Word Finding Deficits in Adults with Aphasia
I. Introduction on Adults with Aphasia Aphasia is communication disorder that impairs a person language as a result of brain damage (WebMD Medical, 2014). The disorder impacts a person receptive and expressive communication abilities as well as reading and written language. Aphasia makes it difficult for people to communicate effectively with others that can lead to misunderstanding their needs or wants. Brain damage can result from a stroke, head injury, brain tumor, an infection or dementia. There are several types of aphasia in which each type of impairment are classified into two general categories of fluent aphasia and non-fluent aphasia. Fluent aphasia demonstrates a person's ability
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A new technique of word discrimination therapy has been used for the treatment of phonological word-finding impairment (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). In aphasia, word finding impairments are based on the two-stage model of word production. The first stage is the lexical selection. Lexical selection is the ability to select the most appropriate word when given the available conceptual/semantic information (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). The second stage is the phonological encoding. Phonological encoding is the ability to retrieve information from a network that contains nodes representing the different types of linguistic units (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). If the lexical selection stage is damaged, then the patient may select a semantically related word rather than the appropriate word to match the concept (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). Then, if the phonological encoding stage is damaged, the patient will produce phonological errors that may consist of partial phonological and/or substitutions of incorrect phonemes in words (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). The patient may also have difficulties with oral reading and word repetition tasks. In word discrimination therapy, the aphasic patient is trained on their production of words in different context. The patient is trained on a set of phonologically …show more content…
The results show that there were little phonemic paraphasias in the therapy treatment compared to the baseline phase. A similar decrease was evident in the client’s dysfluent hesitations, and rates of all other errors such as formal paraphasias and semantic paraphasias were lower during the therapy session (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford, 2009). Word discrimination therapy demonstrated that gains were significantly faster for the words that were trained within phonologically related triplets compared to those trained in unrelated triplet sets. Following the therapy session, the client was reassessed during the maintenance testing after three months of post-therapy. The outcome indicated that the therapy gains were well maintained over time for both related and unrelated sets. The examination of error types showed that phonemic paraphasias, dysfluent hesitations, formal paraphasias, and semantic paraphasias remained well below when observed during baseline testing in both related and unrelated items during the treatment phases (Fisher, Wilshire, & Ponsford,
Standardized and nonstandardized methods are used to screen oral motor functions, speech production skills, comprehension, written language, and cognitive aspects of communication. Screenings typically focus on body structures and functions, (ASHA, 2016). Strengths and weaknesses related to spoken and written language are determined along with noticing how the effects of the language disorder impact the individual’s activities and participation in everyday context (e.g., social interactions, work activities). This is important for the person with aphasia’s quality of life which is targeted in the treatment. The individual’s areas
Alice was given the Initial Sound Fluency and Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, which are designed to assess her phonological awareness. She was required to produce and identify the first sounds/phoneme in a word within the Initial Sound Fluency. On the benchmarks of this assessment, which occurred in September and January, her performance was below the
Language is an ability that many of us take for granted in everyday life. For those with aphasia, it is a daily struggle to overcome and effective communication is a goal to strive for. Aphasia patients are able to think, perhaps as well as the average person, but they simply cannot convey their ideas or thoughts easily. The Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination is an excellent examination for the diagnosis of the presence and type of aphasia, and for the location of brain damage. The Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia has been shown to be the most comprehensive assessment of the overall patient’s strengths and weaknesses in regard to language; it also allows for physicians to predict recovery accurately. Though it is no longer as popular or applicable as newer diagnostic tests, such as the BDAE, it is still an accurate assessment for aphasia. I think this is the paradox in neurological assessment: as technological advances improve, older assessments are becoming invalidated- though they are not inaccurate assessments. New advances and knowledge are being acquired in medicine every day, therefore there is always room for improvement (Holland, 2008). One of the biggest cons to the two batteries I mentioned in this paper is the fact that they are both time consuming- for both the patient and the
Jane’s raw score (number right) of 48 words on the pretest for the Slosson Oral Reading Test (SORT), placed her at the 41st percentile. Her score at the 41st percentile is considered to be in the middle part of the average range. Jane’s miscues were visually similar to the printed words up to List 2. For example, she confused “there” for “three,” and “wat” for “what,” suggesting the need for reinforcement of irregular high frequency words. She also substituted “brother” for “better,” and “drink” for “dark,” suggesting Jane attended to the beginning and ending sounds, but had difficulty with medial sounds and short vowels. Jane also substituted “log” for “large,” and “hop” for “hope,” further demonstrating a need for instruction on medial
Ashlyn’s raw score (number right) of 91 words on the pretest for the Slosson Oral Reading Test (SORT) placed her at the 48 percentile. She placed slightly below average. Ashlyn’s miscues were visually similar to the target words. For example, she substituted “him” for “hill,” “timud” for “timid,” and “disire” for “desire” suggesting that Ashlyn was able to produce the beginning and ending sounds however she had a difficult time with medial vowel sounds. Intervention will focus on vowel sounds and vowel teams.
would help to facilitate word recognition. The evidence also suggests that in most cases deficits in phonological skills associated with the ability to use speech codes are likely causes of dyslexia. Definitions of phonological processing are complex, Arrow (2016) defines
Does a 65 year adult with aphasia after a CVA and who receives therapy involving gesture, drawing or writing of the first letter, have less word finding difficulties and reduced time it takes to find the words, compared to therapy involving a combination of all three?
