Aphasiology

Background There is a lack of standardised aphasia assessment tools in Basque, a language in the process of normalisation, spoken by about 809.000 speakers in the South of France and North of Spain. This may be explained by the Basque complex sociolinguistic situation: its linguistic status (being official or not) and its normalisation differs across territories. Basque has several dialects plus a standard variety, the so-called “Unified Basque” (UB), which was developed in 1968 to be commonly used in the media, administration, and education. Aims A prerequisite for validating the pictures to be included in any CAT adaptation is to achieve a high level of name agreement on these pictures. This paper aims to explain how meeting this criterion was particularly challenging in Basque, given its high dialectal variability, and to present the strategies found to overcome this challenge. Methods & procedures 38 Basque speakers with various dialects, aged 22–84 years old (mean age: 43.97), participated in three picture naming tasks and one word comprehension task. They had to name or recognise a total of 363 pictures presented in four different Google online-surveys. Outcomes & results First, the variability of answers collected from the picture naming tasks demonstrated that dialects are commonly used in Basque including phonological and lexical variants. Second, the results showed that although several expected words were not produced in UB in the picture naming tasks, these words were nonetheless understood in the word comprehension task. Third, participants’ living place and literacy skills in Basque had an impact on the number of accurate words produced in UB. Conclusions This paper supports the idea that to develop reliable aphasia assessment tools, it is crucial to take into account language-specific grammatical properties and sociolinguistic features in addition to key psychometric issues. Some issues emerging from the Basque CAT adaptation might be of particular interest to those in charge of adaptations of assessment tools in minority languages or languages in the process of normalisation.

Introduction: Normal cognitive aging is identified from pathologi-cal through the administration of neuropsychological tests, includ-ing tests of language ability. Compared to English, available testsand test batteries for assessing acquired language deficits in Turkishspeakers are much more limited. This study reports on the adapta-tion and generation of normative data of the TheBatterie d’Évaluation Cognitive du Langage (BECLA) for the adultTurkish population.Method: The article describes two studies. Study 1 concerns theTurkish adaptation of the BECLA (BECLA-Tr). Study 2 examineda group of older neurotypical Turkish-speaking adults to obtainnormative data.Results: In Study 1, some changes were made to adapt the originaltest battery linguistically and culturally for use in Turkey. In Study 2,normative data were obtained based on the performance of 409participants aged 18 years and older with different education levels.Conclusion: The BECLA-Tr fills an important gap in the clinicalpractice of speech and language pathologists in Turkey. This com-prehensive test battery has the potential to help clinicians andresearchers better detect acquired language deficits in the adultand elderly Turkish population.

Background: Japan’s aging population presents challenges to speech-language pathologists and community volunteers in supporting the growing number of people with aphasia (PWA) after stroke. PWA’s self-efficacy or confidence may affect how much they engage in situations that require them to communicate. The Communication Confidence Rating Scale for Aphasia (CCRSA) is a patient-reported scale that assesses how confident a person with aphasia feels about their ability to communicate in different situations. Aim: The purpose of this study was to describe the development of a Japanese version of CCRSA (J-CCRSA) and examine its psychometric properties for use in speech-language therapy (SLT) in Japan. Methods and Procedures: In this cross-sectional study, we examined J-CCRSA acceptability, internal consistency reliability, retest reliability, structural validity, convergent validity, and known population validity. Participants were PWA in the chronic phase and healthy controls with no history of stroke (HC). Outcomes and Results: Analysis of 76 PWA and 23 HC showed that J-CCRSA has psychometric properties that can be considered favorable. Specifically, there were no missing values, no bias in the distribution of the measured data, and no ceiling or floor effects. Cronbach’s α for internal consistency reliability was α = 0.89, and the intraclass correlation coefficient for test–retest reliability (n = 33) was intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.79 (P < 0.001). In addition, two factors were extracted in the exploratory factor analysis of the structural validity study, with loadings of 0.64–0.90 for the first factor and 0.78–0.90 for the second factor. The Spearman’s correlation coefficient for the convergent validity index was rho = 0.31–0.63 (P < 0.05), and the known-groups validity, examined by comparing the PWA and HC scores, showed a significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.002, r = -0.35). Conclusions: Our analysis of the psychometric properties of the J-CCRSA provides evidence that J-CCRSA can be used to assess Japanese-speaking PWA, thereby expanding assessment options and providing potential new directions for SLT in Japan.