JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Naming problem is common faced by patients with various type of aphasia. In clinics, cueing hierarchies provided by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) is the traditional approach to strengthen the neuronal association between the sematic representation and naming expression. This approach needs intensive training, but not usually feasible due to clinical situation. Besides, the lack of personalized practice contents as well as their associated cueing hierarchies without the help of SLPs introduces difficulty to people with aphasia (PWA) in home for self-practice.

Objective:

The purpose of this study is to assess the feasibility of a novel client-server-model based naming practice system for self-practice.

Methods:

In this paper, a naming practice system based on the client-server model as well as the hierarchical cueing method is developed. In which, the personalized contents to each PWA participant may be assigned by SLPs and generated from the database server. The naming test for each PWA also is performed face-to-face with the SLPs once a week according to the therapeutic protocol. A novel scoring method is proposed to assess the treatment effect.

Results:

This study is approved by Institutional Review Board of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. There were 12 PWA participants completed the experiment. Over 12 weeks of intervention, the naming accuracy in the 100-object picture naming test increased from 44.42%±21.52% in the baseline test to 73.75%±18.35% in the post-training test, and further slightly decreased to 66.08±23.82 in the follow-up test. Comparing to the results of this picture naming test in the baseline test, these results in the post-training test and the follow-up test enhanced statistically significantly. Moreover, reaction time and naming accuracy were two important domains in the picture naming test. It was found that some aphasia participants who used the naming practicing system more than 2 hours per week got the better scores both after training or in follow up, however, there was no significant change between the results of the Concise Chinese Aphasia Test (CCAT). In addition to the standardized language assessment and the picture naming test, more than 50% of PWA participants reported that they perceived their naming performance were improved and felt more confidence in independent living and communication.

Conclusions:

From this study, using cueing hierarchical naming practice with novel scoring method selected personalized training contents via client-server architecture over two hours per week would promote the short-term and long-term naming ability, and beneficial for the oral expression. It is suggested that PWAs with conventional treatment provided by SLPs to promote various aspects of language function, and use the proposed naming practice system as an adjunct tool to perform the naming practice at home intensively at least 2 hours per week would improve the naming performance in their daily life.