Disorders of Semantics in Aphasia

Many people with aphasia have difficulty in determining the relationship between words and their meaning. Word naming, namely the ability to name objects, is severely affected in aphasia (something which is often described as word retrieval deficit). The semantic features of the words have been shown to have an impact on how easily these can be retrieved in aphasia. Pronoun resolution, namely the ability to properly utilize reference to the nouns that need to be interpreted in relation to the previous context, is another area of difficulty for patients with aphasia (PWA). PWA often struggle to correctly identify the referent of pronouns. In this chapter we will look at the semantic aspects that are at the source of the deficit and forms of treatments proposed to overarch the impairment.