The relationship between comprehension and oral reading in progressive fluent aphasia

The role played by comprehension in oral reading was investigated in three patients with progressive fluent aphasia. For patients J.L. and G.C., there was evidence of a deficit in semantic memory affecting both word production and comprehension. F.M., although equally anomic, had significantly better single-word comprehension than either J.L. or G.C. It was predicted that, for J.L. and G.C., success or failure in word comprehension should show item-specific correspondence with success or failure in reading exception words, but not regular words. This predicted pattern was obtained between word-picture matching tests and reading. For F.M., with only minimal comprehension impairment for the items used, a smaller trend in the same direction was observed. The results are discussed with respect to Patterson and Hodges' hypothesis (Neuropsychologia 30, 1025-1040, 1992) regarding the consequences of impaired semantic memory for the integrity of representations in the phonological output lexicon.