A double-blind, placebo-controlled study of pharmacological and behavioural treatment of lexical-semantic deficits in aphasia

This investigation replicated and extended an earlier study of naming disorders (McNeil et al. 1995) by administering a placebo and pharmacological agents (d-amphetamine and selegiline) in the presence and absence of a behavioural intervention termed lexical-semantic activation inhibition therapy (L-SAIT) to examine their effects on naming performance in two adults with stroke-induced aphasia. Results revealed acquisition and maintenance effects of L-SAIT on targeted lexical items, no effects of placebo or active pharmacological agents in the absence of L-SAIT, and no differential effects between placebo + L-SAIT and pharmacological agents + L-SAIT. Thus, positive treatment effects were attributed to L-SAIT. Generalization to untrained items within and across form class was not observed, nor was generalization to measures of informativeness of connected speech. Subject 1 evidenced improvement on the Rapid Automatized Naming Test (Denckla and Rudel 1976).