Central executive function in individuals with aphasia

Individuals with aphasia (IWA) have been shown to encounter deficits in attention and working memory (WM). Although there is growing evidence demonstrating deficits in WM processing, there is less information regarding the abilities of the central executive (CE) of the WM system in IWA. Individuals with fluent and nonfluent aphasia were administered tasks that isolated the four fractions of the CE, and qualitative, descriptive analyses were conducted to determine performance on tasks that fractionate different CE functions. Additionally, the impact of variables such as age, time post-onset of injury, and aphasia severity on CE task performance was explored. Results suggest that CE dysfunction of the participants in this study cannot be predicted by aphasia type. Rather, aphasia severity and age may be more predictive indicators of CE abilities. Overall, there may be several factors that contribute to CE deficits in aphasia, indicating that attention may be affected differently amongst IWA.