Effect of Stimulus Variables on Dysphasic Verbal Errors

Abstract

Reanalysis of oral responses from 32 dysphasics to word stimuli counterbalanced according to abstraction level, part of speech, length, and frequency of occurrence, and presented through the visual, auditory and visual-auditory modalities, indicated that: through the visual modality, high and medium abstract words produced significantly more verbal errors than low; through the visual-auditory modality, medium abstract words produced significantly more verbal errors than low, while through the auditory modality no significant differences were found. Regardless of modality, verbs and adjectives produced significantly more verbal errors than nouns, while no significant difference was found between verbs and adjectives; regardless of modality, long words produced significantly more verbal errors than short; regardless of modality, infrequent words produced significantly more verbal errors than frequent words. Regardless of abstraction level, part of speech, word length, and frequency of occurrence, the visual produced significantly more verbal errors than the auditory and visual-auditory modalities, except in the case of words of medium abstraction level where the visual-auditory modality produced significantly more verbal errors than the auditory modality.