2020 Volume 38 Issue 2 Pages 147-154
A patient in his thirties with left temporal lobe epilepsy, who suffered from sentence production deficits and verbal paired associate impairment, benefited from rehabilitation using divergent thinking tasks. He did not suffer from aphasia but presented poor results in examinations using divergent thinking. The tests included the Sentence Forming Test (SFT), the Supplementary Tests for Standard Language Test of Aphasia (SLTA-ST), and the Standard Verbal Paired-Associate tests (S-PA). He also exhibited convergent thinking problem in the naming of low familiarity words in the Test of Lexical Processing in Aphasia. Rehabilitation consisted of one hour with a speech-language therapist and five homework assignments each week. In addition to eight kinds of divergent thinking tasks, we applied facilitating internal motivation theory by responding to his hopes, such as getting a job, and errorless learning to improve his self-esteem. After eight weeks of rehabilitation, his divergent thinking improved but his convergent thinking such as naming did not improve. The patient's scores in the SFT, SLTA-ST, and S-PA improved. We assumed that rehabilitation using divergent thinking tasks would be effective. Internal motivation and errorless learning improved his self-esteem so that he overcame the anxiety of speaking. The patient ultimately found a new job.
