A preliminary investigation on core lexicon analysis in dementia of the Alzheimer's type.

Background: Core lexicon (CL) analysis is a time efficient and possibly reliable measure that captures discourse production abilities. For people with aphasia, CL scores have demonstrated correlations with aphasia severity, as well as other discourse and linguistic measures. It was also found to be clinician-friendly and clinically sensitive enough to capture longitudinal changes in aphasia.

Tamoxifen Effects on Cognition and Language in Women with Breast Cancer.

Cognitive changes following adjuvant treatment for breast cancer (BC) are well documented following chemotherapy. However, limited studies have examined cognitive and/or language functions in chemotherapy-naive women with BC taking tamoxifen (TAM). Using ambulatory cognitive assessment, we investigated the trajectory of cognitive and language changes during early period of adjuvant endocrine treatment (TAM) in women with BC at two time periods (pretreatment and 2 months after treatment began).

Quality of Measurement in Core Lexicon Measures.

Purpose: Core lexicon measures have received growing attention in research. They are intended to provide clinicians with a clinician-friendly means to quantify word retrieval ability in discourse based on normal expectations of discourse production for specific discourse elicitation tasks. To date, different criteria have been used to develop core lexicon measures by groups of researchers.

Precision rehabilitation for aphasia by patient age, sex, aphasia severity, and time since stroke? A prespecified, systematic review-based, individual participant data, network, subgroup meta-analysis.

Background: Stroke rehabilitation interventions are routinely personalized to address individuals' needs, goals, and challenges based on evidence from aggregated randomized controlled trials (RCT) data and meta-syntheses. Individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses may better inform the development of precision rehabilitation approaches, quantifying treatment responses while adjusting for confounders and reducing ecological bias.

Aim: We explored associations between speech and language therapy (SLT) interventions frequency (days/week), intensity (h/week), and dosage (total SLT-hours) and language outcomes for different age, sex, aphasia severity, and chronicity subgroups by undertaking prespecified subgroup network meta-analyses of the RELEASE database.

Light verb production in healthy ageing and dementia.

Background: Light verbs are highly frequent and semantically impoverished words. It is currently not known whether light verb production in discourse tasks differs by age or for people with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT).

Aims: The purpose of the current study was two-fold: (1) to determine whether there is a relationship between age and the proportion of light verbs produce during a narrative discourse task; and (2) to determine whether people with DAT produce a different proportion of light verbs compared with neurotypical adults.

Eye Tracking Measures for Studying Language Comprehension Deficits in Aphasia: A Systematic Search and Scoping Review.

Aim The aim of this scoping review is to identify the eye tracking paradigms and eye movement measures used to investigate auditory and reading comprehension deficits in persons with aphasia (PWA). Method MEDLINE via PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, OTseeker, Scopus, Google Scholar, Grey Literature Database, and ProQuest Search (Dissertations & Theses) were searched for relevant studies. The Covidence software was used to manage the initial and full-text screening process for the search.

Marginal assessment of the cost and benefits of aphasia treatment: Evidence from community-based telerehabilitation treatment for aphasia.

Introduction: Few studies have reported information related to the cost-effectiveness of traditional face-to-face treatments for aphasia. The emergence and demand for telepractice approaches to aphasia treatment has resulted in an urgent need to understand the costs and cost-benefits of this approach.

Methods: Eighteen stroke survivors with aphasia completed community-based aphasia telerehabilitation treatment, utilizing the Language-Oriented Treatment (LOT) delivered via Webex videoconferencing program.

Development of a measure of function word use in narrative discourse: core lexicon analysis in aphasia.

Background: Although discourse-level assessments contribute to predicting real-world performance in persons with aphasia (PWA), the use of discourse measures is uncommon in clinical settings due to resource-heavy procedures. Moreover, assessing function word use in discourse requires the arduous procedure of defining grammatical categories for each word in language transcripts.

Aims: The purpose of this exploratory study was twofold: (1) to develop core function word lists as a clinician-friendly means of evaluating function word use in discourse; and (2) to examine the ability of the core function word measure to differentiate PWA from cognitively healthy adults and persons with fluent aphasia from non-fluent aphasia.

Rapid automatized naming (RAN): effects of aging on a predictor of reading skill.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN), a task in which participants must name a series of items as rapidly as possible, has been very useful as a measure of cognitive abilities that predict reading skill both in children and in young adults (YAs). This study examined RAN performance of 100 YAs and 80 cognitively healthy older adults (OAs). RAN performance was highly reliable but showed only a few weak correlations to other measures of individual differences used to study cognitive aging.

Relative contributions to overall impact of stuttering in adults using the overall assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES).

Purpose: Comprehensive assessment of stuttering requires consideration of a wide range of behaviors that impact outcomes, and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES) is an assessment tool that accomplishes such. The purpose of this study was to determine how the individual components of the test contribute to the OASES' impact score.

