Text Comprehension in Persons with Aphasia

Comprehension problems are common in persons with aphasia. A person with aphasia may experience pronounced problems at the acute phase following which recovery would take place. However, it is noticed that persons with aphasia may experience subtle deficits in text comprehension owing to the fact that the reading comprehension would require or impose additional load on the memory systems and meta cognitive systems. Inferencing abilities is also important for text comprehension. The present study was carried out with the aim of studying text comprehension in persons with aphasia. 7 participants with aphasia (3 Broca’s, 2 anomic, 1 conduction and 1 Wernicke’s aphasia) and 10 neuro typical participants were considered. Text comprehension was assessed through polar and multiple choice questions. The performance of the participants varied for polar and multiple choice questions. The performance was better for polar questions compared to multiple choice questions. Multiple choice questions led to more confusions especially in persons with anomic aphasia.