Word Retrieval In Aphasia Research Articles

Word retrieval in aphasia: From naming tests to connected speech and the impact on well-being

ABSTRACT Background Language assessment includes mainly structured tasks; however, everyday communication requires additional abilities. An important clinical question is whether the performance of individuals on structured language tasks can predict their performance and participation in everyday communication, and how it affects their well-being. Aims We aimed to examine whether the performance on structured tests represents individuals’ participation in everyday communication, focusing on lexical retrieval and comparing structured tasks and less structured tasks. In addition, we examined whether the performance on these measures is compatible with individuals’ self-report on a questionnaire. Methods & Procedures Twenty people with aphasia (PWA. Mean age: 61 years; mean months post-onset: 42), with comprehension and cognition abilities that enabled understanding and performing the tasks participated in the study. They were administered tasks of single word retrieval (picture naming) and word retrieval in connected speech: story-telling and conversation on initiated topic. In addition, the Aphasia Impact Questionnaire-21 (AIQ-21. Swinburn et al., 2019) was administered, a pictorial self-report questionnaire adapted for PWA which evaluates communication, participation, and well-being. Connected speech was assessed using two measures: (a) the %WR (Percent Word Retrieval; Mayer & Murray, 2003), calculating the percent of correctly produced nouns and verbs and (b) the Measure of Participation in Conversation (MPC. Kagan et al., 2004). Outcomes & Results (a) Nouns were retrieved significantly better in conversation compared to picture naming and story-telling; (b) Moderate correlations were found between word retrieval in the picture naming task and the less structured tasks (story-telling and conversation); (c) Scores in the self-report questionnaire and specifically in the well-being section were correlated with success in word retrieval in connected speech as well as with the MPC measure. Conclusions The results indicate that performance in a picture naming task differs from retrieval in connected speech. Thus, it is important to include connected speech tasks in language assessment of PWA to better evaluate the ability to participate in everyday conversation. Furthermore, a self-report questionnaire adds information for assigning treatment goals.

Physiological Arousal, Attentiveness, Emotion, and Word Retrieval in Aphasia: Effects and Relationships.

This study aimed to (a) compare physiological arousal and attentiveness during a confrontational naming task between participants with aphasia and a control group across four conditions that varied according to emotionality of presented stimuli and (b) explore relationships among physiological arousal, attentiveness, perceived arousal, and naming performance. We hypothesized that participants with aphasia would show lower levels of arousal and attentiveness than control participants and that emotional conditions would lead to increased physiological arousal and attentiveness. Eight participants with aphasia and 15 control participants completed a confrontational naming task under positive, negative, and neutral conditions and rated their perceived arousal after each. Electrophysiological recordings were taken during the entire experiment to obtain measures of heart rate (HR), HR variability, and skin conductance (SC). Videos of confrontational naming trials were rated based on visual signs of participant attentiveness during each trial. Statistically significant group differences were found for HR, SC, and attentiveness ratings, but no differences were found in these measures among conditions. Correlational analyses revealed statistically significant relationships between attentiveness and response time, HR, and naming accuracy. Significant correlations were also found for HR and naming accuracy as well as perceived arousal and naming accuracy. Findings suggest that decreased physiological arousal or attentiveness may contribute to naming deficits for people with aphasia (PWA). Assisting PWA to fully attend to and engage in therapy tasks may be important for accurate assessment of language functions and for achieving optimal benefit in treatment.

Treatment of the Linguistic and Temporal Components of Lexical Activation to Improve Word Retrieval in Aphasia.

