**3.2 The analyses of the SC condition**

We compared the performance data for SC between all patients and the normal controls to examine whether or not such basic comprehension of sentences was affected for the patients. The patients showed no significant difference in error rates for SC when compared with the normal controls (t (40) = 0.87, p = 0.4) (Table 2). Regarding RTs for SC, there was no significant difference between the patients and normal controls (t (40) = 0.36, p = 0.7). Moreover, paired t-tests showed that the patients' error rates were significantly lower for SC than for AS, PS, and SS (AS: t (20) = 3.6, p = 0.020; PS: t (20) = 3.4, p = 0.0029; SS: t (20) = 4.5, p = 0.0002), whereas the normal controls' error rates for SC were not significantly different from those for the three main conditions (p > 0.7). For both the patients and normal controls, RTs were significantly shorter for SC than for the three main conditions (all, p < 0.0001). These results indicate that basic comprehension of sentences under the SC condition was preserved among the patients.
