Can the effects of facilitation predict the effects of treatment?

In the treatment of word-finding in anomia, there has been no simple correspondence between the treatment used, the impairment and the success of the treatment. For the clinician, therapy remains something of a ‘lucky dip’. Even with the best assessment and a theoretically guided choice of treatment, there is no guarantee of success. In this project we investigate whether it is possible, by using a task once (facilitation) to predict whether the same task will be successful as treatment. Participants were first given a series of tasks (e.g. semantic feature questions; repetition) and the effects of one application of these tasks on their subsequent naming was examined. Subsequently, for each individual, one task that was successful and one that was not was chosen and used repeatedly as treatment. We will discuss the relationship between the results of facilitation and the results of treatment and the implications for clinical practice.