Presupposition processing declines with age.

The present study investigates the processing of presuppositions across the life span and extends the findings of the only available study on presupposition processing and typical aging by Domaneschi and Di Paola (J Pragmat 140:70-87, 2019). In an online and offline task, we investigate the impact of cognitive load during the processing and recovery of two presupposition triggers-definite descriptions and change-of-state verbs-comparing a group of younger adults with a group of older adults. The collected experimental data show that (1) presupposition recovery declines during normal aging, (2) presupposition recovery of change-of-state verbs is more cognitively demanding for older adults than the recovery of definite descriptions, and lastly (3) presupposition recovery for the change-of-state verb begin is more demanding than the change-of-state verb stop. As of today, few works have directly investigated presupposition processing across the life span. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work revealing that cognitive load directly impacts the recovery of presuppositions across the life span, which in turn suggests an involvement of verbal working memory.

The neural correlates of referential communication: Taking advantage of sparse-sampling fMRI to study verbal communication with a real interaction partner.

This paper introduces an innovative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol to study real verbal interactions while limiting the impact of speech-related movement artefacts. This protocol is based on a sparse sampling acquisition technique and allowed participants to complete a referential communication task with a real interaction partner. During verbal interactions, speakers adjust their verbal productions depending on their interlocutors' knowledge of the referents being mentioned. These adjustments have been linked to theory of mind (ToM), the ability to infer other's mental states. We thus sought to determine if the brain regions supporting ToM would also be activated during a referential communication task in which participants have to present movie characters that vary in their likelihood of being known by their interlocutor. This pilot study establishes that the sparse sampling strategy is a viable option to study the neural correlates of referential communication while minimizing movement artefacts. In addition, the brain regions supporting ToM were recruited during the task, though specifically for the conditions where participants could adjust their verbal productions to the interlocutor's likely knowledge of the referent. This study therefore demonstrates the feasibility and relevance of a sparse-sampling approach to study verbal interactions with fMRI, including referential communication.

Context processing during irony comprehension in right-frontal brain-damaged individuals.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the degree of incongruity between contextual information and a target sentence influences the extent to which irony is understood in individuals with right-frontal-hemisphere damage (RHD). A psycholinguistic paradigm was used, allowing us to assess whether impairment in irony understanding is likely to be due to insensitivity (i.e. difficulty in capturing or detecting relevant contextual information) to relevant contextual information or to difficulties in integrating contextual information. Twenty individuals with RHD and 20 healthy control (HC) participants were tested on their understanding of a speaker's ironic intent and their executive functions. The main results revealed that individuals with RHD exhibit different patterns of performance, some of them being able to understand irony while in others this ability was impaired. The present study gives support to the hypothesis that difficulties in adequately using contextual information may account for pragmatic impairment of individuals with RHD. More importantly, the results suggested that these difficulties are related to a lack of sensitivity to contextual information instead of difficulty integrating it along with the ironic utterance. A subgroup of individuals with RHD processed the speaker's utterance without any reference to contextual information, which led them to a literal interpretation of the utterance.

Inter-individual variability in discourse informativeness in elderly populations.

An increasing number of studies focus on discourse production in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and underline its clinical usefulness. However, if this is to be used as a clinical tool, one needs to consider how normal discourse varies within cognitively unimpaired elderly populations. In the current study, the aim has been to investigate discourse macrolinguistic variability. For this, 123 participants aged between 55 and 84 were recruited. A cluster analysis of their discourse macrolinguistic features was conducted. Then, cluster characterisation based on socio-demographic and linguistic performance was tested (fluency, naming, syntax and spelling). This method aims to identify various profiles of speaker and informativeness and then see if inter-individual variability may be related to socio-demographic and/or linguistic aspects. Four clusters of informativeness were found but no socio-demographic features appeared significant. The fourth cluster, defined as 'off topic', had lower performance during linguistic tasks than others and thus the boundary between normality and pathology should be questioned.

Theory of mind and cognitive processes in aging and Alzheimer type dementia: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVES: Theory of mind (ToM) performance in aging and dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) has been a growing interest of researchers and recently, theoretical trends in ToM development have led to a focus on determining the cognitive skills involved in ToM performance. The aim of the present review is to answer three main questions: How is ToM assessed in aging and DAT? How does ToM performance evolve in aging and DAT? Do cognitive processes influence ToM performance in aging and DAT? METHOD: A systematic review was conducted to provide a targeted overview of recent studies relating ToM performance with cognitive processes in aging and DAT. RESULTS: RESULTS suggest a decrease in ToM performance, more pronounced in complex ToM tasks. Moreover, the review points up the strong involvement of executive functions, especially inhibition, and reasoning skills in ToM task achievement. CONCLUSION: Current data suggest that the structure of ToM tasks itself could lead to poor performance, especially in populations with reduced cognitive abilities.

