The relationship between semantics, phonology, and naming performance in aphasia: a structural equation modeling approach.

The exploration of naming error patterns in aphasia provides insights into the cognitive processes underlying naming performance. We investigated how semantic and phonological abilities correlate and how they influence naming performance in aphasia. Data from 296 individuals with aphasia, drawn from the Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistics Project Database, were analyzed using a structural equation model. The model incorporated latent variables for semantics and phonology and manifest variables for naming accuracy and error patterns. There was a moderate positive correlation between semantics and phonology after controlling for overall aphasia severity. Both semantic and phonological abilities influenced naming accuracy. Semantic abilities negatively related to semantic, mixed, unrelated errors, and no responses. Interestingly, phonology positively affected semantic errors. Additionally, phonological abilities negatively related to each of phonological and neologism errors. These results highlight the role of semantic and phonological skills on naming performance in aphasia and reveal a relationship between these cognitive processes.

Review of the Phonological System of Contemporary Urdu Spoken in Pakistan.

PURPOSE: Urdu is the lingua franca and national language of Pakistan, and is the 10th most-spoken language worldwide with over 230 million speakers. The Urdu phonological system has been examined over the past decades. However, the system has been evolving. This paper aimed to review the available studies investigating various aspects of the Urdu phonological system and to reveal the variations noted among these studies. METHOD: Twenty-one studies examining the phonological system of Urdu were located. The studies were reviewed in terms of consonants, geminates, consonant clusters, vowels, diphthongs, syllable structure, phonotactic constraints, and stress. RESULT: The findings indicated that 38 consonants, 23 vowels, and 15 diphthongs are used in contemporary Urdu. Most consonants exist as geminates word medially. There are six syllable structures. The consonant clusters are constrained to the coda position only, and short vowels cannot exist in the word-final position. Like other syllable-timed languages, stress is not prominent in Urdu. CONCLUSION: Based on this review, a contemporary Urdu phonemic and syllable structure inventory has been proposed. This will serve as a reference for use in further acquisition research and clinical practice.

Gradient speech change during intervention for school-aged children and adults with cleft palate ± lip.

Gradient speech change, where speech sound production develops in a broadly step-wise fashion towards the standard adult form, is a well-recognised phenomenon in children developing typical speech, but is much less studied in speakers with developmental speech sound disorders. Instrumental techniques, such as electropalatography (EPG), may be useful for identifying gradient speech change and may supplement phonetic transcription in important ways. This study investigated whether gradient speech change occurred in six participants with cleft palate ± lip undergoing intervention within a usage-based phonology framework (2/6 participants with speech distortions; 4/6 with pattern-based speech substitutions; combined total of 25 speech sounds targeted for intervention). Participants received weekly therapy in a hospital setting and were aged 10-27 years. Gradient speech change with target speech sounds was examined using EPG analysis, which was undertaken after every fifth session of therapy. The presence of gradient change was determined by visually examining EPG palatograms and EPG indices for target speech sounds across successive EPG test points. This study found gradient speech change occurred in 22/25 target sounds over the course of intervention. This gradient change occurred for both speech distortions and pattern-based speech substitutions. The remaining 3/25 target sounds showed categorical change. Usage-based phonology was suggested as a theory with potential for explaining gradient speech change, with both typical and atypical speech, and with speech distortions and pattern-based speech substitutions. This finding adds to other research showing that the objective data provided by instrumental techniques, such as EPG, may be a valuable complement to phonetic transcription.

Which skills underlie French-speaking children's lexical spelling acquisition in elementary school? Insight from a cross-sectional exploratory network study from Grade 1 to Grade 5.

Learning to spell in an inconsistent orthographic system is a true challenge for primary school children. Previous empirical studies have highlighted three main skills involved in this learning process: phonological skills, morphological skills, and children's sensitivity to graphotactic regularities. However, the literature shows contradictions in the exact nature of the contribution of each skill at different stages of the learning process. So, the aim of our study was to test the contribution of this set of skills in the acquisition of lexical spelling as a function of children's grade level. For this purpose, we assessed these dimensions in a cross-sectional sample of 1101 French-speaking children from Grade 1 to Grade 5. The analyses were conducted using data-driven exploratory network modeling. The results showed (a) a predominant role of phonological skills at the beginning of learning, which tends to decrease with advancing schooling; (b) an increasing contribution of morphological skills from Grade 1 to Grade 5 with a drop in Grade 4, which is the only contribution that continues to increase in Grade 5; and (c) a contribution of the sensitivity to graphotactic regularities that tends to be stable until Grade 4 before decreasing in Grade 5. Our findings show the importance of all three skills in a dynamic process in learning to spell. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the integration of multiple patterns model of learning to spell.

