has many paradigmatic gaps and asked participants to inflect the verbs in a given context. Inflectional uncertainty was measured by the number of different forms the participants produced for each verb. We classified produced forms that were not expected as either synonymous or novel and measured their optimal string alignment distance to expected forms. Our analyses revealed that a usage-based approach to paradigmatic defectivity fits better with the obtained results than a classical approach typically met in dictionaries and descriptive grammars. Thus, we argue, that paradigmatic defectivity can be better described as a dynamic rather than a static system, where gaps represent a continuum of possible inflectional choices rather than a lack of an inflectional variant.

Online transcranial magnetic stimulation reveals differential effects of transitivity in left inferior parietal cortex but not premotor cortex during action naming

Accumulating evidence indicates two cortical regions, the left ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and left intraparietal sulcus (IPS), are involved in spoken verb production. Some evidence also indicates these regions may be differentially engaged by transitive (i.e., object-oriented) versus intransitive actions. We explored the role of these regions during action picture naming in two experiments, each employing high frequency (10 Hz) online repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) in 20 participants. In Experiment 1, participants named intransitive action pictures (e.g., LAUGH) accompanied by active and sham rTMS to the left PMv, left IPS, and right superior parietal lobule (SPL; control site). Application of rTMS to PMv resulted in slower naming latencies compared to sham and control site stimulation, whereas stimulation of the IPS did not result in any significant effects. Experiment 2 employed active and sham rTMS identical to Experiment 1 with transitive action pictures (e.g., PUSH). Stimulation of both regions induced changes in naming latencies compared to sham and control site stimulation, with rTMS applied to PMv slowing responses and IPS stimulation facilitating them. Surprisingly, stimulation of the right SPL control site also slowed naming compared to sham across both Experiments. Overall, these findings indicate different roles for PMv and IPS during action picture naming. Specifically, the divergent effects of PMv and IPS stimulation in the transitive action naming task indicate different processes likely operate in the two regions during verb production. Involvement of the right SPL across both transitive and intransitive action naming might reflect visuospatial or general attention mechanisms rather than language processes per se.

Sociolinguistic Variation in Mouthings in British Sign Language: A Corpus-Based Study.

Mouth activity forms a key component of all sign languages. This can be divided into mouthings, which originate from words in the ambient spoken language, and mouth gestures, which do not. This study examines the relationship between the distribution of mouthings co-occurring with verb signs in British Sign Language (BSL) and various linguistic and social factors, using the BSL Corpus. We find considerable variation between participants and a lack of homogeneity in mouth actions with particular signs. This accords with previous theories that mouthings constitute code-blending between spoken and signed languages-similar to code-switching or code-mixing in spoken languages-rather than being a phonologically or lexically compulsory part of the sign. We also find a strong association between production of plain verbs (which are body-anchored and cannot be modified spatially) and increased mouthing. In addition, we observe significant effects of region (signers from the south of the United Kingdom mouth more than those from the north), gender (women mouth more than men), and age (signers aged 16-35 years produce fewer mouthings than older participants). We find no significant effect of language background (deaf vs. hearing family). Based on these findings, we argue that the multimodal, multilingual, and simultaneous nature of code-blending in sign languages fits well within the paradigm of translanguaging. We discuss implications of this for concepts of translanguaging, code-switching, code-mixing, and related phenomena, highlighting the need to consider not just modality and linguistic codes but also sequential versus simultaneous patterning.

VERBA TRANSITIF DALAM THREAD HOROR DI TWITTER @DARJOFESS

This study discusses the production of transitive verbs, types of transitive verbs, the role of transitive verbs, and their grammatical meanings found in the horror thread on the Twitter account @darjofess. The horror thread that will be analyzed is entitled “An Strange Experience on the South Beach of Malang” which was uploaded on April 19, 2022. The research method used in this research is descriptive qualitative research and literature study. The data collection technique in this study was a read-note technique, and documentation in the form of screenshots which were then listened to intensively. The aims of this study are: 1) To find out the types of transitive verbs in the object of study in the form of a horror thread on Twitter and social media; 2) Knowing the type of transitive verb role in the object of study in the form of a horror thread on Twitter social media. The results of this study indicate there are 27 transitive verbs dominated by affix composition (meN-), that is mem-, meng-, meny-, men-, me-; 17 monotransitive verbs and 10 dwitransitive verbs are found, the role of predicate function filler in transitive verbs which is found entirely is the role of action

