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Speech errors patterns in post-stroke aphasia: cross-linguistic evidence from two elicitation tasks

Georgia Angelopoulou1, 2*, Swathi Kiran2, DImitrios Kasselimis1, 3, Erin L. Meier2, Yue Pan2, Maria Varkanitsa4, 5, Dimitris Tsolakopoulos1, Georgios Papageorgiou1, Dionysis Goutsos6, Ioannis Evdokimidis1 and Constantin Potagas1
  • 1 National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1st Department of Neurology, Eginition Hospital, Greece
  • 2 Boston University, Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation, United States
  • 3 University of Crete, Department of Psychiatry, Greece
  • 4 University College London, Linguistics Department, United Kingdom
  • 5 Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Department of Neurology, United States
  • 6 National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, Philology Department, Greece

Word retrieval deficits are considered among the most pervasive symptoms in aphasia. Speech errors may serve as indicators of impaired word retrieval providing useful information regarding the stages (lexical access or phonological encoding) involved in word production (Dell et all., 1997). Similarly, silent intervals in speech (empty pauses) may be studied as an index of internal cognitive processes, such as word access and retrieval (Butterworth, 1979). To the best of our knowledge, there are sparse findings on the investigation of errors’ production, in relation to pauses occurrence in connected speech. The present cross-linguistic study aims to investigate the frequency of semantic (presented as word substitutions) and phonological errors (presented as phoneme omissions, additions and/or substitutions) in two narrative tasks, in conjunction with the occurrence of silent pauses, in two distinct cohorts of post-stroke patients with aphasia, i.e. English-speaking and Greek-speaking patients. Methods Nineteen English-speaking [12 males; mean age = 62.22 years (SD: 8.2), mean years of formal schooling = 14.42 (SD: 2.1)] and 15 Greek-speaking [11 males; mean age = 56.87 years (SD: 14.5), mean years of formal schooling = 14.64 (SD: 2.8)] chronic stroke patients with aphasia narrated the Cinderella Story and described a picture. Groups were matched for age, years of education, time post-onset and speech rate (words/minute). Speech samples were transcribed and errors were identified by two independent raters. Empty (silent) pauses preceding both phonological and semantic errors were annotated with ELAN software and their duration was extracted. The frequency of paraphasias’ production was calculated based on the total number of words produced. Structural imaging data (3D T1W images) were obtained for each patient. Percentage of spared tissue for specific left hemisphere cortical ROIs (inferior frontal gyrus, middle and superior temporal gyri, inferior parietal lobule, including angular and supramarginal gyri and insula) and total lesion volume were calculated based on methodology presented by Meier, Kapse & Kiran, 2016, using AAL atlas. Results First, Paired samples t-tests were conducted separately for each language group to investigate possible differences between the two elicitation tasks, with regard to all speech (errors and pauses) variables. Results showed that there are no differences between the two genres, for both groups. Regarding between groups comparisons, no significant differences were detected. Finally, correlation analyses between specific ROIs and speech variables showed a significant negative correlation between MTG and semantic errors produced in both tasks, for all participants (r= −.463, p=.0395). Discussion Overall, our findings indicate no significant differences in phonemic and semantic errors between two groups, in both narrative tasks. Considered that our groups are similar regarding to demographics, we could argue in favor of a universal language mechanism. Similarly, the negative association between percentage of spared tissue in MTG and production of semantic errors in both tasks, is group independent. Following previous research, we suggest that MTG may play an important role in access to semantic representations and lexical retrieval processes.

Acknowledgements

GA, doctoral student, is supported by the Fulbright Foundation under its 2017–2018 Doctoral
Dissertation Visiting Research Students program in the United States.
DK is supported by IKY Scholarships Programme co-financed by the
European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) and Greek National
Funds.
This study was partially supported by the Center for the Neurobiology of Language
Recovery.

References

Butterworth, B. (1979). Hesitation and the production of verbal paraphasias and
neologisms in jargon aphasia. Brain and language, 8(2), 133-161.

Dell, G. S., Schwartz, M. F., Martin, N., Saffran, E. M., & Gagnon, D. A. (1997). Lexical
access in aphasic and nonaphasic speakers. Psychological review, 104(4), 801.
Meier, E. L., Kapse, K. J., & Kiran, S. (2016). The relationship between frontotemporal effective connectivity during picture naming, behavior, and preserved cortical tissue in chronic aphasia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00109
Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., Landeau, B., Papathanassiou, D., Crivello, F., Etard, O., Delcroix, N., Mazoyer, B. & Joliot, M. (2002). Automated anatomical labeling of activations in SPM using a macroscopic anatomical parcellation of the MNI MRI single-subject brain. Neuroimage, 15(1), 273-289.

Keywords: semantic errors, Phonological errors, Silent pauses, Connected speech, cross-cultural comparison

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018.

Presentation Type: oral presentation

Topic: Eligible for a student award

Citation: Angelopoulou G, Kiran S, Kasselimis D, Meier EL, Pan Y, Varkanitsa M, Tsolakopoulos D, Papageorgiou G, Goutsos D, Evdokimidis I and Potagas C (2019). Speech errors patterns in post-stroke aphasia: cross-linguistic evidence from two elicitation tasks. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00089

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Received: 01 May 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Mrs. Georgia Angelopoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1st Department of Neurology, Eginition Hospital, Athens, Greece, georginangel@gmail.com