Patients with aphasia can have difficulties using nouns and their grammar.
This study will investigate if people diagnosed with aphasia could have problems using certain types of noun (naming words such as house, tea or gate).
We are focussing on two types of noun:
countable nouns, such as ‘dog’, which change depending on how many there are (one dog, two dogs)
uncountable nouns, such as ‘water’, which don’t change based on quantity (one litre of water, two litres of water)
What is the purpose of this research study?
The reason we are carrying out this research is because there is a lack of information about processing of countable and uncountable nouns in aphasia and the specific difficulties people face.
This research will help other researchers to know a bit more about how nouns are represented in the brain and what might go wrong when a person suffers from a communicative disorder such as aphasia.
We hope in future this will help clinicians to consider how to develop tools in therapy to improve countable or uncountable nouns grammar in case their patients suffer from a specific countability impairment.
What will it Involve?
This will involve meeting with the researcher once a week on Zoom or Skype for one hour for approximately three months - we can discuss in the first meeting if you would like to meet more or less often a week to change the overall duration.
After having finished the research, there won’t be any follow-ups. However, once your research exercises have been analysed, we will send you a document where you will find all your results.
During the sessions we will do oral and written tasks to test your knowledge about countable and uncountable nouns that would involve, for instance, the following exercises:
- Picture naming tasks.
- Repetition of words and noun phrases.
- ‘Fill in the gaps’ exercises.
- Description of images.
- Written naming picture tasks.
- Reading tasks.
You will be able to use the information to identify whether you experience specific noun difficulties, which can be shared with Speech and Language Therapists (if you are under treatment) to address this.
Who can take part?
We are looking for participants that have been diagnosed with either Broca’s Aphasia (also called Expressive Aphasia) or Conduction Aphasia and are not currently taking antidepressants.
If you have Broca’s aphasia, we need participants with the following characteristics:
**Between 39 and 57 years old.
**Female.
**You must have suffered from an Ischemic stroke.
**You must be right-handed.
**You must have studied a university degree.
People with Broca’s Aphasia/Expressive Aphasia have difficulty speaking, writing and using words or sentences. They also have trouble using grammar.
We need people who suffer from Conduction aphasia with the following characteristics:
**Male, between 73 and 87 years old, right-handed, Ischemic stroke, tertiary education (e.g., professional training).
**Male, between 18 and 28 years old, right-handed, haemorrhagic stroke, you must be doing/ have done your a-levels.
**Male, between 30 and 48 years old, right-handed, Ischemic stroke, university degree.
People with Conduction Aphasia have a lot of difficulty repeating words and sentences.
You will need to know how to use Zoom or Skype and will need to do a linguistic task before being accepted onto the study. This linguistic task would last between 40 to 50 minutes
How Can I Register my Interest?
Please email Lucas Jesus Martinez-Almagro at 0619018694@alu.uma.es or lucas.martinez-almagro@port.ac.uk.