Abstract
This study was designed to evaluate the pragmatic abilities of persons with aphasia. The purpose was to answer the following questions : (1) Can the patients perform as both a speaker and a listener? ; (2) Are their behavioral patterns different across contexts? The subjects were 8 aphasic patients (4 had severe and 4 had mild ˜ moderate aphasia) and 4 normal adults matched for age, sex and educational background. All the subjects were right-handed.
First the subjects were videotaped during both free-talking with the author and performance of pointing tasks which were designed for aphasic patients. Then these videotapes were analyized by using interval recording strategies.
Results suggested that in terms of quality aphasic patients retained pragmatic abilities as well as normal subjects, but in terms of quantity patients' abilities were lower than those of normal subjects. The nonverbal behavioral patterns of aphasic patients, for example, eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures, were different across the two contexts.
It was also suggested that video analysis strategies were useful in evaluation, especially of severely aphasic patients who could not perform on tests.