Direct and indirect linguistic measures of common ground in dialogue studies involving a matching task: A systematic review.

During dialogue, speakers attempt to adapt messages to their addressee appropriately by taking into consideration their common ground (i.e., all the information mutually known by the conversational partners) to ensure successful communication. Knowing and remembering what information is part of the common ground shared with a given partner and using it during dialogue are crucial skills for social interaction. It is therefore important to better understand how we can measure the use of common ground and to identify the potential associated psychological processes. In this context, a systematic review of the literature was performed to list the linguistic measures of common ground found in dialogue studies involving a matching task and to explore any evidence of cognitive and social mechanisms underlying common ground use in this specific experimental setting, particularly in normal aging and in neuropsychological studies. Out of the 23 articles included in this review, we found seven different linguistic measures of common ground that were classified as either a direct measure of common ground (i.e., measures directly performed on the referential content) or an indirect measure of common ground (i.e., measures assessing the general form of the discourse). This review supports the idea that both types of measures should systematically be used while assessing common ground because they may reflect different concepts underpinned by distinct psychological processes. Given the lack of evidence for the implication of other cognitive and social functions in common ground use in studies involving matching tasks, future research is warranted, particularly in the clinical field.

The contribution of discursive and cognitive factors in referential choices made by elderly people during a narrative task.

The present study focuses on referential choices made by healthy aged adults during narrative discourse, and their relationship with cognitive and socio-cognitive abilities. Previously, some studies have shown that, compared to young adults, older adults produce more pronouns when referring to various entities during discourse, regardless of the accessibility level of the referent for the addressee. This referential behavior has been interpreted in relation to the decrease of cognitive abilities, such as working memory abilities. There is, as of yet, little empirical evidence highlighting which cognitive competences preferentially support referential choices during discourse production. Here, we focus on three categories of referential markers (indefinite, definite markers and pronouns) produced by 78 participants from 60 to 91 years old. We used a storytelling task enabling us to examine the referential choices made at three discourse stages (introduction, maintaining or shift of the referent in focus) and in increasing levels of referential complexity (one vs two characters, and different vs same gender). In addition to specifically assessing how increasing age influences referential choices, we also examine the contribution of various cognitive and socio-cognitive skills that are presumed to play a specific role in referential choices. We found that both age and specific cognitive abilities (planification, inhibition, and verbal episodic memory) had an effect on referential choices, but that these effects depended on when (at which discourse stage) the referential markers were produced. Overall, our study highlights the complex interplay between discursive and cognitive factors in referential choices made by healthy older speakers.

Time reference in aphasia: are there differences between tenses and aphasia fluency type? A systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis.

Time reference is used to build the temporal framework of discourse and is essential in ensuring efficient communication. Several studies have reported time reference deficits in fluent and non-fluent aphasia and have shown that tenses (past, present, future) are not all impaired to the same extent. However, there is little consensus on the dissociations between tenses, and the question of the influence of the type of aphasia (fluent vs. non-fluent) on time reference remains open. Therefore, a systematic review and an individual participant data meta-analysis (or mega-analysis) were conducted to determine (1) whether one tense is more impaired than another in fluent and non-fluent aphasia and, if so, (2) which task and speaker-related factors moderate tense effects. The systematic review resulted in 35 studies reporting the performance in time reference of 392 participants. The mega-analysis was then performed on 23 studies for a total of 232 participants and showed an alteration of past tense compared to present and future tenses in both types of aphasia. The analysis also showed a task and an age effect on time reference but no gender effect, independently of tenses. These results add to our knowledge of time reference in aphasia and have implications for future therapies.

The other side of the social interaction: Theory of mind impairments in people with schizophrenia are linked to other people's difficulties in understanding them.

