129 The impact of accuracy-focused and speed-focused therapy on word retrieval in picture naming and composite picture descriptions in post-stroke aphasia.

Introduction: Word‐retrieval difficulties commonly occur in aphasia after stroke and are considered 1 of the most pervasive symptoms affecting everyday communication. While picture naming tasks have typically been used for assessing and treating word finding problems in clinical practice, there is a dearth of studies investigating the relationship between confrontation naming and connected speech tasks. This study investigated whether a newly‐developed treatment targeting both speed and accuracy in picture naming would be more effective for improving the use of the treated names in connected speech, than the standard therapy which targeted accuracy alone.

Method: 20 participants with aphasia of varying degrees of severity and subtype took part in 12 therapy sessions over 6 weeks. In the baseline and post‐treatment assessments, participants were asked to complete a composite picture description task and a picture naming task, the items of which were part of the composite pictures and constituted therapy targets.

Results: Based on the already tested 5 participants' data, for the dependent variables of speed and accuracy in picture naming, we found that the speed‐focused therapy was as effective as the standard therapy. The ‘carry over’ of the therapy items to connected speech was increased for all items relative to the baseline, but the speed therapy, in comparison to the standard one, led to significantly higher generalization of its targeted items to connected speech.

Discussion: These findings suggest that a more demanding single‐word therapy can promote strong generalisation effects to more linguistically and cognitively demanding connected speech production.