The Efficacy of a Semantic Cueing Procedure on Naming Performance of Adults With Aphasia

The effects of self-selected semantic cues on naming performance of three individuals with aphasia were studied. Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design, a procedure incorporating semantic feature analysis was used to facilitate generalization. Two subjects showed improved naming performance on trained items, with robust generalization to untrained items and maintenance over a one-week period. Performance remained stable on a control measure of productive morphology throughout training, indicating that improved naming performance was not due to generalized language improvement. The third subject did not show substantial improvement. For the two subjects who improved, results suggest that they learned a semantic cueing strategy and applied it to both trained and untrained items for improved naming performance.