Production of Nouns and Verbs in Adults with Broca’s Aphasia: Comparison between Naming and Narration

Kim, Soo Ryon; Park, Chang Il; Kim, Deok Yong; Hwang, Min A

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2004;9(2): 1-18.

Soo Ryon Kim^` , Chang Il Park^` , Deok Yong Kim^` , and Min A Hwang^`

김수련(Soo Ryon Kim)| 박창일(Chang Il Park)| 김덕용(Deok Yong Kim)| 황민아(Min A Hwang)

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the production of nouns and verbs in Korean-speaking adults with Broca’s aphasia. Ten adults with Broca’s aphasia and 10 normal adults participated in a picture-naming task and in a narrative task where the target nouns and verbs were identical across the tasks. Although the aphasic adults produced more errors than the normal adults, both groups produced nouns more accurately than verbs in the two tasks. However, the performance differences between nouns and verbs were greater in the aphasic adults than in the normal adults. Within the aphasic adults, the gap between noun-verb production was greater in the naming task than in the narrative task. Normal adults did not show such task difference in their production of nouns and verbs. The analysis of error types revealed that ‘no response’ was the most prevalent type of error for the aphasic adults, compared to ‘associated’ for the normal adults. The aphasic adults tended to make more ‘no responses’ in the narrative task than in the naming task. The results implied that Korean-speaking adults with Broca’s aphasia showed more deficits in verb production relative to noun production, which is in agreement with the findings of Broca’s aphasia in other languages. However, such dissociation appeared to be affected by task types. The factors associated with noun-verb dissociation and the importance of error analysis were discussed.