Script Therapy or VNeST for Agrammatic Aphasia? A Pilot Study

Costello, Maureen and Balasubramanian, Venu (2014) Script Therapy or VNeST for Agrammatic Aphasia? A Pilot Study. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

Fluent language production can be determined by a number of linguistic factors including the ability to produce appropriate morphology, lexical retrieval, sentence production, grammatical form, and conversational discourse. Individuals with agrammatic aphasia may exhibit impaired lexical processing which greatly impedes their ability to construct sentences and communicate fluently. In particular, individuals with agrammatic aphasia exhibit difficulty in understanding or producing complex lexical items specifically in verb morphology as well as presenting with non-fluent, reduced speech lacking grammatical features, and a decrease in the production of verbs and nouns (Ballard & Thompson, 1999; Edmonds & Babb, 2011; Edmonds, Nadeau, & Kiran, 2009; Martin, Fink, & Laine, 2004; Nickels, 2002; & Raymer, & Ellsworth, 2002). Similarly, these individuals may demonstrate lexical retrieval deficits that are semantic in nature with difficulty accessing meaning and producing the correct forms of words (Libben, 2008). Also, these individuals may present difficulty both socially and linguistically processing discourse and conversation due to the nature of the interaction. This study investigated which treatment, Script Therapy or Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST), was more beneficial in improving sentence production and conversational discourse with two individuals with agrammatic aphasia. Script therapy was chosen as it is a functional approach to aphasia therapy that can facilitate participation in personally relevant conversational activities. Structurally-based VNeST aims to improve lexical retrieval of content words in sentence context by promoting retrieval of verbs and their thematic roles (Edmonds et al., 2009). Previous studies suggest that both treatments help increase fluency in more complex sentence production that is necessary for discourse and conversation in individuals with agrammatic aphasia (Edmonds & Babb, 2011; Edmonds et al., 2009).

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