Action-naming performance in four syndromes of aphasia

This study examined the influence of two situational contexts on the action-naming performances of 44 aphasic patients: single-word confrontation naming and naming within the context of connected speech. Subjects were evenly distributed among the syndromes of Broca's. Wernicke's, anomic, and conduction aphasia. The two naming tasks employed each comprised the same 18 target verbs. Naming performance was not systematically influenced by the particular naming task in any of the aphasia groups studied. However, for some individuals, particularly in the group of anomic aphasia, there were substantial performance discrepancies between scores obtained on the two different tasks. Correlations between scores on the confrontation-naming and picture-description tasks were highest for the Wernicke's aphasics, followed by the conduction, Broca's, and anomic aphasics. The extent to which action-naming error types could discriminate between the four groups of aphasics was examined. Results obtained in the present study were compared to results obtained in an earlier study on object-naming (S. Williams & G. Canter, 1982), Brain and Language, 17, 92-106). Discussion focuses on implications for the psycholinguistic processes involved in action versus object-naming.