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PubMed1983

Comprehension strategies determining reference in aphasia: a study of reflexivization.

This study explored the comprehension of reference in aphasia as reflected in reflexivization. A total of 132 test sentences were used consisting of two basic syntactic frames varying in the minimal distance principle and in the type of cues available in the sentence (syntax, syntax and morphology, syntax and lexical, and syntax, morphology, and lexical) for determining pronominal reference. Fifteen patients, five Broca's, five Conduction, and five Wernicke's, were asked to point to the picture (of two) corresponding to the auditorily presented test sentence. Results indicated that aphasic patients as a whole comprehend reference; however, their performance varied depending on the nature of the cues available in the sentence. All groups were impaired when only syntactic cues were available and showed a significant decrement in performance when the test sentence violated the minimal distance principle. As additional cues other than syntactic structure were provided, performance level increased. All groups, including the Broca's aphasics, showed only slight improvement with the presence of morphological cues. Wernicke's aphasic's performance was particularly vulnerable when lexical cues were added to syntactic cues. These results suggest that evaluation of a patient's deficit in sentence comprehension requires analysis of those attributes of the sentence contributing to its overall semantic interpretation.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Facet theory applied to the construction and validation of the Aachen Aphasia Test.

The linguistic performance of 120 aphasic patients of the four standard syndromes assessed by the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) is analyzed by a nonmetric (ordinal) multidimensional scaling procedure (Smallest Space Analysis, SSA1). The linguistic structure of the test items is characterized within the framework of L. Guttman's facet theory. Three systematic components (facets) are discerned: linguistic modality, unit, and regularity. Properties of the facets as well as their relations are assessed and tested empirically by analyzing the interrelations among different items or sets of items. The spatial configurations obtained by the scaling procedure fit only partially the expectations derived from the facet-theory model. The modality facet was found to have a strong overriding influence on the aphasic test performance. The facets unit and regularity were only found for the most rigorously designed subtests. Written Language and Comprehension. The results suggest the introduction of a new combined facet linguistic complexity which reflects the dependency of the facets regularity and unit.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Phonetic disintegration in aphasia: acoustic analysis of spectral characteristics for place of articulation.

In this study, we attempted to determine whether phonetic disintegration of speech in Broca's aphasia affects the spectral characteristics of speech sounds as has been shown for the temporal characteristics of speech. To this end, we investigated the production of place of articulation in Broca's aphasics. Acoustic analysis of the spectral characteristics for stop consonants were conducted. Results indicated that the static aspects of speech production were preserved, as Broca's aphasics seemed to be able to reach the articulatory configuration for the appropriate place of articulation. However, the dynamic aspects of speech production seemed to be impaired, as their productions reflected problems with the source characteristics of speech sounds and with the integration of articulatory movements in the vocal tract. Listener perceptions of the aphasics' productions were compared with acoustic analyses for these same productions. The two measures were related; that is, the spectral characteristics of the utterances provided salient cues for place of articulation perception. An analysis of the occurrences of errors along the dimensions of voicing and place showed that aphasics rarely produce utterances containing both voice and place substitutions.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Speech sound errors in patients with conduction and Broca's aphasia.

Speech sound errors exhibited by three conduction and three Broca's aphasic patients on naming and word-repetition tasks were subjected to phonemic and subphonemic analyses. In the conduction aphasic patients, errors occurred equally often on consonants and vowels in both the naming and word-repetition tasks, while in the Broca's aphasic patients errors occurred selectively on consonants. Transposition errors occurred almost as often as substitution errors in the conduction aphasic patients, while substitution errors constituted the majority of errors in the Broca's aphasic patients. The Broca's aphasic patients, as compared to the conduction aphasic patients, exhibited a markedly higher number of substitution errors occurring between phonemes separated by a single subphonemic feature on the naming task. On the basis of these findings, it was hypothesized that the differences in the error patterns of the two types of aphasia reflected differences in the underlying mechanisms of the impairment in each type.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

What the classical aphasia categories can't do for us, and why.

