AUDITORY PROCESSING IN INDIVIDUALS WITH MILD APHASIA - A STUDY OF RESOURCE-ALLOCATION

This study examined the effects of lesion location (frontal vs. poster ior] and nature Of distraction (nonverbal vs. verbal secondary, compet ing task) on mildly aphasic individuals' performances of listening tas ks hat required semantic judgments and lexical decisions under isolati on, focused attention, and divided attention conditions. Despite compa rable accuracy among all groups during isolation conditions, he aphasi c groups responded less accurately and more slowly than the normal con trol group during focused and divided attention conditions. Generally, the two aphasic groups performed similarly, quantitatively and qualit atively. Demographic characteristics such as time post stroke did not correlate with performance decrements. Independent of group, all indiv iduals showed greater disruption of auditory processing skills when th e secondary task was verbal rather than nonverbal. Within a limited-ca pacity model of attention, the results suggest that aphasic individual s display impairments of attention and resource allocation and that th ese impairments negatively interact with their auditory processing abi lities.