International journal of language & communication disorders
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Int J Lang Commun Disord · Mar 2014
Comparative StudyA comparison of aphasia therapy outcomes before and after a Very Early Rehabilitation programme following stroke.
Very early aphasia rehabilitation studies have shown mixed results. Differences in therapy intensity and therapy type contribute significantly to the equivocal results. ⋯ A prescribed, impairment-based aphasia therapy regimen, provided daily in very early post-stroke recovery, resulted in significantly greater communication gains in people with mild-severe aphasia at completion of therapy and at 6 months, when compared with a historical control cohort. Further research is required to demonstrate large-scale and long-term efficacy.
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Int J Lang Commun Disord · Mar 2014
'I am not a tragedy. I am full of hope': communication impairment narratives in newspapers.
Individual attitudes and more general attitudes in society can negatively influence the functioning of people with communication disorders according to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) (2002). Personal narratives have been recommended as the best means to convey and understand a person's life experience and have been investigated extensively. Investigations of personal narratives of communication impairment in mass media continue to be relatively rare in the literature. Published narratives can enrich understandings of clients' experiences by elucidating available representations of lived experiences of communication impairment. ⋯ The under-representation of the lived experience of people with communication impairments in Irish national newspapers may be seen as contributing to a general lack of understanding and awareness of communication impairments. This under-representation, coupled with a lack of awareness, may potentially affect the ability of people with communication impairments to re-engage with and reintegrate into their communities.
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Int J Lang Commun Disord · Mar 2014
Maternal input to children with specific language impairment during shared book reading: is mothers' language in tune with their children's production?
The literature on input addressed to children with specific language impairment (SLI) has shown contrasting results on the role that parents assume during conversational interactions. Some studies have shown that parents compensate for the child's linguistic limitations. In contrast, other studies have indicated that mothers are able to adjust their communication in response to their children's language characteristics. ⋯ On the whole these findings suggest that mothers of children with SLI are able to tune their language to their children's linguistic limitations. These findings may contribute to improving early intervention programmes with children with SLI by focusing on the mother-child interaction during shared book reading.