Phonemic Fluency and Rhyme Production in People with Aphasic Word Retrieval Disorders: Sub‐Lexical Written Language Skills Matter

What is already known on this subject So far, it has been discussed that language functions, e.g., confrontation naming performance or vocabulary size, and executive functions have an impact on phonemic fluency in people with aphasia (PWA). In addition, studies with people with developmental dyslexia and non-literate people have shown that phonemic fluency performance is strongly influenced by segmental written language skills. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge The present study has shown that in PWA with post-semantic word retrieval disorders, segmental written language skills, i.e., reading/writing of nonwords, are associated with their performance in phonemic fluency and rhyme production. In contrast, performance in category fluency showed a relationship with spoken word retrieval abilities as measured by confrontation naming. What are the potential or actual clinical implications for this work? At least for PWA with dyslexia/dysgraphia, word form-based tasks such as phonemic fluency and rhyme production may not be appropriate for assessing or treating word retrieval disorders, as performance on these tasks, which rely on phonological strategies, appears to be related to deficits in segmental written language skills. Alternatively, tasks that also require semantic references may be more appropriate.