Effects of thematic structure on syntactic comprehension in aphasia

The Use of Contextual Information by Right Brain-Damaged Individuals in the Resolution of Ambiguous Pronouns

“…Conceming the use of infomlation contained outside the sentence boundary, converging evidence from a number of studies suggests that the interpretation of sentences and paragraphs by aphasics is influenced by preceding linguistic contexts (Cannito, Jarecki and Pierce, 1986;Friederici, 1983;Germani & Pierce, 1992;Hough, Pierce & Cannito, 1989;Pierce, 1988;PierCe & Beekman, 1985;Pierce & OeStefano, 1987;Pierce & Wagner, 1985;Waller and Darley, 1978). Waller and Darley (Experiment 2,1978), for instance, found that aphasics' comprehension of paragraphs was significantly improved when preceded by a short context of two or three sentences that stated information concerning what was about to be described.…”

“…The hypothesis for the LBD groups was based on the mounting evidence (e.g. Cannito et al, 1986;Friederici, 1983;Gennani & Pierce, 1992;Hough et al, 1989;Pierce & Beekman, 1985;Pierce & DeStefano, 1987;Pierce & Wagner, 1985;Waller and Darley, 1978) that suggests that LBD patients use preceding linguistic infonnation to a considerable degree to aid in language processing.…”

Discourse coherence and theory of relevance: Stumbling blocks in search of a unified theory

“…Schneiderman et al There is evidence from aphasia literature which suggests that discourse comprehension depends on the right hemisphere (e.g., Joanette et al~ 1990;Molloy et al, 1990;Chiarello, 1988). While left hemisphere damaged aphasics with intact hemisphere functioning are able to benefit from thematic information in the discourse topic (e.g., Engel-Ortelieb, 1981;Cannito et al, 1986;Huber, 1989), right hemisphere damaged individuals are impaired in their ability to utilize such information (e.g., Brownell et al, 1986;Beeman, 1993;Hough, 1990). They are unable to distinguish between salient and trivial information, between normal and deviant discourses, or see the main point or moral of a story.…”

Memory and Encoding of Spoken Discourse Following Right Hemisphere Damage: Evidence from the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) Technique

“…Nicholas and Brookshire (1986;see also, Brookshire & Nicholas, 1984;Wegner, Brookshire, & Nicholas, 1984) found that RHD adults were not impaired in answering questions regarding the main ideas of texts when compared to NBD controls and LHD patients, but were impaired in answering questions relating to propositions not explicitly stated in the text. Other researchers have also questioned the general idea that processing contextual information is disrupted following RHD (Cannito, Jarecki, & Pierce, 1986;Hough, Pierce, & Cannito, 1989;Leonard, Waters, & Caplan, 1997a;Leonard, Waters, & Caplan, 1997b;Tompkins, 1990Tompkins, , 1991aTompkins, Boada, & McGarry, 1992). Leonard et al (1997a,b), for instance, found that RHD adults utilized biased sentence contexts to resolve ambiguous pronouns to the same degree as neurologically intact and LHD controls.…”