Supervidierte computergestützte Benenntherapie mit randomisierten Items: Zwei Einzelfallstudien bei Aphasie

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: It is becoming more and more important to stabilize the contents of conventional face to face therapy with computer-based therapy materials. With this method of self-conducted intervention, a highly intensive therapy can be realized. In the present study the efficacy of a computer-based therapy was reviewed in which subjects relearned in a self-conducted manner the lexical retrieval of randomly generated items. METHOD: A commercial version of a computerised therapy programme (ITS/aphasiaware, Siemens) was applied in the experiment. Due to the pilot character of the study, a small-n design with two subjects with contrasting symptoms of aphasia was chosen: Subject A suffered from an acute, fluent aphasia with mild anomia; Subject B suffered from a chronic, nonfluent aphasia with severe anomia. Both patients named in 17/20 sessions 60 items at a time, which were randomly generated from an 832 items sized pool. On average every single item was presented only two times (range: 1−12). The computer-based training was completed without additional therapeutic help but the procedure was controlled. In addition, the subjects achieved unspecific motivation in their learning behaviour. Reactions were recorded, classified and assessed with a session-related item-score. RESULTS: From session to session, the two subjects demonstrated a continuously and significantly improvement in performance. In pre- and post-tests, both subjects showed more correct reactions. The responses became more related to the target-item. In addition, the influence of lexical parameters like length and frequency decreased. The benefit for both single cases underlines the assumption that supervised, computer-based, self-conducted training of lexical retrieval is feasible and effective in different types of aphasia.