A Comparison of Oral, Written and Computer-Mediated-Text Production in Aphasic Participants

Based on the fact, that agrammatic utterances show variant symptoms, our research aim was to investigate by what factors language usage is influenced. In our study we followed a media-specific hypothesis, which refers to the concept of adaptation. Our claim is that the variation in agrammatic symptoms does directly mirror the basic syntactic disorder, but shows adaptation to different interactive and media-specific demands. Therefore in an experimental study we compared the influence of interactivity and modality-specific conditions on formulation in persons with agrammatism and non-aphasic speakers

Aphasia Awareness Training for Emergency Responders: Train the Trainers

First responders rarely receive training on aphasia but they are more likely to encounter a person with aphasia (PWA) than someone with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy (Will & Peters, 2004). Many of them do not know what aphasia is, much less how to communicate with a person with the disorder. This paper presents a unique Aphasia Awareness Training Program to educate police, firefighters and EMTs to understand aphasia, recognize signs of aphasia in emergency situations and communicate effectively with PWA.  Quantitative and qualitative data on the effectiveness of the program are discussed along with future implications

Pilot study of crowdsourcing evidence-based practice research for adults with aphasia

textThe purpose of this study is to explore crowdsourcing as a research paradigm for creating evidence-based practice research in the field of speech pathology. Using an Internet survey, respondents provided de-identified information about one patient with aphasia they had treated in the previous year. The respondents were then asked to rate the success of treatment. Analysis and grading of the responses was performed to identify which responses were usable for the purpose of planning a treatment for a patient with similar demographics and diagnostic make-up. Results showed that crowdsourcing is a viable research method; however, further refinements to the collection and analysis are required before it can be an effectively used.Communication Sciences and Disorder

Colour and Naming in Healthy and Aphasic People

Abstract The purpose of this study was to create a paradigm suitable for people with aphasia and healthy subjects to evaluate the influence of colour on naming pictures of objects. We designed a completely new stimulus set based on images of 140 common real objects that were inspired by the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (1980). We were especially interested whether there is a difference in performance between the aphasic patients and the group of healthy controls. Adding chromatic information to pictures of objects shows only a small effect in verification and categorisation tasks. However, when observers are required to name objects, colour speeds performance and enhances accuracy (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004). The present study contrasts two different claims as to why colour may benefit object naming. The first is that colour simply aids the segmentation of the object from its background (Wichmann et al., 2002). The second is that colour may help to elicit a wider range of associations with the object, thereby enhancing lexical access (Bisiach, 1966). To distinguish between these processes an equal number of pictures containing high and low colour diagnostic objects were presented against either fractal noise or uniform backgrounds in a naming task to aphasic subjects with anomia and to healthy controls. Performance for chromatic stimuli was compared with that for monochrome stimuli equated in luminance. Results show that colour facilitates naming significantly in both subject groups and there was no significant difference between objects with high or low colour diagnostic values. We also found that object segmentation and the lexical access seem to occur in parallel processes, rather than in an additive way

Aphasia Compendium

Aphasia is an acquired central disorder of language that impairs a person’s ability to understand and/or produce spoken or writing language. The study of aphasia is important in different clinical and fundamental areas, including neurology, psychology, linguistics, and speech-language pathology. This book presents comprehensive information on the diagnosis and treatment of aphasias. Chapters cover such topics as linguistics and the study of aphasias, different types of aphasias, treatment approaches, imaging, and much more

Deep phenotyping and genomic data from a nationally representative study on dementia in India

The Harmonized Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia for the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI-DAD) is a nationally representative in-depth study of cognitive aging and dementia. We present a publicly available dataset of harmonized cognitive measures of 4,096 adults 60 years of age and older in India, collected across 18 states and union territories. Blood samples were obtained to carry out whole blood and serum-based assays. Results are included in a venous blood specimen datafile that can be linked to the Harmonized LASI-DAD dataset. A global screening array of 960 LASI-DAD respondents is also publicly available for download, in addition to neuroimaging data on 137 LASI-DAD participants. Altogether, these datasets provide comprehensive information on older adults in India that allow researchers to further understand risk factors associated with cognitive impairment and dementia.Peer reviewe