Article

Improving writing in people with aphasia could improve ability to
communicate, reduce isolation and increase access to information. One area that
has not been sufficiently explored is the effect of impairment based spelling
therapies on functional writing.
A multiple case study was conducted with eight
participants with aphasia subsequent to stroke.
This aimed to measure the effects
of spelling therapy on functional writing and perception of disability. METHOD:
Participants engaged in 10 sessions of copy and recall spelling therapy. Outcome
measures included spelling to dictation of trained and untrained words, written
picture description, spelling accuracy within emails, a disability questionnaire
and a writing frequency diary. RESULTS: All participants made significant gains
on treated words and six demonstrated improvements to untreated words. Group
analyses showed significant improvements to written picture description, but not
email writing, writing frequency or perceptions of disability. CONCLUSIONS: These
results show that small doses of writing therapy can lead to large gains in
specific types of writing.
These gains did not extend to improvements in
frequency of writing in daily living, nor ecological measures of email writing.
There is a need to develop bridging interventions between experimental tasks
towards more multi-faceted and ecological everyday writing tasks. Implications
for Rehabilitation Acquired dysgraphia can restrict people from participating in
social, educational and professional life. This study has shown that copy and
recall spelling therapies can improve the spelling of treated words, untreated
words and written picture description in people with a range of types and
severities of dysgraphia following stroke. The results of this study suggest that
more specific additional training is required for other writing activities such as email writing.

Langue : ANGLAIS