2017 Theses Doctoral

Efficacy of Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written treatment in people with mild aphasia

Obermeyer, Jessica Ann

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a newly adapted treatment, Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written, to improve microlinguistic and macrolinguistic aspects of written and spoken discourse of people with mild aphasia.
Background: Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written takes a top-down approach to language rehabilitation that focuses on the cognitive-linguistic processes required for spoken and written discourse production.
Methods: Five people with mild aphasia received Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written across two single subject experimentally controlled pre-post treatment design studies.
Results: All participants demonstrated improvement in both written and spoken discourse generalization measures. Improvement in functional communication, and confrontation naming was also observed for some participants.
Conclusions: The results reported in these two studies provide preliminary evidence that Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written is a viable treatment option to improve both written and spoken discourse in people with mild aphasia. Participants demonstrated different pre-treatment profiles and mechanisms of improvement, which are discussed.