The training of verb production in Broca's aphasia: A multiple‐baseline across‐behaviours study

Abstract

Background: Verb production is often impaired in Broca's aphasia: Action naming is more affected than object naming and in spontaneous speech the number and/or diversity of lexical verbs is low. Because verbs play a pivotal role in the sentence, these verb problems have a serious impact on the communicative contents of speech in daily life. Aims: The purpose of this study was to increase the informational content of spontaneous speech in two individuals with Broca's aphasia by training them in verb production. Methods & Procedures: Verb production was trained at the sentence level, using the treatment programme Verb Production at the Word and Sentence Level (Bastiaanse, Jonkers, Quak, & Varela, 1997). Six baseline sessions were planned, followed by a training programme to learn infinitives, finite verbs, and sentence construction in one participant and finite verbs, infinitives, and sentences in the other. The participants were tested each week for progress on infinitives and finite verbs not in the programme and an unrelated test. Pre-treatment and post-treatment (directly after and 3 months after treatment stopped) the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) and the Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT) were administered and spontaneous speech was elicited and analysed with respect to verbs, nouns, and utterance length. Outcomes & Results: Both participants improved significantly on the production of untrained finite verbs. No improvement was made on the untrained infinitives. There was also significant improvement on related subtests of the AAT, but no improvement on unrelated subtests. Both also showed a significant improvement on verb production in spontaneous speech and in verbal communication, as measured on the ANELT. Conclusions. The treatment programme has been shown to be an effective tool for training participants in verb production. The most important criteria for relevant treatment were met: generalisation to spontaneous speech and improvement in verbal communication.

Aphasia rehabilitation and the role of computer technology: Can we keep up with modern times?

“…Although it has been shown that language training may generalize to linguistically related, but untrained items (Thompson, 2008), and according to some studies even to communicative settings (Bastiaanse, Hurkmans, & Links, 2006), treatment effects are usually larger for trained than for untrained items. In a meta-analysis of word finding therapy studies, Wisenburn and Mahoney (2009) calculated large effect sizes for trained words, but only minor gains for untrained, unexposed words.…”

Effect of Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST) in Persons With Aphasia: Extension and Replication of Previous Findings

“…Overall, improvements were observed for trained verbs, but there was limited improvement to single-word retrieval of untrained verbs (Links et al, 2010;Raymer & Kohen, 2006). Some improvements to sentence production were reported (Bastiaanse et al, 2006;Edwards & Tucker, 2006;Links et al, 2010;McCann & Doleman, 2011), with improvement to connected speech in a few participants (Bastiaanse et al, 2006;Edwards & Tucker, 2006;Links et al, 2010). Although the improvements to sentence production and connected speech are encouraging, the gains observed in these studies were primarily structural and/or grammatical (Webster & Whitworth, 2012), not lexical.…”

“…A subset of these studies (as described by Webster & Whitworth, 2012) focused primarily on sentence structure, syntax, and/or morphosyntax (e.g., Bastiaanse, Hurkmans, & Links, 2006;Conroy, Sage, & Lambon Ralph, 2009;Edwards & Tucker, 2006;Links, Hurkmans, & Bastiaanse, 2010;McCann & Doleman, 2011;Raymer & Kohen, 2006). Trained tasks included sentence completion and production and sentence production cuing hierarchies.…”

Integrated narrative analysis in multilingual aphasia: The relationship among narrative structure, grammaticality, and fluency

“…Units such as Mean Length of Utterance (MLU; Brown, 1973) have been used in examining children (Berman 1985(Berman , 1997Bishop & Adams, 1990) and individuals with aphasia (Baltaxe & Guthrie, 1987;Bastiaanse, Hurkmans & Links, 2006). However, different MLUs may be associated with different languages, depending on their morphological systems.…”