A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

theories on the negative effects of emotional status on linguistic performance by
people with aphasia have also been supported and can now be extended to
impacting on the ability to learn new vocabulary. This finding has implications for
the timing and type of intervention provided to patients and their families. The
findings of this investigation could possibly be extended to the ability to learn
new vocabulary by non-aphasic populations who also experience anxiety and
depression, as such emotional disturbances have been found to affect cognitive
processes including attention and memory.
The findings also demonstrated the ability of people with chronic aphasia to
learn new vocabulary suggesting related cortical plasticity up to and including
146 months post-stroke (as suggested by C10 who was 146 months poststroke).
This finding is consistent with literature evidence where recovery from
aphasia was demonstrated for individuals with an average of 8.5 years poststroke
when given intensive therapeutic input (Pulvermüller et al., 2001). The
success of the type of therapeutic input with people with chronic aphasia has
implications for the health care system which is not currently capable of
providing such intensive rehabilitation (Meinzer et al., 2002). Alternatives to
direct intensive therapy could involve the training of carers or family members,
or perhaps use computer-based training programmes for people to practise daily
therapy tasks in their own homes (Meinzer et al., 2002). While participants with
chronic aphasia demonstrated a greater ability to learn and retain new
vocabulary than those in the more acute stages of recovery, this was not to the
exclusion of those participants with acute aphasia who also demonstrated new
vocabulary learning. There did not appear to be any inherent interactions
between the various factors, for example older participants did not appear to be
more anxious or depressed than younger ones and emotional impairment was
not noted to be related to levels of educational experience.
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