Kemahiran berkomunikasi dalam kalangan penutur dewasa Melayu dengan afasia

Kajian ini meneliti kebolehan penghasilan kata kerja dan kata nama yang wujud dalam pertuturan pesakit afasia dengan menggunakan Malay Verb and dan Noun Test (MVAN). Prestasi dua kumpulan peserta: subjek kawalan dan afasia dinilai melalui tugasan penamaan gambar. Seramai 14 orang dewasa yang berbahasa Melayu dengan afasia, berumur 28-64 tahun (min = 50.70) dan 20 orang dewasa normal penutur asli bahasa Melayu yang dipadankan dari segi umur, jantina dan pendidikan, berusia 28-71 tahun (min = 52.29) telah dipilih. 52 kata nama dan 32 kata kerja yang dikawal mengikut kepanjangan suku kata, kebolehgambaran dan keterbiasaan disenaraikan dan ditukarkan kepada kad bergambar hitam dan putih. Subjek diminta untuk menamakan objek dalam kad tersebut. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa kumpulan subjek kawalan dapat menghasilkan kata nama lebih baik daripada kata kerja berbanding kumpulan subjek dengan afasia. Kumpulan subjek dengan afasia fasih menunjukkan prestasi yang lebih baik dalam kedua-dua penghasilan kata nama dan kata kerja daripada kumpulan subjek afasia tidak fasih. Secara keseluruhan, pola kesalahan yang ditunjukkan oleh semua subjek adalah kesalahan semantik dan kesilapan yang tidak berkaitan. Keputusan juga menunjukkan bahawa apabila pengaruh faktor-faktor pembauran dimasukkan seperti kebolehgambaran dan keterbiasaan, tidak ada bukti menunjukkan kewujudan defisit tertentu kelas perkataan dalam kalangan subjek dengan afasia. Dapatan kajian juga mengukuhkan kepentingan penggunaan gambar dalam menilai masalah pencarian semula perkataan dan telah menyediakan beberapa data berguna dalam penghasilan kata nama dan kata kerja dalam kalangan orang dewasa Melayu dengan afasia

The Knowledge and Use of Speech Therapy Mobile Applications: Speech-Language Pathologists’ Perspectives in Malaysia

Technology incorporation in speech therapy has been growing over the years. Mobile applications are among the adoptions that facilitate delivering speech therapy services. The situation in Malaysia is discouraging because there are not enough speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to serve the growing number of populations. Despite the abundance of available speech therapy mobile applications in the market, there is a lack of information focusing on the SLP’s knowledge and usage perspectives, especially in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to describe the knowledge and usage perspectives of speech therapy mobile applications among SLPs in Malaysia and to analyze the instructional features and functional features relationships within the perspectives of SLPs. Surveys are established in three parts, with demographic questions in Part A, Likert scale responses for statements in Part B, and open-ended questions in Part C. This study is co-designed to relate to the results from an initial study that adopted PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and features analysis. The data from the initial study includes a review of 161 apps out of 1797 that have been identified. Five instructional features and nine functional features are presented. There are 35 SLPs participating in the survey. Their responses demonstrate evidence of SLPs’ knowledge and usage of speech therapy mobile applications. We will propose a conceptual framework for the features of speech therapy mobile applications, using people with aphasia as a point of reference for users with speech and language disorders

The Knowledge and Use of Speech Therapy Mobile Applications: Speech-Language Pathologists’ Perspectives in Malaysia

Technology incorporation in speech therapy has been growing over the years. Mobile applications are among the adoptions that facilitate delivering speech therapy services. The situation in Malaysia is discouraging because there are not enough speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to serve the growing number of populations. Despite the abundance of available speech therapy mobile applications in the market, there is a lack of information focusing on the SLP’s knowledge and usage perspectives, especially in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to describe the knowledge and usage perspectives of speech therapy mobile applications among SLPs in Malaysia and to analyze the instructional features and functional features relationships within the perspectives of SLPs. Surveys are established in three parts, with demographic questions in Part A, Likert scale responses for statements in Part B, and open-ended questions in Part C. This study is co-designed to relate to the results from an initial study that adopted PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and features analysis. The data from the initial study includes a review of 161 apps out of 1797 that have been identified. Five instructional features and nine functional features are presented. There are 35 SLPs participating in the survey. Their responses demonstrate evidence of SLPs’ knowledge and usage of speech therapy mobile applications. We will propose a conceptual framework for the features of speech therapy mobile applications, using people with aphasia as a point of reference for users with speech and language disorders

Targeting complex orthography in the treatment of a bilingual aphasia with acquired dysgraphia: The case of a Malay/English speaker with conduction aphasia

