Transient Aphasia as a Common Element in Speech and Reading Defects

Transient aphasia characterizes mental fatigue. It was thought that it might also characterize those individuals whose rate and comprehension in silent reading is low in comparison with their intelligence. A test was devised which required a series of equivalent mental operations at two-second intervals, in order to reveal momentary aphasic periods. College freshmen whose rate and comprehension in silent reading was below the average for their level of intelligence failed to perform 20% of the operations; those whose reading scores were consistent with their intelligence failed to perform 11.9% of the operations and those whose reading scores were high in relation to their intelligence failed to perform only 5.9% of the operations. The speech of these individuals was analyzed by five different objective criteria and was found to vary in quality directly with the relative value of the silent reading score