The purpose of this study was to investigate the comprehension of spoken messages among adult aphasics when speech was delivered at varying rates. The subjects were 20 aphasics between 26 and 70 years of age who demonstrated no abnormalities with regard to hearing, vision and color recognition and were capable of retaining at least three units of stimuli on the auditory retention subtest of the MTDDA (Japanese version) . Twenty normal adults who were matched with the subjects in terms of age served as the control group. The stimuli were 50 simple phrases devised from the Token Test (e. g.“Black circle and red square.”) presented at 5 different rates. The rates included 2 conditions of expansion, a normal rate, and 2 conditions of compression. The results indicated that time compression significantly attenuated the comprehension of aphasics while the control group demonstrated little or no evidence of reduced compre tension.