ERIC Number: EJ894044
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-May
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1058-0360
EISSN: N/A
Using Semantic Feature Analysis to Improve Contextual Discourse in Adults with Aphasia
Rider, Jill Davis; Wright, Heather Harris; Marshall, Robert C.; Page, Judith L.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, v17 n2 p161-172 May 2008
Purpose: Semantic feature analysis (SFA) was used to determine whether training contextually related words would improve the discourse of individuals with nonfluent aphasia in preselected contexts. Method: A modified multiple-probes-across-behaviors design was used to train target words using SFA in 3 adults with nonfluent aphasia. Pretreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up sessions obtained language samples for the preselected contexts. Contexts included 4 story retellings and 4 procedure explanations. Results: All participants improved naming ability for treated words. No generalization to untrained items was found. Within discourse samples, participants increased number of target words produced from pretreatment to posttreatment sessions but did not increase lexical diversity across samples. Participants maintained performance on standardized measures from the beginning to the end of the study. Conclusions: Results support and extend previous research by indicating that SFA improves confrontational naming ability and may benefit word retrieval in discourse production of closed-set contexts. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)
Descriptors: Semantics, Aphasia, Vocabulary, Adults, Discourse Analysis, Story Telling, Cues, Therapy, Generalization, Outcomes of Treatment, Visual Stimuli, Television, Neurological Impairments, Language Processing
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A