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The brain, verbs, and the past: Neurolinguistic studies on time referenceBos, Laura

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The brain, verbs, and the past

Neurolinguistic studies on time reference

Laura S. Bos

.

CLCG

The work reported in this thesis has been carried out under the auspices of theErasmus Mundus joint International Doctorate for Experimental Approachesto Language and Brain (IDEALAB) of the Universities of Groningen (NL),Newcastle (UK), Potsdam (DE), Trento (IT) and Macquarie University, Sydney(AU), and of the Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG).

The work in this thesis has partially been funded by a short-term grant of theGerman Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Collaborative ResearchCenter SFB 632 ‘Information Structure’. Publication of this thesis was finan-cially supported by the University of Groningen and the Stichting Afasie Neder-land (SAN).

Groningen Dissertations in LinguisticsISSN 0928-0030ISBN 978-90-367-7535-9 (printed version)ISBN 978-90-367-7534-2 (digital version)

©2014, Laura S. Bos

Cover Design by Michel Holper, www.parap.luLayout style by Dörte de Kok, prepared with LATEX2ε typeset in pdfTEXPrinted by Wöhrman Print Service, Zutphen, The Netherlands

The brain, verbs, and the past

Neurolinguistic studies on time reference

PhD thesis

to obtain the joint degree of PhD at theUniversity of Groningen, the University of Potsdam and Macquarie University

on the authority ofthe Rector Magnificus of the University of Groningen, Prof. E. Sterken, thePresident of the University of Potsdam, Prof. O. Günther, and the Chair of

Academic Senate of Macquarie University, Prof. D. Verityand in accordance with the decision by the College of Deans

of the University of Groningen.

This thesis will be defended in public on

Thursday 22 January 2015 at 12:45 hours

by

Laura Simone Bosborn on 3 November 1983

in Alkmaar, the Netherlands

Supervisors:Prof. Y.R.M. BastiaanseProf. I. Wartenburger

Assessment Committee:Prof. R.A.J. de BleserProf. D. HowardProf. C. LuzzattiProf. H.G. Simonsen

Acknowledgments

The first thing I want to say here is that I feel I have been very lucky withmy ’promotors’. My first supervisor Roelien Bastiaanse has given me ampleopportunity to get experience with various neurolinguistic techniques and tolearn anything that felt necessary. She shared her expertise on aphasia andexperimental design and provided me with effective feedback. I also owe her forensuring that my joint PhD programme results in a joint PhD degree. I am gladwe get along well both professionally as personally: I felt supported even beyondmy dissertation project. She trusted me in working independently even fromfar away places such as (in order of distance) Sydney, Alice Springs (althoughmy computer overheated to be honest), Moscow (the second and fourth time),Elche, Barcelona, Berlin, Potsdam, Enschede, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and, well,the remote office in the Rode Weeshuisstraat in Groningen. Ontzettend bedanktvoor alles, Roelien! Hopelijk kunnen we in de toekomst ook samenwerken.

For the International Doctorate in Experimental Approaches to Languageand Brain (IDEALAB) and a scholarship from the Sonderforschungsbereich632 from the German Research Foundation, I moved to Berlin for 14 months,from where I commuted to Potsdam (Golm) almost daily. In Potsdam, IsabellWartenburger accepted to be my second supervisor within IDEALAB. I wasamazed how she handled her overfull agenda and still always found time toprovide me with extensive and valuable feedback and help during the eyetrack-ing and fMRI experiments, and during the write-up of abstracts and articles.Apart from that, she kept track of interesting lectures or faculty parties. VielenDank das du meine zweite Doktormutter geworden bist, Isa! I appreciate it alot that you are coming over to Groningen for my public defense.

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I am very thankful that the members of my assessment committee haveagreed to evaluate my dissertation, and moreover that they have done so oversummer, before September. Prof. Ria de Bleser, Prof. David Howard, Prof.Claudio Luzzatti, and Prof. Hanne Gram Simonsen: I feel honored that youare willing to travel to Groningen to exchange thoughts about my dissertationduring the public defense. My two paranimphs are my sister Marjolein, andSilvia Martínez-Ferreiro. They are always very pleasant company, so I amthankful to have them at my side during the PhD ceremony.

In the initial stages of my PhD, Laurie Stowe has provided endless informa-tion input on EEG studies from her integrated encyclopedia (a.k.a. memory)but also the necessary food input during (ir)regular potluck dinners. Thanks aton, Laurie! Of course this is a perfect opportunity to thank Olga: Большоеспасибо, for your continuous infectious enthusiasm regarding neurolinguisticsand such a pleasant collaboration. I hope we will continue to run projectstogether.

