The purpose of the study is to determine if speech therapy can be enhanced by Aerobic Exercise (AE). Investigators will use a single subject design to determine if aphasia therapy result in greater gains when combined with aerobic exercise.
Aim 1: To test the feasibility of a research study that combines speech therapy with aerobic exercise (AE). Participants will be alternately assigned to receiving AE during during a 30 minute break from speech therapy. Aim 2: To test the preliminary efficacy of combining speech therapy with AE to promote language improvements in aphasia. These data will inform the design of a large, controlled clinical trial
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
8
There will be three blocks of treatment, ideally three times a week 100 minutes per day. Treatment will target impairment-directed speech language therapy (SLT) approaches or compensatory-directed SLT in each of the three treatment blocks. Half of the participants will receive the impairment-directed SLT. Half of the participants, will receive treatment that will target compensatory-directed speech language therapy approaches that are focused on functional communication skills in the conversational context. Methods of treatment will include PACE (Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (Davis, 2005), conversational coaching (Hopper et al., 2002), and supported conversation (Kagan et al., 2001). The clinician will model and encourage all (verbal and non verbal) modalities of communication.
30 minutes background music only
NYU Langone Medical Center
New York, New York, United States
The Aphasia Communication Outcome Measure (ACOM) (Hula et al., 2015)
Patient-reported outcome measure of communicative functioning for persons with aphasia
Time frame: 24 Weeks
The Boston Naming Test
The examiner begins with Item 1 and continues through Item 60, unless the patient is in distress or refuses to continue. The patient is told to tell the examiner the name of each picture and is given about 20 seconds to respond for each trial. The examiner writes down the patient's responses in detail, using codes. If the patient fails to give the correct response, the examiner at her or his discretion may give the patient a phonemic cue, which is the initial sound of the target word. After the patient completes the test, the examiner scores each item + or - according to the response coding and scoring procedures
Time frame: 24 Weeks
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There will be three blocks of treatment and the AE will take place for all participants during one or two treatment blocks (randomly assigned), threetimes a week (sessions are three times a week prior to speech therapy but may be one or two times a week if a session is missed or may be up to four or five times a week if one or two sessions are missed and rescheduled due to weather or other circumstances).