Date of Award

Summer 2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Director

Stacie I. Ringleb

Committee Member

Anastasia M. Raymer

Committee Member

Sebastian Y. Bawab

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E56 O86 2012

Abstract

Individuals who have experienced a left hemispheric stroke often develop aphasia, which results in a loss of effective verbal communication and reliance on gesturing to communicate. In this study we combined these two aspects of aphasic word retrieval difficulties and gesturing with three-dimensional kinematics. The purposes of this study were: 1) to develop a preliminary database of upper extremity movements for two common gestures used in gestural facilitation of naming (GES) training, slicing and hammering, in participants who experienced a left-hemisphere stroke and compare them to age-matched healthy controls, and 2) to perform a case study consisting of a single aphasic subject to observe how two therapies, GES and errorless naming treatment, influenced his limb movements. Differences in slicing and hammering kinematics between healthy and aphasic participants were found using Euler angles. No differences were found with kinematic variables movement amplitude, trajectory duration, and average velocity, indicating differentiation between healthy and aphasic participants should include analysis beyond kinematic variables. The main finding was that GES training led to exaggerated movement kinematics that crossed over to errorless naming treatment, which took place in the second phase of speech therapy. These movements then returned toward a more normal pattern following the errorless naming training, but more so for hammering than slicing.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/w3d5-zk78

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