Search

Social hierarchical information impacts language comprehension. Nevertheless, the specific process underlying the integration of linguistic and extralinguistic sources of social hierarchical information has not been identified. For example, the Chinese social hierarchical verb 赡养, /shan4yang3/, ‘support: provide for the needs and comfort of one’s elders’, only allows its Agent to have a lower social status than the Patient. Using eye-tracking, we examined the precise time course of the integration of these semantic selectional restrictions of Chinese social hierarchical verbs and extralinguistic social hierarchical information during natural reading. A 2 (Verb Type: hierarchical vs. non-hierarchical) × 2 (Social Hierarchy Sequence: match vs. mismatch) design was constructed to investigate the effect of the interaction on early and late eye-tracking measures. Thirty-two participants (15 males; age range: 18–24 years) read sentences and judged the plausibility of each sentence. The results showed that violations of semantic selectional restrictions of Chinese social hierarchical verbs induced shorter first fixation duration but longer regression path duration and longer total reading time on sentence-final nouns (NP2). These differences were absent under non-hierarchical conditions. The results suggest that a mismatch between linguistic and extralinguistic social hierarchical information is immediately detected and processed.

Background: Nonverbal cognitive training for aphasia has gained popularity. Prior research has found that cognitive status correlates with language function. Objective: To determine whether nonverbal computer-assisted executive control training (CAET) to improve cognitive status affects language performance in patients with aphasia (PWA) and executive dysfunction. Design: A single blind randomized trial. Setting: Department of Rehabilitation, Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University. Participants: A total of 68 individuals were randomized, underwent treatment and were included in the analysis (CAET group, n = 33; control group, n = 35). Interventions: The experimental group was treated with 4 weeks of traditional speech and language therapy (SLT) combined with CAET. The control group underwent SLT only. Main Outcome Measures: Western Aphasia Battery [WAB]) with executive dysfunction (as assessed by the verbal fluency test [VFT], the Proverbs Test, the Tower of London Test [TLT], the Stroop Color and Word Test [SCWT], and the Trail Making Test [TMT]). Results: Differences between pre- and posttreatment language outcomes except oral naming (group x time, p = .236) were significantly greater in the experimental group compared with the control group: spontaneous speech (group x time, p = .026), auditory comprehension (group x time, p < .001), speech repetition (group x time, p = .001), and aphasia quotient (AQ; group x time, p < .001). A similar effect was observed for cognitive function such as Trial Making Test (TMT)-A (group x time, p = .006), TMT-B (group x time, p = .005), and verbal fluency test (VFT-V; group x time, p = .018). Conclusion: The study demonstrates that CAET combined with SLT can yield favorable language outcomes for PWA, especially improvements in auditory comprehension and AQ. CAET combined with SLT generates benefits in both cognitive function and language performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]