The Characteristics of the Working Memory in Patients with Chinese Aphasia / 听力学及言语疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the characteristics of the working memory in patients with Chinese aphasia in different ways of tasks and test materials .Methods Fifteen aphasia patients (aphasia group ,54~70 years old) and fifteen matched normal cases (control group) were requested to finish auditory retelling and auditory recognition tests of numerical materials ,content and function words .The maximum length of the string correctly completed was referred to as the working memory span .The working memory span was compared between the two groups .Results The working memory span of the aphasia group was significantly smaller than that of in the normal group (P<0 .01) .The working memory span of in patients with the aphasia group in the positive sequence retelling tasks were significantly greater than in reverse retelling ,positive recognition and reverse recognition (P<0 .01) .Reverse retell-ing was significantly greater than reverse recognition (P<0 .01) .The positive recognition was significantly greater than the reverse recognition(P<0 .01) .In retelling tasks ,the order of the working memory span was numbers , function words ,content words from high to low in the aphasia group ,but there was no significant difference be-tween them .In the positive recognition tasks ,the average working memory span for the numerical material was sig-nificantly greater than the content words(P< 0 .01) and the function words(P< 0 .01) .The content words were greater than the function words(P<0 .01) .In the reverse recognition tasks ,average working memory span for the numerical material was significantly greater than the function words (P<0 .01) .Conclusion The working memoryspan of in patients with aphasics significantly lags behind the normal people .Numbers are the easiest for aphasics . In different task modes ,the difficulties from high to low are as followpositive retelling ,reverse retelling ,positive recognition and reverse recognition .