Aphasic word identification as a function of logical relationship and association strength.

Abstract

Aphasic word identification as a function of logical relationship and restricted association strength of clues was investigated to (1) establish the relative efficiency of strategies in eliciting word identificatons, and (2) compare aphasic and nonaphasic performance on the experimental task. Subjects were eleven aphasic adults from the University of Michigan aphasia program and eleven randomly selected college students. All aphasic subjects had completed college premorbidly. The word identification task was designed to elicit twenty target words (nouns). For each target word four clue words were selected which represented the following relationships to the target word: (1) logical, high association, (2) infralogical, high association, (3) in-fralogical, low association, and (4) logical, low association. Analysis of variance of the data indicated no significant difference between the groups in total number of words identified. The effect of the different clue combinations on word identification and the interaction between subjects and treatments were highly significant. The findings suggest similar patterns of facilitation of target word identification for both subject groups. However, high logical and high infralogical clues were more efficient in eliciting target words from nonaphasic than from aphasic subjects, while low infralogical and low logical clues were equally efficient.