[Diagnosis of language-understanding deficit in aphasia. Methodological considerations and composition of a test for...

The investigation of language comprehension in aphasics has usually been concerned only with the word and sentence levels. It has not been considered that language in the normal communicative situation has the character of discourse. Furthermore, language understanding should be conceived of as comprising different processes of comprehension which can be selectively affected in aphasia. It was therefore necessary to compose a test for text comprehension. In this test the patient is read a short text and then required to choose that picture from a multiple-choice set which is most appropriate to the story. Texts and pictures were developed according to the linguistic parameters: agent/experiencer, action, situation, metaphorical comment. With the tasks kept uniform this test allows not only quantitative but also qualitative statistical evaluation. Preliminary results show that the test reveals qualitative differences between subtypes of aphasia.