Processing deficits at the lexical level, such as delayed and reduced lexical activation, have been theorized as the source of breakdowns in syntactic operations and thus contribute to sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia (IWA). In the current study, we investigate the relationship between lexical and syntactic processing in object-relative sentences using eye-tracking while listening in IWA. We explore whether manipulating the time available to process a critical lexical item (the direct-object noun) when it is initially heard in a sentence has an immediate effect on lexical access as well as a downstream effect on syntactic processing. To achieve this aim, we use novel temporal manipulations to provide additional time for lexical processing to occur. In addition to exploring these temporal effects in IWA, we also seek to understand the effect that additional time has on sentence processing in neurotypical age-matched adults (AMC). We predict that the temporal manipulations designed to provide increased processing time for critical lexical items will 1) enhance lexical processing of the target noun, 2) facilitate syntactic integration, and 3) improve sentence comprehension for both IWA and AMC. We demonstrate that strengthening lexical processing via the addition of time can affect lexical processing and facilitate syntactic retrieval of the target noun and lead to enhanced interference resolution in both unimpaired and impaired systems. In aphasia, additional time can mitigate impairments in spreading activation thereby improving lexical access and reducing interference during downstream dependency linking. However, individuals with aphasia may require longer additions of time to fully realize these benefits.

词汇层面的处理缺陷，例如词汇激活的延迟和减少，被认为是句法操作故障的根源，从而导致失语症患者的句子理解缺陷（IWA）。在当前的研究中，我们在 IWA 中聆听时使用眼动追踪来研究对象相关句子中词汇和句法处理之间的关系。我们探讨了在句子中首次听到关键词汇项（直接宾语名词）时，控制可用于处理该词汇项的时间是否会对词汇访问产生直接影响，并对句法处理产生下游影响。为了实现这一目标，我们使用新颖的时间操作来为词汇处理的发生提供额外的时间。除了在 IWA 中探索这些时间效应之外，我们还试图了解额外时间对神经典型年龄匹配成年人 (AMC) 的句子处理的影响。我们预测，旨在增加关键词汇项处理时间的时间操作将 1) 增强目标名词的词汇处理，2) 促进句法整合，3) 提高 IWA 和 AMC 的句子理解。我们证明，通过增加时间来加强词汇处理可以影响词汇处理并促进目标名词的句法检索，并导致未受损和受损系统中的干扰分辨率增强。在失语症中，额外的时间可以减轻传播激活的损伤，从而改善词汇访问并减少下游依存链接期间的干扰。然而，失语症患者可能需要更长的时间才能完全实现这些好处。