Priming sentence comprehension in aphasia: effects of lexically independent and specific structural priming

Abstract

Purpose.-Impaired message-structure mapping results in deficits in both sentence production and comprehension in aphasia. Structural priming has been shown to facilitate syntactic production for persons with aphasia (PWA). However, it remains unknown if structural priming is also effective in sentence comprehension. We examined if PWA show preserved and lasting structural priming effects during interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences and if the priming effects occur independently of or in conjunction with lexical (verb) information.Methods.-Eighteen PWA and 20 healthy older adults (HOA) completed a written sentencepicture matching task involving the interpretation of prepositional phrases (PP; the chef is poking the solider with an umbrella) that were ambiguous between high (verb modifier) and low attachment (object noun modifier). Only one interpretation was possible for prime sentences, while both interpretations were possible for target sentences. In Experiment 1, the target was presented immediately after the prime (0-lag). In Experiment 2, two filler items intervened between the prime and the target (2-lag). Within each experiment, the verb was repeated for half of the prime-target pairs, while different verbs were used for the other half. Participants' off-line picture matching choices and response times were measured.Results.-After reading a prime sentence with a particular interpretation, HOA and PWA tended to interpret an ambiguous PP in a target sentence in the same way and with faster response times. Importantly, both groups continued to show this priming effect over a lag (Experiment 2), although the effect was not as reliable in response times. However, neither group showed lexical (verbspecific) boost on priming, deviating from robust lexical boost seen in the young adults of prior studies.Conclusions.-PWA demonstrate abstract (lexically-independent) structural priming in the absence of a lexically-specific boost. Abstract priming is preserved in aphasia, effectively facilitating not only immediate but also longer-lasting structure-message mapping during sentence comprehension.

Effects of Verb Overlap on Structural Priming in Dialogue: Implications for Syntactic Learning in Aphasia

“…Even when PWAs showed robust abstract priming for transitives in Experiment 1, they showed an average of only 4% of verb-specific enhancement on priming. These results are consistent with our previous comprehension priming study, wherein PWAs showed only abstract priming during interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences (Lee, Hosokawa, et al, 2019). Furthermore, the findings suggest that the lexically independent and lexically specific structural priming effects are associated with distinctive cognitive processes (Chang et al, 2012;Reitter et al, 2011) and can be selectively affected in PWAs.…”

“…This two-step priming might have encouraged the participant to better encode and reuse the lexical-semantic materials of the prime. Different from Yan et al's findings, we (Lee, Hosokawa, et al, 2019) failed to find a lexical boost effect during comprehension of syntactically ambiguous sentences. However, the PWAs still demonstrated abstract priming not only in the immediate priming condition (0-lag) but also over two intervening utterances (2-lag).…”

“…Importantly, we included not only transitive but also dative target sentences, thereby allowing us to further examine the generalizability of the priming effects across different structures. PWAs were expected to demonstrate abstract priming effects in immediate priming, consistent with previous structural priming studies in production (Cho-Reyes et al, 2016;Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998a;Saffran & Martin, 1997) and comprehension (Lee, Hosokawa, et al, 2019). If lexically specific immediate priming is also preserved in aphasia, PWAs were predicted to show a significantly greater priming effect in the same-verb prime condition than in the differentverb prime condition (Yan et al, 2018).…”

“…Most previous studies in aphasia used a single-speaker experimental task where the participant would orally repeat or read a prime sentence prior to target production (Cho-Reyes et al, 2016;Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998a;Lee & Man, 2017;Saffran & Martin, 1997;Yan et al, 2018; but see Rossi, 2015;Verreyt et al, 2013, for nonproduction tasks). In a recent study, Lee, Hosokawa, Meehan, Martin, and Branigan (2019) found that PWAs could reuse their interlocutor's syntactic structures in their own production in a collaborative picture-matching game involving a blocked priming design. Interestingly, the priming effect was found when the PWAs orally repeated the prime sentences they heard (interlocutor's picture descriptions) during the picture matching (prime) block prior to the production block, but not when the primes were processed in listening only, that is in a comprehension-to-production task.…”

“…If PWAs showed priming in dialogue, our second question was to examine whether both lexical boost and abstract priming are preserved in PWAs, as found in Yan et al (2018), or whether they demonstrate only abstract priming, as found in Lee, Hosokawa, et al (2019). Thus, Experiment 1 examined the effects of same-versus different-verb primes on the production of transitive and dative alternations when the target sentence was elicited immediately after the prime, that is, immediate priming (0-lag).…”