A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

with the creation of new neuronal connections. A review of the literature
indicated that while a small number of studies have investigated the potential of
domain-specific new learning (i.e. in the language domain) by people with
aphasia, the stimuli employed by these studies involved already familiar word
forms or meanings (see section 2.8.5.3) and no study had employed unfamiliar
word forms paired with unfamiliar word meanings i.e. new vocabulary.
Therefore, the acquisition of new vocabulary by people with aphasia had not yet
been adequately investigated. So the question of whether new learning in the
language domain occurs during the rehabilitation process of language restitution
remained unanswered. This investigation addressed this research question and
explored the ability of young adults (