Browsing by Author "Elo, Laura"

Background and aims. Aphasia is a linguistic disorder most commonly caused by stroke. Aphasia manifests itself as difficulties in understanding and producing spoken or written language. Rehabilitation from aphasia requires the ability to learn. Previous studies have shown that individuals with chronic aphasia are able to learn and remember novel vocabulary in varying degrees. In addition, studies have shown that self-repair of speech is interrelated with linguistic recovery. However, the relationship between self-repair of connected speech and novel word acquisition in the non-chronic and chronic stages of aphasia has not previously been studied. The objective of this thesis is to describe the self-repair of connected speech and novel word learning ability in aphasic individuals and to determine whether self-repair and the ability to learn novel words are interrelated in the subacute (0–3 months) and chronic (12 months) stages of aphasia. Participants and methods. Four aphasic individuals were examined 0–3 months and again 12 months post-stroke within the Opi Sanoja research project at the University of Helsinki. Participants completed a computer-assisted learning experiment in which their aim was to learn the associations between novel words and images. Connected speech was collected from participants’ speech samples in a picture narration task, a stroke narrative and a thematic interview. The speech samples were transcribed according to the conventions used in conversation analysis and self-repairs were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively at both points in time. The relationship between self-repair and novel word acquisition was analyzed on a case-by-case basis and a group-level basis using scatter graphs and regression plots. Results and conclusions. Self-repairs of connected speech decreased and changed during the first year after stroke for all participants. The ability to learn novel words varied among the participants, but some participants were able to learn new words in the subacute and chronic stages of aphasia. On a case-by-case basis, no relationship was found between self-repair of connected speech and the ability to learn novel words in the subacute or chronic stages of aphasia. The learning ability in the subacute stage did not appear to predict the amount of self-repairs, nor the length of non-repaired problem sequences in the chronic stage. At the group level, in the subacute stage, there was a weak positive correlation between learning ability and self-correction rates, which turned negative in the chronic stage. There appeared to be a weak negative correlation between the length of non-repaired problem sequences and the ability to learn in the subacute stage, which disappeared in the chronic stage. However, group-level results were unreliable due to small sample size.