The impact of group therapy on word retrieval in people with chronic aphasia

Nickels, Lyndsey; McDonald, Belinda; Mason, Catherine

doi:10.3233/nre-161340

Cited by 7 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…This aimed to determine whether a treatment of proven efficacy for word retrieval at a single-word level (e.g., Mason et al, 2011) would increase the efficacy of the group treatment. As noted above, Nickels et al (2016) found that this was the case at the single-word level.…”

Section: Home Programmementioning

confidence: 57%

“…Participants were assessed prior to beginning the study using the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (Swinburn, Porter, & Howard, 2005) and, critically, all displayed impaired naming. See Table 1 for biographical details and summary of assessments (Nickels et al, 2016, provides further detail).…”

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(1) 30-min passive viewing of a topic-related video; (2) 30 min of facilitated group discussion about the video topic; and (3) 30 min of structured treatment tasks facilitated by the speech pathologist. These aimed to maximise opportunities for productions of a target word set, focused around a set of 30 core topic-related nouns, adjectives, and verbs (see Nickels et al 2016 for details regarding the word selection process). The tasks used techniques typical of word-retrieval treatment such as naming to a definition, with cueing and/or repetition as required (Nickels, 2002;Nickels & Best, 1996).…”

Section: Weekly Group Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the prevalence of discussion-focused treatment groups, in Nickels, McDonald and Mason (2016), we evaluated the effects of a typical discussion-focused group-treatment programme for three individuals with aphasia, when conducted once a week in an outpatient clinic. The group focused on the discussion of topics of general interest (e.g., health, education, pollution) aiming to facilitate the participants' ability to converse on these topics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Mason

Nickels

McDonald

2020

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

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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.

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Section: Home Programmementioning

confidence: 57%

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Weekly Group Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Mason

Nickels

McDonald

2020

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

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“…It also improved after group conversations, but with no difference between the words practiced in conversation and control words. Nickels, McDonald, and Mason (2016) also carried out a within-subject study with four PwA. Participants' lexical retrieval abilities were assessed with both picture naming and structured interviews designed to elicit the target words.…”

Section: Background and Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Playing a team game improves word production in poststroke aphasia

et al. 2018

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Background: High intensity, one-to-one rehabilitation therapy is effective in the treatment of poststroke aphasia, but it can put strain on public health providers, as well as lead to high attrition. Working within a group of peers may be efficient for professional speech and language therapists, as well as reduce feelings of isolation and lack of confidence in patients, which can negatively affect progress. Evidence-based, structured group-based approaches, however, are lacking. Aims: We wanted to assess the feasibility a new group-delivered game-based intervention, designed to provide efficacious wordretrieval rehabilitation, in a cost-effective and motivating environment. Method & Procedure: Two cohorts of six participants took part. Each was split into two teams to play language games where pictures were named with the help of team members and facilitation from a speech and language therapist. Facilitation was varied in three different cueing conditions: phonemic, gesture + phonemic, and semantic + phonemic. Overall, 180 words were practiced (90 nouns and 90 verbs). Therapy was delivered 3 days per week, for 6 weeks (for a total of 54 hr). Outcomes & Results: Our intervention was equally effective across the three cueing conditions and for nouns and verbs. Gains were demonstrated in naming the pictures used in training, but also in the description of pictured scenes designed to elicit the same words. With these tasks, there were improvements of 25% and 18% from base-line accuracy, which compares well with gains reported in the literature using individually delivered speech and language therapy based on picture naming. Improvements were mostly maintained at both 4-7 weeks and 6-months post-therapy and were significant in all but the two most severely affected participants. There was some generalization of gains to narrative production, but not to other language tasks, nor to untreated words in picture naming. These positive language outcomes were combined with a high level of engagement and satisfaction (with participants stating a preference for games over standard therapy). Conclusions: Our results support embedding theoretically and empirically based techniques for aphasia rehabilitation within games with a strong social aspect, which may promote linguistic ARTICLE HISTORY

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