Cognitive approaches to writing rehabilitation in aphasics: Evaluation of two treatment strategies

Abstract

Chronic aphasic patients received each of two rehabilitation programmes that were devised for writing disturbances according to dual route models of writing function. The phonological treatment stimulated non-lexical phoneme to grapheme conversion procedures whereas patients were stimulated to use whole word form by the visual-semantic treatment. Overall results showed that the effect of both treatment procedures was significant and stable over time. However, when single case improvement was taken into account, almost all patients were found to respond only to one treatment. These results are consistent with a view that models of human cognitive functions are suitable for planning therapies for neuropsychological disturbances.