Slowed Compensation Responses to Altered Auditory Feedback in Post-Stroke Aphasia: Implications for Speech Sensorimotor Integration.
Lorelei Phillip Johnson, Stacey Sangtian, Karim Johari and 2 others
PMID 32919232WHAT IT FOUND
People with aphasia took longer to adjust their pitch when their auditory feedback was altered, but corrected to the same extent as healthy speakers once time was accounted for.
This suggests the mechanism for speech error correction remains intact, though it operates more slowly.
Key findings
01Individuals with aphasia showed a significant delay in the timing of their vocal compensation response to altered auditory feedback compared to healthy controls.
02When the analysis controlled for the difference in response timing, there was no significant difference in the magnitude of vocal compensation between the aphasia and control groups.
03There was no significant correlation between how well participants compensated for altered feedback during a vowel task and their ability to self-correct errors during a picture naming task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small, particularly for the brain imaging analysis, which may have missed subtle relationships between specific brain lesions and behavior. The groups were not matched for sex or education, although the authors state these factors did not significantly predict performance. The picture naming task was relatively short, which may not have provided enough opportunities to detect rare or subtle self-correction behaviors. The study did not include participants with Wernicke’s aphasia, so the results may not apply to all types of language impairment.
Declared interests
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H., Extramural). No other conflicts of interest are declared in the text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that people with aphasia have a normal speech feedback system. While the size of their correction was normal, the significant delay in their response time indicates a processing deficit that this study cannot fully explain. The lack of correlation with naming errors also means these findings do not directly translate to everyday speech production difficulties.