Pantomime Production by People with Aphasia: What Are Influencing Factors?.

Purpose The present article aimed to inform clinical practice on whether people with aphasia (PWA) deploy pantomime techniques similarly to participants without brain damage (PWBD) and if not, what factors influence these differences. Method We compared 38 PWA to 20 PWBD in their use of 6 representation techniques (handling, enact, object, shape, deictic, and other) when pantomiming objects, and determined whether PWA used the same defaults as PWBD. We assessed the influence of (non-)dominant arm use, ideomotor apraxia, semantic processing, aphasia severity, and oral naming. Results PWA used various pantomime techniques. Enact, deictic, and other were used infrequently. No differences were found for the use of shape techniques, but PWA used fewer handling and object techniques than PWBD and they did not use these for the same objects as PWBD did. No influence was found for (non-)dominant arm use. All other variables correlated with the use of handling, object, and defaults. Conclusion In our study, PWA we...