A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

- The medical stability of participants was considered essential to ensure
that their attention was focussed on the investigation at hand rather than
ongoing personal ill-health.
- In order to reduce extraneous influences on the ability to learn,
participants did not have any history of mental illness, progressive
illnesses or illegal substance abuse.
Prior to recruitment, ethical approval was secured from the Lothian and Fife
NHS Trusts. Recruitment of participants was mainly through communication with
trust managers and speech and language therapists where the investigation was
discussed and potential participants were noted. Information sheets (see
Appendix 5.1) describing the investigation and participant consent forms (see
Appendix 5.2) were forwarded to each manager. Completed consent forms were
returned on behalf of consenting participants by speech and language
therapists. The participants with aphasia in the main investigation originally
numbered 14, however one participant had severe visual impairments and was
unable to participate in the screening assessments and another participant
began the training but unfortunately became ill and had to withdraw from the
investigation after two training sessions. Of the remaining 12 participants, nine
were recruited through their speech and language therapists. One participant
was recruited through communication with a local college, which educates
people with disabilities. A further two participants were recruited from an
informative talk about the investigation at the local Chest, Heart and Stroke
Association. Of these 12 participants there was no participant attrition for the
four training sessions, however, two participants (C10 and C11) declined to
partake in the delayed recall assessment tasks.
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