Verbal memory function in mild aphasia.

Verbal material may be processed by semantic and phonologic systems. Damage to these language systems may also impair memory. We classified 16 mildly aphasic patients according to phonologic and lexicosemantic abilities, tested them on a variety of short- and long-term memory measures, and correlated behavioral deficits with lesion location. Aphasia impaired both short- and long-term memory. Phonologic impairment affected only digit span performance. Lexicosemantic deficits impaired self-organized encoding of word lists. Memory impairment was not associated with specific lesion locations. Persistent verbal-memory impairments accompanying even mild residual aphasia may be responsible for much of the difficulty mildly aphasic patients experience returning to vocational, academic, and social life. Co-occurrence of these deficits probably reflects their underlying dependence on similar processing systems.