Sensory Modality and Object-Naming in Aphasia

Abstract

Twenty-seven aphasics, 12 right-brain-injured, and 12 normal subjects were presented with 16 objects for tactile naming, 16 for auditory naming, and 16 for olfactory naming. All 48 objects were also presented for visual naming. Comparison between groups was based on the percentage difference in response latencies between naming by vision and naming by each of the other modalities. Analysis of variance showed no significant differences. The order of increasing difficulty of stimuli was the same for all groups, with aphasics showing consistently larger differences in latency than the other two groups. With few exceptions, the aphasics' naming scores were less than 1 SD unit apart in all modalities. It was concluded that a modality nonspecific process intervenes between stimulus presentation and naming.