Remediation of language processing in aphasia: Improving activation and maintenance of linguistic representations in (verbal) short-term memory

Verbal short-term memory (STM) impairments are ubiquitous in aphasia. Empirical evidence supports a relationship between word processing and STM. Current models of word processing emphasize a temporal component: maintenance of semantic and phonological representations of words during comprehension and production of language. Martin and Saffran (1997) proposed that impairment of this ability results in deficits of both word processing and verbal STM. Their account predicts that treatment of the ability to maintain activation of word representations in STM should lead to improvements that generalize beyond content and tasks used in treatment. This hypothesis is tested in this treatment case study