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Compensation of speech impairment with gestures in two persons with Broca's aphasia

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2022

Abstract

The aim of the lecture is to show that for two tested persons with Broca's aphasia, the fewer autosemantic words (content words) these persons produce and the simpler the syntax of their speech, the more they use distinct (mainly iconic) gestures to convey the required information.

We chose the method based on German research (Jakob et al., 2011). Participants watched 4 episodes of the animated series Shaun the Sheep for a total length of 24 minutes, after which they were asked to retell the story and recorded on a video camera for approximately 23 minutes. Individual answers (both verbal and non-verbal components) were subsequently transcribed, in order to achieve inter-annotator agreement, by two pre-trained students and the main administrator, who had the role of supervisor.

Just like the results of foreign research (Jakob et al, 2011), the results of our research are in agreement with the fact that people with aphasia can meaningfully produce gestures often as a speech substitute, which especially applies to those diagnosed with Broca's aphasia. In the diagnostic process, the patient's non-verbal expressions, especially gestures, which can play an important role in the process of information transmission, should be investigated and taken into account in detail.