SPEECH REHABILITATION IN PATIENTS WITH APHASIA: COMPUTER IMAGE AIDS
The paper describes the author's experience in application of computer images as aids to speech rehabilitation of patients with aphasia. Computer images (photos of objects, natural phenomena, human/animal activities/states; or short plot-driven videos) are borrowed online for selected application purposes. The logopedist should take into account the patient's age, personal interests, professional environment, emotional intensity and individual significance for a given patient. Computer images have been used by the author as effective means to ensure: 1) auditory attention priming; 2) auditory and verbal memory rehabilitation; 3) rehabilitation of global reading skills; 4) better sentence (linear pattern) building skills with step-by-step increase in sentence length; 5) better skills to build detailed utterances ranging from dialogue responses (answering questions) to unaided monologue narration; 6) prevention / elimination of agrammatisms like disagreement in oblique nominal case endings in various noun declensions; and 7) vocabulary actualization and mental activity rehabilitation.Carefully selected goal-oriented computer images seamlessly enter into the rehabilitation exercise to keep up the positive emotional atmosphere of the session and assist both the patient and the speech therapist in getting over the problems specific to various types of speech disorders and successfully restoring the language system altogether.