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A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

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Chapter 5<br />

Ma<strong>in</strong> Investigation<br />

5.1 INTRODUCTION<br />

The pilot studies (Chapter 4) have demonstrated that the novel stimuli and<br />

procedure were suitable for the tra<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g and assessment <strong>of</strong> new vocabulary<br />

learn<strong>in</strong>g by healthy adults and post-stroke adults with and without aphasia. The<br />

ma<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>vestigation reported <strong>in</strong> this chapter whether adults with aphasia could<br />

learn new vocabulary. As previously discussed (see section 2.7) this knowledge<br />

could <strong>in</strong>form any theory <strong>of</strong> rehabilitation as it is currently not known if aphasia<br />

rehabilitation merely facilitates the access<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> previously known <strong>in</strong>formation<br />

which is now <strong>in</strong>accessible due to cortical damage or if new learn<strong>in</strong>g is <strong>in</strong>volved<br />

<strong>in</strong> the therapeutic process. This <strong>in</strong>formation could also have implications for the<br />

methods and stimuli employed <strong>in</strong> aphasia rehabilitation.<br />

This chapter reports the recruitment criteria <strong>of</strong> participants for the ma<strong>in</strong><br />

<strong>in</strong>vestigation and outl<strong>in</strong>es the procedure as developed through the process <strong>of</strong><br />

the prelim<strong>in</strong>ary studies (Chapter 3) and pilot studies (Chapter 4). The results are<br />

divided <strong>in</strong>to three ma<strong>in</strong> sections. Firstly, the f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs relat<strong>in</strong>g to the ma<strong>in</strong><br />

research question i.e. whether post-stroke adults with aphasia (

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