Action and Object Processing in Brain-Injured Speakers of Chinese

• Published in: Neuropsychology Vol. 25; no. 6; pp. 792 - 805
• Main Authors: AREVALO, Analia L, LU, Ching-Ching, HUANG, Lydia B.-Y, BATES, Elizabeth A, DRONKERS, Nina F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-11-2011
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Aged; Analysis of Variance; Aphasia; Aphasia - diagnosis; Aphasia - etiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Injuries - complications; Brain Injuries - pathology; Case-Control Studies; Cognitive Impairment; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Female; Functional Laterality - physiology; Human; Humans; Injuries of the nervous system and the skull. Diseases due to physical agents; Language; Left Hemisphere; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Movement Disorders - diagnosis; Movement Disorders - etiology; Names; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Object Recognition; Oral Communication; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Photic Stimulation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading; Semantics; Traumas. Diseases due to physical agents; Traumatic Brain Injury; Verbal Fluency; Visual Perception; Vocabulary; Human; Nervous system diseases; Action; objects; Cognition; Language disorder; Cerebral disorder; Communication disorder; Central nervous system disease; Information processing; Aphasia; Chinese; Object; Head trauma; Neurological disorder; actions
• ISSN: 0894-4105; 1931-1559
• DOI: 10.1037/a0024272

To see whether action and object processing across different tasks and modalities differs in brain-injured speakers of Chinese with varying fluency and lesion locations within the left hemisphere.
Words and pictures representing actions and objects were presented to a group of 33 participants whose native and/or dominant language was Mandarin Chinese: 23 patients with left-hemisphere lesions due to stroke and 10 language-, age- and education-matched healthy control participants. A set of 120 stimulus items was presented to each participant in three different forms: as black and white line drawings (for picture-naming), as written words (for reading) and as aurally presented words (for word repetition). Patients were divided into groups for two separate analyses: Analysis 1 divided and compared patients based on fluency (Fluent vs. Nonfluent) and Analysis 2 compared patients based on lesion location (Anterior vs. Posterior).
Both analyses yielded similar results: Fluent, Nonfluent, Anterior, and Posterior patients all produced significantly more errors when processing action (M = 0.73, SD = 0.45) relative to object (M = 0.79, SD = 0.41) stimuli, and this effect was strongest in the picture-naming task.
As in our previous study with English-speaking participants using the same experimental design (Arévalo et al., 2007, Arévalo, Moineau, Saygin, Ludy, & Bates, 2005), we did not find evidence for a double-dissociation in action and object processing between groups with different lesion and fluency profiles. These combined data bring us closer to a more informed view of action/object processing in the brain in both healthy and brain-injured individuals.