The latest medical research on Speech Pathologist

Speech fluency has important diagnostic implications for individuals with poststroke aphasia (PSA) as well as primary progressive aphasia (PPA), and quantitative assessment of connected speech has emerged as a widely used approach across both etiologies. The purpose of this review was to provide a clearer picture on the range, nature, and utility of individual quantitative speech/language measures and methods used to assess connected speech fluency in PSA and PPA, and to compare approaches across etiologies.

We conducted a scoping review of literature published between 2012 and 2022 following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Forty-five studies were included in the review. Literature was charted and summarized by etiology and characteristics of included patient populations and method(s) used for derivation and analysis of speech/language features. For a subset of included articles, we also charted the individual quantitative speech/language features reported and the level of significance of reported results.

Results showed that similar methodological approaches have been used to quantify connected speech fluency in both PSA and PPA. Two hundred nine individual speech-language features were analyzed in total, with low levels of convergence across etiology on specific features but greater agreement on the most salient features. The most useful features for differentiating fluent from nonfluent aphasia in both PSA and PPA were features related to overall speech quantity, speech rate, or grammatical competence.

Data from this review demonstrate the feasibility and utility of quantitative approaches to index connected speech fluency in PSA and PPA. We identified emergent trends toward automated analysis methods and data-driven approaches, which offer promising avenues for clinical translation of quantitative approaches. There is a further need for improved consensus on which subset of individual features might be most clinically useful for assessment and monitoring of fluency.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25537237.

The study purpose was to compare the practice patterns captured by self-reported logbook data and those recorded by a computerized home program application. The current study is part of a larger single-case research design study aimed at investigating the effect of logbook use on home program adherence in people with aphasia poststroke.

Data from six adults with chronic aphasia with interest in improving their reading were used in this secondary analysis. Participants completed reading comprehension therapy tasks using a mobile application and tablet. The activities were self-directed and designed for people with aphasia to complete independently. We created an aphasia-friendly logbook based on best practices to allow participants to record their estimated total minutes practiced. Participants received instructions to practice the reading therapy application 80 min a day 7 days a week for the duration of the study. We calculated the difference in the total time per day recorded by each participant to the application data collected.

All participants used the logbook to record their practice. There was a strong relationship between self-reported logbook practice and application-recorded practice for four of the six participants. Individual differences were noted and explored.

These results suggest that some people with aphasia can use logbooks with aphasia-friendly modifications to accurately estimate the amount of practice completed outside of therapy sessions.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between speechreading ability, phonological skills, and word reading ability in typically developing children.

Sixty-six typically developing children (6-7 years old) completed tasks measuring word reading, speechreading (words, sentences, and short stories), alliteration awareness, rhyme awareness, nonword reading, and rapid automatized naming (RAN).

Speechreading ability was significantly correlated with rhyme and alliteration awareness, phonological error rate, nonword reading, and reading ability (medium effect sizes) and RAN (small effect size). Multiple regression analyses showed that speechreading was not a unique predictor of word reading ability beyond the contribution of phonological skills. A speechreading error analysis revealed that children tended to use a phonological strategy when speechreading, and in particular, this strategy was used by skilled speechreaders.

The current study provides converging evidence that speechreading and phonological skills are positively related in typically developing children. These skills are likely to have a reciprocal relationship, and children may benefit from having their attention drawn to visual information available on the lips while learning letter sounds or learning to read, as this could augment and strengthen underlying phonological representations.

The present meta-analysis investigated the efficacy of anomia treatment in bilingual and multilingual persons with aphasia (BPWAs) by assessing the magnitudes of six anomia treatment outcomes. Three of the treatment outcomes pertained to the "trained language": improvement of trained words (treatment effect [TE]), within-language generalization of semantically related untrained words (WLG-Related), and within-language generalization of unrelated words (WLG-Unrelated). Three treatment outcomes were for the "untrained language": improvement of translations of the trained words (cross-language generalization of trained words [CLG-Tx]), cross-language generalization of semantically related untrained words (CLG-Related), and cross-language generalization of unrelated untrained words (CLG-Unrelated). This study also examined participant- and treatment-related predictors of these treatment outcomes.

This study is registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) under the number CRD42023418147. Nine electronic databases were searched to identify word retrieval treatment studies of poststroke BPWAs of at least 6 months postonset. Pre- and posttreatment single-word naming scores were extracted for each eligible participant and used to calculate effect sizes (within-case Cohen's d) of the six treatment outcomes. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted to assess weighted mean effect sizes of the treatment outcomes across studies. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the effects of participant-related variables (pretreatment single-word naming and comprehension representing poststroke lexical processing abilities) and treatment-related variables (type, language, and duration). The methodological quality of eligible studies and the risk of bias in this meta-analysis were assessed.

A total of 17 published studies with 39 BPWAs were included in the meta-analysis. The methodological quality of the included studies ranged from fair (n = 4) to good (n = 13). Anomia treatment produced a medium effect size for TE (M = 8.36) and marginally small effect sizes for WLG-Related (M = 1.63), WLG-Unrelated (M = 0.68), and CLG-Tx (M = 1.56). Effect sizes were nonsignificant for CLG-Related and CLG-Unrelated. TE was significantly larger than the other five types of treatment outcomes. TE and WLG-Related effect sizes were larger for BPWAs with milder comprehension or naming impairments and for treatments of longer duration. WLG-Unrelated was larger when BPWAs received phonological treatment than semantic and mixed treatments. The overall risk of bias in the meta-analysis was low with a potential risk of bias present in the study identification process.

Current anomia treatment practices for bilingual speakers are efficacious in improving trained items but produce marginally small within-language generalization and cross-language generalization to translations of the trained items. These results highlight the need to provide treatment in each language of BPWAs and/or investigate other approaches to promote cross-language generalization. Furthermore, anomia treatment outcomes are influenced by BPWAs' poststroke single-word naming and comprehension abilities as well as treatment duration and the provision of phonological treatment.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25595712.