Week 5: Language Disorders and Therapy

Question 1

Conduction aphasia

Answer 1

Inability to repeat words or phrases

Typically caused by damage to: supramarginal gyrus and arcuate fasciculus

Question 2

Aphasics…

Answer 2

retain the underlying semantic and phonological representations of words,
but show impairments in accessing them

Question 3

Aphasia incidence and prevalence

Answer 3

Incidence: 0.05% / year
Prevalence: 0.1-0.3%

Question 4

Treatments

Answer 4

• Naming, word-to-picture mapping
• Linguistic tasks (e.g. sentence completion, semantic categorisation)
• Melodic intonation therapy (e.g. singing)
• rTMS
• tDCS
• Drugs (e.g. glutamate inhibitor memantine)

Question 5

High frequency principle

Answer 5

Do as much therapy as possible

Question 6

Focusing principle

Answer 6

Control of language use by constraints and guidance to avoid learned non-use (less you use something, the less likely you will be to use it in the future)

Question 7

Behavioural relevance principle

Answer 7

Practice language in relevant action contexts

Therapy should utilise links between language and action areas (Hebb’s law)
e.g. naming vs requesting need different practice

Question 8

ILAT

Answer 8

Intensive language-action therapy

Aims to use three principles

Language games (naming, requesting etc. around a table)

Seems to work, as long as it’s intensive