Lucy Bryant

• Doctor of Speech Pathology (Ph.D.)
• Lecturer at University of Technology Sydney

Purpose: The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in the field of neurodevelopmental communication disability is emergent and under-researched. The views of supporters on the use of AR by children with neurodevelopmental communication disability will help in the design of applications suited to their educational, learning, social, and communication needs....

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the views of professionals working with children with developmental communication disability (e.g. associated with developmental disability, autism, developmental language disorder) on the features underlying effective augmented reality (AR) applications for language learning and education; and design, build, a...

To improve meals for people with dysphagia, we explored the views of people with dysphagia, their supporters and allied health professionals on a range of food design strategies (e.g. food shaping and food presentation techniques), including 3D food printing. From November 2021 to February 2022, an online survey of (1) adults with dysphagia (n = 30...

Background A recent literature review identified that past research has described the impacts of dysphagia on quality of life; but there is limited research on these impacts from the perspective of people with dysphagia, their supporters and allied health professionals. Recent qualitative research has provided details about these perspectives, but...

Background: Evidence-based recommendations for a core outcome set (COS; minimum set of outcomes) for aphasia treatment research have been developed (the Research Outcome Measurement in Aphasia-ROMA, COS). Five recommended core outcome constructs: communication, language, quality of life, emotional well-being and patient-reported satisfaction/impac...

Purpose To understand the views of people with dysphagia and their supporters on the feasibility of using 3D food printing to improve the visual appeal of texture-modified foods and their mealtime experiences. Materials and Methods Nine people with dysphagia and four of their supporters engaged in a virtual 3D food printing experience and intervie...

Background: Dysphagia impacts negatively on quality of life, however there is little in-depth qualitative research on these impacts from the perspective of people with dysphagia. Aims: To examine the lived experiences and views of people with lifelong or ongoing dysphagia on the impacts of dysphagia and its interventions on quality of life, and...

BACKGROUND: Numerous quantitative and descriptive studies show that dysphagia impacts on quality of life. However, there is little in-depth qualitative research exploring the nature of quality of life impacts of dysphagia from the perspectives of people with chronic or lifelong dysphagia or allied health professionals. OBJECTIVE: To determine the v...

Background: Augmented reality (AR) technologies may provide immersive visual supports that foster active user engagement in activities. However, there is little research examining the use of AR as a visual support to guide its use in research or therapy settings. Aims: To investigate the development and use of AR for delivering visual supports in a...

This review investigated virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) communication interventions for children, adolescents, and adults with communication disability and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well the feasibility of these technologies. A search of five scientific databases yielded 5385 potentially relevant records of which 69 met inclus...

Purpose: Qualitative research methods, grounded in an inductive analytic paradigm, increasingly inform clinical practice in the field of speech-language pathology. Social media research, often including qualitative methods, provides a valuable way to connect and listen to the voices of people with communication disabilities. With growing empirical...

Purpose: Virtual reality (VR) lends itself to communication rehabilitation by creating safe, replicable, and authentic simulated environments in which users learn and practice communication skills. The aim of this research was to obtain the views of health professionals and technology specialists on the design characteristics and usability of a pr...

Texture-modified foods are a common component of interventions provided to people with dysphagia (swallowing disorders) to maintain their respiratory health, nutritional health and to reduce the risk of aspiration-related illness or choking on food. However, the unsightly and unappetizing appearance of texture-modified foods may negatively impact o...

Background Spoken discourse is a fundamental form of communication, yet often disrupted in persons with aphasia and other neurogenic communication disorders. It follows that discourse analysis is important for understanding language, its impairments, and language recovery in these populations. Being a highly interdisciplinary field, discourse analy...

Purpose Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices in...

Purpose: Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices i...

Purpose The heterogeneous nature of measures, methods, and analyses reported in the aphasia spoken discourse literature precludes comparison of outcomes across studies (e.g., meta-analyses) and inhibits replication. Furthermore, funding and time constraints significantly hinder collecting test–retest data on spoken discourse outcomes. This research...

Background A reduced quality of life for people with aphasia is in part associated with their loss of friendships and social networks. Twitter offers people with communication disability a way to exchange information, develop and maintain their social networks and connections, and participate in society online. However, little is known about how Tw...

Variability is common in language sample analysis (LSA), arising from personal factors such as age or level of education, or from factors within the text such as its length and purpose. Variability can affect interpretation of results in clinical practice and research studies, as well as the ability to detect change in individuals over time. This a...

Background: Evidence-practice gaps exist in aphasia rehabilitation across the continuum of care. The principles of implementation science have been utilised in recent research to reduce evidence-practice gaps and demonstrate improvements in clinical practice. However, the sustainability of these changes are unknown. Sustained outcomes are critical...

Virtual reality (VR) technologies are emerging as novel platforms for physical and cognitive interventions, though applications in communication rehabilitation are scarce. Consultation with end-users on implementation of VR in clinical contexts is a vital first step to investigating the feasibility VR in communication rehabilitation. The aim of thi...

Purpose: This paper describes the development of a working group and its initiatives, which have been designed to address major gaps in the spoken discourse aphasia literature, including a lack of standardization in methodology, analysis, and reporting, and nominal data regarding the psychometric properties of spoken discourse outcomes. Method: The...

Objectives: To integrate findings on the information infrastructure for people with intellectual or developmental disability (I/DD) living in supported accommodation, to understand how documentation use impacts person-centred support. Methods: We conducted an integrative literature review. Following screening by two independent reviewers, we inc...

Objective: To examine the views and experiences of patients and their health care providers on developing advance care planning (ACP) and advance care directives (ACD); and determine barriers and facilitators to ACD development, storage, and use, including implications for people with communication disability. Method: An integrative review of 93...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to conduct an integrative review of original research, across adult populations relating to fatal or nonfatal choking on food, to understand ways to respond to and prevent choking incidents. Method Four scientific databases (CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science, and EMBASE) were searched for original peer-reviewed...

Background: This article recognises Professor Linda Worrall’s contribution to aphasiology and discusses research themes which have grown from her work. Aims: To review, summarise, and discuss literature relating to four themes which have emerged from the work of Professor Worrall: (1) Research capacity building; (2) Implementation of research evide...

Background: Technology devices and applications including virtual reality (VR) are increasingly used in healthcare research and practice as tools to promote health and wellbeing. However, there is limited research examining the potential for VR to enable improved communication for people with communication disability. Aims: To review: (a) current r...

Background: Patients with communication disability, associated with impairments of speech, language, or voice, have a three-fold increased risk of adverse events in hospital. However, little research yet examines the causal relationship between communication disability and risk for specific adverse events in hospital. Objective: To examine the i...

Background and aims Facilitated Communication (FC) is a technique that involves a person with a disability pointing to letters, pictures, or objects on a keyboard or on a communication board, typically with physical support from a “facilitator”. Proponents claim that FC reveals previously undetected literacy and communication skills in people with...

Background: Linguistic discourse analysis is frequently used in aphasia research but is met with frequent calls for greater clinical application by speech pathologists and discussion of barriers and facilitators to clinical use. When examined in the clinical context, applications of linguistic discourse analysis were reportedly limited by knowledge...

This article reviews legal and scientific literature relating to Advance Care Planning (ACP) and Advance Care Directives (ACDs) in Australia, for information about (a) opportunities or benefits of ACP and ACDs and (b) risks, barriers or difficulties in relation to ACP and ACDs. These are discussed in relation to

Background: Linguistic discourse analysis is an assessment method widely applied within aphasia research literature to examine impairments as they affect the language of daily function—discourse. Although this literature suggests that clinical applications do occur, it also identifies barriers that may inhibit the translation of research to practic...

This review examined previous research applications of linguistic discourse analysis to assess the language of adults with aphasia. A comprehensive literature search of seven databases identified 165 studies that applied linguistic measures to samples of discourse collected from people with aphasia. Analysis of methodological applications revealed...

Background: Measuring and describing the effects of aphasia on the informativeness of language is a complex process. Due to technological advances in the recent years, the processes involved in the measurement of language can be automated through the use of computerised analyses. In the present research, the Computerized Propositional Idea Density...