A good deal of activity in contemporary aphasia research goes under the label "neurolinguistics." What characterizes this enterprise is, among other things, its goal of identifying neurally realized computational subsystems that support language processing. In this essay the thesis is put forward that this goal will not be served by the continued exploitation of the classical (Wernicke-Lichtheim) taxonomic categories. These categories, it is argued, cannot by virtue of their "polytypic" structure support the relevant neurolinguistic generalizations.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1984

Immediate memory span, recognition memory for subspan series of words, and serial position effects in recognition memory for supraspan series of verbal and nonverbal items in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.

Four Broca's aphasics, four Wernicke's aphasics, and four matched controls were investigated on three verbal and one visual short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 considered memory span and subspan recognition memory for verbal items and Experiment 2 assessed serial position effects in supraspan verbal recognition memory. The Broca's aphasics demonstrated verbal memory deficits, which could not be attributed to linguistic disturbances, while the verbal memory deficiencies seen with the Wernicke's aphasics could be regarded as secondary to linguistic defects. In Experiment 3, where visual recognition memory was investigated, only the Broca's aphasics showed deficient performance. The wider context of deficient mnemonic performance in aphasia is discussed.

Aged↗
PubMed1986

A comparison of speech sound durations in three syndromes of aphasia.

This study compared the durations of selected vowels and consonants produced by three groups of aphasics and a normal control group in confrontation naming and single-word repetition tasks. There were seven aphasic subjects in each of the syndromes of Broca's, Wernicke's, amnesic, and conduction aphasia, in addition to a group of seven normal subjects. Wide-band spectrograms were used to measure speech sound durations. Analysis of group data revealed no significant differences in the durations of vowels or consonants across the four subject groups. In addition, there were no differences in speech sound durations for the confrontation naming versus repetition tasks. When two speech-language pathologists listened to tape recordings of all subjects performing the two tasks, they judged the speech of two Broca's aphasics as being labored, while the speech of the remaining subjects was not judged as labored. Clinical judgments of labored speech appeared to correspond to acoustical measurements of speech sound duration, as the two Broca's aphasics judged to be labored displayed longer durations than those subjects who were not judged as labored. The increase in duration was particularly marked for vowels and for sounds in polysyllabic words. The results are discussed in relation to current descriptions of the articulatory characteristics of Broca's aphasics. Clinical implications are also addressed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Anomia in moderate aphasia: problems in accessing the lexical representation.

This study has two objectives: (1) to determine through the analysis of surface manifestations of anomia whether one or several anomic syndromes exist, (2) to identify the psycholinguistic process at fault in anomia with reference to M. F. Garrett's (1982, in A. Ellis (Ed.), Normality and pathology in cognitive functions, London/New York: Academic Press) language production model. Two naming tasks were administered to 24 moderate aphasics. Test A was a standard naming task, and test B was a similar task which included subtests designed to indicate which level of representation was affected whenever patients did not name the target word. The subtests required, respectively, the identification of (a) a conceptual property, (b) two semantic attributes, (c) the first and (d) last syllable of the target word, and (e) the target word itself. Descriptive statistics yielded three groups of subjects different in terms of surface anomic manifestations, yet unrelated to clinical type of aphasia. Moreover, no significant differences between groups emerged on the subtests. All groups showed a good performance on the conceptual and the semantic subtests, suggesting preservation of high-level cognitive and semantic processes. In contrast, subjects evidenced poorer performances in syllabic identification, indicating a disruption of lower level mechanisms which are assumed to retrieve and process formal lexical representations. Results support the view that aphasic anomia originates from a difficulty in accessing the formal lexical representation and not from a semantic problem.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Contextual influences in aphasia: effects of predictive versus nonpredictive narratives.

The influence of prior linguistic predictive and nonpredictive context on the comprehension of reversible passive sentences was investigated in 16 adults with aphasia. Eight subjects were classified as fluent and 8 as nonfluent. Subjects were presented with the sentences in isolation and preceded by nonpredictive and predictive contextual paragraphs. The overall results indicated that the subjects benefited significantly from the prior contextual narratives regardless of whether the paragraphs were predictive or nonpredictive. There were no significant differences between the two subject groups. The significant facilitation generated by the nonpredictive context suggests that redundancy of information may play a role in comprehension.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Verb processing during sentence comprehension in aphasia.

