17.2841, Review: Neurolinguistics: Edwards (2005)

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Subject: 17.2841, Review: Neurolinguistics: Edwards (2005)

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1)
Date: 30-Sep-2006
From: Michael Dean < Michael.Dean at homerton.nhs.uk >
Subject: Fluent Aphasia 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:51:20
From: Michael Dean < Michael.Dean at homerton.nhs.uk >
Subject: Fluent Aphasia 
 

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-3582.html 

AUTHOR: Susan Edwards 
TITLE: Fluent Aphasia 
SERIES: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 107 
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2005 

Michael P. Dean, Regional Neurological Rehabilitation Unit, Homerton University
Hospital NHS Trust, London, UK

Susan Edwards aims to cast light on the complex patterns of language impairment
that can result from brain injury, particularly on the relationships between
damage to the grammar and the lexicon and between fluent and non-fluent forms of
aphasia.  She reviews empirical studies, emphasising the value of analyses of
continuous speech data, with new examples, alongside tests that tap or elicit
specific aspects of language processing.  A variety of difficulties with
morphology, verbs and sentences are seen in fluent aphasia that cannot be
attributed to lexical impairment, and variation is seen between individuals
within the traditional diagnostic categories.

The first chapter reviews attempts, dating back to the 19th Century, to
categorise various fluent aphasias.  These include the influential neoclassical
or Boston system with diagnostic categories of Wernicke's, conduction,
transcortical sensory and anomic fluent aphasia to contrast with non-fluent
categories.  The features of language with which these subgroups are
characterised, and the terminology, have not been consistently used by different
authors and over time.  There is also an imperfect relationship between
particular aphasia syndromes and sites of anatomical lesion.

Chapter 2 is entitled 'Descriptions of fluent aphasia' and is dense with ideas
and evidence.  It introduces Levelt's (1989) model of sentence processing, which
contains a number of interacting components responsible for processing different
aspects of language.  This model has 'minimal overlap' with the framework
Edwards will use, which she describes as a dual language system of lexical and
grammatical domains.  Both domains are impaired in fluent aphasia.  Edwards next
describes evidence that there is preservation of rate of speech and prosody in
fluent aphasia.  We then return to the dual system and deficits to the lexical
domain.  Phonological errors occur in fluent aphasia, as do whole word
substitutions, often the substitution of a semantically related word.  The
latter can be attributed to a disruption of feature selection with the equal, or
superior, activation of words neighbouring the target.  In connected speech it
is often difficult to identify which word is incorrectly produced, as the
speaker's target is not known.  Edwards gives examples, noting that grammatical
category but not always argument structure tends to be preserved across
substitutions.  Substitutions of closed class words also occur, which can less
readily be attributed to problems with semantic features.

Next considered is a study by Butterworth and Howard (1989).  They propose a
non-linguistic control system to account for the 'constructional errors' that
occur in fluent aphasia.  They argue that the same kinds of errors occur in
fluent aphasia as in unimpaired subjects but at a higher rate, due to reduced
monitoring, and that these errors have a lexical basis.  The most common form of
error occurring in this study was of inflection.  Edwards argues that these and
another type of error (pronouns illegally in head positions of relative clauses)
are better explained by a grammatical deficit.  She next reviews further
evidence for the occurrence of grammatical errors, including incorrect use of
verb arguments.

The third chapter tackles assessment.  It begins by highlighting the importance
of differential diagnosis of aphasia and disorders of language from aetiologies
such as dementia.  Edwards describes sensory and physical problems that may
accompany aphasia resulting from a stroke (but not the possibility of
concomitant cognitive deficits, or changes in non-verbal behaviour that are not
diagnostic of dementia).

A number of aphasia assessment batteries that result in the examinee being
assigned to one of the (neo-) classical aphasia syndromes are described.  These
syndromes are therefore based on correlations between performance on subtests,
and the features contributing to fluent vs. non-fluent distinctions differ
between tests.  Example Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) profiles
are provided for Edwards's case MG, assessed over a number of years.  The
Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia (PALPA) do not
classify subjects according to syndrome, but rather reveal patterns of preserved
and impaired skill within a cognitive neuropsychological model of single word
processing.  The battery also contains a subtest of sentence comprehension and
MG's scores are given for this.  The Sentence Processing Resource Pack contains
a comprehension test, targeting reversible sentences, and an 'event processing'
test, where depicted actions are matched on the basis of shared features. 
Edwards argues that the latter might be performed through verb retrieval rather
than non-verbal event processing.  (The difference between fluent and other
types of aphasia on these assessments is not discussed.)