One Cue's Loss Is Another Cue's Gain-Learning Morphophonology Through Unlearning.

A word often expresses many different morphological functions. Which part of a word contributes to which part of the overall meaning is not always clear, which raises the question as to how such functions are learned. While linguistic studies tacitly assume the co-occurrence of cues and outcomes to suffice in learning these functions (Baer-Henney, Kügler, & van de Vijver, 2015; Baer-Henney & van de Vijver, 2012), error-driven learning suggests that contingency rather than contiguity is crucial (Nixon, 2020; Ramscar, Yarlett, Dye, Denny, & Thorpe, 2010). In error-driven learning, cues gain association strength if they predict a certain outcome, and they lose strength if the outcome is absent. This reduction of association strength is called unlearning. So far, it is unclear if such unlearning has consequences for cue-outcome associations beyond the ones that get reduced. To test for such consequences of unlearning, we taught participants morphophonological patterns in an artificial language learning experiment. In one block, the cues to two morphological outcomes-plural and diminutive-co-occurred within the same word forms. In another block, a single cue to only one of these two outcomes was presented in a different set of word forms. We wanted to find out, if participants unlearn this cue's association with the outcome that is not predicted by the cue alone, and if this allows the absent cue to be associated with the absent outcome. Our results show that if unlearning was possible, participants learned that the absent cue predicts the absent outcome better than if no unlearning was possible. This effect was stronger if the unlearned cue was more salient. This shows that unlearning takes place even if no alternative cues to an absent outcome are provided, which highlights that learners take both positive and negative evidence into account-as predicted by domain general error-driven learning.

Revisiting the nature and the context of T4 alternations: insights from disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic word/digit productions in Taiwan Mandarin.

The tone values of a Tone 4 (T4) syllable are conventionally assumed to change from '51' to '53' when the syllable is followed by another T4 syllable in Mandarin Chinese. Literature focusing on T4 alternation is still inconclusive regarding the contexts for the alternations and whether the phenomenon should be better categorized as tone sandhi (i.e., represented as an abstract phonological rule in mental grammar) or tonal coarticulation (i.e., a natural articulation phenomenon at the phonetic level). The current study probes into these issues by focusing on disyllabic pseudowords, right-branching trisyllabic words as well as unstructured trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic digits. Productions from a total of 148 participants were collected and fundamental frequency (f0) contours, vowel lengths and f0 slopes were included in the analysis. The results from the experiments supported the tonal coarticulation view and showed that the trigger for the alternations was the high-onset tones following T4. Implications to the phonological analysis on tonal alternations in Mandarin Chinese are discussed.

Constraints on novel word learning in heritage speakers.

Introduction: Recent research on word learning has found that adults can rapidly learn novel words by tracking cross-situational statistics, but learning is greatly influenced by the phonological properties of the words and by the native language of the speakers. Mandarin-native speakers could easily pick up novel words with Mandarin tones after a short exposure, but English-native speakers had specific difficulty with the tonal components. It is, however, unclear how much experience with Mandarin is needed to successfully use the tonal cue in word learning. In this study, we explored this question by focusing on the heritage language population, who typically are exposed to the target language at an early age but then develop and switch to another majority language. Specifically, we investigated whether heritage Mandarin speakers residing in an English-speaking region and speaking English as a dominant language would be able to learn novel Mandarin tonal words from statistical tracking. It helps us understand whether early exposure to the target feature is sufficient to promote the use of that feature in word learning later in life. Methods: We trained 30 heritage Mandarin speakers with Mandarin pseudowords via a cross-situational statistical word learning task (CSWL). Results and discussion: Heritage Mandarin speakers were able to learn the pseudowords across multiple situations, but similar-sounding words (i.e., minimal pairs) were more difficult to identify, and words that contrast only in lexical tones (i.e., Mandarin lexical tone) were distinguished at chance level throughout learning. We also collected information about the participants' heritage language (HL) experience and usage. We did not observe a relationship between HL experience/usage and performance in tonal word learning, suggesting that HL exposure does not necessarily lead to an advantage in learning the target language.

