City Research Online

Abstract

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of two intensive therapy methods: Constraint- 4 Induced Aphasia Therapy (CIAT) and semantic therapy (BOX).

Method: Nine patients with chronic fluent aphasia participated in a therapy programme 6 to establish behavioral treatment outcomes. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups (CIAT or BOX).

Results: Intensive therapy significantly improved verbal communication. However, BOX 9 treatment showed a more pronounced improvement on two communication measures, namely on a standardized assessment for verbal communication, the Amsterdam Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (Blomert, Koster, & Kean, 1995) and on a subjective rating scale, the Communicative Effectiveness Index (Lomas et al., 1989). All 13 participants significantly improved on one (or more) subtests of the Aachen Aphasia Test (Graetz et al., 1992), an impairment-focused assessment. There was a treatment-specific effect. Therapy with BOX had a significant effect on language comprehension and on semantics, while of CIAT affected language production and phonology.

Conclusion: The findings indicate that in patients with fluent aphasia (1) intensive treatment has a significant effect on language and verbal communication, (2) intensive therapy results in selective treatment effects and (3) an intensive semantic treatment shows a more striking mean improvement on verbal communication in comparison to communication-based CIAT-treatment.

Publication Type:	Article
Publisher Keywords:	Fluent aphasia, constraint-induced aphasia therapy, semantic treatment
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics R Medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads