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…

Twenty-one aphasic and seven nonaphasic adults participated in a referential communication task. Both aphasic and nonaphasic subjects successfully determined essential information to be communicated and communicated it to a listener. Nonaphasic and nonfluent aphasic subjects were more efficient in communicating information than mixed or anomic…

Conversation analysis was used to investigate a conversational partner's strategies when assisting with the word searches of an aphasic person. Analysis of 38 authentic videotaped conversation sequences identified four conversation strategies systematically and collaboratively used: guessing, alternative guessing, completion, and closing…

Language sample data from normal subjects (ages 40-79) were collected to determine how normal aging might affect performance on a picture description task, routinely used for assessment of aphasic individuals. Only an increase in the number of paraphasias and a decrease in communication efficiency correlated with increased age. (DB)

Seven aphasic and seven normal adults described cartoon drawings and received one of three types of feedback (explicit, false, or implicit). Subjects' recodings showed that normal subjects used more expansion and deletion than aphasics. No significant differences existed between groups for repetition or revision. Subjects' responses varied…