Agrammatic Broca's aphasia is not associated with a single pattern of comprehension performance. 2001

A Caramazza, and E Capitani, and A Rey, and R S Berndt
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. caram@wjh.harvard.edu

One influential hypothesis posits that the brain regions implicated in Broca's aphasia are responsible for specific syntactic operations that are necessary for the comprehension and production of sentences (Grodzinsky, 1986, 1990, in press). The empirical basis of this hypothesis is the claim that Broca's aphasics have no difficulty understanding sentences in the active voice (and other "canonical" sentence types, such as subject relatives and clefts with negative predicates), but perform at chance level with passive voice constructions (and other "noncanonical" sentences such as object-gap relatives and object clefts). In the face of well-established results indicating that Broca's aphasics can exhibit several different performance patterns on these sentence types, Grodzinsky, PiƱango, Zurif, and Drai (1999) argued that these conflicting results do not challenge the theory when the data are analyzed appropriately. They carried out a creative statistical analysis of the comprehension performance of published cases of Broca's aphasia and concluded that all of these cases are in agreement with the predicted pattern: chance on passives and 100% correct on actives. Here we show that the statistical reasoning adopted by Grodzinsky et al. (1999) is flawed. We also show that the comprehension performance of a substantial number of the Broca's aphasics in their own sample does not conform to the pattern required. Rather, contrary to these authors' claim, Broca's aphasia is not associated with a consistent pattern of sentence comprehension performance, but allows for a number of distinct patterns in different patients.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D009483 Neuropsychological Tests Tests designed to assess neurological function associated with certain behaviors. They are used in diagnosing brain dysfunction or damage and central nervous system disorders or injury. Aphasia Tests,Cognitive Test,Cognitive Testing,Cognitive Tests,Memory for Designs Test,Neuropsychological Testing,AX-CPT,Behavioral Assessment of Dysexecutive Syndrome,CANTAB,Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery,Clock Test,Cognitive Function Scanner,Continuous Performance Task,Controlled Oral Word Association Test,Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System,Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment,Hooper Visual Organization Test,NEPSY,Neuropsychologic Tests,Neuropsychological Test,Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test,Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status,Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure,Symbol Digit Modalities Test,Test of Everyday Attention,Test, Neuropsychological,Tests, Neuropsychological,Tower of London Test,Neuropsychologic Test,Test, Cognitive,Testing, Cognitive,Testing, Neuropsychological,Tests, Cognitive
D011582 Psychological Theory Principles applied to the analysis and explanation of psychological or behavioral phenomena. Social Cognitive Theory,Psychologic Theory,Psychological Theories,Theories, Psychological,Theory, Psychological,Cognitive Theories, Social,Cognitive Theory, Social,Psychologic Theories,Social Cognitive Theories,Theories, Psychologic,Theories, Social Cognitive,Theory, Psychologic,Theory, Social Cognitive
D001921 Brain The part of CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM that is contained within the skull (CRANIUM). Arising from the NEURAL TUBE, the embryonic brain is comprised of three major parts including PROSENCEPHALON (the forebrain); MESENCEPHALON (the midbrain); and RHOMBENCEPHALON (the hindbrain). The developed brain consists of CEREBRUM; CEREBELLUM; and other structures in the BRAIN STEM. Encephalon
D003072 Cognition Disorders Disorders characterized by disturbances in mental processes related to learning, thinking, reasoning, and judgment. Overinclusion,Disorder, Cognition,Disorders, Cognition
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D001039 Aphasia, Broca An aphasia characterized by impairment of expressive LANGUAGE (speech, writing, signs) and relative preservation of receptive language abilities (i.e., comprehension). This condition is caused by lesions of the motor association cortex in the FRONTAL LOBE (BROCA AREA and adjacent cortical and white matter regions). Agrammatism,Aphasia, Motor,Aphasia, Nonfluent,Broca Aphasia,Dysphasia, Broca,Agrammatic Broca Aphasia,Agrammatic Broca's Aphasia,Aphasia, Anterior,Aphasia, Ataxic,Aphasia, Expressive,Aphasia, Frontocortical,Dysphasia, Broca's,Verbal Aphasia Syndrome,Agrammatic Broca Aphasias,Agrammatic Broca's Aphasias,Agrammatic Brocas Aphasia,Anterior Aphasia,Anterior Aphasias,Aphasia Syndrome, Verbal,Aphasia Syndromes, Verbal,Aphasia, Agrammatic Broca,Aphasia, Agrammatic Broca's,Aphasias, Agrammatic Broca,Aphasias, Agrammatic Broca's,Aphasias, Anterior,Aphasias, Ataxic,Aphasias, Broca,Aphasias, Frontocortical,Ataxic Aphasia,Ataxic Aphasias,Broca Aphasia, Agrammatic,Broca Aphasias,Broca Aphasias, Agrammatic,Broca Dysphasia,Broca's Aphasia, Agrammatic,Broca's Aphasias, Agrammatic,Broca's Dysphasia,Dysphasia, Brocas,Expressive Aphasia,Frontocortical Aphasia,Frontocortical Aphasias,Motor Aphasia,Nonfluent Aphasia,Syndrome, Verbal Aphasia,Syndromes, Verbal Aphasia,Verbal Aphasia Syndromes
D012660 Semantics The relationships between symbols and their meanings. Semantic
D013067 Speech Perception The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes). Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech

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