PREDICTORS OF VERBAL FLUENCY PERFORMANCE IN PERISYLVIAN APHASIA

Abstract

Individuals who struggle with the ability to communicate may be suffering from a language disorder known as aphasia. Verbal fluency in individuals with post-stroke aphasia is a focus of this study. This type of aphasia is caused by damage to the perisylvian region of the brain, which is responsible for language. This study specifically examines how verbal fluency performance is affected in these individuals. Two types of verbal fluency tasks were conducted to examine word processing and fluency performance of stroke participants. The findings were then compared to that of neurotypical controls. One task assessed letter (F-A-S) fluency, while the other task looked at category (animal) fluency. The data extracted from these tasks allowed us to generate fluency scores for each individual and analyze psycholinguistic properties of words produced. Cognitive and language measures were also used to predict fluency scores. The main goal was to investigate how individuals with aphasia perform on letter fluency tasks compared to healthy older adults. Our results indicated that psycholinguistic word properties influenced letter fluency performance, but not category fluency. It was also found that language and cognitive measures related to phonological skill predict fluency performance. Overall, the results suggest that individuals with perisylvian post-stroke aphasia demonstrate impairment on phonological code retrieval.