TONE PERCEPTION DEFICITS IN CHINESE-SPEAKING BROCAS APHASICS

Recent studies have demonstrated some type of tone production problems following left hemisphere lesions in severely aphasic tone-language s peakers. We studied the ability of Toisanese Chinese-speaking Broca's aphasics to comprehend lexical tone. Sets of monosyllabic words differ ing only by tone permitted comprehension testing via a word-picture ma tching task. The pattern of tone confusion in the aphasics was found t o be an exaggeration of that experienced by the normal controls.