A pilot-study into the effectiveness of therapeutic app SimpTell for speakers with aphasia

Recruiting

Conditions: Aphasia

Registration Number: NL-OMON25274

Lead Sponsor: Centre for Language Studies (CLS), Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

Brief Summary: Not available

Detailed Description: Not available

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: Recruiting

Sex: Not specified

Target Recruitment: 10

Inclusion Criteria

Age between 16 and 75 years old
- Unilateral left hemispheric stroke
- At least 6 months post-onset (chronic stage)
- Disordered sentence production (expressive agrammatism) due to aphasia. On the 6-point scale of the subtest Spontaneous Speech of the Dutch version of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT; Graetz, De Bleser, & Willmes, 1992), the syntactic structure of the participant’s speech output should be rated as 1 (mostly one or two word utterances; almost no inflection forms or function words) or 2 (short, simple sentences, which are mostly syntactically incomplete; frequent absence of function words and inflected forms).
- Native speaker of Dutch
- Pre-morbidly right handed
- The participant should approve the proposed aim, which is promoting the overuse of ellipses (telegraphic style)

Exclusion Criteria

- A history of previous stroke
- Aphasia caused by tumor or trauma
- Severe aphasia (unable to understand instructions or provide consent). This is operationalised via score on either (1) the Dutch Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-NL; Visch-Brink, Vandenborre, De Smet & Marien, 2014) OR (2) the Dutch version of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT; Graetz, De Bleser, & Willmes, 1992). (1) CAT-NL: Subtest 9 [Comprehension of spoken sentences]: a score of 18 (out of 32) or below, and Subtest 10 [Comprehension of written sentences]: a score of 14 (out of 32) or below. (2) AAT: Subtest TB 1&2 [Comprehension of spoken language]: a score of 33 (out of 60) or below, and Subtest TB 3&4 [Comprehension of written language]: a score of 30 (out of 60) or below,
- (Even with visual aid) profound visual perceptual disorders;
- (Even with hearing aid) profound hearing deficit;
- Psychiatric or neurological disorders (other than stroke)
- Severe apraxia of speech or severe dysarthria (criterion: more than 5% unintelligible speech output).

Study & Design

Study Type: Interventional

Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
1) Quantitative measure of verbal effectiveness (Ruiter, Kolk, Rietveld, Dijkstra & Lotgering, 2011), based on experimentally adapted scenarios of the ANELT (Blomert, Koster & Kean, 1995) and Picture Description Task (2008)<br>2) Quantitative measure of verbal efficiency (Ruiter, Kolk, Rietveld, Dijkstra & Lotgering, 2011), based on experimentally adapted scenarios of the ANELT (Blomert, Koster & Kean, 1995) and Picture Description Task (2008)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
1) Percentage of words produced in ellipses (WIE; Ruiter, Kolk, Rietveld & Feddema, 2013) in the ANELT and PDT [Administered at T1 and T2]<br>2) Percentage of grammatically well-formed sentences produced in the Sentence Order and Inflection Test (SOIT; Kok, Kolk,& Haverkort, 2006), to control for spontaneous recovery [Administered at T1 and T2]<br>3) Token Test (36-item version, De Renzi & Fraglioni, 1978) as a measure of overall severity of aphasia [Administered at T1 ]