Article

Developing language treatments that not only improve trained items but also
promote generalisation to untrained items is a major focus in aphasia research.
This study is a replication and extension of previous work which found that
training abstract words in a particular context-category promotes generalisation
to concrete words but not vice versa (Kiran, Sandberg, & Abbott, 2009 ). Twelve
persons with aphasia (five female) with varying types and degrees of severity
participated in a generative naming treatment based on the Complexity Account of
Treatment Efficacy (CATE; Thompson, Shapiro, Kiran, & Sobecks, 2003 ). All
participants were trained to generate abstract words in a particular
context-category by analysing the semantic features of the target words. Two
other context-categories were used as controls. Ten of the twelve participants
improved on the trained abstract words in the trained context-category. Eight of
the ten participants who responded to treatment also generalised to concrete
words in the same context-category. These results suggest that this treatment is
both efficacious and efficient. We discuss possible mechanisms of training and
generalisation effects.

Langue : ANGLAIS