Therapy for Verbs Expression in Aphasia: A Systematic Review

Background and Aim: In recent years there has been large interest in the differential processing of nouns and verbs in people with aphasia, but more limited concern about whether the differences have implications for therapy. It remains unclear whether verbs can be treated in a similar way to nouns or should be treated using other approaches. This paper reviews studies focusing on therapy for spoken verb retrieval, considering the impact of therapy on treated and untreated verbs. It explores whether there are differential gains across therapy paradigms and whether verbs respond to therapy in the same way as nouns. Materials and Methods: Studies were identified using a systematic search. A total of ۱۶ studies were reviewed and classified under two headings: (۱) studies that treated verbs in a single-word context, (۲) studies that compared treatment for nouns and verbs. Results: Findings from the review demonstrate that verb therapy is effective in improving the retrieval of treated verbs, but with limited generalization to untreated verbs. Verbs respond very similarly to nouns when treated using the same techniques, but improving verb retrieval may be harder to achieve than improving noun retrieval. Conclusion: The review highlights the need for more systematic evaluation of different types of verb therapy, measuring the impact of therapy on verb retrieval and also sentence production. through the sensible assessment and monitoring of change across different contexts will an understanding of how verbs respond to therapy be developed and what generalization patterns can be predicted. This will lead to increased assurance in the selection of therapy approaches for people with verb difficulties in aphasia.

Keywords:

Aphasia , Stroke , Verb