Browsing by Subject "aleksia"

Background and aims: Aphasia is commonly associated with deficits in all linguistic modalities.In mild, chronic aphasia syndromes difficulties in reading can interfere with tasks of everyday life. The rehabilitation of reading difficulties caused by a general linguistic deficit is closely related to the rehabilitation of spoken language, especially in the early stages. Partly due to the limited resources granted to speech therapy, rehabilitation seldom proceeds to reading in its own right. Research has shown that rehabilitation of reading as such can however be beneficial to more general linguistic abilities. In this study, the quality and responsiveness to treatment of a sublexical reading deficit related to mild, chronic conduction aphasia were examined. The aim was to investigate, whether a sublexical therapy method and in particular text-level reading practice were effective in enhancing the fluency of reading or more general linguistic abilities. Methods: A 37-year-old man with mild, chronic conduction aphasia and resulting phonological alexia participated in the study. The intervention consisted of 17 training sessions (total of40 hours) of speech therapy, during which independent practice of repetitive reading that lasted for 11 weeks was started. Therapy consisted of phonological and word-level repetition and naming tasks combining the auditive and written modalities. Data consisted of linguistic tasks collected before, during and after the practice period. The effects of the intervention were evaluated by examining oral reading speed and accuracy of connected text and nonwords. More general phonological and linguistic abilities were examined through auditive repetition and auditive memory tasks. Results and discussion: The reading deficit reflected a more general linguistic difficulty that seemed to originate in auditive processing. Difficulties in reading seemed to arise from weakened phonological activation of word forms. No clinically significant changes were observed after the rehabilitation period. Still, positive changes were noted that imply the rehabilitation can be efficient when carried out through a longer period. Reading speed increased in nonword reading task, but speed of reading connected text increased steadily through the whole study period. A positive change in oral reading speed was observed in first readings of practice texts that might imply a more consistent enhancement during a longer training interval. No rehabilitative effect was apparent in auditive repetition or auditive memory, even though individual tasks improved. The results of this case study imply that repetitive reading ought to be further investigated as a reading rehabilitation method for persons with mild phonological reading deficits. Considering more general phonological rehabilitation, systematic methods could enhance the effectiveness of practice.