The Effect of Different Tasks in the Amount of Jargons in Individuals with Jargon Aphasia

Abstract

Introduction: Previous findings showed that individuals with jargon aphasia (JA) produce more jargons in picture naming compared to repetition task. Since naming and repetition differ primarily in the availability of the phonological code. It has been suggested that a difficulty of retrieving the phonological code after lexical selection underpin jargons production (Marshall et al., 1998; Sampson & Faroqi-shah, 2011). Aim: To investigate the effect of the linguistic demands on the amount of jargon speech produced by individuals with JA across three tasks: naming pictures, reading aloud, and repetition. Method: 5 English speaking individuals with JA with age range (51-86 years old) were tested using the 175-items of the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT). Participants were examined using the same list of items in reading aloud and repetition tasks. Procedure: The amount of jargons was achieved by measuring the ratio of jargon syllables to the total number of syllables produced in a task. Results: Although participants presented higher jargon ratios in naming compared to reading aloud and repetition tasks, findings from across participants showed no significant difference between the three conditions. However, participants' performance in naming task differs from other conditions in the pattern of errors produced and not the amount of jargons as expected. Conclusion: Findings from reading aloud condition do not support the assumption that individuals with JA perform better in repetition task due to the availability of the phonological code only. We suggest that the involvement of different linguistic routes in each condition underpin the variation seen in errors.