Researchers at University of Texas at Austin have developed a behavioral therapy designed to improve communication in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Video-Implemented Script Training for Aphasia (VISTA) is a speech-language intervention designed to promote fluent connected speech via repeated rehearsal of functional content. Probes of trained and untrained script topics from pre- and post-treatment were transcribed, coded, and analysed using Computerised Language Analysis and Redenlab’s Analyse pipeline. Participants demonstrated significant changes for trained topics from pre-to post-treatment in words per minute, fluency disruptions per hundred words, mean length of utterance in morphemes, grammatical complexity, and proportion of open to closed class words. Reductions were observed in mean and variability of syllable duration and mean pause duration, and speech to pause ratio increased.

These findings lend additional support for script training as a means to promote fluency of connected speech in individuals with nfvPPA and illustrate the utility of automated and semi-automated measures for characterising treatment effects following intervention. They also highlight how objective markers of speech and language can be used in clinical trials

Study highlights

Participants exhibited measurable progress in:

• Words per minute and speech-to-pause ratio, reflecting enhanced fluency.
• Reduction in fluency disruptions, pauses, and syllable duration variability.
• Grammatical complexity and utterance length, indicating stronger communication skills.

These findings affirm the effectiveness of script training for individuals with non-fluent variant PPA (nfvPPA), supported by advanced automated and semi-automated analysis tools.

This multi-institutional study, published in Cortex, involved collaboration between Redenlab and leading institutions, including:

• University of Texas at Austin
• University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences
• University of California, San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center
• California State University, Chico
• University of New Mexico
• University of Houston
• University of Melbourne

Redenlab’s precise speech analysis tools were pivotal in capturing objective treatment outcomes, furthering understanding of effective therapies for PPA.

S. Grasso, K. Berstis, K. Mendez, W. Keegan-Rodewald, L. Wauters, E. Europa, H. Hubbard, H. Dial, J. Hixon, M. Gorno-Tempini, A. Vogel, M. Henry.

For more information, please click here.