Abstract
An assessment of long-term recovery capacity was undertaken for 90 right-handed aphasics who have all suffered this condition for longer than two years and six months.
The study was based on results on the Standard Language Test for Aphasia (SLTA).
The study in aphasics with lesions present almost entirely throughout the middle cerebral artery (MCA) revealed these results as follows. The significant spread in SLTA results depended on the age of onset for all language modalities. Specifically, recovery tended to be notably better in these aphasics with an age of onset under 40 years compared against those with an age of onset of 40 years and olders. In the younger group, recovery typically started with renewed word comprehension since early periods from onset, followed by gradual improvement in comprehension of short sentences word recall, and processing of Kana letters. Severe disturbances generally remained, however, in terms of sentence repetition, and comprehension of complex sentences. In the aphasics suffered from lesions MCA territory with a later age of onset, serious difficulties persisted in all language modalities, with recovery especially tenuous in the area of Kana processing.
Otherwise, aphasics sufferd from word deafness and apraxia of speech showed poor improvement in these disturbances.
From these findings, it can be concluded that age of onset affects aphasic's ability to recover language functions, and that redundancy of functional recovery varies accoding to specific language modalities.