When I made plans to run an eye-tracking study in Potsdam, I was broughtinto contact with Hanni (Sandra Hanne). I was excited about working with her,because I remembered her inspiring and clear conference presentation earlier inPotsdam. It was indeed a very pleasant and fruitful cooperation, and I learnta great deal from her on eye-tracking and R programming. Plus, it was fun!

I would like to thank my co-authors Sergey Avrutin for sharing his knowl-edge on aphasia and discourse-linking in Russian, and Ekaterina Iskra for al-lowing me to see how the clinical practice in Moscow works. I also want toacknowledge Jan Ries here, even though the fMRI study we worked on is notdescribed in this dissertation, and Giosuè Baggio and Sanne Brederoo similarlyfor the interesting EEG project.

I have tremendous respect for the people with aphasia that volunteered toparticipate in my studies and would like to thank them all. I got to knowseveral people with a strong determination to make the best out of their life. Ialso want to thank the many speech therapists, clinical linguists, and numerousother people that brought me into contact with them, including the board andmembers of the Stichting Afasie Nederland (SAN), Afasievereniging Nederland(AVN) and Afasienet. I specifically want to name Peter Mariën in this respect,for his help and organizational skills. I am furthermore grateful to the control(non-brain-damaged) and EEG participants that signed up for my studies. Inthe preparations of my experiments, some friends and acquaintances helped

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me by modeling for the test pictures: among them Laura, Daniele, Michel,Françoise, Sophie, and Roelien. Thank you! (I expect to see you shine in mydefense pictures.)

For the proofreading of the journal articles collected in this dissertation, Iam grateful to Katrina Gaffney, for the remaining English chapters to LeighFernandez, and for the Dutch summary I owe Jeanine van Kollenburg. Anymistakes in the text are, however, my very own mistakes - I may have changedsome lines here and there after their revisions. For the check-up of my workin R, I am very grateful to Felix Golcher. He has been highly responsive inhelping me understand mixed effects regression models. Michel is my absolutefavourite designer for several reasons, and I am very happy that he created thebeautiful cover of this book!

A big thank you goes to the professors involved in IDEALAB, who spentso much of their time and effort to make IDEALAB as inspiring, instructive,interactional, and fun as it is: Lyndsey Nickels (also for moving us from winterto a magnificent summer school), David Howard (for his wit as well), GabrieleMiceli (also for the Rovereto winter school), Ria de Bleser (also for getting usin the Venice summer school), Barbara Höhle, Ben Maassen, and Roelien Bas-tiaanse. Several times they gave insightful and valuable comments. I also wantto thank the audiences of numerous international conferences that provided mewith helpful feedback; and particularly Mike Dickey for sharing his thoughtson the eye-tracking study. Excellent support in the process of realising a jointPhD degree came also from Ren Yi, Lanna Leung, and Lesley McKnight.

My work has benefitted a lot from feedback. I am grateful to the Neu-rolinguistics research group in Groningen, whose meetings always helped mefurther. Throughout the years, its members included: Ben, Djaina, Ellie, Fe-dor, Felipe, Gerard, Harwintha, Jakolien, Joost, Katrien, Miren, Laurie, René,Rimke (ik mis nu al alle gezelligheid, raad, hulp, koekjes, koffie enz. op kan-toor, op congres, en daarbuiten! ), Roel (nogmaals bedankt dat je mijn overstapnaar Groningen zo makkelijk maakte), Rui, Seçkin, Silvia, Srđan, Tom, andothers who I would also like to thank.

There are more people from my Groningen (and beyond) time I would like tothank: Alice Pomstra, Anna Hausdorf, Audrey, Binne, Bregtje, Daniël, Gorusvan Oordt, Hanne, Hanneke, Huub, Ildikó, Jan, Jeanine, Jingxing, Joep andJulia, John, Joost, Konstantin, Kars, Kashy, Laia, Luca, Martijn, Martine,Nataša, Nienke and Roberto, Nynke, Robert, Ron, Ruggero, Ryan, Peter Al-

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bronda, Phil, Sabrina, Sanne, Suzanne, Vera, Wyke, the rest of the potluckdinner crew and everyone that helped me during my PhD research. The secre-tariaat staff and the audiovisual department have been very helpful wheneverthere was an issue to solve. The write-up of my dissertation in the library wasproductive partly because coffee- and lunch breaks were gezellig with Fanny,Julia, Marleen and Tommy.

