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Associations between Self-Reported Reading Experiences and Reading Accuracy after Stroke
Poster Session E, Sunday, September 14, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
Devna Mathur1, Alycia Laks1,2, Catherine Kelly1,2, Sarah Snider1, Andrew DeMarco1, Peter Turkeltaub1,2; 1Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA, 2Research Division, MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital, Washington, DC, USA
Introduction: Approximately 68% of people with aphasia present with reading deficits after stroke (Brookshire et al., 2014), which may lead to a lower quality of life (Hilari, 2011). Patient-reported outcome measures for aphasia are limited in their assessment of reading (Swinburn et al., 2019). To our knowledge, no studies have examined whether self-reported reading ability and activity relates to reading scores after stroke. Before-stroke reading ability and activity might provide resilience to stroke-related reading deficits, but this has also not previously been tested. To address these gaps, we examine relationships of self-reported reading experience and ability before and after stroke to oral and silent reading tasks in adults with chronic left-hemisphere stroke. Methods: Participants were 52 individuals with left-hemisphere stroke, primarily in the chronic phase. Participants completed an oral word reading task and two silent reading tasks (lexical decision and word-to-picture matching) along with matched auditory versions. Participants also completed a novel functional reading task that assessed reading comprehension in simulated real-world scenarios, e.g., finding key information on a pill bottle. In addition, a reading questionnaire was administered to evaluate participants’ ease, frequency, and enjoyment of reading before and after stroke, both at home and at work. For this study, we focused on at-home scores since many stroke survivors did not return to work. Non-parametric correlations examined relationships of self-reported reading with age, education, and lesion volume. Partial correlations examined relationships between the reading tasks and reading questionnaire scores, controlling for age, education, and lesion volume. Results: Self-reported ease of reading after stroke was inversely related to lesion size. Self-reported enjoyment of reading both before and after stroke was related to education level. Controlling for age, education, and lesion size, self-reported before-stroke reading ability and activity was not significantly correlated with accuracy on the reading tasks. In contrast, self-reported ease of reading after stroke was positively correlated with the oral and silent reading tasks, and, at an uncorrected threshold, also with auditory word-to-picture matching. Ease was not correlated with the functional reading task. Accuracy on the functional reading task was significantly correlated with all of the silent and oral reading tasks as well as their auditory versions. Conclusions: A short patient-reported outcome measure about at-home reading appears valid, in that it relates to silent and oral reading accuracy after stroke. This questionnaire has potential applications in clinical practice to assess at-home reading ability and activity. We expected self-reported before-stroke reading to relate to reading ability after stroke, but did not find this effect above and beyond the role of education level in reading after stroke. We also introduced a new functional reading measure. This measure was unrelated to self-reported reading outcomes, perhaps because the outcomes reflected reading of text such as emails and books and not the goal-directed reading required for the functional tasks. Future work will need to examine the validity of this measure.
Topic Areas: Reading, Disorders: Acquired