Background: Pictures drawn by people with aphasia (PWA) are often more challenging to understand than those drawn by healthy people. There are two types of objects: those that tend to be drawn symbolically (symbolically drawn objects--SOs) and those that are likely to be drawn realistically (realistically drawn objects--ROs). Aims: To compare the…

Background: Word retrieval skills change across the lifespan. Permanent alterations in the form of decreased accuracy or increased response time can be a consequence of both normal ageing processes or the presence of acquired and neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., aphasia and dementia). Despite the extensive literature exploring the…

Purpose: This study investigated conflict adaptation in aphasia, specifically whether upregulating cognitive control improves sentence comprehension. Method: Four individuals with mild aphasia completed four eye tracking sessions with interleaved auditory Stroop and sentence-to-picture matching trials (critical and filler sentences). Auditory…

Older adults show a progressive cognitive decline, and although language processing appears to resist advancing age, studies in word retrieval report that elders show important difficulties. Previous research reports that such failures increase from age 70 years, which suggests that during the fourth age word retrieval would exhibit even stronger…

Purpose: Decision making involves multiple cognitive and linguistic processes. The extent to which these processes are involved depends, in part, on the conditions under which decision making is assessed. Because people with aphasia (PWA) have impaired language abilities and may also present with cognitive deficits, they may have difficulty during…

Speech-language pathologists serving individuals with aphasia must make many decisions regarding assessment and intervention practices to support comprehension and expression of language. Each of these decisions can influence the effectiveness of therapy and long-term functional outcomes for individuals with aphasia. One factor that must be…

Background & Aims: The present retrospective study examines veterans and military personnel who have sustained a cognitive-communication deficit/disorder (CCD) and/or aphasia secondary to traumatic brain injury (TBI). The prevalence of each disorder secondary to TBI is identified and demographic factors are analysed to determine whether…

Purpose: This study reports on how very old (VO) Finnish people without dementia perform in the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) and two verbal fluency tasks and which demographic factors predict the performance. Method: The study included fifty 80- to 100-year-old community-dwelling Finnish speakers with no dementing illnesses or speech-language…

Background: Aphasia is often accompanied by impairment of non-language cognitive functions. Assessment of cognitive capacity in people with aphasia (PWA) with standard neuropsychological methods may be problematic due to their language difficulties. Numerous experimental studies indicate that P300 may be considered as an index of cognitive…

Purpose: When speakers retrieve words, they do so extremely quickly and accurately--both speed and accuracy of word retrieval are compromised in persons with aphasia (PWA). This study examined the contribution of two domain-general mechanisms: processing speed and cognitive control on word retrieval in PWA. Method: Three groups of participants,…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the relationship between nonverbal cognitive functions and language processing of people with aphasia (PWA) by taking a data-driven approach, as well as multiple cognitive components and multilevel linguistic perspectives. It is hypothesized that language performance is differentially associated with…

Background: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) describes a heterogeneous group of language-led dementias. People with this type of dementia are increasingly being referred to speech and language therapy (SLT) services. Yet, there is a paucity of research evidence focusing on PPA interventions and little is known about SLT practice in terms of…

Purpose: The relationship between cognitive abilities and aphasia rehabilitation outcomes is complex and remains poorly understood. This study investigated the influence of language and cognitive abilities on anomia therapy outcomes in adults with aphasia. Method: Thirty-four adults with chronic aphasia participated in Aphasia Language Impairment…

Alzheimer's dementia (AD) is a progressive, degenerative disease that occurs in the cerebral cortex due to increased levels of glutamate, the proliferation of plaque-forming amyloid beta proteins, and reactive gliosis. Establishing behavioral indicators of the disease (e.g., impairments of episodic memory) and use of neuroimaging technology…

Purpose: Individuals with probable Alzheimer disease (pAD) are frequently impaired at picture naming. This study examined whether a semantic elaboration task would facilitate naming in pAD, and whether training either semantically typical or atypical stimulus items facilitated generalized improvement in picture naming and category generation…