A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

5.16.1.1 Personal attributes
C11 was aged 45;03 at the time of the investigation and was one of the younger
participants. She had spent 15 years in education and was previously employed
as a bookbinder, which required the ability to be quick to learn new skills and be
able to measure and count accurately (www.learndirect-advice.co.uk - profile
576). C11’s HADs scored ‘abnormal’ for anxiety and ‘normal’ for depression and
she was 23 months post-stroke. C11’s husband had advised that she had
recently been treated for clinical depression but was no longer on medication.
Due to C11’s age, level of education and developed skills it was predicted that
her personal profile would have a positive impact on her ability to learn new
words, however, there may be negative influence from her high anxiety status.
5.16.1.2 Cognitive abilities and the capacity to learn
The cognitive sub-tests of the CLQT indicated that C11 had moderate attention
impairment and her memory, executive function, visuospatial skills and clock
drawing skills were severely impaired. C11 demonstrated adequate visuospatial
skills to engage in the training and assessment tasks by drawing detailed
pictures of the creatures and copying the new words accurately. The severity of
C11’s cognitive impairments would predict difficulty in learning and recalling the
new vocabulary (see section 2.6.3.3) and although attempted she did not
achieve any score on the non-linguistic learning task despite numerous
instructions and demonstrations, indicating a poor general capacity to learn.
5.16.1.3 Severity of aphasia
The language sub-test of the CLQT suggested that C11 had severe language
difficulties. Her language screening scores are displayed in Table 5.28 for each
task and mapped on to a cognitive neuropsychology model in Figure 5xiii below.
The CLQT language subtest indicated that C11 had severe language
impairment. C11’s data (see Table 5.30 and Figure 5xiii below) indicated that
she had many language difficulties at single word level.
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