Stephanie Kelter

Analytical competence and language impairment in aphasia

Abstract Matched groups of Brocas and Wernickes aphasics, brain-damaged patients without aphasia and chronic schizophrenics were tested in a nonverbal matching task where the subject had to indicate which of two pictures was more closely linked to a clue picture. Eight additional verbal and nonverbal reference tasks were administered. Both aphasic groups performed worse than brain-damaged controls when the identification of individual attributes or actions shared by clue and referent was required, but were unimpaired when the two had a set of referential-situational associations in common. Factor analyses resulted for both groups in two factors, one of which represents general Language Impairment. For the Brocas aphasics this factor was closely related to general organic deficit as measured by the Trail Making Test; for the Wernickes aphasics it was associated with tasks which might be considered illustrative of analytical competence in isolating and comparing individual features of objects or concepts.

Verbal coding and visual memory in aphasics

Abstract Fluent and non-fluent aphasics, non-aphasic brain-damaged patients, schizophrenics, and normal controls were tested in a non-verbal visual retention task (object-drawings, snowflakes). All groups of neurological and psychiatric patients scored lower than normal controls under a rehearsal condition. Differences levelled off when a distractor task was interpolated. While fluent aphasics were impaired with both the object-drawings and the snowflakes, non-fluent aphasics were impaired only with the latter. Results are discussed with respect to the verbal-encoding hypothesis and other theories of aphasia.

The conceptual structure of aphasic and schizophrenic patients in a nonverbal sorting task

Hierarchical and overlapping cluster methods were applied to the sortings of aphasic, nonaphasic brain-damaged, schizophrenic, and normal subjects presented with 30 pictures of animals. The hierarchical structure solutions were most diffuse for the groups of the schizophrenics and the fluent aphasics. The structure for the nonfluent aphasics showed more clarity, but was also deviant from the structures of the normals and the brain-damaged without aphasia. Fluent aphasics but not nonfluent aphasics tended to sort pictures which they could not name into smaller groups. For the nonfluent aphasics, there was a significant correlation between the commonality of the sortings and the severity of aphasic disturbances as measured by the Token Test. The relationship between conceptual disorganization and language impairment seems to be functionally different for fluent and nonfluent aphasics.

Restricted associations in aphasics and schizophrenics

SummaryMatched groups (N=25) of fluent and nonfluent aphasics, brain-damaged and normal controls as well as schizophrenics were requested to name (1) as many animals and (2) as many things that are typically yellow as possible within 5 min. The main results of Gloning & Müller (1972) as to smaller numbers of correct responses, higher percentages of repetitions, shorter association clusters, and higher popularity in aphasics could be replicated for the animal task. Comparing the data from both tasks for fluent and nonfluent aphasies with the various control groups led to considerable doubts as to what extent these results follow directly from quantitative differences in verbal output or have to be interpreted as qualitative differences in memory storage, retrieval, and self-editing processes.ZusammenfassungParallelisierte Gruppen (N=25) von Aphatikern mit flüssigem und nicht-flüssigem Sprechverlauf, hirngeschädigten, schizophrenen und neurologisch wie psychiatrisch gesunden Kontrollpersonen hatten (1) soviele Tiere und (2) soviele Dinge, die üblicherweise gelb sind, aufzuzählen wie in 5 Minuten möglich. Hinsichtlich der ersten dieser beiden Aufgaben konnten die Befunde von Gloning & Müller (1972) im wesentlichen bestätigt werden: Aphatiker nannten weniger Tiere, brachten mehr Wiederholungen, kürzere Assoziationsketten und mehr häufige Reaktionen als Gesunde. Vergleiche zwischen den beiden Aufgabenstellungen und den verschiedenen Probandengruppen ließen es in hohem Maße unklar erscheinen, inwieweit die Unterschiede zwischen den Aphatikern und Kontrollgruppen der Funktion der geringeren Anzahl angemessener Antworten oder aber als qualitative Unterschiede in der Struktur des Gedächtnisses oder spezifischer Abruf- und Ausleseprozesse anzusehen sind.

Conceptual Impairment in Aphasia

Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasics, brain-damaged patients without aphasia, and chronic schizophrenics were tested in a non-verbal matching task where the subject had to indicate which of two pictures was more closely linked to a clue picture. Both aphasic groups performed worse than brain-damaged controls when the identification of individual attributes or actions shared by clue and referent was required, but were unimpaired when the two had a set of referential-situational associations in common. Factor analyses including 8 additional verbal and nonverbal reference tasks resulted for both groups in two factors, one of which represents general Language Impairment. For the Broca’s aphasies this factor was closely related to general organic deficit as measured by the Trail Making Test; for the Wernicke’s aphasies it was associated with tasks which might be considered illustrative of analytical competence in isolating and comparing individual features of objects or concepts.