Browsing by Author "Palola, Jemina"

Aims of the study. Aphasia can be studied from the aspect of functional communication, in which case the focus is on how a person with aphasia is able to use language in their everyday environment. One way to study the functional communication of people with aphasia is to analyse discourse, as word-finding difficulties, which are common in aphasia, can affect discourse. Discourse can also be studied to determine whether the effects of an intervention are generalized to the level of functional communication. The aim of this thesis is to study the discourse of people with chronic aphasia, elicited using interview questions, in different phases of an intervention consisting of rTMS treatment (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation) and Intensive Language Action Therapy (ILAT). The discourse features which are analysed include lexical diversity (verbs and nouns) and informativeness (correct information units). The results of the discourse analysis are compared to the results of linguistic tests (Boston Naming Test for nouns and Action Naming Test for verbs). Methods. The data consisted of the discourse of three participants. The discourse was elicited using interview questions. All the participants had chronic fluent aphasia. They participated in the University of Helsinki research project “Treatment-Induced Speech and Language Improvement and Neuroplasticity after Stroke”, during which they received both rTMS treatment and ILAT therapy. They were examined four times during the intervention: at baseline, after rTMS treatment period, after combined rTMS and ILAT period, and at follow-up (3 months after the intervention). The discourse samples were analysed using discourse analysis. The chosen measurements were measures of lexical diversity, i. e. verbs and nouns, and measures of information units. The results were analysed visually. In addition, group effect sizes were calculated. Regression lines were used to compare the results of the discourse analysis to the results of linguistic tests. Results and discussion. No clear changes were detected in lexical diversity and informativeness of the discourse of people with chronic aphasia during rTMS and ILAT. Thus, the intervention did not have effect on functional communication at group level. However, there was much variation between the participants as well as between the results of different measures. The efficiency of informativeness increased for all the participants and it also had the largest group effect size. There was a stronger correlation between the use of nouns in discourse and the results of Boston Naming Test than between the use of verbs in discourse and the results of Action Naming Test