Analysis of lexical recovery in an individual with acute anomia

Abstract

Observing recovery of cognitive functions may provide converging evidence about the organization of systems that mediate cognitive functions. We analyzed recovery of lexical abilities in a patient, HH, with an acute onset of anomic aphasia following a cerebral infarction confined to the left temporo-occipital junction (area 37). His initial assessment, described in detail elsewhere (Raymer et al. 1997a), indicated a cross-modal anomia arising at a stage in lexical processing at which semantic information accesses phonological and orthographic lexical mechanisms for speech and writing. We also documented reading and spelling impairments that we attributed to developmental deficits. We now report our patient's follow-up testing at 6 and 15 months post-stroke. Recovery testing demonstrated significant improvements in task performance across recovery phases: word retrieval in naming and spelling tasks recovered in the earlier recovery phase and reading improved at the later testing. Word frequency effects varied across observations. Over time, error patterns evolved from off-target and semantically related responses towards correct responses. The parallel recovery patterns in oral and written naming support our proposal that a common impairment was responsible for the cross-modal anomia. In contrast, recovery of reading and spelling skills contradicts our hypothesis that these problems were developmental in origin.