An analysis of the word-finding difficulties and of the content of the content of the discourse of recent and chronic aphasic speakers

Abstract

An analysis of the word-finding difficulties and of the content of the content of the discourse of recent and chronic aphasic speakers, Aphasiology, 11:8, 783-811, AbstractThis study examined the changes in the discourse produced by recent and chronic aphasic speakers while describing the bank robbery picture from the Montrtal-Toulouse protocol (Nespoulous e t al. 1986) at two different assessments, on average 6 weeks apart. The manifestations of word-finding difficulties, content unit production and several efficacy of communication indices were analysed. No statistical improvement of word-finding difficulties or of content unit production was found in the discourse in the recent aphasic group. Overall, both groups were more efficient on the second assessment on the index of number of open-class words per unit of time. Significant correlations were observed between aphasia severity and content unit production, as well as with the efficacy of communication indices.

How Conversational Therapy influences language recovery in chronic non-fluent aphasia

“…On the other hand, none of the patients showed significant changes on the picture description task or on the noun naming tasks. Overall, these considerations are in line with the hypothesis that a multi-level approach to language analysis is adequate to quantify communicative improvement in persons with aphasia (Andreetta, Cantagallo, & Marini, 2012;Larfeuil & Le Dorze, 1997;Marini et al, 2007;.…”

“…As aphasic individuals can usually communicate more than they can speak, traditional standardised aphasia tests may not be sensitive enough to adequately assess linguistic deficits and recovery patterns in persons with aphasia (Larfeuil & Le Dorze, 1997). As a result, both functional and structural methods for the analysis of connected language samples from people with aphasia have been devised (Armstrong, 2000;Marini, Andreetta, Del Tin, & Carlomagno, 2011;Prins & Bastiaanse, 2004).…”

“…In accordance with these premises, the present study has two main goals: (1) to evaluate the usefulness of a rehabilitation protocol designed to elicit verbal communication in patients with non-fluent speech whose linguistic production is characterised by reduced information content and poor syntactic organisation, and (2) to evaluate the clinical relevance of a multi-level approach to the analysis of the patient's speech production in capturing the essential features of language improvements after pragmatically oriented therapy, considering that standard aphasia tests might not always be able to identify specific patterns of functional recovery (Larfeuil & Le Dorze, 1997;Marini, Caltagirone, Pasqualetti, & Carlomagno, 2007;Marini et al, 2011).…”

Aphasic discourse analysis: The story so far

“…incidence of paraphasias, non-specific lexical items) (Wagenaar et al 1975, Nicholas et al 1985, Dressler and Pleh 1988, Glosser et al 1988, Vermeulen et al 1989) and a grammatical one (varieties of word classes used) (Berko-Gleason et al 1980, Saffran et al 1989. Studies have documented the word-finding difficulties also evidenced and welldocumented on naming tasks (Dressler andPleh 1988, Larfeuil andLe Dorze 1997) although discrepancies between findings on single word-retrieval tasks and lexical performance during spontaneous discourse have been reported (Williams and Canter, 1981, Nicholas et al 1985, Vermeulen et al 1989, Armstrong 1997.…”

Social Validity of Changes in Informativeness and Efficiency of Aphasic Discourse Following Linguistic Specific Treatment (LST)

“…Traditional assessment of aphasia (i.e., standardized aphasia tests) involves identifying impaired components of the language system, whereas discourse analysis assesses the actual language performance in relation to the speaker and the communication context. Analyzing the connected speech of individuals with aphasia offers greater potential for determining communication abilities and deficits in more natural conditions than standardized aphasia tests (Larfeuil & Le Dorze, 1997;Ross & Wertz, 1999). Larfeuil and Le Dorze, for example, found differences between discourse measures, which reflected no change over time, and standardized tests, which reflected improved performance.…”