Lexical Access in Spanish-Speaking Individuals with Post-Stroke Anomia: Psycholinguistic Predictors, Error Patterns and Reaction-Time Analyses

Abstract

This study examines lexical access deficits in Spanish-speaking individuals with stroke induced anomia by analyzing psycholinguistic predictors, error patterns, and reaction times during naming and comparing the results with performance on a fluency task. Eleven participants completed both tasks. Naming performance was assessed using psycholinguistic variables such as age of acquisition, frequency, word length, phonological complexity, and familiarity. At both group and individual levels, words acquired later and rated as less familiar significantly increased error rates, supporting the role of these variables in lexical access. Error analysis showed heterogeneous profiles, with lexical accuracy errors (particularly contextual errors) being the most frequent. Lexical accuracy errors predominated over phonological ones. RT analyses demonstrated significantly longer latencies for incorrect responses, especially for lexical accuracy errors, suggesting that increased time does not enhance performance. Phonological errors were produced more quickly than lexical ones, consistent with models of temporal lexical access stages. Additionally, naming accuracy significantly correlated with semantic fluency but not phonemic fluency, highlighting shared lexical-semantic processes between these tasks. Despite its descriptive nature and limited sample size, this study provides preliminary evidence about psycholinguistic and temporal characteristic of lexical retrieval deficits in aphasia, with implications for assessment and targeted intervention in clinical practice.