Equivalence to Stimulus and teaching by exclusion of verbs and nouns for adults and elderly with fluent and non-fluent aphasias.

Author(s)

Sabrina Roberta Oliveira Fontanesi

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2017-06-09

Examining board members

Andreia Schmidt; Camila Domeniconi; Marisa Tomoe Hebihara Fukuda; Deisy das Graças de Souza; Ana Claudia Moreira Almeida Verdu

• Advisor: Andreia Schmidt

Abstract

The elderly represents a growing group in the population and some important changes in the health of this population come from strokes, which can leave sequels such as aphasias. Despite positive results from traditional areas of aphasia treatment, behavioral analysts have developed successful teaching procedures with non-elderly clinical populations, employing exclusion procedures and teaching conditional discrimination to form equivalence classes between verbal stimuli. The general objectives were: a) to verify the effectiveness of a teaching by exclusion nouns and verbs for fluent and non-fluent aphasics, from teaching conditional discriminations with auditory and visual stimuli, and b) verify the emergence of repertoires not directly taught (transitive relations between stimuli, naming and reading). A total of 14 elderly people with aphasia participated in the study. Two studies were conducted, in which the participants were exposed to the initial verbal repertoire evaluations and were submitted to the procedure of teaching relationships between dictated words, figures or videos, and printed words, with subsequent probes of formation of equivalence, naming and reading, besides post-tests. A multiple probe design was used. Overall results indicate that the procedure was effective to teach new relationships to the participants, but it was not enough to sustain the formation of equivalence classes between stimuli for most of the relationships taught, and the emergence of naming these stimuli. There were no differences between the learning of nouns and verbs. The procedure studied, with adaptations, may be a therapeutic alternative for the recovery of verbal repertoires in aphasics. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/07004-1 - Stimulus equivalence and teaching by exclusion of verbs and nouns to elderly patients with fluent and nonfluent Aphasia
• Grantee: Sabrina Roberta Oliveira Fontanesi
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate