The contrast between cueing and/or observation in therapy for verb retrieval in post-stroke aphasia

Studies measuring treatment efficacy for post-stroke verb anomia are scarce. These studies mainly assessed the efficacy of three strategies: semantic, phonological and sensorimotor. Following these previous treatments, the performance of most participants improved on treated verbs, while improvement on untreated stimuli and tasks was inconsistent.

This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of a semantic-phonological strategy and a sensorimotor strategy for verb anomia in post-stroke aphasia.

A multiple baseline single-subject experimental study was conducted with two participants (9-37 years post-stroke). Four phases were completed: (1) background assessment, (2) baselines, (3) therapy, and (4) follow-up. Three equivalent lists of verbs were created for each participant and two of them were trained with a different strategy: action observation+semantic-phonological cues, action observation alone. The stimuli of the third list (control list) were not treated.

The semantic-phonological cueing strategy led to a significant improvement. No improvement was observed after action observation. No generalization to untreated verbs was found.

Verb naming can be enhanced by semantic/phonological cueing. In addition, other studies (clinical, neuroimaging, etc.) are needed to document the effect of action observation for the treatment of verb anomia.

The reader will be able to (1) describe semantic-phonological therapies used in post-stroke verb anomia, (2) describe sensorimotor therapies used in post-stroke verb anomia, and (3) identify factors contributing to the efficacy of therapies to improve action naming in aphasia.