Brain (1982), 105, 719-733

FROM THREE TO 3: A DIFFERENTIAL

ANALYSIS OF SKILLS IN TRANSCODING
QUANTITIES BETWEEN PATIENTS WITH
BROCA'S AND WERNICKE'S APHASIA

by GERARD DELOCHE1 and XAVIER SERON

(From /NSERM U.84, 75634 Paris Cedex 13, France and the Neuropsychology Department,
Cliniques Universilaires St Luc, 1200 Bruxeiles, Belgique)

SUMMARY

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A psycholinguistic investigation into the ability of aphasic patients to transcode integer quantities from
written numeral forms into digit strings is reported. Broca's aphasics experienced specific difficulties in
handling the grammatical structure underlying word order and also, on the word level, the bound
morphemes relative to the root morphemes. Wernicke's aphasics seemed to have lexical troubles
reflected by some purely lexical confusions together with serial order disturbances. These findings
support the hypothesis of differential preserved/impaired skills according to type of aphasia, but
having a high level of generality since they appear in classic linguistic tasks as well as in the domain of
numbers.

INTRODUCTION

Neurolinguistics has devoted much attention to the subprocesses responsible for

overt verbal behaviour and to their dissociations as manifested by aphasic patients
(Shallice, 1979; Saffrane/a/., 1980). Among the most important fields of interest are
those related to the selective dissolution of the semantic and syntactic skills
according to type of aphasia (Caramazza and Berndt, 1978) and those related to
reading disorders in the framework of models derived from information processing
theory (Patterson, 1981). In the present paper, we consider how aphasic patients
transcoded integers written in numeral form (a word sequence like 'five-hundred
and twenty-one') to the corresponding number in the digital system (the digit
sequence '521') and analyse the impaired abilities with reference to aphasic
disorders. Interest in numbers is not new in neuropsychology, but much of what has
been done on acalculia is related to the description of impairments in recognizing
numbers and arithmetic symbols or in performing arithmetic (Grewel, 1969;

1
Reprint requests to: Dr Gerard Delochc, 1NSERM U.84, 47, Boulevard de I'Hopital, 75634 Pans Cedex 13.
720 GERARD DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

Collignon et al., 1977). Our concern is quite different. Given, for each of the two
coding systems, a set of symbols and a simple grammar that defines how to combine
vocabulary elements into syntactically well-formed sequences, we are mainly
interested in the linguistic process of translating a quantity written in one code into
the other code.
We first investigated how a mixed group of aphasic subjects performed this task
(Deloche and Seron, 1982). This study had two purposes: (1) to define a semeiology
of the erroneous transcriptions in the particular transcoding task; (2) to identify the
psycholinguistic mechanisms responsible for impaired performance viewed as
resulting from some partial or contextually inadequate processing strategies.
In this paper, we will analyse the specific patterns of dissolution of the subjects'
performances with two types of aphasia in order to determine the status of the
numeral coding system with reference to language and the generality of the
transcoding strategies in this limited but well-defined linguistic domain.
The advantages of this approach are as follows. (1) While the quantities to be
represented linguistically constitute an infinite set, the lexical primitives used in each
of the two coding systems are very limited: 10 digits and 25 words for French
integers from 0 to 999999. (2) There is a one-to-one correspondence between the

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numeral and the digital codings of a given quantity that ensures the normal
transcription—an experimental situation that is far simpler than one involving the
transcoding of sentences or even words from one language into another. (3) Simple
grammars can be written for each coding system as well as transcoding algorithms
for going from one code to the other (Power and Longuet-Higgins, 1978).
In the first study, we analysed the erroneous transcriptions of numerals into
numbers produced by a mixed group of aphasic patients in three ways. (1) The
influence of general dimensions such as the number of units in the stimulus item or in
the expected transcription on the frequency of correct responses was assessed.
(2) Erroneous transcriptions were described relative to correct ones in terms of serial
ordering disturbances involving unit additions, omissions, displacements, and
perseverations. (3) Erroneous transcriptions were considered as the result of the use
of inappropriate strategies derived from the correct ones by omission or misapplica-
tion of the rules applied in the normal production system. The third approach
proved to be the most powerful, since it provided explanations not only for a
significant proportion of the errors but also for the systematic nature of some
erroneous transcriptions. Apart from some errors that could be attributed to a
general aphasic disturbance such as visual, phonemic, or literal paragraphias or
serial ordering disturbances, the subjects' impairments seemed to involve the
handling of transcoding strategies themselves. The next question is whether or not
the difficulties in transcoding quantities match the semantic and syntactic disorders
characterizing the different types of aphasia, more particularly, Wernicke's and
Broca's aphasia.
Before presenting the experimental procedure and the population of aphasic
subjects and discussing their performances relative to the patterns of linguistic
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS 721

disorders, we describe briefly the numeral lexicon system. The study was conducted
in two countries, France and Belgium (Wallonia), that use the same system with two
exceptions concerning the coding of tens. These exceptions gave us the opportunity
to investigate the applicability of hypotheses derived from erroneous translations
produced by one linguistic community to those produced by the other.

