Assessment and Therapy for Disorders of Word Retrieval : the Contribution of Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Published in: The Japanese Journal of Communication Disorders Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 18 - 29
• Main Author: David HOWARD
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Japanese Association of Communication Disorders 30.04.2005
• ISSN: 1347-8451

Difficulties in word-finding are almost always found in people with aphasia and are a major impediment to real life communication. Effective therapy for these disorders is, therefore, a major concern for aphasia therapists. Cognitive neuropsychology has stimulated significant advances over the last twenty years in our understanding of the nature of these disorders and how they can be treated. This paper, first, describes how cognitive neuropsychology can be used to identify the nature of the underlying deficit in word retrieval, using converging information from (i) the variables affecting performance, (ii) performance in other tasks, and (iii)the nature of errors in production. The results of this assessment should yield information both about the nature of impaired abilities but also about remaining processing strengths. The next section then reviews a number of different kinds of therapy for disorders of word retrieval. It is argued that a variety of different therapy techniques including both `semantic and‘lexical/phonological’therapy operate by strengthening the mapping between meaning and word form, and have item-specific effects. In contrast therapies that improve phonological assembly, or involve using relatively intact spelling abilities to support spoken word production have effects that generalise to words not targeted during treatment.