Effects of personally relevant language materials on the performance of severely aphasic individuals

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not severely aphasic adults perform better with personally relevant language materials than with otherwise similar nonpersonal language materials. The subjects for this study were 24 severely aphasic individuals. Subjects responded to personally relevant and nonpersonal materials in four language tasks: auditory comprehension, speech repetition, naming, and reading comprehension. Subjects showed significantly better performance on personally relevant items than on nonpersonal items. This was true for each of the four tasks.