Method: Data collected at a university speech-language and hearing clinic from 29 adults were used for a relative weight analysis (RWA).

Improving Discourse following Traumatic Brain Injury: A Tale of Two Treatments.

Persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often present with discourse-level deficits that affect functional communication. These deficits are not thought to be primarily linguistic in nature but instead are thought to arise from the interaction of linguistic and cognitive processes. Discourse processing treatment (DPT) is a discourse-based treatment protocol which targets discourse deficits frequently seen in TBI.

RELEASE: a protocol for a systematic review based, individual participant data, meta- and network meta-analysis, of complex speech-language therapy interventions for stroke-related aphasia.

Background: Speech and language therapy (SLT) benefits people with aphasia following stroke. Group level summary statistics from randomised controlled trials hinder exploration of highly complex SLT interventions and a clinically relevant heterogeneous population. Creating a database of individual participant data (IPD) for people with aphasia aims to allow exploration of individual and therapy-related predictors of recovery and prognosis.

A Compendium of Core Lexicon Checklists.

Core Lexicon (CoreLex) is a relatively new approach assessing lexical use in discourse. CoreLex examines the specific lexical items used to tell a story, or how typical lexical items are compared with a normative sample. This method has great potential for clinical utilization because CoreLex measures are fast, easy to administer, and correlate with microlinguistic and macrolinguistic discourse measures.

A Tutorial on Core Lexicon: Development, Use, and Application.

Evidence suggests that discourse-level assessment in aphasia should be implemented within clinical settings. However, existing discourse measures that are time and labor intensive in process prevent speech-language pathologists from applying such measures to their clinical practices. This article provides an overview of a lexicon-based analysis (core lexicon measure) that recently was developed and investigated for clinical usability.

Concurrent Validity and Reliability of the Core Lexicon Measure as a Measure of Word Retrieval Ability in Aphasia Narratives.

Purpose General agreement exists in the literature that clinicians struggle with quantifying discourse-level performance in clinical settings. Core lexicon analysis has gained recent attention as an alternative tool that may address difficulties that clinicians face. Although previous studies have demonstrated that core lexicon measures are an efficient means of assessing discourse in persons with aphasia (PWAs), the psychometric properties of core lexicon measures have yet to be investigated.

Gender differences in aphasia outcomes: evidence from the AphasiaBank.

Background: Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Aphasia is a language impairment which results as a consequence of stroke. Gender differences are reported in underlying mechanisms of stroke, however, gender differences in aphasia type and severity remain unclear.

Measuring word retrieval in narrative discourse: core lexicon in aphasia.

Background: Discourse analysis procedures are time consuming and impractical in a clinical setting. Critical to clinicians are simple and informative discourse measures that require minimal time and labour to complete. Many studies, however, have overlooked difficulties that clinicians face.

Discourse-based treatment in mild traumatic brain injury.

Background: Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) present with numerous discourse deficits associated with impairments to the linguistic system and other cognitive systems. Individuals with TBI may produce discourse that is lacking important information and poorly organized, as well as containing numerous coherence disrupting elements. Yet there are few studies directly addressing discourse deficits in individuals with TBI to guide clinicians.

Working Memory in Aphasia: Considering Discourse Processing and Treatment Implications.

Evidence suggests that persons with aphasia (PWAs) present with working memory impairments that affect a variety of language tasks. Most of these studies have focused on the phonological loop component of working memory and little attention has been paid to the episodic buffer component. The episodic buffer, as a limited capacity, multimodal system that binds and integrates information from the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory would likely be involved in discourse processing.

Semantic Knowledge Use in Discourse: Influence of Age.

Semantic memory is relatively stable across the lifespan (Rönnlund, Nyberg, & Bäckman, 2005; Spaniol, Madden, & Voss, 2006); however, most research has been conducted at the single concept level. Few researchers have examined how semantic knowledge is used in discourse. The purpose of the study, then, was to determine the proportion of semantic knowledge and category domains used in discourse produced by younger and older participants.

Lexical Ambiguity Resolution Using Discourse Contexts in Persons With and Without Aphasia.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of persons with aphasia (PWA) to resolve different types of ambiguous words (homophones, metaphors, and metonyms) in discourse contexts.

Method: Six PWA and 10 controls listened to short discourses that biased either the dominant (more frequent) or subordinate (less frequent) version of an ambiguous word as well as nonsense (filler) discourses. Participants then indicated whether or not the final sentence, which contained the ambiguity, made sense in the discourse.

Semantic Knowledge Use in Discourse Produced by Individuals with Anomic Aphasia.

Background: Researchers have demonstrated that people with aphasia (PWA) have preserved semantic knowledge (Dell et al., 1997; Jefferies & Lambon Ralph, 2006). However, Antonucci (2014) demonstrated that some PWA have impaired access to certain types of knowledge more than others.