Work association of time-altered auditory and visual stimuli in aphasia.

A word association test was administered to a group of 32 aphasic adults and to a control group of 32 normal adults similar in age, sex, and education. Word stimuli were balanced according to frequency of occurrence in written English language usage (frequent, infrequent), word length (short, long), abstraction level (low, medium, high), and grammatical class (noun, verb, adjective). Stimuli were presented auditorily at normal speed (equivalent to 10 phonemes per sec) and at half speed (equivalent to 5 phonemes per sec) speech. When word stimuli were presented at half speed (slower), the aphasic adults but not the controls produced significantly more paradigmatic (same grammatical class) responses. Twenty aphasic subjects and twenty controls supplied association responses to words presented tachistoscopically at fixation speed (equivalent to 250 msec) and at sweep speed (equivalent to 10 msec). When word stimuli were shown for a longer time, the aphasic adults but not the controls produced significantly more paradigmatic responses. Also analyzed were paradigmatic responses to the word association test produced in relation to frequency of occurrence, word length, levels of word abstraction, and grammatical class.