TelePriming Sentence Production in Aphasia: A Feasibility Study

EasyChair Preprint 6452

Abstract

Structural priming—the tendency to repeat a recently encountered sentence structure—has been shown to reflect processes of implicit syntactic learning (Chang et al., 2006) and can implicitly facilitate sentence production in persons with aphasia (PWA). More recently, there is evidence that telepractice is as effective as in-person therapy in PWA (Hall, Boisvert, & Steele, 2013). The present study investigated the feasibility of applying tele-testing to structural priming (TelePriming) with PWA in a dialogue-priming task, delivered remotely using videoconferencing. We tested 10 PWA, 12 older adults (OA), and 12 younger adults (YA) on a dialogue-priming task, where participants took turns with the experimenter describing transitive pictures via videoconferencing. We measured if participants produced more passive sentences after hearing passive sentences (primes) compared to active sentences. Additionally, the same verb was repeated for half of the prime-target pairs to assess the lexical boost effect. All three groups showed significant priming effects (increased production of passive sentences after hearing a passive versus active prime sentence). The priming effects also increased when the verb was repeated between prime and target sentences, although this lexical boost was not significant in PWA. Finally, all three groups showed medium to large effect sizes of priming effects with greater magnitude of priming for the same verb versus different verb prime condition. The results are consistent with previous findings where PWA and healthy adults showed significant structural priming and lexical boost in a dialogue-like task in aging and aphasia (Man et al., 2019). This study also suggests that structural priming is effective in PWA when delivered remotely using web-based videoconferencing. Therefore, implicit syntactic learning in a dialogue context remains preserved in PWA, and TelePriming provides a valid alternative to in-person testing.

Keyphrases: aphasia, sentence production, structural priming, telepractice

@booklet{EasyChair:6452,
  author    = {Austin Keen and Emily Bauman and Jiyeon Lee},
  title     = {TelePriming Sentence Production in Aphasia: A Feasibility Study},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6452},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}