Current approaches to treatments for word processing impairments in aphasia emphasize two components to target, the linguistic content, semantic or phonological representations of words, and the processing component, access to and retrieval of those representations. In this study, we explore these two components of a treatment to improve lexical activation that supports access and retrieval of word representations. Five people with aphasia participated. The treatment task was repetition of concrete word pairs after a 5-s response delay which was intended to provide practice in maintaining activation of the words for that 5-s period before reproducing them. Two of the five participants demonstrated a difficulty in maintaining activation of single words in repetition, with accuracy decreasing significantly after the 5-s interval. The treatment was applied to all participants, however, to determine if its benefit was specific to those with the activation maintenance impairment. Results confirmed that the activation maintenance treatment in the context of this repetition task led to more treatment gains for the two participants who demonstrated this specific impairment. They made gains on four of the nine measures compared to improvements on one to two measures for the other participants. A second question addressed in this study was the relative importance of the item component (linguistic content) of the treatment and the processing component, maintenance of activation. To that end, there were two conditions of treatment probes, (1) repeated content for all treatment, immediate post-treatment and 3-month maintenance probes and (2) novel content for probes in these three phases of treatment. Only one participant showed significant improvement in treatment when items were novel for all probes. We discuss the possibility that this outcome reflects a more specific deficit in the temporal processing component of lexical activation compared to the two other participants who showed better performance on probes with repeated items in treatment and post-treatment phases. Clinical implications of this study and directions of future research are discussed.

Facilitating Word Retrieval in Aphasia: Which Type of Cues for Which Aphasic Speakers?

Background: Even if both phonological and semantic cues can facilitate word retrieval in aphasia, it remains unclear if their respective effectiveness varies according to the underlying anomic profile.Aim: The aim of the present facilitation study is to compare the effect of phonological and semantic cues on picture naming accuracy and speed in different types of anomia.Methods: In the present within-subject design study, 15 aphasic persons following brain damage underwent picture naming paradigms with semantic cues (categorically- or associatively related) and phonological cues (initial phoneme presented auditorily, visually or both).Results: At the group level, semantic cueing was as effective as phonological cueing to significantly speed up picture naming. However, while phonological cues were effective regardless of the anomic profile, semantic cueing effects varied depending on the type of anomia. Participants with mixed anomia showed facilitation after both semantic categorical and associative cues, but individuals with lexical-phonological anomia only after categorical cues. Crucially, semantic cues were ineffective for participants with lexical-semantic anomia. These disparities were confirmed by categorical semantic facilitation decreasing when semantic/omission errors prevailed in the anomic profile, but increasing alongside phonological errors.Conclusion: The effectiveness of phonological vs semantic cues seems related to the underlying anomic profile: phonological cues benefit any type of anomia, but semantic cues only lexical-phonological or mixed anomia.

Rational Adaptation in Using Conceptual Versus Lexical Information in Adults With Aphasia.

The information theoretic principle of rational adaptation predicts that individuals with aphasia adapt to their language impairments by relying more heavily on comparatively unimpaired non-linguistic knowledge to communicate. This prediction was examined by assessing the extent to which adults with chronic aphasia due to left-hemisphere stroke rely more on conceptual rather than lexical information during verb retrieval, as compared to age-matched neurotypical controls. A primed verb naming task examined the degree of facilitation each participant group received from either conceptual event-related or lexical collocate cues, compared to unrelated baseline cues. The results provide evidence that adults with aphasia received amplified facilitation from conceptual cues compared to controls, whereas healthy controls received greater facilitation from lexical cues. This indicates that adaptation to alternative and relatively unimpaired information may facilitate successful word retrieval in aphasia. Implications for models of rational adaptation and clinical neurorehabilitation are discussed.

Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training: A Replication and Update of an Abstract Word Retrieval Therapy Program.

