Category: Stroke; Clinical Practice (assessment, diagnosis, treatment, knowledge translation/EBP, implementation science, program development)
Objective :
To determine the effects of picture and video stimuli on the outcomes of action observation treatment for verb naming in aphasia.
Design :
Single-subject experimental
Setting :
University outpatient clinic and home practice.
Participants (or Animals, Specimens, Cadavers) :
Fifty-eight year old male three years post-stroke with a diagnosis of nonfluent aphasia characterized by phonological impairment.
Interventions :
The first phase of treatment was in an outpatient clinic for five consecutive days. Each treatment session consisted of five cycles of the protocol. The participant was instructed to name the action verb represented in the picture or video in a single word response. The stimuli were presented in a random block order within each session. After the 1 week post-treatment testing, the participant completed home practice for a month. The participant designed his own schedule of three 1-hour sessions per day.
Main Outcome Measure(s) :
Naming accuracy for trained stimuli were measured three times at baseline, post-treatment and post-home practice. Treatment probes were taken daily at the start of each clinic session.
Results :
Naming accuracy improved in all lists. Accuracy for the biological lists improved more than the non-biological lists; accuracy for the biological videos improved more than the biological pictures. Results were maintained during post-treatment testing. Home practice lead to further improvements in all lists.
Conclusions :
Action observation treatment lead to improvements in all four stimuli lists with the greatest improvement in the biological lists, specifically the biological videos. Thus, the hypotheses were supported. The current results provide further evidence that videos are an effective presentation mode for action verbs; and are more effective than picture stimuli which are the traditional clinical method. Research is underway to replicate these results with refined picture and video stimuli.
Christina del Toro
– Associate Professor, Midwestern University, Downers Grove, IllinoisMegan Cuellar
– Associate Professor, Midwestern University, Downers Grove, Illinois