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Melodic Intonation Therapy in subacute aphasia
No full textMelodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) is based on the observation that persons with severe nonfluent aphasia are often able to sing words or even short phrases they cannot produce during speech. MIT uses the melodic elements of speech, such as intonation and rhythm, to facilitate and improve language production. Although clinicians disagree about the usefulness of MIT, it has been translated into several languages and is frequently applied worldwide. Many studies have reported successful application of MIT. However, most studies are case-studies without control condition in chronic patients. Hence, the level of evidence for MIT is low and little is known about its effect in earlier phases post stroke, when treatment interacts with processes of spontaneous recovery.
We examined MIT in the subacute phase post stroke. The purpose of this multicenter study was threefold. First, we evaluated the efficacy of MIT in the subacute phase. Further, we examined the effect of the timing of MIT in this early phase post stroke. Thirdly, we investigated potential determinants influencing therapy outcome
The relationship between brain volume loss in TBI and measures of cognition and narrative discourse
Get PDFThe present study of 167 individuals with TBI investigated how well total brain volume loss accounts for performance on cognitive tasks, including WM, immediate memory (IM), EF, and IQ, and on narrative discourse production measures at multiple levels (e.g., intra-sentential, inter-sentential, global) of analysis. An underlying goal of this study was to examine the prognostic potential of a brain lesion metric for outcomes in discourse production. It is hypothesized that brain volume loss will correlate significantly with the cognitive and narrative discourse measures
Development and Simulation Testing of a Computerized Adaptive Measure of Communicative Functioning in Aphasia
No full textComputerized adaptive testing (CAT), based on the mathematical framework of item response theory (IRT), has increasingly been implemented in patient reported outcome measures over the past decade (Fries, Bruce, & Cella, 2005). Given a calibrated item pool fit by an appropriate IRT measurement model, a CAT can produce reliable ability estimates more efficiently than traditional paper-and-pencil tests by administering items that are most informative given the examinee’s estimated ability level (Wainer, 2000). As conventional measures employed in the measurement of aphasia were developed under traditional measurement theory, many of these measures are long and inefficient, and are consequently unsuitable for regular clinical care. In addition, these conventional measures often fail to meet the needs of many community-dwelling stroke survivors whose impairments falls outside the range reliably measured by these tests (Doyle et al. 2012). IRT-based and in particular CAT patient reported outcome measures offer the possibility of substantial improvements in measurement technology for persons with aphasia
Mild Conduction Aphasia and Narrative Functionality: Beyond the Assessment of Impairment (A Case Study)
Get PDFThe current discourse-based study presents a case history of a Ph.D.-educated mechanical engineer with conduction aphasia (C-APH01). His most recent standardized test scores were within normal limits, but he reported persistent restrictions in his social and professional interactions. Narrative analysis frameworks designed to reflect narrative functionality were used: analysis of narrative storyline and background functions (Longacre, 1989, 1996); analysis of the referential and evaluative (prominence-adding) functions in narratives (Labov, 1972, 1997; Olness et al., 2012); and analysis of efficiency of transmission of narrative information (Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993)
Reading Comprehension and Parkinson's Disease
Get PDFParkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, afflicting approximately 1% of adults by age 65 (Shulman et al., 2011). Whereas PD typically presents with a variety of motoric symptoms, including rigidity and bradykinesia, a growing literature describes the cognitive and linguistic effects of PD. Within the limited language literature, however, there has been nominal investigation of reading abilities beyond the isolated word or sentence level even though several lines of evidence suggest this language modality may be vulnerable in PD
Validation of an iPAD based therapy for language and cognitive rehabilitation in individuals with brain damage
