NCRRN.org

Dr. Schwartz is Associate Director of Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI) and Research Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. She earned a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and received post-doctoral training in Behavioral Neurology/Neuropsychology from the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Schwartz is co-founder and research director of the Moss Aphasia Center. As Co-Investigator of the NCRRN, Dr. Schwartz heads the Patient Research Registry project.

Areas of Expertise

• Language processing in unimpaired adults and adults with acquired aphasia, including the retrieval, selection, and sequencing of words in spoken production
• The rehabilitation of acquired aphasia
• The breakdown of complex, naturalistic action after TBI and stroke
• Methodological issues in cognitive rehabilitation research
• Practical and ethical issues involved in recruiting patients for cognitive rehabilitation research

Programs of Research

• Varieties of word- and sentence-production impairments in aphasia, as revealed by behavioral experiments and computational modeling (with Gary Dell)
• Brain localization of semantic and phonological processes, as revealed by voxel-based deficit-lesion analysis (with Dan Kimberg and Branch Coslett)
• Frontal control processes and their contribution to normal and impaired language processing (with Thompson-Schill)
• Studies in the rehabilitation of aphasia using SentenceShaper™, a computerized, processing-prosthesis for spoken language production (with Marcia Linebarger and Ruth Fink)
• Short-term memory, interference, and word-learning in aphasia (with Nadine Martin and Prahlad Gupta)
• Predictors of naturalistic action impairments in left hemisphere stroke (with Laurel Buxbaum)
• The Moss Patient Registry for Cognitive Rehabilitation Research
• The Moss Aphasia Center

Publications

• Dell, G. S., Schwartz, M. F., Martin, N., Saffran, E. M., & Gagnon, D. A. (1997). Lexical access in aphasic and nonaphasic speakers. Psychological Review, 104, 801-838. PMID 9337631
• Schwartz, M.F. & Brecher, A. (2000). A model-driven analysis of severity, response characteristics, and partial recovery in aphasics’ picture naming. Brain and Language, 73, 62-91. PMID 10872638
• Linebarger, M.C., Schwartz, M.F., Romania, J.R., Kohn, S.E. & Stephens, D.L. (2000). Grammatical encoding in aphasia: Evidence from a ‘processing prosthesis’. Brain and Language, 75, 416-427. PMID 11112295
• Berndt, R.S., Wayland, S., Rochon, E., Saffran, E., & Schwartz, M.F. (2001). Quantitative production anaysis (QPA): A training manual for the analysis of aphasic sentence production. Hove, U.K.: Psychology Press.
• Schwartz, M.F. & Hodgson, C. (2002). A new multiword naming deficit: Evidence and interpretation. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 19, 263-288.
• Fink, R.B., Brecher, A., Schwartz,M. & Robey, R. (2002). A computer implemented protocol for treatment of naming disorders: Evaluation of clinician-guided and partially self-guided instruction. Aphasiology, 16 (10/11), 1061-1086.
• Schwartz, M.F., Buxbaum, L.J., Ferraro, M., Veramonti, T., & Segal, M. (2003). Naturalistic action test. Suffolk, England: Pearson Assessment, Oxford UK
• Schwartz, M.F. & Fink, R. (2003). Rehabilitation of Aphasia. T.E. Feinberg & M.J. Farah (Eds.), Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychology, 2nd Edition. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.
• Schwartz, M.F., Brecher, A.R., Whyte, J.W., Klein, M.G. (2005) A patient registry for cognitive rehabilitation research: A strategy for balancing patients’ privacy rights with researchers’ need for access. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 86, 1807-1814. PMID 16181947
• Cooper, R.P., Schwartz, M.F., Yule, P., & Shallice, T. (2005). The simulation of action disorganization in complex activities of daily living. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22, 959-1004.
• Fink, R.B., Brecher, A., Sobel, P. & Schwartz, M.F. (2005) Computer-assisted treatment of word retrieval deficits in aphasia. Aphasiology, 19, 943-954.
• Linebarger, M.C. & Schwartz, M.F. (2005). AAC for hypothesis-testing and treatment of aphasic language production: Lessons from a ‘processing prosthesis.’ Aphasiology, 19, 930-942.
• Schnur, T. T., Lee, E., Coslett, H. B., Schwartz, M. F., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2005). When lexical selection gets tough, the LIFG gets going: A lesion analysis study of interference during word production. Brain and Language, 95, 12-13. (Long abstract).
• Schwartz, M.F. Cognitive neuropsychology of everyday action and planning (2006). Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 202-221.
• Schnur, T.T., Schwartz, M.F., Brecher, A., & Hodgson, C. (2006). Semantic interference during blocked-cyclic naming. Evidence from aphasia, Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 199-227.
• Schwartz, M.F., Dell, G.S., Martin, N., Gahl, S., & Sobel, P. ( 2006). A case-series test of the interactive two-step model of lexical access: Evidence from picture naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 228-264.
• Schwartz, M.F., Linebarger, M.C., Brooks, R., and Bartlett, M.R. Combining assistive technology with conversation groups in long-term rehabilitation for aphasia. Manuscript, September 2007. (PDF: 554kb / 61 pages)