Hanna K. Ulatowska

University of Texas at Dallas | UTD · School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

International Journal of Reminiscence and Life Review, 10, 51-55. https://journals.radford.edu/index.php/IJRLR People share and listen to stories of illness, trauma, and recovery as a powerful source of healing. Memoirs reflect the intimate, emotional, and personal insights of the wounded storyteller based on their experience of illness and recove...

FOCUS OF RESEARCH LINE: Content analysis of memoirs of authors with aphasia provides a unique window into their lived experience, legacy, identity, and culture. This pragmatic focus on communicative competence complements traditional linguistic narratology. The method may exclude representation of cultures in which written personal stories are inap...

Abstract: Humans carve pragmatic action and communicative purpose out of a boundless array of contexts and situation through the use of language. For people who have an acquired, neurogenic language disorder called aphasia, potential effects of the impairment on their pragmatic competence are of interest. People with aphasia vary from each other in...

Aphasias are a family of language impairments. They are associated with focal damage to the neurological networks that support language and that are typically localized to the left cerebral hemisphere. This chapter examines the pragmatic abilities of people who have aphasia. Component, perspectivist and functional views of pragmatics are each consi...

Aphasias are a family of language impairments. They are associated with focal damage to the neurological networks that support language and that are typically localized to the left cerebral hemisphere. This chapter examines the pragmatic abilities of people who have aphasia. Component, perspectivist and functional views of pragmatics are each consi...

Macrostructures provide the global meaning of a text. Using Aesop's fables, the main goal of this study has been to identify the advantages and limitations in using the macrostructure tasks of retell, summary, lesson, and gist as clinical tools in understanding 16 patients with mild-to-moderate aphasia. Results suggest that all of the macrostructur...

Background: Personal narratives have been suggested as a way for persons post stroke to re-establish their identity. To relate tellable personal stories, narrative competence - along with its building blocks - is essential. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe narrative competence in persons with mild to moderate aphasia. It ad...

Background: Discourse functionality is a primary goal of aphasia assessment and intervention. People who have aphasia often display a paradoxical functionality in their production of discourse, despite their aphasic impairment. A variety of linguistic and non-linguistic resources are orchestrated to produce coherent discourse. One discourse genre,...

Background: Reported speech has been examined extensively in linguistics and discourse research; however, very few studies on reported speech in narratives of individuals with aphasia have been undertaken. Previous research on stroke narratives focused on African American and Caucasian American populations and cultural variations in narrative style...

Teksty Drugie [Second Texts], 1/2 Język, Umysł, Mózg [Language, Mind, Brain], 183-189. Reprint in Polish translation of the original English version from Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 259-264, 1997; (A. Kinecka & B. Zakrzewski, Trans., with cooperation of J. Kordys & G. Grochowski). --- The article discusses the importance of determinin...

This article examines the preservation of pragmatic abilities of individuals with aphasia, as manifested in the discourse they produce. The construct of coherence is used as a framework for understanding this pragmatic preservation. Discourse coherence is largely derived from the structure, selection, and highlighting of information expressed in a...

Introduction Although narrative structure has been extensively studied in speakers with aphasia, narrative evaluation has been largely ignored. Evaluation is the process of assigning prominence to information in a narrative, by encoding it in a way which departs from the local norm of the text (Polanyi, 1989). An important function of evaluation i...

This case study focuses on a bilingual, older man who spoke Polish and English and showed weaknesses on clinical measures of dichotic listening in English. It was unclear whether these test results were influenced by the participant's facility with his second language or by other nonauditory factors. To elucidate the nature of this deficit, the aut...

Background: There is a tradition of social validation studies in the adult clinical treatment literature that has not yet been extended to narrative evaluation. This social validation process begins with lay listener holistic judgements of narrative quality for non-brain-injured narrators, and compares these judgements to clinician-researchers' ass...

NOTE: Content of this 2004 presentation is associated with the following 2005 publication: Olness, G. S., Ulatowska, H. K., Carpenter, C. M., Williams-Hubbard, L. J., & Dykes, J. C. (2005). Holistic assessment of narrative quality: A social validation study. Aphasiology, 19(3-5), 251-262. DOI: 10.1080/02687030444000723 -------------------- Backgrou...

