Verbal and nonverbal memory impairment in aphasia

Abstract

Repetition is frequently impaired in aphasia, most strikingly in conduction aphasia. The still not fully answered question is whether this relates to a linguistic deficit or to a general impairment of working memory extending to other modalities as well. To contribute to this problem, we assessed 49 aphasic and 50 non-aphasic stroke patients using an aphasia test plus three memory tests in forward and backward fashion, taxing verbal, numerical, spatial, and facial retention. The results show that in aphasics there is a memory gradient declining gradually from verbal to nonverbal content reflecting aphasia severity and that aphasics generally perform worse than non-aphasics, even if they present with similar cerebral lesions.