Aiding chronic written language expression difficulties: A case study

Abstract

This paper describes some progress made in helping a young aphasic man (MD) to overcome what had appeared to be intractable written language expression difficulties, which continued to be significant for him. Traditional therapy methods based on cognitive neuropsychological assessment had failed to help MD to generalize improvement in his spelling particularly, but not exclusively, of longer and irregular words. Both a splint which allowed him to use his dominant hand for writing directly onto a computer screen and a simple word-processing programme with synthesized auditory feedback and lexical and grammatical prediction (Write:OutLoud and Co:Writer) enabled him to produce more normal written output (increased quantity and more normal quality). The discussion also focuses on how effectiveness of language therapy can be measured in this man with chronic aphasia.