Previous studies have used semantic verb categories to compare how speakers with and without aphasia use verb types during narrative monologue discourse tasks. In this study, we explore the types of verbs used by speakers with and without aphasia during conversation. Using previously collected conversational discourse samples produced by 23 adults…

Purpose: Following the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS) framework, the current study investigated the active ingredients in the modified semantic feature analysis (mSFA) targeting either noun or verb retrieval in Mandarin-English bilingual adults with aphasia (BWA). Method: Twelve Mandarin-English BWA completed mSFA treatment…

Background: Patients with anomic aphasia experience difficulties in narrative processing. General discourse measures are time consuming and require necessary skills. Core lexicon analysis has been proposed as an effort-saving approach but has not been developed in Mandarin discourse. Aims: This exploratory study was aimed (1) to apply core lexicon…

Purpose: Item response theory (IRT) is a modern psychometric framework with several advantageous properties as compared with classical test theory. IRT has been successfully used to model performance on anomia tests in individuals with aphasia; however, all efforts to date have focused on noun production accuracy. The purpose of this study is to…

Purpose: Although there is increasing interest in using structural priming as a means to ameliorate grammatical encoding deficits in persons with aphasia (PWAs), little is known about the precise mechanisms of structural priming that are associated with robust and enduring effects in PWAs. Two dialogue-like comprehension-to-production priming…

Background: Despite its importance, in-depth analysis of connected speech is often neglected in the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) -- especially for the logopenic variant (lvPPA) for which unreliable differential diagnosis has been documented. Only a few studies have been conducted on this topic in lvPPA. Aims: The aim of this…

Background: Discourse analysis procedures are time consuming and impractical in a clinical setting. Critical to clinicians are simple and informative discourse measures that require minimal time and labour to complete. Many studies, however, have overlooked difficulties that clinicians face. We recently developed core lexicon lists for nouns,…

Background: Given the integral role that verbs play in sentence production, understanding verb deficits is critical to clinical practice. Difficulties in sentence production are often directly related to an inability to retrieve argument structure information which, according to most theoretical accounts, is specified at a lexical level as part of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review treatment studies of semantic feature analysis (SFA) for persons with aphasia. The review documents how SFA is used, appraises the quality of the included studies, and evaluates the efficacy of SFA. Method: The following electronic databases were systematically searched (last search February 2017):…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare the outcomes of the manually coded Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis (NNLA) system, which was developed for characterizing agrammatic production patterns, and the automated Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) system, which has recently been adopted to analyze speech samples of individuals…

Purpose: The aims of the study were to assess and compare grammatical deficits in written and spoken language production in subjects with agrammatic primary progressive aphasia (agPPA) and in subjects with agrammatism in the context of dominant apraxia of speech (DAOS) and to investigate neuroanatomical correlates. Method: Eight agPPA and 21 DAOS…

Purpose: The present study tested whether (and how) language treatment changed online sentence processing in individuals with aphasia. Method: Participants with aphasia (n = 10) received a 12-week program of Treatment of Underlying Forms (Thompson & Shapiro, 2005) focused on production and comprehension of passive sentences. Before and after…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of verb argument complexity on verb production in individuals with aphasia using a verb-final language. The verb-argument complexity was examined by the number of arguments (1-, 2-, and 3-place) and the types of arguments (unaccusative vs. unergative comparisons). Fifteen Korean-speaking…

Background: Many people with aphasia have word-finding difficulties, with some showing particular difficulties with verbs. Picture-naming therapy is often used to improve naming, but gains are usually limited to therapy items and do not transfer to conversation. Therapy where words are produced in sentences and in real-life activities may be more…

Purpose: The present work investigated whether verbal working memory (WM) affects morphosyntactic production in configurations that do not involve or favor similarity-based interference and whether WM interacts with verb-related morphosyntactic categories and/or cue-target distance (locality). It also explored whether the findings related to the…