Attention and anosognosia: the case of a jargonaphasic patient with unawareness of language deficit.

Abstract

Some patients with aphasia lack awareness of the language errors they make. We describe a man with undifferentiated jargonaphasia and preserved auditory comprehension who was unaware of his speech production errors when he had to both speak and listen simultaneously. However, when listening to a recording of his speech, he could detect the speech errors he had made. We attribute this patient's unawareness of his speech production errors to a reduced attentional capacity for simultaneous linguistic tasks.