Word-category violations in patients with Broca's aphasia: An ERP study

Wassenaar, M., & Hagoort, P. (2005). Word-category violations in patients with Broca's aphasia: An ERP study. Brain and Language, 92, 117-137. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2004.05.011.
An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line syntactic processing in patients with Broca’s aphasia. Subjects were visually presented with sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of word-category. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N=11), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N=9), and healthy aged-matched controls (N=15). Both control groups appeared sensitive to the violations of word-category as shown by clear P600/SPS effects. The Broca patients displayed only a very reduced and delayed P600/SPS effect. The results are discussed in the context of a lexicalist parsing model. It is concluded that Broca patients are hindered to detect on-line violations of word-category, if word class information is incomplete or delayed available.
Publication type
Journal article
Publication date
2005

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