Article

Anomia refers to difficulties retrieving words and is 1 of the most
common symptoms of aphasia and hence often the target of therapy. The principal
aim of the present study was to explore, for the first time, whether it is
possible to predict the responsiveness of individual words to naming therapy from
the psycholinguistic properties
of those words and from the length of the
phonemic cue required to name them. The relationship between this form of cueing
and the outcome of naming therapy is of particular interest given that cueing is
an established research and clinical tool within aphasiology, and is commonly
used to probe naming performance. METHOD: By amalgamating data from 3 previous
studies, we were able to analyze data from 22 participants with chronic aphasia,
yielding cueing and therapy data for 1080 target words. Cross-session changes in
cueing and naming accuracy were collated for 298 target words. RESULTS: The
results demonstrated that items which were accurately named after therapy (both
at 1 wk and 5 wk later) required a significantly shorter phonemic cue to prompt
correct naming in assessments prior to therapy. Imageability was a significant
predictor of the required cue level, whereas word age of acquisition and word
frequency were not. Highly imageable words required less cueing and were more
likely to be accurately named posttherapy. A novel analysis of cross-session
accuracy revealed that, even though the required cue length reduced across the
first 6 of 10 therapy sessions, the relationship between the required cue length
and final posttherapy accuracy was present throughout therapy. DISCUSSION: The
findings are discussed in the context of their clinical implications for
intervention, specifically for therapies that focus on accurate production of
specific word targets. Themes for future related research are also considered.
CI - Copyright (c) 2012 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS