The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effectiveness of Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) on action-word retrieval with individuals with chronic aphasia. The participants included three women with a history of chronic aphasia as the result of traumatic brain injury, cancer, and mild cognitive impairment. The participants were age 40-80, living at home with moderate to severe chronic aphasia verified by a score of 26-75 on the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2007). The treatment took place in the homes of the three participants three times each week. Treatment consisted of convergent naming of 15 trained, functional action-word photographs without cues, followed by naming of the same untrained action-word photographs using the SFA cueing chart. Semantic feature analysis was applied in the context of a changing criterion research design with a single session baseline with four intervention phases followed by post-testing with the WAB-R (Kertesz, 2007) and all 30 baseline stimulus photographs (trained and untrained) to assess generalization skills following intervention, Results included an increase in naming of the trained words for two of the three participants. The results are consistent with previous research, that included positive results with the use of SFA with individuals with aphasia. Additional studies examining the effect of SFA using action words for individuals with chronic aphasia are warranted.
Keywords: aphasia, semantic feature analysis, action word retrieval
