TOP TEN LIST: Word Retrieval Strategies

Today's post is on word retrieval. Our grandmother recently suffered a stroke. The stroke has unfortunately made it more difficult for her to verbally say the words that she wants to produce because she is experiencing some expressive aphasia in addition to some verbal apraxia. During our recent visit to South Dakota to see her, we provided her with some tips on how to produce words that she could not think of and also those words that are on the "tip of her tongue" and proving to be difficult for her to verbally produce. This top ten list has been typed up with her in mind and all of the other patients that we see who are experiencing word finding errors as a result of a stroke or head injury.

This handout is geared more toward the patient and not the therapist. We therapists know how to elicit a lot of speech during our therapy tasks by providing different cues. For example: We often will provide phonemic cues by giving the initial letter and sound of a word to help the client say the word. We also often provide semantic cues by providing category members, functions, and partial phrases that need a word to end it. These therapy tasks are very useful and elicit a lot of speech productions that ultimately help to make new neuro pathways of understanding and better speech for our clients, but we particularly just wanted to produce a handout for the client to be used for when we are not around. We were thinking of our grandmother who may find herself struggling alone with her newly acquired word retrieval troubles and we hope that the tips that we provide could be ones that she can read and start to try to memorize so that she can use them if she is having a word finding episode.

We are happy to share this new top ten tip sheet with you all. Thank you for stopping by our blog and if you can send a few prayers and well wishes toward South Dakota for our Grandma's recovery, we would appreciate it immensely. Thank you for that!

Please know that the download is available by simply right clicking onto the picture, saving the picture to your computer and then printing it off.
Sincerely,
Manda, SLP
Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy

Some definitions taken from ASHA - American Speech Language Hearing Association 

APRAXIA: Taken 9/10/13 from: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/ApraxiaAdults/#what_is:

Apraxia is a general term. It can cause problems in parts of the body, such as arms and legs. Apraxia of speech is a motor speech disorder. It is caused by damage to the parts of the brain related to speaking. Other terms include apraxia of speech, acquired apraxia of speech, verbal apraxia, and dyspraxia.
People with apraxia of speech have trouble sequencing the sounds in syllables and words. The severity depends on the nature of the brain damage.
Children can have apraxia, referred to as childhood apraxia of speech.

EXPRESSIVE APHASIA: Taken 9/10/13 from: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/Aphasia/

Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to the parts of the brain that contain language. Aphasia causes problems with any or all of the following: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Characteristics of Expressive Aphasia include: Speaks only in single words (e.g., names of objects, Speaks in short, fragmented phrases; Omits smaller words like "the," "of," and "and" (so message sounds like a telegram); Puts words in wrong order; Switches sounds and/or words (e.g., bed is called table or dishwasher a "wish dasher"; Makes up words (e.g., jargon, strings together nonsense words and real words fluently but makes no sense).