The Effect of Errorless Naming Treatment on Anomia in an Elderly Patient with Aphasia

Anomia is one of the most common problems that aphasic patients and therapists are involved with it. Because of the disruptive effect of anomia on communicative efficiency of aphasic patients¡ this study aimed at examining the effect of errorless naming treatment on naming ability in an aphasic patient.
Methods & Materials: The subject was selected using purposeful sampling method. This interventional single-subject study with ABA design was implemented on a 69-year-old woman with moderate Broca’s aphasia and phonological errors. The participant was a literate¡ right-handed Persian speaking patient with neither severe motor speech disorder nor significant auditory comprehension deficits. The patient underwent 10 sessions of treatment using errorless naming treatment protocol (Raymer et al.¡ 2012). Based on this method¡ the patient was given multiple opportunities to rehearse the correct name of a picture supported by repetition and oral reading¡ while avoiding production of errors during training.
The effect size in confrontational naming task after intervention in this patient for trained and control words were 5.42 and 2.38¡ respectively. The linear trend line of correct responses percentage of trained and control words were 7.6 and 4.15¡ respectively. Improvements in the trained and control word sets remained at a higher level than baseline¡ one week later. Also improvements in Persian WAB and naming tests were noticed in posttreatment period.
As a result of errorless naming treatment in the current study¡ the patient showed significant improvements in naming of trained words but generalization was not noticeable for control words. Based on this finding¡ this method might be useful as a therapeutic protocol in Persian speaking aphasic patients with anomia.