Accommodation and Language Contact.

The paper introduces the Special Issue on Language Contact and Speaker Accommodation, which originates from the conference Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE) held at the University of Lecce, Italy, in 2019. It discusses the topics of language contact and speaker accommodation, summarizing the contributions included in the Special Issue, and arguing explicitly in favour of a unitary view of how both temporary and stable changes happen in (part of) the linguistic systems. Accommodation is seen as the same gradual and non-homogeneous process at play in different contact settings. In the introductory sections, a discussion is offered on various situations in which linguistic systems are in contact and on the main factors that may be at play; the following sections offer an overview of the papers included in the Special Issue, which focus on accommodation in L2 and heritage speakers as well as on the time dimension of dialect or language societal contact. Finally, accommodation is discussed as the same process that is at work in any interaction, that may modify temporarily or long-term the system of L2 learners and bilinguals (e.g., immigrants), that usually affects in the long-term the heritage speakers' system, and that only in the long term can lead to language changes involving entire communities.

Neural representation of phonological wordform in temporal cortex.

While the neural bases of the earliest stages of speech categorization have been widely explored using neural decoding methods, there is still a lack of consensus on questions as basic as how wordforms are represented and in what way this word-level representation influences downstream processing in the brain. Isolating and localizing the neural representations of wordform is challenging because spoken words activate a variety of representations (e.g., segmental, semantic, articulatory) in addition to form-based representations. We addressed these challenges through a novel integrated neural decoding and effective connectivity design using region of interest (ROI)-based, source-reconstructed magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (MEG/EEG) data collected during a lexical decision task. To identify wordform representations, we trained classifiers on words and nonwords from different phonological neighborhoods and then tested the classifiers' ability to discriminate between untrained target words that overlapped phonologically with the trained items. Training with word neighbors supported significantly better decoding than training with nonword neighbors in the period immediately following target presentation. Decoding regions included mostly right hemisphere regions in the posterior temporal lobe implicated in phonetic and lexical representation. Additionally, neighbors that aligned with target word beginnings (critical for word recognition) supported decoding, but equivalent phonological overlap with word codas did not, suggesting lexical mediation. Effective connectivity analyses showed a rich pattern of interaction between ROIs that support decoding based on training with lexical neighbors, especially driven by right posterior middle temporal gyrus. Collectively, these results evidence functional representation of wordforms in temporal lobes isolated from phonemic or semantic representations.

Do early musical impairments predict later reading difficulties? A longitudinal study of pre-readers with and without familial risk for dyslexia.

The present longitudinal study investigated the hypothesis that early musical skills (as measured by melodic and rhythmic perception and memory) predict later literacy development via a mediating effect of phonology. We examined 130 French-speaking children, 31 of whom with a familial risk for developmental dyslexia (DD). Their abilities in the three domains were assessed longitudinally with a comprehensive battery of behavioral tests in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we examined potential longitudinal effects from music to literacy via phonology. We then investigated how familial risk for DD may influence these relationships by testing whether atypical music processing is a risk factor for DD. Results showed that children with a familial risk for DD consistently underperformed children without familial risk in music, phonology, and literacy. A small effect of musical ability on literacy via phonology was observed, but may have been induced by differences in stability across domains over time. Furthermore, early musical skills did not add significant predictive power to later literacy difficulties beyond phonological skills and family risk status. These findings are consistent with the idea that certain key auditory skills are shared between music and speech processing, and between DD and congenital amusia. However, they do not support the notion that music perception and memory skills can serve as a reliable early marker of DD, nor as a valuable target for reading remediation. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Music, phonology, and literacy skills of 130 children, 31 of whom with a familial risk for dyslexia, were examined longitudinally. Children with a familial risk for dyslexia consistently underperformed children without familial risk in musical, phonological, and literacy skills. Structural equation models showed a small effect of musical ability in kindergarten on literacy in second grade, via phonology in first grade. However, early musical skills did not add significant predictive power to later literacy difficulties beyond phonological skills and family risk status.

