Perception of intonational contours in Persian Broca's Aphasics

Dysprosody is a disorder of speech production in which the aphasic patients are not able to apply the prosodic cues correctly. Prosody also is an essential cue for the understanding of spoken language. The present study aimed at investigating comprehension of intonation contours in Persian Broca’s Aphasics. The subjects of this experimental study included three Farsi-speaking males. They were selected by simple purposive sampling method from patients directed to the speech therapy unit in the Ghaem Educational, Research and Treatment Centre (Mashhad, Iran). They were classified as Broca’s aphasics according to the Farsi Aphasia Test, their CT scan and MRI reports. The ability of Broca’s aphasics to comprehend intonation contours was assessed via Persian adaptation of Comprehension Test of Intonation Contours in Aphasia. The data were analyzed by Paired and Independent-samples T-Test. The comparison of the mean number of errors within each group (broca’s aphasic patients: p = 0/002; control group: p = 0/001) indicated that there were significant differences between the mean. On the other hand, there were significant differences between mean numbers of correct responses in two groups (p