Semantic Judgment Ability in Adult Aphasia

Recent psycholinguistic literature suggests that language usage often involves the ability to make judgments or appraisals about various aspects of language. It was therefore the purpose of the present study to examine the semantic judgment or evaluation abilities of thirty persons with aphasia in comparison to these same behaviors in a group of thirty normal individuals. That is, this study examined subject ability to use knowledge to make comparisons or judgments in reference to specific criteria. Results support the existence of a judgment capacity and indicate that persons with aphasia are impaired in their ability to evaluate semantic material. Therefore, speech pathologists may wish to include semantic judgment tasks in their evaluation procedures and plan therapy directed toward the retrieval of judgment responses.