Background: Examining discourse production during picture description performance holds great promise for understanding the nature of and the interconnectedness between visuospatial processing and language production in aphasia - a language disorder following acquired brain damage. There is a paucity of studies concurrently investigating the two processes in discourse production tasks, despite their potential clinical utility in aphasia rehabilitation. In the current study, we compared the core lexicon (CoreLex) word production performance of PWA and matched healthy control participants (HCP) along the dimensions of typicality of words (e.g., the words most frequently used by a normative sample of healthy controls), CoreLex word production timing, as well as the indirect visuospatial measures of order and spatial location of CoreLex word productions across the four quadrants of the Cat Rescue picture in a story telling task.

Methods: A total of 319 transcripts from HCP and 400 transcripts from PWA, all of whom completed the picture description task of the Cat Rescue were drawn from the AphasiaBank database-the largest repository of aphasic discourse samples in the world. For each transcript, CoreLex scores and timing data of word production - including the elapsed time to produce each core lexicon content item and the first core lexicon content word in each quadrant-were indexed across the four quadrants of the Cat Rescue picture using the CLAN (Computerized Language ANalysis) program.

Results: CoreLex analysis revealed that PWA were significantly slower compared to HCP in producing the first CoreLex word for each quadrant of the picture. PWA also demonstrated delayed CoreLex word production times across all the four quadrants, as well as lower rates of certain CoreLex word production compared to HCP. Aphasia severity was inversely related to the latency and accuracy of CoreLex production.

Conclusion: Study findings offer preliminary evidence for the clinical utility of integrating concurrent visuospatial processing and language production tasks as part of discourse assessment in PWA. Future implications for further expanding and refining discourse-based visuospatial processing assessment tools in aphasia rehabilitation are discussed.

Keywords: aphasia; aphasia severity; core lexicon; discourse; visuospatial processing.

Copyright © 2025 Dalton, Anjum, Fromm and MacWhinney.

背景： 在失语症（一种由于脑损伤引起的语言障碍）康复中，同时研究视觉空间处理和语言生成之间的联系具有重要的临床应用价值。尽管如此，在话语产出任务中同时研究这两个过程的研究仍然很少。在这项研究中，我们比较了失语症患者（PWA）与匹配的健康对照组参与者（HCP）在典型词汇（例如，健康对照样本中最常用的单词）、核心词汇生成时间以及故事讲述任务中猫救援图片四个象限中的核心词汇生成顺序和空间位置上的表现。

方法： 我们从AphasiaBank数据库中抽取了319份HCP的记录和400份PWA的记录，所有参与者都完成了猫救援图的描述任务。使用CLAN（计算机语言分析）程序，在猫救援图片的四个象限内索引每个记录的核心词汇得分以及单词生成时间数据，包括产生每个核心词汇项目所需的时间和在每个象限中产生的第一个核心词汇项。

结果： 核心词汇分析表明，PWA在生成每个象限中的第一个核心词汇时比HCP要慢。此外，PWA在所有四个象限的核心词汇生成时间上都表现出延迟，并且某些核心词汇的生成率低于HCP。失语症严重程度与核心词汇生成的时间和准确性成反比。

结论： 研究结果为将同时进行视觉空间处理和语言生产任务作为PWA话语评估的一部分提供了初步证据。讨论了未来在失语症康复中进一步扩展和完善基于话语的视觉空间处理评估工具的意义。

关键词： 失语症；失语症严重程度；核心词汇；话语；视觉空间处理。

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