Naslov
Main concepts in the spoken discourse of persons with aphasia

Autori
Lice, Karolina ; Matić Škorić, Ana ; Kuvač Kraljević, Jelena

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
8th Nordic Aphasia Conference: Comprehensive Aphasia Treatment: From theory to practice

Mjesto i datum
Reykjavík, Island, 14.06.2023. - 16.06.2023

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Poster

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
persons with aphasia ; discourse ; main concepts ; language measures

Sažetak
Background and aims: Persons with aphasia (PwA) have considerable difficulties in formulating discourse, which affects their everyday interactions. Thus, development of discourse skills must be one of the goals of speech-language therapy for PwA. This study is grounded in the Linguistic Underpinnings of Narrative in Aphasia (LUNA) framework [1] analysing two categories – propositional and linguistic. The aim of the study is two-folded: to compare the ability of PwA and healthy speakers (HS) to form main concepts in a spoken discourse and to investigate the relationship between the number of main concepts and several language measures in PwA. Methods: 39 PwA and 39 HS, matched in age, gender, and education, were included in the study. They orally described a picture from the Croatian version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-HR ; [2]). The narratives were transcribed and evaluated in terms of main concepts and language measures of productivity (N words, N verbs), informativeness (N CIU), and grammaticality (N clauses, N T-units, clausal density). Coding procedures proposed by [3] and [4] were utilised. Results and main contribution: PwA produce fewer, less accurate and more incomplete main concepts than HS. They also show lexical retrieval problems, have difficulty producing verbs and marking their argument structures. Only N CIU and N clauses were correlated with the number of main concepts. Lack of correlations with other language measures reflects the way that PwA shape a discourse. Conclusions: PwA have somewhat limited ability to recognize and define main concepts relevant for the story which also causes their reduced language production. Even when they understand and recognize the main concept, their language disorder disrupts them to linguistically mark it. Implications: By using a task from CAT-HR, we show that assessment instruments can be used as a valuable source of information of functional communication of PwA, and guide SLTs in designing therapy goals aimed at encouraging functional communication.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Logopedija

POVEZANOST RADA