Encyclopedic overview of the nature of 'discourse'

Background: There is a need for discourse research with African Americans who have aphasia, highlighted by ethnic group differences in stroke prevalence, and potential ethnic group differences in dialect. Identification of ethnic dialect is critical to differentiate communication changes associated with pathology from normal communicative differenc...

Background: Pictorial stimuli are a traditional means of discourse elicitation for individuals with aphasia. The discourse genre produced in response to pictures may be affected by the presence of aphasia, the nature of the stimulus, or both. Ethnicity may also influence discourse responses, an issue critical for effective differentiation between c...

We compared performance on language impairment, functional communication, and discourse measures between 33 African-American aphasic patients and 30 African-American normal subjects. The aphasic group performed significantly lower than the normal group on the Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia and Cortical Quotients, Token Test, and ASHA Functional As...

A focus on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) verb use in narratives is advantageous for examining the effects of dialect in aphasia. The inherent variability in speakers' use of dialect features is discussed. Verb morpho-syntax is examined in speakers of AAVE who have aphasia, and compared to that of African American normal controls. Diale...

Grammatical disturbances characteristic of the Polish language are illustrated in a longitudinal study of a patient with aphasia. Disturbances of the inflectional system of nouns and verbs consisted of substitution errors on inflectional suffixes and verb prefixes. Errors also occurred in stem alternations in both nouns and verbs. Forms which were...

A focus on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) verb use in narratives is advantageous for examining the effects of dialect in aphasia. The inherent variability in speakers' use of dialect features is discussed. Verb morpho-syntax is examined in speakers of AAVE who have aphasia, and compared to that of African American normal controls. Diale...

There is a paucity of performance information for African American adults with aphasia on appraisal tasks, especially in comparison with performance by neurologically normal African American adults. We administered language impairment, functional communication, and discourse measures to neurologically normal African American adults and African Amer...

This study considers the use of repetition in the narratives of African Americans and the way in which this ethnic use of repetition might be altered or constrained by aphasia. Two groups of African Americans-1 neurologically normal and I with aphasia-produced narratives of a frightening experience. Instances of repetition were analyzed qualitative...

Models of discourse comprehension emphasize the roles of textual and extratextual knowledge systems in inferential processing of texts. These knowledge systems were examined by compar- ing the levels of inferencing in moderately impaired aphasic patients and normal control subjects on gist and moral responses for fables. The responses were further...

This longitudinal study investigated discourse abilities in 16 normal adults in their 80s and 90s at two separate testing times. The discourse tasks evaluated macro-level processing of narratives as manifested on retells, summaries, gists, and morals, and in explanations of proverbs. The group results showed preservation with increased age on those...

This study compared proverb processing across three groups, i.e. patients with fluent aphasia (APH), patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and normal control subjects (NC). Proverb stimuli were used to examine the effects of group membership and proverb familiarity in two presentation formats (i.e. spontaneous versus multiple-choice) on performan...

The article discusses the importance of determining the relationship between sentence-level devices and narrative discourse for narrative theory. This issue is of special significance in the studies of aphasic language which often demonstrates a relative preservation of narrative discourse in spite of a disruption of sentence level devices. A theor...

In the lead article Parr recognizes a primary shortcoming of standardized assessment and ‘autonomous’ intervention. It is definitely true that the rehabilitation of the aphasic individual is not exclusively served by drilling the patient in the linguistic structures and grammars, but that the aphasic individual is also served by the development of...

The present study compared discourse ability across three groups: patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD), healthy old-elderly individuals (OE, >80 years), and normal control subjects (NC). Discourse samples were analyzed according to aspects of coherence using a methodology based on frame analysis (Goffman, 1974). The results revealed signific...

The author of the leading article deals with a topic very relevant to the general area of discourse performance in aphasia, and the goals which should be established for communicative therapy. Although the author brings up many useful points his argument has a number of serious shortcomings.

A number of recent studies have indicated that conversational discourse abdities are preserved in aphasia, at least at the global level. For example, Holland (1982) found that aphasic subjects exhibited communicative success much more frequently than they did communicative Cilure. Schienberg and Holland (1980). in a study of two Wemicke's aphasic s...

The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the relationship between cohesion and text quality in children's writing, (2) to compare different methods of measuring cohesion, and (3) to compare the cohesive properties of different genres. Narrative and procedural texts written by 30 fifth-grade children were analyzed using two sets of variables: nu...

