Background: Global aphasia is a severe communication disorder affecting all language modalities, commonly caused by stroke. Evidence as to whether the functional communication of people with global aphasia (PwGA) can improve after speech and language therapy (SLT) is limited and conflicting. This is partly because cognition, which is relevant to…

Purpose: In single-case treatment studies, researchers may compare client performance during a baseline, nontreatment phase(s) to client performance during intervention phases. Autocorrelation in the data series gathered during such studies increases the likelihood that analysts will detect or fail to detect meaningful differences between baseline…

Purpose: This article reviews four discourse measures and examines whether they are sensitive to impairments in people with both mild and severe aphasia. We also ask whether these measures were sensitive to effects of conversation treatment in two case examples. Method: Two people with aphasia, one mild and fluent and the other severe and…

Background: Information from speech and gesture is often integrated to comprehend a message. This integration process requires the appropriate allocation of cognitive resources to both the gesture and speech modalities. People with aphasia are likely to find integration of gesture and speech difficult. This is due to a reduction in cognitive…

Purpose: The aims of this systematic review are to provide a critical overview of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) treatments in stroke aphasia and to systematically evaluate the internal and external validity of STM/WM treatments. Method: A systematic search was conducted in February 2014 and then updated in December 2016 using 13…

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate how emotional arousal and valence affect confrontational naming accuracy and response time (RT) in people with mild-to-moderate aphasia compared with adults without aphasia. We hypothesized that negative and positive emotions would facilitate naming for people with aphasia (PWA) but lead to…

Purpose: Individuals with primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) have apraxia of speech (AOS) in which disruptions in articulation or prosody predominate the speech pattern, referred to, respectively, as phonetic or prosodic subtypes. Many develop aphasia and/or dysarthria. Past research has demonstrated that simple temporal acoustic…

Purpose: This article uses an illustrative case example to discuss a means of producing a holistic profile of Internet use for individuals with aphasia. Methods: The authors used the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health as a framework to select novel and existing assessments to explore the Internet use and skills of…

Health care providers can experience increased diffculty communicating with adult patients during medical interactions when the patients have communication disorders. Meeting the communication needs of these patients can also create unique challenges for providers. The authors explore Communication Accommodation Theory (H. Giles, 1979) as a guide…

Resulting from stroke or brain injury, aphasia affects individuals' ability to produce and comprehend language, but it also creates profound social changes, limiting individuals' opportunities to communicate or to be seen as capable of communication. To address these challenges, the field of communicative sciences and disorders (CSD) has sought to…

The statistical information that estimates the magnitude of communication disorders among Egyptian children is scarce. At Mansoura University, a prospective study was performed to identify communication disorders among nursery school children in Dakahlia governorate, Egypt to estimate the problem's size among Arabic-speaking Egyptian children…

Background: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that occurs secondary to brain injury, such as stroke. It causes communication difficulties that have a significant impact on quality of life and social relationships. Although the efficacy of speech-language therapy has been clearly demonstrated in this population, long-term services are…

Background: Gesticulation (gestures accompanying speech) and pantomime (gestures in the absence of speech) can each be comprehensible. Little is known about the differences between these two gesture modes in people with aphasia. Aims: To discover whether there are differences in the communicative use of gesticulation and pantomime in QH, a person…

Alignment refers to the interactive use of similar words to accomplish a linguistic and cognitive "common ground" in conversations. Alignment is thought to be unconscious, relying on priming mechanisms. This occurs uniquely in conversational contexts and has been shown in choices of words, grammatical constructions, and even indirect…

This single case study served to examine text-to-speech (TTS) effects on reading rate and comprehension in an individual with mild aphasia and cognitive impairment. Findings showed faster reading, given TTS presented at a normal speaking rate, but no significant comprehension changes. TTS may support reading in people with aphasia when time…