Comprehension of sentence structure in anomic and conduction aphasia.

Picture-pointing auditory and reading comprehension tests were administered to anomic and conduction aphasics. Subjects responded to active sentences of the present progressive form. The possible errors which a subject could make on these experimental tasks included failure to correctly interpret noun order, number, or lexical meaning. Both groups made significantly more correct responses than error responses. Of their error responses, noun-order errors significantly exceeded number and lexical errors for which no differences were observed. When compared with results previously obtained for agrammatic Broca's aphasics, no differences in the pattern of errors were identified. These results are discussed relative to current theories of syntactic processing and for the mechanisms which account for these syntactic comprehension deficits following aphasia.

Diagnostic-related groups: their impact on an inpatient rehabilitation program.

Prospective payment by diagnostic-related groups (DRGs) was expected to result in early discharges from acute care hospitals. Early transfers of patients to rehabilitation programs were anticipated, since inpatient rehabilitation programs were exempt from the prospective payment plan. A retrospective study of 516 patient records at our hospital between July 1, 1983, and June 30, 1985, was undertaken to examine changes in the major parameters of the rehabilitation program. No changes in proportions of individuals by diagnostic group, age, or gender were found. No significant change in length of stay occurred. After prospective payment took effect, the average patient admitted to rehabilitation was more impaired regardless of age, yet patients over 65 years showed comparable functional levels at discharge. More medical complications during rehabilitation stay were noted. Most patients continued to return to a home environment. Most parameters did not change after the advent of DRGs.

Reaction times of severe Broca's aphasics to monaural verbal stimuli.

Reaction times of nine subjects with severe Broca's aphasia were measured to verbal stimuli presented monaurally to their left or right ears. The aphasic subjects showed left-ear advantages in reaction times to verbal stimuli, paralleling dichotic findings among aphasic patients. The results are interpreted as consistent with right-hemisphere language processing.

Cerebral asymmetry for verbal information in severe aphasia.

Reaction times (rt's) of 3 M and 6 F Ss aged 57-84 yrs (mn = 69 yrs) with severe Broca's aphasia and of 9 normal matched Ss were measured to taped verbal stimuli (12 word-pairs posing minimal phonemic contrasts; half the contrasts were prevocalic, half postvocalic. Identical words were presented monotically to both ears; difference in manual rt to pictures of these words was taken to indicate ear advantage). The aphasics had limited but reliable auditory comprehension and minimal speech; they evidenced L-ear advantage in rt's although the postvocalic rt as compared with prevocalic rt was normal. These results were interpreted as indicating a latent R-brain linguistic capacity which emerged after significant L-brain damage.

Reaction-times of normal subjects to monaurally presented verbal and tonal stimuli.

Sixteen right-handed subjects responded to monaurally presented verbal and tonal stimuli with their right and left hands at separate times. Subjects' reaction-times to speech were significantly faster when they heard words in their right ears, while their reaction-times to tones proved significantly faster after left-ear stimulations. Reaction-times to speech were significantly faster when subjects responded with their right hands, but after tonal stimulation. Left-handed responses were significantly faster. These results were interpreted as demonstrating consistent laterality effects--the faster response occurring after intrahemispheric processing. Furthermore, the interactions between ear stimulated and hand of response were suggestive of minor hemisphere processing.

Syntactic versus semantic performances of agrammatic Broca's aphasics on tests of constituent-element-ordering.

Ten agrammatic Broca's aphasics ordered written sentence constituents to form simple, active-declarative sentences of the structure the + N + is/are + V + ing + the + N. Four specific linguistic tasks were presented. These aphasic subjects used likely semantic relationships among major lexical items to order sentence constituents. They recognized basic sentence syntax (N + V + N) and the NP structure (art + N) but failed to arrange constituents accurately when recognition of the morphophonemic agreement between subject and verb was the basis of response.