Single Search Term Gesture Therapy

Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects many adults and families. Aphasia occurs as a result of damage to the language-specific areas of the brain (ASHA, 2014). Individuals with aphasia may experience difficulties with oral language, receptive language, memory, attention writing, and reading. There are a myriad of approaches designed for the treatment of aphasia. Two treatment approaches, Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (P.A.C.E.) and Constraint Induced Language Therapy (C.I.L.T.), and their efficacy in regard to available evidence will be discussed below.

Language is an ability that many of us take for granted in everyday life. For those with aphasia, it is a daily struggle to overcome and effective communication is a goal to strive for. Aphasia patients are able to think, perhaps as well as the average person, but they simply cannot convey their ideas or thoughts easily. The Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination is an excellent examination for the diagnosis of the presence and type of aphasia, and for the location of brain damage. The Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia has been shown to be the most comprehensive assessment of the overall patient’s strengths and weaknesses in regard to language; it also allows for physicians to predict recovery accurately. Though it is no longer as popular or applicable as newer diagnostic tests, such as the BDAE, it is still an accurate assessment for aphasia. I think this is the paradox in neurological assessment: as technological advances improve, older assessments are becoming invalidated- though they are not inaccurate assessments. New advances and knowledge are being acquired in medicine every day, therefore there is always room for improvement (Holland, 2008). One of the biggest cons to the two batteries I mentioned in this paper is the fact that they are both time consuming- for both the patient and the

Sundin, K., Jansson, L., & Norberg, A. (2000). Communicating with people with stroke and aphasia: understanding through sensation without words. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 9(4), 481-488.

Clients suffering from stroke have slow speech loss of memory, speechless one side of their body paralysed which cause restriction to their movement.

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects a person’s ability to understand oral and written language, speaking and writing. It is estimated that one third of those who survive stroke have aphasia (Department of Health, 2007). Most patients with aphasia exhibit spontaneous recovery, usually in the first 2-3 months following stroke onset (Godecke, Hird, Lalor, Rai, & Phillips, 2012). However, 30-40% of these patients may experience long-term post-stroke aphasia (Bakheit et al., 2007). Continued rehabilitative treatments with the speech and language pathologists (SLPs) are not as significantly effective due to the current high demands on limited resources (Palmer et al., 2012), which reduced the availability of face-to-face speech

Stroke is a leading cause of adult disability and patients face multiple challenges, such as weakness/paralysis on one side of the body, social disability, inability to walk and self-care, the decline in community participation, and the decline in cognitive and emotional functioning. These challenges impede them from independently performing their daily activities related to work, school, parenting, or leisure. Evidence Based Practice shows that the best way to treat individuals with stroke is through the use of the mental practice. Mental practice is a training method during which a person cognitively rehearses a physical skill in the absence of overt, physical movements for the purpose of enhancing motor skill performance. It is a practice

W.C., a 26 year 11 month old woman, was brought to the Florida Atlantic University-Communication Disorders Clinic (FAU-CDC) by her boyfriend for a Speech-Language Evaluation. She was referred to the FAU-CDC by her neurologist for word finding difficulties and a possible articulation disorder after a left hemisphere hemorrhagic stroke one month ago. According to her boyfriend, W.C.’s symptoms began immediately following her stroke and are characterized by word finding difficulties, slowed and choppy speech, and mispronunciation of certain consonants that is affecting intelligibility along with a strained voice.

