A capacidade de evocação verbal em pessoas com afasia

: estudo comparativo sobre a produção de nomes e verbos em três contextos de produção verbal

Abstract

The difficulties of word retrieval are found in the core of changes observed in people with aphasia. Previous studies focused mainly on quantitative analysis of the results acquired in naming tasks, however it is questionable whether the results in this kind of proof reflect word retrieval in discourse. This study aims to analyze the influence of the context of verbal production in word retrieval (nouns and verbs) and the relationship between different tests, and also explore the influence of the type of aphasia (non-fluent/fluent/sequelae) and the severity of the language disorder in this ability. It was performed an analysis of the production of nouns and verbs in 13 people diagnosed with aphasia and sequelae of aphasia by employing the following tests: naming, semi-spontaneous speech and spontaneous speech. We’ve used the measure of percentage of Word Retrieval - Names and Verbs (%EPnomes and %EPverbos). The results revealed an influence of context in both EPnomes% and EPverbos%, with significantly better skills in the production of spontaneous speech than the semi-spontaneous speech and spontaneous speech relatively better than naming. The tests showed no significant differences between naming and semi-spontaneous speech. The existence of a relationship between the naming task and the spontaneous speech measures analyzed was not confirmed, nor the relationship between the Aphasia Quotient and measures of word retrieval. It was confirmed the influence of type of aphasia. The conclusion was that a naming test cannot strongly predict the word retrieval ability in speech, especially spontaneous speech, therefore being relevant the analysis of the skills of word retrieval for this context of verbal production.

Date of Award	4 Apr 2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria Emília dos Santos (Supervisor) & Ana Mineiro (Supervisor)