Purpose We report on a study that replicates previous treatment studies using Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (AbSANT), which was developed to help persons with aphasia improve their ability to retrieve abstract words, as well as thematically related concrete words. We hypothesized that previous results would be replicated; that is, when abstract words are trained using this protocol, improvement would be observed for both abstract and concrete words in the same context-category, but when concrete words are trained, no improvement for abstract words would be observed. We then frame the results of this study with the results of previous studies that used AbSANT to provide better evidence for the utility of this therapeutic technique. We also discuss proposed mechanisms of AbSANT. Method Four persons with aphasia completed one phase of concrete word training and one phase of abstract word training using the AbSANT protocol. Effect sizes were calculated for each word type for each phase. Effect sizes for this study are compared with the effect sizes from previous studies. Results As predicted, training abstract words resulted in both direct training and generalization effects, whereas training concrete words resulted in only direct training effects. The reported results are consistent across studies. Furthermore, when the data are compared across studies, there is a distinct pattern of the added benefit of training abstract words using AbSANT. Conclusion Treatment for word retrieval in aphasia is most often aimed at concrete words, despite the usefulness and pervasiveness of abstract words in everyday conversation. We show the utility of AbSANT as a means of improving not only abstract word retrieval but also concrete word retrieval and hope this evidence will help foster its application in clinical practice.

Effects of distributed practice and criterion level on word retrieval in aphasia

This study examined how the distribution and amount of practice affect word retrieval in aphasia as well as how such factors relate to the efficiency of learning. The central hypothesis was that factors that enhance the learning of new knowledge also enhance persistent access to existing, but inconsistently available, word representations. The study evaluated the impact of learning principles on word retrieval by manipulating the timing and amount of retrievals for items presented for naming. Nine people with chronic aphasia with naming impairment completed the experiment. Training materials involved proper noun entities assigned to six conditions formed by crossing a 2-level factor of spacing of sessions, i.e., intersession interval (1 day versus 7 days between sessions) with a 3-level factor of number of correct retrievals per item per session, i.e., criterion level (Criterion-1, Criterion-2, and Criterion-4). Each intersession interval condition comprised three training sessions and a one-month retention test. Increasing the criterion level enhanced naming performance after short (1 day, 7 days) and long (one month) retention intervals, but these advantages came at the cost of many additional training trials. In most cases, later naming success was superior when the same number of correct retrievals of an item was distributed across multiple sessions rather than administered within one session. The substantial advantages for across-session spacing were gained at little cost in terms of additional training trials. At one-month retention, naming accuracy was numerically but not significantly higher in the 7-day versus 1-day intersession interval condition. Implications for theories of lexical access and naming treatment in aphasia are discussed.

Name it again! investigating the effects of repeated naming attempts in aphasia

ABSTRACT Background: In the context of therapy for word retrieval in aphasia, the person with aphasia is often required to attempt to name treated items on multiple occasions. However, there is limited information about the impact of these repeated attempts at naming in and of themselves. Aim: The aim of this study was to examine if repeated attempts at naming, with no treatment or feedback, improve naming accuracy in people with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: 23 participants with stroke aphasia named 50 pictures on seven occasions, approximately six weeks apart. No support, cues (written or spoken) or feedback on accuracy was provided at the time or between naming attempts. This was part of a larger study investigating two different types of therapy on different items. Outcomes & Results: After excluding any potential influence from treatment of other items, four participants showed significant improvements in accuracy and two participants showed a worsening of accuracy for the stimuli that received repeated naming attempts (but were untreated). We found evidence that significant change in accuracy was predicted by the variability of naming accuracy between sessions, executive functioning skills (as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task), and picture naming ability (Nickels’ Naming Test). Conclusions: We hypothesised that in the context of variability in naming accuracy, intact executive functioning may help monitor responses, such that only correctly named items are reinforced. Critically, without the ability to monitor responses without feedback, incorrect responses may be reinforced, leading to a worsening of performance. The fact that four individuals with aphasia showed improved naming accuracy by naming items once every six weeks is striking and suggests that further investigation of effects of repeated naming at closer intervals is warranted, as for some participants any advantage from a naming attempt may have decayed by the time of repetition.

Interaction between processing speed, cognitive control and word retrieval in aphasia

Interaction between processing speed, cognitive control and word retrieval in aphasia

Links Between Short-Term Memory and Word Retrieval in Aphasia.

