Validation of Videoconference Administration of Picture Description From the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised in Neurotypical Canadian French Speakers.

PURPOSE: During the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians and researchers have increasingly used remote online assessments to pursue their activities, but mostly with tests not validated for videoconference administration. This study aims to validate the remote online administration of picture description in Canadian French neurotypical speakers and to explore the thematic unit (TU) checklist recently developed. METHOD: Spoken discourse elicited through the picture description task of the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) was collected from Canadian French neurotypical speakers from Québec aged between 50 and 79 years old. Forty-seven participants completed the task in person, and 49 participants completed the task by videoconference. Videos of each discourse sample were transcribed using CHAT conventions. Microstructural variables were extracted using the CLAN (Computerized Language ANalysis) program, whereas thematic informativeness was scored for each sample using TUs. Chi-square tests were conducted to compare both groups on each TU; t tests were also performed on the total score of TUs and microstructural variables. RESULTS: Groups were matched on sex, age, and education variables. The t tests revealed no intergroup difference for the total TU score and for the microstructural variables (e.g., mean length of utterances and number of words per minute). Chi-square tests showed no significant intergroup difference for all 16 TUs. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support remote online assessment of the picnic scene of the WAB-R picture description in Canadian French neurotypical speakers. These results also validate the 16 TUs most consistently produced. The use of videoconference could promote and improve the recruitment of participants who are usually less accessible, such as people using assistive mobility technologies. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21476961.

Picture Description of the Western Aphasia Battery Picnic Scene: Reference Data for the French Canadian Population.

PURPOSE: The main aim of this study is to provide French Canadian reference data for quantitative measures extracted from connected speech samples elicited by the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised picnic scene, a discourse task frequently used in clinical assessment of acquired language disorders. METHOD: Our sample consisted of 62 healthy French Canadian adults divided in two age groups: a 50- to 69-year-old group and a 70- to 90-year-old group. RESULTS: High interrater reliability scores were obtained for most of the variables. Most connected speech variables did not demonstrate an age effect. However, the 70- to 90-year-old group produced more repetitions than the 50- to 69-year-old group and displayed reduced communication efficiency (number of information content units per minute). CONCLUSION: These findings contribute to building a reference data set to analyze descriptive discourse production in clinical settings.

Predicting Early Post-stroke Aphasia Outcome From Initial Aphasia Severity.

Background: The greatest degree of language recovery in post-stroke aphasia takes place within the first weeks. Aphasia severity and lesion measures have been shown to be good predictors of long-term outcomes. However, little is known about their implications in early spontaneous recovery. The present study sought to determine which factors better predict early language outcomes in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Methods: Twenty individuals with post-stroke aphasia were assessed <72 h (acute) and 10-14 days (subacute) after stroke onset. We developed a composite score (CS) consisting of several linguistic sub-tests: repetition, oral comprehension and naming. Lesion volume, lesion load and diffusion measures [fractional anisotropy (FA) and axial diffusivity (AD)] from both arcuate fasciculi (AF) were also extracted using MRI scans performed at the same time points. A series of regression analyses were performed to predict the CS at the second assessment. Results: Among the diffusion measures, only FA from right AF was found to be a significant predictor of early subacute aphasia outcome. However, when combined in two hierarchical models with FA, age and either lesion load or lesion size, the initial aphasia severity was found to account for most of the variance (R 2 = 0.678), similarly to the complete models (R 2 = 0.703 and R 2 = 0.73, respectively). Conclusions: Initial aphasia severity was the best predictor of early post-stroke aphasia outcome, whereas lesion measures, though highly correlated, show less influence on the prediction model. We suggest that factors predicting early recovery may differ from those involved in long-term recovery.