Predicting segmental substitution errors in aphasic patients with phonological and phonetic encoding impairments

• Published in: Loquens Vol. 2; no. 2; p. e023
• Main Authors: Marczyk, Anna, Baqué, Lorraine
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas 30.12.2015
• Subjects: aphasia; phonetic and phonological impairments; trastornos fonéticos y fonológicos; afasia; errores de sustitución; substitution errors
• ISSN: 2386-2637; 2386-2637
• DOI: 10.3989/loquens.2015.023

This paper analyses the factors that predict substitution errors produced by four Broca’s and four conduction aphasic subjects, all native speakers of Spanish, in reading and repetition tasks. Errors were elicited using a list of words where type of consonant, lexical stress and phonetic context were controlled for and where variables related to frequency of occurrence (word and syllable) and phonological neighbourhood characteristics were assigned using available online corpora. 675 substitution errors were obtained and preferential tendencies to devoice, occlusivise or spirantise were identified. Logistic regression mixed-effect models were performed on these three types of substitution errors to identify the predictors depending on the aphasic profile. While our results lent support to the hypothesis of a concomitant phonetic deficit in fluent aphasia, contrary to the classical claim, it also revealed differential patterns in the phonic behaviour of patients regarding the access to mental syllabary or syllabic position effects. Our results are discussed in relation to the phonetic vs. phonological impairments dimension in aphasia and the seriality/ interactivity axis in speech architectures.