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The residual word-finding deficit of traumatically head-injured children

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the residual word-finding deficit after severe head-injury. Reach of five severely head—injured subjects, (2;0-8;0 post-injury) males, ranging in age from 10;0—17;0 was compared with a Control matched for age and sex. Subjects were tested with a number of standardized and experimental language tests. Results were compared between subject groups. Results indicated that naming stimulus and condition affected the accuracy of the head—injured childrens' responses. Photographs were easier to name than line drawings. Visual confrontation naming and sentence completion were easier tasks than naming to auditory description, which in turn was easier than naming to palpation. Metalinguistic skills, e.g. antonyms and homonyms, were demonstrated to be an area of deficit for the head-injured children and warrant further research. Expository speech of the head-injured children was marked by an overall simplifications smaller MLU, and reduction of syntactic complexity when compared with the Control group. The speech of the head-injured children also contained more pauses which are indicative of word-finding difficulty.

Text

2010-06-20

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25897

Audiology and Speech Sciences

University of British Columbia

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