At a glance
ClinicalIndex Comparison Record- ✓Diagnosis of Wernicke's, Broca's, or Conduction aphasia with significant word-retrieval deficits
- ✓At least 6 months post-onset of single, left-hemisphere stroke
- ✓Minimum of high-school education
- ✓Visual and auditory acuity sufficient for experimental tasks
- ✕Diagnosed mental illness other than depression
- ✕Neurological condition other than that which resulted in aphasia
- ✕History of alcohol or substance abuse
- ✕Non-native English speaker
Standardized by ClinicalIndex from the ClinicalTrials.gov record · verify against the source.
Word-Retrieval for Aphasia: Facilitation of Generalization
In Brief
A clinical study evaluating Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA)Training for Aphasia and 2 related conditions. Completed, enrolled 110 participants across 1 site.
Detailed Summary
The purpose of this investigation is to further develop and test a treatment for word-finding problems in aphasia. The treatment is designed to strengthen meaning associations within categories of words (e.g., animals, tools, fruits). The treatment is also designed to be used as a search strategy in instances of word-finding difficulty. The study was devised to evaluate the extent to which treatment increases the ability to recall trained, as well as untrained, words.
Study Details
Timeline
Interventions
SFA entails having the speech-language pathologist (SLP) guide the participant through generation of pertinent semantic features for pictured treatment items (e.g., category membership, physical description, location of item in context, personal associations, action associated with item). For some participants, treatment items were grouped according to typicality of category membership (e.g,, a robin-typical bird and penguin-atypical bird). Training of atypical items may stimulate a broader semantic activation of the category and thus, may promote greater generalization. Treatment was applied sequentially to sets of items in the context of single-subject, multiple baseline designs. In this way, replication of treatment effects could be evaluated within and across participants. Treatment was administered by certified SLPs three times per week until prescribed accuracy levels were met during nontreatment probes or a maximum number of treatment sessions was completed.