The literature review looks at effectiveness of language treatment for aphasic patients in terms of complications in treatment studies (differences among patients and spontaneous recoveries), and results of treatment studies suggesting that treatment usually benefits only patients who meet specific criteria (such as aphasia of less than 3 months…

Spaced retrieval (SR) has recently been modified to target anomia in persons with aphasia (PWA). It relies on a strict management of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) where the time between stimulus presentations is doubled or halved based on response accuracy. Although SR is successful in treating anomia, it remains to be studied whether the…

This paper presents preliminary results of pre- and post-treatment error analysis from an aphasic patient with anomia. The Interactive Activation (IA) model of word production (Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997) is utilized to make predictions about the anticipated changes on a picture naming task and to explain emerging patterns.…

In this longitudinal study, quantitative and qualitative changes in responses of people with aphasia were examined on a phonemic fluency task. Eighteen patients were tested at 3-month intervals on the letters F-A-S while they received comprehensive, intensive treatment from 3 to 12 months post-stroke. They returned for a follow-up evaluation at an…

Compared the effectiveness of two speech therapy programs for patients with stroke-induced aphasia. Neither a systematic therapy program for auditory communication disorders nor a conventional stimulation therapy program had any clear effect on the patients' language recovery, especially when contrasted against the progress of patients receiving…

Two consecutive treatments were conducted to investigate skill learning and generalization within and across cognitive-linguistic domains in a 62-year-old Spanish-English bilingual man with severe non-fluent aphasia. Treatment 1 was a cognitive-based treatment that emphasized non-linguistic skills, such as visual scanning, categorization, and…

A foundation principle of professionalism is listening carefully to clients' needs. This paper reviews current studies that have sought to listen to the needs of people with aphasia and their families. The preliminary evidence to date suggests that people with aphasia have goals that cover the bio-psycho-social spectrum but place a lot of…

The effects of a generalization training procedure on requesting by four adult subjects with Broca's aphasia were examined. Results revealed that generalization effects were greatest when trainers, as opposed to unfamiliar volunteers, served as conversational participants. Subjects' requests increased to a level comparable to a normal comparison…

This study, with five adults diagnosed with Broca's aphasia with agrammatism, evaluated the acquisition and generalization of complex-sentence production using Linguistic Specific Treatment (LST) and the utility of syntactic theory in evaluating treatment effects. The study's findings support the use of LST, which applies syntactic theory to…

The study compared PACE (Promoting Aphasics' Communicative Effectiveness) and traditional stimulation therapy in the remediation of naming deficits in a 66-year-old conduction aphasic. In PACE, client and clinician engage in natural interaction sequences using multiple channels, including gestures, to communicate. PACE resulted in greater gains in…

This study examined effects of group communication treatment on the linguistic and communicative performance of 24 adults with chronic aphasia. Participants received five hours of group communication treatment weekly provided by a speech-language pathologist. Participants had significantly higher scores on communicative and linguistic measures…

A semantic-based treatment was used initially to train naming of nouns in four adults with aphasia. Treatment responses and error patterns indicated treatment resulted in improved naming of both trained and untrained items for two participants. Two other participants showed improved naming only after phonological information was added. Results…

This article provides information on aphasia, including the incidence of aphasia; the effects of the disorder; the role of the speech-language pathologist; and the different types of treatment of aphasia. General studies of the efficacy of aphasia treatment are reviewed and a case study is included. (CR)

Four patients with fluent aphasia received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories. Patients trained on naming of atypical exemplars demonstrated generalization to naming of intermediate and typical items. Patients trained on typical items demonstrated no generalized naming…

Four individuals with agrammatic aphasia were trained to comprehend and produce filler-gap sentences with wh-movement. Two participants received treatment first on the least complex structure (who-questions), and 2 received treatment on the most complex form (object-relative constructions). Object-relative training resulted in robust…