Evolution of aphasic naming errors following phonomotor treatment

Abstract

The primary outcome measures for aphasia treatment investigations targeting anomia typically include naming accuracy of trained and untrained words. Recently, several treatment investigations have also included error analyses that closely look at the way in which word retrieval breaks down pre-treatment vs. post-treatment (Gordon, 2007; Kendall, Pompon, Brookshire, Minkina, & Bislick, 2013; Kiran & Johnson, 2008, Kiran & Thompson, 2003). In one such analysis, Kendall et al. (2013) investigated treatment-induced changes in aphasic naming errors following a phonomotor treatment for anomia. The study was rooted in an interactive two-stage model of word retrieval, in which world retrieval is initiated with activation of semantic representations, allowing for access of the word’s lemma (which holds grammatical properties), while phonological representations are accessed in the second stage (Dell, 1986). In the analyses of confrontation naming errors in ten people with aphasia, several trends were noted immediately following treatment: a decrease in the proportion of omissions on trained words, and an increase in the proportion of mixed (phonologically and semantically related) errors on untrained words. These results suggested that treatment led to more precise activation of nodes supporting word retrieval. The present study sought to replicate this error proportion analysis in a larger group of participants and expand the analysis to explore changes in raw numbers of errors. The following research questions were asked both for trained and untrained words: Preliminary research question 1) Is there a significant difference between picture naming accuracy pre-treatment vs. immediately post-treatment, and pre-treatment vs. three months post-treatment? Main research questions 2) Is there a significant difference in raw numbers of various error types made during picture naming pre-treatment vs. immediately post-treatment, and pre-treatment vs. three months post-treatment? 3) Is there a significant difference in error type proportions (the number of each error type divided by the total errors made) observed during picture naming pre-treatment vs. immediately post-treatment, and pre-treatment vs. three months post-treatment