engleski

Interrelation between voice, articulation and language in aphasia

Aphasia as a result of neurological impairments, most frequently brain stroke, affects various aspects of speech and language. Differences in correlations between multiple impaired functions are possible and depend on the type and severity of a particular impairment. These correlations between multiple impairments imply various degrees of dependence or independence of different functions of speech and language. The aim of this paper was to investigate relationship between voice, articulation and language functions in patients with aphasia and to correlate them with the type and location of cerebral impairment. A group of 10 aphasic patients (5 male and 5 female) aged between 37 and 60 participated in the investigation. Their speech and language rehabilitation lasted between 1 and 5 years. The neurological status was determined by means of standard clinical neurological examination and by means of brain CT to localize the place of cerebral impairment. Speech and language functions were assessed by means of various tests measuring the following set of variables: voice quality (acoustic analysis of phonation of the vowel /a/ and sustained pronunciation of consonants /s/ and /z/), articulation of speech sounds (assessment of the quality of pronunciation of sounds in isolated words of various phonetic structures), morphological and syntactic performance (formation of the plural forms in nouns and tense forms in verbs, recognition of the grammatical errors in the sentence, sentence construction using given words) and speech fluency (sentence repetition and description of a given picture). Data were manipulated by adequate statistical procedures. The results show that correlations between investigated speech and language variables and location of brain impairments are The results could be used in future planning of rehabilitation treatment in various cases of aphasic patients.

aphasia; voice; articulation; language; cerebral impairment

nije evidentirano