Secondary language impairment in posterior cortical atrophy: insights from sentence repetition.

Introduction: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by progressive impairment in visuospatial and perceptual function linked to atrophy of the occipito-parietal cortex. Besides the salient visual impairment, several studies have documented subtle changes in language may also be present. Sentence repetition is a highly constrained linguistic task involving multiple linguistic and cognitive processes and have been shown to be impaired in other AD spectrum disorders, with little consensus on its relevance in PCA. This aim of this study was to further delineate the linguistic and cognitive features of impaired language in PCA using a sentence repetition task. Method: Seven PCA patients and 16 healthy controls verbally repeated 16 sentences from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. Responses were transcribed orthographically and coded for accuracy (percentage accuracy; percentage Correct Information Units; Levenshtein Distance) and for temporal characteristics (preparation duration (ms); utterance duration (ms); silent pause duration (ms); speech duration (ms); dysfluency duration (ms)). The potential modulating effects of attentional control and working memory capacity were explored. Results: PCA patients showed lower overall accuracy with retained semantic content of the sentences, and lower phonological accuracy. Temporal measures revealed longer preparation and utterance duration for PCA patients compared to controls, alongside longer speech duration but comparable dysfluency duration. PCA patients also showed comparable silent pause duration to controls. Attentional control, measured using the Hayling sentence completion task, predicted accuracy of sentence repetition. Discussion: The findings suggest that sentence repetition is impaired in PCA and is characterized by phonological, response planning and execution difficulties, underpinned in part by attentional control mechanisms. The emerging profile of language impairment in PCA suggests vulnerability of similar cognitive systems to other Alzheimer's syndromes, with subtle differences in clinical presentation.

Heterogeneity and overlap in the continuum of linguistic profile of logopenic and semantic variants of primary progressive aphasia: a Profile Analysis based on Multidimensional Scaling study.

BACKGROUND: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) diagnostic criteria underestimate the complex presentation of semantic (sv) and logopenic (lv) variants, in which symptoms partially overlap, and mixed clinical presentation (mixed-PPA) and heterogenous profile (lvPPA +) are frequent. Conceptualization of similarities and differences of these clinical conditions is still scarce. METHODS: Lexical, semantic, phonological, and working memory errors from nine language tasks of sixty-seven PPA were analyzed using Profile Analysis based on Multidimensional Scaling, which allowed us to create a distributed representation of patients' linguistic performance in a shared space. Patients had been studied with [18F] FDG-PET. Correlations were performed between metabolic and behavioral data. RESULTS: Patients' profiles were distributed across a continuum. All PPA, but two, presented a lexical retrieval impairment, in terms of reduced production of verbs and nouns. svPPA patients occupied a fairly clumped space along the continuum, showing a preponderant semantic deficit, which correlated to fusiform gyrus hypometabolism, while only few presented working memory deficits. Adjacently, lvPPA + presented a semantic impairment combined with phonological deficits, which correlated with metabolism in the anterior fusiform gyrus and posterior middle temporal gyrus. Starting from the shared phonological deficit side, a large portion of the space was occupied by all lvPPA, showing a combination of phonological, lexical, and working memory deficits, with the latter correlating with posterior temporo-parietal hypometabolism. Mixed PPA did not show unique profile, distributing across the space. DISCUSSION: Different clinical PPA entities exist but overlaps are frequent. Identifying shared and unique clinical markers is critical for research and clinical practice. Further research is needed to identify the role of genetic and pathological factors in such distribution, including also higher sample size of less represented groups.

Neural substrates of L2-L1 transfer effects on phonological awareness in young Chinese-English bilingual children.

