Compensation of speech impairment using gestures: a case study of two individuals with Broca's aphasia
Abstract
In my research, I verify two basic assumptions established by Jakob et al. (2011): 1) Persons with aphasia (PWA) produce more gestures with regard to the number of words when interpreting texts than healthy control persons (HCP); 2) The more speech-limited a person with aphasia is, i.e., the fewer words s/he produces, the more gestures s/he produces when interpreting the text.
In total, 6 persons with diagnosed aphasia and 12 persons without an obvious speech defect were included. For the purposes of this article, I describe two men with Broca's aphasia.
I point out how the production of autosemantic words (nouns and verbs) and pronouns is related to the production of communicative gestures, or more precisely, verify the assumption that a more expressive production of gestures relates to a higher frequency of pronouns and a lower frequency of nouns and verbs. I also describe the use of autosemantic words by these two people with Broca's aphasia with the help of the so-called h-point and the ratio between activity and descriptiveness of the text. While in participant MB1 it appears that a higher frequency of pronouns and gestures means a lower frequency of nouns and verbs, in participant MB2 this dependence is not so evident.