Gesture in the eye of the beholder: An eye-tracking study on factors determining the attention for gestures produced by people with aphasia

Co-speech hand gestures are an ubiquitous form of nonverbal communication, which can express additional information that is not present in speech. Hand gestures may become more relevant when verbal production is impaired, as in speakers with post-stroke aphasia. In fact, speakers with aphasia produce more gestures than non-brain damaged speakers. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that speakers with aphasia produce gestures that convey information essential to understand their communication. In the present study, we addressed the question whether these gestures catch the attention of their addressees. Healthy volunteers (observers) watched short video clips while their eye movements were recorded. These video clips featured speakers with aphasia and non-brain damaged speakers describing two different scenarios (buying a sweater or having witnessed an accident). Our results show that hand gestures produced by speakers with aphasia are on average attended to longer than gestures produced by non-brain damaged speakers. This effect was significant even when we controlled for the longer duration of the gestural movements in speakers with aphasia. Further, the amount of information in speech was also correlated with gesture attention. That is gestures produced by speakers with less informative speech were attended to more frequently. In conclusion, our findings suggest that listeners reallocate their attention and focus more strongly on non-verbal information from co-speech gestures if speech comprehension becomes challenging due to the speaker's verbal production deficits. These findings support a communicative function of co-speech gestures and advocate for instructing people with aphasia to communicate things in the form of gestures that cannot be expressed verbally because interlocutors take notice of these gestures.

Permanence properties of verbal products and verbal wreath products of groups

By means of analyzing the notion of verbal products of groups, we show that soficity, hyperlinearity, amenability, the Haagerup property, the Kazhdan property (T), and exactness are preserved under taking k -nilpotent products of groups, while being orderable is not preserved. We also study these properties for solvable and for Burnside products of groups. We then show that if two discrete groups are sofic, or have the Haagerup property, their restricted verbal wreath product arising from nilpotent, solvable, and certain Burnside products is also sofic or has the Haagerup property, respectively. We also prove related results for hyperlinear, linear sofic, and weakly sofic approximations. Finally, we give applications combining our work with the Shmelkin embedding to show that certain quotients of free groups are sofic or have the Haagerup property.

Production of Sentential Negation in German and Italian Non-fluent Aphasia

The ability of persons with non-fluent aphasia (PWAs) to produce sentential negation has been investigated in several languages, but only in small samples. Accounts of (morpho)syntactic impairment in PWAs have emphasized various factors, such as whether the negative marker blocks or interferes with verb movement, the position of the Negation Phrase in the syntactic hierarchy or the interpretability of negation. This study investigates the ability of German- and Italian-speaking PWAs to construct negative sentences, as well as the role of verbal working memory (WM) capacity and education in task performance and production of sentential negation. German and Italian differ in the syntactic properties of the negative markers that are relevant here (nicht and non, respectively). A sentence anagram task tapping into the construction of negative and affirmative declarative sentences was administered to 9 German- and 7 Italian-speaking PWAs, and to 14 German- and 11 Italian-speaking age- and education-matched healthy volunteers. We fitted generalized linear mixed-effects models to the datasets. There was no significant difference between negative and affirmative sentences in either group of PWAs. There was a main effect of verbal WM capacity on task performance, but no interaction between verbal WM capacity and production of negative vs. affirmative sentences. Education did not affect task performance. The results are discussed in light of different linguistically-informed accounts of (morpho)syntactic impairment in non-fluent aphasia.

