Intensive language-action therapy (ILAT): The methods

Background: Brain and language theories suggest the application of general neuroscientific and linguistic principles in the neurorehabilitation of language. The interwoven nature of language and action has long been emphasised in linguistic pragmatics, and recent neuroscience research has indeed demonstrated tight functional interactions between language and action mechanisms of the human brain. This provides important arguments in favour of practising language in communicative settings, rather than with the sole purpose of producing linguistic structures. Intensive language-action therapy (ILAT), including its most popular form called constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT), realises language-action embedding in synergy with the use of intensive training and guidance by modelling, shaping, and explicit rules. ILAT leads to significant improvement of language performance in chronic post-stroke aphasia within a short period of time. A comprehensive description of its methods has thus far been missing. Ai...