Nonfluent and fluent dysphasic subjects (N=22) and nondysphasic subjects (N=20) were assessed on tasks of word fluency and picture-naming. Results showed that clinical language examinations should utilize contexts other than naming tasks for detecting the presence of word retrieval problems and for differentiating the two polar types of dysphasia.…

Two groups of 10 adult aphasics received auditory-verbal "yes-no" questions, including egocentric, environmental, pictorial, and relationship items, either in a consistent order or random order. Support was found for the existence of a hierarchy of difficulty among the types of questions, but there was no significant difference between…

This study of four moderately to severely aphasic subjects found that success in manual sign training programs is related to severity of aphasia, that aphasic subjects' propositional use of manual signs rarely follows simple acquisition, and that generalization to untrained stimuli or environments does not occur without additional training.…

Language Enrichment Therapy (LET), a program of language stimulation for aphasia developed in Finland, was tested by five British speech therapists with 13 adult stroke victims and their relatives. Results suggested the usefulness of a refined English version of LET as a cooperative tool for speech therapists and volunteer helpers. (JW)

Four patients with fluent aphasia received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories. Patients trained on naming of atypical exemplars demonstrated generalization to naming of intermediate and typical items. Patients trained on typical items demonstrated no generalized naming…

Thirty-two subjects (5 Broca's, 7 conduction, and 10 anomic aphasics and 10 normal controls) performed story retell and procedural discourse tasks containing familiar and unfamiliar topics, with familiar and unfamiliar listeners. Results indicated that topic familiarity significantly influenced verbal output in both normal and aphasic subjects.…

A short, 2-day, seminar-style program designed for adults with chronic aphasia and their families is described. Six-month follow-up data from 21 participant pairs found a significant improvement in functional activity level, improved knowledge of aphasia, and improved family relationships. Nonparticipant pairs (n=15) did not show any changes.…

Group treatment is explored in light of its psychosocial context, treatment effectiveness, and efficiency. A summary of the four group treatment approaches (two for children, two for adults) for communicative disorders are provided: classroom-based elementary school group, multicultural and multilinguistic preschool group, alaryngeal speech…

The sentence processing abilities of a conduction aphasic adult woman with a documented phonological coding deficit were investigated in tests of auditory and visual sentence comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences and spatial prepositions, sentence production through story completion and picture description, and repetition of…

The case study of a 78-year-old music composer who had had a stroke revealed that he had a severe reading disturbance, a well-preserved writing ability, and no appreciable aphasia. He continued to read music and to compose. His text and music reading performance under different conditions suggested that this unusual dissociation (alexia without…