Development of Landmark Use for Navigation in Children: Effects of Age, Sex, Working Memory and Landmark Type

The use of landmarks for navigation develops throughout childhood. Here, we examined the developmental trajectory of egocentric and allocentric navigation based on landmark information in an on-screen virtual environment in 39 5–6-year-olds, 43 7–8-year-olds, and 41 9–10-year-olds. We assessed both categorical performance, indicating the notion of location changes based on the landmarks, as well as metrical performance relating to the precision of the representation of the environment. We investigated whether age, sex, spatial working memory, verbal working memory, and verbal production of left and right contributed to the development of navigation skills. In egocentric navigation, Categorical performance was already above chance at 5 years of age and was positively related to visuo-spatial working memory and the production of left/right, whereas metrical performance was only related to age. Allocentric navigation started to develop between 5 and 8 years of age and was related to sex, with boys outperforming girls. Both boys and girls seemed to rely more on directional landmark information as compared to positional landmark information. To our knowledge, this study is the first to give insight into the relative contribution of different cognitive abilities to navigation skills in school-aged children.

Evaluating the Accuracy of Self-Ratings of Language in Adults with Aphasia and Non-Brain Injured Adults: A Pilot Study.

Rating scales are frequently used in research and clinical practice with people with aphasia (PWA) to characterize communication in the home environment. However, it remains unclear whether responses provided on rating scales accurately reflect the communication that occurs. We aim to evaluate the accuracy of PWA's self-perceptions of verbal language use as measured by a rating scale and determine whether this accuracy is different from that of non-brain-injured (NBI) participants. Four PWA and four NBI participants completed a rating scale estimating their amount of verbal language production as compared with their communication partner. Audio recordings from participants' home environments were analyzed for proportion of words and conversational turns contributed by the participant, which were compared with rating scale estimates. Perceptions of verbal language output among both PWA and NBI participants showed variable accuracy, with discrepancies between estimates and objective data across both groups. The reliability of rating scales in quantifying language output appears questionable, suggesting they may not accurately represent naturalistic language environments of PWA. Additional research with larger sample sizes is warranted to investigate whether this trend is consistent across a larger population of individuals with aphasia.

Performance gaps between English speakers and Chinese-English speakers on classic semantic, action, and emotional verbal fluency

Aims and objectives: Semantic verbal fluency taps into vocabulary knowledge but often elicits poorer performance in bilingual speakers tested in a second language (L2). Few studies have examined verbal fluency tasks that target abstract words and examined test–retest reliability. The present study examined the performance gap between English speakers and Chinese-English speakers on classic semantic, action, and emotional verbal fluency. Methodology: English data were collected for six verbal fluency tasks from 41 English speakers and 18 Chinese-English speakers who spoke English as L2. Verbal fluency performance was reassessed one week later to examine test–retest reliability. Data and analysis: Verbal productivity, valence and arousal, test–retest reliability, and cross-session consistency in producing similar responses in repeated testing were analyzed. Morphological complexity of verbal responses also was compared because Chinese is morphologically simpler than English and emotional verbal fluency may trigger morphologically complex words. Findings/conclusions: Productivity gaps between groups were reliable for all tasks despite practice effects but were smaller for action and emotional verbal fluency. Words produced by Chinese-English speakers were more positive generally and less arousing for specific categories (e.g., “happy”). Both speaker groups were equally likely to produce variable responses with repeated testing, especially for emotional verbal fluency. Words produced by Chinese-English speakers were morphologically simpler than those produced by English speakers for emotional verbal fluency. Originality: Past work on semantic verbal fluency has focused on the retrieval of neutral and concrete words. This is the first study to assess the reliability in performance gaps between speakers tested in L1 and speakers tested in L2 on verbal fluency that targets the retrieval of abstract and emotional-laden words. Significance: Verbal fluency is one of the most frequently employed tasks in neuropsychological assessments. The findings demonstrate the effects of language proficiency on performance across verbal fluency variants, group differences in valence and arousal, the effects of repeated testing, and the effects of linguistic features on responses produced.

