Clinical Trial: Phonological Treatment Paired With Intensive Speech Therapy Promotes Reading Recovery in Chronic Aphasia

Study Status: Active, not recruiting
Recruit Status: Active, not recruiting
Study Type: Interventional

Official Title: Phonological Treatment Paired With Intensive Speech Therapy Promotes Reading Recovery in Chronic Aphasia

Brief Summary: Participants will receive either intensive phonology or semantic feature analysis treatment for 16 weeks to improve naming, reading, and writing in individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia.

Detailed Summary:

A total of 20 clients will be enrolled in the study, 10 will be in control group and 10 in experimental group and will be assigned in a random order. All clients will be given standardized tests pre and post treatment to assess comprehension, expressive, reading and writing skills.

Participants MRI reports will be collected to understand lesion sites and language outcomes. Both experimental and control group will receive individual, group and reading for an hour each. Participants in experimental group will receive an hour of individual phonology therapy. The participants in control group will receive traditional individual therapy. Both groups will receive group and an hour of reading aloud.

Experimental Group Therapy will involve visual and auditory drills. It will also be structured, sequential, repetitive, and cumulative. The sounds targeted during treatment will be separated into five sets which will include 5 sounds - one short vowel and four consonants. For consonants that have two sounds, initially the hard sound will be taught. The soft sound will be taught when the participant is taught the different spelling rules (i.e. "silent 'e'"). Each set will be targeted for three weeks or until mastery.

When teaching a new set of sounds, the clinician will teach the participant the placement of the articulators and the name of the letter. The participant will copy each letter in the set while receiving auditory bombardment of the sound. During auditory bombardment, the participant is encouraged to produce the sound.

Procedure: The participants in the experimental group will receive an hour of phonology treatment, an hour of group therapy, and an hour of reading. The participants in the control group will receive a
Sponsor: Austin Speech Labs

Current Primary Outcome:

  • Improvement in reading single words as measured by PALPA [ Time Frame: 16 weeks ]
    Reading of single words will be testing using Psycholinguistic Assessment of Language Processing (PALPA) subtests
  • Improvement in naming as measured by BNT [ Time Frame: 16 weeks ]
    picture naming (nouns) will be tested using Boston Naming Test (BNT)


Original Primary Outcome: Same as current

Current Secondary Outcome: Improvement in spontaneous speech measured by WAB [ Time Frame: 16 weeks ]

spontaneous speech will be tested for information content and fluency using standardized measuring tools like Western Aphasia Battery(WAB) picture description to analyze increase in spontaneous speech


Original Secondary Outcome: Same as current

Information By: Austin Speech Labs

Dates:
Date Received: February 17, 2016
Date Started: June 2015
Date Completion: June 2017
Last Updated: June 9, 2016
Last Verified: June 2016