The facilitative effects of drawing and gesturing on word retrieval for people with aphasia

In order to verbally communicate successfully, people need the ability to retrieve a desired word. However, the inability to do this, called “anomia,” is a common impairment for people with aphasia, and frequently persists into the chronic stage of recovery. Strategies that facilitate verbal expression may reduce or compensate for instances of anomia. Verbal strategies, such as Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) have been researched extensively and shown to be effective. Nonverbal strategies, such as drawing and gesture, have research on their effects as a substitution for verbalization, but less on their facilitative effects. However, the research suggests they may work in a similar manner to verbal approaches, by activating semantic networks. Thus, the facilitative effects of nonverbal strategies should be explored further. The aim of this experiment was to determine the facilitative effects of drawing and gesturing during a picture naming task in one participant with chronic aphasia. Results revealed that all conditions evaluated, drawing, gesture, and wait (control), produced improvements in the picture naming task. However, contrary to expectations, the facilitated conditions (i.e. drawing and gesture) did not create more effects than the unfacilitated condition (i.e. wait). This finding may indicate the benefits of a factor common to all conditions. Further results of this study and directions for future research are discussed.