Current interest in discourse performance has been motivated by the explanatory power provided by recent developments in discourse grammar. Discourse, unlike sentences, does not have a strict set of rules that specify grammaticality. Nor does discourse have a specified length. Although discourse is often described as a series of connected sentences...

The present study investigated moderately impaired aphasic subjects' ability to integrate information across sentences by having them identify antecedents for ambiguous pronouns in brief narratives. In order to disambiguate the pronouns, the subjects had to consult either textual cues and/or extratextual cues. In addition, the subjects' ability to...

A case of aphasia following left temporal lobe lesions is reported. The studied material was collected in a number of various tests including constructing of sentences and longer oral and written texts. A neurolioguistic analysis made possible an insight into the nature of the speech system in this case and characterization of disturbances in morph...

Much recent research in aphasia has been devoted to the characterization of the syndrome of agrammatism. At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that at least some aphasic syndromes and most notably agrammatism are deficits which are most precisely described along grammatical lines rather than according to the various linguistic activite...

The study was concerned with the ability to discourse in a group of 10 patients with minor or moderately severe disturbances in Alzheimer disease and in a control group of healthy subjects. The aim the study was to answer the question whether patients with this disease have language deficits, and if they have, then at what level they appear and wha...

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of investigations concerned with the language abilities of demented patients. These studies have suggested that the linguistic deficits in demented subjects may be specific rather than global. It appears that certain levels of language are disrupted, while others may be relatively spared. Th...

A homogeneous sample of normal adults living in a religious order in a study of age effects on reference as a cohesive device in discourse production and comprehension. Narrative and procedural discourse were examined across various levels of complexity and stimulus/response requirements. Results indicate that significant ambiguity of reference eme...

Thirty-three elderly women, whose mean age was 76.2 years, and eighteen middle-aged women, whose mean age was 45.6 years, were assessed on a number of linguistic discourse tasks. The women were well educated, and most of them were or had been engaged in the teaching profession. Each woman was given narrative discourse tasks involving recall of stor...

The reading performance of a Japanese Broca-type aphasic patient on a single-word reading test was investigated. The result indicated that the subject fits the symptom complex of deep dyslexia in more than one aspect. Unique characteristics of this subject included (1) the isolated subcortical site of the lesion, which apparently produced deep dysl...

This study documents the performance of a Wernicke aphasic on production of written discourse. The discourse data consisted of spontaneously produced texts of three different types: narrative discourse, personal and formal letters, and expository discourse. A detailed description of the language of this aphasic at a sentence and discourse level rev...

The study described the abilities of a group of 15 moderately impaired aphasics and 15 normals to produce narrative discourse. The experimental tasks included telling stories, summarizing stories, and giving morals to stories. The data were analyzed in terms of sentential grammar, discourse grammar, and subjective ratings of content and clarity of...

The abilities of a group of 15 moderately impaired aphasics and 15 normals to produce procedural discourse are described. The experimental tasks included producing four procedures of varying levels of complexity. The data were analyzed in terms of sentential grammar, discourse grammar, and subjective ratings of content and clarity of language. The...

Twenty-seven independently living older adults (18 women and 9 men) ranging in age from 65 to 87 years were interviewed in order to assess their competence. "Competence" was defined as effectiveness in dealing with the problems and opportunities characteristic of one's environment. Each participant completed the Block Design and Similarities subtes...

The study described the abilities of a group of 10 aphasics and 10 normals to produce narrative and procedural discourse. The experimental tasks included telling stories, producing summaries, giving morals to the stories, and producing procedures. The variables examined in the investigation included features of sentential grammars, such as amount o...

Longitudinal data on perceptual-motor, cognitive, and linguistic functioning is reported for two children: one with right hemispherectomy and one with left hemispherectomy. Both levels of functioning and specific profiles of abilities within an area of function are evaluated. The subjects both show effects from damage to the brain: shortened memory...

Residents (N = 27) of a Jewish home for the aged were given a battery of twenty-five tests of cognitive abilities. Participants included people carrying a diagnosis of organic brain syndrome. Subsets of tests were designed to measure immediate sequential memory, ability to handle categories, and ability to execute motor patterns. There were marked...

This paper reports an investigation into the dynamics of language processing by braindamaged subjects. An anagram task, here called the Sentence Construction Test (SCT) was designed, together with protocols for gathering and evaluating performance data. The experiment reported here consisted of administering the SCT to samples from three different...