Browsing by Author "Lappalainen, Anni"

Aphasia is a language disorder acquired after language learning, usually caused by a cerebrovascular accident or a stroke. The severity and type of aphasia symptoms vary individually. Naming difficulties are one of the most common and long-lasting symptoms of aphasia. Self-corrections of one's own speech are a significant part of successful interaction, and they indicate the ability to monitor speech. Aphasia symptoms may impair the ability to monitor. The aim of this master's thesis is to examine the self-repairs of participants with varying degrees of aphasia in naming tasks. The aim of the thesis is to examine the quantity, quality and success of self-corrections. The aim of the thesis is also to examine the not-corrected errors of research subjects in naming tasks. The thesis was carried out as a multi-case study. Four participants with different degrees of aphasic symptoms were selected from the existing material of the Opi Sanoja research project. The participants were selected based on their aphasia quotient determined by the WAB test. The material consisted of audio recordings of the performance of the participants in the Boston naming test, and the naming section of the research project's word learning assignment during two different research visits. Notations were formed from the data using ELAN software. The number of self-corrections and the self- correction elements used, as well as the uncorrected errors of the subjects were analysed and categorised. The data was analysed at individual level. The self-repair elements used, as well as the number of self-repair initiatives, varied between the study participants. The most commonly used self-correction element in the entire data was the interruption of the expression, most often followed by the repetition or rephrasing of a word or syllable. All subjects made successful self-corrections in the Boston naming test. Successful corrections were corrections that improved the phrase closer to the target word. In the naming section of the word learning task, two out of four participants made successful self-correction initiatives. In this study, the amounts of not-corrected errors of the participants were in the same order in both tasks. The participant with the most severe aphasia made the most not-corrected errors and the participant with the least severe aphasia made the least. Due to the small number of participants (N = 4), the generalizability of the results is weak. However, in this data, regardless of the severity of aphasia, the participants tended to correct their own expression at least when naming familiar objects, in which case the ability to monitor speech is at least partially preserved. The severity of aphasia also seems to be related to the preservation of speech monitoring ability when examining uncorrected errors.