Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine how 2 methods known to improve naming impairment in aphasia (i.e., retrieval practice and errorless learning) affect lexical access. We hypothesized that instances of naming during retrieval practice use and strengthen item-specific connections in each of 2 stages of lexical access: Stage 1,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and pilot a novel treatment framework called "BEARS" (Balancing Effort, Accuracy, and Response Speed). People with aphasia (PWA) have been shown to maladaptively balance speed and accuracy during language tasks. BEARS is designed to train PWA to balance speed-accuracy trade-offs and…

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by language and cognitive decline. Word-retrieval deficits are the most common PPA symptom and contribute to impaired spoken expression. Intense semantic interventions show promise for improving word retrieval in people with PPA. In addition, people with PPA may learn…

Background: The ability to generate words that follow certain constraints, or verbal fluency, is a sensitive indicator of neurocognitive impairment, and is impacted by a variety of variables. Aims: To investigate the effect of post-stroke aphasia, elicitation category and linguistic variables on verbal fluency performance. Methods &…

This study evaluates spelling errors in the three subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA): agrammatic (PPA-G), logopenic (PPA-L), and semantic (PPA-S). Forty-one PPA patients and 36 age-matched healthy controls were administered a test of spelling. The total number of errors and types of errors in spelling to dictation of regular words,…

This study analysed the capacity of the Catalan and Spanish versions of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) to distinguish between normal and pathological aging. Both versions of the test were administered to 45 bilingual subjects: 15 healthy aging subjects, 15 patients with mild cognitive impairment and 15 patients with Alzheimer's disease. To…

The goal of this study was to address the relationship between language proficiency, language impairment and rehabilitation in bilingual Russian-English individuals with aphasia. As a first step, we examined two Russian-English patients' pre-stroke language proficiency using a detailed and comprehensive language use and history questionnaire and…

We report on the case of an elderly bilingual woman presenting with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia. The participant's native language was Friulian (L1), a predominantly oral Romance language, and her second language was Italian (L2), formally learned at primary school in oral and written forms. We investigated her linguistic abilities…

The history of the evolution of language assessments for children and adults with language disorders is described briefly. This is followed by a discussion on language assessment of the clinical population with an emphasis on linguistic profiling, illustrated through the Linguistic Profile Test. Discourse analysis, in particular, is highlighted…

This study presents two cases with fluent aphasia in Telugu with semantic dementia and post-stroke fluent aphasia. Comparable scores were obtained on the conventional neuropsychological and language tests that were administered on the two cases. Both cases demonstrated fluent, grammatical and well-articulated speech with little content, impaired…

The report presents information from a survey of the needs and characteristics of children with severe communication disorders in Ontario and the programs available to serve them. It is explained that information was gathered from structured interviews with principals, teachers, and 28 parents of language handicapped children, as well as visits to…