The Core B provides for the screening and recruitment of patients from the Boston DVA Medical Center and normal controls as research subjects, for carrying out an extensive language and cognitive assessment, and for maintaining a data base of test results and demographic, medical and diagnostic information. This information is a available to investigators of the various projects of the Aphasia Research Center, the functions of this core include monitoring the research schedule for patients and facilitating access of investigators to appropriate subjects. A special project within the framework of Core B utilizes the extensive patients data resources of this facility to study the course of aphasia over periods of several years post-onset. Specifically, two sub-projects are proposed. The first of these explores the relationship of functional communication skills to language per as well as to non-linguistic cognitive functions, and proposes to study the development of functional communications over the course of time post-onset. The second project is aimed at providing a detailed analysis of changes in naming and discourse patterns over time. This lattern study is based on pilot work suggesting that formal test scores may fail to capture real improvement in communicative value when responses containing some correct semantic or phonological information are scored by traditional, """"""""all-or none"""""""" methods.
