Focused attention deficits in patients with forms of aphasia

Abstract

Features of focused attention in patients with fluent and non-fluent aphasia were investigated in the study. Attention disorders in patients with aphasia were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by making inter-comparison and comparing against the same disorders in healthy individuals. Forty seven patients with different forms of aphasia (aged 24–75) and thirty nine neurologically intact subjects of equivalent age (control group) took part in the study. The subjects were asked to monitor long strings of aurally presented digits and react to specific combination of two numbers. Overall, the number of correct responses was greater and reaction times were shorter in healthy subjects than in subjects with aphasia. The following differences in type of errors and reaction times between participants with fluent and non-fluent aphasia were demonstrated: subjects with fluent aphasia had lower reaction times in case of high-frequency target stimuli presentation, while subjects with non-fluent aphasia demonstrated more correct responses in case of low-frequency target stimuli presentation. Additionally, subjects with non-fluent aphasia made more errors related to omitting when one target stimulus immediately followed another. No linear relationship was found between severity of language impairment and observed focused attention deficits. Thus, the presented study demonstrates the importance of studying attention deficits in patients with aphasia in rehabilitation practice.