Nonverbal Working Memory as a Predictor of Anomia Treatment Success: Preliminary Data

Abstract

It has been well established that individuals with aphasia tend to have difficulty with nonverbal working memory (Lang & Quitz, 2012; Maher & Murray, 2012; Wright & Fergadiotis, 2012) that can influence linguistic and nonlinguistic processing. The extent to which these working memory deficits impact recovery from aphasia is still under investigation. From a clinical standpoint, the relationship between nonverbal working memory and response to aphasia treatment may hold prognostic value in predicting those individuals who will respond best to a particular type of treatment. To obtain this clinical goal, it will be necessary to assess the reliability of working memory tasks in individuals with aphasia (Mayer & Murray, 2012) because of high variability in performance across sessions in this population. The purpose of the study was threefold; (1) to identify the extent to which nonverbal working memory performance, as measured by the spatial span (SS) task (Wechsler, 1997), was reliable across multiple testing sessions in individuals with aphasia, (2) to determine if Cued Picture Naming Treatment (CPNT) impacted performance on the SS task, and (3) to determine the degree to which nonverbal working memory, as measured by the SS task, predicted response to anomia treatment in individuals with chronic aphasia