Rhyme priming in aphasia: the role of phonology in lexical access

Brain Lang. 1994 Nov;47(4):661-83. doi: 10.1006/brln.1994.1062.

Abstract

The present experiment was conducted to explore the facilitory effects of rhyme in lexical processing in brain-damaged individuals. Normal subjects and non-fluent and fluent aphasic subjects performed auditory lexical decision and rhyme judgement tasks, in which prime-target pairs were phonologically related (either identical or rhyming) or unrelated. Results revealed rhyme facilitation of lexical decisions to real-word targets for normal and non-fluent aphasic subjects; for fluent aphasic subjects, results were equivocal. In the rhyme judgement task, facilitory effects of rhyme were found for all three groups with real-word targets. None of the groups showed clear rhyme facilitation effects with non-word targets in either task. Findings are discussed with reference to the role of phonology in lexical processing in normal and aphasic populations.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aphasia / physiopathology*
  • Brain / physiopathology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Phonetics*
  • Verbal Behavior*
  • Vocabulary