Semantic & Naming Therapy: An Integrated Approach

This resource aims to provide clinicians with evidence-based therapy tasks to enhance naming and word-finding abilities in people with aphasia. The resource addresses the clinical questions of not just what to do, but why it is being done, and how to do it. This resource provides the clinician with tasks that are known to strengthen the link between the semantic system and the phonological output lexicon.

The development of the treatment tasks has adhered to current models of psycholinguistic processing and current impairment-based aphasia treatment efficacy research. Many of the task items are controlled for word frequency, image ability, and length. Some important and novel features of this therapy resource are that it provides the clinician with: theoretical descriptions of how each task might be influencing the language processing system; detailed instructions about tasks and how to teach-on-error; structure for monitoring progress and moving clients to higher or lower treatment levels; and a means through which rate of presentation can be controlled and manipulated.

In addition, there is repetition and integration of key naming items across different therapy tasks to enhance and reinforce learning, in line with current cognitive learning theory. The resource uses illustrations and includes: a treatment manual containing all information and worksheets; and downloadable resources with a copy of all worksheets, as well as computerised naming, oral reading, and repetition tasks.