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The Relationship between Semantic Impairment in Comprehension and Naming in Aphasic Patients
Author(s) -
GAINOTTI G.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.3109/13682827609011291
Subject(s) - aphasia , psychology , language disorder , comprehension , semantic memory , cognitive psychology , semantics (computer science) , semantic dementia , boston naming test , linguistics , audiology , neuropsychology , cognition , computer science , neuroscience , dementia , medicine , philosophy , disease , pathology , frontotemporal dementia , programming language
Summary The aim of the present research consisted in studying if in aphasia the signs of semantic impairment that can be observed at the levels of language production and of auditory comprehension are independent, or if they are reciprocally related. The emission of one or more semantic paraphasias at a test of naming pictures was considered as indicative of a semantic disorder at the expressive level, while the number of semantic errors obtained at the “verbal sound and meaning discrimination test” was retained as an index of the defect of semantic discrimination at the receptive level. One hundred and thirteen unselected aphasic patients were taken into account in our research: 77 of them (68%) showed at least one semantic paraphasia at the test of naming pictures, whereas 60 (53%) obtained a pathological number of semantic errors at the test of verbal auditory comprehension. The emission of semantic paraphasias and the impairment of the semantic system at the receptive level were strongly reciprocally related. This finding seems to show that in aphasia the semantic level of integration of language is more or less severely impaired.