Self-interruptions in Breast Cancer Patients Who Complain of Anomia

Amélie B. Richard (1, 2) , Fabrice Hirsch (1) , Sophie Jacquin-Courtois (2, 3) , K T Reilly (2)

1 Praxiling - Praxiling
2 CRNL - Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon - Lyon Neuroscience Research Center
3 Hôpital Henry Gabrielle [CHU - HCL]

Patients with cancer and cancer survivors sometimes complain of cognitive difficulties related to the cancer and its treatments. Even though one of their most frequent complaints is anomia, currently used neuropsychological tests are unable to detect wordfinding difficulties. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between pauses at minor boundaries and their right contexts to better describe pauses associated with subtle anomia. The spontaneous speech of seventeen patients with breast cancer was recorded. Pauses in suspensive interruptions (i.e., the phrase continues after the pause) and disfluent interruptions (i.e., the phrase is modified after the pause) were analysed as well as their right contexts (i.e., lexical-semantic content, independent phrases, or tool words). The main result showed that suspensive pauses are more likely to be followed by lexical content. This finding suggests that the analysis of pauses in syntactic disruptions could provide evidence about subtle anomia.

Mots clés: breast cancer; pauses; anomia; disfluencies

Domaines: Linguistique

Amélie B. Richard, Fabrice Hirsch, Sophie Jacquin-Courtois, K T Reilly. Self-interruptions in Breast Cancer Patients Who Complain of Anomia. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2023), Aug 2023, Prague, Czech Republic. pp.4012-4016. ⟨hal-04195993⟩