Contrastive Study of Brain Activation Regions during Verb Production in Uyghur and Chinese Broca Aphasia Patients after Stroke

<bold>Objective</bold> Blood oxygenation level dependent-functional magnetic resonance image (Bold-fMRI) was used to compare the brain activation of Uyghur and Chinese broca aphasia patients during verb production task, exploring the neural mechanism of verb production, in order to provide basis for the evaluation and treatment of Uyghur and Chinese broca aphasia patients. <bold>Methods</bold> A total of thirty-one patients with broca aphasia who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were selected, including 15 patients in the Uyghur patient group and 16 patients among the Chinese patient group. Thirty-six healthy volunteers were recruited and matched with the patients in the ethnicity, sex, age and years of education, with 18 in each group. Language function was evaluated by Uyghur and Chinese standard aphasia test. Using Uyghur and Chinese nouns as basic experimental materials, Bold-fMRI data were collected when subjects performed the verb production task. SPM 8.0 software was used for statistical analysis, language and aphasia factors were used for double factor variance analysis to compare the interaction at the whole brain level of the four groups. Simple effect analysis was performed in the brain regions with significant interaction, and the differences in brain activation were compared between the two groups. <bold>Results</bold> In terms of language functions, there were no significant differences in repetition, naming, listening and understanding, reading, writing scores and BDAE grading between the Uyghur and Chinese patient groups ( <italic>P</italic>&gt;0.05). The four groups showed significant interaction in the activation of bilateral lateral occipital lobe, middle frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus and fronto-orbital gyrus; there were statistically significant differences in activation intensity of bilateral middle frontal gyrus between the Uyghur healthy group and patient group ( <italic>P</italic>&lt;0.05), but there were no statistically significant differences in activation intensity of precentral gyrus and left lateral occipital lobe ( <italic>P</italic>&gt;0.05). There were statistically significant differences in activation intensity of precentral gyrus and left lateral occipital lobe between the Chinese healthy group and patient group ( <italic>P</italic>&lt;0.05), while there were no statistically significant differences in activation intensity of bilateral middle frontal gyrus ( <italic>P</italic>&gt;0.05). There were no statistically significant differences in simple effect comparison between the Uyghur healthy group and Chinese healthy group, or the Uyghur patient group and Chinese patient group ( <italic>P</italic>&gt;0.05). <bold>Conclusion</bold> Language type and aphasia both affect neural mechanism of brain verb production; the left middle frontal gyrus may play an important role in morphological processing of Uyghur verbs; the precentral gyrus may be involved in phonetic coding output of Chinese.

Automatic language analysis identifies and predicts schizophrenia in first-episode of psychosis

Automated language analysis of speech has been shown to distinguish healthy control (HC) vs chronic schizophrenia (SZ) groups, yet the predictive power on first-episode psychosis patients (FEP) and the generalization to non-English speakers remain unclear. We performed a cross-sectional and longitudinal (18 months) automated language analysis in 133 Spanish-speaking subjects from three groups: healthy control or HC (n = 49), FEP (n = 40), and chronic SZ (n = 44). Interviews were manually transcribed, and the analysis included 30 language features (4 verbal fluency; 20 verbal productivity; 6 semantic coherence). Our cross-sectional analysis showed that using the top ten ranked and decorrelated language features, an automated HC vs SZ classification achieved 85.9% accuracy. In our longitudinal analysis, 28 FEP patients were diagnosed with SZ at the end of the study. Here, combining demographics, PANSS, and language information, the prediction accuracy reached 77.5% mainly driven by semantic coherence information. Overall, we showed that language features from Spanish-speaking clinical interviews can distinguish HC vs chronic SZ, and predict SZ diagnosis in FEP patients.

Light verb production in healthy ageing and dementia.

Light verbs are highly frequent and semantically impoverished words. It is currently not known whether light verb production in discourse tasks differs by age or for people with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT). The purpose of the current study was two-fold: (1) to determine whether there is a relationship between age and the proportion of light verbs produce during a narrative discourse task; and (2) to determine whether people with DAT produce a different proportion of light verbs compared with neurotypical adults. A total of 469 neurotypical adults and 12 participants with DAT produced narratives from a wordless picture book. The results indicated that light verb production increases as a function of age, even when controlling for education, and people with DAT produced a higher light verb-word ratio compared with neurotypical adults when matched for age and education. Light verb use may increase as a function of age due to declines in retrieval ability. These declines are not only more pronounced in people with DAT, but also semantic knowledge deficits may contribute to a reliance on light verbs. Light verbs are typically some of the first verbs learned due to their simple semantic construction and high frequency. However, two things are unknown: (1) how light verbs changed across the adult lifespan; and (2) whether cognitive impairment changes light verb production. The study found that light verb production increases as a function of age, and that people with DAT used a higher ratio of light verbs to words in a narrative task compared with neurotypical adults. However, despite the findings, more research is needed to determine their clinical utility. Future research may wish to investigate whether light verbs (1) facilitate comprehension in older adults or (2) may be used in cognitive-linguistic assessments for cognitive impairments.