This study explored the relationship between anomia and verbal short-term memory (STM) in the context of an interactive activation language processing model. Twenty-four individuals with aphasia and reduced STM spans (i.e., impaired immediate serial recall of words) completed a picture-naming task and a word pair repetition task (a measure of verbal STM). Correlations between verbal STM and word retrieval errors made on the picture-naming task were examined. A significant positive correlation between naming accuracy and verbal span length was found. More intricate verbal STM analyses examined the relationship between picture-naming error types (i.e., semantic vs. phonological) and 2 measures of verbal STM: (a) location of errors on the word pair repetition task and (b) imageability and frequency effects on the word pair repetition task. Results indicated that, as phonological word retrieval errors (relative to semantic) increase, bias toward correct repetition of high-imageability words increases. Results suggest that word retrieval and verbal STM tasks likely rely on a partially shared temporary linguistic activation process.

The role of frequency in the retrieval of nouns and verbs in aphasia

ABSTRACTBackground: Word retrieval in aphasia involves different levels of processing—lemma retrieval, grammatical encoding, lexeme retrieval, and phonological encoding—before articulation can be programmed and executed. Several grammatical, semantic, lexical, and phonological characteristics, such as word class, age of acquisition, imageability, and word frequency influence the degree of success in word retrieval. It is, however, not yet clear how these factors interact. The current study focuses on the retrieval of nouns and verbs in isolation and in sentence context and evaluates the impact of the mentioned factors on the performance of a group of 54 aphasic speakers.Aims: The main aim is to measure the effect of word frequency on the retrieval of nouns and verb by disentangling the influence of word class, age of acquisition, imageability, and lemma and lexeme frequencies on word retrieval in aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Four tests for retrieval of nouns, verbs in isolation, and infinitives and finite verbs were administered to 54 aphasic speakers. The influence of lemma and lexeme frequency, Age of Acquisition on the word retrieval abilities was analysed.Outcomes and Results: Word class, age of acquisition, and imageability play a significant role in the retrieval of nouns and verbs: nouns are easier than verbs; the earlier a word has been learned and the more concrete it is, the easier it is to retrieve. When performance is controlled for these factors, lemma frequency turns out to play a minor role: only in object naming does it affect word retrieval: the higher the lemma frequency of a noun, the easier it is to access. Such an effect does not exist for verbs, neither on an action-naming test, nor when verbs have to be retrieved in sentence context. Lexeme frequency was not found to be a better predictor than lemma frequency in predicting word retrieval in aphasia.Conclusions: Word retrieval in aphasia is influenced by grammatical, semantic, and lexical factors. Word frequency only plays a minor role: it affects the retrieval of nouns, but not of verbs.

Contrasting effects of errorless naming treatment and gestural facilitation for word retrieval in aphasia

We compared the effects of two treatments for aphasic word retrieval impairments, errorless naming treatment (ENT) and gestural facilitation of naming (GES), within the same individuals, anticipating that the use of gesture would enhance the effect of treatment over errorless treatment alone. In addition to picture naming, we evaluated results for other outcome measures that were largely untested in earlier ENT studies. In a single participant crossover treatment design, we examined the effects of ENT and GES in eight individuals with stroke-induced aphasia and word retrieval impairments (three semantic anomia, five phonological anomia) in counterbalanced phases across participants. We evaluated effects of the two treatments for a daily picture naming/gesture production probe measure and in standardised aphasia tests and communication rating scales administered across phases of the experiment. Both treatments led to improvements in naming of trained words (small-to-large effect sizes) in individuals with semantic and phonological anomia. Small generalised naming improvements were noted for three individuals with phonological anomia. GES improved use of corresponding gestures for trained words (large effect sizes). Results were largely maintained at one month post-treatment completion. Increases in scores on standardised aphasia testing also occurred for both ENT and GES training. Both ENT and GES led to improvements in naming measures, with no clear difference between treatments. Increased use of gestures following GES provided a potential compensatory means of communication for those who did not improve verbal skills. Both treatments are considered to be effective methods to promote recovery of word retrieval and verbal production skills in individuals with aphasia.

