Comprehension of Complex Structures by Persian-speaking Aphasics: The Role of Cognitive Load

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Article Type:
Research/Original Article (دارای رتبه معتبر)
Abstract:
Introduction

So far, many studies have investigated the extent and nature of the grammatical deficit in aphasia. However, to the best of our knowledge, this research is the first in the Persian language to inspect the comprehension of patients with Broca’s aphasia on diverse syntactically complex structures.

Materials and Methods

To scrutinize the impact of task on aphasics’ performance, four age-, education- and gender-matched Persian-speaking patients with Broca’s aphasia were compared with their healthy matched controls regarding the two different tasks of grammatical judgment and figurine act-out task. The structures used to examine the subjects’ performance included agentive passive, subject cleft, object cleft, object relative clause, and object experiencer psychological verbs.

Results

Our results which supported the trade-off hypothesis, showed that our subjects generally performed better in grammatical judgment task than in figurine act-out task (P≤0.05). Particularly in the second task, as our inner task comparison, the patients’ problems were more severe in object cleft, object experiencer, and object relative clauses: all structures whose interpretations need more cognitive load.

Conclusion

Our findings put more weight on the interactive or constraint-based model of language processing.

Language:
English
Published:
Journal of Modern Rehabilitation, Volume:15 Issue: 4, Autumn 2021
Pages:
227 to 238
https://www.magiran.com/p2332319