Use of word- or short-syntagma-stimulation for utterance production in aphasics.

In 50 aphasics and 30 normal controls, a therapeutic stimulating technique using different classes of words and short syntagmas was performed. The different classes of words or short syntagmas elicited different types of answers. Unlike controls, the aphasics showed a tendency to less often include the stimulus in the answer and to substitute it inadequately. The stimulus was not too often modified when included in the answer, the initial position being more frequent, as a support for sentence production. Grammatical agreement was deficient. Poor structures of the answers were predominant. After speech therapy using various types of stimuli, the performance in aphasics improved. Since stimuli of different morphological classes produce different performances, it seems necessary to use all types of stimuli in the speech therapy.