Phonemic false evaluation?: Preliminary data from a conduction aphasia patient

Abstract

The present study provides a preliminary descriptive analysis of the production errors classified as ‘no source’ sound substitutions in the speech of a single conduction aphasic patient. Acoustic analyses of the errors as well as correct productions of the substituted sounds and on-target productions were conducted to examine whether the paraphasic errors were true substitution errors or instead reflected errors of articulatory implementation. Preliminary findings revealed that most perceived substitutions exhibited acoustic characteristics appropriate to the substituted sound, and thus most likely reflect true phoneme selection errors. Results are discussed in relation to the underlying nature of paraphasic errors in conduction aphasia and the phenomenon of phonemic false evaluation.