Word retrieval in aphasia: From naming tests to connected speech and the impact on well-being

ABSTRACT

Background

Language assessment includes mainly structured tasks; however, everyday communication requires additional abilities. An important clinical question is whether the performance of individuals on structured language tasks can predict their performance and participation in everyday communication, and how it affects their well-being.

Aims

We aimed to examine whether the performance on structured tests represents individuals’ participation in everyday communication, focusing on lexical retrieval and comparing structured tasks and less structured tasks. In addition, we examined whether the performance on these measures is compatible with individuals’ self-report on a questionnaire.

Methods & Procedures

Twenty people with aphasia (PWA. Mean age: 61 years; mean months post-onset: 42), with comprehension and cognition abilities that enabled understanding and performing the tasks participated in the study. They were administered tasks of single word retrieval (picture naming) and word retrieval in connected speech: story-telling and conversation on initiated topic. In addition, the Aphasia Impact Questionnaire-21 (AIQ-21. Swinburn et al., 2019) was administered, a pictorial self-report questionnaire adapted for PWA which evaluates communication, participation, and well-being. Connected speech was assessed using two measures: (a) the %WR (Percent Word Retrieval; Mayer & Murray, 2003), calculating the percent of correctly produced nouns and verbs and (b) the Measure of Participation in Conversation (MPC. Kagan et al., 2004).

Outcomes & Results

(a) Nouns were retrieved significantly better in conversation compared to picture naming and story-telling; (b) Moderate correlations were found between word retrieval in the picture naming task and the less structured tasks (story-telling and conversation); (c) Scores in the self-report questionnaire and specifically in the well-being section were correlated with success in word retrieval in connected speech as well as with the MPC measure.

Conclusions

The results indicate that performance in a picture naming task differs from retrieval in connected speech. Thus, it is important to include connected speech tasks in language assessment of PWA to better evaluate the ability to participate in everyday conversation. Furthermore, a self-report questionnaire adds information for assigning treatment goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Aphasia
• Word retrieval
• Connected speech
• AIQ-21 Questionnaire
• Participation

Acknowledgments

We thank Shiraz Cohen-Tsemah, Ravit Goldstein, Daniel Koren, Hodaya Raymond and Rotem Toledano for their help in participants’ testing and data analysis.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

¹ The adaptation to Hebrew was done with the permission of Dr. Swinburn, and with consultation concerning the process and changes that were made in the Hebrew version. See details in Appendix A.

² We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggested explanation.

³ The questionnaire was adapted to several other languages: Danish, Catalan, Japanese, Slovakian, Greek (Charalambous et al., 2022) and Turkish (Yaşar et al., 2022). (See The Aphasia Impact Questionnaire website: https://www.aiq-21.net). It should be noted, as one of the reviewers indicated, that the changes between the Hebrew version of the AIQ-21 questionnaire and the original English version might limit generalization of the findings and comparison to studies in other languages.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.