Which Word Planning Processes Require Attention: Evidence from Dual-Task Interference in Aphasics Speakers

EasyChair Preprint no. 6439

Abstract

In everyday life, utterance production is affected under dual-task condition, this effect is larger in case of impaired language. Dual-task paradigm have been used to test attentional requirement in utterance production (Ferreira & Pashler, 2002). Studies carried out with healthy (Cook & Meyer, 2008) and aphasics speakers (Laganaro, Bonnans, & Fargier, 2019) have shown that all word planning processes seem to be under attentional control. An increase of phonological errors has been reported in aphasics speakers in a dual-task with concurrent auditory stimuli appearing at SOA +300 ms (Laganaro et al, 2019). In the present study, we aim at investigating whether other word planning processes are affected by a concurrent dual-task if auditory stimuli are presented at different SoAs. 21 patients suffering from aphasia and 26 control subjects participated in this study. Participants underwent a picture naming task, an auditory detection task in isolation and under dual-task. Under dual-task condition, the auditory stimuli appeared at three SOAs (+150, +300 or +450 ms), corresponding to the time-window associated with lexical, phonological and phonetic encoding (Indefrey, 2011). In the dual-task, the participants had to name the pictures while pressing a key when they heard the target syllable. The results showed in both groups an interference at each SOA relative to single task on naming latencies. Analyses by type of error in aphasics speakers showed an increase of phonological errors at late SOAs (+300 and +450 ms) and an increase of omissions at SOA+150 ms. The results confirm the observation by Laganaro et al. (2019) that only phonological errors increased under dual-task condition was related to the specific SOA used. The increase of omissions and phonological errors at specific SOAs associated respectively to underlying lexical and post-lexical encoding processes confirm that attentional resources are involved at all encoding processes.

Keyphrases: aphasia, attention, dual-task interference, word production

@Booklet{EasyChair:6439,
  author = {Cyrielle Demierre and Grégoire Python and Bertrand Glize and Marina Laganaro},
  title = {Which Word Planning Processes Require Attention: Evidence from Dual-Task Interference in Aphasics Speakers},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 6439},

  year = {EasyChair, 2021}}