Word class deficits in individuals with aphasia: A syntactic analysis at discourse and single word production in the Kannada language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31117/neuroscirn.v8i1.339Keywords:
Aphasia, Lexical retrieval, Word class, Discourse, Picture namingAbstract
Aphasia commonly leads to word retrieval issues, particularly with nouns and verbs. Traditional assessments often focus on single-word. This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to assess word class deficits in Kannada-speaking Individuals with Aphasia (IWA) compared to Neurotypical Individuals (NTI) in single-word production and discourse production. Twenty IWAs (aged 20-50) and twenty age/gender-matched NTIs were recruited. Confrontation naming evaluated single-word production, while structured picture description (picnic scene) assessed discourse. Both tasks included a fixed set of nouns and verbs for comparison. The results were that IWAs performed poorer than NTIs in both tasks. Statistically significant noun and verb usage differences were observed between IWAs and NTIs in the picture description task (p<0.05). However, word class differences in the IWA group were insignificant across tasks. NTIs showed significant differences only in the picture description task. This study underscores word class deficits in aphasia, particularly at the discourse level. Discourse analysis is crucial for understanding language characteristics in aphasia and should be integrated into routine assessments.
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