Grammaticality judgements of mildly aphasic individuals under dual-task conditions

This study examined the grammaticality judgements of mildly aphasic individuals under dual-task conditions in order to examine the relationship between syntactic processing and resource capacity and allocation in aphasia. Individuals with aphasia and age matched control subjects performed a listening task that required grammaticality judgements under isolation, focused attention, and divided attention conditions. Subjects were also required to rate task difficulty following completion of each listening condition. Although grammatical sensitivity was similar between groups during the isolation condition, introduction of a secondary, competing task resulted in significantly greater dual-task interference for the aphasic than for the control subjects. Despite these group differences in dual-task performance, aphasic and control subjects' perceptions of task difficulty failed to differ significantly. These findings provide further support for a resource limitation model of syntactic processing deficits in aphasia.