The French and the Belgian ( Walloon) Numeral Lexicon Systems

The elements of the lexicon are arranged in stack structures of units (digit names),
tens, and particulars (numbers from 11 to 16 transcribed in one word) (Table 1).
Within each stack, the elements are organized according to their customary order.
Thus, 'TROIS' (3), 'TREIZE' (13) and T R E N T E ' (30) all occupy the third position
but in different stacks: the units, particulars, and tens, respectively. Conversely,
'VINGT' (20) and 'CINQUANTE' (50) have different positions (second, fifth) in
the same tens stack. Each element of the lexicon is thus assigned two independent
identification characteristics, the stack and the position within the stack. To code
integer quantities from 0 to 999999, the Belgian numeral system makes use of 27
different words whereas the French one needs only 25 elements. In the French
systems, three tens names are composed of two ('SOIXANTE-DIX' (70),

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'QUATRE-VINGTS'(80))orthree('QUATRE-VINGT-DIX'(90))names already
used in the lexicon. The economy in the French lexicon size relative to the Belgian is
offset by an increase of complexity of combinational rules and in the underlying
meaning of the composed tens names. The serial ordering of the lexical elements

TABLE 1. FRENCH (F)/BELGIAN-WALLOON (B) NUMERAL LEXICAL ELEMENTS

Units Tens Particulars

Number Numeral Number Numeral Number Numeral

1 UN 10 DIX 11 ONZE
2 DEUX 20 VINGT 12 DOUZE
3 TROIS 30 TRENTE 13 TREIZE
4 QUATRE 40 QUARANTE 14 QUATORZE
5 CINQ 50 CINQUANTE 15 QUINZE
6 SIX 60 SOIXANTE 16 SEIZE
7 SEPT 70 (B) SEPTANTE
(F) SOIXANTE-DIX i
8 HUIT 80 QUATRE-VINGTS1
9 NEUF 90 (B) NONANTE
(F) QUATRE-VINGT-DIX1

Miscellaneous MIL L E (thousand)

CENT (hundred)
ZERO (zero)
ET (and)
Composed tens names
722 GERARD DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

appearing in composed tens names refers to arithmetical operations involving their

individual lexical values. Thus, 'SOIXANTE-DIX' (70) is 'SOIXANTE' (60) plus
'DIX' (10); 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) is 'QUATRE' (4) times 'VINGT (20); and
'QUATRE-VINGT-DIX' (90) is 'QUATRE' (4) times 'VINGT' (20) plus 'DIX'
(10). The two countries code '80' (QUATRE-VINGTS) in the same way. Five
elements ('MILLE' (thousand), 'CENT' (hundred), 'VINGT' (20), 'DIX' (10), and
'QUATRE' (4)) have two different roles in the system: lexical as in 'CENT VINGT
QUATRE' (124) or 'MILLE SOIXANTE-DEUX' (1062), and syntactical when
they are multiplicands (TROIS CENTS' (300), 'DEUX MILLE' (2000)) or when
they appear in composed tens names as multiplier, multiplicand, or additive
constant ('QUATRE-VINGT-DIX' (90)). These two different roles complicate
both the decoding and transcoding processes.
Transcoding numerals into numbers is by no means a trivial process of assigning
to each word in the numeral its lexical value in the digital system from left to right.
Such a strategy would be adequate only with one word numerals: 'UN' (1) ->• T ;
'CINQUANTE' (50) -• '50'; 'MILLE' (thousand) -•'1000'. In other cases, it yields
erroneous transcriptions such as 'CENT CINQUANTE-TROIS' (153) -• '100503';
or 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) -> '420'. The transcoding of a lexical element in a

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given numeral depends thus on its context (forward and backward). This is clearly
exemplified with 'CENT' (hundred), which is marked in the number by' 1' in 'CENT
CINQUANTE-TROIS' (153), by '10' in 'CENT SEPT' (107), by '100' in 'CENT
MILLE' (100000), by '00' in 'DEUX CENTS' (200) and by '0' in 'DEUX CENT
QUATRE' (204). Two kinds of transcoding strategies relying on very different
processes may be hypothesized that parallel the dissociations between deep and
surface dyslexia in reading aloud (Marshall and Newcombe, 1973; Deloche et al.,
1982) or between phonological and lexical agraphia in writing from dictation
(Shallice, 1981; Beauvois and Derouesne, 1981). In one strategy, the transcoding
process is assumed to be mediated by semantic procedures pointing to the meaning
of the stimulus to transcode; errors like 'three-fourths' -* 'seventy-five'; 'one-half
-* 'fifty' (Rinnert and Whitaker, 1973) would be the analogue of semantic paralexias
like 'city' -* 'town'; 'large' -* 'big'. Another strategy would rely on analytical
procedures using context-sensitive transcoding rules operating from left to right on
the lexical elements of the numeral in the same way that grapheme to phoneme
conversion rules are implied in reading aloud. This time, no reference is made to the
quantity referred to by the numeral. Erroneous transcriptions such as 'QUATRE-
VINGT-UN' (81) -> '421', where each word is assigned the digit corresponding to
the position within its stack, would parallel phonemic paralexias produced by
surface dyslexics like 'disease' -> 'decease'; 'island' -* 'izland'. In these latter
examples, the erroneous transcriptions would result from application of over-
generalized term-by-term correspondence rules without taking into account the
forward/backward context of each unit in the sequence.
Finally, one remark has to be made concerning the syntactical constraints of the
two coding systems. While any digit string is a well-formed integer on the condition
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS 723

