A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

chronic aphasia to learn new information should not however infer exclusion of
those adults in the acute stages of recovery. Individual participant profiles
indicated that people could also learn new vocabulary at this stage. P3 for
example, was ranked second in the amount of new learning demonstrated yet
he had experienced his stroke only seven months prior to participation in the
main investigation. These findings are consistent with the literature which report
positive outcomes in the acute stages following a stroke although the effect was
not as great as those with chronic aphasia (see section 2.6.4.1).
6.3.1.6 Summary
The hypotheses relating to the impact of age and education on the acquisition of
new vocabulary have been supported, indicating that participants who were
younger and more educated learned more new vocabulary than older and less
educated participants. The findings of this investigation are also consistent with
the concept of cognitive reserve as participants with more education and more
complex occupational levels learned more vocabulary. Therefore an ideal
patient would appear to be one who is young and highly educated, perhaps
being in highly skilled employment. However as individual participant learning
performance indicated this was not true for every individual. As suggested older
patients should not be discarded because of their age alone, a view which is
consistent with extensive literature which acknowledges that experiencedependent
cortical changes occur throughout our lifespan (Mateer and Kerns,
2000). However plasticity in the normal population is not limited by age as
people continue to learn throughout their lifetime despite age-related
degenerative processes. Educational experience alone should also not
determine who might be appropriate for therapeutic intervention as it may be
possible to teach less educated patients new methods of learning to facilitate
successful language rehabilitation. It could be speculated that these hypotheses
would also be supported for learning investigations involving the general
population rather than being solely indicative for people with aphasia. Current
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