Impact of personal relevance on acquisition and generalization of script training for aphasia: A preliminary analysis

Purpose: The importance of personalization in script training in aphasia has been assumed but never tested. This study compared acquisition and generalization of personally relevant versus generic words or phrases appearing in the same scripts. Method: Eight individuals (6 men; 2 women) with chronic aphasia received 3 weeks of intensive computer-based script training. For each participant, 2 scripts, a trained and an untrained generalization script, were embedded with 4 personally relevant word choices and 2-4 generic items that were similar across participants. Scripts were probed for accuracy at baseline and posttreatment. Significance testing was conducted on baseline and posttreatment scores, and for gains in personally relevant versus generic items. Effect sizes were computed. Results: Both personally relevant and generic items improved significantly on trained scripts. Improvements on untrained scripts were smaller, with only personally relevant items reaching significance. There was no significant difference on gains made on personalized versus generic items for trained scripts (p = .059), but the effect size was large (d = 0.90). For generalization scripts, this effect was small (d = 0.25) and nonsignificant. Conclusions: Personally relevant words and phrases were acquired, although not generalized, more successfully than generic words and phrases. Data supports the importance of personalization in script training, but the degree of that importance requires further investigation.