Manipulating hemispheric attentional mechanisms to modulate word retrieval in aphasia

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that left hemisphere damage may create an attentional bias towards stimuli initially processed in the right hemisphere. Aims: The current study aimed to investigate whether this hemispheric attentional bias influences spoken word production in a picture–word interference task. Methods & Procedures: Two participants with aphasia and seven healthy controls named centrally presented pictures that were preceded by a distractor word which appeared in either the left or right visual field 200 ms prior to the picture. Distractor words were semantically related, phonologically related, unrelated, or the name of the picture. Results were analysed in terms of response times and accuracy. Outcomes & Results: A greater overall facilitation effect was found in the left visual field/right hemisphere condition for both participants with aphasia, however this varied depending on distractor condition. These results are consistent with an attentional bias towards linguistic stimuli initially presented to the right hemisphere. In contrast, the results of the control group suggest a reduction in the lateralisation of language processing to the left hemisphere in healthy ageing. Conclusions: These results suggest that spoken word production may be influenced by changes in attentional mechanisms following left hemisphere damage in aphasia, as well as changes in hemispheric lateralisation and inhibition in healthy ageing. Identifying attentional conditions that optimise language performance in aphasia may have implications for new treatments in language rehabilitation.

Motor Cortex Preactivation by Standing Facilitates Word Retrieval in Aphasia

Background and Objectives. A tight link between linguistic functions and activation of motor areas has been consistently reported, indicating that the 2 systems share functional neural resources. Few efforts have been made to explore whether this knowledge could aid the rehabilitation of aphasia. Methods. The authors assessed whether preactivation of the leg motor cortex during standing, compared with sitting, can facilitate language production in patients with chronic aphasia. In a cross-over within-subject design, the authors assessed performance on a picture naming task and controlled for effects on processing speed and simple verbal reaction time. Results. They found that standing compared with sitting had a beneficial effect on the number of semantic self-corrections that resulted in correct naming. In the absence of effects on motor or general processing speed, this points to a specific effect on lexical retrieval and selection. This was further corroborated by an error pattern analysis. Successful semantic self-corrections during standing were only found when there was already partial activation of the target semantic network—that is, when self-corrections were preceded by an incorrect but semantically associated naming response. Discussion. These findings show that preactivation of the motor system, which extends beyond the intrinsic link between manual gestures and language, can facilitate lexical access in chronic aphasia and may open new directions in aphasia rehabilitation.

Do the hands have it? The facilitation effects of arm and hand gesture on word retrieval in aphasia

Background: There is considerable disagreement in the literature concerning the function of co‐verbal gesture. Studies of the relationship between speech and gesture have employed an array of methods to investigate the origin and functions of arm and hand gesture. Commonly, these studies have utilised an experimental design to examine possible speech facilitation effects. However there is a need to examine spontaneous gesture production and its effect on speech production, as evidence suggests that natural gesture production is distinct from that produced under test conditions. Aims: To investigate the possible facilitation effects of spontaneously generated arm and hand gestures during word retrieval difficulty in people with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Conversational samples 20 minutes long were acquired from 18 participants with chronic aphasia. Verbal utterances were transcribed for word retrieval difficulty, resolved word retrieval difficulty, and fluent speech production. The transcription was augmented with all arm and hand gestures produced by the participants. Gestures were segmented into gesture units and classified into types. A second rater classified 20% of the samples for gesture type, occurrence of word retrieval difficulty, and whether the difficulty was successfully resolved or not. Consensus ratings were carried out where disagreement occurred. Variables were paired for comparison using a series of non‐parametric Wilcoxon Signed‐Ranks Tests. Outcomes & Results: Gesture production was significantly higher during instances of word retrieval difficulties. The resolution of word retrieval difficulty was significantly more frequent with a gesture present. Crucially, there was no significant difference between the amounts of gesture produced during resolved, as compared to unresolved, word retrieval difficulties. However performance in the group was variable. Five individuals produced over 50% more gesture during resolved word retrieval events than during unresolved. Post‐hoc examination of the linguistic characteristics of these five participants suggested they had a specific phonological level impairment. Conclusions: Gesture production is multifunctional for people with aphasia. People with mild aphasia, who have the majority of their linguistic resources still accessible, are likely to experience facilitation from gesture production, and hence gesture treatment maybe an appropriate and potent therapy focus. Some individuals with severe language impairment are capable of using many rich, communicative gestures. Such gesture expression should be explored as a viable component of a “total communication” therapeutic approach for those individuals.

