Gestes et prosodie dans la parole aphasique non fluente

Abstract

Gesture and prosody in non-fluent aphasic speech. Non-fluent aphasia is characterized by frequent word searches and a slower speech-rate than is found in fluent speech. For people with aphasia (PWA), everyday communication is therefore very much impaired. Multimodal communication has been suggested as an alternative therapeutic treatment in order to improve patients' daily interactions. Such a treatment however presupposes that gesture is a possible alternative for patients, and that their gestures are not impacted by aphasia in the way their speech is. This paper therefore presents a study of PWA's gestures in a comparison with speakers without aphasia. Results show that PWA's referential and non-referential gestures are impacted essentially in their internal structure and that this structure matches PWA's speech impairment.