Background: Disruption of spoken language in people with aphasia tends to interfere with the ability to write, which is referred to as dysgraphia. This study examined the effectiveness of the anagram and copy treatment (ACT), administered in English on a bilingual Malay/English patient with conduction aphasia (GM). ACT is the arrangement of component letters presented in scrambled order (i.e., an anagram) so that the patient could use the letters to form target words, followed by repeated copying of the word. Methods: A single-subject multiple-baseline design was used with sets of English words (both nouns and verbs) sequentially targeted for treatment. Prior to the treatment, a series of single word writing and reading baselines were conducted in two languages: English and Malay. The ACT treatment was done in English, the language reported as more dominant for reading by the patient. Probes assessing generalizations to untrained pictures were presented at 8th, 13th, and 18th sessions. Results: GM showed steady and incremental improvement in the writing of trained nouns and verbs, with generalizations to untrained English nouns and verbs. Conclusions: Single word writing treatment in a non-transparent language may improve dysgraphia among adults with bilingual aphasia through the administration of a structured and systematic treatment

Oral Language Skills and Literacy Skills of Malay Children with Dyslexia

Dyslexia can involve among others, difficulties in spoken language. However, there is limited local data on oral language (narrative skills) and literacy skills in children with dyslexia. The relationship between language and literacy is well documented although they involve complicated and non-straightforward processes. There is also evidence suggesting a link between language difficulties with subsequent literacy difficulties. Thus, this study aims to identify and describe the language and literacy skills of Malay children with dyslexia, and to discuss the possible relationships between them. Subjects were six children with dyslexia in the Klang Valley, Malaysia aged 8:0 to 9:11 (mean age, 8:10) who were compared to an age-matched control group (n = 10). The battery of tests administrated was phonological awareness test, language task, narrative, and literacy tasks. Our findings showed that children with dyslexia had generally weaker language and literacy skills than the control group. There were significant differences (p < .05) in grammar understanding, sentence repetition, and reading and spelling at both word and paragraph levels. Pearson correlation between language and literacy was shown to be positive and strong, r = .887, p < .05. The qualitative discussion of the data is presented. Findings from this study would provide useful information to teachers and speech-language therapists in their teaching or planning of appropriate clinical evaluation and management of children with dyslexia

The knowledge and use of speech therapy mobile applications: Speech-language pathologists’ perspectives in Malaysia

Technology incorporation in speech therapy has been growing over the years. Mobile applications are among the adoptions that facilitate delivering speech therapy services. The situation in Malaysia is discouraging because there are not enough speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to serve the growing number of populations. Despite the abundance of available speech therapy mobile applications in the market, there is a lack of information focusing on the SLP’s knowledge and usage perspectives, especially in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to describe the knowledge and usage perspectives of speech therapy mobile applications among SLPs in Malaysia and to analyze the instructional features and functional features relationships within the perspectives of SLPs. Surveys are established in three parts, with demographic questions in Part A, Likert scale responses for statements in Part B, and open-ended questions in Part C. This study is co-designed to relate to the results from an initial study that adopted PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and features analysis. The data from the initial study includes a review of 161 apps out of 1797 that have been identified. Five instructional features and nine functional features are presented. There are 35 SLPs participating in the survey. Their responses demonstrate evidence of SLPs’ knowledge and usage of speech therapy mobile applications. We will propose a conceptual framework for the features of speech therapy mobile applications, using people with aphasia as a point of reference for users with speech and language disorders

Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) in the Treatment of Naming Deficits: Evidence from a Malay Speaker with Non-Fluent Aphasia

