Executive Attention Deficits In Persons With Aphasia: Conflict Resolution and Goal Maintenance

An understanding of the relationship between attentional deficits and language processing can provide insight into the language disorders in persons with aphasia (PWA) (McNeil, Odell & Tseng, 1991). Executive attention is a critical component of the attentional system (Cowan, 2005). Core features of executive attention are goal maintenance and conflict resolution (Engle, Kane & Tuholski, 1999). The relationships among executive attention, language processing and aphasia have not been studied extensively. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of goal maintenance and conflict resolution in word-level processing in PWA. Picture-Word Interference (PWI) tasks were used whereby written words were superimposed on pictures in congruent (word and picture match), neutral (word with polygon) or incongruent (word with non-matching picture) conditions. The incongruent condition was presented at 19% and 73% proportion. Ten PWA and 20 normal individuals (NI) categorized words into animal or non-animal. Button press response times (RT) and error were measured. Conflict resolution was measured by comparing RTs in the incongruent condition to those in both the neutral and congruent conditions. Goal maintenance was measured by comparing Errors on the incongruent condition between the two proportions. A mixed model examined RTs among conditions for the 19% incongruent proportion between groups. PWA showed significantly (p<.05) longer RTs for the incongruent and neutral conditions, but no significant group difference for the congruent conditions. The NI showed significantly more errors on the lower proportion, however, the PWA showed no significant difference between two proportions. Given that there was no significant group difference on the congruent condition, the significantly longer RTs for the PWA on the incongruent conditions is interpreted as evidence that PWA demonstrated impaired on conflict resolution. The finding that NI showed a significant proportion effect and the PWA did not is interpreted as evidence that the PWA demonstrated impaired goal maintenance. RT and error data indicate deficits of these components of executive attention in the PWA. Moderately high correlation coefficients for the PWA between RTs from the incongruent condition and measures of working memory and aphasia severity suggest a meaningful relationship between these attentional impairments and language processing impairments

Conflict Resolution and Goal Maintenance Components of Executive Attention are Impaired in Persons With Aphasia: Evidence from the Picture-Word Interference Task

The relationship between language processing and attention has been a topic of research in linguistics, psychology and speech-language pathology for a very long time. Following the hypothesis that attention (e.g., Kahneman, 1973) may be related to impaired language performance in aphasia (McNeil, 1982), researchers have increasingly investigated this hypothesis (McNeil, Odell, & Tseng, 1991; Murray, 1999; Robin & Rizzo, 1989; Tseng, McNeil, & Milenkovic, 1993)

Developing a standardized measure of short-term memory and syntactic complexity: results from subtests of the CRTT-R

Short-term memory (STM) effects have shown to be distinguishable from other working memory components supporting complex computations/central executive functions. To develop a measure capable of assessing the effects of STM and linguistic computations on sentence processing,  effects of syntactic complexity and padding were investigated with the Computerized Revised Token Test &ndash;Revised in individuals with aphasia and control participants.  Off-line measures revealed clear effects of both factors.  The expected interaction of complexity and padding  and overadditive effects for individuals with aphasia were not found. An effect of complexity on word errors in passive sentences for individuals was shown

Automatic activation, interference and facilitation effects in persons with aphasia and normal adult controls on experimental CRTT-R-Stroop tasks

The current study investigated the effects of several color word congruent and incongruent “Stroop” tasks, within the context of a reading comprehension test (CRTT-R-wf-Stroop), in persons with aphasia (PWA) (N=25) and normal adults (NA) (N=29). Reading times, percentage of correct responses and CRTT-R-wf scores were examined for the color words. Both groups demonstrated significant vigilance and interference effects on RT ratios reflecting costs in sustained attention, interference/suppression effects and attentional switching. Both groups showed a facilitation effect on the CRTT-R-wf score. Unlike the NA, the PWA showed no attentional effects for the number of correct response on the color adjectives