Deficits of semantic control produce absent or reverse frequency effects in comprehension: evidence from neuropsychology and dual task methodology.

Neuropsychologia
Azizah AlmaghyuliElizabeth Jefferies

Abstract

Patients with multimodal semantic impairment following stroke (referred to here as 'semantic aphasia' or SA) fail to show the standard effects of frequency in comprehension tasks. Instead, they show absent or even reverse frequency effects: i.e., better understanding of less common words. In addition, SA is associated with poor regulatory control of semantic processing and executive deficits. We used a synonym judgement task to investigate the possibility that the normal processing advantage for high frequency (HF) words fails to emerge in these patients because HF items place greater demands on executive control. In the first part of this study, SA patients showed better performance on more imageable as opposed to abstract items, but minimal or reverse frequency effects in the same task, and these negative effects of word frequency on comprehension were related to the degree of executive impairment. Ratings from healthy subjects indicated that it was easier to establish potential semantic associations between probe and distracter words for HF trials, suggesting that reverse frequency effects might reflect a failure to suppress spurious associations between HF probes and distracters. In a subsequent experiment, the aphasic pati...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 11, 2013·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Daniel Mirman, Allison E Britt
Oct 12, 2015·Brain : a Journal of Neurology·Hannah E ThompsonElizabeth Jefferies
Dec 25, 2012·Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior·Elizabeth Jefferies
Oct 25, 2016·Brain and Cognition·Giovanna MolloElizabeth Jefferies
Aug 5, 2017·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Upasana NathanielElizabeth Jefferies
Sep 4, 2019·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Maria MontefineseElizabeth Jefferies
Dec 29, 2020·Neuropsychology, Development, and Cognition. Section B, Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition·Megan S BarkerGail A Robinson

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