Illiteracy and brain damage 3: A contribution to the study of speech and language disorders in illiterates with unilateral brain damage (initial testing)

Neuropsychological Aspects of Illiteracy

“…Lecours extensively reviewed the literature concerning aphasia in illiterate subjects (Lecours et al, 1987a(Lecours et al, , b, 1988. Before 1970, the existing information consisted of personal opinions and anecdotal evidence.…”

Educational level, socioeconomic status and aphasia research: A comment on Connor et al. (2001)—Effect of socioeconomic status on aphasia severity and recovery

“…Our preliminary conclusions based on the previous results are that: (a) there is little conclusive evidence that literacy does affect the hemispheric dominance for language organization; both illiterate as well as literate subjects present with aphasia most often after a left-and not a right-lateralized brain injury; (b) it appears, however, that the right hemisphere may have a greater role in language use in illiterate subjects; specifically, left-damaged literate subjects make a greater number of errors on some aphasia tests compared to left-damaged illiterate subjects (Lecours et al, 1988;Matute de Duran, 1986). One possible speculative interpretation of this latter finding is that the illiterate subjects may be more prone to use non-verbal strategies, in addition to language based, in different types of problem solving as suggested by for example CastroCaldas, Ferro, Guerreiro, Mariano, and Farrajota (1995).…”

“…However, we now know that visual naming skills assessed with line drawings are likely influenced by formal schooling and literacy (Reis, Petersson, Castro-Caldas, & Ingvar, 2001b). Therefore, it cannot be excluded that the findings of Lecours et al (1988) reflect pre-morbid differences between samples.…”

“…For instance, Cameron, Currier, and Haerer (1971) suggested that aphasia tended to be less severe and more transient in illiterate subjects and suggested that the cerebral infrastructure for language is not as well localized (''planted'') in the dominant hemisphere in illiterate as in literate subjects. Additional findings were interpreted as indicating a greater involvement of the right hemisphere in language processing in illiterate subjects (Lecours et al, 1988;Matute de Duran, 1986). In contrast, the findings of Dama asio, Ferro (1976a, 1976b) concluded that language lateralization does not depend on literacy.…”

“…In the study of Matute de Duran (1986) patients of several different types of aetiologies as well as different patterns of aphasic speech disorders were pooled and not fully balanced between study groups. A potential problem with the study of Lecours et al (1988) is that they based their neuropsychological assessment for language disorders mainly on visuographic material. They found significant differences between the normal controls and both of the left-hemisphere stroke groups, between the illiterate right-hemisphere group and the illiterate control group, but not between the literate control group and the right-hemisphere literate group.…”