Lack of communicatively supportive opportunities for social participation is a critical barrier for many people with aphasia. Speech-language pathologists need to address this barrier by playing a key role in ensuring that adults with aphasia have appropriate social participation choices in their communities. Speech-language pathologists may…

Health care providers can experience increased diffculty communicating with adult patients during medical interactions when the patients have communication disorders. Meeting the communication needs of these patients can also create unique challenges for providers. The authors explore Communication Accommodation Theory (H. Giles, 1979) as a guide…

Illness narratives may be told in various contexts and are reported to be associated with a variety of positive health outcomes, such as fewer doctors' office visits. The story of stroke onset can be highly varied among people without language impairments, seeming to reflect the way the individual is understanding and adapting to living with the…

The phonomotor treatment program for treating word-retrieval deficits among people with aphasia is inspired by a parallel distributed processing model of lexical processing and is focused at the level of individual phonemes and phoneme sequences. Because verbal production of words involves the translation of a lexical-semantic representation into…

During clinical interactions between speech-language pathologists and adults with aphasia, a variety of emotional issues arise. The literature suggests that while counseling is within the scope of practice, SLPs tend to avoid emotional issues in therapy (A. Holland, 2007a). The precise mechanisms employed for circumventing emotional issues in…

An Aphasia Communication Enhancement program in which therapeutic roles are modified to include roles associated with a life participation approach to aphasia (LPAA) is discussed.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who work with adults with cognitive-linguistic impairments, including aphasia, have long needed an assessment tool that predicts ability to function in the real world. In this article, it is argued that virtual reality (VR)-supported approaches can address this need. Using models of disability such as the…

A qualitative study of group therapy for aphasia was undertaken in order to discover interaction patterns and discourse management strategies that help define "social" or "conversation" group therapy for aphasia. Specifically, an analysis of the discourse of clients and therapists was conducted to identify patterns across therapists and settings.…

Drawing as therapy for the expressively restricted aphasic adult is discussed with sections on: drawing and acquired brain damage, communication through drawing in aphasia, and training expressively restricted aphasic patients to draw communicatively by use of the Lyon/Sims Program. (DB)

Cooperative group treatment for aphasia based on cooperative learning principles is designed to improve communication skills during small, two-member group interactions. The treatment involves teamwork incorporating positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual accountability, and group processing. Group size, treatment…

This article describes the efforts of a group of people in the United Kingdom at Connect-the communication disability network-to make health and social services more communicatively accessible to people with aphasia. The project involved listening to people with aphasia talk about their experiences with health and social care services and working…

Group treatment is explored in light of its psychosocial context, treatment effectiveness, and efficiency. A summary of the four group treatment approaches (two for children, two for adults) for communicative disorders are provided: classroom-based elementary school group, multicultural and multilinguistic preschool group, alaryngeal speech…