The Cultural Experience of Living with Aphasia

Culture can be defined as the values, norms, and traditions expressed through language that affect our behavior and interaction with the environment and society (Agar, 1994). It is important to view the individual’s behavior from his/her own cultural context. When aphasics from multi-cultural and linguistic backgrounds refer to the health care services, they confront a set of issues related to their backgrounds that can be considered as challenges in aphasia therapy (Penn, 1993). The aim of this study is to explore what culture can contribute to the aphasic’s and the family’s understandings of aphasia and their dealings with it

A Dynamic View of Response to Aphasia: The Emergence of Compensatory Adaptations

This presentation employs two qualitative research methodologies, conversation analysis (CA) and phenomenology, to describe the evolution of eleven compensatory strategies within the conversational performance of a particular individual with aphasia. By comparing conversational data prior to the individual’s stroke with data samples 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months post onset, the evolution of his compensatory adaptations to aphasia are documented and analyzed. This provides a dynamic perspective on his conversational compensations and their utility. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed

The Impact of Spontaneous Recovery in Clinical Aphasiology

In clinical aphasiology, there are a number of well-accepted concepts that are considered organizing constructs in the discipline. One such construct is the concept of spontaneous recovery (SR). This construct influences the expectations that we hold regarding the time frame for greatest recovery and for best clinical response, and a host of theoretical and organizing principles that determine much of our planning and research design and that guide our expectations with respect to treatment, recovery, reimbursement, and explanatory mechanisms for recovery. However, the construct itself has been little studied