Mapping Therapy: An Intervention Therapy

Mapping Therapy:

An Intervention Therapy

✦✦✦✦✦✦

Mapping Therapy is a powerful cognitive-linguistic intervention designed to improve sentence production and comprehension in individuals with aphasia. It focuses on visualizing and manipulating the relationships between sentence elements (verbs, nouns, prepositions) through diagrams or "maps." By explicitly representing these connections, Mapping Therapy helps clients understand and produce more complex sentence structures, leading to improved communication abilities.

Patient Population 

Individuals with aphasia, particularly those with difficulties in sentence formulation and comprehension, benefit most from Mapping Therapy.

Pre-requisites or Contraindications 

• Pre-requisites: Basic understanding of nouns and verbs, ability to participate in structured tasks.
• Contraindications: Severe cognitive impairments that preclude participation in visual-spatial tasks.
• 
  

Material with Illustrated Examples

• Written or printed sentences
• Agent(subject), action(verb) and patient(object) cards
• Picture cues

Steps Involved

1. Sentence Selection: Choose a sentence relevant to the client's needs.
2. Identification of Elements: Identify the verb, subject and object
3. Map Construction: Draw a central node for the verb and connect it to other elements with lines.
4. Visual Representation: Use images or symbols to represent nouns and prepositions.
5. Sentence Production: Guide the client to reconstruct the sentence based on the map.
6. Repetition and Variation: Repeat with different sentences, varying complexity

Video Demonstration

Sample Outcome Recording Sheet

Home-Based Activity

Home based activities in mapping therapy helps individuals with aphasia to practice communication using different modalities in natural settings. This activity reinforces the principles of Mapping Therapy in a fun and engaging way, promoting generalization of skills to everyday contexts.

"Sentence Scavenger Hunt"

Instructions:

1. Choose 5-10 simple sentences related to daily activities (e.g., "randma drinks coffee").
2. Write each sentence on a separate card.
3. Hide the cards around the house.
4. The client finds a card, identifies the verb, subject, and object
5. The client then says the sentence aloud.