A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

The methodology for the training and assessment of the new vocabulary for the
main investigation was discussed in detail in Chapter 4 (see section 4.7) and is
summarised again in Figure 5i above.
5.3 MAIN INVESTIGATION FINDINGS
The main research question of this investigation was to ascertain if adults with
aphasia could learn new vocabulary despite having language impairments as a
result of their stroke. As the literature has suggested that adults with aphasia
have demonstrated the ability to learn other types of new information (see
section 2.8.5.3) a hypothesis was formed as follows:
Hypothesis one
Adults with aphasia will demonstrate the learning of
new vocabulary
This hypothesis was addressed by simply observing the total raw scores for
each participant’s performance on the assessments immediately following the
training session (immediate recall). The degree of ability to learn the new
vocabulary was assessed by totalling the raw scores for each assessment.
Details of performance on all assessments are presented in individual profiles
(see section 5.5 –5.16). The highest possible score for each individual was 320
being the total maximum score for the assessment tasks (immediate and
delayed recall). The exception to this was participant P3 whose highest possible
score was 280 as he was not assessed with all immediate recall tasks during the
methodological development in the pilot studies (see section 4.6.3).
The immediate recall totals for each participant are presented in Table 5.1
below. For convenience, participants are numbered according to immediate
recall score. As can be seen, the results support the hypothesis that these 12
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