Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review treatment studies of semantic feature analysis (SFA) for persons with aphasia. The review documents how SFA is used, appraises the quality of the included studies, and evaluates the efficacy of SFA.
Method: The following electronic databases were systematically searched (last search February 2017): Academic Search Complete, CINAHL Plus, E-journals, Health Policy Reference Centre, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, and SocINDEX. The quality of the included studies was rated. Clinical efficacy was determined by calculating effect sizes (Cohen's d) or percent of nonoverlapping data when d could not be calculated.
Results: Twenty-one studies were reviewed reporting on 55 persons with aphasia. SFA was used in 6 different types of studies: confrontation naming of nouns, confrontation naming of verbs, connected speech/discourse, group, multilingual, and studies where SFA was compared with other approaches. The quality of included studies was high (Single Case Experimental Design Scale average [range] = 9.55 [8.0-11]). Naming of trained items improved for 45 participants (81.82%). Effect sizes indicated that there was a small treatment effect.
Conclusions: SFA leads to positive outcomes despite the variability of treatment procedures, dosage, duration, and variations to the traditional SFA protocol. Further research is warranted to examine the efficacy of SFA and generalization effects in larger controlled studies.