The growing trend of bilingual education between Chinese and English has contributed to a rise in the number of early bilingual children, who were exposed to L2 prior to formal language instruction of L1. The L2-L1 transfer effect in an L1-dominant environment has been well established. However, the threshold of L2 proficiency at which such transfer manifests remains unclear. This study investigated the behavioral and neural processes involved when manipulating phonemes in an auditory phonological task to uncover the transfer effect in young bilingual children. Sixty-two first graders from elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited in this study (29 Chinese monolinguals, 33 Chinese-English bilinguals). The brain activity was measured using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Bilingual children showed right lateralization to process Chinese and left lateralization to process English, which supports more on the accommodation effect within the framework of the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. Also, compared to monolinguals, bilingual children showed more bilateral frontal activation in Chinese, potentially reflecting a mixed influence from L2-L1 transfer effects and increased cognitive load of bilingual exposure. These results elucidate the developmental adjustments in the neural substrates associated with early bilingual exposure in phonological processing, offering valuable insights into the bilingual learning process.

Revisiting the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing: Evidence from Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals.

The influences of shared orthography, semantics, and phonology on bilingual cognate processing have been investigated extensively. However, mixed results have been found regarding the effects of phonological similarity on L2 cognate processing. In addition, most existing studies examining the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing have been conducted on alphabetic scripts, in which phonology and orthography are always associated. Hence, in this study, we recruited Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals who used two logographic scripts, traditional Chinese and Japanese Kanji, to examine the influence of phonological similarity on L2 cognate lexical decision. Importantly, these scripts allow the manipulation of phonological similarity using identical characters across both languages. In addition, we examined how word frequency and L2 proficiency modulate cognate processing. Results showed that although word frequency and L2 proficiency played important roles in cognate processing, there was minimal overall influence of phonological similarity on cognate lexical decision. The latter finding suggests that theoretical models of bilingual word recognition may need to be refined to enhance our understanding of cognate processing regarding the role of phonology among diverse bilingual populations.

High-level language brain regions process sublexical regularities.

A network of left frontal and temporal brain regions supports language processing. This "core" language network stores our knowledge of words and constructions as well as constraints on how those combine to form sentences. However, our linguistic knowledge additionally includes information about phonemes and how they combine to form phonemic clusters, syllables, and words. Are phoneme combinatorics also represented in these language regions? Across five functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we investigated the sensitivity of high-level language processing brain regions to sublexical linguistic regularities by examining responses to diverse nonwords-sequences of phonemes that do not constitute real words (e.g. punes, silory, flope). We establish robust responses in the language network to visually (experiment 1a, n = 605) and auditorily (experiments 1b, n = 12, and 1c, n = 13) presented nonwords. In experiment 2 (n = 16), we find stronger responses to nonwords that are more well-formed, i.e. obey the phoneme-combinatorial constraints of English. Finally, in experiment 3 (n = 14), we provide suggestive evidence that the responses in experiments 1 and 2 are not due to the activation of real words that share some phonology with the nonwords. The results suggest that sublexical regularities are stored and processed within the same fronto-temporal network that supports lexical and syntactic processes.

Modeling Item-Level Spelling Variance in Adults: Providing Further Insights into Lexical Quality.

Purpose: The lexical quality (LQ) hypothesis predicts that a skilled reader's lexicon will be inhabited by a range of low- to high-quality items, and the probability of representing a word with high quality varies as a function of person-level, word-level, and item-specific variables. These predictions were tested with spelling accuracy as a gauge of LQ. Method: Item-response based crossed random effects models explored simultaneous contributions of person-level (e.g., participant's decoding skill), word-level (e.g., word's transparency rating), item-specific (e.g., participant's familiarity with specific word), and person-by-word interaction predictors (e.g., decoding by transparency rating interaction) to the spelling of 25 commonly misspelled irregular English words in 61 undergraduate university students (M = 19.4 years, 70.49% female, 39.34% Hispanic, 81.97% White). Results: Substantial variance among individuals in item-level spelling accuracy was accounted for by person-level decoding skill; item-specific familiarity, proportion of schwas correctly represented, and correctly identifying the word from its mispronunciation; and an interaction of transparency rating by general decoding skill. Conclusions: Consistent with the LQ hypothesis, results suggest that one's ability to form a high-quality lexical representation of a given word depends on a complex combination of person-level abilities, word-level characteristics, item-specific experiences, and an interaction between person- and word-level influences.

Phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition: Complementary routes during learning to read.

