Psycholinguistic Study Of Aphasia: A Revision Of The Concept Of Anomia

Abstract

An adult aphasic with anomia was compared on the basis of a normal model of speech with a normal subject. It seemed to be possible to hypothesize that anomia may be characterized by the loss of all but the most general and frequent words in the language. Therefore, such a patient has suffered disruption of voluntary control of those relatively infrequent words which carry essential information, but has retained more or less automatic use of highly frequent words.