Comprehension of Active and Passive Sentences in Korean Aphasics: Evidence for Processing Deficit Hypothesis

Choi, So-Young

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2012;17(2): 322-337.

So-Young Choi^`

최소영(So-Young Choi)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
Several models of comprehension deficits in agrammatic aphasia rely on structural impairments in syntactic representations. However, recent studies have found that there are differences in aphasics’ sentence-processing routines depending on the reason for the processing deficit. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present reasons for using a particular processing approach based on the language-specific characteristics of Koreans.
Methods
In order to compare individuals’ sentence-comprehension abilities, this study measured the accuracy and reaction times (RT) of 16 aphasic patients (AP) and 16 normal controls (NC) during a sentence-picture matching task. In comparison with the “morphological passive” where a suffix is used, the “semantic passive” consists of sentences derived solely from a verb that has passive meaning properties (ex: “danghada” means “undergo something”).
Results
Both groups showed higher error rates and longer RT in the passive condition irrespective of sentence type (morphological/semantic). These results indicate that a high aptitudeis needed in order to understand passive expressions and the frequency of usage was considered one of the possible factors affecting these results.
Discussion & Conclusion
The results of this study suggest that the aphasic impairment of sentence comprehension can be explained by aprocessing deficit rather than agrammar-oriented hypothesis.