Abstract
This study investigates the noun-verb dissociation problem in word finding abilities in aphasia from a longitudinal point of view. At least 4 consecutive performances on oral naming of objects and actions on the Standard Language Test of Aphasia (SLTA) were analyzed in 26 aphasic patients. The results were as follows: (1) Four groups were recognized: One group showed a consistently better performance in producing verbs than nouns (the verb-dominant group, N=5); another group showed the reverse pattern, that is, a consistently better performance in producing nouns than verbs (the noun-dominant group, N=6); the remaining two groups comprised the equivalently recovered group (N=9) and the fluctuating group (N=6); (2) All cases in the verb-dominant group showed early verb-dominant recovery patterns, fluent speech, and all had predominantly left temporal lesions; (3) All cases in the noun-dominant group showed early noun-dominant recovery patterns, but they had either fluent or nonfluent speech and diverse lesion sites. Furthermore they made various types of error in action naming. It is concluded that the disproportionately noun-impaired group seems to be relatively homogeneous whereas the disproportionately verb-impaired group seems to be heterogeneous. It is suggested that there are a variety of reasons why verbs should be harder than nouns to retrieve.