Next introduced is the Verb and Sentence Test (VAST). Edwards has worked on the
English version of this.  It contains comprehension tests for single words and
sentences, semantic anomaly judgements, sentence anagrams, and has production
tasks.  Data are given for a group of people with fluent aphasia (Wernicke's and
anomic).  Both subgroups make reversal errors in the sentence comprehension task
(selecting distractor items that depict the same main event with swapped
thematic roles for participants) rather than lexical errors.  In production
tasks, infinitive forms of verbs in sentences are produced more readily than
finite forms.  These results reinforce the view that grammatical processing is
impaired in fluent aphasia.

Chapter 4 is on connected speech.  The pros and cons of connected speech samples
versus elicited experimental data are discussed.  Some studies report
differences and others find converging evidence from different task contexts. 
Edwards provides a detailed analysis of four sentences elicited from one man in
a picture description task, discussed in terms of lexical errors and with
reference to generative grammar.  Convergence with patterns observed in test
data from the VAST is seen.  Inflectional errors also occur and their patterning
is consistent with the split INFL hypothesis where Tense and Agreement separate.
 Another explanation considered is that 'checking' of the aspectual ?ing
inflection works for lexical but not auxiliary verbs, with resultant
ungrammatical sentences being produced rather than 'crashing'.

The Northwestern and Reading systems for coding samples of spontaneous speech
are introduced, compared and contrasted, with examples.  People with fluent
aphasia produce reduced levels of complex structures, as well as having problems
with tense marking and with lexical retrieval.

Linguistic accounts of non-fluent aphasia are described in Chapter 5.  Using
Government and Binding Theory, two hypotheses have been advanced.  'Trace
deletion' is an account for features of agrammatic comprehension, specifically
difficulties understanding reversible sentences and passives.  Reviewing the
literature, not all non-fluent aphasics show the patterns of performance to
support this hypothesis, while some people with fluent aphasia do.  Priming
studies are described which purport to reveal the presence or absence of the
trace of moved sentence components, with mixed results.  The 'tree pruning'
hypothesis of agrammatic production stands better stead.

Chapter 6 considers comprehension and processing problems in fluent aphasia. 
Comprehension difficulties are often seen in the context of good social
interaction skills, therefore an aphasic person's behaviour may be interpreted
as unwillingness to listen or cooperate.  With reduced insight, they may
attribute breakdown in communication to the behaviour of their communication
partners.  Edwards gives examples of such maladaptive beliefs developing.  There
is a further review of Wernicke's account of language comprehension.  The idea
that comprehension difficulties may result from impairment to working memory,
and thereby hold a relation with short-term memory difficulties, is next
considered.  Edwards does acknowledge that the difference between
language-dedicated processes and grammatical operations is not clear; working
memory is regarded here as a general rather than language-specific process.  She
then further considers the comprehension of sentences with canonical and
non-canonical word order and the processing of thematic roles.  Again,
similarities between people with fluent and non-fluent aphasias are seen.

Data collected by Edwards and Bastiaanse show that most of their fluent aphasic
subjects have more difficulty comprehending sentences than single verbs (which
points to grammatical and not just lexical impairment) and again similar
performance on different sentence types is seen in fluent and non-fluent
aphasia.  Difficulties with thematic role assignment are again considered, in
comprehending these sentence types and in performing a semantic anomaly
judgement task.

Chapter 7 examines more closely the language skills of MG, a man who has had
fluent aphasia for over 7 years.  He has consistently been classified with
Wernicke's aphasia by the BDAE, although there is variability in his scores over
time.  He shows semantic and phonemic substitutions and reduced semantic
specificity in tests that elicit nouns and verbs and in continuous speech.  The
nature of an underlying semantic impairment is considered. Other features of
MG's performance point to grammatical problems: in substituting words he tends
to maintain word class (open vs. closed) and he has difficulty repeating
inflected words (compared to words with irregular past tense and plural forms).
 In his spontaneous speech he has a reduced level of embedded sentences and
subordinate clauses. 

Edwards ends her book in Chapter 8 by addressing the future of aphasia research.
 She suggests that functional brain imaging studies must be mindful of the
difficulties in establishing homogeneous groups of subjects, and that a limited
range of language tasks can be investigated by such measures.  Aphasia therapy
is another developing area, in terms of identifying theoretical bases for what
works for whom.  The final section is a useful summary of the data reviewed in
earlier chapters.

EVALUATION

Edwards reviews the literature and presents new data that illustrate an
important point.  Fluent forms of aphasia cannot be identified with lexical
impairment alone; there is evidence for concurrent difficulties with a variety
of aspects of grammatical processing.  Indeed, some of these difficulties are
not distinct from those exhibited by people with non-fluent forms of aphasia. 
Moreover, within groups of people with fluent aphasia, there is much variability
in performance on language tasks; the diagnostic category 'fluent aphasia' as
currently used is therefore of limited value in further characterising the
individuals it subsumes.

