The effect of literacy on oral language processing: Implications for aphasia tests

Abstract

Most studies investigating the impact of literacy on oral language processing have shown that literacy provides phonological awareness skills in the processing of oral language. The implications of these results on aphasia tests could be significant and pose questions on the adequacy of such tools for testing non-literate individuals. Aiming at examining the impact of literacy on oral language processing and its implication on aphasia tests, this study tested 12 non-literate and 12 literate individuals with a modified Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (Paradis and Amberber, 1991, Bilingual Aphasia Test. Amharic version. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.). The problems of phonological awareness skills in oral language processing in non-literates are substantiated. In addition, compared with literate participants, non-literate individuals demonstrated difficulties in the word/sentence–picture matching tasks. This study has also revealed that the Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test may be viable for testing Amharic-speaking non-literate individuals with aphasia when modifications are incorporated.

• aphasia
• Bilingual Aphasia Test
• literacy
• Amharic
• phonological awareness
• word/sentence–picture matching

Acknowledgement

The authors are extremely grateful to all participants of this study.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1. Literate participants are between 7 and 10 grade levels. Although this involves exposure to English, they hardly ever use it, and hence their knowledge of English is likely minimal. This is also evidenced from their inability to understand simple commands and to write even a simple sentence to express their ideas in English.

2. ‘The proposed error scores for normal participants’ refer to the norms published in Paradis and Libben (1987).

3. According to Leyew (2007), Amharic has five regional dialects, namely Gondar, Gojam, Wollo, Shewa and Addis Ababa. The Addis Ababa dialect, which is spoken in the capital, Addis Ababa, is said to be the standard dialect.

4. Tasks that involve distinguishing fruits from vegetables or vice versa may not be appropriate as their distinction is not consistent across all cultures.

5. ‘3ms’ stands for third person masculine singular.