Body image and comprehension of body part names.

The relation between awareness of body topology and auditory comprehension of body part names was studied in 22 aphasic subjects. Two nonverbal tasks--human figure drawing and placement of individual body parts in relation to a drawn face--were compared with two auditory tests of body part comprehension. The two nonverbal and the two verbal tasks were closely correlated with each other, but there was no relation involving either of the verbal tests with either of the nonverbal tests. Selection errors in the auditory comprehension tasks were predominantly semantically based and equally distributed between functionally analogous parts and parts related by location on the body.