Chapter 14 The Relationship Between Pantomime Expression and Recognition in Aphasia: The Search for Causes

Impairments in pantomime expression and pantomime recognition commonly occur as part of the syndrome of aphasia. Deficits in pantomime expression and recognition are highly correlated with each other and with the verbal symptoms of aphasia. To understand the interrelationships among these deficits, it is necessary to focus on the causes of pantomimic deficits. The search for these causes has been the goal of much research for over 25 years. In the first part of the chapter, we review the background and descriptions of current theories of the causes of pantomimic deficits. In the second part, we critically review some of the limitations of the research methods used in testing causal theories. and in the third part, we present a description of causal modeling, a strategy for the testing of causal theories. Seven different causal models hypothesized to explain deficits in both pantomime expression and recognition are presented and tested using path analysis, a type of causal modeling.