Background: Many speakers with non-fluent aphasia (NFA) are able to produce some well-formed word combinations such as 'I like it' or 'I don't know', although they may not use variations such as 'He likes it' or 'I don't know that person'. This suggests that these utterances represent fixed forms. Aims: This case series investigation explored the…

Background: Narrative discourse is central to effective participation in conversations. When discourse is assessed in people with communication disability, structured tasks (e.g., picture descriptions) provide experimental control, while unstructured tasks (e.g., personal narratives) represent more natural communication. Immersive virtual reality…

Background: Research evidence suggests aphasia therapy must be delivered at high intensity to effect change. Comprehensive therapy, addressing all domains of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, is also called for by people with aphasia and their families. However, aphasia therapy is rarely intense or…

Purpose: The dual-task paradigm has been frequently used to examine stroke-related deficits because it samples behavioral performance under conditions of distraction similar to functioning in real-life environments. This original systematic review synthesizes studies that examined dual-task effects involving spoken language production in adults…

Introduction: Dysphagia affects up to 70% of care home residents, increasing morbidity and hospital admissions. Speech and language therapists make recommendations to support safe nutrition but have limited capacity to offer ongoing guidance. This study aimed to understand if recommendations made to support safe and effective care are implemented…

Purpose: This meta-analysis synthesizes published studies using "treatment of underlying forms" (TUF) for sentence-level deficits in people with aphasia (PWA). The study aims were to examine group-level evidence for TUF efficacy, to characterize the effects of treatment-related variables (sentence structural family and complexity;…

Background: Evidence should guide decisions in aphasia practice across the continuum of stroke care; however, evidence-practice gaps persist. This is particularly pertinent in the acute setting where 30% of people with stroke will have aphasia, and speech pathologists experience many challenges implementing evidence-based practice. This has…

To support improved understanding of interaction among the heterogeneous people with aphasia who attend facilitated conversation groups we applied discourse structure analysis (DSA). We focused on group members with mild and severe aphasia. We identified the function of each communicative move, an utterance unit core to DSA, individuals made in…

Background: Dysphagia affects over half of adults after stroke. Dysphagia rehabilitation aims to improve swallowing and reduce negative outcomes for these adults. However, significant variability exists in dysphagia rehabilitation. Research is needed to explore the underlying clinician-specific and workplace factors that contribute to variability…

Background: Verbal fluency tasks are routinely used in clinical assessment and research studies of aphasia. People with aphasia produce fewer items in verbal fluency tasks. It remains unclear if their output is limited solely by their lexical difficulties and/or has a basis in their executive control abilities. Recent research has illustrated that…

Background: People with post-stroke aphasia (PWA) are more likely to experience serious mood disorders compared with those without. Emotional regulation may be important for influencing life participation after stroke. Understanding emotional regulation in the context of aphasia is important for promoting personally defined recovery, psychological…

Purpose: Core lexicon measures have received growing attention in research. They are intended to provide clinicians with a clinician-friendly means to quantify word retrieval ability in discourse based on normal expectations of discourse production for specific discourse elicitation tasks. To date, different criteria have been used to develop core…

Background: Although discourse-level assessments contribute to predicting real-world performance in persons with aphasia (PWA), the use of discourse measures is uncommon in clinical settings due to resource-heavy procedures. Moreover, assessing function word use in discourse requires the arduous procedure of defining grammatical categories for…

Background: Despite evidence that Communication Partner Training (CPT) can enable health professionals to communicate more effectively with people with aphasia (PWA), an evidence-practice gap exists. To address this, a tailored implementation intervention was developed and trialled to improve health professionals' implementation of communication…

Background: To date, studies have not explored whether a dual diagnosis of aphasia plus apraxia of speech (AOS) versus aphasia alone (APH) affects the response to language-based naming treatments. Aims: To compare the effects of semantic feature analysis (SFA) treatment for individuals with APH versus aphasia plus AOS, and to test if the presence…