Pragmatic Profiles of Adults with Fragile X Syndrome and Williams Syndrome.

Linguistic phenotypes of individuals with Fragile X (FXS) and Williams (WS) syndromes exhibit various degrees of pragmatic impairment, involving difficulties in social communication and in adapting to conversational principles. The goal of the present study was to explore syndrome-specific pragmatic profiles of adults with FXS and WS based on the assessment of the observance of Gricean maxims of conversation. The participants were 12 Spanish-speaking adults (6 FXS/6 WS), without a diagnosis of ASD, whose extensive naturalistic conversations (71,859 words) were transcribed and coded with the CHILDES/TALKBANK tools and the PREP-CORP pragmatic protocol. Violations of the maxims of conversation were analyzed, and indexes of cooperation and conversational response were obtained. Both groups showed reduced verbal production and repetitive dysfluencies; prominent features in the FXS profile were higher proportion of non-contingent language, perseverations of topic and form, and impulsive conversational responses; in the WS profile, salient characteristics were higher proportion of tangential utterances, reformulations, and conversational responses reflecting overly literal interpretation. Pragmatic profiles of violation of conversational maxims reflect specific communication skills impaired in adults with FXS and WS and raise the need for assessment and intervention methods that specifically address their social communication abilities.

Verbal production dynamics and plasticity: functional contributions of language and executive control systems.

Bilingual language production requires both language knowledge and language control in order to communicate in a target language. Learning or improving a language in adulthood is an increasingly common undertaking, and this has complex effects on the cognitive and neural processes underlying language production. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment investigated the functional plasticity of verbal production in adult language learners, and examined the dynamics of word retrieval in order to dissociate the contributions of language knowledge and executive control. Thirty four adults who were either intermediate or advanced language learners, underwent MRI scanning while performing verbal fluency tasks in their native and new languages. A multipronged analytical approach revealed (i) time-varying contributions of language knowledge and executive control to verbal fluency performance, (ii) learning-related changes in the functional correlates of verbal fluency in both the native and new languages, (iii) no effect of learning on lateralization, and (iv) greater functional coupling between language and language control regions with greater second language experience. Collectively, our results point to significant functional plasticity in adult language learners that impacts the neural correlates of production in both the native and new languages, and provide new insight into the widely used verbal fluency task.

Effect of Sing and Speak 4 Kids: An Online Music-Based Speech and Language Learning Game for Children in Early Intervention

Music-based speech language interventions have shown promise to support young children with autism, other speech and language deficits, and Dual Language Learners (also known as DLL, English Language Learners, or ELL). Online edtech learning programs may produce greater positive outcomes for children by including parents as mediators of the intervention. This study measured the preliminary effectiveness of Sing and Speak 4 Kids (SS4Kids), a music-based online speech and language development game, administered to 26 children ages 2–6 years old with or at risk for a diagnosis of autism, other speech and language deficits or DLL. The children were trained in early intervention settings across 4–6 sessions over a 2-week period in one of three group conditions: (a) teacher only in clinic; (b) parent only at home; (c) both teacher + parent. Measurement of verbal production of target words in pre- and post-training sessions showed that trained words significantly improved from pre-test to post-test Additionally, there was no effect of different group conditions (teacher only vs. parent only vs. both teacher + parent) on children's performance. Results suggest that the SS4Kids program is an effective music-based speech and language training method for supporting target word production in young children across a two week timespan. Importantly, the results also found that group conditions did not influence the improvement, confirming effectiveness of both clinic and home-based parent mediation. During a time when traditional in-person intervention services may be restricted, the current work provides cautious but emerging evidence of the effectiveness of an online edtech evidence-based practice to support the speech and language outcomes for a variety of children in early intervention.