This study examines verb processing during on-line sentence comprehension in aphasia. We describe two experiments that explore whether a group of Broca's aphasics, who were agrammatic in comprehension as well as speech, a group of fluent aphasics, and a group of normal controls are sensitive to the argument structure arrangements of verbs. Subjects had to perform a complex secondary task both in the immediate vicinity of the verb and also at a point well past the verb while listening to sentences for meaning. Reaction times to this secondary task show that both normal controls and agrammatic Broca's aphasic subjects activate multiple argument structure possibilities for a verb in the vicinity of the verb, yet at a point downstream from the verb such effects disappear. These data suggest that the problems agrammatic subjects show with verbs in sentence comprehension, and the general lexical access deficit also recently claimed to be part of the agrammatics' problem, may not extend to the real-time processing of verbs and their arguments. Fluent aphasic subjects, on the other hand, do not show sensitivity to the argument structure properties of verbs, suggesting that these patients may have a semantic-like sentence processing deficit.

Aged↗
PubMed1991

Speech-related body movement in aphasia: period analysis of upper arms and head movement.

The effects of aphasia on coverbal body movement have important implications for the understanding of both normal and pathological speech processes. The related findings were often inconsistent, partly due to inherent methodological difficulties which could be reduced by the use of advanced techniques of movement monitoring (Hadar, 1991). The present study employed a new computerized system, CODA-3, which locates small prismatic markers and computes by triangulation their three-dimensional position at 100 Hz. Movement of the head and the upper arms was monitored in 15 aphasic and normal subjects engaged in speech during a naturalistic interview. Movement analysis was based on automatized identification of successive movement extrema ("period analysis") and the computation of amplitude, duration, and velocity of each period. The results showed higher incidence and amplitude of all body movement in the aphasic population. Fluent aphasics showed this particularly with "symbolic," content-bearing movements, while nonfluent aphasics were higher than controls in both symbolic and "motor" (simple and small) movements. No deficit in the internal organization of movement was seen in the aphasic population. These results indicate that aphasics increase their coverbal movement in compensation for their speech impairment: fluent aphasics compensate primarily for a symbolic impairment, while nonfluent aphasics compensate more for a motor impairment.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

The influence of sex and age on the incidence and type of aphasia.

The relation of sex and age to the incidence and type of aphasia was investigated in 200 aphasic patients. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) Males and females show language disorder with equal frequency. (2) There is a prevalence of non-fluent aphasics in males as compared to females. (3) Broca's aphasics are mildly, but significantly young than Wernicke's aphasics.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1981

Word-retrieval in aphasia: an investigation of semantic complexity.

Performance of aphasic subjects in adjective recognition and production tasks in which adjectives varied in semantic feature and markedness complexity was investigated. Twelve pairs of adjectives were examined in three experimental tasks; viz., picture recognition, antonym production, and sentence completion. Subjects were eight nonfluent and eight fluent aphasics. The results indicate significant differences in performance were dependent upon semantic features, markedness, experimental tasks, and type of aphasia. The discussion related semantic complexity to cognitive processes.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1987

Auditory syntactic comprehension in nine aphasia groups (with CT scans) and children: differences in degree but not order of difficulty observed.

Auditory syntactic comprehension was examined in nine groups of aphasics (60 stroke cases) and 3 and 6 year old children. Ten syntactic contrast pairs were studied. Differences in degree but not order of difficulty were observed. The 5 easier pairs were Gender; On/Under; Negative/Affirmative; Object-number; Subject-number; the 5 more difficult pairs were Past/Present; Subject/Object Reversible; Is/Are; Relative Clause; and Future/Present. The "marked" half-pair was significantly more difficult--i.e., Negative vs. Affirmative; Plural vs. Singular Subject; Future or Past vs. Present. Performance on the test was significantly correlated with the BDAE Auditory Comprehension z-score and Token Test. The 3 year old children most closely resembled the Severe Wernicke's (but were better than the Globals), and the 6 year old children were similar to aphasia cases with mild comprehension deficits and frontal or parietal perisylvian lesions which spared most of Wernicke's area. Wernicke's area (posterior two-thirds superior temporal gyrus area) appears to be the area most sensitive to auditory syntactic comprehension. However, the surrounding perisylvian areas including frontal and parietal lobes are also areas sensitive to syntactic comprehension.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Grammatical morphology in aphasia: evidence from three languages.

