A theory of cerebral language disorders based on therapy

A Plea for More Research and Less Diagnosis

Intuitive processes have their place in the clinical judgments of the therapist. They are also necessary in the scientific analysis of personality. But in diagnostic classification for the purpose of deciding the treatments to be given to patients, intuitive processes are ineffective and should be replaced by objective procedures whose efficiency has been established empirically.

Phonemic behavior of aphasic subjects without dysarthria or apraxia of speech

Thirty adult aphasic subjects without apraxia of speech or dysarthria were tested for their ability to produce phonemes in single test words and in spontaneous contextual speech. Results indicated that 75% of the total phonemic errors were due to a whole-word phenomenon apparently associated with faulty processing of the word rather than faulty production of the phoneme. True phonemic errors comprised 25% of the total errors or about 2% of all responses. Phoneme substitutions were by far the most frequent error (61%). Of the 30 subjects, 28 made no phonemic errors in spontaneous contextual speech. Aphasic behavior is not characterized by significant breakdown of articulatory performance. Observed patterns of error do not clearly support a phonemic regression hypothesis.