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An Exploration of the Impact of Group Treatment for Aphasia on Connected Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2020

Catherine Mason Open the ORCID record for Catherine Mason [Opens in a new window] ,
Lyndsey Nickels  and
Belinda McDonald
Catherine Mason*
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney 2113, Australia
Lyndsey Nickels
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney 2113, Australia
Belinda McDonald
Affiliation:
St. Vincent’s Health, Sydney 2010, Australia
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Catherine Mason, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, 16 University Ave, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia. E-mail: catherine.mason@mq.edu.au
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Abstract

Objective:

Group treatment enables people with aphasia to practise communication skills outside the typical clinician–patient dyad. While there is evidence that this treatment format can improve participation in everyday communication, there is little evidence it impacts linguistic abilities. This project aimed to investigate the effects of ‘typical’ group treatment on the communication skills of people with aphasia with a focus on word retrieval in discourse.

Methods:

Three people with aphasia took part in a 6-week group therapy programme. Each week focused on a different topic, and three topics also received a home programme targeting word retrieval. The six treated topics were compared with two control topics, with regard to language production in connected speech. Semistructured interviews were collected twice prior to treatment and twice following the treatment and analysed using (a) word counts; (b) the profile of word errors and retrieval in speech; (c) a measure of propositional idea density, and (d) perceptual discourse ratings.

Results:

Two participants showed no significant improvements; one participant showed significant improvement on discourse ratings.

Conclusions:

This study provides limited support for group treatment, leading to improved communication as measured by semistructured interviews, even when supplemented with a home programme. We suggest that either group treatment, as implemented here, was not an effective approach for improving communication for our participants and/or that outcome measurement was limited by difficulty assessing changes in connected speech.

Keywords

AphasiaAcquired language disorderGroup treatmentGroup therapySpeech-language pathologySpeech pathologyAnomiaConnected speech
Type
Regular Research
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 26 , Special Issue 1: Rehabilitation , January 2020 , pp. 72 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2020. 

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