Influence of brain lesion and educational: background on language tests in aphasic subjects

Abstract

In language assessment, several socio-demographic variables must be taken into account.ObjectivesTo characterize the performance of aphasic patients with different educational background on language tasks and to compare their performance to that of individuals with no language disorders.MethodsThirty aphasic patients and 30 healthy individuals were selected. Patients were divided into two groups according to educational level: A (1–4 years) n=15 and B (5–11 years) n=15. Age ranged from 27 to 78 years. All subjects were submitted to the Montreal Toulouse language assessment protocol. The pertinent statistical tests were applied.ResultsEducational level interfered in the linguistic performance of normal subjects but not in that of aphasic subjects, whose performance was influenced more by the lesion.ConclusionsThe present study can contribute toward greater understanding of the influence of lesions and educational background on the language performance of aphasic subjects.

Aplicação do teste M1-Alpha em sujeitos normais com baixa escolaridade: estudo piloto

“…With regard to the characteristics of the sample, both mean age and standard deviation of the participants was high, suggesting difficulties finding younger adults with low educational level. Although the sample comprised volunteers of both genders, this variable was not included in the analysis since numerous studies have reported that this aspect does not influence the language tasks assessed in this study (3,4,14,18) . The performance of normal individuals with low educational level on the different tasks of the M1-Alpha was observed.…”

“…Although two studies have been carried out, one involving a normal population (6) and the other an aphasic population (5) , a specific study in a population with low educational level was lacking. Schooling influences all cognitive functions (11,12) including language (4,13,14) , and the M1-Alpha comprises stimuli which can be easily processed by populations with low educational level (15,16) , largely owing to its visuallybased stimuli (17,18) . Given that individual and sociocultural factors can influence performance on language-based tasks, the aim of this study was to determine the performance of normal individuals with low educational level on the M1-Alpha test in order to obtain parameters for use in assessing aphasic patients with similarly low level of education.…”

Influence of schooling on language abilities of adults without linguistic disorders

“…Guidelines recommend the use of tests to carry out this appraisal. 1 Tests enable comparisons between the performance of subjects with brain lesions and that of healthy subjects who have the same schooling level, or allow intra-subject comparisons among brain lesion patients when tests are used longitudinally.…”

Análise do reconhecimento das figuras do Teste MT Beta-86 modificado para uma adaptação: descrição e discussão de aspectos metodológicos

“…Some visual stimuli were part of the modified Beta MT-86 test and some were from the study by Cycowicz et al (11) . Thus, we used the visual stimuli of the Montreal-Toulouse protocol for linguistic assessment of aphasia (modified MT Beta-86), adapted by Parente et al (without reference), and a set of pictures of objects (9) , totaling 266 figures. Figures from the modified MT-Beta 86 test were mixed to figures proposed by Cycowicz et al (11) , because their recognition had been previously studied in the Brazilian population (12) .…”

“…In Brazil, many clinicians and researchers have had contact with the material and began to use it in their clinical practice and/or in research; however, studies (4,(6)(7)(8)(9) have been performed with this protocol over the years and detected the need of adaptation. For the Montreal Toulouse protocol, to be a diagnostic tool capable of measuring linguistic process changes caused by brain damage, further studies aimed at the creation of stimuli fitted to the Brazilian linguistic reality are, extremely important.…”