A linguistic communication measure for monitoring changes in Chinese aphasic narrative production

Abstract

This study investigated the usefulness of the Cantonese Linguistic Communication Measure (CLCM) in monitoring changes of narrative production in five Chinese adults with aphasia in the period of spontaneous recovery (SR group) and four who underwent anomia therapies (Tx group). Language samples elicited from a picture description task were collected among SR participants at regular intervals within the first 6 months post‐onset and among Tx participants before and after treatment. Results showed that the CLCM indices could reflect changes of language production in these individuals over time. The changes of index values were consistent with the expectations of performance during early stages after stroke for the SR participants and treatment outcomes of the Tx participants. While the CLCM has previously been shown to be useful in measuring aphasic narratives on a single occasion, this study has provided further evidence of its capability to monitor changes of language production over time.

• Aphasia
• narrative
• Chinese
• monitor change

Notes

Notes

1. Each follow‐up session was about 30 minutes long. Half of the session was spent on reviewing the client's oral‐motor skills, auditory comprehensive, and expressive abilities. An evaluation of swallowing difficulties was also administered if necessary. The remaining 15 minutes were used to carry out naming exercises on highly familiar items (e.g. naming upon verbal and syllable cues), and provide training to the client on his/her compensatory communication skills (e.g. gestures and writing) and language facilitation skills to caregivers.

2. MTK and YSH reached the performance criterion in 16 and 27 sessions, respectively, for which two sessions per week were carried out. For TWT and YKM, treatment was terminated after 20 sessions of training.

3. It was the requirement in Law et al. (2009) that the participants had not had any form of anomia treatments before the treatment began. In this way, previous word finding training would not confound the effects of the target intervention.