Studies investigating voicing onset time (VOT) production by speakers with aphasia have shown that nonfluent aphasics show a deficit in the articulatory programming of speech sounds based on the range of VOT values produced by aphasic individuals. If the VOT value lies between the normal range of VOT for the voiced and voiceless categories, then…

Verb retrieval difficulties are common in aphasia; however, few successful treatments have been documented (e.g. Conroy, P., Sage, K., & Lambon Ralph, M. A. (2006). Towards theory-driven therapies for aphasic verb impairments: A review of current theory and practice. "Aphasiology", 20, 1159-1185). This study investigated the efficacy of a novel…

One of the most frequent symptoms of unilateral stroke is aphasia, the impairment or loss of language functions. Over the past few years, behavioral and neuroimaging studies have shown that rehabilitation interventions can promote neuroplastic changes in aphasic patients that may be associated with the improvement of language functions. Following…

Two important research lines in neuro- and psycholinguistics are studying natural or experimentally induced slips of the tongue and investigating the symptom patterns of aphasic individuals. Only few studies have focused on explaining aphasic symptoms by provoking aphasic symptoms in healthy speakers. While all experimental techniques have so far…

Aphasia causes significant disability and handicap among stroke survivors. Language therapy is recommended for aphasic patients, but not always available. Piracetam, an old drug with novel properties, has been shown to have mild beneficial effects on post-stroke aphasia. In the current study, we investigated the effects of 6 months treatment with…

Current research on bilingual aphasia highlights the paucity in recommendations for optimal rehabilitation for bilingual aphasic patients (Edmonds & Kiran, 2006; Roberts & Kiran, 2007). In this paper, we have developed a computational model to simulate an English-Spanish bilingual language system in which language representations can vary by age…

Purpose: To investigate the hypothesis that vowel production is more variable in adults with acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) relative to healthy individuals with unimpaired speech. Vowel formant frequency measures were selected as the specific target of focus. Method: Seven adults with AOS and aphasia produced 15 repetitions of 6 American English…

This article provides a detailed assessment of patient HT with a history of progressive language deterioration of approximately 6 years presenting now as a fluent jargon aphasic with severe impairment of both speech production and comprehension. Neuropsychological testing of non-verbal cognitive functions showed no impairment, leading to the…

We report the naming performance of a Spanish patient (AQF) suffering from Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). AQF's performance revealed a grammatical category-specific deficit, with poorer performance in verb than in noun naming. Furthermore, this dissociation was only present in written naming. Importantly, the patient's dissociation between…

Purpose: To determine the effect of personal relevance and contextualization of images on the preferences and word-picture matching accuracy of people with severe aphasia. Method: Eight adults with aphasia performed 2 experimental tasks to reveal their preferences and accuracy during word-picture matching. The researchers used 3 types of visual…

Producing a sentence involves encoding a preverbal message into a grammatical structure by retrieving lexical items and integrating them into a functional (semantic-to-grammatical) structure. Individuals with agrammatism are impaired in this grammatical encoding process. However, it is unclear what aspect of grammatical encoding is impaired and…

Recent work in neuropsychology, clinical aphasiology and neuropharmacology have presented evidence that the causative substrates of recurrent perseveration in adults with aphasia are more recondite and subject to distinct interpretations than originally thought. This article will discuss and evaluate how various proposals from theory, from the…

Several studies have reported improved naming using the semantic feature analysis (SFA) approach in individuals with aphasia. Whether the SFA can be modified and still produce naming improvements in aphasia is unknown. The present study was designed to address this question by using a modified version of the SFA approach. Three, rather than the…

Previous studies have shown the appearance of right-sided language-related brain activity in right-handed patients after a stroke. Non-invasive brain stimulation such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) have been shown to modulate excitability in the brain. Moreover, rTMS and…

Purpose: This study investigated whether computers are a useful tool in the assessment of people with aphasia (PWA). Computerized and traditionally administered versions of tasks were compared to determine whether (a) the scores were equivalent, (b) the administration was comparable, (c) variables such as age affected performance, and (d) the…