Research

The North East Aphasia Centre at Newcastle University, supported in part by the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia, celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2009. Over the last ten years, through a highly successful collaboration with the local SLT community, it has provided intensive speech and language therapy to people with aphasia, combining both group and individual therapy. Many specialist speech and language therapists from both the university and local services have contributed to the Centre and this has provided a wealth of opportunity to take forward our research into aphasia whilst sharing ideas about assessment, therapy and how we evaluate therapy effects.

Current activity

Aphasia research in Newcastle is focused around several core strands. These revolve around issues of elucidating processing models for language, of developing and validating new assessments, of evaluating therapy, and of working with people with aphasia to identify the important questions. Julie Morris and David Howard, together with Frauke Buerk, are currently exploring semantic processing in aphasia, particularly what therapy techniques are effective and what patterns of generalisation we observe. David’s research, in particular, revolves around his interest in the methodological questions about how therapy studies should be analysed and how, in evidence-based practice, evidence should be weighed and evaluated. The underlying motivation for this research is that data, when used carefully, from both non-aphasic people and people with aphasia, and from therapy studies from both individual participants and groups of subjects, can yield information about language processing that will result both in better theoretical understanding, in better assessment, and in better treatment of people with aphasia.

Janet Webster's research is currently focusing predominantly on verb and sentence processing, with particular emphasis on developing assessments that help us understand the nature of people's difficulties and investigating the efficacy of therapy targeting verb and sentence production. Anne Whitworth, having recently completed a fellowship with the Health Foundation, complements the strong focus on verb and sentence processing, using intervention studies to test out processing models and, latterly, explore how narrative may be used to bridge the gap to real-life communication. The team, as a whole, is committed to combining approaches in therapy into coordinated holistic therapy which draws on psycholinguistic, social and interactional models.

Current PhD projects

A range of interesting PhD projects also abound. Heather Waldron, funded by the Stroke Association, is looking at therapy for people with phonological assembly difficulties while Christopher Plant has secured ESRC funding to explore noun and verb organisation in the mental lexicon and the impact on treatment and generalisation in word-retrieval therapy for aphasia. Caroline Tapster's work examines the use of an innovative computer programme focusing on sentence processing. Continuing a long tradition in Newcastle of applying conversation analysis (CA) in the clinical setting with people with aphasia, Sonja Turner is exploring what clinicians look for in deciding candidates for conversation partner training. Students interested in pursuing research into aphasia at an advanced level are encouraged to contact us for informal discussion.

And other strands…

And aphasia research isn’t all that happens in Newcastle. Nick Miller, alongside his interest in foreign accent syndrome, has an extensive programme of work around communication changes in Parkinson's disease. He and his team have been looking at the nature and prevalence of speech and swallowing changes in Parkinson's, especially trying to fill in our knowledge about how the profile of change and support needs evolve over the course of the condition. The team has had a special emphasis on highlighting changes from the point of view of the person with PD and their families. A further strand of work involves pursuing studies looking at the nature and underlying causes of apraxia of speech. Alongside previous studies of the clinical manifestations, Nick, Nicole Lallini (our latest addition to the team) and David Howard have commenced a series of cross language studies of apraxia of speech to gain more insights into the motor versus phonology debate around the disorder. Nicole is also currently working on the vast data collected during her PhD focusing on the effect of phonological neighbourhood density and phonotactic probability on output accuracy in people with acquired output impairment. As well as addressing crucial methodological controversies, Nicole’s work has direct relevance to clinical issues in assessment and treatment of speech disorders. Kath Mumby’s work draws these different areas together in her investigations into apraxia of speech and grammar in aphasia, as she explores new perspectives on clinical issues. The team at Newcastle is completed by our two Clinical Educators, Helen Nazlie and Pauline Meek, who contribute to the complex organisation of student training in the Aphasia Centre.

While we remain a highly active research group, we are also actively involved with people with aphasia. This is shown through our work with the charity, North East Trust for Aphasia (NETA), whose trustees are predominantly people with aphasia and their carers, in the NETA Aphasia Support Centre. Managed by Rose Hilton, the Support Centre is run within the same premises, and offers longer term support where activities are led by the users. Again, the NETA Aphasia Support Centre is now firmly embedded within the local SLT services who are key stakeholders and who will play a large part, along with its members, in shaping its future. Our involvement extends to all of our therapy and research work, where user groups are consulted on changes, developments and projects. In celebration of and to develop our engagement with people with aphasia, we have recently received funding to develop a social meeting place (the Aphasia Café) for people with aphasia. This will compliment our existing work.