The Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia Quotient

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

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

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.

Nearly one million individuals within the United States experience aphasia resulting from a stroke. The website for the American Heart Association states that strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. They are often referred to as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). This occurs when the blood flow to the brain has been either stopped or interrupted. The deprivation of blood flow and oxygen to the brain results in a stroke. Around 41.2 percent of individuals who suffered from a stroke will have aphasia (Guyomard et al., 2009). Manasco (2014) stated that aphasia is a deficit in language abilities resulting from the brain. It is broken down into, two categories fluent and non-fluent. Individuals with aphasia typically suffer from anomia. This is a condition where word retrieval (anomia) is difficult. “Most unimpaired individuals do not need to put forth any effort to express themselves verbally. However,

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) accounts for approximately 30% of all injury-related deaths each year in the U.S. (CDC 2015). Survivors experience a range of disabilities that depend on the location and severity of the lesion, including language impairments referred to as Aphasia. Aphasia does not affect a person’s actual intelligence, however, aphasia will affect a person’s ability to use words and to understand others. Aphasia can affect someone’s ability to speak and comprehend, as well as other abilities from the language part of the brain such as reading and writing. The incidence of aphasia is an estimated 80,000 new cases in the U.S per year, and the prevalence of aphasia is approximately 1 million

Human beings occasionally suffer bad damage to particular parts of their brains. Unfortunately, these injuries may lead to major failure of speech production, understanding language and comprehension which most of the patients suffer it permanently. This impairment is called Aphasia. Gayle (2012) states that people with aphasia fail to understand sentence comprehension although it is a simple sentence. She also mentioned that aphasia patients also have difficulty in reading and understanding speeches. According to Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2011), aphasia is a scientific term used to explained language disorder due to brain injuries caused by diseases or trauma. In other words, aphasia involves partial or total loss of the ability to

Aphasia can cause problems with speaking, listening, reading, writing, understanding speech, and thinking of words when speaking or writing. The exact symptoms involved with a particular patient depends on the type and severity of the injury to the brain. It affects about 20 percent of stroke patients.

The topic of this annotated bibliography is communicating with people who have Aphasia. Aphasia is neurological condition that occurs when the tissues in the left hemisphere of the brain that are responsible for speech, reading and writing are impaired (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013). The main signs of this disorder are: trouble in articulating oneself when speaking, difficulty understanding speech, and problems with reading and writing. Aphasia is usually caused by a stroke, severe head trauma, brain tumors, and brain infections (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013). Aspasia is more common in elderly individuals, The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) states that Aphasia will occur in 15% percent of persons under the age of 65 and will increase to 43% for people that are 85 years of age and older (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013).

The literature review used in this article is from sources that are reliable, up-to-date, and use evidence-based practice to guide their studies. For example, the study was performed using the guidelines provided by the CDC. Additionally, the resources that were used by Chau et al. (2011) were from previous researchers that used evidence-based information to guide them in their own study. The review summarizes knowledge on the dependent and independent variables and their relationship. The dependent variables are identified as the years of experience each participant has along with the two hospitals involved (Chau, Thompson, Twinn, Lee, & Pang, 2011). The independent variable is attributed to overall compliance rate (Chau et al., 2011). The authors’ hypothesized that the overall compliance rates increased with the amount of years of experience of each participant (Chau et al., 2011).

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)

Aphasia is a language disorder that can be the result of a brain injury. An individual that is suffering from aphasia may experience difficulty speaking, writing, reading, or comprehending. There are three different types of Aphasia that differ in various ways. First, Wernicke’s Aphasia is the inability to grasp the meaning of words and sentences that have been produced by another individual. This type of aphasia is also known as “fluent aphasia” or “receptive aphasia”. Wernicke patients’ speech may come across like a jumble of words or jargon, but it is very well articulated and they have no issue producing their own connected speech. If the patient is consecutively making errors, it is common for them to be unaware of their difficulties, and not realize that their sentences don’t make sense. The severity of the disorder varies depending on the patient, and the disorder results form damage in the left posterior temporal region of the brain, which is also known as Wernicke’s area.

The population studied (Lesnecki, 2010) was clearly identified as a convenience sample, with data obtained from “three Northeastern Pennsylvania hospitals” (p. 186). The weakness of a convenience sample is that it can be difficult to control for biases. The author tried to reduce bias in her sample by using inclusion and exclusion criteria, which narrowed membership of the

Upon completion of the data collection, 583 patients were assessed for inclusion into the study, 325 in the 2010 pre-implementation group and 258 in the 2013 post-implementation group. A total of 200 patients were randomized in each group (n=400); however, 69 (35%) and 63 (32%) were excluded from the 2010 group and 2013 group respectively. Sample demographics are described in Table 1.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue one important and fundamental aim: language and the brain are purely inseparable since it allows us to perform essential tasks such as generating, comprehending and expressing speech. With damage to the brain, individuals can no longer perform such tasks which can ultimately lead to many types of language disorders. The focus of this paper is Broca’s aphasia, a language disorder characterized by the inability to produce written and spoken speech. Damage to the brain can cause many types of speech impairments as well as comprehension deficits.