that the first digit is not '0', the numeral code is much more constrained since any
arrangement of lexical elements is not necessarily a legal numeral. For instance, only
two out of the six permutations of the three lexical primitives, 'TROIS' (3),
'CINQUANTE' (50) and 'CENT' (hundred), are allowed 'CENT CINQUANTE-
TROIS' (153) and 'TROIS CENT CINQUANTE' (350); the four others,
'CINQUANTE CENT TROIS' or 'TROIS CINQUANTE CENT', etc., are
dyssyntaxic.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The subjects had to transcodc in digital code a list of one hundred numerals printed in upper case
letters. The list was constructed taking into account some manifest or intuitive factors of difficulties in
the transcoding processes such as the following. (1) The opportunity of making serial ordering errors
on the lexical elements of the numeral without violating syntactical constraints. Thus, permutation of
'VINGT' (20) and 'QUATRE' (4) might result in transcoding 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) into '24'
(VINGT-QUATRE) and the latter into the former. (2) The placement of an intercalated '0' in the
number form, since this digit is not indicated in the numeral under its lexical name 'Zero' as in
'CENT DEUX MILLE SIX' (102006). (3) The presence ofsome elements either in their lexical role or

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as multiplicands ('MILLE' (thousand), 'CENT' (hundred)) or in composed tens ('VINGT (20), 'DIX'
(10) and 'QUATRE' (4)). Therefore, this list of numerals was in no way intended to be a random
sample either of integers from 0 to 999999 or of integers with high frequency of usage.
Ten items had different numeral forms in the two linguistic communities. Thus, the responses to 110
different numeral items were recorded. The procedure consisted of writing numbers from numerals in
one or several sessions. Five practice trials were administered. The sessions never lasted more than
thirty minutes and never took more than three consecutive days. No comments or corrections were
given to the subjects.

Subject Population
There were 14 aphasic subjects, 8 women and 6 men, from 23 to 75 years of age (mean : 52.9). The 11
French patients were examined at the Hopital de la Salpetriere in Paris and the 3 Belgians at the
Cliniques Universitaires St Luc in Brussels. The lesions were vascular in 11 cases; tumour, trauma and
infection were responsible in the 3 other cases, respectively. The cases were balanced according to type
of aphasia (7 Wernicke's aphasics, 7 Broca's aphasics, mean ages: 56.8 and 49.0 years, respectively,
with 4 women in each subgroup). The type of aphasia was assessed according to the standard protocol
in use at La Salpetriere Hospital (Ducarne, 1976). The classification is equivalent to that of Goodglass
and Kaplan (1972): Wernicke's aphasia, Broca's aphasia with or without agrammatism, anomic
aphasia, conduction aphasia, and transcortical sensory aphasia. The criteria for selection were the
following. For the Wernicke's aphasics: fluent verbal output, poor scores in repetition, naming, and
comprehension tests; presence in verbal output ofsome neologisms and/or phonemic paraphasias, but
without jargon aphasia. Some literal paragraphias could occur but jargon agraphic patients were
excluded from the study. For Broca's aphasics, the pattern was: nonfluent verbal output, poor score in
repetition but comprehension relatively spared. Two Broca's aphasics were typical agrammatic
aphasics, with syntactical difficulties shown by a picture multiple choice test on reversible sentence
comprehension and speech output without important phonetic deformations but essentially tele-
graphic. The five others had limited productions in spontaneous speech with difficulties in naming on
visual confrontation. They performed better in the syntactic comprehension test but presented more
dysarthric deformations in spontaneous speech and in repetition tests. The differences between the two
subgroups were of degree but fit the distinctions proposed by Berndt and Caramazza (1980). The
724 GERARD DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

subjects were neither logorrhoeic nor mute at the time of examination (six months at least after the
onset of aphasia), and were able to work with sufficient attention, at least during the sessions. All the
subjects were able to write with the right or, for some of the Broca's aphasics, with the left hand; they
were of middle or high sociocultural level and, as they had written their own cheques before brain
damage, the task was familiar to them.

