Short-Term Memory and Aphasia: From Theory to Treatment.
Irene Minkina, Samantha Rosenberg, Michelene Kalinyak-Fliszar and 1 others
PMID 28201834WHAT IT FOUND
Verbal short-term memory is commonly impaired in aphasia and may help characterize semantic versus phonological deficits.
Treatment evidence is from case studies, so larger studies are needed.
Key findings
01Verbal short-term memory is commonly impaired in aphasia, and span measures are associated with language performance.
02Recall patterns such as primacy, recency, and imageability effects may help characterize semantic versus phonological language deficits, but the link to word retrieval is less consistent.
03Case studies report possible language gains after verbal short-term memory tasks, but larger studies are needed to determine treatment components and outcomes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a narrative review, not an original trial, so it cannot establish treatment effects. Most treatment evidence comes from case reports and very small studies. The ongoing case series is described before results are available. The studies reviewed differ in stimuli, delay, feedback, and dose, so active components cannot be separated. The authors are involved in the research and ongoing study they describe.
Declared interests
Research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health. All authors are supported through this grant. Nadine Martin serves as Vice President for Science and Research of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that verbal short-term memory treatment improves aphasia language skills. The treatment evidence described here comes from case reports and an ongoing case series, and the article says larger studies are needed.