Furthermore, I am grateful to those who made the Dutch (and other)aphasia conferences so nice to attend: Evy Visch-Brink, Mieke van de Sandt-Koenderman, Dineke Blom, Ineke van der Meulen (who was the first one toteach me about neurolinguistics, in my first year of linguistics in Leiden), Car-olina Mendez, Femke Nouwens, Karin van Nispen, Sandra Wielaert, and others.Also thanks to my fellow members of the organizing committee of the TabuDagand the Science of Aphasia in Groningen. I want to acknowledge the audiencesof numerous international conferences that provided me with helpful feedback;particularly Mike Dickey for sharing his thoughts on the eye-tracking study.

I really think I would not have stayed in Potsdam/Berlin so long if I hadnot met such nice people there: Ana (with your everlasting hospitality), Conny(super das ich deine ganz tolle Wohnung im Prenzlauer Allee mieten könnte),Helene (vanaf het moment dat ik in Berlijn uit de trein stapte ben je er voor megeweest! ) and Julius, Joé (villmools Merci vir ‘t Lëtzebuergesch geschwetsch)Jule and Axel (Lise is as pleasant as you two), Kata, Kathi, Maja and Daniel(the nicest way to improve my German is to talk with you two), Max, Nastaranand Matthias (alles gute ihr zwei! ), Nele (with all your positive energy), Koosand Ruth, Leigh (the welcome dinner was such a good start!), Tina (greatacrobatic saving of my ring in Australia!), and Quique (gracias por todo el’input’ en español and all the fun), and more people that I met over lunch,coffee or drinks. Of course my working environment was important too: I owethe Potsdam Neurocognition of Language (NOLA) group and the other peopleof the SFB 632 and the Linguistics department (Anja, Anne, Astrid, Elisa,Frank, Jana, Jonka, Julia, Lena, Malte, Nicole, Romy, and Tom: I name a few,but thank you all.

Via IDEALAB, I got to meet so many nice people from all over the world!I met old and new friends throughout Europe and Australia. Two very closefriends are Trudy (one of the kindest people I know) and Nastya (with a beau-tiful sense of humour), the lovely -now married- Vânia and Adrià, and morepeople I have not yet mentioned: Farnoosh, Michela, Oksana, Sana, and Sean.

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Of course I also want to thank my all-time friends Daphne, Ilse, Laura,Miranda, my EMCL friends, specifically Helena, Julia, and Tomek, Line, Clau-dio, Allison, Njinga, Smita, and the Trotzqui’s for providing me with very gooddistraction in the past years.

There are only a few more people I want to thank. (Apart from the ones Iforgot - sorry!) I am grateful to all the members of my family, who give me am-ple reason to dive into multilingualism. George an Pumy, Dany an Yves (matJamie an Jupp), Françoise an Maarten (mat Stijn), Tommy, an och BomaJuliette an Tata Maddy: villmols merci dat ech zu der Familien gehéieren. Ikben mijn eigen familie ontzettend dankbaar. Steffan en Ida (met Sigurd natu-urlijk), Arnold, Marjolein en Herrie, oma, Ron en Esther: Ik ben heel gelukkigmet jullie en blij dat we zo hecht zijn. Pap en mam, ik ben enorm trots op jullie.Ik kan jullie niet genoeg bedanken voor alle kansen die jullie ons altijd hebbengeboden en voor jullie onvoorwaardelijke steun. Lieve michel: ech sinn so <————>10 immens frou mat dir. In mijn onderzoek was ‘verleden’ moeilijk en‘toekomst’ onzeker, maar gelukkig geldt dat niet voor ons! (Alhoewel het heusniet makkelijk was om elkaar in de afgelopen jaren zo vaak te moeten missen.)Samen met jou is alles standaard leuker, makkelijker, mooier en zekerder.

De ruimte hierboven heb ik leeggelaten, omdat ik je zo persoonlijk mogelijkwil bedanken, niet in dit font, maar in mijn eigen handschrift, en alleen voorjou geschreven.

Haarlem, 1 September 2014

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Contents

Acknowledgments v

1 General introduction 11.1 The study of aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1.1 Aphasia syndromes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.2 Agrammatic and fluent aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.2 Theoretical background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.2.1 Discourse-linking and tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.2.2 The PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH) . . 9

1.3 Methodological background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111.3.1 Event-related potentials (ERPs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121.3.2 Eye-tracking in the visual-world paradigm . . . . . . . . 131.3.3 Linear mixed-effects regression modeling . . . . . . . . . 13

1.4 Issues addressed in the current dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . 141.5 Outline of the dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2 Understanding discourse-linked elements in aphasia 192.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.1.1 Discourse-linking theory and aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . 202.1.2 Previous studies on discourse-linked elements in

aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232.1.3 Linguistic background of Russian . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272.1.4 Goals of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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2.2 Materials and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292.2.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292.2.2 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302.2.3 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322.2.4 Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3 Time reference decoupled from tense in aphasia 393.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

