Abstract
In this paper we studied errors found in an Arabic numeral dictation experiment conducted on a conduction aphasic patient and a Broca's aphasic patient, and examined the features and occurrence level of their errors from the perspective of their ability to process digits and numerical positioning. We devised and executed the following two kinds of test on the two patients: “dictation test of Arabic numerals”, which both included and excluded zero (0) numerals ; and a “digit & numerical positioning test”, which examined the processing of digits and their numerical positioning separately. Results showed that the conduction aphasic patient presented many errors in digits, while the Broca's aphasic patient presented errors in both digits and numerical positioning. The digit errors presented by both patients occurred in the repetitive level of the auditory stimulus before it was written down, while the numerical positioning errors of the Broca's aphasic patient occurred in the level at which the Arabic number was written after it had been repeated. These results suggest that the digit errors in both cases were a processing deficit of the digit in the Verbal Word Frame of the Triple-Code Model (Dehaene et al.,1995) ; the numerical positioning errors of the Broca's aphasic patient were thought to be a processing deficit of numerical positioning in the Visual Arabic Number Form of the model concerned.
