Case Study - Conduction Aphasia


Case Study

Conduction Aphasia

Age: 47

Time since stroke: 13 months


Problems

Carol had a history of seizures and had a stroke. While she retained some physical weakness, her biggest issue was being able to talk to her family. She’d been given an AAC device, which she used with some help to navigate, but wasn’t satisfied with the limitations and effort to find what she wanted to say.

Given that Carol had conduction aphasia, her speech was characterized by sentences in which she would decrease her volume when she couldn’t correctly say the target word. Her speech errors were words that sounded very similar to the word she was trying to say. She became very frustrated with her inability to effectively communicate. She was very social and embarrassed by her speech. Her attempts to correct her speech made it worse in the moment.

Assessment

Using WAB-R
  • Poor repetition
  • Poor auditory comprehension
  • Low awareness of errors
  • Wrote some single words
  • Reading at sentence-level
  • Issue with word-finding
  • Could not correct errors

Treatment

She completed a 6-week program

and My Aphasia Coach software homework daily.


Results

Before
After
Speech information content
30%
70%
Repetition
8%
30%
Responsive speech
30%
90%
Writing output
17%
58%

Outcome

  • Improved awareness of errors
  • Increased repetition and ability to sequence sounds in 1-2 syllable words
  • Went from writing single words to writing sentences
  • Improved auditory comprehension and ability to follow along during a conversation
  • Gained confidence and began talking to other people she had met at the center
  • Learned how to use effective strategies when people couldn’t understand her
  • Said her husband’s, children’s and parents names more easily