Event processing through naming: Investigating event focus in two people with aphasia

Abstract

Some people with aphasia may have trouble with verbs because of fundamental difficulties in processing situations in a way that maps readily onto language. This paper describes a novel assessment, the Order of Naming Test, that explores the conceptual processing of events through the order in which people name the entities involved. The performance of non-brain damaged control participants is described. The responses of two people with non-fluent aphasia are then discussed. Both ‘Helen’ and ‘Ron’ showed significant difficulty with verbs and sentences. Ron also had trouble on a range of tasks tapping aspects of event processing, despite intact non-verbal cognition. While Helen's performance on the Order of Naming Test was very similar to the controls, Ron's differed in a number of respects, suggesting that he was less focused on the main participant entities. However, certain aspects of his response pointed at covert event processing abilities that might be fruitfully exploited in therapy.

The work reported in this paper was supported by a bursary from Connect, the Communication Disability Network to Deborah Cairns. The test materials were drawn by Jane Harbour. We are grateful to Helen, Ron and all the control participants for their generous participation. Since completing this paper Ron has sadly died. We dedicate this paper to his memory.

Notes

¹The term ‘entity’ is used to denote both complement arguments and adjuncts such as instruments.