Retrieval of nouns and verbs in Persons with Aphasia

Abstract

A grammatically correct sentence is comprised of two parts, a subject (noun or pronoun) and a predicate (verb). The noun represents the names of a particular person, place or thing. The verb, on the other hand, represents actions, states, processes or relations. Nouns and verbs, differ in the linguistic dimensions, such as word frequency, imageabilty, and lexical semantic variables. These varying dimensions have been explored in individuals with Aphasia and contrasting results have been reported. The retrieval of nouns and verbs can vary as a function of the task taken into consideration. Most of the previous studies have used a single task (either spontaneous speech or naming or picture description).Cumulative evidence may evoke different findings. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the retrieval of nouns and verbs in the different aphasic variants by using picture description task and confrontational naming task. A total of 12 participants were considered for the study with 4 participants in each of the three variants (Broca’s Aphasia, Conduction Aphasia, and Anomic aphasia). Persons with all the variants had difficulty in retrieving both nouns and verbs. While persons with anomic aphasia could retrieve verbs relatively better than nouns, individuals with Broca’s and conduction aphasia could retrieve nouns easily compared to verbs.

Keywords: Naming, frequency effect, word length effect

Cite this Article

Abhishek B.P., Malavi Srikar, Reny Raju. Retrieval of Nouns and Verbs in Persons with Aphasia. Research and Reviews: Journal of Neuroscience. 2019; 9(1): 24–28p.