Response Generalization in Anomia Treatment: A Focus on Untrained Stimuli Selection

EasyChair Preprint no. 6401

Abstract

Anomia is ubiquitous across persons with aphasia and remains a common target of treatment. The success of an anomia treatment can be measured by its ability to promote generalization to untrained tasks (stimulus generalization) or untrained stimuli (response generalization; Thompson, 1989). We focus on response generalization. For example, Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA; Boyle, 2010) has shown some evidence of response generalization, where semantically related untrained words are more likely to improve post-treatment than unrelated untrained words (Quique et al., 2019). One explanation is that SFA treatment harnesses the structure of semantic memory as activation spreads from trained words to connected untrained words. Given this model, we hypothesized that more similar untrained words will exhibit greater generalization than less similar untrained words. To assess our hypothesis, we considered ten articles from Quique et al’s (2019) meta-analysis of SFA. For.each study, we identified the selection criteria and relatedness between trained and untrained probes. We also calculated the Percentage of Nonoverlapping Data (PND) for naming of untrained probes by participant in each study as a measure of response generalization (Scruggs et al., 1987). Of the ten studies, only four had selected untrained probes based on their relatedness to the trained probes. Only one of these studies reported the stimuli used, limiting our ability to systematically quantify the degree of relatedness of untrained probes. PND ranged from highly effective to ineffective, with no clear relationship between relatedness of untrained probes and PND. We were unable to answer our initial question regarding the impact of relatedness of untrained probes on response generalization. We discuss further research needs in this area that will ultimately enhance anomia treatment effectiveness.

Keyphrases: anomia treatment, aphasia, response generalization, Semantic Feature Analysis, untrained words

@Booklet{EasyChair:6401,
  author = {Audrey Wayment and Nichol Castro},
  title = {Response Generalization in Anomia Treatment: A Focus on Untrained Stimuli Selection},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 6401},

  year = {EasyChair, 2021}}