Aphasic articulatory defect and aphasic phonological defect.

Abstract

The differentiation of aphasic articulatory defect and aphasic phonological defect is described. Six non-fluent and five fluent subjects, from a group of 48 aphasics, were distinguished by their responses in single word tests designed to assess phonemic accuracy and auditory discrimination ability. Discriminant analysis, operating on a subset of the differentiating variables, linked 23 further subjects with the non-fluent and five further subjects with the fluent group. The response patterns of the enlarged groups were essentially similar to those of the small non-fluent and fluent groups in variables excluded from the analysis. A speech production problem, characterized by, for example, non-speech rehearsals, distorted speech sounds and a consistent order of difficulty of phoneme classes associated with consonant complexity, is contrasted with a linguistic disorder in which no consonant class is more problematical than others, phonemic and lexical errors exist in input as well as in output and much stutt...