An Investigation of Phonological Impairment in Aphasia, Part 1

Phonology: A Review and Proposals from a Connectionist Perspective

“…First, phonemic selection errors are constrained by the lexical target and both normal subjects and aphasic patients make more phonological errors repeating nonwords than real words (Alajouanine & Lhermitte, 1973;Brener, 1940;Martin & Rigrodsky, 1974). Aphasic patients with relatively good access to lexical targets (e.g., Broca's, conduction) demonstrate conduite d'approche (continuous improvement in their effort to zero-in on the target through successive attempts), whereas those (e.g., patients with Wernicke's aphasia) with poor lexical-semantic access are much less likely to exhibit this phenomenon (Butterworth, 1979;Gandour, Akamanon, Dechongkit, Khunadorn, & Boonklam, 1994;Joanette, Keller, & Lecours, 1980;Miller & Ellis, 1987;Valdois, Joanette, & Nespoulous, 1989; but see also Goodglass, Wingfield, Hyde, Gleason, Bowles, & Gallagher, 1997).…”

Phonological processes and phonemic paraphasias

“…An alternative proposal may be that the phonological breakdown in posterior aphasia may be related to the linguistic deficit rather than to an articulatory deficit. Posterior aphasic subje,cts have, in fact, been noted to make a number of simultaneous semantic and phonological confusions (Burns and Canter 1977, Kohn 1984, Martin and Rigrodsky 1974. This combined phonological and lexical-semantic deficit may possibly be reflected in the predominance of syllabic structure processes noted in the speech ofposterior aphasic subjects in the present reanalysis.…”

“…Many individual case studies have also been published (Caramazza, Berndt and Basili 1983, Duchan, Stengel and Oliva 1980, Gandour, Buckmgham, Dardaranda, Stawathumrong and Petty 1982, Niemi, and Koivuselka-Salliner 1985. A pertinent aspect of all investigations has been the analytical method used to collect and classify the data since this influences the results obtained (Bums and Canter 1977, Canter, Trost and Bums 1985, Kohn 1984, Martin and Rigrodsky 1974, MacKenzie 1982. The distinctive feature approach has been the most frequently used means of analysis.…”

Neuropsychological Processes in Adult Aphasia: Rationale for Treatment

“…Several writers have stressed the complex interaction among phonologica1, syntactic and semantic systems. Rigrodsky (1974a and1974b) and Martin,et a1 (1 975) conducted extensive investigations of articulatory performance in aphasics. A major contribution of these studies was the demonstration that other aspects of language influenced aphasic performance on the phonemic level.…”