Telerehabilitation for Aphasia (TERRA)

Summary

Speech-language therapy is generally found to be helpful in the rehabilitation of aphasia. However, not all patients with aphasia have access to adequate treatment to maximize their recovery. The goal of this project is to compare the efficacy of telerehabilitation or Aphasia Remote Therapy (ART) to the more traditional In-Clinic Therapy (I-CT).

Conditions

• Aphasia
• Stroke
• Stroke Rehabilitation

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Semantically-focused therapy tasks

1\) Semantic feature analysis (SFA; Boyle \& Coelho, 1995; Boyle, 2004). For each pictured stimulus the participant is prompted to name the picture. Then, s/he is encouraged to produce semantically related words that represent features similar to the target word. 2) Semantic barrier task. This approach includes features of the Promoting Aphasics' Communication Effectiveness (PACE; Davis \& Wilcox,1985). The goal of the task is for one participant (e.g., person with aphasia) to describe each card so that the other participant (e.g., clinician) can guess the picture on the card. 3) Verb network strengthening therapy (VNeST; Edmonds et al., 2009; 2014) targets lexical retrieval of verbs and their thematic nouns. The objective of VNeST is for the participant to generate verb-noun associates with the purpose of strengthening the connections between the verb and its thematic roles.

BEHAVIORAL

Phonologically-focused therapy tasks

1\) Phonological components analysis task (PCA; Leonard et al., 2008). The participant first attempts to name a given picture and then to identify the phonological features of the target words. 2) Phonological production task focuses on the identification of phonological features of targeted, imageable nouns and verbs. It requires the participant to sort picture stimuli based on the number of syllables and then to identify a hierarchy of phonological features. Once each targeted feature is identified for the pair of words, the participant is required to blend the syllables/sounds together. 3) Phonological judgment task relies on computerized presentation of verbs and nouns where participants are required to judge whether pairs of words include similar phonological features (e.g. # of syllables, initial phonemes, final phonemes, rhyming).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

  collaborator NIH

• Medical University of South Carolina

  collaborator OTHER

• University of South Carolina

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Julius Fridriksson, Ph.D. · University of South Carolina

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

21 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-05-05

Primary Completion

2027-01-31

Completion

2027-03-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations