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Abstract:
Abstract: The degree to which syntactic and discourse
comprehension rely on common or disparate processing systems is a
matter of continuing debate in psycholinguistics, particularly in
aphasia research (Caplan & Waters, 1999). The present study
examines possible relationships between discourse comprehension (as
measured by Gernsbacher's Discourse Comprehension Battery), overall
"literacy" (as measured by the Stanovich survey), and auditory
syntactic comprehension (as measured by accuracy and reaction time
for 12 sentence types of differing syntactic complexity, similar to
those used by Miyake, Carpenter, & Just, 1994). In addition, we
assessed syntactic comprehension not only under normal listening
conditions, but under single- and dual "stress" conditions as well
(50% speech rate compression, and 50% speech rate compression
1000Hz low pass filter). Results from two experiments with 157 and
131 college students showed that stress can dramatically exaggerate
differences in syntactic difficulty (consonant with the findings of
Dick, Bates, Wulfeck, Utman, & Dronkers, 1999), and that
general discourse comprehension skill can significantly predict
syntactic comprehension profiles. We discuss the results with
reference to competing models of language development,
comprehension, and breakdown.
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