BACKGROUND: People with schizophrenia (SZ) often present with theory of mind (ToM) deficits and with speech production deficits. While a link has been established between ToM abilities and symptoms of thought disorder, much less is known about other aspects of speech production in SZ. STUDY DESIGN: This is a case-control study in which 25 stable outpatients with recent-onset SZ (27.1 years, 22 men) and 22 matched healthy controls (25.6 years, 16 men) performed a collaborative, verbal production task with a real interaction partner. Blind raters scored how easy participants made it to understand them (Facility ratings), how interesting they were to listen to (Interest ratings) and how expressive they were (Expressivity ratings). ToM was assessed with the Combined Stories Test and Sarfati's cartoon task. Symptoms were assessed with the PANSS five-factor version. STUDY RESULTS: Compared to healthy controls, SZ received significantly lower ratings for all three aspects of their verbal productions (Facility, Interest and Expressivity), despite the raters being blind to group membership. Interestingly, the Facility ratings were linked to ToM performance in the SZ group, which suggest that SZ participants who have difficulties understanding others (ToM deficits) also make it harder for others to understand them. Other notable findings include a strong link between the Expressivity ratings and the Interest ratings for both groups, and significant correlations between the Facility ratings and Cognitive/Disorganisation symptoms, and between the Expressivity ratings and both Negative and Depression/Anxiety symptoms in SZ. CONCLUSION: Studying speech production during real, collaborative social interactions could help move beyond the individual approach to SZ deficits, making it possible to involve the interaction partners to promote more efficient communication for people with schizophrenia.

Exploring Cognitive-Pragmatic Heterogeneity Following Acquired Brain Injury: A Cluster Analysis of Hint Comprehension.

PURPOSE: Difficulties understanding nonliteral language (especially hints) are frequently reported following acquired brain injury (ABI). Several cognitive mechanisms, such as context processing, executive functions, and theory of mind (ToM), may underlie these disorders. However, their role remains controversial, mainly because of the characteristic heterogeneity of this population. Therefore, our study aimed to identify cognitive-pragmatic profiles in individuals with ABI. METHOD: A new task of hint comprehension, manipulating executive demand, markers of hints, and ToM and neuropsychological tests were administered to 33 participants with frontal ABI and 33 control participants. Cluster analysis, a method sensitive to profile heterogeneity, was applied and coupled with error analysis. RESULTS: We highlighted two cognitive-pragmatic profiles. One subgroup of participants with ABI exhibited contextual insensitivity, leading them to infer the utterance meaning based on linguistic decoding alone-literal meaning. This difficulty in understanding hints was associated with deficits in working memory, inhibition, and ToM. The second subgroup of participants with ABI showed difficulty with literal statements, associated with impaired inhibition and ToM. In addition, the two subgroups differed only on the ToM task. This result suggests that various types of ToM deficit (misunderstanding vs. incorrect attribution of mental states) could contribute to the variability of the pragmatic profiles observed (difficulties in interpreting hints vs. literal statements). CONCLUSION: The experimental design adopted in this study provides valuable insight into the explanatory hypotheses of nonliteral language comprehension disorders and has important clinical implications. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24069516.

A New Test of Irony and Indirect Requests Comprehension-The IRRI Test: Validation and Normative Data in French-Speaking Adults.

OBJECTIVE: Nonliteral language comprehension disorders in individuals with acquired brain injuries (ABI) are frequently reported in the literature but rarely assessed in clinical settings. A major reason is the lack of tools available to clinicians. Therefore, the present study aimed to further promote the pragmatic assessment routine by creating a new nonliteral language comprehension tool for ABI individuals: the IRRI test. This tool is intended to be standardized and capable of directing clinicians to cognitive deficits underlying a poor understanding of nonliteral language-context processing, executive functions, and theory of mind. METHOD: Three studies were conducted. The first study aimed at constructing the two IRRI test tasks: the irony and indirect requests comprehension tasks. These tasks integrate the cognitive processes within them. The second study aimed at analyzing the tasks' psychometric qualities in a sample of 33 ABI participants and 33 healthy participants (HC). Preliminary normative data obtained from 102 healthy French-speaking subjects were collected in the third study. RESULTS: Significant differences in the IRRI test's performances were observed between the ABI and HC individuals. The indirect requests task demonstrated robust convergent validity and good sensibility to discriminate altered participants among ABI participants. Both IRRI test's tasks also showed excellent test-retest and inter-rater reliability. The preliminary norms were stratified according to the conditions of interest in relation to the cognitive mechanisms underlying the understanding of nonliteral language. CONCLUSIONS: The IRRI test is a promising new standardized test of nonliteral language comprehension, which contributes to identifying cognitive-pragmatic profiles to guide therapy.

Comparing individual and collective management of referential choices in dialogue.

