Aphasic Comprehension of Time Spacing

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Abstract
Receptive difficulty is known to be of crucial significance in the disorder of aphasia. Auditory comprehension difficulty has been related to an inability to perceive the temporal sequence of aural stimuli. This experiment tested the hypothesis that aphasics might be aided in comprehending speech sounds by a method called interpolated silences. Thirty aphasic veterans were tested on the Sklar Aphasia Scale. Fifteen over 50 were then compared with 15 under 50 on selections from the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress listening test under three conditions: normal enunciation, interpolated silences, and accumulated time. Interpolated silence surrounded every phoneme with 150 msec of silence. The accumulated time condition inserted the same amount of silences, but after each word. Each condition was put on video tape imaging the experimenter’s head and shoulders with lip synchronizing. Each subject served under all three conditions in counterbalanced sequences. With the younger group, interpolated silences resulted in improved performance, but the improvement was not noted in the older group. Though the younger and older groups differed somewhat in their degrees of deficit, the factor of age emerged from this study as being of great significance in evaluating the aphasic’s probable responsiveness to interpolated silences.

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