RESULTS
Global Data
The data available consists of 1400 transcriptions produced by the 14 aphasic
subjects for the 100 items of the test battery. In 269 cases, the transcriptions were
incorrect (mean frequency 0.19). There were no 'no responses' but some transcrip-
tions were aborted. The transcriptions contained no elements alien to the digital
coding of numbers, although some of them were followed by monetary indications
(Francs, Frs., F.). The presence of this indication and the absence of the symbol'.'
(corresponding to the English ',') separating thousands from hundreds were not
recorded as errors when they were the only anomalies in the transcriptions.
The mean error frequencies were 0.21 and 0.18 for the Broca's and the Wernicke's
aphasics, respectively. All subjects correctly transcoded 13 numerals in the battery,

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of which 6 were one word numerals ('HUIT' (8), 'DOUZE' (12), 'SEIZE' (16),
'QUARANTE' (40), 'CENT' (100), 'MILLE' (1000)). The numeral lexicon
elements were almost always con-ectly transcribed. The error frequency was 0.06
(8/126) for units, 0.06 (5/84) for particulars, and 0.10 (8/84) for simple tens, but for
composed tens ('SOLXANTE-DIX' (70), 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) and
'QUATRE-VINGT-DIX' (90)), it rose to 0.21 (9/42).

Qualitative Analysis
In this section, we analyse the erroneous transcriptions in three respects: (1) alexic
disorders occurring in the identification of the lexical elements of the numeral; (2)
serial ordering disturbances evidenced either in parsing the numeral elements from
left to right or in the serial organization of digits; and (3) impairments in the
scheduling of transcoding strategies. A differential analysis of the Wernicke's and
Broca's aphasics will be proposed in each case.
Identification Errors. Visual paralexias. In 2 cases out of the 269 erroneous
transcriptions, the error was in the presence of digit '5' in the digit string at a position
occupied in the numeral string by the word 'CENT' (hundred). Since the two
numeral lexicon elements 'CENT' (hundred) and 'CINQ' (5) have the same number
of letters and two letters in common in the same places, errors like 'CENT UN' (101)
-* '51' were considered as visual paralexias. The two examples were produced by the
same Broca's aphasic with agrammatism.
Phonemic paralexias. As some patients read the numeral aloud when performing
the transcoding task we will tentatively consider as a phonemic paralexia the
substitution of '16' (SEIZE) /sez/ to '13' (TREIZE) /trez/ in 'TRENTE MILLE
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS 725

TROIS CENT TREIZE' (30,313) -> '30316' (TRENTE MILLE TROIS CENT
SEIZE). This unique phonemic paralexia was produced by a Wernicke's aphasic.
Stack errors. These result from impaired processing of the information relative to
the stack of a numeral lexical element while information regarding its position-
within-stack is preserved. For example, a particular name like 'QUINZE' (15) could
be transcribed into either the tens or the digit stack ('QUINZE' (15) -> '50'
(CINQUANTE) or '5' (CINQ)). Stack errors accounted for 18 of the 269 erroneous
transcriptions, 12 being produced by 5 Broca's aphasics, of which 8 were made by
the 2 agrammatic patients, 6 by 3 Wernicke's aphasics. For the Wernicke's aphasics,
the errors did not seem to be directional, in that the erroneous transcriptions,
whatever the stack name of the numeral element, could be either a tens (1 case), a
particular (3 cases), or a unit (2 cases). On the contrary, 8 out of the 12 errors
produced by the Broca's aphasics consisted in transforming particulars or tens into
units. This tendency to produce only the digit corresponding to the position-within-
stack when confronted with tens or particulars names might be viewed either as an
overgeneralized transcoding strategy or as the analogue of affix stripping in deep
dyslexia. In the former interpretation, the subjects would transcode each numeral
element (except 'ET' (and)) into one digit. This is correct, for instance, in 'CENT

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CINQUANTE-TROIS' (153) but not with multiplicands appearing in the numeral,
or when '0's are expected in the digit string, or with composed tens and particulars.
The second interpretation would consider the omission of '0' in 'SOIXANTE'
(60) - '6' (SIX) and of' 1' in 'TREIZE' (13) -» '3' (TROIS) as the preservation of the
root morpheme processing whereas information relative to the bound morpheme is
not preserved.
Simple stack position errors. Stack position errors would typically consist in
substituting one element of a given stack to another element in the same stack. This
kind of error accounted for four of the erroneous transcriptions. They were
produced by three Wernicke's aphasics. The substitutions occurred once between
two units ('CINQUANTE-HUIT' (58) -> '59' (CINQUANTE-NEUF)) and
three times between tens (TRENTE-NEUF MILLE SEPT CENT QUARANTE-
DEUX' (39742) -> '39752' (TRENTE-NEUF MILLE SEPT CENT
CINQUANTE-DEUX); 'NEUF CENT QUARANTE-TROIS' (943) -> '953'
(NEUF CENT CINQUANTE-TROIS); and 'CINQUANTE-CINQ MILLE
HUITCENTTRENTE-NEUF'(55839)-> '45839' (QUARANTE-CINQ MILLE
HUIT CENT TRENTE-NEUF)). As can be seen in these examples, the errors on
the position-within-stack were minor since the substituted and substituant elements
were adjacent in their stack.

