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An international team of researchers, including scientists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain, has unveiled new insights into the challenges faced by individuals with aphasia when expressing grammatical tense. The study, published in Aphasiology, explores how the impairments in forming and retrieving verb tenses can vary based on a patient’s native language, highlighting the critical role of language-specific factors in aphasia therapy and diagnosis.
Aphasia, often resulting from a stroke, is a severe speech disorder that hinders an individual’s ability to communicate effectively. One of the key difficulties for aphasia patients is the incorrect use of verb tenses, which obstructs their ability to refer to past or future events. This can have a significant impact on daily communication and quality of life.
To better understand the origins of these tense-related difficulties, the research team, which included experts from universities in Russia, Greece, Italy, the US, and Norway, conducted an experiment. They hypothesized that these challenges could stem from two primary processes: encoding and retrieval.
During encoding, individuals form a mental representation of time—deciding whether an action took place in the past, present, or future. Retrieval involves selecting the appropriate verb tense to express this concept. The researchers tested aphasia patients across four languages—Greek, Russian, Italian, and English—chosen for their distinct verb tense structures. This approach allowed the team to investigate how language-specific features influence the encoding and retrieval of tense in patients with aphasia.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers designed two sentence-completion tasks. The first task required participants to complete sentences that involved both encoding and retrieval, such as: “Yesterday, the gardener watered the flowers. Tomorrow, the gardener will… the flowers.” The second task focused on retrieval alone, where participants had to complete sentences without changing the tense of the verb, such as: “The gardener is currently… watering the plants.”
The results revealed that while most participants had difficulties with both encoding and retrieval, the severity of these issues depended on the language spoken. For instance, Russian- and English-speaking participants were more likely to struggle with the retrieval task, while Greek- and Italian-speaking participants encountered more difficulties during encoding. Interestingly, some aphasia patients had trouble referring to the past, while others struggled with future events, indicating that difficulties in expressing time were not uniform.
Olga Buivolova, a Research Fellow at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain and one of the study’s authors, emphasized the significance of these findings for understanding how aphasia patients lose the ability to express time. “These insights can help us develop more targeted and effective therapeutic approaches for patients with aphasia,” she said.
The study’s conclusions also carry practical implications for neurorehabilitation. The researchers’ experimental method can assist in identifying the specific causes of tense-related difficulties, allowing speech therapists and neuropsychologists to develop more personalized treatment plans. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of considering a patient’s native language when diagnosing aphasia, leading to more accurate assessments and better overall care.
In conclusion, the research provides valuable evidence that language-specific factors play a pivotal role in shaping the challenges aphasia patients face when expressing tense. This new understanding paves the way for more precise diagnoses and individualized therapeutic interventions, offering hope for improved outcomes in aphasia rehabilitation.
For more information:
Valantis Fyndanis et al, Teasing apart time reference-related encoding and retrieval deficits in aphasia: evidence from Greek, Russian, Italian, and English, Aphasiology (2024). DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2024.2415927
