D W M S Samarathunga and Nuwani Dharmarathne
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Neurol Disord
In aphasia, various levels of symbolic language processing (semantics) are affected. It is shown that persons with aphasia (PWA) often experience more problems comprehending some categories of words than others. The study aimed to determine lexical semantic deficits seen in auditory comprehension (AC) and to describe lexical-semantic deficits across six selected word categories. Thirteen (n=13) persons diagnosed with post stroke aphasia (PSA) were recruited to perform an AC task. Foods, objects, clothes, vehicles, body parts and animals were selected as the six categories. Picture stimulus was adapted from the pictures developed by Snodgrass and Vanderwart and a pilot study was conducted with five non brain damaged healthy adults to develop applicable test materials. In the main study, participants were scored based on the accuracy and number of errors shown. Similar trends were reported confirming literature that �animals� to be the easiest category to comprehend and �body parts� were most difficult. Mann-Whitney U test indicated that no statistical significance was found between the errors and the type of aphasia reflecting similar patterns described in aphasia literature on other languages. The current study indicates the presence of selectivity of lexical semantic deficits in AC and a hierarchy was developed based on the complexity of the categories to comprehend by Sinhala speaking PWA, which might be clinically beneficial when improving language skills of Sinhala speaking persons with post-stroke aphasia. However, further studies on aphasia should be conducted with larger samples for a longer period to study deficits in Sinhala and other Sri Lankan languages. dwms91@gmail.com
Neurological Disorders received 1253 citations as per Google Scholar report
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