A comparison of impairments in verbal comprehension, speech, reading, and writing in adult aphasics

A clinical population of 44 aphasics was rated on the severity of impairment of functional communication in each of four language modalities: verbal comprehension, speech, reading, and writing. Comparisons are made of the severity of impairment in each pair of language modalities for the subjects as a group and for individual subjects. Correlations between severity ratings in each pair of language modalities are also presented. The results indicate that all modalities are impaired to approximately the same degree and that differences between severity ratings across all modalities are small for the large majority of aphasic subjects. Writing is usually the most severely impaired modality. A discussion is presented reviewing the important influences that methodology has on the data obtained and on the inferences which may be drawn about the nature of aphasia as a uni- or multimodality impairment.