Erratum: Reply to Aten, Darley, Deal, and Johns

Abstract

Two lines were omitted from A. Damien Martin’s letter to the editor, “Reply to Aten, Darley, Deal, and Johns,” which appeared on pages 420–422 of the August, 1975, Volume 40, issue of this journal. The paragraph should read: The writers state flatly “But the simple fact, known to everyone … is that not all aphasic patients display phonologic impairment. Only some of them do. And some patients display phonological impairment in pure culture with no associated problems in the use of lexicon or syntax.” There is not total agreement on this. Schuell (1965) pointed out that her Group I and II patients presented inconsistent misarticulation, while Group III patients presented phonological difficulties as a major presenting symptom. In some of my own research (Martin and Rigrodsky, 1974a, 1974b) patients who did not present phonological impairment as a major symptom showed it within certain tasks. In a later study (Martin et al., 1975) we found that the incidence, type, and position of error were related to the presence or absence of morphological inflection. The arguments presented by Aten et al. illustrate one of the dangers of categorization, especially dischotomous categorization. It can reflect “the old error of observing only the most obvious symptoms that fit some a priori assumption, or symptoms prominent at one point in time” (Schuell, Jenkins, and Jimenez-Pabon, 1964, p. 101).