Correlation of Aphasic Individual’s Performances in Three Turkish Aphasia Tests:  A Study of Criterion Validity

Bülent Toğram; Güliz Çıkan; Hüseyin Duru

doi:10.4274/Tnd.07279

Bülent Toğram¹, Güliz Çıkan², Hüseyin Duru³

¹Anadolu University, Center for Speech And Language Disorders (DILKOM), Eskişehir, Turkey
²Anadolu University, Medical Sciences Institutes, Speech And Language Therapy, Phd. Student, Eskişehir Turkey
³Ada Education And Psychological Counselling Center, Üsküdar, İstanbul

Keywords: Aphasia, assessment of aphasia, Language Assessment Test forAphasia, Ege Aphasia Test, Gülhane Aphasia Test-2

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Assessing the language characteristics of aphasic patients is essential for aphasia rehabilitation. In Turkey, there is a limited number of tests developed for the purpose of assessing aphasic patients. The need for a study comparing aphasic patients’ performance in Turkish aphasia tests has an important place in the literature. The general purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation of aphasic people’s performances on Language Assessment Test for Aphasia, Ege Aphasia Test, and Gülhane Aphasia Test-2 and to realise the criterion validity study of ADD as a result. In addition to the aphasic participants, the performance of healthy participants as a control group on all three of the tests is analyzed.

METHODS: This study has been carried out in two steps which are first, the correlation study of Language Assessment Test for Aphasia and Ege Aphasia Test; and second, the correlation study of Language Assessment Test for Aphasia and Gülhane Aphasia Test-2. In both steps, the tests were administered to 30 aphasic and 30 healthy participants. In both steps, data from the mutual subtests of the two tests that were in question were used. Also, in both steps, the tests were administered to healthy participants and their performances were compared with aphasic people’s performances.

RESULTS: The results show that aphasic participants performed highly lower than healthy participants on all three tests and there is a significant difference between aphasic and healthy participants’ performance. A high degree of correlation was found between aphasic participants’ performance on Language Assessment Test for Aphasia-Ege Aphasia Test; and Language Assessment Test for Aphasia-Gülhane Aphasia Test-2

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, it was seen that all three tests show a high compatibility and they can be used interchangeably for the purpose of assessing aphasic persons’ language characteristics.