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Abstract:
Abstract: Understanding anaphoric reference is central to
discourse processing. For example, a passage might mention that a
girl picked some tulips and then several sentences later refer to
those tulips with the phrase, "the flowers." According to the
memory-based text processing framework, deciphering such anaphoric
references entails two sets of processes: (1) retrieval of relevant
possible antecedents from memory, and (2) inhibition of incorrect
antecedents activated in memory. In this study, we examined the
ability of patients with severe closed-head injury (CHI) to perform
these processes. Twenty severe CHI participants (> 1 year
post-injury) and 20 matched controls read passages with an
anaphoric reference to a target antecedent that shared features
with another word elsewhere in the passage. The target antecedent
either appeared early or late in the passage, with the related term
appearing in the opposite part of the passage. The control group
replicated a previous finding that a sentence referring to the
early antecedent can facilitate access to that term. In contrast,
the CHI group showed difficulty in retrieving the correct early
antecedent from memory when cued by the reinstatement sentence.
Nevertheless, the CHI group inhibited activation to the incorrect
antecedent. Patients with severe CHI thus displayed intact
inhibitory ability coupled with a memory retrieval deficit that
impacted discourse processing.
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