Identifying the loci of lexical semantic breakdown in aphasia and the choice of therapy techniques

Abstract

Word finding would be more challenging in a person with aphasia because of a breakdown in lexical semantics. Words may be difficult to locate if they are not stored appropriately or readily available. In addition, the inability to access language could be the result of a weakness in either the lemma node, leading to verbal paraphasia, or the phoneme retrieval, leading to phonemic paraphasia. Commonly used to avoid this lexical semantic gap, cueing allows for clearer communication. SFA and PCA methods are also used to aid in the search for appropriate words. The study was carried out on persons with anomic aphasia. After determining the source of the lexical semantic breakdown, the goal of this research was to determine an appropriate therapeutic strategy. There were 12 people with anomic aphasia who participated in the research. Tasks tapping phoneme judgment and semantic judgment were given to the participants. Two individuals withdrew out of the study, while four subjects fared poorly on PCA (group 1). Six subjects performed poorly on the semantic judgment test (group 2). Training for Group 1 used PCA, while training for Group 2 used SFA. After training, participants' ability to recall names and verbs was evaluated using the Boston Naming Test and the Action Naming Test. After training, participants in both groups showed considerable improvement on the retests of the naming and judgment tasks.