What Conversation Topics are Meaningful to People with Aphasia?

Specialists in rehabilitation and speech-communication disorders from hospitals, universities, and the National Health Service Foundation in the United Kingdom have conducted a study to identify conversation topics of greatest meaningfulness to persons with aphasia.  Their key motivation was to provide a basis, empirically, for choosing vocabulary to target in therapies for word-finding in conversation, observing…

How artificial intelligence (AI) is used in aphasia rehabilitation

Aphasia researchers and computer scientists from universities, hospitals, and research centers in Montréal and Paris have collaborated on a scoping review of the uses of artificial intelligence in service of aphasia rehabilitation during the years 1990 to 2023.  Their study objectives were – firstly – to describe how AI is being used to advance the…

Research Gaps in Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs

Aphasia researchers in the communication disorders programs at Idaho State University and University of Montana have published a qualitative study of research gaps in the available literature investigating benefits to communicatively challenged participants in Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs (ICAP).  The goals of this investigation are to characterize such gaps from the perspective of international implementers…

Telepractice in the treatment of speech and voice disorders

An interdisciplinary team of specialists from the leading hospitals and medical schools of the Boston area, with expertise in communication disorders, clinical service delivery, and telemedicine have published an article identifying and assessing opportunities and issues around incorporating emerging technologies in the clinical management of voice-, speech-, language- and communication-disorders.  The goals of their publication…

The Outcomes of Remote Administration of Combined Aphasia and Apraxia of Speech Treatment

Investigators from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Utah report results from single-subject experimental research into outcome improvements in three persons with aphasia (PWA) who remotely received Combined Aphasia and Apraxia of Speech Treatment (CAAST). The goals of the research were to document outcome changes – in terms of acquisition,…

How AI Language Models can Enhance or Impede Communication for AAC Users

Computer scientists and artificial intelligence investigators working for Google Research collaborated with specialists in communication sciences and disorders at the University College of London and at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute of Health Professions to investigate incorporating chatbot technologies – such as OpenAI’S ChatGPT – into Speech Generating Devices for AAC technology users. They focused on…

Conversation analysis of texting exchanges in aphasia

Aphasia researchers from Chicago, Virginia, and Louisiana have collaborated on a study of the structures and strategies employed by persons with aphasia (PWA), and their neurotypical communication partners, during text messaging. The current investigators apply the investigative framework developed originally for Conversation Analysis of verbal face-to-face communications, later usefully applied to analyze also texting communications.…

Two-Year Longitudinal Evaluation of Community Aphasia Center Participation

Investigators at Columbia University in New York City, and at Jacksonville University in Florida, have published the results of a two-year longitudinal study of benefits accruing to persons with aphasia (PWA) through participation in offerings at a community-based Aphasia Center. The goals of the study were to document changes in confrontation naming, structured discourse performance,…

From the Inner Circle to Rebuilding Social Networks

Researchers from Speech Pathology, within the School of Allied Health at Australia’s La Trobe University, have published the results of a longitudinal investigation into the impacts of acquired aphasia on the social networks of stroke survivors. The study focuses on documenting how communicative deficits disrupt the close personal relationships of person with aphasia (PWA) following…

The Narrative-Based Evolution of a Stakeholder-Engaged Research Team

In work partly supported by an Engagement Award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, six speech-language pathologists (SLP) with an interest in understanding aphasia recovery processes collaborated with a Ph.D. stroke survivor with aphasia to investigate how close attention to the post-stroke biographical narratives of persons with aphasia (PWA) – as well as of investigative…