Speech Therapy for Aphasia: Comparing Two Treatments

Overview

This is a behavioral speech therapy trial for individuals who have suffered a stroke on the left side of the brain and have difficulty speaking. The name of this disorder is called "aphasia." Individuals in this study will receive one of two treatments. The first is a phonological (sound level) treatment and the second is a semantic (word level) treatment. Individuals in both groups will receive 60 hours of therapy for free (2 hours/day, 5 days/week, 6 weeks).

Purpose: The ultimate goal of anomia treatment should be to achieve gains in exemplars trained in the therapy session as well as generalization to untrained exemplars and contexts. Phonomotor treatment (PMT) has shown such effects but has not yet been compared to a commonly used lexical/semantic based treatment (semantic feature analysis; SFA). Methods: In a between group randomized controlled trial, 58 persons with aphasia characterized by anomia and phonological dysfunction were randomized to receive 56-60 hours of intensively delivered treatment over 6 weeks with testing pre-, post- and three-months post treatment termination.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes