Frequency, Picturability and Availability of Nouns in Aphasia

Fluent aphasia have a higher proportion of non-picturable and abstract nouns in their conversation than do Broca's aphasics but this difference is confined to noun's in the Thorndike-Lorge frequency range of over 100 occurrences per million.

Abstract

Fluent aphasia have a higher proportion of non-picturable and abstract nouns in their conversation than do Broca's aphasics but this difference is confined to nouns in the Thorndike-Lorge frequency range of over 100 occurrences per million. Cloze procedure reveals non-picturable and abstract nouns are more predictable in context than picturable and concrete nouns in the above frequency range. Aphasics' vocabulary differences are interpreted as a function of noun predictability, interacting with differences in word-finding and grammatical fluency of the two classes of aphasics.