IULC Publications

Acoustic Dimensions of Functor Comprehension in Broca's Aphasia

By R. Allen Harris

Nine Broca's Aphasia patients were subjects in a study of functor comprehension similar to that of Heilman and Scholes 1976 (Cortex 12:257-65), but with the important addition of a control on the acoustic dimensions of the key function word. In a replication of Heilman and Scholes' principal results, it was found that the aphasic population was significantly less reliable overall than normals in a forced choice task and that the difference between correct responses and function errors was not significantly greater than chance for sentences with normal intonation. However, a salient effect was discovered, in that the subjects were significantly more reliable with acoustically boosted tokens of the key function word. Harris suggests that there is a performance component to Broca syndrome functor difficulties and offers an explanation of the results in terms of short term memory difficulties. The work includes a literature survey more comprehensive than any to date in this area. Mr. Harris' book will find interested readership from the fields of both linguistics and communicative disorders.

155 pages
$5.00

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