It is important to consider usability and the clinician's perspective in developing telepractice applications in speech-language pathology. Future directions include assessing the efficacy of remote treatment and collecting a larger sample of clinician data.
Background: The literature on aphasia has been growing rapidly, with reports of different therapeutic approaches for a post-stroke anomia. While individuals with poststroke anomia frequently recover to some extent, the other end of the aphasia recovery continuum is occupied by those who experience relentless language dissolution as a result of progressive disorders such as primary progressive aphasia. One of the most recent additions to the field of aphasia rehabilitation is therapy whereby either part of or the entire therapy is administered via computer-based programmes. There have been few treatment studies investigating the rehabilitation of language abilities in people with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Aims: The objectives of this investigation were to examine the ability of PPA individuals to relearn lost words and to determine the extent of benefits derived from MossTalk WordsH, a computer-based treatment for anomia. Methods and Procedures: Using a multiple baseline across behaviours design, we explored treatment-specific effects, maintenance, and generalisation of improvements derived from this therapy programme. Two participants with nonfluent PPA were treated, each on three lists of words for which low and stable baselines were first established. Sessions occurred two to three times a week. Treatment involved the presentation of a picture on the computer screen, with the participants being required to name it. Success in treatment was measured by probing list naming every second session. Once a participant attained 80% accuracy over two consecutive probes, or participated in 12 sessions (whichever occurred first), treatment of a list was terminated and the next
Sentence comprehension abilities were investigated in a patient with semantic dementia who was administered tests of semantic knowledge and sentence comprehension over a 5-year period. Results showed that despite a severe and continual degradation in semantic knowledge, syntactic comprehension abilities remained largely intact. Evidence was also found for a codependency between semantics and syntax in a task in which knowledge about conceptual number influenced subject-verb agreement in the patient and in control participants. Results are discussed in relation to the nature of the sentence comprehension impairment in semantic dementia and with reference to the modularity of the components of the language processing system.
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