We examined the reliance on phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition strategies in developing and skilled readers of French. A lexical decision experiment was conducted where the critical stimuli were four types of nonwords, all derived from the same base word, such as the French word visage (face) in the following examples: (a) pseudo-homophone (PsH) nonwords (e.g., visaje), (b) orthographic controls for PsH nonwords (e.g., visape), (c) pseudo-morphemic (PsM) nonwords (e.g., visageable), and (d) orthographic controls for PsM nonwords (e.g., visagealle, where alle is not a suffix in French). Responses to PsH and PsM nonwords and their controls were studied in three groups of school children (Grades 1, 2, and 5) and one group of skilled adult readers. PsH interference effects (i.e., more errors to PsH nonwords than to the corresponding controls) decreased during reading acquisition to become nonsignificant in skilled readers. Interestingly, the opposite pattern was seen in PsM interference effects (also measured in terms of accuracy), which were already significant in Grade 1 and increased during reading development to reach their maximum in skilled readers. These results point toward opposing learning trajectories in the use of phonological and morphological information when learning to silently read for meaning.

Patterns of performance on the animal fluency task in logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia: A reflection of phonological and semantic skills.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to characterize the quantitative (total number of correct words generated) and qualitative (psycholinguistic properties of correct words generated) performance patterns on the animal fluency task in individuals with the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia and to investigate the influence of phonological and semantic abilities to these patterns. METHODS: Fifteen participants with lvPPA and twenty neurotypical adults completed the animal fluency task and an assessment battery to characterize their phonological and semantic abilities. We recorded the total number of correct words produced and their psycholinguistic properties. Group differences were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and analysis of covariance. Stepwise and multiple linear regression analyses were implemented to investigate the contribution of psycholinguistic properties on word generation as well as the role of phonological and semantic abilities on performance. We also investigated the mediating role of phonological and semantic abilities on the relationship between relevant psycholinguistic properties and word generation output. RESULTS: Compared to neurotypical controls, participants with lvPPA produced fewer correct responses and more words with lower age of acquisition. The total number of correct words generated was predicted by the age of word acquisition, such that individuals who generated more responses, produced words acquired later in life. Phonology and semantics influenced the number of correct words generated and their frequency, age of acquisition, and semantic neighborhood density. Familiarity and arousal were driven by semantic abilities. Phonological abilities partially mediated the relationship between age of acquisition and word generation output. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides valuable insights into the performance patterns of the animal fluency task in lvPPA. Individuals with lvPPA with more intact phonological and semantic abilities generated greater number of words with more complex psycholinguistic properties. Our findings contribute to the understanding of language processes underlying word retrieval in lvPPA.

Multiple phonological activation in writing: evidence for cascadedness in Chinese written verb production.

The dynamics of information transmission through the lexical system during written word production remain underspecified. Existing studies largely come from noun production, relatively less work has explored verb production. Verbs, representing actions or states, are considered more abstract and are found to be more challenging to be produced. The present study investigated phonological involvement and the principles governing information flow during Chinese written verb production. Participants wrote down single verbs and verb phrases while ignoring phonologically related, or unrelated distractor pictures. Results revealed phonological facilitation effects on writing latencies from phonologically related distractors in the verb phrase generation. Findings provide novel chronometric evidence that information transmission during written production involves cascaded activation allowing multiple phonological codes to be activated prior to written output. This phonological facilitation effect signifies the influence of phonology, especially lexical phonology, has been underestimated in writing.

The effects of a psycholinguistic training based on phonology and semantics on sentence production in an aphasic child with cerebral palsy.

In aphasia, damage to brain regions responsible for language processing disrupts access to words previously learned and consolidated in the mental lexicon, causing people with aphasia (PWA) to experience word finding difficulties that negatively impact their everyday communication. This study seeks to investigate the effects of a psycholinguistic training based on phonology and semantics on sentence production in a aphasic child with cerebral palsy. The study used a single-subject multiple- baseline research design across behaviors. A 13-year-old boy, named AE with expressive aphasia, admitted to Speech and Swallowing Disorders Clinic, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud University was recruited to participate in this study. The aphasic child with cerebral palsy was found to be successful at the end of the training sessions, compared to the baseline. In other words, there was a positive difference between the data obtained in the first and last training sessions for each child.