Biomedical subjects

Nada Vasić

Publications and source records attributed to Nada Vasić.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Interpretation of pronouns in VP-ellipsis constructions in Dutch Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.

In this paper, we investigate the ability of Dutch agrammatic Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics to assign reference to possessive pronouns in elided VP constructions. The assumption is that the comprehension problems in these two populations have different sources that are revealed in distinct patterns of responses. The focus is primarily on the performance of the agrammatic group whose errors in comprehension are not viewed as a consequence of a breakdown of grammatical knowledge but as a result of limited processing resources (for an overview see Grodzinsky, 2000). The results of the present study provide evidence for the psycholinguistic reality of the economy hierarchy as proposed in the Primitives of Binding (Reuland, 2001). According to the economy hierarchy proposed for the non-brain-damaged, the more economical semantic dependencies are preferred over the costlier discourse dependencies. This hierarchy is reflected in agrammatic aphasia where the semantic dependencies are available on time and preferred over the discourse dependences that are not available on time as a result of the lack of processing resources with consequences for comprehension.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Reference assignment: using language breakdown to choose between theoretical approaches.

We report results of an experimental study with Dutch agrammatic aphasics that investigated their ability to interpret pronominal elements in transitive clauses and Exceptional Case Marking constructions (ECM). Using the obtained experimental results as a tool, we distinguish between three competing linguistic theories that aim at determining principles responsible for pronoun distribution: Government and Binding (Chomsky, 1981), Reflexivity (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993), and Primitives of Binding (Reuland, 2001). The obtained results are inconsistent with Government and Binding, but consistent with the latter two theories. We further show that the Primitives of Binding framework most naturally explains our results. Our proposal is based on the different performance demonstrated by patients in transitive clauses and ECM constructions, in combination with the often-made claim in the literature regarding the limitation of processing resources in this population (e.g., Haarmann and Kolk, 1991, Haarmann and Kolk, 1994 and Zurif et al., 1993, among others).

Adult↗

PubMed2005

[Myocardial sarcoidosis--new dignostic and therapeutic procedures].

INTRODUCTION: Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disorder of unknown etiology. Clinical manifestations depend on the disease activity and organ involvement. The actual incidence of myocardial sarcoidosis has never been established. Manifestations range from accidental findings and benign conditions to fatal cardiomyopathies and arrhythmias. DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES: Bernstein et al. first described myocardial sarcoidosis in 1929, and Getzen first described a lethal case caused by myocardial sarcoidosis in 1937. A definite histological diagnosis of sarcoidosis is dificult to make, and in some cases treatment should be initiated without histological confirmation. An optimal strategy for establishing diagnosis of myocardial sarcoidosis is not clear. Thallium scintigraphy (with additional use of gallium and technetium) is most often used and investigated 2D echocardiography is less sensitive, but could be an additional tool in diagnostics. New non-invasive techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) can also be applied in diagnostics of this disease. Considering life-threatening potential of myocardial sarcoidosis, prompt and aggressive treatment with corticosteroids and/or inmmunosuppressive drugs is necessary. CONCLUSION: Recognition of myocardial sarcoidosis and choice of adequate treatment regimen requires maximal involvement and team work of cardiologists and respirator), specialists. This paper also deals with new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, because early diagnosis and initiation of adequate treatment are the main prognostic factors of myocardial sarcoidosis.

Cardiomyopathies↗

PubMed2004

Cross-serial dependencies in Dutch: testing the influence of NP type on processing load.

We tested the cross-linguistic generalizability of three models of sentence processing complexity--Lewis (1996), Gibson (1998, 2000), and Gordon (Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001; Gordon, Hendrick, & Levine, 2002)--by investigating the on-line processing of cross-serial dependencies in Dutch. The number of subject-verb relations in a clause was manipulated, as well as type of noun phrase (indexical pronouns vs. proper names or full definite NPs). Several of our findings diverged from Gibson's model: Processing difficulty at the verbs was not affected by the use of proper names versus first- and second-person pronouns; an increase at the first verb was seen for full NPs versus pronouns in 3-verb constructions, which was predicted by the Gibson model, but is in contrast to Lewis's model. These findings are best explained within the framework of similarity-based inference models (Gordon et al., 2001; Gordon et al., 2002), according to which the number of similar NPs affects processing difficulty at the point of retrieval, and not specifically their discourse status or syntactic function.

Adolescent↗