Conversational Repetition and Aphasia: A Case Study

Easter, Kyle P.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/25774 Copy

Description

Title

Conversational Repetition and Aphasia: A Case Study

Author(s)

Easter, Kyle P.

Contributor(s)

Hengst, Julie

Issue Date

2011-05-20

Keyword(s)

• Repetition
• Aphasia

Abstract

Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder affecting one million Americans (National Institutes of Health, 2010). Caused by brain damage from stroke or other injuries, aphasia disrupts individuals’ understanding and use of language. Speech-language pathologists provide therapy for clients with aphasia designed to improve language use and functional communication. A fundamental principal and assumed therapeutic mechanism for therapy is repetition, and most therapy tasks involve clinicians structuring clients’ repetitions of target items. This study is designed to examine the therapeutic value of conversational repetition for individuals with aphasia (Hengst, Duff, & Dettmer, 2010). Contrasting with clinician directed tasks, this protocol supports conversational interaction around a set of targets using a game-like barrier task (Hengst et al., 2010). The task involves two participants (client with aphasia and clinician-partner) separated by a partial barrier. Players have identical boards with twelve spaces for twelve cards (representing places, concepts, people). The director’s cards are prearranged on his/her board before each game, and he/she describes to the matcher where to place each card. In this protocol, pairs play the game sixty times (six trials, 10 sessions) with one clinician-partner, and thirty times (six trials, 5 sessions) with a second clinician-partner. Data analysis (see Hengst, et al., 2010) includes: 1) assessment of collaborative referencing (accurate card placement, development of specific labels for each card, streamlining of labels across trials); 2) discourse analysis of patterns of conversational repetition of labels for target cards during game play. “Butch”, the client-participant for this study, is a 64 year old woman with severe aphasia. Butch completed the full protocol with 99% correct card placement. The paper will present the protocol, analysis of collaborative referencing, and preliminary discourse analysis of repetition from sessions 1, 4, 7 and 10.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/25774

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