The oral reading of aphasic individuals

Ten aphasic Italian-speaking patients who were receiving speech and language therapy in a clinic in Rome participated in a quantitative study of speech production. They cooperated as fully as possible when requested to speak under two conditions. First, each experimental subject read aloud twelve common Italian words, and then he earlier read or repeated - depending on his facility with language - six sets of three six-syllable phrases under different conditions of auditory feedback. The objectives were (1) to find whether aphasic adults react to delayed sidetone in the manner of normal-speaking adults, (2) to compare alternative and equally available measures of a single type of oral verbal production by aphasic individuals, (3) to compare the performance of aphasic adults in twp types of verbal tasks, and (4) to assess the relative difficulty of saying different words. (This was not extended to phrases because there are many more sources of difference among phrases than among single words.).