Rehabilitation of Post-stroke Aphasia by Targeting Phonological, and Lexico-semantic Deficits With Speech Output Tasks

NCT ID: NCT06451731

Last Updated: 2024-06-11

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 44 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2015-06-01
• Study Completion Date: 2019-12-31

Brief Summary

Aphasia in brain-damaged adult patients refers "to the more or less complete loss of the ability to use language" resulting from acquired brain damage, typically of the left hemisphere. The defective spoken output of persons with aphasia (PWA) has anomia as a main clinical manifestation. Improving anomia is a main goal of any language treatment.

The present randomized controlled study assessed the effectiveness of a novel, two-week, rehabilitation protocol (PHOLEXSEM), focused on PHonological, SEmantic, and LExical deficits, aiming at improving lexical retrieval, and, generally, spoken output.

The effects of the PHOLEXSEM treatment were compared to those of a control treatment, i.e., a Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (PACE) protocol.

Finally, we studied the effects of age, education, disease duration, brain lesion volume, and functional independence (Functional Idependence Measure, FIM) on the treatment-induced linguistic improvements.

Conditions

Aphasia, Acquired; Stroke; Anomia

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

PHOLEXSEM

Each session lasted 30 minutes, and comprised three sections, each lasting 10 minutes: Repetition, Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA), and Lexical retrieval.

Repetition: 50 items for different kind of stimuli including: syllables, 2-syllable words and non-words; 2-syllable words and non-words with one consonant cluster; 3-syllable words and non-words; 3-syllable words and non-words with one consonant cluster, nuclear phrases.

SFA: stimuli were 46 pictures of nouns, including living and non-living objects, controlled for frequency of use.

Lexical retrieval phase: the patient was given three fluency tasks: a) 4 min of phonemic recall, b) 4 min of semantic recall, and c) 2 min of verb recall.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

PHOLEXSEM

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Phonological, Lexical, and Semantic training

PACE

Three decks of cards - diversified by frequency of use - depicting nouns, were presented in sets of 4 cards each. In an exchange modality, the task consisted in understanding the noun chosen by the patient and, in turn, by the rehabilitator. Any communicative modality (oral, gestural, verbal, graphic) was allowed. Word difficulty was graded based on the frequency of use and semantic proximity or distance between target and distractors.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

PACE

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

See arm description

Interventions

PHOLEXSEM

Phonological, Lexical, and Semantic training

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

PACE

See arm description

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• acquired brain-damage
• presence of aphasia

Exclusion Criteria

• global aphasia
• undergoing another treatment for aphasia

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 90 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

Istituto Auxologico Italiano

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Other Identifiers

25C501

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id