Spoken discourse and memory deficits in English speakers with chronic stroke

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between (1) episodic, short-term, and working memory and (2) spoken discourse in terms of global and local coherence, syntactic complexity, informativeness, and error frequency. Correlations between memory and linguistic data revealed positive correlations between episodic memory and global coherence. Stronger short-term and working memory correlated with increased local coherence, syntactic complexity and informativeness with reduced error frequency. Regression analysis found that global coherence and semantic errors significantly predicted episodic and short-term memory, while syntactic complexity significantly predicted working memory. The above findings suggest that top-down rehabilitation approaches stimulating memory during discourse training may enhance macro- and micro-linguistic productions. Future research examining these potential treatment benefits is needed.