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Signs and Symptoms:

Wernicke’s aphasia is characterized as impaired comprehension of incoming speech stimuli (Ropper, Samuels & Klein, 2014). An aphasic patient’s speech output is fluent and has normal prosody. Patients with aphasia will produce an equal number of words in their spontaneous speech output compared to a normal speaker, but their speech contains several paraphasias, circumlocutions, and repetitions (Andreetta & Marini, 2014, p.715). When speaking, a patient will often produce jargon, or nonsense utterances (ASHA, 2016). Patients are unable to appropriately express their thoughts as well as lack the ability to decode meaning within the incoming speech stimuli (Marsel, 2014). The damage is associated with the posterior portion of the left hemisphere of the brain.

Aphasia and The Psycholinguistic Models of Language:

Researchers use language deficits seen in the aphasic population to draw conclusions about the psycholinguistic models of language including message formation, lexical selection and morphosyntactic encoding. Cho-Reyes, Mack & Thomson (2016) discovered that patients with aphasia access syntactic representations, including thematic representations, during sentence production, similarly to the typically developing cohorts. Also, because the participants showed lasting priming effects, the incorporation of structural priming within treatment is hypothesized to aid production of complex structured utterances (Cho-Reyes, Mack & Thompson, 2016, p. 213).

Along with structural priming, clients with aphasia perform semantic priming, but they require more time to complete language tasks such as the lexical decision task. This is largely due to the large onset competitor effect, meaning the inability to distinguish words with shared semantic onsets (Vee, Blumstein & Sedivy, 2009). However, aphasic patients perform at chance levels for semantic judgment tasks. In comparison to normal patients, those with aphasia will increasingly fixate on words semantically related to the target. Therefore, they are able to access lexical entries and activate the lexical network but lack the ability to use such information within an offline task (McNellis & Blumstein, 2001, p.162). Semantic representation declines largely due to the blurring of category boundaries, reduced difference between basic terms, incapability to judge semantic relatedness and abnormal activation of semantic representations of nonwords. Further, aphasia is characterized by deficits in lexical retrieval through the presence of nonword errors (Marshall, 2006, p. 392). Nonword errors are typically substituted for content words and follow pauses. Many times, patients will not recognize their speech errors and continue communicating jargon with little to no self -monitoring of the speech output (Marshall, 2006, p. 398).

Treatment of Wernicke’s Aphasia:

By analyzing language processing in aphasic patients, researchers have discovered the importance of a multilevel approach in assessment and treatment (Andreeta & Marini, 2015, p.719).

Word Retrieval

Anomia is consistently seen in aphasia, so many treatment techniques aim to help patients with word finding problems. One example of a semantic approach is referred to as semantic feature analyses. The process includes naming the target object shown in the picture and producing words that are semantically related to the target. Through production of semantically similar features, participants develop more skilled in naming stimuli due to the increase in lexical activation (Boyle, 2004, p. 240).

Computer Rehabilitation

Four types of treatment methods utilize the computer to drive communication in the aphasia population. This includes stimulation, drill and practice, simulations, and tutorials (Raymond, 2004, p. 255). Stimulation focuses on the maintenance of skills over a longer period of time, while drill exercises are categorized as a “teaching deep” process. So, drill and practice exercises attend to only a few stimuli and continue teaching until the participant achieves accurate productions. Then, simulations depict a structured environment with a given challenge and a list of possible solutions to choose from. Lastly, tutorials are informative and strive to provide caregivers the necessary information to create optimal communication for the client (Raymond, 2004, p. 255).

Augmentative communication devices are an alternate treatment method for aphasia. Augmentative communication utilizes computers to aid communication through digitized speech, pictures, animation and/or text (Raymond, 2004, p. 255).
 * 1) REDIRECT Aphasia: Processing of Language