Afferent Speech Therapy System: Assessment Study of a Multi-modal Speech Therapy Device

In a fast moving society like the one we live in, it is all the more important to restore disordered language as fast, effectively and with the best outcome possible. This book is concerned with the introduction and evaluation of a newly developed speech therapy method for aphasic patients, Project ASTS (Afferent Speech Therapy System), which emerged from a cooperation of the Klinik Judendorf-Straßengel and Graz Technical University. In the pilot study at hand, six probands were tested with and without ASTS in one therapy session each. An answer to the following question was to be found: Can an efficacy of this method be observed? And if this is not the case, how can one methodologically progress to answer this question? The first part of the thesis deals with the theoretical disquisition of linguistic theories or therapy-related and anatomical topics respectively. Subsequently, the speech therapy device will be introduced in the empirical part. Moreover, this section includes the pilot study, i.e. the data and analysis plus results and discussion.