Modelling Speech Sound Errors in Aphasia : A

The purpose of this study was to examine speech sound production errors in an aphasic subject in an attempt to determine the level of speech production processing from which such errors arose. Speech production tasks included: 1) the Boston Naming Test; 2) picture descriptions from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, the Western Aphasia Battery and the Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia; 3) a story completion task; and 4) spontaneous conversation. Reading aloud was used to establish a comparison with the subject's silent reading abilities. It was hypothesized that the subject's deficit was at a phonological level; results supported this hypothesis. The subject produced errors characteristic of a phonological deficit at the level of what Shattuck-Hufnagel (1979) has termed the scan-copier.