Language after aphasia: only a matter of speed processing?

Background: Recovery from aphasia is a subject that raises many questions regarding the possibility of full recovery.Aims: The authors intended to analyse quality performance and response speed in complex language tasks by people considered to have completely recovered from aphasia.Methods & Procedures: This study analysed the performance of 23 people who have become non-aphasic. Their results were compared with pre-existing scores for the Portuguese population in a set of oral comprehension tests (proverbs, semantic decision, and idioms) and oral production tests (word definition and sentence production). Age and literacy were controlled.Outcomes & Results: People who have recovered from aphasia have an identical linguistic performance to controls, both in comprehension as in production tests. However most of them take twice as long to accomplish the tasks. Only one "patient" was identical to controls in this matter. There was no relation between response speed and time post-onset.Conclusions: It is possible to become non-aphasic, but people hardly regain all their premorbid language skills. Slower language processing such as was verified in the present study may compromise the communication of these people, formally considered to have normal language skills.