The Relationship between the Generalizability of Treatment and the Stages of Damage in Naming

Naming impairment is known as the main symptom of aphasia. Despite the fact that numerous studies have found evidences to support the effective role of therapeutic interventions in recovery of naming impairments, treatment cannot be generalized for most of these interventions. The factors involved in no generalization in treatment are not definite yet. Damaged stage in word-finding process can be one of these factors. The present study aimed to investigate this relation. Treatments used in this study concentrated on damaged stage of word-finding.
In a cross-over single-subject study, four participants with aphasia whose problem was mainly naming were selected. Each patient received semantic features analysis and phonological components analysis treatments. For each patient, a series of untrained words were considered in which generalization was checked with validation of naming correctly.
Both therapeutic approaches led to improvement in the ability of naming untrained words; although generalization was significantly more in participants with phonological impairment following phonological treatment and participants with semantic impairment following semantic treatment.
The ability to predict a generalized pattern for a particular therapeutic approach has clinical significance. Our suggestion is that based on a psychological-linguistic model, first the stage of word-finding damage must be determined, and then commensurately, the treatment which targets the defeat stage must be applied.