Week Eleven

Question 1

What are the theories of cognitive communication deficits and the ways to target them in therapy?

Answer 1

1. Coarse coding deficit hypothesis (L hemisphere = fine semantic coding [apple - red], R hemisphere = coarse coding [apple - Newton]).
   - SLT provides strong contextual bias: contextual constraint therapy
2. Suppression deficit hypothesis (problems suppressing possible meanings based on context)
   - Contextual constraint therapy
   - Highly metalinguistic approaches
3. Cognitive resources hypothesis (Compete for cognitive resources, e.g., harder tasks lead to breakdowns)
   - Over learning (e.g., ordering lunch)
   - Compensatory strategies (alarm, diary)
4. Social cognition hypothesis (not good at picking up on social cues)
   - Discussion of social norms (role play)

Question 2

What are some symptoms of right hemisphere disorders and their treatment?

Answer 2

• Prosody (reflected in production and expression)
  : barrier tasks
• Discourse and pragmatics (tangential, rude, topic, theme) (indirect requests, reduced or extremely animated conversation)
  : story retelling/generation with self evaluation
  :group training

-Lexical semantic processing (figurative language)

• Reading and writing (difficulties processing visual information, neglect dyslexia)
  : compensatory strategies

-Cognition (anosognosia = impaired awareness of motor, sensory, cognitive and emotional deficits, attention orientational problems) ( hinders motivation for treatment)
: feedback approach (ask them how they did on a task)
: educational task (this is the problem, this is the consequence

Question 3

Why is collecting case history so important for people with right hemisphere disorders and especially involving family?

Answer 3

• Helps to identify meaningful outcomes
• Family is important when person with disorder may not be aware of deficits
• Inventory of everyday tasks

Question 4

Screening test for right hemisphere disorder

Answer 4

Cognitive linguistic quick test

Tests used in aphasia can be used as informal tests

Completed with informal ax

Question 5

What are some initial treatment targets?

Answer 5

• obstacles to goal attainment (awareness of problems)
  -Areas with rapid positive impact