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Dr. Ramsberger's research focuses on the rehabilitation
of persons with acquired neurologically based language and
cognitive disorders. In her efforts to discover new and effective
rehabilitation approaches, she seeks to understand the linguistic,cognitive,
social, environmental and emotional factors that contribute
to communicative success.
Dr. Ramsberger's current research projects are aimed at
better understanding the variables that contribute to functional
outcomes in people who have aphasia, with the ultimate goal
of using this information to develop more effective rehabilitation
programs. Two projects are collaborative efforts with Akira
Miyake, Ph.D., in which expertise from the fields of cognitive
psychology and speech-language pathology are being combined
to study the role that nonlinguistic cognitive processes (more
specifically, executive functions) play in the communicative
success of persons with aphasia. This project reflects a paradigm
shift in two dimensions of traditional aphasia rehabilitation
research focus. First, instead of emphasizing the production
and comprehension of linguistically well-formed sentences
in laboratory situations, their work focuses on functional
communication in real life situations. Second, instead of
emphasizing the role of purely linguistic processes, their
work recognizes the importance of nonlinguistic process in
real life communication.
A third project is a collaborative effort with Lise Menn,
Ph.D., in which expertise from the fields of linguistics and
speech-language pathology are being combined to study the
role that communicative partnerships play in the communicative
success of persons with aphasia. This project examines conversational
interactions of people with aphasia and communicative partners
who do not have aphasia. Building upon methodology that has
been used in conversational analysis of neurologically intact
people, they are studying conversational interactions in order
to better understand the linguistic and nonlinguistic means
by which communication is achieved.
Selected Publications:
Ramsberger, G., & Rende, B. (in press). Measuring transactional
success in the conversation of people with aphasia. Aphasiology.
Rende, B., Ramsberger, G., & Miyake, A. (in press). Commonalities
and differences in the working memory components underlying
letter and category fluency tasks: A dual task investigation.
Neuropsychology.
Ramsberger, G., & Menn, L. (in press). Co-Constructing
Lucy: Adding a social perspective to the assessment of communication
success in aphasia. In Goodwin, C. (Ed.), The Pragmatic Life
of Brain Damaged Patients: Situating Language Impairments
Within Conversation. London: Oxford University Press.
Gahl, S., Menn, L., Ramsberger, G., Jurafsky, D. S., Elder,
E., Reweg, M., & Holland, A. L. (in press). Syntactic
frame and verb bias in aphasia: Plausibility judgments of
undergoer-subject sentences. Brain and Cognition.
Ramsberger, G., Miyake, A., Menn, L., Reilly, K., & Filley,
C. (1999). Selective preservation of geographic and numeric
information in a patient with severe anomia. Aphasiology 13,
8, 625-645.
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