This project addresses an important gap in the clinical literature: the dearth of tools for remediation of the communication deficits associated with right hemisphere brain damage. The tasks comprising the treatment program are motivated by a theoretical analysis of the neuropsychology of metaphor comprehension deficits and related topics. One notion is that damage to right posterior regions limits a patient's ability to process connotative associations between words. A second notion is that damage to right frontal regions can affect working memory and a patient's ability to review information and to select a most relevant alternative from a set. The treatment is based on a simple mode of representing semantic relations in words and narrative, Thinking Maps(r), that has been used extensively with children. Thinking maps explicitly list the semantic features or associations shared between words that provide potential bases for metaphors. Thinking maps make available the ingredients of metaphor in concrete form for practice and review. The protocol is designed to evaluate and treat: 1) difficulty generating appropriate associations to words; 2) difficulty evaluating connotative shared meaning; and 3) difficulty selecting from among alternative interpretations. Each patient is expected to progress through the program spending more time on some tasks and less time on others as a function of that patient's specific profile of cognitive impairment. Generalization and maintenance of gains will be assessed. ? ?
| Brownell, Hiram; Lundgren, Kristine; Cayer-Meade, Carol et al. (2013) Treatment of metaphor interpretation deficits subsequent to traumatic brain injury. J Head Trauma Rehabil 28:446-52 |
| Lundgren, Kristine; Brownell, Hiram; Cayer-Meade, Carol et al. (2011) Treating Metaphor Interpretation Deficits Subsequent to Right Hemisphere Brain Damage: Preliminary Results. Aphasiology 25:456-474 |
| Lundgren, Kristine; Helm-Estabrooks, Nancy; Klein, Reva (2010) Stuttering Following Acquired Brain Damage: A Review of the Literature. J Neurolinguistics 23:447-454 |
