Long-term language recovery in left-handed aphasic patients

The purpose of this study was a systematic examination of language recovery in a sample of left-handed aphasic patients (n = 19) with unilateral cerebrovascular lesions. Language behaviour was assessed using a wide range of measures from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasic Examination (BDAE) (Goodglass and Kaplan 1972), involving spontaneous speech output, auditory comprehension, repetition, naming, reading and writing. Overall, performance on the individual BDAE subtests was remarkably stable across testing sessions. When recovery did occur among these left-handers, it was most pronounced in the first 6 months, for comprehension functions, and for material processed at the single-word level. This pattern of recovery is similar to that which has been reported for right-handed aphasic patients.