A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

years or greater in this investigation) also presented with less severe aphasia
than the other participants in this study. Additionally, these participants also
learned a significant amount of information about the new words. The converse
also appeared to be true. Those participants who experienced less than 13
years of education in this investigation (four participants) also appeared to be
more severely aphasic and learned less information about the new vocabulary
than the other participants. Three of these participants (C9, C10 and C11 - the
lowest scoring participants) were also those who were unable to fractionate the
learning tasks for individual learning time and required close guidance from the
researcher. These were also the participants who were employed in jobs that
were less complex, for example more manual, automatic and repetitive
occupations such as factory and cleaning jobs. Those participants with more
complex occupations such as engineering, pharmacy and managerial work
appeared to use more fractionating of tasks and organised thought, perhaps
with more experience of planning, problem solving and sequencing. The group
trend in this investigation is consistent with this hypothesis as participants with
more active factors thought to accumulate cognitive reserve, i.e. high education
and occupation levels, also presented with less severe aphasia and learned
more vocabulary than less educated and less skilled participants. There were
two exceptions to this – C3 who was a homemaker and C11 who had 15 years
in education. C11 (who was the lowest scoring participant) was employed in a
manual occupation (bookbinding). C3 was ranked fourth in the ability to learn the
new vocabulary retaining 80% of this new learning. She worked as a
homemaker due to a long history of ill-health therefore it is not possible to
establish what occupational level she might have achieved if she pursued a
career outside the home.
As the main investigation findings suggest that new learning could be a process
involved in aphasia rehabilitation should those less educated, less skilled
individuals be excluded from the therapeutic process? It would of course be
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