Résumé
Among the sequelae that can appear following a brain injury, aphasia is an acquired language disorder whose most frequent and persistent symptom is anomia. Despite the central pivotal place of the verb in the sentence, the literature mainly proposes studies targeting the recovery of noun anomia, but very few concern verb anomia. Rooted in the theory of mirror neurons and that of Embodied and Situated Cognition, the study by Durand et al. (2018) proposed a new protocol named POEM (Personalized Observation, Execution and Mental imagery) that targets verb recovery by combining for the first time three sensorimotor strategies: observation and action execution with mental imagery. Since the original material was created and calibrated from Quebec French, our study aimed at replicating the POEM protocol by creating a material adapted to the French language of France. The material was validated with a population of 95 people matched to the French population in terms of gender and age, using a video questionnaire. This calibration allowed us to select a total of 96 videos. We were then able to use this material by proposing POEM therapy to a patient with verb anomia in order to study the behavioral effects. Similar to the study by Durand et al. (2018), analysis of our results showed significant improvements for both treated and untreated items, indicating a generalization phenomenon. We were also able to observe improvements on other levels of processing such as noun and proposition processing. These data are discussed and compared with studies in the current literature. The results of the experimental study, although related to the analyses of the single patient’s results, invite further research on the related behavioral effects with a larger number of participants.