Communication is fundamental to the human condition but is impaired in life-altering ways for more than 2.4 million individuals with aphasia in the United States. Individuals with aphasia identify discourse-level communication (i.e. language in use) as a high priority for treatment. The central premise of most aphasia treatments is that restoring…

Purpose: Individuals with primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) have apraxia of speech (AOS) in which disruptions in articulation or prosody predominate the speech pattern, referred to, respectively, as phonetic or prosodic subtypes. Many develop aphasia and/or dysarthria. Past research has demonstrated that simple temporal acoustic…

Purpose: Aphasia is a complex, neurogenic language disorder, with different aphasia syndromes hallmarked by impairment in fluency, auditory comprehension, naming, and/or repetition. Broad, standardized assessments of language domains and specific language and cognitive assessments provide a holistic impairment profile of a person with aphasia.…

Background: While implementation studies in aphasia management have shown promising improvements to clinical practice, it is currently unknown if aphasia implementation outcomes are sustained and what factors may influence clinical sustainability. Aims: To evaluate the sustainment (i.e., sustained improvement of aphasia management practices and…

Purpose: Aphasia fluency is multiply determined by underlying impairments in lexical retrieval, grammatical formulation, and speech production. This poses challenges for establishing a reliable and feasible tool to measure fluency in the clinic. We examine the reliability and validity of perceptual ratings and clinical perspectives on the utility…

Purpose: Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices…

Background: People with aphasia (PWA) can experience functional numeracy difficulties, that is, problems understanding or using numbers in everyday life, which can have numerous negative impacts on their daily lives. There is growing interest in designing functional numeracy interventions for PWA; however, there are limited suitable assessments…

Background: A number of practice barriers (e.g., time constraints, patient comorbidities and competing demands) exist as regards the evidence-based assessment of adult language within the acute hospital setting. There is need for an evidence-based, diagnostically validated, adaptable, comprehensive and efficient aphasia assessment. The Brisbane…

Background: People with aphasia rely on gesture more than healthy controls to get their message across, but use a limited range of gesture types. Gesture therapy is thus a potential avenue of intervention for people with aphasia. However, currently no gesture assessment evaluates how they use gesture. Such a tool could inform therapy targets and…

Background: Severe word production difficulties remain one of the most challenging clinical symptoms to treat in individuals with jargon aphasia. Clinically, it is important to determine why some individuals with jargon aphasia improve following therapy when others do not. We report a therapy study with AM, an individual with severe neologistic…

Purpose: The StartReact effect, whereby movements are elicited by loud, startling acoustic stimuli (SAS), allows the evaluation of movements when initiated through involuntary circuitry, before auditory feedback. When StartReact is applied during poststroke upper extremity movements, individuals exhibit increased muscle recruitment, reaction…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to verify the equivalence of 2 alternate test forms with nonoverlapping content generated by an item response theory (IRT)--based computer-adaptive test (CAT). The Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT; Roach, Schwartz, Martin, Grewal, & Brecher, 1996) was utilized as an item bank in a prospective, independent…

Background: The semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is typically associated with a loss of semantic knowledge. Research on the semantic processing in the other clinical variants of PPA is, however, rather sparse and limited to off-line behavioural studies. Aims: This study aimed to investigate verbal semantic processing in…

Background: Discourse assessment and treatment in aphasia rehabilitation is a priority focus for a range of stakeholder groups. However, a significant majority of speech and language therapists (SLTs) infrequently conduct discourse analysis, and do not feel competent in doing so. Known barriers identified in other countries, specifically a lack of…

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the small but growing literature on the rehabilitation of language for older adults, as well as evaluate the clinical utility of a functional approach to language assessment. The study included an assessment-based response profile that informed individualized treatment targets and prompt selection,…