Gesture and naming therapy for people with severe aphasia: a group study.

Purpose: In this study, the authors (a) investigated whether a group of people with severe aphasia could learn a vocabulary of pantomime gestures through therapy and (b) compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. The authors also examined whether gesture therapy cued word production and whether naming therapy cued gestures.

Method: Fourteen people with severe aphasia received 15 hr of gesture and naming treatments.