A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

person with aphasia only ever producing correct responses. Recent findings
suggest that while participants strongly preferred errorless learning techniques,
being less frustrating and more rewarding than errorful techniques, errorless
learning produced equivalent results to errorful learning in the rehabilitation of
anomia (Fillingham et al., 2003; Fillingham et al., 2005). However as there
appears to be a paucity of research in this area and all participants in the above
investigations did not improve to the same extent, further exploration is
warranted. This investigation has highlighted the different learning styles of
participants in the preliminary, pilot and main investigation which may account
for some of the variation in participant outcome. Perhaps further language
therapy investigations should take this factor into account where people may
gain further functional improvements using methods more suited to their own
individual learning styles.
6.3.6 Summary
The factors affecting the learning of new vocabulary have been discussed as
isolated entities. While the impact of each factor on both the recovery from
aphasia and the ability to learn new language representations is considered
important, in reality the various factors act in an integrated fashion. There is
opportunity for future research to examine how each factor interacts and impacts
one on another. A larger study would enable a more powerful investigation of
the inter-relatedness of each of the factors and perhaps establish the relative
strength of the impact of each individual factor on the recovery of language and
new learning, for example whether the impact of depression is greater than the
impact of severity of aphasia.
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