Abstract
A sentence comprehension test was performed to study the influence of context and syntactic structure on auditory sentence comprehension in aphasics. The subjects were 30 aphasics and 15 persons with no brain damage. The aphasics were divided into 6 groups according to clinical type (fluent/non-fluent) and total test score (low/medium/high). After the presentation of stories, a sentence comprehension test was given which consisted of 60 sentences varying in parameters of context (consistent/inconsistent with the presented stories) and syntactic structure (active/pas-sive). Results were as follows.
1) In non-brain-damaged subjects, both parameters had no influence, all sentences being equally easy to comprehend.
2) In aphasics, both parameters exerted significant influence on comprehension difficulty.
a) Inconsistent sentences were more difficult to comprehend than consistent sentences ; this tendecy proved more marked in aphasics with lower scores.
b) Passive sentences were more difficult to comprehend than active sentences.
