Intensive Multimodal Communication Intervention for People with Chronic Aphasia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine an intensive multimodal intervention for chronic aphasia. The intervention aimed to increase successful initial use of nonverbal communication modalities to prevent communication breakdowns and to improve switching among communication modalities to repair communication breakdowns. Two people with chronic aphasia completed 10 three-hour intervention sessions across a two-week period. Participant one demonstrated increased successful initial nonverbal modality use across three words lists and increased switching to repair breakdowns. Participant two showed limited success using nonverbal modalities initially or as a repair attempt. Clinical implications and future research directions will be discussed