Graduation Year

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Major Professor

Michelle S. Bourgeois, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Committee Member

Jacqueline Hinckley, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Committee Member

Howard Goldstein, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Keywords

aphasia, broca's aphasia, language therapy, verbal cues

Abstract

Script training is a technique that allows persons with acquired speech and language disorders, such as nonfluent aphasia, to have islands of fluent speech during which they can speak about a topic without pausing or having word-finding errors. Scripts relevant to specific functional situations are written and practiced until memorized. Script training delivered verbally has been effective with clients with aphasia but the role of written cues in the training has not been explored. Therefore the purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of script training taught verbally, or verbally with a written script, in persons with aphasia.

Three adults, one with Broca’s aphasia and apraxia of speech (AOS), one with Broca’s aphasia, and one with Anomic aphasia were recruited for this study. Participants selected three topics for script training and with the clinician’s help wrote a script and a script prompt for each topic. Scripts were trained one sentence or phrase at a time until 95% repetition accuracy was achieved, then training began for the next script. The effects of two training procedures, verbal only and verbal + written script, were evaluated with a multiple baseline design across training procedures, the order of which was counterbalanced across participants. Maintenance data were collected after each script was mastered and after the study ended. Results revealed that 3 persons with aphasia (PWA) demonstrated mastery of 2-3 scripts each using V+W script training methods, but only 1 participant maintained script accuracy at 16 weeks post-study. More research is needed to explore the role of written and verbal cues on script mastery and generalization.

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