Background: Human communication occurs through both verbal and visual/motoric modalities. Simultaneous conversational speech and gesture occurs across all cultures and age groups. When verbal communication is compromised, more of the communicative load can be transferred to the gesture modality. Although people with aphasia produce meaning-laden…

Background: Acquired writing impairment, or dysgraphia, is common in aphasia. It affects both handwriting and typing, and may recover less well than other aphasic symptoms. Dysgraphia is an increasing priority for intervention, particularly for those wishing to participate in online written communication. Effective dysgraphia treatment studies…

Background: People with aphasia (PWA) use pantomime, gesture in absence of speech, differently from non-brain-damaged people (NBDP). Aims: To evaluate through an exploratory study the comprehensibility of PWA's pantomimes and to find out whether they can compensate for information PWA are unable to convey in speech. Methods & Procedures: A…

Background: Until today, there is no satisfying explanation for why one language may recover worse than another in differential bilingual aphasia. One potential explanation that has been largely unexplored is that differential aphasia is the consequence of a loss of language control rather than a loss of linguistic representations. Language…

Background: Constraint-induced (language) aphasia therapy (CIAT), based on constraint usage of the language channel only, massed practice and shaping through therapeutic language games, has been suggested as a more efficient therapy approach than traditional aphasia therapies. Aims: To examine the comparative efficacy of CIAT and a traditional…

Purpose: This study evaluated interrater reliability (IRR) and test-retest stability (TRTS) of seven linguistic measures (percent correct information units, relevance, subject-verb-[object], complete utterance, grammaticality, referential cohesion, global coherence), and communicative success in unstructured conversation and in a story narrative…

Lack of communicatively supportive opportunities for social participation is a critical barrier for many people with aphasia. Speech-language pathologists need to address this barrier by playing a key role in ensuring that adults with aphasia have appropriate social participation choices in their communities. Speech-language pathologists may…

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…

Background: Word-retrieval difficulties are commonly experienced by people with aphasia (PwA) and also by typically ageing persons. Differentiation between true naming impairments and naming difficulties found in healthy persons may, therefore, be challenging. Aims: To investigate the extent to which the Maltese adaptation of the Boston Naming…

The Aphasia Center is a service delivery model that provides an interactive community for persons with aphasia. This model has been increasing in popularity over the last 20 years. Aphasia Centers are consistent with a social model of health care and disability. They offer the potential for linguistic, communicative, and psychosocial benefits. The…

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…

Background: Patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures produce scores that do not always have obvious clinical meaning. The PRO-bookmarking procedure is a new and promising way to make PRO measures more meaningful and interpretable. However, the materials and procedures of the task may benefit from adaptations to be more accessible to individuals…

Background: This study explores the psychometric properties of The Scenario Test UK, a culturally adapted version of the Dutch original (The Scenario Test) developed by van der Meulen "et al." in 2010, which evaluates functional, daily-life communication in aphasia. The Scenario Test assesses communication in an interactive context with…

Purpose: The current study aimed to identify objective acoustic measures related to affective state change in the speech of adults with post-stroke aphasia. Method: The speech of 20 post-stroke adults with aphasia was recorded during picture description and administration of the Western Aphasia Battery--Revised (Kertesz, 2006). In addition,…

Purpose: Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a consequence of stroke that frequently co-occurs with aphasia. Its study is limited by difficulties with its perceptual evaluation and dissociation from co-occurring impairments. This study examined the classification accuracy of several acoustic measures for the differential diagnosis of AOS in a sample of…