METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS IN A CASE OF EARLY-ADOLESCENT DYSPHASIA

Aphasia has been characterized as the loss of aptitude for metalinguis tic operations. This article analyses the metasyntactic deficits in a case of early-adolescent dysphasia in terms of a psycholinguistic mode l of metalinguistic development, and characterizes the metasyntactic d eficit according to the level of metalinguistic representation achieve d and the type of processing invoked. The results suggest that aphasia can differentially affect syntactic and metasyntactic competence. The y also suggest that the psycholinguistic model permits a systematic de scription of the nature and the significance of the metasyntactic defi cit by specifying the level at which metasyntactic knowledge is impair ed, and by providing a precise analysis of the representational status of metalinguistic awareness for a given linguistic structure. The mod el permits the definition of a hierarchy of difficulty among metasynta ctic tasks by systematically defining the level of knowledge which eac h might recruit. It is suggested that a systematic analysis of the rep resentational status of a linguistic structure such as the one conduct ed in this study permits an efficient planning of remediation by selec ting therapy targets and therapy tasks.