Aphasic's comprehension of sentences expressing temporal order of events

Fifty-seven aphasic patients' comprehension of five sentence forms which express the temporal order of events has been investigated. Three major patterns of errors of temporal relations have emerged. The dominant pattern is exhibited by patients making errors on Before's but not on After's. The second and third patterns comprise a fewer number of patients making errors on After's but not on Before's and those making errors on both Before's and After's, respectively. It has been shown that different syndromes of aphasia are equally distributed among these three patterns. In the follow-up study of several patients, fluctuating courses of recovery in which comprehension of before and after alternately increases and decreases have been observed. These results are discussed in connection with a possible account of the acquisition of before and after in Japanese.