Effects of Linguistic and Extralinguistic Context on Semantic and Syntactic Processing in Aphasia

This study assessed whether the comprehension of specific lexical items (a semantic judgment) and reversible passive sentences (a syntactic judgment) would be facilitated by preceding them with either linguistic or extralinguistic context. Twenty aphasic subjects were compared for their ability to comprehend semantic and syntactic components of target sentences presented in isolation and when the sentences were preceded by either a single sentence or a picture that predicted the target information. The results revealed that the subjects who demonstrated low comprehension skills on standard tests of auditory comprehension performed better when the target information was preceded by the contextual information than when it was presented in isolation. A similar effect was not seen for those subjects with higher level auditory comprehension skills. These results support the effective use of linguistic and extralinguistic context by some aphasic subjects during the decoding of literal meanings.