City University, London, England.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2012 Jun;55(3):726-38. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2011/11-0219). Epub 2012 Jan 31.
In this study, the authors (a) investigated whether a group of people with severe aphasia could learn a vocabulary of pantomime gestures through therapy and (b) compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. The authors also examined whether gesture therapy cued word production and whether naming therapy cued gestures.
Fourteen people with severe aphasia received 15 hr of gesture and naming treatments. Evaluations comprised repeated measures of gesture and word production, comparing treated and untreated items.
Baseline measures were stable but improved significantly following therapy. Across the group, improvements in naming were greater than improvements in gesture. This trend was evident in most individuals' results, although 3 participants made better progress in gesture. Gains were item specific, and there was no evidence of cross-modality cueing. Items that received gesture therapy did not improve in naming, and items that received naming therapy did not improve in gesture.
Results show that people with severe aphasia can respond to gesture and naming therapies. Given the unequal gains, naming may be a more productive therapy target than gesture for many (although not all) individuals with severe aphasia. The communicative benefits of therapy were not examined but are addressed in a follow-up article.
本研究中，作者（a）通过治疗来调查一组严重失语症患者是否可以学习一组手势动作词汇，并（b）将他们对手势的学习与对单词的学习进行比较。作者还研究了手势治疗是否提示单词生成，以及命名治疗是否提示手势。
14 名严重失语症患者接受了 15 小时的手势和命名治疗。评估包括重复测量手势和单词生成，比较治疗和未治疗的项目。
基线测量是稳定的，但治疗后显著提高。总体而言，命名的改善大于手势的改善。这一趋势在大多数个体的结果中都很明显，尽管有 3 名参与者在手势方面取得了更好的进展。增益是特定于项目的，没有跨模态提示的证据。接受手势治疗的项目在命名方面没有提高，而接受命名治疗的项目在手势方面没有提高。
结果表明，严重失语症患者可以对手势和命名治疗做出反应。鉴于增益不均，对于许多（尽管不是所有）严重失语症患者来说，命名可能比手势更具治疗效果。治疗的交流益处没有被检查，但在后续文章中进行了讨论。
