Mechanism of phonemic process

Abstract

  Impairment of phonemic process on the patient who showed atypical language symptoms has been discussed. The patients manifested severe phonemic paraphasia, neologisms and phonemic jargon on all his verbal expression (spontaneous speech, repetition, naming and writing of phonograms) , while he showed intact understanding words, in particular, he was able to understand complicated sentences when it was presented with ideograms. It was impossible for him to point to a ideogram when auditorily presented one phoneme. However, detailed examination revealed that he could discriminate and recognize each phoneme and ideogram. These findings indicate that there is a pattern of impairment of phonemic process, in which one cannot retrieve and express a certain phoneme but can use it as a symbol.