Serial Ordering Errors. Lexical item displacement. As previously indicated, the

numeral coding system is organized in such a way that sometimes permutations of
lexical elements in the numeral do correspond to a well-formed numeral but
referring to a different quantity. Such permutations were likely to occur in 52 out of
the 100 items in the battery and were observed in 37 cases. Five Wernicke's aphasics
726 GERARD DELOCH AND XAVIER SERON

produced 26 erroneous transcriptions of this type: 'CENT SIX MILLE DEUX'

(106002) -> '6200' (SIX MILLE DEUX CENTS); 'QUATRE MILLE TROIS'
(4003) -»• '3004' (TROIS MILLE QUATRE); 'VINGT-QUATRE' (24) -• '80'
(QUATRE-VINGTS); or 'CENT DIX-NEUF' (119) -»• '1900' (MILLE NEUF
CENTS or DLX-NEUF CENTS, the latter form being mainly used in referring to
historical events). In 4 out of the 11 errors produced by 6 Broca's aphasics
the source of the error seemed to be in a general inappropriate transcoding strategy
rather than in serial ordering disturbances with numeral elements. This assumption
is supported by the fact that unlike some of the Wernicke's aphasics, the Broca's
aphasics did not read the numeral items aloud; the digit sequence they produced
respected the serial organization of lexical elements in the numeral ('CENT DEUX
MILLE SIX' (102 006) -+ '1206' (MILLE DEUX CENT SIX) probably through
'CENT' (hundred) -> '1'; 'DEUX' (2) -* '2'; 'MILLE' (thousand) -> '0'; and 'SIX'
(6) -> '6') and by other examples of such a left to right term-by-term transcoding
strategy in the same subjects' errors.
Partial processing of the numeral. The erroneous transcriptions of numerals
sometimes seemed to result from the nonprocessing of some of their elements. Thus
the omission of 'NEUF' (9) in 'CINQUANTE-CINQ MILLE HUIT CENT

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TRENTE-NEUF' (55839) presumably leads to '53 830'. If, as in this example, it
appears legitimate to invoke the nonprocessing (and often, more likely, the aborted
processing) of a lexical element of the numeral to explain the error, in other cases it
seemed that this omission was in fact systematic and involved 'MILLE' (thousand),
'CENT' (hundred), or 'VINGT' (20) when multiplicands; 'DIX' (10) when an
additive constant, and 'QUATRE' (4) when a multiplier in composed tens. Some
examples are: 'SOIXANTE-DIX-HUIT' (78) -» '68' (SOIXANTE-HUIT); or
'DEUX CENTS' (200) ->• '2' (DEUX). The fact that omissions occurred for these
specific lexical elements when occupying a syntactical position requiring a context-
dependent transcription indicates that it is more proper to consider these errors as a
disturbance in the transcoding strategy than as simple randomly distributed
omissions occurring in the serial ordered processing of the numeral. Such errors will
be discussed later. Whereas an erroneous transcription depicting partial processing
of the numeral might seem at least superficially analogous to an agrammatic
production, it should be noted that, when considering only the omissions bearing
purely lexical elements, agrammatic patients were responsible for only one such
error out of the 9 due to Broca's aphasics. This result contrasts with the high
proportion of errors (59 per cent) made by the 2 agrammatic subjects in the group of
7 Broca's aphasics. Three such errors were produced by 3 Wernicke's aphasics.
These patients, who had difficulty with the transcoding process indicating that they
could no longer transcode and would only continue in error, were without exception
Broca's aphasics. Such behaviour was not observed in Wernicke's aphasics, most
probably due to their anosognosia.
Intra-item perseverations. There were 18 erroneous transcriptions that differed
from the expected digit string only in the presence of extra occurrences of one correct
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS - 727

digit, and in 'CENT CINQUANTE-TROIS' (153) - '1553' or 'SOIXANTE-DIX'

(70) -> '7000'. Eleven such errors concerned the perseverations of digit '0'. Four
Wernicke's aphasics produced 11 intra-item digit perseverations and 3 Broca's the
other 7.

Transcoding errors. The errors reported in the two preceding sections were located
during the identification of the lexical elements of the numeral (visual paralexias,
phonemic paralexias, stack errors, stack position errors), or when parsing the
numeral lexical items from left to right (lexical item displacement and partial
processing), or in the serial organization of the digits to be produced. In this section,
we will analyse erroneous transcriptions resulting from the application of inadequate
transcoding rules to lexical elements assumed to be correctly decoded and processed
without serial ordering disturbances. Erroneous transcoding strategies will be
categorized into: (1) total or partial lexicalization of the numeral elements; (2) errors
in the processing of'MILLE' (thousand), 'CENT' (hundred), either multiplicands
or not; and (3) stack position errors in composed tens.
Lexicalization of the numeral elements. In this case, the erroneous digit string
results from the concatenation of the transcoding into its lexical value of one or

