Rationale: Fatigue affects almost half of all people living with stroke. Stroke survivors rank understanding fatigue and how to reduce it as one of the highest research priorities. Methods: We convened an interdisciplinary, international group of clinical and pre-clinical researchers and lived experience experts. We identified four priority areas: (1) best measurement tools for research, (2) clinical identification of fatigue and potentially modifiable causes, (3) promising interventions and recommendations for future trials, and (4) possible biological mechanisms of fatigue. Cross-cutting themes were aphasia and the voice of people with lived experience. Working parties were formed and structured consensus building processes were followed. Results: We present 20 recommendations covering outcome measures for research, development, and testing of new interventions and priority areas for future research on the biology of post-stroke fatigue. We developed and recommend the use of the Stroke Fatigue Clinical Assessment Tool. Conclusions: By synthesizing current knowledge in post-stroke fatigue across clinical and pre-clinical fields, our work provides a roadmap for future research into post-stroke fatigue.

Rationale: Fatigue affects almost half of all people living with stroke. Stroke survivors rank understanding fatigue and how to reduce it as one of the highest research priorities. Methods: We convened an interdisciplinary, international group of clinical and pre-clinical researchers and lived experience experts. We identified four priority areas: (1) best measurement tools for research, (2) clinical identification of fatigue and potentially modifiable causes, (3) promising interventions and recommendations for future trials, and (4) possible biological mechanisms of fatigue. Cross-cutting themes were aphasia and the voice of people with lived experience. Working parties were formed and structured consensus building processes were followed. Results: We present 20 recommendations covering outcome measures for research, development, and testing of new interventions and priority areas for future research on the biology of post-stroke fatigue. We developed and recommend the use of the Stroke Fatigue Clinical Assessment Tool. Conclusions: By synthesizing current knowledge in post-stroke fatigue across clinical and pre-clinical fields, our work provides a roadmap for future research into post-stroke fatigue.

The purpose of this study was to measure speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) perceptions of fatigue in clients with aphasia and identify strategies used to manage client fatigue during speech and language therapy. SLPs completed a short online survey containing a series of questions related to their perceptions of patient fatigue. Of 312 respondents, 80% reported observing fatigue in their patients with aphasia. Notably, 96% of respondents agreed that declining client performance was an indicator of fatigue during sessions. The most commonly reported clinical strategies used when encountering fatigue were taking short breaks and switching to another task. Participants reported that these strategies were primarily selected based on clinical experience (98%) rather than academic or specific clinical training. The study results suggest that current applications of fatigue management are highly variable and that few clinicians base selection of these strategies on any kind of formal training, despite the known importance of this issue.

Background: Individuals with acquired phonological dyslexia experience difficulty associating written letters with corresponding sounds, especially in pseudowords. Previous studies have shown that reading can be improved in these individuals by training letter–sound correspondence, practicing phonological skills, or using combined approaches. However, generalisation to untrained items is typically limited. Aims: We investigated whether principles of phonological complexity can be applied to training letter–sound correspondence reading in acquired phonological dyslexia to improve generalisation to untrained words. Based on previous work in other linguistic domains, we hypothesised that training phonologically “more complex” material (i.e., consonant clusters with small sonority differences) would result in generalisation to phonologically “less complex” material (i.e., consonant clusters with larger sonority differences), but this generalisation pattern would not be demonstrated when training the “less complex” material. Methods & Procedures: We used a single-participant, multiple baseline design across participants and behaviours to examine phonological complexity as a training variable in five individuals. Based on participants’ error data from a previous experiment, a “more complex” onset and a “less complex” onset were selected for training for each participant. Training order assignment was pseudo-randomised and counterbalanced across participants. Three participants were trained in the “more complex” condition and two in the “less complex” condition while tracking oral reading accuracy of both onsets. Outcomes & Results: As predicted, participants trained in the “more complex” condition demonstrated improved pseudoword reading of the trained cluster and generalisation to pseudowords with the untrained, “simple” onset, but not vice versa. Conclusions: These findings suggest phonological complexity can be used to improve generalisation to untrained phonologically related words in acquired phonological dyslexia. These findings also provide preliminary support for using phonological complexity theory as a tool for designing more effective and efficient reading treatments for acquired dyslexia.