A case study of gesturally cued naming in aphasia: dominant versus nondominant hand training.

Gestural plus verbal facilitation of naming was investigated in an aphasic right handed adult with apraxia and hemisensory deficit but no hemiplegia secondary to a left hemisphere lesion. An alternating treatments design was followed in combined gesture/speech training of picture naming to compare speech facilitation with dominant vs. nondominant hand iconic gesturing. A small but consistent facilitation effect was observed for naming associated with verbal plus left hand gestural training over naming of items trained in association with verbal plus right hand gesturing. This same pattern of gestural facilitation was replicated with a second set of lexical targets, those for which only verbal training was initially provided. Overall gains were retained over a six-month follow-up period for trained stimuli. Although findings are limited to the performance of a single subject, results of this study may provide data relevant to understanding mechanisms of facilitation in gesture-cued naming in aphasia.