Facets of analytical processing in aphasia: a picture ordering task.

Aphasics, especially those diagnosed as Broca's, have more difficulties than patients will right hemisphere lesions when required to order six pictures on the basis of a single feature delineated by the extremes of the rank-order. Additional analyses indicate that they tend also to perform worse than patients with diffuse injuries and than patients with left hemispheric lesions without aphasia. Differences are more pronounced when the critical features have to be inferred from the depicted objects (e.g. age of persons) than when they can be seen directly in the drawings (e.g. girth of persons). The performance of the aphasics correlated significantly with word comprehension scores but negligible with the Token Test. Results are discussed with respect to analytical functions differentially impaired in aphasia.