Authors:

Howard, D., Patterson, K., Franklin, S., Orchard-Lisle, V. & Morton, J.

Reference:

Year of publication:

1985

CBU number:

1888

Abstract:

The effects of two therapy methods in the treatment of picture naming problems are compared, using a within-patient design with twelve adult patients with chronic acquired aphasia. We contrast techniques that require the patient to process the meaning corresponding to the picture name (‘semantic treastment’) with those that provide the patients with information about the phonological form of the name (‘phonological treatment’). With each method, patients either had four sessions of treatment over one week, or eight sessions over two weeks. Both methods caused day-by-day improvement that was specific to the actual items treated. Both methods resulted in significant improvement in naming when this was measured one week after the end of treatment, with a small but significant advantage for the semantic treatment; this is mainly due to improvement that generalises to untreated items. We conclude that specific and theoretically motivated treatment methods can cause significant improvement in the word retrieval ability of patients with chronic aphasia.