Specifying the nature of the production impairment in a conductionxs aphasic: A case study

Abstract

The phonemic paraphasias (e.g., television → ∗/tvσl/) of a conduction aphasic were examined in the light of Garrett's (1984) model of normal language production, with the goal of specifying the impairment in terms of the stage of production at which it arises and the unit over which the impaired process(es) operate. The results of an oral-reading task suggested that target word characteristics, notably length in syllables, rather than contextual factors, were the principal determinant of the likelihood of paraphasic errors. Subsequent studies attempted to define the unit over which the syllable constraint is defined. The results of these studies indicated that, though the unit is typically a single word, it may, under certain conditions, encompass multiple words. The possibility that the unit is defined prosodically is considered, and arguments in favor of assigning the impairment to the positional or phonetic level planning operations are evaluated.