This article is about the development of phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is one of the three phonological processing abilities; the other two are phonological memory and phonological access to lexical storage. Phonological processing is the processing of the sounds of one’s native language. Phonological awareness is the degree of sensitivity to the sound structure of oral language; it is a critical component for learning to read alphabetic languages such as French. Phonological memory is when you code information in a sound based representational system for temporary storage; phonological access to lexical storage is the efficiency of retrieving phonological codes from memory. One of the causes of dyslexia is difficulty with
Intervention will focus on explicit instruction of sight words taught phonologically through common syllable types and word building activities focusing on common phonograms (-an, -on, -et). Additionally, test administration of the El Paso phonics test will indicate specific
The article “A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading” Van Orden researches the effects of stimulus word phonology. This study was design to find out whether when a homophonic word was placed in a category whether the participant could identify the “homophone foils.” The procedure was as follows: participants were seated in front of a Gerbrands B1128 Harvard Model T-3A tachistoscope
Anomia emerges in the early stages of PPA, most patients remain in the anomic phase through most of the disease and experience a gradual worsening of these deficits over time. During the anomic stage, the naming of objects may become impaired and speech may display a choppy quality because of frequent pauses for word-finding. The word-finding and object naming aspects of anomia may present separate from each other. Word-finding deficits lead to simplification, circumlocution, substitution by fillers, and paraphasias. Simplification occurs when a patient uses a general word instead of an infrequent but more appropriate word. Circumlocution occurs when a patient appears to be “talking in circles” by circuitously articulating a thought when the concise word cannot be retrieved. Substitution by fillers occur when an individual says “the thing” or “the place” as an alternative to the missing word. Paraphasias occur when an individual substitutes incorrect words. Paraphasias can be phonemic (replacement of an incorrectly sounding word) or semantic (replacement of sounds within a word). Phonemic paraphasias are common in PPA but rare in AD. Word finding deficits may lead to “empty” speech which presents with typical intonation and fluency but expresses little information. Over the course of progression of PPA, the anomic stage may develop into one of the distinct four categories of PPA
There is a widespread consensus that the developmental deficits in phonological skills characterize dyslexia. Phonological skills as the broad umbrella term include phonological awareness (PA), which refers to the ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sound structure of spoken words (Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Mattingly, 1972); and phonological processing, which involves access to phonological codes without necessarily explicit awareness of the sound structure of spoken words (Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, Hulme, 2012). A large body of evidence found that dyslexic children are worse than both chronological age-matched children and younger reading-age-matched children in PA tasks, such as phoneme deletion and rhyme identification (Swan and Goswami,
Aphasia is a language disorder that can be the result of a brain injury. An individual that is suffering from aphasia may experience difficulty speaking, writing, reading, or comprehending. There are three different types of Aphasia that differ in various ways. First, Wernicke’s Aphasia is the inability to grasp the meaning of words and sentences that have been produced by another individual. This type of aphasia is also known as “fluent aphasia” or “receptive aphasia”. Wernicke patients’ speech may come across like a jumble of words or jargon, but it is very well articulated and they have no issue producing their own connected speech. If the patient is consecutively making errors, it is common for them to be unaware of their difficulties, and not realize that their sentences don’t make sense. The severity of the disorder varies depending on the patient, and the disorder results form damage in the left posterior temporal region of the brain, which is also known as Wernicke’s area.
The purpose of this paper is to pursue one important and fundamental aim: language and the brain are purely inseparable since it allows us to perform essential tasks such as generating, comprehending and expressing speech. With damage to the brain, individuals can no longer perform such tasks which can ultimately lead to many types of language disorders. The focus of this paper is Broca’s aphasia, a language disorder characterized by the inability to produce written and spoken speech. Damage to the brain can cause many types of speech impairments as well as comprehension deficits.
The body function domain refers to the behavior that is affected by the individual’s communication impairment. In the case of an individual with Anomia who has word retrieval deficits, the deficit is what affects the body function domain. As a clinician, we can improve the body function domain by working on word finding tasks through treatment. For word finding deficits, treatments such as semantic feature analysis (SFA) have evidence to support the efficacy of the treatment (Boyle, 2004). Through direct treatment targeting the patient’s word finding deficits, the clinician can improve the patient’s quality of life.