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Abstract
Background: As issues involving quality of life and overall functionality are discussed, more attention is being focused on literacy behaviours and use in aphasia. A viable approach to study reading in aphasia is the constructivist orientation, which has been at the centre of the disciplines focusing on literacy research and teaching for nearly forty-five years. Combining this orientation with qualitative research procedures provides numerous research opportunities in aphasia.
Aims: The current qualitative study explores the reading strategies employed by persons with aphasia in naturalistic settings as they attempt to re-establish their reading proficiency during recovery.
Methods & Procedures: Three persons with aphasia (two women, one man) with mild to moderate aphasia were studied across a number of contexts that required reading. Qualitative research procedures were employed to identify various reading strategies employed by these persons with aphasia.
Outcomes & Results: Twenty-eight different salient reading strategies were identified across the three participants, with some of these also being typical of non-neurologically impaired individuals and some unique to the person with aphasia. These twenty-eight strategies served four specific functions (efficiency, contextualisation, comprehension, socialisation) and were employed during the process of reading recovery subsequent to aphasia.
Conclusions: Despite their aphasia, these individuals exhibited a resiliency and an underlying proficiency that enabled them to create and/or employ various strategies while they re-established their reading proficiency. A number of implications regarding the need to recognise the complexity of reading as a process and the ways that this change might impact service delivery are discussed.