SPOKEN LANGUAGE OF INDIVIDUALS WITH MILD FLUENT APHASIA UNDER FOCUSEDAND DIVIDED-ATTENTION CONDITIONS

The spoken language of individuals with mild aphasia and age-marched c ontrol subjects was studied under conditions of isolation, focused att ention, and divided attention. A picture-description task was complete d alone and in competition with a tone-discrimination task. Regardless of condition, individuals with aphasia performed more poorly on most morphosyntactic, lexical, and pragmatic measures of spoken language th an control subjects. Increasing condition complexity resulted in lithe quantitative or qualitative change in the spoken language of the cont rol group. In contrast, the individuals with aphasia showed dual-task interference; as they shifted from isolation to divided-attention cond itions, they produced fewer syntactically complete and complex utteran ces, fewer words, and poorer word-finding accuracy. In pragmatic terms , their communication was considered less successful and less efficien t. These results suggest that decrements of attentional capacity or it s allocation may negatively affect the quantity and quality of the spo ken language of individuals with mild aphasia.