The goal of all speech rehabilitation methods is the restoration of speech as a unitary higher function. One approach views speech as a complex but coherent system where all levels and components are interconnected. This view takes into consideration the use of verbal communication, which takes place at a higher speech level and includes activity,…

Examination of the lexical errors (phonological paraphasias and neologisms) of two posterior aphasic patients who are speakers of Finnish, a highly synthetic language, revealed that the lexical difficulties generally typical of posterior aphasics were found in these patients as well. The typical lexical difficulties clustered around open class…

Changes in frequency of occurrence of the following linguistic variables in recovery from aphasia due to left temporal lobe lesions are analyzed in text and graphs: (1) quantity of verbalization, (2) syntactic structure: subject-verb-object vs. topic-comment, (3) syntactic complexity, (4) nouns and verbs, (5) morphology, (6) anaphora, and (7)…

An examination of the word-finding problems and nonverbal communication in the conversations of three aphasic patients revealed three different patterns of communicative strategies and success in different kinds of activities, such as tests and conversation. One, with mainly a parietal lesion, hesitates often with turn-keeping gestures and stops…

This paper examines the tacit assumptions behind different theories about the nature of language and aphasia, and it discusses critically the use of structural and generative linguistic theories to explain the behavior of aphasics, especially with regard to the difference between spoken and written discourse. It is proposed that, rather than try…

Analysis of the questions asked by normal children suggests that there are cognitive stages of question development. Samples of spontaneous questions asked by normal children and linguistically deviant children were compared in this study in order to determine if linguistically deviant (aphasic) children suffer primarily from a syntactic…

A study of eight adult chronic aphasic patients' comprehension of sentences and pictures in which comparisons of time and space were crucial was designed to assess A. R. Luria's approach to designing comprehension test tasks. The investigation required patients, with lesions of varying size and location, to determine whether a sentence expressing…

Research is being conducted to determine the factors behind linguistic retardation in children. A first question raised was whether the linguistic system of the deviant child is qualitatively different from that of a normal child. A matching-up of deviant and normal children according to linguistic level suggests that the onset of base syntax may…

The use of a traditional syndrome-classification system for aphasics is examined critically from the different perspectives of medicine and psychometrics. Medicine views syndromes as dichotomous (present or not present) and necessarily indicative of an underlying pathognomic state or process, and psychometrics sees performances as varying along a…

This paper describes the results of two studies of auditory processing in child aphasia, and their implication for understanding deviant language development. The term "aphasia" is discussed as it is used to describe adult and child language disorders. A first experiment on the auditory functioning in aphasic and nonaphasic children suggests that…

Vertical and lateral integration are two important nervous system integrations that affect the development of oral behaviors. There are three progressions in the vertical integration process for speech nervous system development: R-complex speech (ritualistic, memorized expressions), limbic speech (emotional expressions), and cortical speech…

This paper is concerned with the Aristotelian notion of "universal" as applied to phonological phenomena. It is claimed that speech production in children and adults, in normal and deviant speakers, and in a variety of languages, can all be described according to the same universal phonological rules which constitute the universal process of…

Three objectives of research reported here were to describe the neural organization underlying language usage and language loss, to study activities occurring in both cerebral hemispheres, and to study neural changes related to changes in syntactic complexity of stimuli. A dichoptic procedure was chosen. A subject faced a viewing screen on which…