The Cognitive Basis for Sentence Planning Deficits in Discourse Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Recent analyses of the language produced by individuals with traumatic brain injury place increasing emphasis on within-sentence patterns as well as those between sentences. Discussions of production deficits within sentences following TBI have questioned whether these problems involve the implementation of well-formed sentence frames or whether they represent a more fundamental linguistic disturbance in computing sentence structure. This study used online methods to investigate whether problems with sentence planning for discourse after TBI are associated with impaired language functioning or other cognitive processes. The results demonstrated that sentence planning deficits were associated with short-term memory span and attentional processing

A Short-term Memory Treatment Appraoch to the Repetition Deficit in Conduction Aphasia

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Once is not Enough: Thoughts on Replication in Functional Analysis Research in Aphasia

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Difficulty linking macro- and microlinguistic processes for narrative production following TBI

Substantial evidence has accumulated over the past 35 years suggesting deficient intersentential cohesion in the narrative discourse of many individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Since Mentis and Prutting (1987) reported significantly fewer cohesive ties in the narratives of brain-injured versus normal speakers, a number of reports have replicated and expanded upon these findings (e.g., Coelho, Liles, & Duffy, 1995; Davis & Coelho, 2004; Hartley & Jensen, 1991; Liles, Coelho, Duffy, & Zalagans, 1989; Marini et al., 2011). At the same time, several studies have not found evidence of deficient intersentential cohesion in these adults (Coelho, 2002; Glosser & Deser, 1991; Hough & Barrow, 2003). It can be said then that the narratives produced by at least some speakers with TBI tend to show less adequate intersentential cohesion than that observed in normal speakers (Cannizzaro & Coelho, 2012; Coelho, 2007). Variable microlinguistic impairment has also been observed in narrative discourse following TBI. Sentences produced by speakers with TBI have been reported to include more lexical and syntactic errors, increased mazes, more frequent pausing, and greater reductions in content when compared to normal speakers (Ellis & Peach, 2009; Glosser & Deser, 1991; Hartley & Jensen, 1991; Peach, 2013; Peach & Schaude, 1986; Stout, Yorkston, & Pimenthal, 2000). Such narratives also tend to be less efficient (i.e., lengthier and containing more words per maze) (Erlich, 1988; Hartley & Jensen, 1991; Stout et al., 2000) and less complex (Coelho, Grela, Corso, Gamble, & Feinn, 2005; Peach, Shapiro, Rubin, & Schaude, 1990) than those produced by normal speakers. Nonetheless, other studies have not found few, if any, such microlinguistic disturbances in speakers with TBI (Hough & Barrow, 2003; Marini et al., 2011). It has been suggested that brain injury produces a dissociation between the macrolinguistic and microlinguistic components of narrative production (Glosser & Deser, 1991; Hough & Barrow, 2003) and thus, that the processing of discourse and the processing of sentences are based on different cognitive devices (Consentino, Adornetti, & Ferretti, 2013). Alternatively, it might be that the macrolinguistic structure of narratives produced by brain injured speakers is affected by their microlinguistic impairments (see, e.g., Boyle, 2011; Christiansen, 1995). Given the variable patterns that have been observed in the narratives of speakers with TBI, it may be that narrative production following TBI is the result of an effortful interaction between macrolinguistic and microlinguistic processes rather than dissociation of separate cognitive mechanisms. However, few studies exist that attempt to establish the connections between these different levels of language. As a result, there is little information available to describe how specific changes at either level may influence the processing of narrative discourse. Armstrong (2000) has suggested that cohesion analysis is one of the few methods which directly attempts to link the macro- and microlinguistic aspects of discourse. This study therefore investigated the relationship between intersentential cohesion and microlinguistic impairments in discourse produced by speakers with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Subcortical aphasia: A report of three cases

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Attention In Aphasia As Revealed by Event-Related Potentials: A Preliminary Investigation

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A Topographic Event-Related Potential Analysis of the Attention Deficit for Auditory Processing in Aphasia

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Verb preference effects in the sentence comprehension of fluent aphasic individuals

This investigation examined sentence processing of fluent aphasic subjects with varying severity levels. Subjects performed a cross-modal lexical decision task for transitive and intransitive verbs in preferred and non-preferred frameworks. Verb processing was measured by reaction times during on-line sentence comprehension. Reaction times to the cross-modal lexical decision (CMLD) task indicated that the subjects with aphasia were insensitive to preference information associated with the processing of verbs in sentences. Severity level did not alter the pattern observed regarding verb type and preferences

Seagrass can mitigate negative ocean acidification effects on calcifying algae

The ultimate effect that ocean acidification (OA) and warming will have on the physiology of calcifying algae is still largely uncertain. Responses depend on the complex interactions between seawater chemistry, global/local stressors and species-specific physiologies. There is a significant gap regarding the effect that metabolic interactions between coexisting species may have on local seawater chemistry and the concurrent effect of OA. Here, we manipulated CO2 and temperature to evaluate the physiological responses of two common photoautotrophs from shallow tropical marine coastal ecosystems in Brazil: the calcifying alga Halimeda cuneata, and the seagrass Halodule wrightii. We tested whether or not seagrass presence can influence the calcification rate of a widespread and abundant species of Halimeda under OA and warming. Our results demonstrate that under elevated CO2, the high photosynthetic rates of H. wrightii contribute to raise H. cuneata calcification more than two-fold and thus we suggest that H. cuneata populations coexisting with H. wrightii may have a higher resilience to OA conditions. This conclusion supports the more general hypothesis that, in coastal and shallow reef environments, the metabolic interactions between calcifying and non-calcifying organisms are instrumental in providing refuge against OA effects and increasing the resilience of the more OA-susceptible species.E.B. would like to thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoas de Nível Superior (CAPES) for Masters funding. Funding for this project came from the Synergism grant (CNPq 407365/2013-3). We extend our thanks to the Brazil-based Projeto Coral Vivo and its sponsor PetroBras Ambiental for providing the Marine Mesocosm structure and experimental assistance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio