Word-Retrieval Difficulty and Disfluent Speech in Adult Anomic Speakers

Abstract

The relationships existing between measures of disfluency and measures of word-retrieval ability in adult anomic aphasic and adult non-brain-damaged subjects were investigated. Subjects produced single-word naming responses for pictured stimuli consisting of objects, colors, and actions. The obtained number of correct naming responses and word-retrieval latency measurements were related to the number and types of disfluencies present in the subjects' connected speech samples. The major findings of the investigation include the following: (a) the anomic subject group presented significantly more disfluencies than did the nonaphasic group; (b) the number of disfluencies increased as word-retrieval difficulty increased for the anomic subjects; (c) when word-retrieval difficulty was measured by the number of correct responses those anomic subjects who tended to be most disfluent and to have the greatest word-retrieval difficulty also tended to have the highest proportions of those disfluencies most likely to be considered "stutterings" (part-word repetitions, vocal segregate repetitions, and prolongations) and the lowest proportions of hesitations; and (d) the proportion of stutterings increased as the total number of disfluencies increased for anomic and tot nonaphasic subjects. Implications of results for testing of aphasic patients are discussed.

An Exploration of the Impact of Group Treatment for Aphasia on Connected Speech

“…CPIDR-3 is an automated measure of propositional idea density, which provides an indicator of speech fluency and lexical diversity (Kemper & Sumner, 2001). As word-retrieval difficulties in aphasia can result in overt breakdown in word retrieval as well as reduced lexical diversity (e.g., Fergadiotis & Wright 2011) and disfluencies (e.g., Brown & Cullinan, 1981), we would predict that group treatment with a focus on word retrieval would result in improved POWERS indices and higher propositional idea density.…”