Communicative aphasia treatment as a further development of pace therapy

Abstract

We call communicative any treatment approach to language rehabilitation in which the client trains to perform speech acts relevant in everyday conversations. First, PACE therapy as one form of communicative treatment is discussed. Since we see some problems in the application of PACE, we outline an approach comprising several communicative treatment settings that are in various aspects similar to everyday conversation. In order to make it obvious that this approach is an application of basic ideas included in the Wittgenstein philosophy, such treatment settings are called language games. We outline principles of the language game approach and give examples for such games. Finally, the results of a therapy study are presented. The technique introduced has been applied to a group of eight chronic aphasics. Significant improvements in the Token Test were observed in five of these. The necessity of further investigation of the efficacy of aphasia treatment procedures is emphasized.