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26 Speech Pathology Australia
Behavioural (psycholinguistic) aspects. Brain and Language,
101, 103–150.
This study examined syntactic comprehension in a large
group of patients with aphasia secondary to left hemisphere
stroke. The authors sought to investigate two main views of
why aphasic individuals have difficulties with syntactic compre­
hension. The first view suggests that these impairments result
from specific deficits in parsing, while the second view
maintains that a reduction in cognitive resources disrupts
comprehension.
Forty-two participants with aphasia and 25 healthy adults
completed five tests of syntactic processing. Cognitive load –
the number of mental operations required to successfully
complete a task – increased across the various tests. The
behavioural data was then subject to individual and group
data analysis.
As expected, general proficiency in the tasks was reduced
for the patients with aphasia compared to the healthy adults.
There was considerable variability in the performance of the
aphasic patients, and, for the most part, these individuals did
not show a stable pattern of errors for any task. However,
there was a trend for the aphasic group to make more errors
in syntactic processing as the cognitive load increased. This
finding supports the view that syntactic comprehension is
impaired because there is a reduction in cognitive resources
available to process multiple mental operations.
two parent groups would show a similar profile of communi­
cation abilities and disabilities.
The study recruited three parent groups: 30 parents of
children with autism, 30 parents of children with SLI, and 30
parents of typically developing children. The participants
were administered a range of linguistic, memory and literacy
tasks, as well as a checklist that examined pragmatic language
ability.
Both the autism and SLI parent groups were found to have
communicative deficits – a result that once again highlights
the genetic component of both disorders. However, the two
groups displayed a different pattern of communicative
abilities and disabilities. The parents of children with SLI
performed poorly on the linguistic, memory and literacy
tasks, but showed no difficulties with pragmatic language. The
reverse was true for the autism parent group: they had good
performance on the linguistic, memory and literacy tasks, but
experienced difficulties with some aspects of pragmatic
language. The “double dissociation” between linguistic per­
formance and social communication ability suggests that SLI
and autism may result from a different underlying genetic
cause.
Syntactic processing in aphasia
Caplan, D., Waters, G., DeDe, G., Michaud, J., & Reddy, A.
(2007). A study of syntactic processing in aphasia I:
Speech Pathology Australia
National Employment Register
is now available on the website
This member-only service assists speech pathologists to find employment.
Members seeking employment can choose to have their contact details uploaded
onto the website or alternatively view the list of vacant positions on the ‘Job Board’.
Employers can choose to advertise vacant speech pathology positions on the ‘Job
Board’ which members can then access and apply for.
This free of charge service aims to assist members seeking employment.
We would also recommend you seek other sources when looking for employment.
Forms for completion can be downloaded from the website if you wish to use this
service at any time in the future.
For more information see the Association’s website or contact National Office.