Abstract
Spelling–a core language skill–is commonly affected in neurological diseases such as stroke and Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). We present two case studies of the same spelling therapy (learning of phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences with help from key words) in two participants: one who had a stroke and one with PPA (logopenic variant). Our study highlights similarities and differences in the time course of each indivdual's therapy. The study evaluates the effectiveness and generalization of treatment in each case, i.e. whether the treatment affected the trained items and/or untrained items, and whether or not the treatment gains were maintained after the end of therapy. Both participants were able to learn associations between phonemes and graphemes as well as between phonemes and words. Reliable generalization to untrained words was shown only for the participant with post-stroke aphasia, but we were not able to test generalization to untrained words in the individual with PPA. The same spelling therapy followed a different time course in each case. The participant with post-stroke aphasia showed a lasting effect of improved spelling, but we were unable to assess maintenance of improvement in the participant with PPA. We discuss these differences in light of the underlying nature of each disease.
Highlights
Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by language impairment at its onset
In our study we provided spelling therapy to an individual with logopenic variant PPA and compared results to results of the same therapy provided to an individual with post-stroke aphasia
WCR, the one with post-stroke aphasia, completed the training in 25 sessions; FSE, the one with PPA completed the training in 11 sessions
Summary
Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by language impairment at its onset. Other cognitive functions are affected in the course of PPA, language deficits remain the most characteristic and frequent symptom. It has been shown that spelling is one of the earliest affected language skills [1]. There is currently no available pharmacological treatment for these patients; a few studies document behavioral interventions, mostly of naming [2-5,5-12) and only one of spelling [13]. Several variants of PPA have recently been identified: logopenic, semantic, and nonfluent/agrammatic [14].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
