A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

5.13.1.1 Personal attributes
C8 was aged 55;08 at the time of the investigation and was one of the older
participants. C8 spent 11 years in education and was previously employed as a
miner (www.stepfour.com/jobs/850381010.htm) and then as a stewart on a ship
(www.stepfour.com/jobs/350677026.htm). Both of these jobs involved manual
labour requiring good attention and concentration skills. C8’s self-rating for
anxiety and depression was considered to be within normal limits and he was
five months post-stroke. In consideration of C8’s age, years in education and
employment skills it would be anticipated that he would not learn as many words
as other younger and more educated participants. Additionally, as he was only
five months post-stroke he may not learn as many words as people with more
chronic aphasia (see section 5.4.2.1).
5.13.1.2 Cognitive abilities and the capacity to learn
The cognitive sub-tests of the CLQT indicated that C8’s attention, executive
function and visuospatial skills were within normal limits and he had mild
difficulties completing the clock drawing task. He presented with moderate
memory impairment, which was felt to be a reflection of his severe aphasia.
Memory impairment would predict difficulty learning and recalling the new
vocabulary (see section 2.6.3.3) however as with participant C2 (see section
5.7.1.2) it was felt that the CLQT score did not give an accurate reflection of
C8’s memory. He demonstrated the capacity to recall newly learned information
by recalling 100% of the non-linguistic task for immediate and delayed recall.
5.13.1.3 Severity of aphasia
The language sub-test of the CLQT suggested that C8 had severe language
difficulties. His language screening scores are displayed in Table 5.24 for each
task and mapped on to a cognitive neuropsychology model in Figure 5x below.
C8’s data (see Table 5.24 and Figure 5x below) indicated that he had a number
of language difficulties at single word level.
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