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| Therapist researchers: | Principal investigator: Carol Sacchett Project mentors: Maria Black, Prof Ruth Campbell |
| Funder | The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia |
| Summary: |
This study investigated the ability of seven people with severe aphasia to communicate about simple everyday events using drawing. The participants in the study all had very limited spoken or written output. The communicative benefits of drawing as a compensatory means of expression for people with severe aphasia are well-documented. This study explored the diagnostic potential of drawing as a means of gaining further insight into the event processing and language processing abilities of such individuals, with a view to developing a clinically useful assessment tool.
The participants were required to draw a series of simple events in response to video clips (N = 32) and spoken sentences (N = 32). Their drawings were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively, and their individual performance was compared with a) the drawing performance of a group of twelve matched control participants, and b) their own performance on a number of other linguistic and non-linguistic measures.
The results so far indicate that:
- Some people with severe aphasia have underlying event processing problems which affect their ability to communicate about those events, whether through language or through drawing (Drawing A)
- Other individuals have no problems with event processing, suggesting their deficits are purely linguistic in origin. Such individuals are able to communicate about events through drawing in the same way as non-aphasic controls. (Drawing B)
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| Conclusions |
These results are clinically relevant since they suggest that assessment of event drawing abilities can be a useful tool in revealing difficulties with specific aspects of event processing in severe aphasia. These difficulties may themselves be an appropriate target for individually tailored therapy. In particular, the findings so far suggest theoretically motivated and specific ways in which drawing can be used to improve event processing and to increase communicative effectiveness. The next stages of this project will be to:
a) develop a clinically useful assessment tool based on event drawing
b) undertake a therapy study with some of the participants.
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