Correlation of Auditory Comprehension Between Fluent and Non-Fluent Types of Aphasia

Abstract

The current study was aimed to assess auditory comprehension by using the Revised Token Test (RTT) in Telugu. A total of 20 Telugu-speaking aphasics with an age range of 17 to 80 years participated. Qualitative analysis was done to get the details of the errors made by each type of aphasia while performing the test. Results revealed that the performance of all aphasics was observed to be 76% to 93% on all the subtests. Females participated better than the male aphasics. The anomic aphasia group performed well when compared to other types. Error analysis reveals that the incorrect responses were mostly observed in G3 and G4. While performing the test, various errors such as ‘confusions’, ‘multiple attempts’, ‘visual interceptions’, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘No response’ were observed. As the complexity of the sentence occurred, 25% of participants mostly responded by saying "don’t know" and “no response” was given by 15% due to the comprehension deficits. All the aphasics performed poorly on various linguistic elements such as adverb clauses, along with place prepositions, object I nouns, implied common verbs, left-right prepositions, and size II adjective sections, except for anomic, where they showed errors only in adverb clauses. Poor performance might be due to an increase in linguistic and cognitive complexity. Finally, the author found that the auditory comprehension was poor for all the types of aphasias with the increase in complexity of sentences. Anomic aphasics performed better than all the aphasics. Authors stated that detailed auditory comprehension assessments are essential in assessing aphasics and are crucial before starting management.