Treatment of written verb and written sentence production in an individual with aphasia: A clinical study

Abstract

Background: Although the efficacy of treatments for spoken verb and sentence production deficits in aphasia has been documented widely, less is known about interventions for written verb and written sentence production deficits.

Aims: This study documents a treatment aiming to improve production of (a) written subject-verb sentences (involving intransitive verbs) and (b) written subject-verb-object sentences (involving transitive verbs).

Methods & Procedures: The participant, a 63-year-old female aphasic speaker, had a marked language comprehension deficit, apraxia of speech, relatively good spelling abilities, and no hemiplegia. The treatment involved intransitive verbs producing subject-verb active sentences and transitive verbs producing subject-verb-object active non-reversible sentences. The treatment was undertaken in the context of current UK clinical practice.

Outcomes & Results: Statistical improvements were noted for the trained sets of verbs and sentences. Other improvements were also noted in LW's ability to retrieve some non-treated verbs and construct written sentences. Treatment did not generalise to sentence comprehension and letter spelling to dictation.

Conclusions: Our participant's ability to write verbs and sentences improved as a result of the treatment.

Keywords:

• Writing
• Verbs
• Sentences
• Intransitive
• Transitive
• Treatment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank LW and her husband for their willingness to take part in this study. The authors would like to thank Alison Cox, Malathy Venkatesh, Theo Marinis, and Vicky Chondrogianni for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and thorough review. A version of this paper was presented at the 2009 Clinical Aphasiology Conference (Keystone, Colorado) and at the 2009 British Aphasiology Society biennial conference (Sheffield, UK).

Notes

¹Several subtests of the VAST have been adapted for this treatment, from spoken to written.

²The verb stop is unaccusative. In the intransitive example the car is the subject (theme); in the transitive example the car is the object and the theme but the sentence has a different subject. Verbs with non-agentive subjects have been shown to be more difficult to retrieve than those with agentive subjects (Lee & Thompson, 2004).