Bárczi at the Science of Aphasia conference

-- How reliable are the results of language tasks? --

Lilla Zakariás examined the temporal stability of language tasks frequently used in clinical practice, such as lexical decision, with the participation of fifty-five people with aphasia. Although the tasks examined proved to be reliable overall, some performed better than others. The difficulty of the task did not significantly affect reliability, but the second measurement significantly improved it, with subsequent sessions adding only slightly. The results offer concrete recommendations for clinicians and aphasia researchers, both in terms of optimising everyday diagnostic and therapeutic practice and research protocols.

-- How do people with aphasia form sentences? --

Tamás Káldi conducted an eye-tracking experiment with fifteen people with aphasia and seventeen neurotypical people. The research examined how speakers adapt to discourse, what sentence-building strategies they use, and how these relate to impaired verbal production. The results show that in aphasia, sentence flexibility and strategy selection lag behind those of neurotypical individuals but are related to verb production: the less impaired verbal production, the more effective sentence planning. The results are important from the perspective of aphasia therapies.

Conference website.