Communicative disorders in Wernicke's aphasics

The purpose of this study was to analyze some aspects of communicative capacities in 25 predominantly Wernicke's aphasics. The patients with moderate and mild deficits were compared with severely affected patients. Answers in a standard interview were studied for two aspects: answer adequacy to question and conceptual thinking fluency. An initial examination was carried out in the first stage of aphasia and the second examination took place after 3 or 4 months since onset. Both parameters showed more important deficits in the group with severe disorders at onset. An improvement of communicative capacity was also noticed in both groups. The factors involved were discussed pointing out that wrong answers were not exclusively determined by a difficulty of auditory comprehension but by some deficits of conceptual thinking fluency or some other cognitive processes.