The nature of jargon: an analysis of phonemic content and target relatedness of non-words
-
1
University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, United Kingdom
-
2
Sheffield Hallam University, Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, United Kingdom
Introduction
Fluent jargon aphasia is an acquired language impairment, characterised by effortless spoken output. Jargon speech is often unintelligible due to high proportions of non-words (Kinsbourne & Warrington, 1963). Whilst some neologisms appear to be constructed with reference to the target word, others do not. Whether to differentiate between these as abstruse (severe, non-lexical origin), and phonological (mild, phonological origin) errors, is disputed (Marshall, 2006). Since the terminology pertains to their underlying source and structure, it is important to arrive at a clear description of neologisms. This study analysed phoneme and biphone frequency in non-words produced by a group of 10 jargon aphasics, and investigated error-target overlap, to explore whether non-words are a variety of one, or two separate types of error.
Methods
We analysed repetition, reading, and naming data from 10 individuals with jargon aphasia. Phonological Overlap Index (POI), (no, shared phonemes*2)/(total phonemes in response + total phonemes in target) (Bose, 2013), was calculated as an accuracy measure. POI distributions were then plotted for the separate modalities, to unveil the variation of non-word accuracy; two separate error types should yield a bimodal distribution (Schwartz, Wilshire, Gagnon, & Polansky, 2004). Percentage occurrence of each individual phoneme within non-words was correlated against normative data (Denes, 1963). Non-words were then separated as mild or severe (0.5>POI>0.51; due to lack of clear separation in distributions), and the process was repeated. Biphone, and word initial/final phoneme prevalence was also analysed.
Results
The ten individuals produced at least 30% non-words (66 ≥ # ≥ 204, from a possible 244) across tasks of repetition, reading and naming. Group POI distributions favoured a normal, as oppose to bimodal, distribution, across all three modalities, (see figure 1). Ten individuals displayed significant rank correlations with the norms, for phoneme (.599 ≥ τb ≥ .459, p<.001) and biphone (.439 ≥ τb ≥ .355, p<.001) frequency. Nine participants also exhibited significant rank correlations with word initial (.445 ≥ τb ≥ .271, p<.05) and final (.483 ≥ τb ≥ .350, p<.01) phoneme occurrence. Significant correlations were maintained when non-words were segregated for accuracy (mild, .620 ≥ τb ≥ .501, p<.001; severe, .572 ≥ τb ≥ .434, p<.001); however, mild errors displayed a stronger relationship to the norms, (PP x̄ = 0.55; AN x̄ = 0.48). ).
Discussion
Non-words appear to be consistent across individuals, constructed with the typical distributions of phonological segments in relation to English norms. The majority of neologisms overlapped moderately with target phonology, with comparatively fewer errors at either ends of the severity spectrum. This is suggestive of a single locus, and therefore type, of error. However, further examination of segregated non-words revealed small but significant differences in the phonemic content of mild and severe neologisms, suggesting their phonological structure is subtly different. Severe errors showed greater deviation away from a normal distribution, suggesting their output is less tightly constrained by the lexical system.
Figure 1: Phonological Overlap Index distributions, for all non-word errors produced by 10 participants, across modalities.
References
Bose, A. (2013). Phonological therapy in jargon aphasia: Effects on naming and neologisms. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48(5), 582-595. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12038
Denes, P.B. (1963). On the statistics of spoken english. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 35(6), 892-904. doi: doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.1918622
Kinsbourne, M., & Warrington, E.K. (1963). Jargon aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 1(1), 27-37. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(63)90010-1
Marshall, J. (2006). Jargon aphasia: What have we learned? Aphasiology, 20(5), 387-410. doi: 10.1080/02687030500489946
Schwartz, M.F., Wilshire, C.E., Gagnon, D.A., & Polansky, M. (2004). Origins of nonword phonological errors in aphasic picture naming. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21(2-4), 159-186. doi: 10.1080/02643290342000519
Keywords:
jargon aphasia,
Neologisms,
biphones,
Phoneme frequency,
phonological overlap index
Conference:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Platform Sessions
Topic:
Academy of Aphasia
Citation:
Pilkington
E,
Robson
H,
Sage
K and
Saddy
D
(2016). The nature of jargon: an analysis of phonemic content and target relatedness of non-words.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00084
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
29 Apr 2016;
Published Online:
15 Aug 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Emma Pilkington, University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, Reading, RG6 7BE, United Kingdom, e.c.pilkington@pgr.reading.ac.uk