This article is a single-case investigation of
phonological naming therapy. The individual involved had
fluent jargon speech, with neologisms, verbal paraphasias,
and paragrammatisms. The jargon was underpinned by a severe
anomia. Content words were rarely accessed either in spontaneous
speech or naming. Single word investigations highlighted
some preserved skills. Auditory comprehension, at least
for concrete words, was relatively intact and although
nonwords could not be repeated, words could, and at a level
which was far superior to naming. The patient also had
some ability to respond to phonological cues. These results
suggested that phonological representations were preserved
and that there were some intact semantic abilities. It
seemed that the naming disorder was primarily due to an
inability to access phonology from semantics. Therapy took
a phonological approach. The patient was encouraged to
reflect upon the syllabic structure and first phoneme of
pictured targets. Subsequently, she was required to use
this partial phonological knowledge as a self-cue. It was
hypothesized that this therapy might equip the subject
with a self-cuing naming strategy. Posttherapy investigations
of naming demonstrated dramatic improvements, which generalized
to untreated items. However, there was little evidence
that these were due to a self cuing strategy. Performance
on phonological judgment and discrimination assessments,
which required conscious phonological reflection, was unchanged,
and there were no signs that the patient was self-cuing
during naming. Reasons for these paradoxical results are
discussed. (JINS, 1998, 4, 675–686.)