Past research shows that when a discourse referent is mentioned repeatedly, it is usually introduced with a full noun phrase and maintained with a reduced form such as a pronoun. Is this also the case in dialogue, where the same referent may be introduced by one person and maintained by another person? An experiment was conducted in which participants either told entire stories to each other or told stories together, thus enabling us to contrast situations in which characters were introduced and maintained by the same person (control condition) and situations in which the introduction and the maintaining of each character were performed by different people (alternating condition). Story complexity was also manipulated through the introduction of one or two characters in each story. We found that participants were less likely to use reduced forms to maintain referents in the alternating condition. The use of reduced forms also depended on the context in which the referent was maintained (in particular, first or second mention of a character) and on story complexity. These results shed light on how the pressure to signal understanding to one's conversational partner affects referential choices throughout the interaction.

Referential communication in people with recent-onset schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

People with schizophrenia present with language production impairments, yet very few studies examine language production in the context of collaborative, verbal interaction tasks performed with a real interaction partner. The current study relied on a referential communication paradigm in which participants with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy controls (HC) presented a series of movie characters to their interaction partner, whose role was to identify and place the characters in the same order. The HC spontaneously provided more information when presenting characters that their interaction partner was unlikely to know than when presenting very well-known characters, and the magnitude of this adjustment was positively correlated with their performance on a theory of mind task. In contrast, people with SZ showed a significantly reduced (absent) adjustment to the likely-known vs. likely-unknown nature of the characters, and no correlation emerged with ToM. Further examination of the verbal productions revealed that HC often combined movie-related information (ex: character's name or movie title) and descriptive information whereas people with SZ more often used description only to present the characters. Overall, this study adds to our knowledge about referential choices in SZ in the context of collaborative verbal interactions with a real interaction partner.

Mental Time Travel and Time Reference Difficulties in Alzheimer's Disease: Are They Related? A Systematic Review.

Mental time travel and language enable us to go back and forth in time and to organize and express our personal experiences through time reference. People with Alzheimer's disease have both mental time travel and time reference impairments, which can greatly impact their daily communication. Currently, little is known about the potential relationship between time conceptualization (i.e., mental time travel) and time reference difficulties in this disease. A systematic review of the literature was performed to determine if this link had already been investigated. Only three articles integrated both time conceptualization and time reference measures. However, the link between the two was not systematically analyzed and interpreted. This review highlights the lack of research addressing the question of the influence of time conceptualization impairments in Alzheimer's disease on other cognitive domains, and especially language.

Normative Data for Healthy French-Speaking Persons Aged 80 Years and Older for the DTLA Language Screening Test.

The Detection Test for Language Impairments in Adults and the Aged (DTLA) is a quick, sensitive, and standardized screening test designed to assess language disorders in adults and elderly people. The test was specifically developed to detect linguistic impairment associated with major neurocognitive disorders. In 2017, we established normative data on 545 healthy individuals between 50 and 80 years old from four French-speaking countries: Belgium, Canada (Quebec), France, and Switzerland. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the present study was to develop norms for the population older than 80 years of age for the DTLA. METHOD: We extend the original normative data to include 149 healthy, community-dwelling, French-speaking adults aged 80 years old and older from the same countries. RESULTS: For the total score of the screening test, we calculated the 5th, 15th, 25th, and 50th percentiles for two education groups. The analyses allowed the identification of cutoff and alert scores based on education level. CONCLUSIONS: With the present study, solid normative data for the DTLA derived from the performance of 694 healthy, community-dwelling adults, and elderly people are now available to clinicians and researchers.

BEPS: Development, validation, and normative data of a sentence production test in French.

Assessing one's sentence production ability can help to identify difficulties experienced by individuals with aphasia and enables targeted intervention. Speech-language pathologists working with the francophone population must contend with the current lack of a sentence production evaluation tool. The aim of this article is to present the development, validation, and normative data of a French-language test used to evaluate the production of sentences: the BEPS (Batterie d'Évaluation de la Production Syntaxique). The BEPS includes four tasks based on Bock and Levelt's model of sentence production, namely (1) Verb Naming Task, (2) Verb Inflection Task, (3) Constituent Assembly Task, and (4) Thematic Role Assignment Task. For each task, various psycholinguistic parameters were controlled or manipulated. The BEPS had good content and construct validity, excellent test-retest reliability and good internal consistency. This battery fulfills the current needs for clinical tool in the francophone population when assessing sentence production capacities. Normative data are presented for individuals 19-79 years of age (n = 191). Raw scores were converted to percentiles for each task. The BEPS represents significant assistance to help clinicians identify the origins of the syntactic production deficits of patients with poststroke and degenerative diseases.

The application of rules in morphology, syntax and number processing: a case of selective deficit of procedural or executive mechanisms?