Effects of verbal tasks on driving simulator performance

We report results from a driving simulator paradigm we developed to test the fine temporal effects of verbal tasks on simultaneous tracking performance. A total of 74 undergraduate students participated in two experiments in which they controlled a cursor using the steering wheel to track a moving target and where the dependent measure was overall deviation from target. Experiment 1 tested tracking performance during slow and fast target speeds under conditions involving either no verbal input or output, passive listening to spoken prompts via headphones, or responding to spoken prompts. Experiment 2 was similar except that participants read written prompts overlain on the simulator screen instead of listening to spoken prompts. Performance in both experiments was worse during fast speeds and worst overall during responding conditions. Most significantly, fine scale time-course analysis revealed deteriorating tracking performance as participants prepared and began speaking and steadily improving performance while speaking. Additionally, post-block survey data revealed that conversation recall was best in responding conditions, and perceived difficulty increased with task complexity. Our study is the first to track temporal changes in interference at high resolution during the first hundreds of milliseconds of verbal production and comprehension. Our results are consistent with load-based theories of multitasking performance and show that language production, and, to a lesser extent, language comprehension tap resources also used for tracking. More generally, our paradigm provides a useful tool for measuring dynamical changes in tracking performance during verbal tasks due to the rapidly changing resource requirements of language production and comprehension.

Oscillatory dynamics underlying noun and verb production in highly proficient bilinguals

Words representing objects (nouns) and words representing actions (verbs) are essential components of speech across languages. While there is evidence regarding the organizational principles governing neural representation of nouns and verbs in monolingual speakers, little is known about how this knowledge is represented in the bilingual brain. To address this gap, we recorded neuromagnetic signals while highly proficient Spanish–Basque bilinguals performed a picture-naming task and tracked the brain oscillatory dynamics underlying this process. We found theta (4–8 Hz) power increases and alpha–beta (8–25 Hz) power decreases irrespectively of the category and language at use in a time window classically associated to the controlled retrieval of lexico-semantic information. When comparing nouns and verbs within each language, we found theta power increases for verbs as compared to nouns in bilateral visual cortices and cognitive control areas including the left SMA and right middle temporal gyrus. In addition, stronger alpha–beta power decreases were observed for nouns as compared to verbs in visual cortices and semantic-related regions such as the left anterior temporal lobe and right premotor cortex. No differences were observed between categories across languages. Overall, our results suggest that noun and verb processing recruit partially different networks during speech production but that these category-based representations are similarly processed in the bilingual brain.

Low-Frequency vs. Theta Burst Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for the Treatment of Chronic Non-fluent Aphasia in Stroke: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

BackgroundAlthough low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (LF-rTMS) has shown promise in the treatment of poststroke aphasia, the efficacy of high-frequency rTMS (HF-rTMS) has yet to be determined.PurposeWe investigated the efficacy of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) in ameliorating chronic non-fluent aphasia and compared it with that of LF-rTMS.MethodsWe randomly assigned patients with poststroke non-fluent aphasia to an ipsilesional iTBS (n = 29), contralesional 1-Hz rTMS (n = 27), or sham (n = 29) group. Each group received the rTMS protocol executed in 10 daily sessions over 2 weeks. We evaluated language function before and after the intervention by using the Concise Chinese Aphasia Test (CCAT).ResultsCompared with the sham group, the iTBS group exhibited significant improvements in conversation, description, and expression scores (P = 0.0004–0.031), which characterize verbal production, as well as in auditory comprehension, reading comprehension, and matching scores (P < 0.01), which characterize language perception. The 1-Hz group exhibited superior improvements in expression, reading comprehension, and imitation writing scores compared with the sham group (P < 0.05). The iTBS group had significantly superior results in CCAT total score, matching and auditory comprehension (P < 0.05) relative to the 1-Hz group.ConclusionOur study findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that ipsilesional iTBS enhances the language recovery of patients with non-fluent aphasia after a chronic stroke. Auditory comprehension was more preferentially enhanced by iTBS compared with the 1-Hz protocol. Our findings highlight the importance of ipsilesional modulation through excitatory rTMS for the recovery of non-fluent aphasia in patients with chronic stroke.Clinical Trial Registration:[www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [NCT03059225].