Main concepts for two picture description tasks: an addition to Richardson and Dalton, 2016

ABSTRACT

Background: Proposition analysis of the discourse of persons with aphasia (PWAs) has a long history, yielding important advancements in our understanding of communication impairments in this population. Recently, discourse measures have been considered primary outcome measures, and multiple calls have been made for improved psychometric properties of discourse measures.

Aims: To advance the use of discourse analysis in PWAs by providing Main Concept Analysis checklists and descriptive statistics for healthy control performance on the analysis for the Cat in the Tree and Refused Umbrella narrative tasks utilized in the AphasiaBank database protocol.

Methods & Procedures: Ninety-two control transcripts, stratified into four age groups (20–39 years; 40–59; 60–79; 80+), were downloaded from the AphasiaBank database. Relevant concepts were identified, and those spoken by at least one-third of the control sample were considered to be a main concept (MC). A multilevel coding system was used to determine the accuracy and completeness of the MCs produced by control speakers.

Outcomes & Results: MC checklists for two discourse tasks are provided. Descriptive statistics are reported and examined to assist readers with evaluation of the normative data.

Conclusions: These checklists provide clinicians and researchers with a tool to reliably assess the discourse of PWAs. They also help address the gap in available psychometric data with which to compare PWAs to healthy controls.

KEYWORDS:

• Aphasia
• AphasiaBank
• discourse analysis
• main concept
• normative reference

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Chapman Foundation for financial support in the very early stages of our discourse projects for without their contribution, we would never have arrived at this point. We would also like to express our deep gratitude to AphasiaBank developers and contributors for this invaluable database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM109089; NIH NIGMS [P20GM109089].