Carl A. Coelho

Application of Semantic Feature Analysis as a Treatment for Aphasic Dysnomia

Despite agreement that dysnomia affects virtually every aphasic patient, there is no consensus about the purpose and effectiveness of techniques to treat it. Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) is a treatment technique designed to improve retrieval of conceptual information by accessing semantic networks. This paper reports the application of SFA as a treatment for aphasic dysnomia to a subject with Brocas aphasia. SFA was effective for improving confrontation naming and for generalizing the improvement to untreated pictures. However, no generalization to connected speech was seen on the measures used in this study. Discussion will focus on possible reasons for these results.

Impairments of discourse abilities and executive functions in traumatically brain-injured adults

Preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation of the potential relationship between narrative discourse performance and executive functions in adults with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are reported. Narrative stories were elicited from 32 adults with TBI. Stories were analysed at three levels: sentence production, intersentential cohesive adequacy, and story episode structure. These measures were then correlated with scores from the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the primary measure of executive function. A significant correlation was noted between a factor score from the WCST and the measure of story structure, but not sentence production or cohesive adequacy. These results suggest that executive functions may be a promising avenue to pursue in the search for underlying causal factors of narrative discourse dysfunction and, therefore to better delineate the nature of communicative deficits secondary to TBI.

Discourse production deficits following traumatic brain injury: A critical review of the recent literature

Abstract This review analyses several recent studies of discourse deficits subsequent to traumatic brain injury. The review describes methodological problems related to incomplete subject descriptions, use of different discourse elicitation tasks and analyses, and examines the findings from each study by level of analysis. The limitations of these findings are discussed and general conclusions regarding discourse abilities following traumatic brain injury are offered. Implications for future research are also presented.

AN INVESTIGATION OF A METHOD OF SIMPLIFIED SCORING FOR THE KAUFMAN HAND MOVEMENTS TEST AS A MEASURE OF LIMB APRAXIA

A simplified, 3-category method for scoring the Kaufman Hand Movements test was devised to replace a previously used, more complex 21-category scoring method. The concurrent validity and diagnostic sensitivity of the rescored test as a measure of limb apraxia were investigated in a reanalysis of the test protocols of 23 aphasic adults. Using the Limb Apraxia Test as the criterion measure, a Pearson r of .71 and predictive validity of 100% were obtained. These results encourage further investigation of the Kaufman Hand Movements test as an efficient measure of limb apraxia.