Tuesday, March 3, 2009

~FirSt PoStInG~

The Efficacy of Computer-Provided Reading Treatment for Chronic Aphasic Adults
(http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/3/493)

Richard C. Katz 1Robert T. Wertz 2 1 Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Phoenix, AZ and Arizona State University Tempe2 Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Nashville, TN and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Nashville, TN
katz.richard@phoenix.va.gov

We examined the effects of computer-provided reading activities on language performance in chronic aphasic patients. Fifty-five aphasic adults were assigned randomly to one of three conditions: computer reading treatment, computer stimulation, or no treatment. Subjects in the computer groups used computers 3 hours each week for 26 weeks. Computer reading treatment software consisted of visual matching and reading comprehension tasks. Computer stimulation software consisted of nonverbal games and cognitive rehabilitation tasks. Language measures were administered to all subjects at entry and after 3 and 6 months. Significant improvement over the 26 weeks occurred on five language measures for the computer reading treatment group, on one language measure for the computer stimulation group, and on none of the language measures for the no treatment group. The computer reading treatment group displayed significantly more improvement on the Porch Index of Communicative Ability "Overall" and "Verbal" modality percentiles and on the Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia "Quotient" and "Repetition" subtest than the other two groups. The results suggest that (a) computerized reading treatment can be administered with minimal assistance from a clinician, (b) improvement on the computerized reading treatment tasks generalized to non-computer language performance, (c) improvement resulted from the language content of the software and not stimulation provided by a computer, and (d) the computerized reading treatment we provided to chronic aphasic patients was efficacious.

Review
This article that I have read falls under the category of reading for information. This article explains about a study on the effects of computer-provided reading activities on language performance in chronic aphasic patients. There are 55 subjects in this study which are all of them are aphasic adults. They were assigned randomly to three conditions which are computer reading treatment, computer stimulation, or no treatment at all. Subjects in the computer groups used computers 3 hours each week for 26 weeks. In the computer reading treatment group, they are exposed to computer reading treatment software consisted of visual matching and reading comprehension tasks. On the other hand, in the computer stimulation group, they were exposed to computer stimulation software consisted of nonverbal games and cognitive rehabilitation tasks. Language measures were administered to all subjects at entry and after 3 and 6 months to study the effect. There is significant improvement over the 26 weeks period where it occurred on five language measures for the computer reading treatment group, on one language measure for the computer stimulation group, and none of the language measures for the no treatment group. The computer reading treatment group displayed a significant improvement on the 4 scale items which are the Porch Index of Communicative Ability "Overall" and "Verbal" modality percentiles, the Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia "Quotient" and "Repetition" subtest than the other two groups. The result from conducted test shows that computerized reading treatment can be addressed with minimal assistance from a clinician. There is an improvement on the computerized reading treatment tasks generalized to non-computer language performance. There is also an improvement resulted from the language content of the software and not stimulation provided by a computer. So, the computerized reading treatment that has been provided to the chronic aphasic patients is a successful.

Activities
1. For those that is not familiar with the term aphasic, please click here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia
2. To read the original article, please click here.http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/3/493

1 comment:

  1. ok you meet the requirement. please add on the audio and video files ok . Keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete