Verbs used by persons with aphasia during procedural discourse

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if people with mild-moderate non-fluent aphasia use verbs that differ in quantity and quality during procedural discourse than they do during conversational discourse, as well as the degree to which these differences occur. The participants for this study were 45 people from the Aphasia TalkBank with mildmoderate non-fluent aphasia who had produced both free speech and procedural discourse language samples. Of the participants, 39 had Broca’s aphasia and 6 had Transcortical Motor aphasia. Only those with a score of 10 or higher on the spontaneous speech subtest of the Western Aphasia Battery were eligible. This study analyzed verbs from conversational discourse and procedural discourse language samples. These language samples were drawn from the Aphasia TalkBank, a research database. Each sample included both videos and printed transcripts. The database provided demographic data and testing results. The free speech (conversational discourse) language sample prompt was "Tell me about an important event in your life. It can be happy or sad, from any time - from when you were a child or more recently." The procedural discourse language sample prompt was "Tell me how you would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich". Verbs from these language samples were classified using Halliday's Verb Categories and verb tense. Copulas, auxiliaries, modal verbs, transitive verbs, and intransitive verbs were also recorded. The classified verbs were then compared between the two types of discourse samples and analyzed for significant differences. Verb classifications were conducted both by the study author and a third party to ensure inter-rater reliability. The results of the study showed that both the number and type of verbs varied between the two discourse types.