A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

previously known verbal information but he was unable to learn new verbal
concepts.
These studies although small in number indicate that some memory-impaired
people are able to demonstrate learning (in particular those people who have
acquired amnesia through trauma), however, it may not be the case for all
individuals (in particular, people with progressive memory impairments). As
previously discussed, aphasia from a stroke is sudden in onset and not
progressive in nature (see section 2.2), therefore any acquired memory
impairment could be assumed to be more similar in nature to memory
impairment from trauma rather than dementia. Findings from this population
suggest that this type of memory processing difficulty would not prevent new
learning. The following investigations evaluate the evidence of new learning with
people with aphasia.
2.8.5.3 Adults with aphasia learning vocabulary
There have been a small number of studies evaluating the ability of people with
aphasia to learn new words. Similar to studies with healthy and memory
impaired adults various techniques have been employed to evaluate learning.
Some of these studies have utilised real words that were unfamiliar to the
participants to demonstrate the learning of vocabulary. Grossman and Carey
(1987) report that in the 1970s several researchers attempted to teach new
words to people with aphasia but failed to demonstrate any ability on the
participants’ part to acquire new words. Grossman and Carey’s (1987) own
study aimed to evaluate their participants’ knowledge of one word (bice) that
was considered to be unknown to them. The results indicated that while many of
their participants demonstrated some learning they presented with varied
learning profiles, which the authors suggest is synonymous with their individual
presentation of aphasia. They demonstrated that people with Broca’s and fluent
aphasia presented with very different learning abilities for the new word. Basso
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