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…

Perceived Factors That Facilitate or Prevent the Use of Speech-Generating Devices in Bilingual Individuals With Aphasia

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) from the academy, a clinical service-delivery business, and the AAC manufacturer Lingraphica collaborated on a study of perceptions of practicing SLP clinicians regarding the use of speech-generating devices (SGDs) in rehabilitating bilingual clients with aphasia.  Their aim was to identify and characterize the main factors perceived by respondents either to hinder, or…

Applying adaptive distributed practice to self-managed computer-based anomia treatment: a single-case experimental design.

Researchers from Northwestern University’s Center for Education in Health Sciences and the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders studied therapeutic effects of a computer-based application for self-managed practice of verbal naming in two persons with moderate chronic aphasia. Flashcard software was used to present either a drawing or a written description of…

Feasibility, acceptability, and limitations of speech and language telerehabilitation during COVID-19 lockdown: A qualitative research study on clinicians’ perspectives.

European health care researchers conducted a survey of speech-language pathologists in Italy to probe the views of practicing clinicians on the use of telerehabilitation (TR) technologies for the delivery of speech therapy services to clients during the COVID-19 lockdown, when meetings face-to-face for clinical sessions were discouraged The goals of the research were to document…

People with Aphasia Share Their Views on Self-Management and the Role of Technology to Support Self-Management of Aphasia

Investigators at the Aphasia Research Centre, University of Queensland – together with colleagues elsewhere Australia – have reported research on how persons with aphasia (PWA) regard self-management, including how they view and employ technologies that facilitate self-management. The goals of this investigation were to: (1) refine our understanding of what, in actual practice, self-management means…