2020 Volume 40 Issue 4 Pages 421-431
In this study, we reported a patient with aphasia whose output is more severely impaired than input, and whose spontaneous speech was almost limited to non-meaningful recurrent utterances. The patient also had serious difficulty in word repetition, though abilities in phonemic discrimination and phonological manipulation were spared, and there was no evidence of typical anarthria or any dysarthrias. We examined the patientʼs competence in repeating monosyllables, the units smaller than a word, consecutively in random order. The results showed that performance was much worse with the added burden of rapidity. Based on these results, we provided the patient training in repeating monosyllables with “rapidity, repetitiveness, and accuracy,” after which repetition performance of words improved significantly. We hypothesized that the impairment of competence in repeating monosyllables consecutively with the additional burden of rapidity was caused by vulnerability of selection of memory of articulatory movements in the motor realization process. Because this process to select the memory of articulatory movements is one step in the last phase of utterance, we estimated that its disturbance would wield an influence on utterance modalities other than repetition. Further case studies will be needed in order to decide if we should identify the disturbance as anarthria.
