Assessment and Treatment of Abstract Words in Aphasia Dallin Bailey, PhD, CCC-SLP Assistant Professor Department of Communication Disorders Auburn University Auburn, AL dallinbailey@auburn.edu Scan code to download presentation. Or send me an email. I have no relevant financial or nonfinancial relationship(s) within the products or services described, reviewed, evaluated or compared in this presentation.

Learning Outcomes As a result of participation, the attendee will be able to describe methods for assessing and treating abstract word retrieval deficits in aphasia As a result of participation, the attendee will be able to describe methods for assessing and treating abstract verb-based sentence production in aphasia As a result of participation, the attendee will be able to discuss potential ways for maximizing generalization in abstract word retrieval and sentence production treatments for aphasia SHAA Convention 2019

Assessing abstract word retrieval deficits in aphasia Keep psycholinguistic variables in mind Example psycholinguistic variables (word characteristics affecting word processing and retrieval from the mind): age of acquisition: the age at which people think they learned a word (early: ball, car, play, wash. Later: allegory, calculus, etiquette, audit) word frequency: how often a word appears in a corpus (very large collection of words) compared to other words high frequency: be, have, do, know, say, people, time, year. low frequency: adage, abyss, abstain, airlift word length: the length of a word, typically in phonemes or letters history vs antidisestablishmentarianism lexicality: the status of a word as being a real dictionary word, or a nonsense word ferb vs rain SHAA Convention 2019

Psycholinguistic variables More psycholinguistic variables imageability: the ease with which the referent of a word (the concept the word represents) can be imagined in the mind (how picturable it is) high = house or apple low = fact or hope concreteness: closely related to imageability; the ease with which the referent of a word can be experienced with the physical senses; how tangible (touchable) it is Usually the same, but emotions are an example that may vary (anger is low concreteness, but high imageability) Either may be used as a proxy for “abstract” SHAA Convention 2019

Compromise http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/school/MRCDatabase/uwa_mrc.htm No word can be favorable to processing on all psycholinguistic variables, so we shouldn’t say that low concreteness words should just be avoided Other presentation: frequency is a major variable we should consider, and high frequency words includes a large amount of low concreteness words, like remember, decide, and appreciate SHAA Convention 2019

Beyond picture naming: methods for assessing naming Generative naming Constrained by contextual or other semantic category Contexts as in Sandberg & Kiran Levin’s verb categories Naming to definitions or to synonyms or antonyms (McNeil et al., 1998) Sentence completion/fill in the blank Icons (https://thenounproject.com/) and pictures as stand ins, maybe combined with a phonemic cue (starts with…) or a definition cue Any other ideas? SHAA Convention 2019

Sentence Frame SHAA Convention 2019

Help for clinician Hard to come up with on the spot Sheet developed using https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ Click “collocates” Type a target verb (like decide) in the first box Select the collocates you would like The numbers refer to the location of words in relation to the target word (up to four words before the target, or four words after the target) put in _n* in the collocates box Click “Find collocates” SHAA Convention 2019

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References SHAA Convention 2019 Bailey, D. J. (2016). Development of an Aphasia Treatment Targeting Verbs with Low Concreteness. (PhD dissertation), The University of Utah, Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptions of perceptual symbols. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(04), 637-660. doi:10.1017/s0140525x99532147 Bunker, L. D., Wright, S., & Wambaugh, J. L. (2018). Language Changes Following Combined Aphasia and Apraxia of Speech Treatment. Am J Speech Lang Pathol, 27(1S), 323-335. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-16-0193 Edmonds, L. A. (2014). Tutorial for Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST): Detailed Description of the Treatment Protocol with Corresponding Theoretical Rationale. SIG 2 Perspectives on Neurophysiology and Neurogenic Speech and Language Disorders, 24, 78-88. doi:10.1044/nnsld24.3.78 Edmonds, L. A., & Babb, M. (2011). Effect of Verb Network Strengthening Treatment in Moderate-to-Severe Aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(2), 131-145. Gierut, J. A. 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Aphasiology, 12(7-8), 575-585. doi:10.1080/02687039808249559 McNeil, M. R., Doyle, P. J., Spencer, K. A., Goda, A. J., Flores, D., & Small, S. L. (1997). A double-blind, placebo-controlled study of pharmacological and behavioural treatment of lexical-semantic deficits in aphasia. Aphasiology, 11(4-5), 385-400. doi:10.1080/02687039708248479 McNeil, M. R., Small, S. L., Masterson, R. J., & Fossett, T. R. D. (1995). Behavioral and Pharmacological Treatment of Lexical-Semantic Deficits in a Single Patient with Primary Progressive Aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 4. Mestres-Misse, A., Munte, T. F., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2014). Mapping concrete and abstract meanings to new words using verbal contexts. Second Language Research, 30(2), 191-223. doi:10.1177/0267658313512668 Newton, P. K., & Barry, C. (1997). Concreteness Effects in Word Production but Not Word Comprehension in Deep Dyslexia. 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Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 46(3), 591-607. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2003/047) Wambaugh, J. L., & Ferguson, M. (2007). Application of semantic feature analysis to retrieval of action names in aphasia. J Rehabil Res Dev, 44(3), 381-394. Wambaugh, J. L., Mauszycki, S., & Wright, S. (2014). Semantic feature analysis: Application to confrontation naming of actions in aphasia. Aphasiology, 28(1), 1-24. doi:10.1080/02687038.2013.845739 Wambaugh, J. L., Nessler, C., & Wright, S. (2013). Modified response elaboration training: application to procedural discourse and personal recounts. Am J Speech Lang Pathol, 22(2), S409-425. doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2013/12-0063) Wambaugh, J. L., Wright, S., Mauszycki, S. C., Nessler, C., & Bailey, D. J. (2018). Combined aphasia and apraxia of speech treatment (CAAST): Systematic replications in the development of a novel treatment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 1-15. doi:10.1080/17549507.2016.1267262 Wambaugh, J. L., Wright, S., Nessler, C., & Mauszycki, S. C. (2014). Combined Aphasia and Apraxia of Speech Treatment (CAAST): effects of a novel therapy. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 57(6), 2191-2207. doi:10.1044/2014_JSLHR-L-14-0004 SHAA Convention 2019

Questions? Email: dallinbailey@auburn.edu SHAA Convention 2019