Abstract
Background
Aphasia rehabilitation faces serious challenges: 1. It needs to provide intensive therapy when national health resources are scarce; 2. It needs to maintain engagement when intensive practice with a speech and language therapist may be draining and possibly demotivating; 3. It needs to break negative interactions between lack of confidence and avoiding language practice. 4. It needs to demonstrate functional communication gains.
Aims
Our Gamified Aphasia INtervention based on Playing social games in Teams (GAIN-PT) addresses these challenges. We aimed to demonstrate GAIN-PT’s acceptability, in terms of engagement and satisfaction with therapy, and efficacy, in terms of increased ability to produce sententences and trained words.
Method and Procedure
Our study expands on a previous incarnation of this approach (Romani et al. 2019) by developing, along with a naming game, six scenario games where participants practised communicative interactions in common everyday scenarios. Two groups of six participants each played the games three times a week for 2 hours each time, over 8 weeks (for a total of 48 hours). Gains were assessed in terms of picture naming and narrative production. Assessment was carried out before therapy (5 participants assessed with two baselines one month apart), immediately after therapy, and at maintenance (two months after therapy). Each group was facilitated by one/two assistants thus reducing costs for professional SLT.
Results
Attendance and satisfaction with therapy were very high (88% of therapy hours attended) with participants stressing improvements, but also having fun and making friends. Confidence improved significantly when measured with a questionnaire. Retrieval of the practiced words improved significantly, both when assessed with therapy materials (14% improvement in picture naming at the end of therapy and 17% after maintenance, corresponding, respectively, to 33 and 43 words gained), and when measured in narrative production (5% improvement at the end of therapy and 12% after maintenance). Narrative production also showed a significant increase in number and percentage of relevant words produced (CIUs), and in number and length of sentences, and a significant reduction in the rate of errors.
Outcomes
We have demonstrated the benefits of GAIN-PT as a useful, additional tool for aphasia rehabilitation which widens options, addresses existing challenges, and results in optimal levels of engagement, language outcomes, and satisfaction with therapy. Playing games where people with aphasia can support each other and repeatedly practise speech in everyday life scenarios is a promising way to further aphasia rehabilitation.
Aphasia rehabilitation faces serious challenges: 1. It needs to provide intensive therapy when national health resources are scarce; 2. It needs to maintain engagement when intensive practice with a speech and language therapist may be draining and possibly demotivating; 3. It needs to break negative interactions between lack of confidence and avoiding language practice. 4. It needs to demonstrate functional communication gains.
Aims
Our Gamified Aphasia INtervention based on Playing social games in Teams (GAIN-PT) addresses these challenges. We aimed to demonstrate GAIN-PT’s acceptability, in terms of engagement and satisfaction with therapy, and efficacy, in terms of increased ability to produce sententences and trained words.
Method and Procedure
Our study expands on a previous incarnation of this approach (Romani et al. 2019) by developing, along with a naming game, six scenario games where participants practised communicative interactions in common everyday scenarios. Two groups of six participants each played the games three times a week for 2 hours each time, over 8 weeks (for a total of 48 hours). Gains were assessed in terms of picture naming and narrative production. Assessment was carried out before therapy (5 participants assessed with two baselines one month apart), immediately after therapy, and at maintenance (two months after therapy). Each group was facilitated by one/two assistants thus reducing costs for professional SLT.
Results
Attendance and satisfaction with therapy were very high (88% of therapy hours attended) with participants stressing improvements, but also having fun and making friends. Confidence improved significantly when measured with a questionnaire. Retrieval of the practiced words improved significantly, both when assessed with therapy materials (14% improvement in picture naming at the end of therapy and 17% after maintenance, corresponding, respectively, to 33 and 43 words gained), and when measured in narrative production (5% improvement at the end of therapy and 12% after maintenance). Narrative production also showed a significant increase in number and percentage of relevant words produced (CIUs), and in number and length of sentences, and a significant reduction in the rate of errors.
Outcomes
We have demonstrated the benefits of GAIN-PT as a useful, additional tool for aphasia rehabilitation which widens options, addresses existing challenges, and results in optimal levels of engagement, language outcomes, and satisfaction with therapy. Playing games where people with aphasia can support each other and repeatedly practise speech in everyday life scenarios is a promising way to further aphasia rehabilitation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 35 |
| Journal | Aphasiology |
| Early online date | 26 Feb 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 26 Feb 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.Data Access Statement
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2025.2467232Keywords
- Aphasia rehabilitation
- functional language gains
- games
- group therapy
- wellbeing