Verbal self-correction and improvement in treated aphasic clients

This study provides objective information on the relationship of verbal self correction and improvement by treated aphasic clients. Measures of aphasic patients' verbal self correction effort and success were obtained before (pre-treatment) and during (treatment) language therapy and examined in relation to two outcome measures. Results revealed that pretreatment verbal-self-correction effort, but not success, was related to changes on the outcome measures. All treatment verbal self-correction measures were significantly correlated with the outcome measures. Patients improving most tended to (1) have higher pre-treatment verbal self-correction effort, (2) have higher auditory comprehension scores and/or improvement markedly on auditory comprehension during treatment, and (3) reflect anomic or conduction aphasia rather than global or Wernicke's aphasia. Findings suggest that verbal self-correction should be considered as one of a cluster of factors in determining the overall severity of the patient's aphasia and in predicting language treatment outcomes.