A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

to match the name and skill presented. Each task was presented initially in
spoken and then in written form.
4.3.3.6 Scoring system
The scoring of each task varied depending upon the task. As with the
preliminary studies’ scoring system (see section 3.2.1.6), when a name or skill
was recalled correctly the score was one. When a name was incorrect but
contained greater than 50% of phonemes / graphemes and were presented in
the correct order the score was ½. For example, if the target word ‘futarg’ was
produced as ‘putar’ it would be allocated ½ as it contains > 50% of the target
phonemes and these are in the correct order. When a skill contained two words
and one of these words was recalled the score was ½. For example, if the target
skill was ‘creates storms’ and a response consisted of ‘storms’ or ‘creates
something’ they would be allocated ½ point. Apart from these instances
inaccurate names or skills scored zero. The scoring criteria for recalling habitat
and food items, auditory and written lexical decision, categorisation tasks,
syllable matching and word-picture matching tasks was one for correct and zero
for incorrect responses.
The training and assessment procedures (described above) were tested and
evaluated before being employed in the main investigation using a number of
pilot studies. The participant from pilot study one (P1, see section 4.4) was an
adult with normal cognitive and language functioning. Pilot study two (P2, see
section 4.5) involved an adult who had had a stroke but was not aphasic. The
third pilot study (P3, see section 4.6) assessed if the training and assessment
procedures were appropriate for a post-stroke adult with aphasia, for example,
in terms of understanding the instructions and tasks involved as well as the
timing and number of items in each session. These studies will now be
described and evaluated.
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