A Factorial Study of Language Impairment of 269 Aphasic Patients with Cerebrovascular Accident

要旨

The Schuell-Sasanuma Differential Diagnostic Test of Aphasia, Form 2, was administered to 269 consecutively admitted cases of aphasia at a large rehabilitation center. An intercorrelation matrix calculated from the scores of 68 test items served as data for a principal axis analysis. Ten principal axes occupied 95.5% of the common factor variance. An orthogonal rotation in the factor space resulted in the identification of the following factors:Factor 1. Language behavior.Factor 2. Visuo-spatial and/or visuo-motor processes.Factor 3. Programming of articulatory movements.Factor 4. Auditory discrimination and recognition.Factor 5. Movements of speech musculature.Comparisons of the findings with those of a similar study by Schuell et al. revealed some overall similarities as well as some specific differences in terms of the factorial structure.Clinical as well as theoretical implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the neurophysiological correlates underlying the factors, and some linguistic characteristics of Japanese as they are reflected in aphasic performances, in particular in connection with the use of the two types of transcriptions, kanji and kana.Suggestions are forwarded for using a factor analysis approach as an aid to construct a clinically more useful model of language impairment in aphasia, i. e., by means of (1) devising more discriminative tests, and administering them to various aphasic groups, (2) submitting the results of these tests to the factor analysis, and (3) repeating the procedures (1) and (2).

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