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more elements in the numeral, as in 'CENT DEUX MILLE' (102000) - '1002000'
by the lexicalization of 'CENT' (hundred) -» '100' followed by the correct
transcoding of'DEUX MILLE' (2000) - '2000'; or 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) -»
'420' by the lexicalizations of'QUATRE' (4) -» '4' and 'VINGT' (20) -» '20'. This
strategy was particularly exemplified in transcoding composed tens (27 instances) as
in 'QUATRE-VINGT-DIX-SEPT' (97) - '420107' by the successive lexicalizations
of each individual element in the numeral: 'QUATRE' (4) -» '4'; 'VINGT' (20) -
'20'; 'DIX' (10) - ' 10'; and 'SEPT' (7) - '7'. In most cases, the lexicalization did not
bear on each numeral element. For instance, in 'QUATRE-VINGT-TREIZE' (93)
-> '4213' and 'SOIXANTE ET ONZE' (71) -» '611', the tens names 'VINGT' (20)
and 'SOIXANTE' (60) were transcoded by just one digit, '2' and '6', respectively,
whereas the other numeral elements were lexicalized (digit name 'QUATRE' (4) -»
'4' and particulars 'TREIZE' (13) -» '13'; 'ONZE' (11) -» '11'). Lexicalization
accounted for 34 out of the 269 erroneous transcriptions. They were made by 5
Broca's and 4 Wernicke's aphasics. They should be tentatively interpreted as an
impairment in handling the syntactical structure of the numeral element string as it
emerges through serial organization and grammatical rules. Such considerations are
in accordance with the high frequency of this error type on the numerals where the
transcription of some elements is dependent on forward/backward context, that is,
with composed tens. The Broca's aphasics produced 27 such errors, the 2 patients
with agrammatism being responsible for 19.
Errors in the transcoding of 'MILLE' (thousand) and 'CENT' (hundred).
Erroneous transcriptions where the error concerned the transcoding of these
numeral elements resulted from the inappropriate application of a strategy legal in
other contexts.
728 G E R A R D DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

One case is the undue appearance of the digit '1' in the digit string at the place
corresponding to 'MILLE' (thousand) or 'CENT' (hundred) in the numeral
elements sequence. Whereas this strategy does apply in numerals whosefirstelement
is 'MILLE' (thousand) or 'CENT' (hundred) as in 'MILLE NEUF CENTS' (1900)
or 'CENT VINGT-DEUX' (122), it yields errors when these elements are
multiplicands as in 'TRENTE-NEUF MILLE SEPT CENT QUARANTE-
DEUX' (39742) ^ '3917142'; 'TRENTE MILLE TROIS CENT TREIZE' (30 313)
-> '3013113' or 'NEUF CENT QUARANTE-TROIS' (943) -> '9143'. There were
26 such erroneous transcriptions, 17 of which were produced by the 2 agrammatic
Broca's aphasics, the remaining were produced by 3 Wernicke's aphasics.
In other cases, an extra '0' appeared in the digit string, corresponding to 'MILLE'
(thousand) or 'CENT' (hundred). Whereas this transcoding strategy might lead to
correct results, as in 'QUATRE MILLE TRENTE-SEPT (4037) or 'DEUX CENT
QUATRE' (204), it cannot be successfully applied in other contexts: 'VINGT-SEPT
MILLE QUATRE CENT DIX-NEUF' (27419) -• '270419'; 'HUIT CENT
CINQUANTE-SEPT' (857) -> '8057'. There were 7 instances of this error type, 5 of
which were produced by 3 Broca's aphasics and 2 by 2 Wernicke's aphasics.
There were 4 erroneous transcriptions in which the two above mentioned

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strategies occurred together, the multiplicands 'MILLE' (thousand) and 'CENT'
(hundred) being transcoded into T and '0', respectively, as in 'TRENTE-NEUF
MILLE SEPT CENT QUARANTE-DEUX' (39742) -> '3917042' and 'TROIS
MILLE DEUX CENT SEIZE' (3216) -• '312016'. The Wernicke's aphasics
produced no such errors.
The Broca's aphasics were thus responsible for 26 out of the 37 erroneous
transcriptions where the only error concerned the transcoding of 'MILLE'
(thousand) or 'CENT' (hundred) multiplicands into a digit. In a sense, this consists
of assigning a lexical value to a syntactical element. The overgeneralization of the
reverse strategy was also observed. There were 15 instances, 8 of which were
produced by 3 Wernicke's aphasics, where the digit ' 1 ' transcribing 'MILLE'
(thousand) or 'CENT' (hundred) in a nonmultiplicand position was omitted:
'DEUX MILLE CENT' (2100) -> '2000' (DEUX MILLE); 'MILLE QUATRE-
VINGTS' (1080) -> '80' (QUATRE-VINGTS); 'CENT DEUX MILLE' (102000)
-> '2000' (DEUX MILLE).
Stack position errors in composed tens. The erroneous transcriptions in
composed tens may be analysed in several different ways. For instance, a stack error
reducing the particular name 'QUINZE' (15) to the unit '5' (CINQ) might account
for 'SOIXANTE-QUINZE' (75) -> '65' (SOIXANTE-CINQ), and a stack position
error transforming 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) into '90' (QUATRE-VINGT-DIX)
would result in 'MILLE QUATRE-VINGTS' (1080) -»'1090' (MILLE QUATRE-
VINGT-DIX). However, our previous study (Deloche and Seron, 1982) demon-
strated that composed tens names were not lexicalized as a whole, since error
frequencies on one-word tens names was significantly lower than on composed tens
names, and no differences were found between the three French composed tens and
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS 729

the Belgian, or between the two Belgian forms 'SEPTANTE' (70) and 'NONANTE'
(90) and the other simple tens either in France or in Belgium. It thus seems better to
classify these errors in composed tens under a particular heading. They may
tentatively be interpreted as reflecting some impaired ability in processing the
underlying syntactical structure of the composed tens where the lexical values of
numeral elements have to be combined through arithmetic operations. There were 8
instances of such erroneous transcriptions, all produced by the Broca's aphasics
(4 patients concerned).

Mixed errors. In addition to the errors that can be attributed either to impaired
numeral lexicon element identification, to serial ordering disorders, or to misuse of
transcoding strategies, there existed another type of error that may be termed
'mixed' in that the erroneous transcription seemed to result from several dis-
turbances. In some cases, mixed errors came from the combination of at least two of
the difficulties discussed above, while in others, they arose from a blend of normal
and abnormal processing applied to the same numeral element, the digit string
depicting the results of the two processes.
An example of the first type of mixed errors is shown by 'CENT SIX MILLE

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DEUX' (106002) transcoded by '5602' through a visual paralexia, 'CENT'
(hundred) -* '5' (CINQ), and the application of the inappropriate transcoding rule
'MILLE' (thousand) -> '0'. In this case, the interpretation is supported by the fact
that the subject who produced this error also produced 'DEUX CENTS' (200) ->
'25' (VINGT-CINQ) and 'VINGT-SEPT MILLE QUATRE CENT DIX-NEUF'
(27419) -> '270419'. However, the mechanism that led to an erroneous transcription
may sometimes be given different interpretations. For example, the transcoding of
'CENT QUARANTE' (140) by '400' (QUATRE CENTS) is interpretable as the
result of a lexical item displacement and either a stack error ('QUARANTE' (40) -»
'QUATRE' <4)), or a transcoding error in processing 'CENT' ('CENT' (hundred)
-> '0'). Since the subject produced the two types of errors, the nature of the
underlying disturbance of this particular erroneous transcription remains uncertain.
The second category of mixed errors reflects a blend of two (one correct and one
erroneous) transcoding processes operating on the same numeral element, the
transcription evidencing the action of the two processes. This was particularly clear
with composed tens as in 'QUATRE-VINGT-DIX-SEPT' (97) -» '8217' where
'VINGT' (20) was first correctly integrated as a multiplicand in 'QUATRE-
VINGT' (80) and transcoded '8' but then lexicalized as the usual tens name
'VINGT' (20) transcoded by '2'.
Out of the 269 erroneous transcriptions, 55 were categorized as mixed errors. All
subjects produced these kind of errors but the Wernicke's aphasics were responsible
for most with 32. It must be emphasized that this category is not ad hoc: it requires
that the hypothetical disturbances invoked be clearly evidenced in other erroneous
transcriptions of the same subjects, and correspond to previously defined types of
errors.
730 G E R A R D DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

Miscellaneous. Ten per cent of the 269 erroneous transcriptions were not of the
types discussed in the previous sections (16 produced by the Wernicke's and 12 by
the Broca's aphasics). There was only one 'odd' production: 'ZERO' (0) -> '30'; the
others could be classified either as serial ordering disturbances such as the digit
displacement 'MILLE NEUF CENTS' (1900) -> '1090', or as difficulties in
assigning the right number of '0's to digit strings such as 'DEUX CENT MILLE'
(200000) -» '20000'; 'QUARANTE-SEPT MILLE' (47000) -V4700'; 'SEIZE
MILLE' (16 000) ->' 1600'. Since the number produced in the latter example has two
numeral readings: '1600' -> 'MILLE SIX CENTS' or 'SEIZE CENTS', the error
could result from a confusion between 'MILLE' (thousand) in the numeral to
transcode and 'CENT' (hundred). Finally, 11 out of the 16 Wernicke's aphasics
erroneous transcriptions were due to the same subject and corresponded to the mere
addition of one to three '0's to the right of the correct transcription ('CENT
DOUZE' (112) -» '1120'; 'TRENTE ET UN' (31) -> '3100'; 'UN' (1) -»• '1000').

CONCLUSIONS

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Before discussing the differential impairments in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia,
the subjects' ability to handle this transcoding task must be emphasized. The digital
code appeared to be relatively well preserved and there were no transcriptions that
could not be reasonably related either to the expected digit string, to the numeral
elements, or to transcoding strategies.
Paralexic errors were too few for comment. The distribution of the other error
types indicates some structural differences between the performance of Broca's and
Wernicke's aphasics in handling the transcription of numerals into numbers.
(1) There are arguments supporting the view that a large proportion of the
erroneous transcriptions by the Broca's aphasics resulted from grammatical
difficulties. That can be evidenced on the morphological level of lexical elements and
also on the syntactical level.
(a) On the morphological level, grammatical difficulties were exemplified in the
stack errors produced by the Broca's aphasics. They were mainly substitutions
of a single digit (corresponding to a unit) for the particulars and tens names.
This tendency was not observed in the Wernicke's aphasics' performances;
and it parallels the stripping of bound morphemes reported in the reading
aloud by deep dyslexics. The 'unitarization' of tens and particulars would be
analogous to the 'derivational errors' (Marshall and Newcombe, 1973). This is
in line with the facts that 7 out of the 8 such errors were made by the 2 patients
with agrammatism and that nearly all the deep dyslexics were reported as
being agrammatic patients. Contrasting with this selective grammatical
disorder in the Broca's aphasics, it should be noted that no simple stack
position errors were observed; such errors, which would parallel semantic
confusions in naming tasks, were produced by the Wernicke's aphasics.
 T R A N S C O D I N G Q U A N T I T I E S IN A P H A S I C S 731