Immediate and short‐term effects of contextual priming on word retrieval in aphasia

Background: Many therapy techniques for word retrieval disorders use some form of priming to improve access to words. Priming can facilitate or interfere with naming under different circumstances. We examined effects of priming when combined with semantic or phonological context (training words in groups that are semantically or phonologically related) and how these effects interact with the type of naming impairment (semantically or phonologically based).Aims: We addressed three questions (1) Are word retrieval impairments differentially sensitive to priming with semantic or phonological contexts? (2) Would such differences be systematically related to deficits of semantic versus phonological processing? (3) Do effects of priming evolve from immediate interference to short‐term facilitation, as predicted by an interactive activation model of word retrieval?Methods & Procedures: A total of 11 chronic English‐speaking aphasic subjects with varied types of aphasia participated in this experiment. Background measures of semantic and phonological processing ability were administered to determine the nature of each subject's naming impairment. The experiment involved one‐session facilitation treatments for each of three context conditions (semantic, phonological, and unrelated), plus three replications (nine subjects) or one replication (two subjects). Ten pictures in each condition were tested before and after treatment. Five pictures were trained and five served as controls. Participants repeated the name of each picture four times (repetition priming) and then attempted to name each picture individually (naming probe). Repetition priming and naming probes were repeated eight times. We used McNemar tests to compare rates of correct responses before and after priming, and chi square analyses of correct responses and contextual errors on naming probes obtained during the priming sessions.Outcome & results: Our predictions were borne out in the data. Participants varied in their sensitivity to the semantic and phonological contexts. The error data suggest that interference during training is more likely when the context (semantic or phonological) and underlying source of the word processing impairment (semantic or phonological) match. Additionally, we found two sequential effects of contextual priming: immediate interference followed short‐term facilitation.Conclusions: These data have theoretical implications regarding the time course of priming effects, but also have important clinical implications. The present contextual priming procedure is relatively short and could be used as a predictor of performance patterns in a long‐term treatment protocol that uses this approach or other tasks that employ priming.

失語の回復プロセス 発語の回復過程―機能的ＭＲＩを用いて―

発語の回復過程に関与する脳内基盤を検討するため，健常者6名および非流暢型失語患者5名が語頭音による語想起課題を行っている間の機能的 ＭＲＩ を撮像した。失語患者のうち1例は2時点で評価を行った。健常者では Broca野にもっとも強い賦活を認めたが，さらに周辺の左前頭前野･島回・前頭葉内側部･上側頭回などに有意な活動を認めた。一方，失語症例では共通して語想起中の Broca野や隣接する左前頭葉内の賦活が乏しかった。ことに経時的変化をみた症例では，発語の改善とともにBroca野とその周辺の賦活が顕在化しており，この領域の機能保持／機能回復が重要と推測された。この領域の機能保持／機能回復が不十分だと，右半球の言語野対応部位が賦活されてくる場合があるが，その代償機構は不完全であると思われた。失語の回復過程における機能的ネットワークの再構築は症例により異なっており，回復の差異に関与する要因を今後，経時的な機能画像で評価していくことが重要である。

