The nature of working memory deficits in aphasia

Mayer, Jaime and Murray, Laura and Turkstra, Lyn (2007) The nature of working memory deficits in aphasia. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

This research addressed untangling two hypotheses regarding working memory (WM) impairments in aphasia: (a) the domain-specific hypothesis - aphasia is associated with nonlinguistic deficits only to the extent that the latter are dependent upon language; (b) the domain-general hypothesis - aphasia is associated with nonlinguistic impairments due to either overlapping anatomy or widespread cortical changes post-insult. Fourteen adults with aphasia (LHD) and twelve non-brain-damaged controls (NBD) completed a parametric WM task with systematic variation of linguistic complexity and WM load. Results were consistent with domain-general theories in that WM load, but not linguistic complexity, significantly affected LHD subjects’ performance.

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