Attentive Reading With Constrained Summarization Adapted to Address Written Discourse in People With Mild Aphasia

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the preliminary efficacy of Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization–Written (ARCS-W) in people with mild aphasia. ARCS-W adapts an existing treatment, ARCS (Rogalski & Edmonds, 2008), to address discourse level writing in mild aphasia. ARCS-W focuses on the cognitive and linguistic skills required for discourse production.

Method

This study was a within-subject pre–postdesign. Three people with mild aphasia participated. ARCS-W integrates attentive reading or listening with constrained summarization of discourse level material in spoken and written modalities. Outcomes included macro- (main concepts) and microlinguistic (correct information units, complete utterances) discourse measures, confrontation naming, aphasia severity, and functional communication.

Results

All 3 participants demonstrated some generalization to untrained spoken and written discourse at the word, sentence, and text levels. Reduced aphasia severity and/or increased functional communication and confrontation naming were also observed in some participants.

Conclusions

The findings of this study provide preliminary evidence of the efficacy of ARCS-W to improve spoken and written discourse in mild aphasia. Different generalization patterns suggest different mechanisms of improvement. Further research and replication are required to better understand how ARCS-W can impact discourse abilities.

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