Disorders of Language

Question 1

Define Aphasia

Answer 1

Impairment of language follwoing brain damage

Question 2

How is Aphasia tested clinically?

Answer 2

Conversational Speech
- Fluent vs. Nonfluent

Comprehension of Spoken Language
- Comprehension of Spoken Language

Repetition
- Ability to repeat precisley wors presented by examiner

Word finding Difficulties (Anomia)
- Asked to name actual objects or pictures of objects

Question 3

Describe characteristics of Broca’s syndrome

Answer 3

• Good comprehension
• Non-fluent Speech
• Poor repetition

Question 4

Describe the characteristics of Wernicke’s syndrome

Answer 4

• Poor comprehension
• Fluent Speech
• Poor Repitition

Question 5

Describe transcortical motor aphasia

Answer 5

• Good comprehension
• Non-fluent Speech
• Good repetition

Question 6

Describe transcortical sensory aphasia

Answer 6

• Poor comprehension
• Fluent Speech
• Good Repitition

Question 7

What does the auditory analysis system do?

Answer 7

Identify phonemes in sound wave (small units of sounds)
- Distincitive sounds that language uses

Question 8

Describe the function of the Auditory input lexicon

Answer 8

Stores sound patterns of known words
- Word recognition units

Question 9

Describe the function of the semantic system

Answer 9

Stored meanings of known words

Question 10

Describe the function of the speech output lexicon

Answer 10

Stored spoken form of known words
- output string of phonemes

Question 11

Describe the phoneme level

Answer 11

Leads to speech production

Question 12

What is the nemonic associated with the speech comprehension and production pathway?

What is the progressive flow of the pathway and the systems associated with each step?

Answer 12

HAASSPS
1) Heard word
2) Auditory analysis
3) Auditory Input Lexicon
4) Semantic system
5) Speech Output Lexicon
6) Phoneme Level
7) Speech

Question 13

What are the three pathways through which you can repeat a word

Answer 13

1) Auditory Input Lexicon -> Speech Output Lexicon (No processing through semantic system)
2) Auditory Analysis System -> Phoneme Level
3) Go through the longer route which includes the semantic system

Question 14

What is the deficit associated with the Auditory Analysis System?

Answer 14

Pure word deafness

Question 15

What is the deficit associated with the pathway from the auditory analysis system and the phoneme level?

Answer 15

Auditory phonological agnosia

Question 16

What is the deficit associated with auditory input lexicon?

Answer 16

Word meaning deafness

Question 17

What is the deficit associated with the semantic system?

Answer 17

Semantic anomia

Question 18

What is the deficit associated with the speech output lexicon?

Answer 18

Output lexical anomia

Question 19

Define Pure word deafness

Answer 19

Can hear just fine but deaf purely for words

• Impaired speech comprehension (conscious of this impairment)
• Normal hearing on audiometric testing
• Intact: speech production, reading, writing
• Poor repetiton (sythym is similar but actual words are not)

Question 20

What cuases word deafness?

Answer 20

• Vowels identified better than consonants
• Better at slower presentations (particularly digits)

Question 21

Where does the left ear project?
Where does the right ear project?
What about under dichotic presentation?

Answer 21

The left and right ear project to both the left and right hemisphere
- However contralateral side is dominant

Dichotic presentation: The dominant side wins

Question 22

What phenomenon is shown under dichotic listening conditions

Answer 22

Words show a right ear advantage, but stead-state vowels do not

Question 23

What is concluded from the phenomena observed with dichotic presentation of auditory stimuli?

Answer 23

There are two different modes of auditory perception

1) General Auditory Mode
2) Speech-Related Phonetic Mode

Question 24

Describe the general auditory mode

Answer 24

• Capable of processing stead-state vowels
• Present in both hemisphere

Question 25

Describe the speech-related phonetic mode

Answer 25

- Necessary for perception of rapidly changing acoustic signals that specify consonants - Present in left hemisphere

Question 26

Describe Pure deafness in terms of temporal distinctions How one determined how fine tuned a patients rapid acoustic processing system is?

Answer 26

Pure deaf patients are unable to make fine temporal discriminations between rapidly changing accoustic signals that are necessary for identifying and discriminating spoken consonants Pure deaf patients are impaired in distinguishing clicks - They are not impaired in language processing. But in their ability to distinguish between all rapidly changing information

Question 27

What cues can pure deaf patients use to extract meaning from noisy signals?

Answer 27

Can use lip movement cues and linguistic context to aid comprehension "If I go blind, I won't hear anything"

Question 28

Decribe Word Meaning Deafness

Answer 28

Deaf to the meaning of the word - Intact speech production, reading, & writing - Impaired speech comprehension - Otherwise normal hearing - Can write down words heard with accuracy - Only when reading written words, can patients understand

Question 29

Where is the site of branwell's patient's deficit? Why can she still extract meaning from words when reading?

Answer 29

Between the auditory input lexicon and the semantic system She can extract semantic meanign form words because the visual input lexicon feeds information into the semantic system that processes the meaning of words

Question 30

What does patient's HN's ability to spell irregular words properly indicate?

Answer 30

That he is able to acess the visual input lexicon

Question 31

What is the deficit for patients who have Auditory phonological agnosia?

Answer 31

Can hear and repeat back words, but can not repeat non-words They have an impaired phonological route: The only way to repeat speech is through lexicon - Respond to non-word with most similar-sounding real word

Question 32

Describe Patient JL's behaviour

Answer 32

- Normal spontaneous speech - Good reading aloud and spontaneous writing - Complained of some difficuly understanding spoken language - Repitition and writing to dictation - Perfect on auditory lexical decision task

Question 33

What is the most common way to asses anomia?

Answer 33

Confrontation naming - Testing their ability to name pictures of objects

Question 35

What will patients with semantic anomia do?

Answer 35

- Will make semantic errors in naming - Will be poor at detecting those errors as incorrect

Question 36

Patient JCU was a 43 y/o bar tender with a large LH lesion who suffered from semantic anomia What was her speech behaviour like? Could anything help her speech?

Answer 36

- Spontaneous speech was extremley limited - Could name very few object pictures unaiaded, but retrieved many more if given the initial phoneme of the word as a cue Was sucesptable to being influenced to make semantic errors if she was given the first phoneme of an associated object (Ex. tiger - l. she would say lion) - At times she would accept associated objects as the truth, but not random word

Question 37

What causes semantic anomia?

Answer 37

The semantic system is underspecified, which leads to the activation of many semantic representations being activated simultaneously. Multiple semantic representations are sent to the speech output lexicon, and no semantic representation is prioritized. Target and associate objects are both vaguely activated.

Question 38

How do patients with output lexicon impairment behave?

Answer 38

- Will not show semantic naming errors - Will make phonological approximation errors to words they cannot fully express - Probability of being able to produce word correctly is strongly affected by its frequency of use

Question 39

Describe the behaviour of patient EST? What would happen if you were to show him a picture of a snowman? What would happen if you showed him a picture of a baseball bat, and the cue "Ra"?

Answer 39

- Knew exactly what he wanted to say but could not remeber many of the words he needed to express his thoughts. Snowman - He would come up with words associated with a snowman, but could not say "snowman" Baseball bat - Would recognize that the word does not start with the given false cue. He would propose a correct phoneme, but could not say the full word

Question 40

Describe how frequency of use influences the behaviour of semantic anomia patients

Answer 40

The more frequent word use = the more easily to spontaneously say the word

Question 41

What output lexical anomia?

Answer 41

Speech output lexicon is intact but inaccessible - Reduced levels of activation - Higher frequency words have higher baseline activation