Declarative memory is a long-term store for facts, concepts and words. Procedural memory subserves the learning and control of sensorimotor and cognitive skills, including the mental grammar. In this study, we report a single-case study of a mild aphasic patient who showed procedural deficits in the presence of preserved declarative memory abilities. We administered several experiments to explore rule application in morphology, syntax and number processing. Results partly support the differentiation between declarative and procedural memory. Moreover, the patient's performance varied according to the domain in which rules were to be applied, which underlines the need for more fine-grained distinctions in cognition between procedural rules.

Differential impairments in irony comprehension in brain-damaged individuals: Insight from contextual processing, theory of mind, and executive functions.

OBJECTIVE: The comprehension of irony can be affected after brain injuries. The cognitive mechanisms accounting for such disorders remain yet unclear. The heterogeneity of cognitive profiles of brain-damaged individuals and the use of independent tests to measure the links between these mechanisms and the comprehension of irony might contribute to this lack of clarity. The present study aimed to further explore the underlying mechanisms of irony-understanding disorders (i.e., context processing, executive functions [EF], and theory of mind [ToM]) in patients with brain lesions. METHOD: We used a paradigm manipulating these mechanisms within an irony task to identify different patterns of pragmatic performance associated with cognitive profiles. We administered this task and standard neuropsychological tests assessing EF and ToM to 30 participants with acquired brain injury (ABI) and 30 healthy control (HC) participants. RESULTS: A cluster analysis revealed that two thirds of the participants with ABI (3 subgroups out of 4) presented atypical pragmatic and neuropsychological patterns. The most severe disturbances in understanding irony, characterized by insensitivity to the context, were associated with a joint impairment of ToM and EF in 1 subgroup. In the 2 other context-sensitive subgroups, an isolated deficit in EF co-occurred with difficulties dealing with literal or ironic statements when the EF demand of the irony task was increased. However, the effect of this EF demand could be negated by the presence of markers helping the comprehension of irony. CONCLUSION: These results have important clinical implications for the evaluation and therapy of pragmatic disorders in individuals with ABI. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Nonverbal Processing of Actions Is an Area of Relative Strength in the Semantic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia.

Purpose Better performance for actions compared to objects has been reported in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). This study investigated the influence of the assessment task (naming, semantic picture matching) over the dissociation between objects and actions. Method Ten individuals with svPPA and 17 matched controls completed object and action naming tests, and object and action semantic picture matching tests. Performance was compared between the svPPA and control groups, within the svPPA group, and for each participant with svPPA versus the control group individually. Results Compared to controls, participants with svPPA were impaired on object and action naming, and object and action semantic picture matching. As a group, participants with svPPA had an advantage for actions over objects and for semantic picture matching tests over naming tests. Eight participants had a better performance for actions compared to objects in naming, with three showing a significant difference. Nine participants had a better performance for actions compared to objects in semantic picture matching, with six showing a significant difference. For objects, semantic picture matching was better than naming in nine participants, with five showing a significant difference. For actions, semantic picture matching was better than naming in all 10 participants, with nine showing a significant difference. Conclusion The nonverbal processing of actions, as assessed with a semantic picture matching test, is an area of relative strength in svPPA. Clinical implications for assessment planning and interpretation and theoretical implications for current models of semantic cognition are discussed.

Referential adjustment during discourse production in Alzheimer's disease.

Several studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) tend to use more pronouns than healthy aged adults when referring to entities during discourse. This referential behavior has been associated with the decrease of cognitive abilities, such as lexical retrieval difficulties or reduced abilities in working memory. However, the influence of certain important discourse factors on the referential choices made by people with AD has yet to be established. This study examines referential choices made at three discourse stages during narrative discourse (the introduction of a referent, the maintaining of the referent in focus, and the shift from one referent in focus to another). These referential choices are examined in increasingly complex referential contexts. In addition, this study investigates the relationships between referential choices and various cognitive abilities. To do so, the narrative discourses of 21 people with AD and 21 healthy adults were elicited using a newly developed storytelling in sequence task. The analyses focused on the production of three major referential expressions (indefinite expressions, definite expressions and pronouns) which are expected to vary according to discourse stage and the referential complexity of the stories. The results show that AD participants produce significantly fewer of the referential expressions expected at the introduction and shift stages than healthy aged adults produce. Nevertheless, the variation in the categories of referential expressions produced by the AD participants between the discourse stages is similar to that produced by the healthy aged adults, suggesting a preserved sensitivity to the factors manipulated in the task (i.e., discourse stages and referential complexity). This study also highlights the fact that different cognitive competences, especially executive abilities, are greatly involved in referential choices. The results add further evidence that referential choices rely on a variety of cognitive skills, depending on the discourse context in which they are made.