Relationship between semantic paraphasias and related nonverbal factors

Word-finding deficits are a common problem in aphasic patients. One hypothesis suggests that the difficulty that patients experience in naming objects or pictures is related to a disruption in the ability to access the lexicon. Another hypothesis suggests that these problems are caused by a disruption of the mental dictionary and the semantic representations contained in it. The main purpose of this study is to assess whether nonverbal factors such as the ability to distinguish between similar attributes of objects is related to word-use problems in aphasia. 14 adults with left hemisphere cerebrovascular accidents and some word use deficit were administered the first 30 items of the Boston Naming Test and the Conceptual Matching subtest of the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitude. Errors on the Conceptual Matching subtest correlated significantly with the number of semantic paraphasias.