Thematic Roles in Production

The TRIP assessment was developed as a resource for speech and language pathologists for use with aphasic people who have deficits in word retrieval. The assessment aims to detect whether retrieval difficulties are due to an impairment at the word or sentance level, focusing on thematic roles in elicited production. The TRIP addresses this by comparing retieval of the same item within both single word and sentence contexts, providing a method of differentiating the problem from more traditionally desceribed anomias and providing a profile from which to plan appropriate therapeutic strategies. The TRIP draws theoretically from the cognitive neuropsychological literature. It moves beyond single word processing models and is based on a model of sentence processing. Eighty picture cards are used to explore words assigned different thematic roles in sentences of varying argument structure. The cards are divided into two matched sub-texts.