Recent theories on neuroscience suggested that even if brain damage may occur, human memory is not lost, but the neural circuits linking stimuli to memory is damaged. It is well-established that the neural circuits can be recovered through an intensive repetitive training program that would link external stimuli to the memory.
The purpose of this study is to develop a Web Speech Recognition based Intensive Training Program (WSRITP) for Wernicke’s aphasic patients whose visual comprehension, compared to auditory one, is relatively well preserved, and to investigate whether the WSRITP is effective in improving their auditory comprehension.
In the present study, the stimulation-facilitation model, as well as the computer-assisted intervention model, were adapted as the aphasia intervention model to develop the contents of the WSRITP. The methodologies of intervention used for each model were auditory comprehension training and naming intervention. Training words of the WSRITP were mainly the names of objects that could be found in our daily life and they were chosen from a list of words in basic and intermediate level Korean, proposed by National Institute of Korean Language. Based on these backgrounds, web speech API connecting the web server of the researcher with Google’s speech recognition server was used to interact with Wernicke’s aphasia patient and to present feedback visually. Through this, the WSRITP with self-monitoring reinforcement was developed. The expert group of the professional speech language pathologists who had experience more than ten years, evaluated the usability of this training program on five-point scale in four different sections: purpose of evaluation, contents of evaluation, the ease of training, and potential for future use. The results of this usability test show that the WSRITP is convenient and easy enough for Wernicke aphasic patients to use.
A multiple baseline across settings design was used to assess the application effect of the WSRITP to Wernicke’s aphasia patient. A seventy-six-year-old woman with chronic Wernicke’s aphasia participated in the present study as a subject for the duration of four weeks. More specifically, she participated in a pilot study for two weeks, and then in the real experiment for another two weeks. She participated in the study six days a week, for more than an hour at each session. Significant improvement has been achieved in the section of naming and that of answering questions which was not referred to in training, which was viewed as results between a pre-test and a post-test. In a post-experiment test of picture-explanation, the participant not only produced all of the words that she had been trained to, but she also produced sentences that were never mentioned before in the training program. In the K-WAB, her ability in the tests of naming objects, auditory word recognition, sequential commands, and yes/no questions was greatly improved. Therefore, it is certain that the WSRITP is an effective means to help Wernicke’s aphasic patients’ auditory of comprehension ability improved.
Furthermore, its convenient and low-cost availability can be of great benefit to a variety of communication disorder patients who need to improve the auditory comprehension and oral expression skills.