Tactile and auditory-verbal cues to naming difficulties

Abstract

    Effectiveness of tactile and auditory-verbal cues was compared from the data of 60 aphasics in object naming test of Japanese version of the Western Aphasia Battery. The subjects consisted of 18 Broca aphasics,18 Wernicke aphasics,12 anomics, 4 global aphasics, 3 other types of aphasics, and 5 unclassificable aphasics. All received tactile and auditory-verbal cues in their naming task. Each one of 20 ordinary objects was presented to the subject for visual naming. When he named it correctly, next object was presented to him. When he failed in visual naming, he was allowed to touch the object. When he could name it by tactile cuing, next object was presented for visual naming. When he failed by touch, he was told first sound of the target word, or its first half meaningful unit when it was a composite word. The latter cue was called auditory-verbal cue. Each cue was judged as effective when the subject could name more than 3 words correctly among those he could not name before presenting the cue. Results were as follows. 1 ) Tactile cue was effective in 3 out of 60 subjects. However, in 2 of them, auditory-verbal cue was also effective. Therefore, only one subject demonstrated that tactile cue was a sole effective cue to prompt his naming performance. 2 ) Auditory-verbal cue was effective in 41 out of 60 subjects, in 2 of which tactile cue was effective. Therefore,39 subjects demonstrated that auditory-verbal cue was a sole effective cue to prompt their naming performances. 3 ) The subjects who demonstrated auditory-verbal cue as effective showed strong correlation between their performances of visual naming and those of auditory-verbal naming. 4 ) There were more cases who had lesions in temporal and temporo-parietal lobes among those who did not demonstrate auditory-verbal cue as effective than among those who demonstrated it as effective.