The effects of two treatments for word retrieval impairments in aphasic individuals. With the use of errorless naming treatment (ENT) and gestural facilitation of naming (GES). The effects of the two treatments that were used for a daily picture naming/gesture production probe measure and in standardized aphasia tests and communication rating scales were administered across phases of treatment. (p.235)

A contributing factor to this is how difficult it is for people with aphasia to produce sentences that flow smoothly and to connect their sentences. Computer software is helpful in speech therapy because it allows the patients to be able to record themselves speaking, replay it so they can hear exactly what they sound like, and be able to string together partial sentences. This computer program helps the patient produce sentences as they are being formulated. The goal of this program is to “investigate the utility of a two-step treatment that supplements improvements achieved from the use of the software with explicit structural treatment.” (Aphasiology 2009). The results of this study show that this specific approach improves the speech of patients suffering from aphasia, even chronic and non-fluent

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect that mental practice would have on learning a sequential task for the lower limb. This was a single case study regarding an individual with a hemiparesis from a stroke. The study took place in a research laboratory of a university-affiliated rehabilitation center. The participant was a 38-year-old man who had suffered a left hemorrhagic subcortical stroke four months prior to the experiment (Jackson, Doyon, Richards, & Malouin, 2004). The subject was required to practice a serial response time task with the lower limb in three distinct training phases over a period of five weeks: two weeks of physical practice, one week of combined physical and mental practice, and then two weeks of mental practice alone (Jackson et al., 2004). The main outcome measure included the Kinesthetic and Visual Imagery Questionnaire (KVIQ). The KVIQ includes a series of 10 gestures and is adapted for older patients and patients with motor deficits. In this assessment, the patients rate their ability to elicit mental images of the action on two 5-point scales (5 = high imagery; 1 = low imagery). One scale rates the clarity of the image, and the other rates the intensity at which they can feel themselves performing the movement. Utilizing physical practice alone, the patient’s average response time did improve during the first five days, but then failed to show further improvement during the remaining days of physical practice. The combination of mental and physical practice yielded additional improvement; whereas, the following two weeks of mental practice alone resulted in minimal improvement in performance (Jackson et al., 2004). The findings from this case-study showed that when mental and physical practices are combined,

Five of the 6 demonstrated semantic impairments on 4 subtests of the Psycholinguistic Assessment of Language Processing in Aphasia rest (PALMPA) and the Pyramids and Palm Trees test (PAPT), demonstrating lexical retrieval impairment and not phonological output lexicon impairment.

Through the completion of the study, the results may show that there is greater cognitive improvement for individuals with strokes if a specific intervention type is used through occupational therapy. This would benefit the occupational therapy profession because it would provide evidence through research for using a specific intervention type. Occupational therapy is grounded in evidence based practice, so this study could guide therapists as they choose treatments for their patients, with research to show that there is a benefit in their treatment choices. This would also benefit individuals recovering from strokes. If therapists have research showing a larger benefit through using a specific intervention type, and subsequently use the intervention type, there is a higher likelihood that the stroke patients will show greater improvements. While there are economic, physical, and psychological risks for the study participants, the risks are minimal for the participants. There is no outstanding risks anticipated, but there are professional gains anticipated, which rationalizes moving forward with the proposed

Background and Purpose. Stroke patients with visual neglect can be treated with mirror therapy to improve neglect and function. Previous studies have shown improvement of neglect and function in stroke patients who are given mirror therapy on the upper extremity only. This research will exam whether mirror therapy of both the upper and lower extremity can show greater improvement than if mirror therapy is performed

Aphasia is a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. For most people, these are parts of the left side (hemisphere) of the brain. Aphasia usually occurs suddenly, often as the result of a stroke or head injury, but it may also develop slowly, as in the case of a brain tumor. The disorder impairs the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. “Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage”. (Sarno 23)

After having a stroke the most common impairments are weakness on one side of the body, joint pain, muscle stiffness or spasms spasticity, problems with sense of touch or ability to feel different temperatures, pain, numbness, tingling in your limbs, and trouble with starting or coordinating body movements, also known as apraxia. When I had my stroke my cognitive processes and emotions caused the other problems that I encountered; these were speech and language problems, memory and cognitive problems, perception, vision, and emotional problems such as fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, and depression. In order to overcome all of the roadblocks that were placed in my path, I was compelled to work and try not to actually think about it for