Pairing Word Retrieval and Physical Endurance Tasks to Treat Anomia in People With Aphasia

All data collection will occur at Quality Living (QLI).

The researchers will administer a set of standardized assessments prior to initiating the intervention program to determine eligibility for study participation as well as to gather descriptive information about the language abilities of participants. Assessments will include the Western Aphasia Battery - Revised and the Boston Naming Test. In addition to performing language assessments, participants will respond to demographic and injury-related questions and will identify preferred topics of conversation. The researchers will obtain information about each participant's physical status by referring to the physical therapy assessments and associated documentation completed by a QLI physical therapist shortly after the individual's arrival at QLI.

Intervention will occur five days per week and will take place during participants' regularly scheduled speech therapy sessions. Two intervention sessions will occur daily, one held in the morning and the second held in the afternoon. Depending on the activities performed on a given day, the total time devoted to intervention sessions will be 10 to 30 minutes (i.e., 5 to 15 minutes per session).

During each intervention session, the researchers will measure performance on one or more of the following tasks: (a) five trials of generative naming given a unique category and one-minute response period per trial, (b) distance traveled using an exercise machine for five minutes, (c) generative naming given unique categories and one-minute response periods and distance traveled using an exercise machine when performing both tasks simultaneously for five minutes, (d) number of words generated in five minutes in response to conversational topic prompts, (e) distance traveled when walking for five minutes, and (f) number of words generated in response to conversational topic prompts and distance traveled when walking when performing both tasks simultaneously for five minutes. The first three measures comprise intervention tasks, and the remaining three are generalization measures.

Intervention and generalization sessions will follow an overlapping ABAB or BABA format, with the first day of each phase being an overlap day. Participants will be randomly assigned to begin the intervention either with an A or B phase. On overlap days, the researchers will collect measures on all six intervention and generalization activities, with three being performed during a fifteen-minute morning session and three being performed during a fifteen-minute afternoon session. For participants in the A phase, the researchers will collect measures two times daily for each of the subsequent four days on the generative naming and exercise machine activities performed as independent tasks; for participants in the B phase, the researchers will collect measures two times daily for each of the subsequent four days on the generative naming and exercise machine activities performed as simultaneous tasks. A phase sessions will last ten minutes each, and B phase sessions will last five minutes each. The cycle of A and B phases will repeat throughout a participants inpatient stay at QLI. A QLI physical therapist will be present to monitor safety during performance of physical activities. The researchers will audio record all generative naming and conversational discourse activities for later analysis.

Participants will only perform naming, discourse, and physical endurance tasks that are included as part of their routine speech-language therapy and physical therapy sessions. However, completion of the physical endurance tasks will not occur during the participants' physical therapy sessions; instead, they will occur during speech-language therapy sessions. The naming and discourse tasks will also occur during the participants' speech-language therapy sessions.