TABLE 2. DISTRIBUTION OF ERRONEOUS TRANSCRIPTIONS ACCORDING TO

ERROR TYPES AND TYPE OF APHASIA

Category of errors Broca Wernicke Tola

Identification errors
Visual paralexias 2 — 2
Phonemic paralexias — 1 1
Stack errors 12 6 18
Simple stack position errors — 4 4
Subtotal 14 11 25

Serial ordering errors

Lexical item displacement 11 26 37
Partial processing 9 3 12
Intra-item perseveration 7 11 18
Subtotal 27 40 67

Transcoding errors
Lexicalization of numeral elements 27 7 34

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Transcoding of 'MILLE' (thousand)
and 'CENT' (hundred)
—multiplicands 26 11 37
—nonmultiplicands 7 8 15
Stack position errors in composed tens 8 — 8
Subtotal 68 26 94

Mixed errors 23 32 55

Miscellaneous 12 16 28
Total 144 125 269

(b) Syntax, as it emerges from the serial organization of the lexical elements in the
numeral, constituted a particular factor of difficulty for the Broca's aphasics.
This was clearly evidenced in the analysis of erroneous transcriptions at the
level of transcoding strategies where the Broca's aphasics had more than twice
as many errors than the Wernicke's aphasics, the former experiencing great
difficulties in transcoding 'MILLE' (thousand) and 'CENT' (hundred) when
multiplicands. In this case, and with composed tens, the Broca's aphasics
developed a lexicalization strategy assigning to each syntactical element either
one digit or its lexical value. As previously indicated, agrammatic patients
were responsible for a high proportion of these errors. This result is in line with
the findings of Schwartz et al. (1980) concerning the inability of agrammatics
to decode the syntax of word order in reversible sentences when pragmatic
732 G E R A R D DELOCHE AND XAVIER SERON

cues are inoperant. It can also be linked with Grossman's (1980) finding that
these aphasics tend to use chain-like structures rather than hierarchical struc-
tures in a stick-copying task. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that some sort
of working memory deficit could account for the Broca's aphasics' handling of
this transcoding task. But this interpretation seems implausible, for several
reasons: first, the term-by-term strategy was used with the shortest numerals
such as 'QUATRE-VINGTS' (80) -» '420'; secondly, the subject had the
material before him while transcoding the numeral, so the mnestic load would
have been minimal; thirdly, this interpretation has not been demonstrated in
other contexts (Grossman, 1980).
(2) The erroneous transcriptions produced by the Wernicke's aphasics are not
distributed in the same way as those of the Broca's aphasics, but their interpretation
is less clear. However, some tendencies did emerge.
(a) As already mentioned, some semantic errors (4 simple stack position errors)
were produced by the Wernicke's aphasics and none made by the Broca's
aphasics.
(b) The Wernicke's aphasics' difficulties in handling the sequential organization
of the lexical elements in the numeral seemed to depend on different

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underlying disturbances than did the Broca's aphasics'. Lexical item displace-
ments and intra-item perseverations were the characteristic errors made by the
subjects with Wernicke's aphasia. The former type suggests that the subjects
were having serial ordering difficulties in handling the numeral elements,
although this erroneous parsing obeyed syntax constraints as indicated by the
correspondence of the digit transcription to a rearranged, but syntactically
well-formed, sequence of the numeral elements. The latter error type suggests
an impairment located at a level closer to graphic output mechanisms, namely
where the production of the digit string is programmed.
Finally it seems that the Broca's aphasics' difficulties were essentially of a
morphological and syntactical nature and the Wernicke's aphasics' problems of a
semantic type and in serial ordering processes both in decoding information in the
numeral element string and in programming the corresponding digit string. This
pattern of results seems to parallel the general dissolution of linguistic skills in these
two types of aphasia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the speech therapists in the Centre de Reeducation du Langage (Professor F.
Lhermitte, La Salpetriere, Paris) and the Centre de Revalidation Neuropsychologique (Professor C.
Laterre, Cliniques Universitaires St Luc, UCL, Bruxelles) for their help in referring patients. We
should also like to thank Mrs N. Benoit, psychologist, for her assistance in diagnoses. This work was
supported by INSERM Grant 820620.
 TRANSCODING QUANTITIES IN APHASICS 733

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(Received March 25, 1982. Revised June 8, 1982)