Over five years, the investigators will conduct a series of studies to develop a novel intervention strategy for improving sentence production and comprehension in persons with aphasia. Specifically, the investigators will use implicit priming as a novel facilitator for language recovery in aphasia. The planned studies seek to test the hypothesis that implicit priming alters the central language system in PWA, creating lasting and generalized improvements in both sentence production and comprehension. Aim 1 will determine the extent to which different manipulations of priming conditions modulate immediate and long-term improvement in sentence production. The investigators integrate multiple theories of language learning and apply them to make predictions about the trajectory of priming-induced learning in PWA. In Aim 2, using a set of eyetracking sentence comprehension tasks, it will be investigated whether the effects of priming in production generalize to off-line (accuracy) and on-line (eye fixations) sentence comprehension and determine what learning conditions result in greater cross-modality generalization. In Aim 3, the investigators will develop and establish Phase I efficacy data of an implicit priming treatment, incorporating the crucial learning conditions supporting maximal retention from Aims 1 and 2. The project will recruit both individuals with aphasia and without aphasia.
This study focuses on developing a novel treatment for sentence production and comprehension in aphasia, using implicit priming. First set of experiments will aim examine which priming conditions are most effective in creating maximal learning effects. Then, in a later experiment, the investigators will develop and test the efficacy of a novel treatment study based on findings from the first set of the experiments.