A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

5.5.1.1 Personal attributes
C1 was aged 39.05 at the time of the investigation and was one of the youngest
participants. It would therefore be predicted that C1 would learn more new
vocabulary than older participants. C1 had spent 21.5 years in education and
would be expected to have highly developed skills in learning (see section
2.6.1.2). Employed as a Trading Standards Officer, C1 would have used skills in
being attentive to detail, absorbing complex information and have good
communication skills (www.learndirect-advice.co.uk - profile 209). C1’s selfrating
for anxiety and depression placed her within normal limits and she was 66
months post-stroke. It would be predicted that C1’s personal attributes would
contribute favourably in learning the new vocabulary.
5.5.1.2 Cognitive abilities and the capacity to learn
The sub-tests of CLQT indicate that C1’s cognitive abilities were considered to
be within normal limits. She demonstrated the capacity to learn new information
by achieving 100% for the immediate and delayed recall of the non-linguistic
task. It was therefore predicted that cognitive abilities would enhance the ability
of C1 to learn the new vocabulary in particular intact attention and memory.
5.5.1.3 Severity of aphasia
The language sub-test of the CLQT indicated that C1’s language abilities were
within normal limits. Her language screening scores are displayed in Table 5.8
for each task and mapped on to a cognitive neuropsychology model in Figure 5ii
below. C1’s language data indicated that she had difficulties in repeating,
reading aloud and spelling non-words (suggesting impairments in LPC, APC,
PLC, POB and GOB pathways). While the data indicates that C1 could name,
read, repeat and spell single words, qualitative data revealed that her connected
speech was hesitant and contained many fillers (e.g. um, eh) and pauses that
disturbed the flow of her speech (see narration of the Cinderella story in
Appendix 5.3a).
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