Anomia clinical trials

Pairing Word Retrieval and Physical Endurance Tasks to Treat Anomia in People With Aphasia

Many individuals have difficulty with word retrieval, also called anomia, following cerebrovascular accident (CVA). These difficulties impede effective communication in everyday conversations and can negatively impact the resumption of pre-injury activities. Even after rehabilitation specifically targeting these areas, many individuals report persistent difficulties with anomia. Additionally, most individuals report that these difficulties worsen when distracted, fatigued, or when attempting to divide attention between tasks. Given that everyday activities frequently require efficient communication when attention is divided (e.g., walking and talking), it is important to investigate viable interventions to improve these skills. Recovery from CVA and resumption of pre-injury activities is best supported by rehabilitation interventions that are functional and directly related to the tasks individuals aim to resume. For example, a therapy task requiring an individual to generate a grocery list and then go to a grocery store to acquire the items on the list has a greater impact on recovery for the underlying language and cognitive skills than a series of generic language and cognition tasks completed in a therapy room. In addition to this, interventions that incorporate dual-task practices tend to have better outcomes than more traditional single-task practices. The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of pairing word retrieval tasks with physical endurance tasks versus presenting them in isolation. Additionally, this study will investigate whether improvements in word retrieval and physical endurance generalize to the functional, everyday task of holding a conversation while walking. The researchers hypothesize that participants will perform better on word retrieval tasks after participating in dual language and physical tasks than after participating in language tasks presented in isolation.