3.1.1 Linguistic background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413.1.2 Time reference in aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423.1.3 Experimental evidence for the PADILIH in agrammatism 433.1.4 Spontaneous speech evidence for the PADILIH in

agrammatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453.1.5 Time reference in fluent aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463.1.6 Time reference and theory on speech production . . . . 483.1.7 Goals of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

3.2 Materials and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.2.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.2.2 Materials and procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513.2.3 Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

3.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.4.1 Past time reference deficit irrespective of tense inagrammatic aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.4.2 Time reference in agrammatic and fluent aphasia . . . . 583.4.3 Same patterns, different underlying disorders . . . . . . 59

4 Time reference teased apart from tense in the healthy brain 614.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.1.1 Theoretical background on time reference and discourse-linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

4.1.2 Neuro- and psycholinguistic background . . . . . . . . . 644.1.3 The current study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

4.2 Materials and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684.2.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704.2.2 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704.2.3 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 724.2.4 EEG recordings and data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

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4.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744.3.1 Time window 300-500 ms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754.3.2 Time window 500-700 ms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774.3.3 Time window 700-1000 ms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 794.4.1 Results in relation to the predictions . . . . . . . . . . . 804.4.2 Sentence-final effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824.4.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

5 Losing track of time? Incremental time reference processing 855.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

5.1.1 Aphasiological time reference comprehension studies . . 885.1.2 Eye-tracking studies manipulating time reference . . . . 895.1.3 Aphasiological eye-tracking studies . . . . . . . . . . . . 905.1.4 Aims of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

5.2 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 925.2.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 925.2.2 Materials and procedure for the TART . . . . . . . . . . 935.2.3 Materials for the eye-tracking experiment . . . . . . . . 935.2.4 Apparatus and eye-tracking procedure . . . . . . . . . . 985.2.5 Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1015.3.1 TART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1015.3.2 Accuracy and RTs online sentence-picture matching . . 1015.3.3 Eye movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1025.3.4 Summary of the results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1055.4.1 Correctly interpreted time reference in NBDs vs. IWAs 1055.4.2 Incorrect time reference processing . . . . . . . . . . . . 1085.4.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

6 Conclusions and further research directions 1116.1 Major conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

6.1.1 Past time reference is discourse-linked . . . . . . . . . . 1126.1.2 PADILIH applies to language use in general . . . . . . . 1136.1.3 Past time reference difficulties irrespective of tense . . . 1156.1.4 Processing past time reference delayed in agrammatism 117

6.2 Directions for further research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

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Appendix 121A Understanding discourse-linked elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

A.1 Individual Russian participant characteristics . . . . . . 122A.2 Verbs used in the Russian tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124A.3 Accuracy per Russian aphasic participant . . . . . . . . 125

B Time reference decoupled from tense in aphasia . . . . . . . . . 126B.1 Individual Dutch aphasic participant data . . . . . . . . 126B.2 Verbs used in the Dutch aphasia test . . . . . . . . . . . 128B.3 Accuracy per Dutch aphasic participant . . . . . . . . . 129

C Losing track of time? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130C.1 Individual German participant characteristics . . . . . . 130C.2 Verbs and nouns in the eye-tracking experiment . . . . . 131C.3 Accuracy and RT per German aphasic participant . . . 132

References 133

Summary 145

Nederlandse samenvatting 149

About the author 153

Over de auteur 155

List of Publications 157

Grodil 159

List of Figures

1.1 Schematic illustration of the PADILIH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.1 Examples of Russian test items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312.2 Accuracy per subtest for the aphasic speakers . . . . . . . . . . 34

3.1 Example items for the Dutch TART – Production . . . . . . . 533.2 Accuracy on the verb forms per participant group . . . . . . . . 55

4.1 ERPs PeriPast-congruent vs. PeriNonpast-incongruent . . . . . 754.2 ERPs PeriPast-control vs. PeriNonpast-control . . . . . . . . . 764.3 ERPs SimplePast-congruent vs. SimpleNonpast-incongruent . . 774.4 ERPs for periphrastic and simple verb forms . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.1 Sample visual display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 945.2 Overview of the accuracies and RTs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1025.3 Eye movement plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1035.4 Pictures used with ‘to bump’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

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List of Tables

1.1 Overview of the classical aphasia types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3.1 Error types of agrammatic and fluent speakers . . . . . . . . . 56

4.1 Examples of the six experimental conditions . . . . . . . . . . . 69

5.1 Auditory regions of interest (ROIs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

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