Aspects of grammatical morphology in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia were elicited under controlled conditions in three language groups: English, Italian and German. Results suggest that the agrammatism/paragrammatism distinction does not work well for richly-inflected languages. Language-specific ratios of closed class morphology were preserved even among non-fluent patients, with significantly more morphology produced by German and Italian patients. German and Italian patients were also much more likely to furnish the article before nouns--despite or perhaps because of the fact that articles are more complex and informative in those languages. Although patients assigned the correct article most of the time, there were a significant number of article errors (i.e. paragrammatic substitution). Error analyses showed that substitutions are not random, reflecting difficulty in access rather than loss. Substitutions were more common in German, where the complex case and gender markings on the article increase the probability of error. Within each language, error patterns were quite similar for Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. However, at a detailed level patient group differences in error production were detected. German Broca's aphasics tend to avoid difficult case forms by substituting a simpler, less-marked morphosyntactic frame. Wernicke's aphasics try instead to produce the more marked, oblique constructions, resulting in a less conservative error pattern.

Animals↗
PubMed1979

Lexical semantics and memory for words in aphasia.

Aphasic and non-neurological patients were assessed on a word recognition memory task. On any one trial, some words were instances of the same superordinate category, thus presupposing a common abstract conceptual feature, and some words could be linked thematically in the sense of forming context-dependent relations. Observing the temporal order in which patients pointed to the words they recognized permitted an assessment of the extent to which they clustered their responses either in terms of superordinate categories or along thematic lines. The conceptual structures indicated by these clusters were compared with those observed in a previous task requiring judgments of word relatedness. The data suggest that verbal memory limitations in aphasia are only in part linked to constraints on the conceptual features structuring lexical knowledge; and relatedly they raise the possibility that aphasics may have a disturbance of mnemonic processing quite apart from any disruption to language.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

An approach to analyzing a single subject's scores obtained in a standardized test with application to the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT).

Methods for the analysis of a single subject's test profile(s) proposed by Huber (1973) are applied to the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT). The procedures are based on the classical test theory model (Lord & Novick, 1968) and are suited for any (achievement) test with standard norms from a large standardization sample and satisfactory reliability estimates. Two test profiles of a Wernicke's aphasic, obtained before and after a 3-month period of speech therapy, are analyzed using inferential comparisons between (groups of) subtest scores on one test application and between two test administrations for single (groups of) subtests. For each of these comparisons, the two aspects of (i) significant (reliable) differences in performance beyond measurement error and (ii) the diagnostic validity of that difference in the reference population of aphasic patients are assessed. Significant differences between standardized subtest scores and a remarkably better preserved reading and writing ability could be found for both test administrations using the multiple test procedure of Holm (1979). Comparison of both profiles revealed an overall increase in performance for each subtest as well as changes in level of performance relations between pairs of subtests.

Anomia↗
PubMed1982

From three to 3: a differential analysis of skills in transcoding quantities between patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.

A psycholinguistic investigation into the ability of aphasic patients to transcode integer quantities from written numeral forms into digit strings is reported. Broca's aphasics experienced specific difficulties in handling the grammatical structure underlying word order and also, on the word level, the bound morphemes relative to the root morphemes. Wernicke's aphasics seemed to have lexical troubles reflected by some purely lexical confusions together with serial order disturbances. These findings support the hypothesis of differential preserved/impaired skills according to type of aphasia, but having a high level of generality since they appear in classic linguistic tasks as well as in the domain of numbers.

Adult↗