Pronominal and anaphoric reflexive deficits in aphasia.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Comprehension and production deficits of pronominal and anaphoric reflexive structures in people with aphasia.
IRAS ID
118334
Contact name
David Howard
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Research summary
Aphasia is an acquired language disorder affecting a person’s ability to understand and produce language. Many people with aphasia exhibit agrammatism, which is generally characterized as a reliance on single words, an inability to produce the grammatical elements of sentences, and problems understanding complex grammatical structures in language. The inability to use correct grammatical structures inhibits effective communication.
People with agrammatism have difficulties with pronominal structures (e.g. he, she, them) and anaphoric reflexive structures (e.g. himself, herself). These common grammatical structures derive their interpretation via referential dependencies in discourse. There has been limited investigation of the reasons for these difficulties in people with aphasia, their impact on communication, and their relationship with other features of agrammatism. There is a need to understand how these features are processed by people without language difficulties and the nature of the difficulties in people with aphasia when processing these features. Deeper investigation of these difficulties will help speech and language therapists develop more effective and appropriate assessments and treatments for this specific population.
This study will use experimental language tasks investigating the production and comprehension of pronominal and anaphoric reflexive structures in people with nonfluent aphasia and people with fluent aphasia, in order to better understand these deficits. The performance of 10 people with nonfluent aphasia, 10 people with fluent aphasia, and 10 matched healthy adults will be compared.
REC name
North East - Tyne & Wear South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NE/0178
Date of REC Opinion
3 Sep 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion