The case for single-case studies in treatment research—comments on Howard, Best and Nickels “Optimising the design of intervention studies: critiques and ways forward”

Martin, Nadine; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene

doi:10.1080/02687038.2014.987049

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Many of the other commentators also acknowledge that visual analysis has shortcomings and/or they are generally supportive of the need for statistical analysis or the use of statistical analysis to supplement visual analysis (e.g., Hillis, 2015;Kearns, 2015;Martin & Kalinyak-Fliszar, 2015;McDonald, 2015;Thompson, 2015).…”

Section: Visual Analysismentioning

confidence: 94%

Optimising the ingredients for evaluation of the effects of intervention

Nickels

Best²,

Howard

2015

Aphasiology

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Background: In Howard, Best, and Nickels (2015, Optimising the design of intervention studies: Critiques and ways forward. Aphasiology, 2015.), we presented a set of ideas relevant to the design of single-case studies for evaluation of the effects of intervention. These were based on our experience with intervention research and methodology, and a set of simulations. Our discussion and conclusions were not intended as guidelines (of which there are several in the field) but rather had the aim of stimulating debate and optimising designs in the future. Our paper achieved the first aim-it received a set of varied commentaries, not all of which felt we were optimising designs, and which raised further points for debate. Aims: This paper responds to the commentaries and in the context of recent guidelines for evaluation of the design of single-case studies. We aim to further the discussion our target article has started and extend the scope of the discussion more broadly to issues that were not raised in our target article (e.g., replication). Main Contributions and Conclusions: It is clear that there is a strong consensus that adequately designed single-case studies of intervention are an appropriate and important tool in our quest for effective interventions with people with cognitive disorders. It is also the case that many agree that there is no single design that is appropriate for every intervention, every participant or every question. However, whichever design is used it must be able to discriminate between the true effect of an intervention on behaviour, and other potential reasons for change (e.g., practice effects, spontaneous recovery, Hawthorne effects, and placebo effects). We have suggested that, depending on the conditions and question to be addressed, this can be achieved using a combination of design features. These may include: multiple pre-treatment baselines, treated and untreated (or subsequently treated) items/processes/tasks, control tasks (not predicted to be affected by treatment even when generalisation is expected), and a cross-over phase (replication across items/tasks). In addition, the outcome of treatment should be evaluated statistically. We note that generalisation, which is clinically desirable, can lead to particular difficulties in attributing change to intervention unless appropriate controls have been included, and that when items are selected on the basis of poor pre-treatment performance, apparent treatment-related gains may in fact be due to regression to the mean and discuss the implications of this for future research.

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Section: Visual Analysismentioning

confidence: 94%

Optimising the ingredients for evaluation of the effects of intervention

Nickels

Best²,

Howard

2015

Aphasiology

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“…The current study aimed to eliminate the restrictions caused by the application of structured frameworks to maximize the generalization of treatment effects by adopting modifications in the SFA training. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this modified SFA training, a single case intervention study was conducted following the suggestions of Howard, Best, & Nickels (2015) and Martin & Kalinyak-Fliszar (2015) on a neurogenic patient with naming problems characterized with access problems to the phonological output lexicon. In this modified SFA training, an odd man out task was designed to encourage the patient to generate as many distinctive semantic features of the target items as possible in response to the requirements of comparing and contrasting features of object names belonging to the same categories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modified semantic feature analysis for anomia: a single case study

Tam¹,

Lau

2019

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

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Semantic feature analysis (SFA) is a treatment approach designed for patients with lexical retrieval difficulty caused by semantic deficits. During training, a structured framework (e.g. requiring the patient to name the category, function, and colour of the target items) is usually provided to facilitate the patient in thinking of the semantic features of the target items.Nevertheless, the use of a structured framework potentially limits the variety of semantic features activated for lexical retrieval. This study investigated the effectiveness of modifiedSFA training to address this potential limitation. An odd-man-out task was carried out in the modified SFA training with an anomic patient with impaired access to the phonological output lexicon. The task aimed to encourage a detailed comparison of semantic features among items in the same category. It is hypothesized that activations of more distinctive semantic features belonging to the target items will result in greater extent of generalizations in the lexical processing. The patient's abilities in naming semantic features at the beginning and at the end of each treatment session were compared. Besides, accuracy and error patterns in oral and written naming in the initial and post-treatment assessment were also compared.The results showed a significant increase in the number of semantic features retrieved within treatment sessions. Moreover, a significant improvement in oral picture naming was also observed subsequent to the modified SFA training. Finally, the results of the error analyses further supported that the modified SFA was effective in promoting overall lexical processing. The findings indicated that both quantity and distinctiveness of concepts activated in the semantic system are essential to effective lexical retrieval. Theoretical and clinical implications were also discussed.

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“…Chinese PWA are one of the underrepresented minority groups listed by the National Institutes of Health. Traditionally, aphasiology research has employed methods of single-case studies, case series, or participants in groups of small sizes (Martin & Kalinyak-Fliszar, 2014;Willmes, 2007). Using big data to predict epidemics, address pathological deficits, and improve quality of life has become a growing trend in the healthcare industry, including the field of speech therapy or communication sciences and disorders (Faroqi-Shah, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cantonese AphasiaBank: An annotated database of spoken discourse and co-verbal gestures by healthy and language-impaired native Cantonese speakers

Kong

Law

2018

Behav Res

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This article reports the construction of a multimodal annotated database of spoken discourse and co-verbal gestures by native healthy speakers of Cantonese and individuals with language impairment: the Cantonese AphasiaBank. This corpus was established as a foundation for aphasiologists and clinicians to use in designing and conducting research investigations into theoretical and clinical issues related to acquired language disorders in Chinese. Details in terms of the purpose, structure, and levels of annotation of the database (containing part-of-speech-annotated orthographic transcripts with Romanization and the corresponding videos) are described. The discussion presents the challenges of building a spoken database of a language that is not linguistically well-researched and that does not have a standardized written form for many of its lexical items, as well as presenting how these issues were addressed. Most importantly, the article highlights the potential of Cantonese AphasiaBank as a powerful research tool for linguists and psycholinguists.

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The case for single-case studies in treatment research—comments on Howard, Best and Nickels “Optimising the design of intervention studies: critiques and ways forward”

Cited by 18 publications

References 13 publications

Optimising the ingredients for evaluation of the effects of intervention

Optimising the ingredients for evaluation of the effects of intervention

Modified semantic feature analysis for anomia: a single case study

Cantonese AphasiaBank: An annotated database of spoken discourse and co-verbal gestures by healthy and language-impaired native Cantonese speakers

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