Everyday reading in aphasia: Does advance picture context influence reading speed and comprehension?

ABSTRACT

Background

Both reading speed and comprehension at the text level are often impaired in people with aphasia, potentially impacting their daily life. Provision of advance context (e.g., pictures provided to the reader prior to reading) is found to facilitate text processing and comprehension in typical readers. However, there has been no investigation of whether advance context influences reading in people with aphasia, although some studies have found no benefit on people with aphasia’s comprehension accuracy from contextual supports presented simultaneously with text. It also remains unclear whether context may impact people with aphasia’s understanding of any particular type of textual information (main ideas vs details, stated ideas vs implied ideas).

Aims

This study aimed to investigate the effect of advance picture context on reading speed, overall comprehension accuracy and comprehension of different types of ideas for naturalistic everyday texts in people with aphasia.

Methods & Procedures

Twenty-nine adult typical readers and 10 people with aphasia with varying reading ability took part in the study. Participants read three matched sets of short news articles which were either preceded by a related picture, no picture, or (as fillers) an unrelated picture and were followed by multiple-choice comprehension questions. For each text, the questions assessed the understanding of a stated main idea, an implied main idea, a stated detail, and an implied detail. Mixed-effects regression analyses were performed to examine the effect of advance (related) picture context on participants’ reading time and comprehension accuracy.

Outcomes & Results

The results showed a significant effect of advance picture context on reading speed, with both typical readers and readers with aphasia showing significantly shorter reading times when a picture was available. Advance context did not affect overall comprehension accuracy or accuracy for any subtype of textual information for either group of participants.

Conclusion

Advance context facilitates text processing in people with aphasia, resulting in increased reading speed for everyday texts, although it does not influence their comprehension accuracy for these types of texts. This suggests that therapeutic approaches could develop more effective use of advance contextual organisers in order to increase people with aphasia’s reading efficiency and ultimately, their confidence and pleasure in reading.

KEYWORDS:

• Reading in aphasia
• reading comprehension
• reading speed
• authentic everyday texts
• advance picture context

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all of the participants for taking part in the study and the individuals and organizations who assisted with recruitment to the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The unrelated picture fillers were not included in any analyses presented here. Paired t-tests did not show a significant difference in reading times or comprehension accuracy between the unrelated filler and no-picture conditions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus Fellowship Programme for the International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB) [2015-1603/001-001-EMJD].