Treatment of Wernicke's aphasia with jargon: a case study

This case study concerns an adult with Wernicke's aphasia characterized by neologistic jargon and a severe auditory comprehension deficit. No communicative or linguistic improvements had been observed after eight months poststroke. Up until this time, therapeutic intervention was aimed at managing the patient's rambling communicative style and improving auditory comprehension skills. A therapeutic regimen was introduced that focused on visual/written information and included a hierarchy of visual word and sentence comprehension tasks. All auditory/verbal stimulus presentation was eliminated. After two months on the program, improvement was noted in naming abilities and general ability to communicate in conversation, including a reduction of neologistic jargon and an increase in semantic jargon. No improvement was noted in auditory comprehension. The visual program may have facilitated the patient's general attentional set, thereby possibly contributing to her improvement in communicative style and sensitivity to conversational interactions with others.