Are there distinct input and output buffers? Evidence from an aphasic patient with an impaired output buffer

A patient is described whose poor repetition of sentences and of lists of words contrasts with his surprisingly good performance on immediate probe recognition tasks. This result is interpreted as suggesting a distinction between a phonological input buffer involved in lexical access and, perhaps, syntactic parsing and a phonological output buffer involved in language production: the former is functioning normally and the latter is impaired. Consistent with this hypothesis, the patient does not show any comprehension impairment.