The following text-based course is a transcript of the live event, “Assessing Cognitive-Linguistic Skills in Aphasia” presented by Heather Harris Wright, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.
>> Heather Harris Wright: We are going to talk about cognitive and linguistic processes in aphasia, different ways to evaluate cognitive and linguistic processes specifically in adults with aphasia, and to use this information to inform your treatment planning for adults with aphasia. For the cognitive and linguistic processes, the first thing I am going to do is review some of the different processes - attention, memory, and executive functions - to make sure we are all on the same page as to what they are. Then we will talk about how they may present in adults with aphasia; the impairments they may present with.
First let’s talk out the different thoughts of how language and cognition are discussed and conceptualized. At the top part of the figure below, this is often how we talk about language and cognition.
Figure 1. The relationship between language & cognition
We often talk about how language plays a role with cognition or is related to cognition. In this way of conceptualizing that, we are actually speaking of them as two separate entities, constructs or concepts in that language is a separate concept from cognition. But in reality, on the lower portion of the figure, language really is a component of cognition along with attention, memory, and executive function. These cognitive processes of attention, memory, executive functions, and language do share resources. That is why when we have our adults with aphasia and they present with these predominant language problems, we may also see some memory problems and attention problems further contributing to some of their breakdowns. We also know from all of the neuroimaging work and functional imaging work that the neurocircuitry for these processes do overlap. There is a lot of shared neurocircuitry and we will touch on that as we continue on today.
How we are going to proceed in this first half is we are going to talk by each of these processes individually: attention, memory, executive function; and then how we might see them in aphasia. How do the specific processes interact with the language? Then we will move on to assessment of the processes.
