Comparing the effects of clinician and caregiver-administered lexical retrieval training for progressive anomia.
Stephanie M Grasso, Kaleigh M Shuster, Maya L Henry
PMID 28662598WHAT IT FOUND
Two people with progressive word-finding difficulty trained with a clinician then a caregiver showed similar gains in naming trained items.
Neither group showed significant improvement on untrained words, and standard naming tests remained stable despite functional changes.
Key findings
01For both participants, there was no significant difference in treatment effects between clinician-administered and caregiver-administered phases.
02Gains were significant for trained items compared to untrained items for both participants.
03Standardized naming test scores did not change significantly from pre-treatment to post-treatment for either participant, despite functional improvements in self-cueing.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only two participants, making it impossible to generalize findings to other individuals with MCI or PPA. The caregiver-administered phase always followed the clinician-administered phase, so order effects cannot be ruled out. Generalization to untrained items was minimal, limiting the scope of the treatment's impact. One participant (MCI) had a fall during the caregiver phase, which may have affected performance. Standardized outcome measures (Boston Naming Test) did not reflect the functional improvements reported by participants and caregivers.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest were reported in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that caregiver-administered therapy will produce generalizable naming improvements or change standardized test scores. The study showed that while trained items improved, gains did not significantly transfer to untrained items, and standard naming tests remained stable despite reported functional benefits.