Recent approaches to interventions for aphasia have incorporated verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) components. We investigated whether a treatment involving repetition of word sequences after a response delay would improve tolerance of increased verbal STM load in repetition and, consequently, improve performance on repetition and other language tasks. Eight individuals with aphasia participated. We used a single subject design with outcome measures on near-transfer tasks closely related to the treatment task and far-transfer tasks more distantly related to the treatment task. We minimized repeated presentation of stimuli in all phases of treatment to control for confounding effects of repeated exposure of treated items. Four participants demonstrated modest acquisition effects. On outcome measures, we observed improvements by some participants on near-transfer tasks, (repetition of concrete and abstract word strings and verbal spans) and far-transfer tasks (naming and discourse). Some participants demonstrated a significant decline in word repetition accuracy after a response delay before treatment, indicating difficulty in maintaining activation of linguistic representations. It was these participants who showed the most improvement on outcome measures. More studies are needed to determine who will respond to this treatment and what factors might influence the effectiveness of this treatment approach.

中文翻译：

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治疗言语短期记忆能力以改善失语症的语言功能：病例系列治疗研究

最近对失语症的干预方法已经纳入了口头短期记忆 (STM) 和工作记忆 (WM) 组件。我们调查了涉及在响应延迟后重复单词序列的处理是否会提高对重复中增加的口头 STM 负荷的耐受性，从而提高重复和其他语言任务的表现。八名失语症患者参加。我们使用单一主题设计，对与治疗任务密切相关的近转移任务和与治疗任务更远相关的远转移任务进行结果测量。我们在治疗的所有阶段尽量减少刺激的重复呈现，以控制重复暴露治疗物品的混杂效应。四名参与者表现出适度的收购效应。在结果衡量方面，我们观察到一些参与者在近转移任务（具体和抽象词串和语言跨度的重复）和远转移任务（命名和话语）上的改进。一些参与者在治疗前的反应延迟后表现出单词重复准确性的显着下降，表明难以维持语言表征的激活。正是这些参与者在结果测量方面表现出最大的进步。需要更多的研究来确定谁会对这种治疗有反应以及哪些因素可能会影响这种治疗方法的有效性。一些参与者在治疗前的反应延迟后表现出单词重复准确性的显着下降，表明难以维持语言表征的激活。正是这些参与者在结果测量方面表现出最大的进步。需要更多的研究来确定谁会对这种治疗有反应以及哪些因素可能会影响这种治疗方法的有效性。一些参与者在治疗前的反应延迟后表现出单词重复准确性的显着下降，表明难以维持语言表征的激活。正是这些参与者在结果指标上表现出最大的进步。需要更多的研究来确定谁会对这种治疗有反应以及哪些因素可能会影响这种治疗方法的有效性。