Inner Speech and Naming Treatment for Individuals with Aphasia

Aphasia is a language disorder, commonly resulting from stroke or other brain injury, that impacts a person's ability to communicate. This project is looking to improve upon current treatment methods for spoken naming in people with aphasia. People with aphasia frequently report being able to successfully say a word in their head, regardless of their ability to say the word out loud. For example, when presented with a picture of a house, they may report being able to think or hear "house" in their head, even if they can't name it out loud. This "little voice" inside one's head is known as inner speech (IS). Previous research suggests that some people with aphasia can re-learn to say words with successful IS (i.e., words they can already say in their heads) easier and faster than words with unsuccessful IS. This study will extend these findings by implementing a comparative treatment study in a larger group of participants with aphasia. The results will help to establish recommendations for speech-language pathologists in choosing treatment stimuli for anomia.