Introduction Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) is a treatment for lexical retrieval impairment in which participants are cued by providing semantic information regarding concepts they have difficulty with in naming tasks in an effort to facilitate accurate lexical retrieval (Boyle & Coelho, 1995). People with aphasia are commonly found to have naming deficits and speech-language therapists (SLTs) face difficulties in providing an effective treatment method to treat this deficit. This study aims to examine the use of SFA to address naming deficits for nouns and verbs in a Malay patient (KM) with non-fluent aphasia. Methods The following tests were administered to the subject pre- and post- treatment: 1) Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE); 2) Malay Object and Action Test (MOAT); and 3) A series of comprehension and production assessments in Malay. Subject was asked to name 101 and 50 pictures from MOAT. The stimuli were coloured photograph pictures. Treatment and probe (untrained) stimuli were selected from pictures that a subject could not name, yielding 40 nouns and 30 verbs. From these, 20 stimuli were randomly chosen as probe items and 20 as treatment stimuli (nouns), 15 treatment and 15 probes (verbs). For the treatment study, single subject A-B-A design was implemented. Three baseline sessions were completed prior to treatment initiation naming for both probe and treatment pictures. Subject attended once-weekly therapy sessions over 8 months. Probes assessing generalizations to untrained pictures were presented at 4th, 8th, and 12th and so on until the end of the programme. Results Results showed that KM’s ability to name trained and untrained picture stimuli improved for both nouns and verbs. KM demonstrated steady improvement in the SFA treatment of trained nouns and verbs: from 5% baseline accuracy to over 90% accuracy at treatment end for nouns and from 0% baseline accuracy to 90% accuracy at treatment end for verbs. Generalizations to untrained nouns and verbs also showed similar results. KM exhibited marked progress - from naming four nouns (20%) and two verbs (13%) in first probe to 17 nouns (85%) and 13 verbs (87%) in final probe. Pre- and post-assessments results revealed that KM performed better in most of the tasks measured. Conclusion Findings from this study replicate outcomes of previous studies using SFA with people with aphasia. SFA is proven to have helped individuals with naming deficits in accessing semantic features of a target word in a structured and systematic way. Training using the same set/number of pictures in the treatment helps a patient’s ability to retrieve untrained words. This procedure could assist practicing SLTs in Malaysia in treating naming deficits among Malay speakers with aphasia, hence increasing their verbal communication

Syntactic abilities in Malay adult speakers with aphasia: a study on passive sentences and argument structures

Background: Within the last four decades, individuals with aphasia have been observed to face difficulties in understanding complex sentences despite having good understanding of single words. The difficulties observed have been proposed to follow a pattern predicted by the theory of grammar, making the deficit a special case of an underspecified language competence. Aims: The purpose of this study is to examine sentence types – reversible actives and passives and argument complexity among Malay speakers with aphasia, looking at sources of difficulties with non-canonical sentences in a language with free word order. Methods & Procedures: A group of five non-brain-damaged (NBD) adults and five adults with aphasia matched with age, education, and language were recruited. Subjects were tested in their sentence comprehension abilities via two picture matching tasks: a reversibility active/passive and an argument complexity task based on the number of arguments. Outcomes & Results: Generally, the control adults had better sentence comprehension than the group of adults with aphasia, with significant differences in the mean scores of both active and passive reversible sentences. The analysis of the argument complexity task showed that the comprehension level in adults with aphasia was preserved although lower compared to their normal counterparts. Finally, an error analysis of the responses showed that individuals with aphasia had different sources of difficulties: with thematic roles in passive sentences based on syntactic similarities and with active sentences based on semantic similarities. Conclusions: Individuals with aphasia, speakers of a free word order language demonstrated lower understanding of both reversible active and passive sentences with no apparent signs of canonicity patterns. A more detailed error analysis disentangled the source of difficulties with reversible errors for passives based on grammatical order and semantic-based errors for agent-driven sentences based on semantic preferences

Developing criteria for a profession to be considered as profession of allied health in Malaysia: a qualitative study from the Malaysian perspective

Abstract Background The Malaysian Allied Health Profession Act (Act 774) regulates the practice of allied health practitioners in Malaysia, with two described professions viz. allied health profession (AHP) and profession of allied health (PAH). While AHPs have been clearly identified by the law, comprehensive implementation of the act requires development of specific criteria in defining any profession as PAH in the Malaysian context. Hence, the research aims to explore and identify the criteria for defining such professions for healthcare policy direction in Malaysia. Methods This research utilised two methods of qualitative research (document review and focus group discussions (FGDs) involving 25 participants from four stakeholders (higher education providers, employers, associations and regulatory bodies). Both deductive and inductive thematic content analysis were used to explore, develop and define emergent codes, examined along with existing knowledge on the subject matter. Results Sixteen codes emerged from the FGDs, with risk of harm, set of competency and skills, formal qualification, defined scope of practice, relevant training and professional working within the healthcare team being the six most frequent codes. The frequencies for these six codes were 62, 46, 40, 37, 36 and 18, correspondingly. The risk of harm towards patients was directly or indirectly involved with patient handling and also relates to the potential harms that may implicate the practitioners themselves in performing their responsibilities as the important criterion highlighted in the present research, followed by set of competency and skills. Conclusions For defining the PAH in Malaysia, the emerged criteria appear interrelated and co-exist in milieu, especially for the risk of harm and set of competency and skills, with no single criterion that can define PAH fully. Hence, the integration of all the empirically identified criteria must be considered to adequately define the PAH. As such, the findings must be duly considered by policymakers in performing suitable consolidation of healthcare governance to formulate the appropriate regulations and policies for promoting the enhanced framework of allied health practitioners in Malaysia