WAB fluency scores and all spontaneous speech measures were transformed to z-scores to facilitate comparisons.Īgreement on fluency category was 86% overall, but was considerably higher for participants classified as fluent (91%) than nonfluent (78%) by WAB-R rating. In addition, all had Cinderella story samples, from which we generated spontaneous speech measures. Participants included 249 unique PwA in the AphasiaBank database (MacWhinney, Fromm, Forbes, & Holland, 2011) who had both fluency scale scores from the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R, Kertesz, 2006) and fluency classifications by clinicians, allowing comparison of these two measures. To investigate this, we examined the consistency of fluency classifications, and the spontaneous speech characteristics contributing to those classifications. We propose that the multi-dimensional nature of fluency is a major contributor to its lack of reliability. However, only half of the PwA were rated as fluent or nonfluent by a consensus of at least two‐thirds of the clinicians. Gordon (1998) found that practicing speech‐language pathologists relied primarily on reduced grammaticality, articulatory effort, and word-finding difficulties when rating the fluency of speech samples from 10 participants with aphasia (PwA).

Even categorizing aphasia dichotomously by the fluency of language output is not very reliable.

The diagnosis of aphasia syndromes has been plagued since its earliest days by variable terminology and a lack of agreement on which dimensions yield the greatest diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility. Information on the trajectory of early recovery will increase the accuracy of prognoses and establish baseline expectations against which to evaluate the efficacy of interventions.University of Iowa, Communication Science and Disorders, United States Conclusion: Overall language function typically improves substantially and steadily during the first 2 weeks after stroke, driven mostly by recovery of expressive language. Patterns of recovery differed across language domains, with consistent improvements in word finding, grammatical construction, repetition, and reading, but less consistent improvements in word comprehension and sentence comprehension. There was significant variability across patients, and patients with more impaired language function at Day 2 poststroke experienced greater improvements over the subsequent 2 weeks. The trajectory of recovery was approximately linear over this time period. Results: On a 10-point scale, overall language function improved by a mean of 1.07 points per week, confidence interval, with 19 of 21 patients showing positive changes. Language function was assessed at each time point with the Quick Aphasia Battery (Wilson, Eriksson, Schneck, & Lucanie, 2018), which yields an overall summary score and a multidimensional profile of 7 different language domains. Method: Twenty-one patients with aphasia were evaluated every 2-3 days for the first 15 days after onset of acute ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. The goal of this study was to characterize the dynamics and nature of recovery of language function in the acute and early subacute phases of stroke. Despite its importance, little is known regarding evolution of language function in the early postonset period. Purpose: Recovery from aphasia after stroke has a decelerating trajectory, with the greatest gains taking place early and the slope of change decreasing over time.

Western aphasia battery overview