Reaching this conclusion requires the exploration of complex data.  I enjoyed
working through the many examples.  The volume would benefit from a more clearly
signposted organisation.  Only one level of section heading is used throughout,
and headings do not always make explicit the relationship between the content
that follows and the developing themes.  For example, Chapter 6 contains
consecutive sections headed: 'Understanding words and sentences', 'Comprehension
difficulties with sentences', 'Comprehension on single verbs and sentences' and
'Comprehending sentences'.

There were a couple of points where I was left with questions.  The first
concerns the treatment of some test scores.  Tables 6.1 and 6.2 contain results
from 9 people with fluent aphasia on two tests.  Edwards reports that one person
(CG) fell within the normal range for verb comprehension.  It is worth noting
that 2 others do too (MG and MS).  In the analysis of sentence comprehension
scores, chance is taken as 45-55% correct even though there are 4 response
alternatives. This is because few errors were made to the lexical distractors
and so these distractors are discounted.  However, scoring in this way means
that two subjects (JoH and IM) score below the chance range for non-canonical
sentences?a result that requires some explanation.  Further, MF is described as
approaching above chance for canonical sentences, yet her score is 50% for these
items.  When describing the Verb and Sentence Test, Edwards states that all
control subjects obtained at least 98% correct on all subtests (p.85), yet in
Table 3.5 the control range for the verb comprehension test is given as 38-40
out of 40.  Thirty-eight out of 40 is 95% correct.  These apparent errors
detract from the arguments which the figures are used to support.

The second point concerns the comparison of scores, often expressed as
percentage correct, between different tasks.  For example, Edwards reports that
subject MG scores 95% correct in comprehending verbs by selecting action
pictures from an array of 4 items, which contrasts with a 'poor score' of 55%
correct in naming action pictures, thus demonstrating that his comprehension of
verbs is considerably better than his ability to produce them in test conditions
(p.187).  The naming test is, however, simply more difficult than the
comprehension test as it requires semantic specification of the target to the
exclusion of all other possibilities, while selection from an array of 4
requires semantic specification only to the exclusion of those 4 items.  

Detailed exploration of the exact nature of MG's lexical difficulties is not
necessary to Edwards's main thesis; it is the findings of grammatical impairment
and focus on connected speech that are important. However, as she presents
specific test scores and discusses them at some length, I did feel that this
discussion could have made greater reference to accounts of single word
processing.  For example, an effect of imageability on MG's naming is noted
(p.189) but this is not considered as an explanation for the difference seen in
naming objects/nouns (high imageability) versus verbs (low imageability) without
recourse to their grammatical category.  This has been a topic of recent debate
(e.g. Berndt, Haendiges, Burton & Mitchum, 2002; Bird, Howard & Franklin, 2000).
 On p.210, Edwards appears to equate the presence of semantic paraphasia with
semantic impairment and phonological paraphasia with phonological impairment. 
In fact, damage to phonological output lexical representations, or impaired
access to them, may produce semantic errors, as related representations that are
intact or accessible receive activation (see Nickels, 2004).  

I think this book will be of value to those linguists who are concerned to
consider how empirical data (here neurolinguistic and neuropsychological) may
constrain purely formal accounts of language.  And for the clinician who
believes the fluent vs. non-fluent distinction in aphasia is equivalent to
lexical vs. grammatical impairment, or paragrammatism vs. agrammatism for that
matter, there is an important message.

REFERENCES

Berndt, R.S., Haendiges, A.N., Burton, M.W., & Mitchum, C.C. (2002). 
Grammatical class and imageability in aphasic word production: Their effects are
independent. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 15, 353?371.

Bird, H., Howard, D., Franklin, S. (2000). Why is a verb like an inanimate
object? Grammatical category and semantic category deficits. Brain & Language,
72, 246-309.

Butterworth, B. & Howard, D. (1989). Paragrammatism.  Cognition, 26, 1-37.

Nickels, L.A. (2004). How much semantics is enough? The relationship between
comprehension and production in aphasia. In Murdoch, B.E., Goozee, J., Whelan,
B.-M. & Docking, K. (Eds). Proceedings of the 26th World Congress of the
International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Michael Dean Ph.D. is a Speech and Language Therapist working with brain injured
adults, in a post-acute neurological rehabilitation unit within the National
Health Service.  The unit is located in a culturally and linguistically diverse
part of London.  He has research interests in aphasia and cognitive neuropsychology.





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