Dataset Information

Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory.

ABSTRACT: PURPOSE:The existing body of work regarding discourse coherence in aphasia has provided mixed results, leaving the question of coherence being impaired or intact as a result of brain injury unanswered. In this study, discourse coherence in non-brain-damaged (NBD) speakers and speakers with anomic aphasia was investigated quantitatively and qualitatively. METHOD:Fifteen native speakers of Cantonese with anomic aphasia and 15 NBD participants produced 60 language samples. Elicitation tasks included story-telling induced by a picture series and a procedural description. The samples were annotated for discourse structure in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) in order to analyse a number of structural parameters. After that 20?naïve listeners rated coherence of each sample. RESULT:Disordered discourse was rated as significantly less coherent. The NBD group demonstrated a higher production fluency than the participants with aphasia and used a richer set of semantic relations to create discourse, particularly in the description of settings, expression of causality, and extent of elaboration. People with aphasia also tended to omit essential information content. CONCLUSION:Reduced essential information content, lower degree of elaboration, and a larger amount of structural disruptions may have contributed to the reduced overall discourse coherence in speakers with anomic aphasia.

SUBMITTER: Kong AP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5601010 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory.

Kong Anthony Pak-Hin AP Linnik Anastasia A Law Sam-Po SP Shum Waisa Wai-Man WW

International journal of speech-language pathology 20170317 4

<h4>Purpose</h4>The existing body of work regarding discourse coherence in aphasia has provided mixed results, leaving the question of coherence being impaired or intact as a result of brain injury unanswered. In this study, discourse coherence in non-brain-damaged (NBD) speakers and speakers with anomic aphasia was investigated quantitatively and qualitatively.<h4>Method</h4>Fifteen native speakers of Cantonese with anomic aphasia and 15 NBD participants produced 60 language samples. Elicitatio ...[more]

PMID: 28306394

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Project description:Unusual language use is a core feature of psychosis, but the nature and significance of this are not understood. In particular, thought disorder in schizophrenia (SZ) is characterized by markedly bizarre speech, but the cognitive components that contribute to this and the brain correlates of these components are unknown. A number of studies have demonstrated language abnormalities in single word processing, but few have examined speech in SZ at the discourse level. This has been at least partly due to the difficulty in quantifying content of discourse. Recently, methods in computational linguistics have been found to be useful for detecting differences in semantic coherence during discourse between different clinical groups. We build on this work by demonstrating how these methods can be combined with funtional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to tease apart factors that underlie free discourse and its deviations, and how they relate to brain activity. Eleven volunteers with SZ and eleven controls participated in an interview during which they were asked to talk as much as they could about 'religious belief'. These same participants underwent fMRI during a word monitoring task, during which modality of monitoring was manipulated by varying the congruence of auditory and visual stimuli. Semantic coherence scores, measured from free discourse, were examined for their relationship to brain activations during fMRI. In healthy controls, regions associated with executive function were related to coherence. In persons with SZ, coherence was mainly related to auditory and visual regions, depending on the modality of monitoring, but superior/middle temporal cortex related to coherence regardless of task. These findings are consistent with existing evidence for a role of superior temporal cortex in thought disorder, and demonstrate that computational measures of semantic content capture objective measures of coherence in speech that can be usefully related to underlying neurophysiological processes.

Dataset Information

Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory.

Publications

Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory.

Similar Datasets

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