Broca's Aphasia Summary

The following is a clear case of conduction aphasia... He understands everything correctly and always answers questions correctly. ... He shows no trace of motor aphasia .... He cannot, however, find words for many objects he wishes to designate. He makes an effort to find them, becoming agitated in the process, and if one names them for him he repeats the name without hesitation. ... He can say many things fluently, especially familiar expressions. He then comes to a word on which he stumbles, remains caught on it, exerts himself and becomes irritated. After that every word that he utters, haltingly, is nonsensical, he corrects himself over and over again], and the harder he tries the worse the situation becomes...” ( “Conduction aphasia, …show more content…
While Wernicke’s aphasia is also termed “fluent” aphasia, because the ease of producing connected speech is not severely affected, Broca’s aphasia is mainly characterized by partial loss of the ability to produce language and is , therefore, also known as expressive aphasia. Being associated with speech production, Broca’s aphasia has been of particular interest to linguists, allowing a greater flexibility to experimental research and, therefore, facilitating the application of linguistic …show more content…
To begin with, Broca’s aphasics are not fluent; their speech can be described as labored and telegraphic (Avrutin 2). Secondly, speech output of Broca’s aphasics is made up mostly of content words such as nouns and a limited range of verbs. Patients suffering from Broca’s aphasia produce short utterances with long pauses between words. They typically take longer to express their thoughts and have a hard time describing pictures (Avrutin 2). They often have difficulty finding the correct word, often pausing to search for it. This characteristic is called “anomia”, which means “no