On the nature of the phonological output planning processes involved in verbal rehearsal: evidence from aphasia.

This paper describes the performance of an aphasic patient, R.W., in producing the sounds of words and in verbal rehearsal. R.W. showed evidence of retained abilities to access aspects of the forms of spoken words but made numerous phonemic paraphasias in single word production tasks. He did not show features of dysarthria or apraxia of speech. This pattern indicates that his deficit affected a process that plans the phonological forms of spoken words. R.W.'s performances in short-term memory and metalinguistic tasks involving single words were consistent with impaired rehearsal functions. The pattern of results indicates that rehearsal requires planning of the phonological forms of spoken items and suggests that activating entries in the phonological output lexicon is not adequate to permit rehearsal to proceed normally.