Construct validity, external validity, and reliability for a battery of language-specific attention tasks

ABSTRACT

Background: Multiple language problems have been attributed to attentional impairments in people with aphasia. As a result, a number of investigations have examined the effectiveness of attentional treatments for improving impaired language processing. With few exceptions, all of the studies have used domain-general (nonspecific) attention training with nonlinguistic tasks as the therapeutic modality. Unfortunately, despite the well-documented associations between language and attention, these treatments have not yielded substantial improvements in language outcomes. It may be that the lack of specificity in these approaches for recruiting language-related attentional processes is a contributing factor. To address this issue, a Language-Specific Attention Treatment (L-SAT) (Peach, 2012) was proposed using language tasks that are purported to recruit attention for language processing. Further investigation into the attentional requirements of these tasks is needed.

Aims: To establish the construct validity and reliability of the baseline and probe tasks (hereafter, probe tasks) used in L-SAT in a group of healthy participants as well as to determine the external validity of these tasks in participants with aphasia.

Methods & Procedures: Twenty healthy participants and six participants with aphasia were assessed using standardized language and attention tests and an experimental battery of eight language-specific attention tasks that serve as the probe measures for this program. Correlational analyses were performed to examine the construct and external validity of the experimental tasks as well as their reliability.

Outcomes & Results: All of these language tasks were found to be independent of one another in healthy participants and to correlate strongly with at least one attention measure, with the exception of one task, which showed moderate correlations with several attention measures. Examination of the correlations among the probe tasks and the attention measures revealed a highly interpretable pattern that is consistent with the processing requirements of each task. i.e., the attentional demands suggested by these findings are reasonable and consistent with the language tasks themselves. Excellent inter- and intra-rater reliability were found for these tasks in both healthy participants and the PWA. Acceptable test-retest reliability was found in both groups for all but three of the tasks.

Conclusions: The results suggest that these probe tasks provide a valid method for recruiting language-directed attentional abilities, and therefore, may be effective for indexing attentional processing in participants with aphasia. L-SAT, which incorporates these tasks into a hierarchically organized treatment program, may offer a promising approach to treating aphasic impairments associated with attentional deficits.

KEYWORDS:

• Aphasia
• cognition
• attention-disorder
• training
• specificity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.