A fMRI study of word retrieval in aphasia

The neural mechanisms underlying recovery of cognitive functions are incompletely understood. Aim of this study was to assess, using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), the pattern of brain activity during covert word retrieval to letter and semantic cues in five aphasic patients after stroke, in order to assess the modifications of brain function which may be related to recovery. Four out of five patients had undergone language recovery, according to standard testing, after at least 6 months of rehabilitation. The cerebral activation of each patient was evaluated and compared with the activation pattern of normal controls studied with the same fMRI paradigm. In the patients, the pattern of brain activation was influenced by the site and extent of the lesion, by the degree of recovery of language, as reflected by task performance outside the scanner, and by task requirements. In the case of word retrieval to letter cues, a good performance was directly related to the activation in Broca’s area, or in the right-sided homologue. On the other hand, in the case of semantic fluency, the relationship between performance level and activation was less clear-cut, because of extensive recruitment of frontal areas in patients with defective performance. These findings suggest that the performance in letter fluency is dependent on the integrity of the left inferior frontal cortex, with the participation of the homologous right hemispheric region when the left inferior frontal cortex is entirely of partially damaged. Semantic fluency, which engages the distributed network of semantic memory, is also associated with more extensive patterns of cerebral activation, which however appear to reflect retrieval effort rather than retrieval success.

Phonological and orthographic facilitation of word-retrieval in aphasia: Immediate and delayed effects

In the literature on repetition priming of word-production in normal participants, long-lasting effects can be found from a single prime. This contrasts with the findings with adults with anomia (as part of their aphasia) where phonological cues, such as first sound or rhyme, have been shown to have very short-lasting effects on word retrieval (Patterson, Purell, & Morton, 1983). In addition, the research into treatment of anomia suggests that semantic techniques produce longer-lasting effects than phonological techniques (Howard et al., 1985b). One difference between phonological and semantic techniques is in the element of choice available. Typically phonological cues are simply provided. This contrasts with semantic techniques where a choice is available, for example selecting from a set of pictures to match a word. This study, using a case series design, set out to replicate the finding, that phonological techniques have only short-lasting effects on word retrieval in aphasia and to investigate the influence of providing a choice of cues. Items that participants with aphasia were unable to name after 5 seconds were allocated to one of three conditions: extra time (control condition), single cue, and choice of two cues. Naming was assessed immediately and at a delay (over 10 minutes later). Four different cue types were used: whole word, spoken CV, written CV, and rime. The results were surprising. The cues influenced immediate naming, as predicted. However, this effect was still significant a delayed naming. Additionally, the benefits from a choice of cues were generally similar to those from a single cue. Different patterns of cue effectiveness were found for different participants. Further investigations shed some light on the mechanisms of cueing, orthographic cueing in particular.

Aphasia and language: theory to practice

Part 1: Beginnings. Roth, Heilman, Aphasia: A Historical Perspective. Part 2: Dimensions of Language Dysfunction. Greenwald, Gonzalez Rothi, Nadeau, Fluency. Nadeau, Phonology. Wiltshire, Coslett, Disorders of Word Retrieval in Aphasia: Theories and Potential Applications. Raymer, Gonzalez Rothi, Semantic System. Chatterjee, Maher, Grammer and Agrammatism. Part 3: Behavioral Disorders Associated with Aphasia. Greenwald, The Acquired Dyslexias. Rapcsak, Beeson, Agraphia. McNeil, Doyle, Wambaugh, Apraxia of Speech: A Treatable Disorder of Motor Planning and Programming. Ochipa, Gonzalez Rothi, Limb Apraxia. Blonder, Language Use. Part 4: Emerging Alternative Approaches. Nadeau, Connectionist Models and Language. Fischler, Attention, Resource Allocation, and Language. Crosson, Systems That Support Language Processes: Verbal Working Memory. Part 5: Practical Considerations. Kearns, Single-subject Experimental Designs in Aphasia.