Get PDFAbout 795,000 Americans each year suffer a new or recurrent stroke (NIDCD.gov). Also, about 1.7 million individuals suffer from traumatic brain injury each year (CDC.gov). Individuals with language and cognitive deficits following brain damage likely require long-term rehabilitation. Consequently, it is a huge practical problem to provide the continued communication therapy that these individuals require. The present project examines the validity of an iPAD based continuous rehabilitation language and cognitive program. Patients were evaluated and initiated with a treatment plan in the clinic and then required to practice the therapy tasks at home on a daily basis but at individualized times/durations. The treatment plan in the clinic and at home was delivered to the patient via the Constant Therapy Software (www.constanttherapy.com) platform. The level of patient compliance (did they practice the therapy tasks), patient engagement (how long did they practice the therapy tasks) and amount of improvement on each task (percent change over time) was measured. Results from the patients using iPAD Constant Therapy are compared to patients who practice therapy on the iPAD with the clinician but do not take the iPAD home. These data are further compared to patients who receive traditional flashcard based therapy
A COMPARISON OF SEMANTIC FEATURE ANALYSIS AND PROMOTING APHASIC COMMUNICATIVE EFFECTIVENESS FOR TREATING ANOMIA IN PATIENTS WITH APHASIA
No full textThis study used an alternating single-subject design to compare the effects of SFA and PACE on the long-term naming accuracy of two participants with chronic Broca’s aphasia. Each participant was treated using the traditional form of SFA and PACE independently. Naming probes were taken to provide data in order to compare the two treatments. The results indicated that both procedures produced similar long-term improvements in naming the target stimuli but that both participants preferred PACE over SFA
Characteristics of Polysyllabic Word Repetitions in Individuals with Fluent and Nonfluent Aphasia
Get PDFSpeech sound errors associated with aphasia have been attributed to disintegration of both phonologic and motoric processes in different subtypes of aphasia (Pierce, 2001). In nonfluent aphasia (NA), which often co-occurs with apraxia of speech (AOS), motor programming and motor planning difficulties are the typically proposed error generating mechanisms. In contrast, phonemic paraphasia observed in fluent aphasia (FA) is typically thought to be related to inability to retrieve and maintain sequences of phonemes for production. Distortion errors, indicative of motor programming deficiency, predominate in AOS; but also have been reported to a lesser extent in FA, in studies involving word or sentence repetition (McNeil, Robin & Schmidt, 2009; Odell, McNeil, Rosenbek & Hunter 1991; Odell, Bonkowski, & Mello,1995). Associated features of dysfluency and dysprosody have also been reported in AOS (Kent & Rosenbek, 1983). In contrast, undistorted phonemic level errors also occur in both FA and NA subtypes (Blumstien, 1973; Pierce, 2001). This study examines the occurrence of phonemic errors as well as phonetic distortion, dysfluency and dysprosody in speech produced by individuals diagnosed with NA with AOS versus FA with phonemic paraphasia, in comparison with the speech of non-aphasic control speakers. This information is important (1) in order to advance our understanding of AOS, which usually occurs, clinically, in the presence of NA; (2) to further elucidate the role of distortion in FA, wherein speech errors are often described clinically as being fluently produced with little effort or distortion (Seddoh, Robin, Hageman, Moon, & Folkins, 1996); and (3) to help toward differentiating phonological/representational impairments from motorically based aspects of apraxic speech, which may not be mutually exclusive (Ziegler, Aichert & Staiger, 2012)
Deficits of case marker processing in persons with mild cognitive impairment
No full textThe purpose of the current study was to investigate whether persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) showed deficits in processing case markers compared to normal elderly adults (NEA). Results revealed that individuals with MCI presented significantly lower accuracy than the NEA group on a case marker processing (CMP) task. Both groups showed greater difficulties in the passive sentences than sentences with the transitive verbs. The current results suggested that individuals with early stage of dementia started presenting deficits in case marker processing compared to the control group
Effects of Verb Bias and Syntactic Ambiguity on Reading in People with Aphasia
No full textPeople with aphasia (PWA) often have sentence comprehension impairments. According to the Lexical Bias Hypothesis, these impairments emerge when a verb’s argument structure biases conflict with the sentence structure (Gahl, 2002). For example, PWA had more trouble understanding sentences in which the verb’s transitivity bias conflicted with the sentence structure (e.g., a transitively biased verb in an intransitive sentence) (Gahl, 2002). The present study tested the Lexical Bias Hypothesis by investigating whether PWA use verb bias differently from non-brain-damaged controls when reading syntactically ambiguous and unambiguous sentences like those in examples (1) and (2).
1. The talented photographer| accepted| (that)| the fire| could not| have been| prevented.
2. The ticket agent| admitted| (that)| the airplane| had been| late| taking off