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Abstract
Background: Discourse analysis is a key element in determining treatment effects. However, it is extremely labour intensive, requiring in‐depth knowledge of linguistics and aphasiology; thus, it is often neglected in the analysis of treatment outcomes. A clinically practical method of discourse analysis would be beneficial for evaluation and determination of treatment efficacy.
Aims: The current study investigates changes in discourse content following contrasting treatments for anomia using grammatical analysis. In addition, we pilot the use of a new information measure.
Methods & Procedures: We compare discourse changes after a gestural + verbaltreatment and a semantic‐phonologic treatment for nouns and verbs on two groups of individuals with aphasia. Analyses compared discourse samples from 14 participants taken at baseline, post‐phase 1, and post‐phase 2. In addition to traditional measures such as number of nouns, verbs, and sentence types, a new measure of information is introduced, the Utterance with New Information (UNI). The UNI is designed to assess content in non‐propositional, impaired speech in open‐ended discourse.
Outcomes & Results: Noun production increased in participants of both treatments, whereas grammatical sentences increased only in participants of the semantic‐phonologic treatment. Production of UNIs increased in participants of both treatments as well as over time.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that a few easily counted measures of discourse production can provide clinically useful information for the clinician. Moreover, these findings suggest discourse analysis is a viable method of determining treatment outcomes especially given that improving discourse is the ultimate goal of all aphasia treatments.
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